Scrappin' Saturday

Phew, what a fun couple days of scrapping while it's been too cold outside to go out. Traci has two new kits this week and they're AWESOME... she's really been on a roll lately! And guess what, Sweet Shoppe Designs is celebrating their 4 year birthday and everything in the store is 34% off this week! (except for the quarterly assortments and custom fonts) OK now to the pages I've worked on this week! First is Traci's new collab with ScrapKitchen Designs, it's called Kitschy Sweet and I just LOVE the little tag that I included in the page. The colors are gorgeous and the papers stunning! I also used one of Traci's Bottom Ups templates from last week's new releases.
Next Traci came out with a really cute boy kit! I love the name of the kit, Exuberance Irrepressible, and there is some very true word art in there, although, I didn't use it for this page but I'm sure I'll use it on another page one day. I also used Traci's Take Out Tuesday template for the paper and photo blocks in this page... this template is so fun and free so check it out!
Well, this week ends my time as a guest on Traci's creative team. I had so much fun creating pages with her new kits and was so inspired by the talent of her team. I enjoyed being a part of the team's big freebie giveaway earlier this week by making a cluster frame with one of my favorite Traci kits. I loved experiencing what a creative team does and hope someday to be a part of the team again. WOW, January really flew by too fast!

Now for the Design Your Life pages for this week... this week's lesson was on white space and I had an eye opening moment when Cathy talked about trapped space. I'd been really struggling with a page I've been working on and because of this lesson it now looks awesome and I can't wait for you to see the page. Anyways, here are my pages for this week's assignments.
I used all Sweet Shoppe Designs kits that were in my unused kits folder and I'm so excited to be getting through that folder.

The first one using Wild and Craz-He and Bad Sewing Machine What A Bracket both by Traci Reed
The second one using Sweet On You by Penny Springmann which is part of the 2009 Quarterly Assortment vol. 4. I also used the fun Bad Sewing Machine LooptyLoo for the edge of this page which has templates to go with the shape of the stitching... this is one of my most faves of the bad sewing machine sets.
and the last one is using Circle Circle Dot Dot by Shawna Clingerman also part of the 2009 Quarterly Assortment vol 4.

Fix It Friday #42 - Take Two

OK, I felt like the first edit wasn't quite finished so I decided to give it another try... I took my edit and cropped it to a square then I added a TTV texture to it and now I LOVE it.

Original

1st Edit

2nd Edit and my fave!

Fix It Friday #42

Moving my i heart faces Fix It Friday posts to this blog... I think I'm going to let my photography blog die... it's not like anyone was following me anyways, lol...

This week's Fix It Friday was beautiful already but in honor of the "texture" challenge this week they wanted us to add some texture. So in Lightroom 2 I added a little pop to the picture and then warmed it up a tad... then in PSE6 I added some texture used the "multiply" blending mode and toned it down to about 50%. I then erased at 50% some of the texture on her face and the snowman and a little on her coat. I think I'm a little out of practice with the Fix It Fridays but I think it turned out ok.

Original

Edit

ETA: I wasn't totally happy with it so I tried again... check it out here!

Work In Progress Wednesday

not a whole lot to report this week... Mark's been busy deal hunting trying to find all the network cables and stuff we need for the best price... we're finding Ebay has the best deals so then we have to wait for them to be shipped too and we have to wait to see if we've won the bid too. Anyways, so between the deal hunting and threading some of the cables through the walls there isn't much to report... and I won't have a picture for you this week because well it looks like we've taken a step back in our process since all the insulation is out.

The other big discussion this week has been what to do about the cracks in the foundation, specifically the one behind the shower that we would need to wait until spring to have repaired + the added cost of digging a whole out front. And well, we aren't able to truly finish our projects because there are 3 other cracks that need to be fixed too and we want to save money by having them all done at the same time. Well, and our shower downstairs is ugly and not very functional... so we've been looking into taking out the old ugly shower and replacing it with a regular stand up shower. Needless to say I was super excited when Mark presented me with that option. So, the research begins to find out if that's the best option for us cost-wise since we have so much other stuff to purchase yet too. I'm saying a little prayer that we find a stand up shower that would fit our budget and work for our downstairs bathroom. I would love to redo that whole bathroom and it's looking like I may get that wish.

