Locavores

Here are more pics I quickly took at the public market a couple weekends ago! I love that I don't do scrapbooking as my job, or I would feel guilty for repeating this cut out windows technique for these pieces of paper!

I had some random pics of the items at the market and just decided they'd be perfect for this type of layout. I used the Cuppa kit along with some Heidi Swapp letter stickers.

Chris gave me my title for the page, Locavores - people who eat local food! I punched some stars from a strip of paper leftover from a card, added some journaling and voila!

Yum!

A public market staple is having breakfast at Juan & Maria's Empanada Stop! I always get the veggie breakfast empanada. We keep saying we wish they'd sell their Spanish ketchup though, it is sooo good! Maybe Natalie will like an empanada someday with her parents!

I scraplifted this layout by Geralyn Sy from this week's Sunday Sketch at Studio Calico:

I used the Cuppa kit and for the squares at the bottom, I just used a piece of the 6x6 paper pad that had those squares already on it.

OK, gotta run, baby's calling!! :)

Public Market

The weekend before last weekend, we took Natalie to the public market for the first time! Well, we didn't go for her, we went because she had had enough awake time and was ready to nap (so we knew she'd just sleep in her car seat carrier) and it was still early before it got to crowded, and it was probably the last weekend we could take her and go as a family before it gets too frigid out! So I put on her little green knit hat that was made by my cousin, and we flew out the door before 8am! Um, I never fly out the door before 8am... or at least I didn't before I had a kid!

Anyway, I knew when I printed that picture of the painted murals on the wall outside the market that I wanted to use that background paper from the Cuppa kit by Studio Calico. It went perfectly! I just had to figure out what else to do with it, so I opened my Silhouette software and do what I often do when I'm lacking on ideas and embellishments (I didn't buy any scrapbook add-on kits this month since I knew I'd be going back to work and probably not scrapping as much). Anyway, I landed on those sketchy circles that I purchased back in February from Studio Calico and cut out 5 of them from that clay-colored paper that came in the card add-on kit.

Beyond that, it was really pretty simple! Gotta love how easy the Silhouette makes life (if you're a scrapper haha)! I love the software, and before cutting them out, I placed them in the software sort of where I'd want them on my page to get an idea of the size and how many to cut. Now hopefully I'll get the rest of my public market pics scrapped over the long Thanksgiving weekend so I can concentrate solely on December Daily for the rest of the year!!

I Love This

Here are the rest of the pics from Natalie's baby dedication day (dedicated to our Lord Jesus Christ)! It was such a proud moment for us, especially when she didn't fuss, fart, or spit up on Pastor Dave haha!

This month's Cuppa kit from Studio Calico came with a free pdf by Gillian Nelson showing how she put together this layout! I scrap-lifted it, except made it 12x12 instead of 8.5x11 and love how it turned out!

It was so quick and easy once I decided that's what I wanted to do. After I added black mist splotches, I wanted a few more, so used the black stars that came in the card add-on kit. I embossed the title stamp in black to give it a subtle texture. Hoping I can get a couple more layouts from this month's kit before December, December Daily and the December kit all arrive!!

Dedication To Our Lord

Natalie had her baby dedication a couple weeks ago at church! Her face in this picture is priceless! She was not a happy camper right before we went up there, but luckily she didn't cry at all during it.

I used this month's Cuppa kit from Studio calico and got some inspiration from these two layouts by Amy Tan and Sasha Farina, specifically I liked how Amy divided her page to make it look like a mega phone and I liked how Sasha added in the white paper (except I just added white strips instead of cutting the paper and mounting on white). Unfortunately, with my black letter stickers, I was out of L's and S's and only had 2 H's so I was very limited what I could write (I thought about Jehovah Jireh but that requires 3 H's) so I picked some additional white letters from Heidi Swapp. I stamped underneath and above with my giant roller alpha stamp to spell out Natalie's name.

For the bottom portion, I just used a bunch of the printables for this month's kit from In a Creative Bubble as well as some cardstock stickers from Hello Forever, which made it come together really easily!

What a Fun Guy!

