My Scrapbook Story

ABOUT THE STORY:
For the first time in the 10+ years that I have been scrapbooking, I finally made a page about it! Why it's important to me, what it means to me etc. and lo and behold I happened upon my title for the page! I recently participated in the Start Fresh event over at the Simple Scrapper (included with the membership), and loved it - from the planner to the workbook, the daily audio guides and ideas, and even the community. What surprised me on Day 1 was when Jennifer (Wilson) said we would be completing a layout over the next 5 days. I thought, now is as good a time as any!

LAYOUT DESIGN:
Originally, I picked this layout by Jill as my inspiration, I just loved the layers and typing.

MY PROCESS/PRODUCTS USED:
In the end though, I knew I had way too much journaling, and I wanted to showcase just a few papers. I also am not very good at layering. I had gathered some supplies for this layout, as in, I knew I wanted to use the Ivy Tower add-on kit from Studio Calico this month haha! And then as I was picking papers to do the layers, I realized I liked exactly what I had in my hands and laid them down. I painted my title in my version of brush script with black goache paint and then cut my strips from left to right 2.25", 2.5", 8" (the hello paper so it would stretch all the way underneath the vellum), and vellum at 6". I layered them a little on top of each other to give the impression of overlapping instead of laying them flat side by side. And that's pretty much it - I used the Traveling Typewriter font and printed on vellum.

START FRESH ANYTIME

Luckily if you've missed out on the awesome Simple Scrapper Start Fresh event (a scrapbook planning e-course), then I suggest you take advantage of this offer to purchase it separately from the membership! I love the membership because it includes this event PLUS the amazing Stash Bash event (which sounds like there may be a mini stash bash in February, plus the big one this July), on top of the monthly membership goodies - it's an awesome value!

The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.

Hello Today

ABOUT THE PHOTO:
My mom, stepdad, and I took Natalie to the farm last fall and she was just being so sweet. She was so gentle petting the goats and looking for me to tell her that she could pet them, I just wanted to capture some of her personality traits.

LAYOUT DESIGN:
I finally got a chance to use an awesome sketch template from the Simple Scrapper's Premium membership archives. Loved this one!

MY PROCESS/PRODUCTS USED:
I decided to grab some older products for this one, starting with some papers from the Bluegrass Farm kit by Studio Calico, because I knew they'd go well with the photo. I found some fairly neutral/white papers to journal on so they'd stand out some and used a Faber Castell soft brush pen to add to my journaling a little bit.

The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.

Digitizing my word art

So I've played with word art before but hadn't yet ever printed it out yet. I wanted to use this verse I read yesterday to make a card and figured it would be a good time to try this out! Also I figured it would look better if I shrank the art down and made it tighter. Here's my original verse, painted with goache paint in Jet Black onto drawing paper (this was not even close to my first attempt):

After I got it into digital form (I just used a photo I took of it and edited it in Photoshop Elements 12), I cropped it to 4.25x5.5 inches to fit a card and printed first on white paper (will prob hang this in my scrap space or use as a bookmark) then printed it on patterned paper for a card!

Finally, I made the background transparent with the magic eraser and laid it on top of one of a piece of digital paper from Studio Calico for next month's kit! I changed the color of the brush script and really love how that turned out!

In conclusion it was really fun to do and try! Also as a side note, I took the Life Scripted class with brush script expert Kal Barteski awhile back but ended up using a slightly different technique to come up with this, as I found I want to make it closer to my own handwriting and style!

This Happened

ABOUT THE PHOTO:
A group photo - 17 kids + 8 moms (well 19 + 9 all together but not pictured), made it to the zoo! We had such a nice time and it was a nice, hot afternoon! One of the moms was getting pretty preggo, one mom had just given birth a couple weeks before, and I had to nurse Natalie in the sun in the middle of the outdoor eating area under a cover, wow!

LAYOUT DESIGN:
I basically just started with the piece of map paper from The Underground kit and went from there.

MY PROCESS/PRODUCTS USED:
I added a bunch of 4x6 papers from the paper pad that went with the kit and ended up just wanting to layer them across the page. I had another piece of book paper and finally cut into that beautiful vellum paper that came with the kit. I cut the (plastic?) diamond piece in two, slightly off center and added them to the outer edges of the paper. And finally the title I painted in brush script using goache paint on blank book paper and cut close out - I was going to use the foam thicker phrase that came with the Plus One kit by Amy Tangerine + Kal Barteski, but it was too big, so I basically tried to make it look with a similar style.

Congrats Wedding card

ABOUT THIS CARD: I made this card for my cousin who lives in Indiana and got married in Florida!! We ended up missing out on the wedding because of our needy 10 month old baby, but it looked like they had a blast!

PRODUCTS/PROCESS: First and foremost, I bought this digital stamp brush USA map from Studio Calico and stamped at 2500px, printed it, and cut it out! I added some gold hearts to the two states and adhered to a piece of card stock from last year's Double Scoop kit. I kept it simple and just added the Kal Barteski letter thickers from the Amy Tangerine Plus One collection by American Crafts!

I love how this card turned out, and love that I got to use that digital brush stamp file right away!

New Baby cards!

While my passion isn't making cards, I enjoy making cards for new babies because I can always center it around the baby's name - and that has so much meaning for all moms (and dads)! So here are a couple of new baby cards I've made recently - one for a boy and one for a girl :)

This first one was made for a girl (obviously) and I wanted to include her middle name because it has extra special meaning to her parent's. I really wanted her name to stand out, so I was thinking I wanted to use my brush script technique to do so.

To make it stand out more, I first wrote "Jesus loves" over and over again on the background. It was actually a blessing to write this and just think about that phrase - Jesus loves, over and over again! Then I painted on top with jet black goache paint. I had taken Kal Barteski's Life Scripted class at Studio Calico a few months ago. This wasn't my best version of her name, but I only had one shot at the final product!

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For this next card, it ended up taking about 15 minutes to do! I chose those letter thickers from Amy Tangerine's Plus One collection (a collaboration with Kal Barteski as well) and then decided to use papers from the same collection. When I opened my 6x6 pad of paper, I saw that I had leftover cut out pieces from this layout I created back in January and the lightbulb went off!

I adhered the papers coming off the card at an angle, then just trimmed the excess. I also had some leftover black stars from the Cuppa kit by Studio Calico laying out on my table and decided those would go perfectly and "sprinkled" them and adhered them (almost) wherever they landed. Quick and easy and the only people that would know I borrowed the design from a previous layout are you readers :)