Don't be impressed....

No, this is not Palm Sunday 2012 (actually, I was *really* bad, and did not go to church on Palm Sunday at. all. this year), but 2011. Paper and stickers are from Webster's Pages, their Garden Gala line. I bought three WP lines from Your Scrapbook Supply last fall, and I wanted to be sure and USE them. This green was perfect for my page, and the red accents in the line went lovely with Ben's red coat. The blues are an additional bonus for this boy page ;) 

I added a number of touches with embellishments from other lines. The oval holding the title is both a punch (inner oval) and embossing folder (outer oval) from Stampin Up. I bought a scallop oval punch from Mary, a fellow scrapper who had a garage sale last spring. I picked up that punch for just $1 (!) and it's one of my "new" faves, especially with the Stampin Up acquisitions.

The chipboard clouds are from Studio Calico. The architectural circle is from Pink Paislee -- I spritzed it with Glimmer Mist in Mustard Seed (oh, serendipity! and on a church layout...haha). I spritzed the crocheted flower (another Stampin Up product...originally a bright white) and bit of lace next to the title oval with more of the same.

I have been a steady subscriber at Masterful Scrapbook Design (nearly) since its inception, and the April seminar was called Artful Embellishment. Oddly enough, I did not go over the materials until *after* I did this layout...but I followed some of the "rules" they outline, so *something* is sinking in from previous lessons.

I have also been knitting like mad, and spending lots of time at Ravelry. I'm MichiganDenise over there, if you would like to say hello! I've been obsessed with finishing Tiny Owl's Wear the Wild Things Are hat (almost done with it!) and the Hogwart's Express shawlette (my first), as well as making my first Teeny Tiny Mochi Mochi -- a little gnome! I've nicknamed him my Gnomie.

Peace out, gnomies!

Easter Sunday...2012! Shocker.

I have Fridays to myself now (FINALLY...school breaks messed with me for quite a while...) and this is the first Friday I set out to get some scrapping done. Once Lil Guy is home, it is hard for me to concentrate in my scrap room (lovely as it is), so I set aside today to wrap up one layout and hopefully work on some more.

Easter Sunday 2012

What's special about this one, not only is the event recent, but I went on a shopping expedition (I need all day, it's a fair bit of travel now, sadly) to Scrappy Chic and Archiver's Novi *last* Friday with the express purpose of picking up some pieces from Basic Grey's Konnichiwa and Plumeria lines. I was hoping to find October Afternoon's 9-5 collection, too, but alas. They are as slow in shipping as reported.

My Hawaii mini album is done. It is ridiculously large for  "mini." I had to get 2" rings to make it manageable. I will share some photos soon...time to get back to 2011.

Ms. Mojo's Visiting...

Just getting my mojo back. Still haven't finished my Hawaii mini-album, but I'm close. For some reason, scrapbooking seems to go so. sloooow. lately. It just seems to take me HOURS to finish one layout. My biggest delay is searching through paper scraps. I have no desire for new paper; I have SO MUCH already, it's crazy. Time to de-stash, but not while Mojo's visiting. Gotta put my head down and see where this latest burst of energy takes me.

This is from April 2011 (!) Yes, I'm waaay behind on last year. And yes, I MUST scrapbook chronologically (sometimes). I had 300+ photos printed for Scrap Camp back in October, and I've barely made a dent in them.

I wanted to use chevrons on this page, because Ben was hopping all over the place in these photos. I had to take a strip of diagonally striped paper and turn the middle one upside down (at the top) to make chevrons. The chevrons on the photo mat were just part of the paper (both papers from old SIStv collections, circa 2009. See? I *DO* hang on to those scraps! LOL). The black polka-dotted tape is new, from the Smash collection. Flowers are American Crafts. Title letters are from Pink Paislee, bought at the SIStv retreat I attended in Tennessee in 2009. This is why I could never be on a design team...I have to sit on stuff for YEARS before I use it! ;)

Oh yay! A Hawaii layout. Now, this could be submitted for the Graphics 45 design team, because everything on it is from their Tropical Travelogue collection. When I got back from Hawaii, a local scrapbook wholesaler had this up for sale, and I HAD to have it. Obviously. 

We rented a car for our last two days on Oahu, and the first day we had it, we drove around the island up to the North Shore. The waves were too active to see any sea turtles :( but we sat for a while and watched the powerful surf. They fully deserved full-on 5"x7" photos, and I used a sketch (HIGHLY modified) from Get it Scrapped. #73, I think...from their 30 Greatest Hits download, I believe.

