Another Back To School

The week of Thanksgiving is upon us, and we are hosting for the first time ever. Not a huge group, there will be 11 diners. But still, I haven't done this before. *I am not even doing it- my husband will be cooking three kinds of meat. I'll do mashed potatoes in the Instant Pot and sweet potato casserole, haha. But I will be doing a lot of the cleaning before people arrive. 

Which means I will not be stamping. Possibly anything this week at all... ha. So here are some pages I've already made, starting with another day of going back to school! 

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Upper & Lower

Ink: Basic Gray
Paper: Azure Afternoon, Rococo Rose card stocks, Storytime DP

Accessories: Rococo Rose Scalloped Linen Ribbon, Transparent Adhesive Backed Dots 

Everything is long-retired except the base. This one is pretty basic, but it's in her books! I also re-sorted her books last week and put everything in order for her! Yeay! 

A Covid Halloween

Halloween just keeps inching closer! 

Today I have a page from Halloween of 2021- which was the first time covid managed to get in our house. My older kids had bought pieces to be their then-favorite cartoon characters (Dipper & Mabel from Gravity Falls), but on the 28th, they went to get tested instead. My son got a negative and he was SICK for weeks. My daughter got a positive and she was sick for two days. mmkay. But she was still in high school and they were being pretty strict so they were stuck in their own bedrooms a while. I did make them have lunch outside in the sunshine, with human interaction, every day, and we did this little photo shoot. 

They got to wear the costumes the following year, haha, so it worked out, but it was a bummer that day for sure. 
The colors on the page came from mostly her clothes, but the definitely the photos. 

Supplies:

Stamps: Spooky Bingo Bits, ABC Alphabet Lower

Ink: Misty Moonlight, Berry Burst, Memento Black, Crushed Curry, Pumpkin Pie
Paper: Berry Burst, Misty Moonlight, Basic White card stocks

Accessories: Classic Matte Dots 

Gingerbread House

Happy Saturday! Still trucking along on this very busy week! I hope you're enjoying the festivities too! 

Once again, I have old photos for today's scrapping. And once again, I have almost identical pages for my two kids. This time I used a Paper Pumpkin kit from 2020 to add to the gingerbread house theme. 

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Lower (retired)

Ink: Cinnamon Cider (retired)

Paper: Shaded Spruce, Basic White, Powder Pink(retired) card stocks

Accessories: November 2020 Paper Pumpkin Kit
Journaling Font: Janda Elegant Handwriting

The only thing I changed was the color of the card stock base. In fact, I had printed a photo of them with each side of the house, and let them each choose which two to use on the page, and they chose the same ones! hahaha....

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Lower (retired)

Ink: Cinnamon Cider (retired)

Paper: Soft Seafoam, Basic White, Powder Pink(retired) card stocks

Accessories: November 2020 Paper Pumpkin Kit
Journaling Font: Janda Elegant Handwriting

In Person!

Continuing my count down, annnd school starts this week!! Are we ready? ummm.........

But here's a school themed page I made a couple months ago, again, for you, ha. My son graduated in 2020 and did some semesters of college online for a while until he was finally able to attend in person. So this was a big day, ha. 

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Upper & Lower (retired!)

Ink: Shy Shamrock, More Mustard (retired!)
Paper: Basic White, Shy Shamrock, Shaded Spruce, Garden Green card stocks, Just Add Cake DP (retired!)
Accessories: Circle Dies (retired), Garden Green 1/8" Striped Ribbon (retired!)

This layout looks the same as many 4 photo layouts, so the die cut circles gave it a different and more whimsical look.

Friends!

Another Monday, another week down! ACK! 

Here is another school themed page I made a few months ago. These photos were from her wonderful kindergarten teacher, who makes each child a scrapbook, (both AM and PM classes!) which is their own copy of hundreds of photos she took of them over the year. She makes them into collage pages and a quick title and then prints those pages as a booklet for each kid. Then she prints a few sets of the snapshots and let the parents choose whatever they wanted to keep, at the end of year assessment! Later I added their names as journaling strips, but there's no point sharing the blurred out copy, ha. I was sure glad to get these. She absolutely loved Kindergarten so this makes for important memory pages. 

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Upper & Lower (retired!)

Ink: Midnight Muse (retired!)

Paper: Primary Colors Simply Scrappin' Kit (retired!)
Accessories: Cranberry Crisp stitched ribbon (retired!)

Bike Rodeo

This is a fun page, I think. Everything except the colors are long retired, but the photos are pretty old too, haha! 

I used a challenge for this one, to choose from a list of accessories. From the suggested list, I used 

- enamel dots

- die cuts

- twine

- staples
And I'm really happy with this one! 