Last layout from September walking around the Green Acres farm shop and enjoying the beautiful fall day! I just LOVE the Printshop collection by Shanna Noel at Studio Calico so so much! Every layout has been just about my favorite! I've mentioned before that Chris has a saying for when a layout isn't his favorite or isn't the best, he says "Even Michael Jordan didn't shoot a triple-double every game," but when I went over to the other side of the basement (where he is setting up his home gym, yay), and showed him this layout, he said, "now that's a triple-double!" Wow!! Thank you Shanna, making it so simple to create great layouts!!

I really didn't do much so it didn't take me very long - just added some journal cards and embellishments from the collection in a sort of a grid style. But I got the idea for the layout from the Process class over at Big Picture Classes that I'm taking with Catherine Davis. One of the lessons talked about balance and I tried to keep that in mind as I created this.

At the end of the layout, I took a look and saw a little too much boldness at the top left corner, so I tried to even it out a little better by adding an outline to the piece of paper on the bottom right. Love when these come together so quickly and easily!

December Daily Foundation Pages Part 2 (Days 1-8)

OK so this second part of preparing my December Daily pages is taking me a lot longer, but mostly because I am back at work now and not really scrapping during the week anymore! Bummer! I need to take more maternity leaves :)

Anyway, slowly I am making my way through this album, trying to prepare as much as possible before December actually hits! I went through and started my foundation pages here, but since then I already changed a few things. I signed up for the 25 Days class with Maggie Holmes from Studio Calico and I bought some of the Holly Jolly collection from In A Creative Bubble by Geralyn Sy. So I ordered all my digital items from the class, from the shoppe, and from the original DD kit online from OfficeMax Impress Printing Services! I ordered them to be printed on bright white 80# cover stock - so they'd turn out brighter than if I printed at home, and also have a slight shine to them. The files printed and turned out great!

So after I received all these new cards, I went through the album again and swapped out some of the papers I had cut out with the new cards. Then I finally got started for real. Keep in mind, I've decided not to care if my pictures will match - theme or colors! I will keep it holiday-ish and figure if worse comes to worst, I will print my pic some days in black & white or sepia to match!

Here's my cover! I kept it simple and knew I wanted to use those gold letter stickers - I have an extra theme since this is my daughter's first Christmas! I'm sure she will be in a majority of the pictures (why else would you have a kid hehe)!

The only day of the season that I sort of know what we will be doing is Day 1 - I want to always pick out our tree! Except this year, we might not have room for a tree... but even if it means getting the LED tabletop tree from the basement, that will be the theme haha! I used the wood veneer trees from last year's kit (I cheated already and used other stash)!

This Day 2 page came together last out of all these pages so far - I kept going back to it, and finally filled one of the pockets with that white brick wall paper from Studio Calico's latest Cuppa kit! I used the Silhouette to make some cuts and also used some Ali Edwards stamps I purchased from Technique Tuesday:

Day 3 sort of stumped me too, so I'm not crazy about it, but that's ok!

For Day 4 I used a bow from the Printshop collection at Studio Calico, to add some much-needed dimension!

Day 5 is the first page I really love! I finally used one of those gold number chipboard clips and incorporated some gold POW paper to cut out a reindeer head... what I didn't plan on was using that negative like that - I originally was planning to use it for a border around a square 4x4 pic but if I don't have one, then I sort of like just the cut by itself! I would just need to decorate a little more but it works!

I kept day 6 much simpler, and just added that black glittery star from a pack of star stickers I bought at Target - I think they were from American Crafts, part of a Halloween collection!

For day 7, I had some really shiny gold paper I had bought awhile back from one of the LSS (Local Scrapbook Stores) and cut out that ornament and punched some circles to match the gold number again!

And finally for day 8, I got some inspiration from Maggie's foundation pages in her 25 days class and added some sequins and wood veneer 8!

Hopefully I'll get some more days done before December hits and post them, but wanted to get these up as soon as I could! Thanks for stopping by!!

Hello

I love this layout! A couple reasons, but I'd been mostly dying to cut those teepees with my Silhouette, that were part of Shanna Noel's digital cut files from Studio Calico last month!

Once I did that, the rest was pretty easy - I just used the Printshop collection again, also by Shanna Noel, to complete the layout. The stars and circle are vellum stickers and pieces, and I used a white "hello" rub-on directly onto the picture which turned out awesome!