Design Your Life class pages for week 4

Well, I can't believe that week 4 of 12 is coming to an end and I think I've learned a ton and look forward to learning more in the next 8 weeks. Here are the layouts for this week's repetition sketches and real world color sketch.

Here is my first layout using Libby Weifenbach and Tracey Howard's Fra-Gee-Lay and Libby's Border Basics stitching.

These next 5 pages are part of a mini book, using Traci Reed and Eva Kipler's What I Like About Me

The real world color scheme for this week was such a fun one... although, I added an extra color to it... but the point is to be inspired by the color scheme not necessarily to match it perfectly, but as soon as I saw this new kit by Kristin Cronin-Barrow I knew it fit perfectly for this real world color page. The kit is called Happy Go Lucky and I've already used it twice, I love it so much.

catching up...

Ok, I've had a few requests to see the SOOC pic for my i heart faces entry and since I can only have one photo on the actual entry I will add it here and then I'll post the CT layouts from this weekend.

SOOC of my cutie patootie nephew

and the edited w/ texture so you can see the difference

Isn't he adorable, I just love that sweet boy! OK, some fun kits were released this weekend by Traci and Eva. Traci actually released two things this weekend, an adorably fun kit and a set of really awesome templates. I used both for this layout of my vaseline beauty. The kit name is Be You and the templates are Bottom Ups 5.
and I used another one of Traci's new templates to make this page with Kristin Cronin-Barrow's Joy to the World kit.
and I used another one of Traci's new templates to make this fun page using Blue Skies and Flutterbies by Traci.
I love templates because I can easily make a page really fast w/o having to think too much about design.

Eva has a really fun kit that totally brought me back to the 80's with it's colors. It's called Dancing Tween and needless to say I had ABBA running through my head all day Friday and Saturday, and of course now that I mention it it's in my head again, lol. I thought it was perfect for my dancing little girl.

Week 4 - "Textures" Photo Challenge

This week's subject is one of my faves.... I LOVE playing with textures in my pictures. I love this picture too and added a haze texture and some bokeh overlays and sun flare. I loved this picture before I played with it but had so much fun adding the textures to it. So here is my entry in this week's I heart faces photo challenge.

a little bit of scrapping...

I seem to be on a role lately... doing a couple pages a day, then taking a day or two off. I kind of like it this way... although, I'm not sure I'll have enough pictures to do 365 pages this year unless I start scrapping some of my P365 pics, which I seem to be doing already. Anyways, here's a few pages I've done since my last scrapbooking post.

This first one is one I did with a retired kit by Lauren Grier... I just love the colors in this kit! I thought it was prefect for my P365 day 15 pic.
This second one I did with a bundle by Lauren Reid called Art House Bundle... I thought the grungyness of the bundle was perfect for my totally fun and grungy P365, day 18 pic.
Lastly, I finally played with a kit that's by Traci Reed that is available at The Daily Digi this month. It's part of the $5 the digi files #11 which is only available this month and is a huge bundle of goodies. I just love the colors in this kit and you all know how much Moriah LOVES yellow. It was the perfect kit to scrap her birthday pictures. On her bithday we had gone to Goodwill to find a coat for Mark and I found this adorable yellow dress for the summer... even though it was freezing outside she just HAD to wear it all day. I really love this kit and with how much Moriah loves yellow and that dress, I have a feeling I'll be using this kit over and over again.
I just finished watching the slideshow for this week's Design Your Life lesson and I'm looking forward to working on the projects... although, I'm not sure how I'm going to get Moriah and Isaac to right down 5 things about themselves. I'll have to get creative and figure out how to write down grunts and pointing for Isaac or write down the ASL signs he does all day... "nurse/milk" would probably be all 5 things, lol.