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Upper & Lower (retired!)

Ink: Blueberry Bushel 
Paper: Basic White, Real Red, Blueberry Bushel, Pink Passion (retired)
Accessories: White Baker's Twine, Glue Dots, White Perfect Accents (retired), Windmill Fields dies (retired), My ABC's Stampin Wheel (retired!) 

Journaling Font: Modern No. 20

A is for Aquarium!

Okay, this wasn't MUCH "stamping" like I had hoped, but it is something!
I needed to scrap these pages for my daughter and I found a challenge for scrapping a trip somewhere that starts with A! I still hadn't put this pack of DP away from August, and that was handy because it has a water pattern, and two patterns that I picked that have whales. There sure aren't any whales at our aquarium (we are SO landlocked, haha) but it worked well I thought. 

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Lower (retired!)
Ink: Pacific Point

Paper: Whisper White & Daffodil Delight card stock, Sunshine & Sprinkles DP (retired!)
Accessories: Fairy Tale ribbon (retired!), stapler, watercolor brush

Since it's a three pager, I have a close up of each page for you. There were so many pictures of this day so the title had to be tiny. 

The challenge included hand written journaling and/or a list. I managed to do both! For this journaling tag I used a watercolor brush and Pacific Point ink to add some interest and depth. I pulled up the website of the aquarium to find out exactly what these animals were, and added some incredibly old ribbon to make it more of a tag. I'm really happy with how it turned out! 

Scrappy Friday

What a week this has been. So today I got a little more scrapping done. Three more pages for my boy. Here's the first one of the day. I used a brand-new-to-me set from the main catalog, and some retired stamps. The brads are retired and the colors are all current. We won't even talk about how long it took to get this one done...lol.

Supplies:
Stamps: Check You Out, Number of Years (retired), ABC Alphabet Upper (retired), ABC Alphabet Lower (retired)
Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Night of Navy, Seaside Spray, Crushed Curry
Paper: Very Vanilla & Cherry Cobbler

And here's a little closeup of these cute books. This was one of those sets I didn't really notice in the beginning but then I suddenly fell in love with it and had to have it!

And I hope you have a crafty weekend!

Scrapping x2

I haven't gotten to stamp anything in quite a while. Life went completely batty. So today I had some time and I really wanted to scrapbook. My little one had asked me to do more for her book, haha, so I started there. And then my son saw the pictures I was working with and got excited and thanked me for doing it for his book! Um! So clearly I had to do both kids' layouts right then, haha!!

Also, I just helped my mom start reorganizing her craft space, and that included moving all the old, retired stamps that went to live at her house. I spied these super adorable Snow Angels and knew exactly what pictures to pair it with!

Here's the first layout I did...

Supplies:
Stamps: Snow Angels, ABC Alphabet Lower & ABC Alphabet Upper
Ink: Memento Black, Bermuda Bay, Balmy Blue
Paper: Whisper White, Balmy Blue card stocks
Accessories: Watercolor Pencils

And a few close ups!

My coloring is nothing like perfect, I wasn't going for perfect. I just used the Watercolor Pencils as pencils and added some color.

Annnd the second layout I made! I might go back and add a more obvious title, but for now I'm happy with it. 

Supplies:
Stamps: Snow Angels
Ink: Memento Black, Blueberry Bushel, Pool Party
Paper: Whisper White, Blueberry Bushel card stocks
Accessories: Watercolor Pencils

And a few more close ups!

And that's four more pages done, haha!

Simple enough?

LOL! Jennifer's Clean and Simple challenge for this week was "anything goes- just keep it simple". alrighty then! This one is trying to be part of a three page series, but I don't have the stamps here that I want to use on one of the pages and am stumped as to what to do with the third. But this is definitely simple! Supplies: Stamps: ABC Lower Alphabet (retiring!!!) Little Trucks (way retired) Ink: More Mustard, Not Quite Navy Paper: Kraft & More Mustard card stocks Accessories: Mat Pack, EE Brads

