Keeping up with the feather trend...

Here is another layout I did for my Guest Design Team term for Jenni Bowlin Mercantile, and it incorporates one of my favorite trends right now.... feathers!

The kit came with the awesome JBS die-cut feathers, and it also had a feather stencil.  Using the stencil, I put glue over one of the feather stencils, covered it in fine gold glitter and then cut it out to make my own embellishment.  I then used the stencil whole (with all four feathers) over a piece of cardstock, and I sprayed several different inks on top, using a gold spray ink as the base.  I love getting messy and experimenting with stencils!

And, of course, it didn't hurt that Chloe had feathers on her shirt to go with the theme (did this scrappy mama plan out this photo shoot with this layout in mind?  hmmmmm, neveeeeer ;)

Here's another layout from the awesome JBS kit:

Love the stamps that came with it, too - that little airplane stamp gives just the right amount of extra detail!

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!  I'm going to see Pink in concert tomorrow night, and i'm sooo excited!

Celebrating fall...

I don't know about you guys, but I love this time of year.  There's something so beautiful and magical about the changing colored leaves all around.  Our neighborhood, in particular, has old, huge trees that make it a gorgeous sight at this time of year.  Now raking and bagging all those fallen leaves is another story ;)

I think this is my favorite layout I did for my Guest Design work for Jenni Bowlin this month.  This kit was perfect to create fall projects:

I had a lot of fun cutting into some of the beautiful patterned papers and adding in some leaf stickers, and the wooden leaves added the perfect touch.

Will be back soon with more JBS projects!

Jenni Bowlin Guest Designer

I'm SO excited to share with you guys that i'm guest designing for JBS this month with the AMAZING November kit. 

This is the first layout that I created with the kits:

I used the main kit which you can find here,  as well as some goodies from the mini album kit and the Historian add-on kit.  The monthly kit is packed full of awesome goodies including the new JBS exclusive wood veneer shapes - each month, the JBS kits will feature a new wood veneer product.

Here's a close-up of the wood veneer leaves - I just love them!

Also, Jenni is having a membership special this month that you definitely want to check out:

I can't wait to keep playing, and i'll be back with the rest of my projects soon!

Hope everyone had a great end to their October and a fun time trick-or-treating if you went.  Please tell me that i'm not the only one sneaking my kids' candy into my mouth, piece by piece, when they're not looking! ;)

 

Dusting this thing off...

Ok, so it's been a *little* while since i've blogged (insert embarrased smiley face here). I think I was having too much fun these last few months to update everyone. Either that or i've been completely bogged down by kids, work and life. I'll let you choose which one ;)

So here's my attempt at a quick recap. We had a very fun and busy summer that involved swim team for both the bigs, two trips (one 17 hour road trip up north to Maine which we broke up over several days of driving each way and a trip to Disney World/Universal Studios/Lego Land), lots of playdates and, on my end, I finished my second Iron Girl triathlon and got my very first tattoo.

Unfortunately, with a busy summer, I did not scrap nearly as much as I would have liked, but I'm planning to make up for that now that the kids are in school and we have settled back into a routine! Here is one layout I completed recently, using my Silhouette to cut out my title:

And now, for a few (more like a lot ;) of photos of what we've been up to:




Lucas jamming in the animal kingdom

 

Chloe drinking some butterbeer in Harry Potter's world

Noah practicing his wizadry skills with his new Harry Potter wand



Family picture with Mickey (of course!)




 


First day of preschool

 
 




First day of 1st and 3rd grades!



Riding in on the bike portion of Iron Girl

Now that I've updated the last few months lol, I can keep things much more current on this here little ole blog :)

Guest designer at Back Porch Memories

Hi everyone!  Last month I entered a sketch contest over at Back Porch Memories kit club, and I am so excited to have won a Guest Designer spot for this month.  This is the layout I entered for the contest:

This is one layout i've made with the gorgeous May kit so far:

The kit is backed full of new Simple Stories, Lily Bee and Bo Bunny, and i'm having so much fun playing with it!  You can check out BPM's awesome kits here.