My favorite part of this picture is that I got a chance to journal about how both Chris and I remember getting our pumpkins from Green Acres (in the pic) when we were little, and how I love how, because we are from the same hometown, we have a lot of shared memories, just not with each other. But it's so cool to reminisce together even though we didn't really know each other!

Stupid Face

I am definitely now a weekend scrapper, but now that I've gotten faster since Natalie was born, I think I'll be much better at taking advantage of it! I made 2 and a half layouts this weekend (plus 2 cards) so let's say I can get 3 layouts done a weekend, I should still be able to do 12 layouts a month... should hehe :)

I used the Printshop line by Studio Calico again for this layout of Chris and Natalie at Green Acres at the end of September! Um, what's wrong with me, I have like 30 layouts for the first 1.5 months of Natalie's life... at that rate I would have 240 pages or so by her first birthday!

Anyway, I used some pieces from the Process class kit by Studio Calico that I'm taking over at Big Picture Classes with Catherine Davis - namely the "I love your stupid face" card and the wood veneer ampersand! I was nice though and wrote some things I love about my husband on a piece of paper I cut out from the same collection. I used some letter stickers from this month's Cuppa kit. Thanks for stopping by!

The Good Life

I did this quick layout last night after Natalie went to bed for the evening - and now that I'm back at work, it was my first time scrapping all week! Ahh!!

I reprinted this picture of Natalie next to the hotdog vendor at Green Acres farm in black and white because the colors were super bright of the vendor truck and I really wanted to use the new Printshop collection by Shanna Noel for Studio Calico that I just got in the mail!

From there it was pretty simple and quick to get going with the new line - love those transparent titles!! I was also inspired by this layout by Catherine Davis!

Experiment in scrapbooking!

This is the first card my husband ever made!! My mom had given him a really nice birthday gift, so I wanted to send her a special thank you card and jokingly told Chris that I would pick out some basic supplies and have him make her a card... well somehow he agreed, so here's how it went!!

Here are the supplies I ended up picking out, sort of like a mini kit - I chose 4 sheets of paper, 2 types of wood veneer, 2 washi tapes, 1 glitter tape (black though), 2 sets of letter stickers, 1 set of puffy stickers, and some basic tools:

I set it up in the kitchen while he was at the store so when he came back he had his own workspace - he really liked that! Later he sat down, and it was so interesting to watch him, because his process was so unlike mine! He immediately grabbed a piece of paper and looked like he knew EXACTLY what he wanted to do! I was so intrigued! First thing he did was grab his patterned paper like a seasoned pro!

I didn't show him how to use anything or make any suggestions for ideas, and I tried not to hover too much! Then I heard him say he broke my tape gun.

Not to despair, it just takes a couple times using it to get used to it. So I got it working for him again.

The next part really surprised me, because one of the papers I picked out had these speech bubbles, and I was going to suggest he could cut some out to use but decided not to say anything, just to see what he would come up with on his own. So it was so cool when I saw him start to cut out a speech bubble without any prompting - such an advanced technique!!

After that, I didn't get any more pics of his process because I had to get the baby, but I saw him adding the letter stickers inside the speech bubble - what a funny guy, he didn't just write "thank you" but "I say thank you" hahaha!! In my head I just hear that phrase spoken with a British accent after someone gets handed their afternoon tea, hilarious!

Then I saw him select a washi tape and he tore one edge and cut the other, then did two strips that way! He says he knew to do it that way from seeing how I've done it, but I wouldn't have thought to do the two rows like that - really cool!

The only part I helped him with was how to use the mini glue dots to adhere the wood veneer arrow in place, and done!! So interesting!! Here it is again:

Afterwards, when he had finished the card in like 15 minutes I asked him how he made it so quickly, and he replied, "Decisiveness my friend" haha which is something I do not have! I am really indecisive, which is part of what makes my scrapping take really long if I'm not forcing myself to make decisions quickly. Then I asked him what his favorite embellishment was, and he said patterned paper, which is the perfect answer - because it seems to be the common bond amongst all us scrappers! In fact, I was just listening to this week's Paperclipping Roundtable earlier in the day and they had joked that paper is like the gateway drug for scrapbookers!!

Final thought: Chris said he could see why I like to scrap! So I would call this experiment/adventure in scrapbooking a big success!!