Final DT Pages

Here are the last two pages I did for the DT call. This one was supposed to be about Special Moments. That was a hard theme for me....most of what we scrap IS a special moment, in one way or another. We're capturing a moment we'll never return to but want to keep and remember. A reeally Special EVENT to me, would be like a wedding or a birth...but I've done those pages! lol! I had these pictures ready to be scrapped and it was certainly special to HIM, so that's what I did! Supplies: Stamps: ABC Alphabets- Upper and Lower, My ABC's Wheel Ink: Brilliant Blue, Basic Gray, Real Red, More Mustard, Glorious Green, Orchid Opulence, Close to Cocoa, Basic Black Paper: Brilliant Blue, More Mustard & Whisper White card stock Accessories: Spiral Punch, Earth Elements Brads, Mustard Ribbon, brights buttons (retired), Staples This last page was supposed to be a 12x12 layout about me. My daughter is the one with the 12x12 books so I decided to do an About Mommy page. Now of course, I have to do one for my son, and do one about Daddy for each of them too! :) But its ok, once I thought of it, I think it's a great idea to capture what their parents are like at a given time in their lives. Supplies: Stamps: Taffy ABC, Boho backgrounds Ink: Rose Red, Pretty in Pink, Rose Red marker Paper: Chocolate Chip, Rose Red, Pretty in Pink & White card stock, Berry Bliss DP (retired) Accessories: Chocolate Taffeta Ribbon, Jumbo Brads, Button latte, Fairy Tale Ribbon Originals (retired) The journaling says:

I love to go shopping with my mom- especially to the mall! My mommy likes to take us to fun, new places- and take pictures while we're there! My mommy likes to take walks My mom loves to scrapbook and stamp cards. She also likes to blog! My mom is a Stampin' Up! demonstrator and a cub scout leader. Sometimes she has to work hard! My mom likes to be silly with us. My mom likes to find new old-movies for us to watch together! My mom likes to read- especially to us! My mom likes to sing to us and makes up funny songs! My mom likes daisies and frogs and lighthouses. My mom's favorite game is "Who can fall asleep the fastest?" She likes it when I win.

And there's a bit of a closeup of the stamping.

Completed Scrapbooks, here I come!

Back in the day I would drop off a roll of film and have it fully scrapped within a week. Well, now I have two kiddos and many more things going on and that just does NOT happen. Plus the part about me having digital "film" actually takes more effort...you have to choose (and edit) the photos you're going to scrap, instead of just dropping the thing off and hoping something good is on there, lol! A few weeks ago I "found" this section on SCS about a monthly scrapbook goal challenge. I am all for that, since I'd really like to get um, something like caught up... lol. I already put a counter, at the bottom of the side bar here, trying to keep me going...but I'd only done 3 pages total in Jan-Feb. So pathetic, lol! Now that I have three books to work on (ours, his, hers) and everything else is busier, I am waaaaaay behind, and I don't like that fact. You've noticed that I no longer do it all chronologically, I just pick some pictures and scrap THAT! That's making it easier to get done, but harder to put into the books. ho hum... So anyway, when I saw something that would motivate me to accomplish a set number of pages in a month, I dove right in! I committed to 8 pages for the remaining three weeks of March and last night I GOT IT DONE!!! That's right, I did it! Most scrapping I've done for myself in AGES, but hey, I am EXCITED! So here are the 4 pages I did last night, plus a sneaky peek to the Occasions Mini with a page I did last week: ENJOY! (even tho the pictures are LOUSY! It is snowing hard today, it was 31* when I took my son to school and there are WORMS out....???? can someone explain to me how they can move in these temps??) Supplies: Stamps: Taffy ABC ~ Ink: Lavender Lace, Elegant Eggplant Marker ~ Paper: Lavender Lace, Whisper White, Elegant Eggplant ~ Accessories: Scallop Edge Punch, White Organza Ribbon
Supplies: Stamps: ABC Lower, Tag Time (retired) ~ Ink: Pumpkin Pie, Green Galore ~ Paper: Pumpkin Pie, Tempting Turquoise, Green Galore, Whisper White ~ Accessories: Spiral Punch, Black Buttons
Supplies: Paper: Pumpkin Pie, Tempting Turquoise, Green Galore ~ Accessories: Black Buttons Supplies: Stamps: Taffy ABC, All Gods Children (retired) ~ Ink: Basic Black ~ Paper: Sahara Sand, Whisper White ~ Accessories: Black Buttons, Black Gingham Ribbon Supplies: Stamps: ABC Lower, Choo Choo (NEW!) ~ Ink: Tempting Turquoise, Yoyo Yellow ~ Paper: Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White

Blue Boy Page

Here are the pages I started last week. Its pretty simple, but I really wanted my son to be the focus. I just love that little Whiff Of Joy Lying Matthew angel. He looks so much like my own little guy dreaming up another big plan. And he has LOTS of plans! Here's a close-up of the image, and the sparkly wings!

Supplies:

Stamps: ABC Alphabet Upper & Lower, Lying Matthew-Whiff of Joy

Ink: Basic Black, Brilliant Blue, Bashful Blue

Paper: Bashful Blue, Brilliant Blue & Whisper White card stocks

Accessories: Watercolor wonder Crayons, Blender Pens, Star punch, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, 2 Way Glue Pen, fiskars Zingz

Scrapbooking!!!