Work In Progress Wednesday

Just more work on the 4th bedroom this weekend... we got a ton of it done since Mark had Monday off. He decided to insulate the wall between the bedroom and family room too to help with sound and we'll have to get a new door, something solid to help with sound also. To insulate the wall he cut the bottom part of the wall which was already cut in an area due to mold removal and then cut tiny holes at the top to pull the insulation up from the top. This way we won't have to replace the whole wall but just the little holes at the top and the bottom should fit back on. Mark also ordered a whole bunch of networking cables and such so that we can have it all set up soon. I'm so excited that we're getting so close to Mark having an office, and a place for me to store my craft supplies and a guest bedroom for our family. Now to figure out paint colors, YAY, my favorite part!

The other news is that yesterday we had a furnace fire and thankfully I was home to catch it and thankfully it wasn't anything worse. I'm so thankful for God's protection. It was rather scary and I'm still having troubles not thinking of what could have been, but super thankful we're all ok. Several parts were replaced last night so that we can have some heat for the evening and now the process begins to research new furnaces. We've already done a bunch of research already since we thought we were going to replace it this fall but were encouraged to wait until it's warmer and replace the A/C at the same time. Guess what we'll be spending our energy tax credit on, sigh... Actually, we're not really sighing since we already had this planned, I guess.

Well, we're finally feeling like we're accomplishing something and look forward to opening up the downstairs, hopefully real soon!

LOLing at my latest scrapbook page... I'm such a dork!

It took me all of about 5 minutes to do. I was looking through the list of SSD's portfolio challenges and figuring out what to do... then I was looking at my "unused kits" folder and seeing anything will fit. I opened up Lauren Grier's Let's Make Resolutions and looked at the clock embellishment and then looked at the time at the bottom of my computer and saw that the time matched so I thought it would be perfect for the "twitterpatted" challenge which was to create a layout w/o pictures that showed what you were doing right now... I also used Shawna Clingerman's Sturdy Solids which had been a December Mystery Gift w/ purchase last month but now is available for purchase. (this paper pack is the BOMB... I use it soooooooo much) The font is Gimme Space by Lauren Reid and Darcy Baldwin (seriously the most awesome font EVAH). Lastly, I used some other doodle packs by Lauren Grier's Borderline (retired), Doodle Me & Doodle Me Stitches: Misc (and exclusive newsletter freebie).
Here's my layout that I did at 1:45pm today!

Also, last night I did a layout using the blog template on Dani Mogstad's blog. I used Woodland Winter by Dani & DJB tweenybopper. I also used it for one of SSD's portfolio challenges. It was inspired by the blog Color Me Katie and we were to create a layout using our own photos and small captions to tell our own mini story.

Mark's had the day off today and he's been getting a ton of work done on the 4th bedroom getting it ready so that he has an office to work from instead of our bedroom. I'm so proud of him for accomplishing so much this weekend. He has become quite the handy man which I think is sooooo sexy!

I'm still in shock...

Last night i heart faces posted the winners of the photo contest from this week. I love my entry but I really didn't think it would be acknowledged by any of the judges as a top picture. I mean, the entries are AMAZING, like REALLY REALLY AMAZING! Because there were so many entries they changed it up a bit this week. Originally, the judges, there were 18 of them, were supposed to just post their one pick from the week. Well, instead they decided each of them can post their top 5 photos instead. Anyways, 2 of the judges picked my photo as one of their top 5 entries. I really can't believe it, like really really can't believe it. Anyways, I want to thank i heart faces for having such a great birthday bash and thank the judges for acknowledging my entry. It was so much fun and I look forward to entering more photos.

Here's the pic I entered.

Also, I got my Real World Color template and color swatch yesterday for the Design Your Life class. It was a fun urban color inspiration and I actually really like the page I made. The colors were gray, white, lime green and red. I used papers from a few different kits. The gray paper came from Outta This World by Traci Reed and Dani Modgstad (a retired kit), the white paper came from His Playroom by Traci Reed, the green and red papers came from Retro Revival a The Digi Dares collab, and the "hair" alpha was paintity doo dah by Traci Reed. The fonts were traveling typewriter and my personal handwriting done by Darcy Baldwin (btw, Darcy has her custom fonts on sale this week).