Now that my youngest is in school full-time on Fridays (!!) I will be going to scrap tomorrow starting at 12 NOON. omg. I have 4 page "kits" ready with photos, sketches, and paper/embellishments, so hopefully I will have more (at least ONE, please God...I need to speed up my process!) to share this weekend.

Finally, yes, my community suffered some tornado devastation this past week...luckily, no one was seriously harmed or killed, due to the fair warning we had, the time the tornado occurred (5:15p), and the fact that mid-westerners reallyDO take tornado warnings seriously, and TAKE COVER when told. 

Tess had a school event last night and I took this photo of the post-it note boards (TWO of them) full of notes both positive and negative (kids sharing their fears), and it reminded me again what an amazing community I live in.

Taking time...

The last few mornings (while kids are in school) I have been taking time to work on crafty stuff. Since last week, though, crafty time has meant...working on their Valentines.

After last year's surplus of paper, store-bought Valentines ended up all over my house (stickers included), I decided this year I'd make them, using up some scrappy supplies in the process. Last year I bought (but didn't have a chance to use) this cool iPod candy bar wrapper for Tess. We hosted supper club at our house just prior to Valentines, and making dinner for 38 people preempted making cool Valentines. Not this year!

Just prior to February, I wrapped up a 6-month Stamp Club commitment with my Stampin' Up demonstrator (and fellow church mom), Angie. I made sure to order their Sizzix milk carton die, which, although tiny (those iPod wrappers are around regular-sized Hershey bars, for comparison), held an AMAZING amount of Jelly Bellies. Getting Ben to sign all the little cards was agonizing, but went quickly once I promised him any leftover jellies. I had to get a second (!) 2-pound bag (!!), so I wasn't sure there would be any leftovers, but made sure he had a handful for all his hard work.

Now to get back to work on my Hawaii mini-album, and the North Shore waves layout I started at home Friday night, with Graphic 45's Tropical Travelogue line (love!). That won't be too soon, as the kids have a 4-day weekend coming up, but I will try to get those finished up SOON.

Scrapping (and blogging) again

It's been so long since I've (a) dealt with Blogger and (2) used Photoshop Elements, that I'm overwhelmed by changes. So this is the new dashboard? (sorry, you can't see that, can you? Umm...it's...clean!) And I had to uninstall my "Inspiration Browser" (I didn't even know I had such a thing in PSE) and re-install the new one, then "launch" it from within PSE? (took me a minute..."Tips and Tricks," THERE it is!)

All this to show you two quite ancient layouts that I've FINALLY got around to finishing. Yes, 2010. Ancient. Right?

November 2010. I thought I had saved this turkey decoration, but couldn't find it in the disaster area that is our basement storage room (even shelving didn't help) to mine it for "things Tess was thankful for," so I simply zoomed in on the photo and found 2 things that were readable on the feathers: her family, and Silly Bandz (wow, how ancient is that?!) LOL

I thought I had written down the name of the baby reindeer the kids visited at our local library...so I had to find the date of the photo in my files (12/20/10), then *find* my 2010 diary, look up the entry, only to find...umm, no, I did not write it down (I think it was Bingo...no idea why...or why it matters). I sat down yesterday and finished the journaling without it. Imagine that! I still had room on my journaling card. Huh.

Now I am off to discover why Networked Blogs is not updating my Facebook page with these entries (there's another new one just under this one...try not to faint in amazement that I updated). But maybe that's all resolved now. Otherwise, you may get here by a self-serving link to my timeline. Hey, me updating this blog (and *scrapbooking!*) is NEWS.

Travel With Me - 2012 Sketchbook Project

Travel With Me - 2012 Sketchbook Project, a set on Flickr.

After posting this FOUR times to my old PPS blog, I finally figured out where to change my Blogger URL in Flickr. I now have a Pro Account again, and hope to be sharing more from Flickr this way. Whew!

Anyway, this is what I have been working on since returning from our holiday vacation. Now it is winging its way to Brooklyn, just under the January 31st deadline. Yay!

Spending today working on our Hawaii mini-album...hope to share that with you soon!

Whoa!

Bad, bad blogger. Just got back from Scrap Camp and I managed to finish 41 layouts...now, 29 of those were 6x6 pages for my kids' summer mini albums, but since they took the better part of my first day and a half of camp, I'm counting them as full pages! I will have photos soon...just so dang wiped by the late nights at camp...still catching up on sleep...and the Boy has decided No More Pull-Ups at night, which means LOTS of interrupted sleep and LAUNDRY :( Yeah, that's not going so well. YAWN. Okay, just wanted to let you know that I'm alive and will be updating (better) soon.