Had a good weekend, complete with my first ever obstacle run.  It was a 4 1/2 mile run called the Hero Rush, full of firefighter themed obstacles (yes, I did go into a "burning" building and jump over fire at the end ;), and I had a BLAST.  Unfortunately, I ended up spraining my foot (I twisted it when I was running through a mud pit), but it seems to be healing very nicely and quickly, so I know it could have been worse!  This is a busy time of year for me as I am participating in two triathlons this summer, so i'm hoping to be out there running again soon (wait... did I actually just say I hope I can run soon?? That'll be a first lol). 

Hope everyone is having a great week!  We're halfway through :)

Some more blog hop layouts

Yikes, my coming back soon ended up taking two weeks!  Oh well, i'm sure you all aren't too surprised lol.  Ok, so here's a couple more layouts I created for the Noel Mignon crop a couple of weeks ago.

The challenge for this layout was to create a layout incorporating a rainbow.  This was pretty outside of my box, and I ended up having a blast with it!  I used my new Cameo (which I LOVE, btw!) to cut the splash, I backed it with polka dot vellum, and then I used my Heidi Swapp Color Shines to create the rainbow background. 

This layout was for an ombre challenge.  I've always loved the graduated ombre look, but i've never created an ombre layout.  Definitely loved having crop challenges to push me to try new things!  I used my Cameo yet again to cut out the chevron arrow strips, and then I added different shades of blue paint underneath.  Messy but fun!

Hope everyone is doing well and that Spring has finally arrived for you, no matter where you live!  It finally seems to be here now, at least more consistently!

I've been busy!

Can you believe I made five layouts this week?  Five!  That may be the norm for some of you all, but for me, that's a ton in one week lol.  And it was SO much fun!  I played along at the Spring Fling crop for the Noel Mignon kit club (gorgeous kits, btw!), and there was a new challenge posted every day.

The challenge for this layout was to create homemade flowers:

And the challenge for this layout was to create a layout with the following journaling prompt - "you know it's spring when":

Speaking of this layout, I actually took those photos and scrapped them the same day (another first for me!) - last Monday, we had our first decent snowfall of the year.  Um, yeah, that would be at the end of MARCH, several days into spring.  Sigh.  At least we got to go out and play.

Will be back soon with more to share.  Hope you all have had a great week, and for those of you that celebrate Easter, I hope you're having a great holiday!

Heidi Swapp love

So, after years of being a Heidi Swapp fan, i've been in heaven with some of her products now being available at Michaels (especially now that we're down to one LSS after the closest one to me recently closed), and i've been in a creative frenzy!  Haven't been blogging so much still, but I have been scrapping.  Anyway, here's a recent layout I did (I threw in some other goodies, as well, like that Jenni Bowlin stencil I adore!) - for my textured background, I first sanded over a lego (lord knows we have enough of them in this house ;) and then used mist over a stencil:

I also made a mini-album for a contest Heidi Swapp is having - haven't done one in a couple of years, so it's been long overdue!  I've always loved making them but they do take me awhile - but this was soo much fun to make and well worth the time.  I used several different HS wood albums by combining the different sizes and types, and I had a ton of fun with her Color Shine, papers, and embellishments.  And I even sewed on several of the pages - who would have thought you could sew on wood?!  Now to find the perfect spot to display it :)

For my cover, I played with molding paste for the first time - so much fun!  The pink ric rac looking trim is actually the HS zig zag trim that I sprayed with Color Shine and then cut out the triangles to match my molding paste zig zags (and I recycled the cut out triangles as arrows next to the title).  I love dangling things from my mini's, so I added some chipboard hearts to the seam binding for some extra texture.  I used only wood pages for this album - I didn't use any of the paper inserts.  You can see how thick it is - I packed a lot into this bad boy ;)

Here are a few of the inside pages:

There you have it, everyone, thanks for putting up with my photo overload!  Happy weekend, friends!