Here's my page and the journaling reads:
I have a love/hate relationship with my hair. I like it long but it’s so heavy & gives me a headache. I like it really short too because I hate sweaty hair on my neck during the summer. I think my favorite is the chin length inverted bob. I get that cut all the time though and I’m tired of the same ole’ thing. I want a change but nothing really makes me happy. I tried the perm in the 80’s, that was a joke, *snort*. I’ve tried the asymmetrical bob and well, that just doesn’t look right on me. I guess I’ll end up getting the inverted bob again... For the record, I had this cut long before Kate Gosselin, we’re talking high school senior photo. That would be since the early 90’s. Yikes!

I'm a DIVA...

One of Eva's Divas that is! I got a message from Eva this week asking me to join her creative team and I'm really excited to be a part of it. I got right to work and here is my first layout for this week's release. I love this picture and always wanted to scrap it but it wasn't until I saw the colors in Eva's new kit that I knew I needed to use it for that pic. The kit is called Just Breathe which I think is an awesome reminder that I need to relax a little bit and well... just breathe.
On Fridays at Sweet Shoppe Designs they post a new featured scrapper which includes a bonus challenge for our portfolios. The new challenge is an adorable template. Check it out here, I think you'll love it! I decided it was perfect for doing a layout of Isaac's baby pictures using Traci's new kit, I Loved Her First. I LOVE this new kit, it's so perfect for those baby pictures and I think it will be perfect for some great girly pages of Moriah.
On Thursday, I got my new lesson for my Design Your Life class and it was on repetition. I had a great time using the templates and using up some of my many unused kits... my folder is finally getting a bit smaller. Here are the pages I did for it... the first one is a two pager so even though I have the pages seperate, you see the repetition better when you have the pages put together. I used Fallin' 4 You add on by Fee Jardine for this one which is part of the 2009 Sweet Shoppe Quarterly Assortment vol. 3.
This is my second assignment, it's a one pager and I used Picasso by Dani Mogstad which is also part of the 2009 Sweet Shoppe Designs quarterly assortment vol.3.
This morning I got my real world color assignment for Design Your Life class for this week so I'm off to work on that hopefully tonight after the kids are in bed and while Mark is watching the Colts came.


Oh.... I almost forgot... here's my P365, week 2 page! I used the same alphas, paper and ink border as last week... but I used a different frame template. I used Page Parts: Photo Clusters by Krystal Hartley

No Foto Friday today

I've been sporting a migraine the past two days and just have not been up to even converting them to .jpg from RAW let alone doing any post processing. Stay tuned, hopefully next week I'll feel up to working on them. Check out my P365 for some fun pics from this week.

took a couple days off but got back to scrapping again

Yesterday I had to finish my last assignment for Design Your Life before today's new lesson started. My goal is to go through this class without falling behind. I love all the assignments and I love how each of them are building on each other. I must say that I can't wait until March though when we've learned everything there is to know about design. Here is a my last assignment on asymmetry. I used Wild Kingdom by Heather Roselli.

Then I did 3 more pages! I will admit that one of them I had the layout already done a couple months ago but needed to do the journaling, so that was easy. The fun part was that I bought my own handwriting and it's AWESOME! The other fun part is that I can use it for one of the January portfolio challenges at Sweet Shoppe Designs. January 23rd is National Handwriting Day so the challenge was to create a page that prominently uses your own handwriting. I must say it is totally wild typing and seeing your own handwriting show up. I have a feeling I'll be getting rid of a lot of fonts in my font folder because it's just so much more personal to use your own handwriting for journaling pages. You can get your own handwriting done too here by the lovely Darcy Baldwin. She was so great to work with. I had to do my letters a second time because this Type A person was trying hard to get the letters perfect and well, it didn't slant like my natural handwriting, oops! Check out her store, she has a lot of fun fonts and you can also get a custom cursive font too if you don't want print. I used XO by Fee Jardine (part of an older the digi files), Oh Baby from the Simply Sweet mag, You Make My World Go Round by Lauren Grier & Heather Roselli & Graffiti Grunge by Shawna Clingerman which is retired. The "twins" font is called angelic war which I think is from dafont.com, I can't remember.
I also worked on the Bonus Challenge for this week which was to create a layout using a white or nearly white background. I LOVE this page! I used my P365 picture from yesterday and added a bit of color pop to it. I used the kit His Playroom by Traci Reed and her awesome alpha template, Scribble One Out. The font is called Problem Secretary which I got from dafont.com. Oh, and there's Traci's bad sewing machine again... used Fleuriffic again.
Lastly, I'm really trying to work through my unused kits folder so I did a fun little page using As If by Fee Jardine which is one of the 21 mini kits for the 2009 quarterly assortment vol. 4. I love these quarterly assortments... who can beat 21 kits for only $4. I also used Scribble One Out by Traci Reed again... I LOVE that alpha! For the scalloped edge I used Edgy templates by Traci Reed.