Truly, this is my love in the craft world. I have been scrapbooking for almost half my life! haha! So this weekend I think I literally stole some time to get some scrapping done. I completed 3 12x12 pages and have most of an 8x11 spread. I need to go to my moms' and borrow a punch to finish it! (Good thing its Thanksgiving this week!) So here are the three that are done: This was so quick to whip together! I think 12x12 may end up my favorite size. I think you can do more kinds of layouts.
Supplies: Stamps: Taffy Alphabet, Spooky Skyline jumbo wheel (retired?) Ink: Basic Black Paper: Basic Black, Lavender Lace, Pumpkin Pie card stocks Accessories: Black buttons This one definitely looks like more work than I usually put in. I tried to trim all the photos to the same size, but that didn't QUITE happen....I don't know what I did wrong! LOL! Soo, to cover it up, I did a sort of latticey-quilty look with the gingham ribbon. I think its a fun touch and I think its unique... and a close up... Supplies: Stamps: ABC Upper & Lower Alphabets, Haunting jumbo wheel, Tag Time (retired) Ink: Lovely Lilac, Only Orange Paper: Always Artichoke, Only Orange & Whisper White card stocks Accessories: Black Gingham Ribbon This page has been half done for about a week, so I finally glued it down...I think its really cute!

Supplies: Stamps: Bugs & Kisses, Taffy Alphabet Ink: Pumpkin Pie, Brocade Blue Paper: Close to Cocoa, Brocade Blue, Only Orange & Very Vanilla card stocks Anyway, lovin the part about getting back to scrapping! woohoo!!

My boy!

He is growing up! He's had a birthday this week, and I think that's always a little crazy when your oldest gets older... (altho...are we ever going to out-grow Thomas-themed birthdays? LOL!) This is his first store-bought birthday cake(s), and I think he was a little excited!

So here are his cute birthday invitations. The balloons come from the same sneak peek set as that cupcake I last used. I drew the strings from the balloons and even came up with the corny poem. He was so funny finding the rhymes when we were delivering the invites! Anyway, I used a piece of Tempting Turquoise for the base. The balloons were stamped and cut out of various shades of Bold Brights colors and the invitation part was typed up and printed off and glued to the back! Simple enough...!

Here is his birthday card and you can see more of the new stamp set! Yes, its called Sock Monkey! It comes with all the stamps I used on this card, plus five others! I think its so cute! And since I haven't whined enough about cutting lately, I thought I'd try my hand at paper-piecing!!! Yes folks, I'm nuts! I used the brand new Pacific Point card stock for the card base here, as well as for the balloon and pieces of the hat. The monkey was pieced using Creamy Caramel card stock, stamped with the Canvas stamp in Close to Cocoa ink! Then I colored the rest of him using the Bordering Blue watercolor crayon and Blender Pens. I pieced the cupcake with More Mustard for the liner and Chocolate Chip for the frosting. I added glitter with my 2-Way glue pen to the top of the hat and the flame of the candle. The balloons have Silver Cord strings and are tied together, they're also popped up on Dimensionals and I have a little 'shine' with the White Gel Pen.

I think this is the most work I've ever put into a card, and its for a little boy! Goodness!

Now a story about him growing up...! Monday morning, Sienna was asleep in our bed and Hunter came to wake all three of us up. He told us he'd made something and we all needed to come see. How many times does he make a new train track design or lego village? So it took us a few minutes, but we went down to see. I even took the camera to save myself a trip back up. And THIS is what we saw!!! He made each of us BREAKFAST! No, he's never been "allowed" to pour cereal or milk, (not because I don't let him, but because I just do it...) but he did it! He'd chosen what he thought was each of our favorites and it was ready to go! He even put sugar on the corn flakes and wheaties! We were very impressed (even tho it meant eating very soggy cereal)! He was soooo proud of himself he had that beaming grin on til well after we were done eating. Guess he's growing up!

New page and a Sneaky Peek!

Here's a new page for Sienna's book. She LOVES my dad's tractor! These pictures were taken nearly a year ago, I think right around the time he got it. Since then, every tractor she sees she either claims is Grandpa's, or reminds us all that he has one too. The page is pretty simple- a Ruby Red 12x12 base, Old Olive mats under all the photos and the title, and a Very Vanilla title strip. I stamped the title in Ruby Red ink with the ABC alphabet sets. Then I stamped the tractor from the retired By Land set, also in Ruby Red. Oh and I added some brads from my Hodgepodge Hardware. And heeere is my sneaky sneak peek! You can see pieces of 7 of the 8 cards we'll make at my Get Punchy class! Hmm...! So hurry and email me or post a comment saving your spot for either this Friday or the 22nd! Or I can even mail you the kit if that works better!