Sunday Funday

Oh, that crazy girl of mine.  This is one of my favorite pics of her that I captured, spur of the moment, on my iphone.  She was dancing around, being goofy and making funny faces.  She has such a silly side, and I love that about her.  This pic was taken awhile ago now, so it was about time that I did something with it, don't you think? ;-)

Here is another recent project I did - I attached a bunch of Fancy Pants chipboard frames to make this wall hanging for our front door... nice to brighten up the blank back of the door :)

So, we had gooorgeous weather this weekend! It was SO nice to get outside and play! Today we threw our bikes in the mommy van (it's good for something!) and headed to one of our favorite nearby parks that has a pretty lake and lots of bike/running trails (it's actually where I did the Iron Girl tri this summer). We biked around for a bit and then hit the playground to play. Here's my favorite photo from the day:

Hope you all were also able to get out and enjoy your weekend... i'm so happy that spring is on it's way!

Glitter and paint and stencils... oh my!

Had so much fun getting messy with a fun new stencil I bought.  I used some gold paint, added some gold glitter and then some gold leaves (see a theme here? :-) and voila - a fun little embellishment.  I was inspired to go gold with my paper choice - I just can't get enough of the Dear Lizzy gold polka dot vellum - so pretty!  And, of course, i've jumped on the washi bandwagon and love the extra layer the tape adds.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  I did lots of creating this weekend, so i'll have more to share soon :-)

Fun with Instagram and Heidi Swapp

Ok, so as my friend Doris pointed out, I was a total enabler last week when I posted an Instagram photo of all the fabulous Heidi Swapp goodies that Michaels is now carrying, and since i'm getting back into scrapping after a break, it's only fair that I treated myself to new stuff, right?  Because, you know how us scrappers are, I don't have a stockpile of supplies or anything... ;-)  The background paper is Prima, but everything else (except for the washi tape and letters) is HS.  I think those banners are one of my favorites of her new embellishments.

 

 

 

 

I was hoping to get some scrapping done while watching the Oscars, but I decided to kick my feet up with a drink while watching instead :-) 

MME goodies

So, who doesn't love My Mind's Eye??  They are by far one of my favorite manufacturers, and I have a ton of their stuff - papers and embellishments galore!  So when I saw that they are having a Guest Designer contest, along with the very awesome kit club, Gossamer Blue , I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try.  The layout had to be created new, and since you all know I'm finally scrapping again, it was the perfect reason for me to pull out a bunch of my newer MME goodies.  Like most people, i'm in love with washi tapes these days, so I had fun using MME's tape to make my sun.  I cut out some of the design and then backed the paper with AC's glittered cardstock and added some stitching with MME's twine.  I had so much fun with this layout, and these pics are some of my favs of Lucas at the beach this summer... I just love that kid! 

 

 

 

First things first....

Happy Super Bowl day, everyone!  And GO RAVENS!!  We will definitely be wearing our purple loud and proud today :-)

Wanted to share some photos I took last week of a Superhero exhibit we took the kids to.  They had clothes for them to dress up in, lots of things to look at, and a drawing station where you could make your own comic book.  Chloe spent most of her time there :-)

Someone was the cutest little Superman i've ever seen.  Superman's phone booth was there, and he had a blast "talking" to him.  Sadly, however, I don't think any of my children knew what a phone booth even was ;-)

Then of course there was MY batman...

And then the REAL batman showed up...

Now that i've bombarded you all with photos, i'll sign off with some scrappy goodness.  Have I mentioned how great it feels to be scrapping again (pretty sure i've said that once or twice ;-)  LOVE this Ampersand mask by Studio Calico, and I had fun working my design around it.  These are some of my fav pics from our trip to the beach this summer.

Off to a good start

Ok, my second post in a couple of days... i'm off to a good start for the new year ;-) I made this layout a couple of months ago, before my scrapping hiatus (which i'm happy to say is permanently broken!). Definitely a bold one with the Heidi Swapp animal print paper, but it definitely matches my girl's bold personality! I love love love those Prima pink letter stickers too.