Off to check out the new lesson for this week at Design Your Life! This week's lesson is on Repetition, YAY!

Work In Progress Wednesday

It's quite a slow process to get things done w/o the help of my Dad. Mark started working on getting the walls up in the 4th bedroom. We had to figure out where Mark's office will be so that we can run the cables and such before putting up the drywall. He also found another crack... hopefully this is the last one, we now have 3 cracks to get fixed when the weather gets warm again, sigh... It will be really nice though when we have that bedroom done so that Mark has a real office to work in on those days he works from home. Working in our bedroom which is where I nurse Isaac before his naps hasn't been working out too great. Plus with the french doors he hears EVERYTHING and the kids aren't the most quiet, lol. It will be nice to not have those distractions anymore. Plus, it would be nice for our visitors to have a place to sleep away from our early risers or up all night nurser. Oh, and a bed to sleep in, instead of the air mattress on the floor would be nice for them. Here's an updated pic... like I said it's a work in progress. :)

Best face photo and my first i heart faces contest entry!

Well, I was wondering what I was going to blog about today since I took a break last night from digiscrapping... well sort of, you'll find out hopefully by the end of the week what I was doing. Anyways, as I'm going through google reader I'm looking at all the wonderful P365 pictures and just amazed at how talented my friends are. I finally come to i heart faces' blog and every Monday they post the new contest for the week and I always look forward to seeing the winners later in the week because they're just so inspiring. I'm not sure why I've never entered a pic but decided why not... I mean, I love doing the Fix It Friday, so why not enter some of my pics and hopefully improve photographing my kiddos, which is the reason I got my camera in the first place. So, this week's contest is your "best face photo" and this is the picture I'm entering. I just LOVE this picture of both my kids!

This picture was taken 12/22/09

Cloth Diapering goodies giveaway!

I love cloth diapering Isaac and wish I had done it with Moriah, well I dabbled in it when she was potty learning and I was pregnant with Isaac, to see if it was something I wanted to do. I know it seems strange but that's my favorite laundry to do and stuffing them is so relaxing to me. Plus, there is something so cute about a big ole colorful diaper covering my baby's bottom. I love the money I'm saving by not buying disposables and well, they're just so darn cute! I also love that I also like that I'm not filling landfills with disposables and did I mention they're adorable! Well, one of my friends is giving away some diapering goodies, go check it out and enter!

cloth diaper goodies giveaway

Just a quick post before heading to church

I've been working on my Design Your Life course assignments... This week's lesson is on asymmetry. I'm definitely more of an asymmetry person than symmetry and it was a great lesson on learning how to balance your layouts. Here's my first assignment, which I incorporated one of the Sweet Shoppe Design Portfolio challenges into it... The SSD challenge was to scrap about your favorite hobby... I decided to be a rebel, lol. I used the template provided for the assignment and the papers and elements came from All About Me by ScrapKitchen (all of her kits have some seriously gorgeous papers) the stitching came from Traci Reed's Bad Sewing Machine I've Been Framed and LooptyLoo.

The next assignment I worked on was the Real World Color assignment, and the color scheme was pink, orange and brown... the inspiration was gorgeous and must have been old because I immediately looked at the Crate N Barrel website to find the pillows that she posted and they weren't there, sigh... LOVED them! Anyways, here's the fun little 2 pager layout I did for it, using the templates she provided. I used a kit that is not available in stores it was a freebie collab kit that I received for participating in The Digi Dares' one year anniversary dare. The M&H alpha came from Top Of The World by Libby Weifenbach (just the alpha)and the cursive font came from SSD's quarterly assortment Vol 4 (awesome deal if you want a little bit of everything, includes a mini kit from every designer and for only $4)