Hey Kelly, this one's for you...

Seems my favorite crop organizer and all-around best scrapbooker buddy, Kelly, has been looking for a new post since...umm...February? Sorry, but LOAD 2011 kept me busy. I did manage to complete a layout a day in the month of February (plus 1), and I'm hoping to participate again in May. In the meantime, I need to give a little love and attention to my much-neglected scrappy blog.

Here are the layouts I did last Friday at Kelly's house. I wish we were having a church crop tomorrow, but I can't stay to close up (at midnight), since what kept my daughter home from school 3 days this week is now attacking my system. You know it's serious when you cancel the EXTREMELY RARE babysitter you had for tonight's Supper Club Adult's Night Out (dinner! in a restaurant! with adult conversation! no kids!! Heaven...) because you'd like to crawl under the covers with the 5 year-old bottle of prescription cough medicine you just found in the back of your medicine cabinet.

Heaven forbid a medical doctor would give me a new prescription. They don't seem to be into that these days, unless you have a fever. Thanks to these new-fangled thermometers, you can't do that old "hold it to the lightbulb while the nurse is out trick," a la E.T. In the meantime, I will be organizing 4-hour doses until what I have is gone. Which should be around 10p tonight.

Onward...

This one was based on a sketch from BHG's Scrapbook Etc. Page Planner (published in 2008, I believe). I pulled this specialty issue out near the end of LOAD, and just keep finding inspiration from it. Which is pretty funny, considering I haven't used it since I bought it. Lain's "Kill Maybe" philosophy was an eye-opener.

This one turned out to be SO FUN to do. It certainly didn't start out that way! I was trying to print out 2"x3" photos at home, and my printer nozzles were clogged. I was nearly out of color ink, and -sure enough- by the time I did a few maintenance runs, I was completely out of color ink :( (doncha just love how that works?!)

I quickly threw my photos on a DVD and went to the CVS near Kelly's house after dinner out together. Apparently various smaller prints on a single sheet are under the "collage" option on Kodak Print Makers. I did not have the patience to figure that out (the picture maker at my local pharmacy is pretty upfront about how to put 4 different 2x3 prints on one 4x6 sheet. I'm spoiled!) and went with 4"x6" prints of my faves.

So, I ended up with larger (and fewer) photos than planned for both layouts, and had to get creative with my own "sketch" on this last one. I had fun going through my color-organized papers (wave of thanks to Stacy Julian for that idea) for various blues, borrowed a perfect background cardstock sheet from Kelly (thanks!...you need a blog too, ya know?), and took off running with layers & sparkles and everything nice to put this last one together.

Here's my whole LOAD 211 set...have a trick for making new sets, since I don't have a "pro" account at Flickr anymore (I need to take care of that, BTW...) Seems I can set up a set through the flickr app on my iPod Touch (score!), then I can go to flickr.com and add individual photos to the new set. Twenty-nine LOs, in all...I had extra inspiration on day 5, it seems.

I'm editing photos while the cough syrup lasts...hopefully I will feel good enough tomorrow (and dd will go to her half-day of school tomorrow, to give me a break...alas, no such luck with the preschooler) to get a little more scrapping in...with HOME PRINTED photos.

Until then, hoarding my cough syrup...