Project Life June 2-8

I have another Project Life week to share with you today.

 This time around I used the Scraptastic June kit.  You may recall that this kit is not a PL kit, just a regular scrapbooking kit.  That's the beauty of PL, you really can use anything to create your pages.

Side A

SideB

Some close ups:

The title card was created using many of the stickers from the sticker sheet included in the kit.  The wood veneer pennant is from the Add On kit, and that triangle cluster stamp was from one of the stamp sets.

I really, really wanted to record the story of the "Our Robin Family", but had so many photos that I also wanted to include in our week.  The solution was to create a little pocked from scraps and tuck it right behind one of the pockets.  I used one of the stickers from the set to function as a tab, so down the road people would know that there was a little something extra in that pocket.

 That bottom blue card includes 2 stamps also from the kit.  The "Quoted" and "Forever and a day" are both Scraptastic exclusives, I'm pretty sure they'll get a lot of use from here on out.

There you have it another week under my belt.  I am all caught up to date, just haven't photographed them yet (to be honest that is my least favourite part of blogging).  I'll be sure to share soon.

Hope you're in for wonderful Sunday friends, thank you much for stopping by today.

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Chic Tags - Challenge Sunday

I love mixing and matching manufacturers and old and new product together so much.  That's exactly what I did for this week's Instagram Challenge over at Chic Tags.

A little masking, and misting.

Some old Pink Paislee trim with some new Everyday Life II Chic Tags, and new My Mind's Eye Enamel Dots.

I created this cut title using my Silhouette Cameo

It was so cool meeting Jennifer Putnum (Stricker) for the first time in MSP.  We are IG friends who both love to scrap.  She saw that I ws coming to Minneapolis for Belle's Dance Competition, and offered to hook up with me.  She introduced me to the wonderful boutique type store known as Typo (where this pic was taken by her hubby).  We also hit up Archiver's.  Two hours of fun together.

Create a layout using an Instagram photo and link it up to our Challenge.  You could win yourself a little shopping spree to the Chic Tags store.  Hop over here to get the deets and see what the rest of our super talented DT created. Pin It

Dream Big

Happy Friday friends!

The countdown in officially on at our house 4 more days of school.  Here in Manitoba the kids are kept until the very bitter end.  The past 2 weeks have been packed with field trips, special events, and assemblies like crazy.  Nothing like saving it all up until the end. I've been in the school a lot, hence the crickets chirping on the blog lately, my apologies.  My kids, and family, however will always come ahead of my hobby.

We spent the tail end of April, and better part of May in Dance Competitions.  Here is my beautiful Belle in her Jazz Dance costume.  It was a wonderfully, playfully genius choreographed piece by their teacher Lori Watson.  It was called Pretty In Pink and, the girls were dressed to look like flamingos with little flamingos on their arms.  They looks positively stunning and danced well enough to earn themselves an Elite Gold, and tie for 1st in their category.

As I often do I hid the journaling behind the photo.  It reads: Watching how beautifully you danced this Flamingo dance made me swell with pride for you.  All your hard work to catch up to your peers over the past year totally paid off!  You looked amazing!  Beautiful lines, and full of grace.  Way to go Belle!

Love this little cluster of Pink Paislee die cuts

Added a few Studio Calico sequins, and a My Mind's Eye brad

As always lots of layers all over the page

It had been ages since I had completed a layout just for me.  And this one came together super quick.  It always helps to have inspiring product and photos.

In support of my bloggy friend Leslie, I am linking this up to Whimsical Wednesday at The Memory Nest.

Now, how about an AMAZING FREEBIE to kick off the weekend?  Catherine sent this to those of us featured in the Summer issue of Scrapbook and Cards Today.

She is kicking off the release of this issue with a BANG.  Not only is it the release of the Summer Issue, but it is also the 30th Issue of her sweet magazine, that wasn't much more than a dream not too long ago.  Giveaways, prizes, challenges, and much, much more await you on their blog.  I strongly encourage you to take the time to pop over and check out all the goodness going on, the party starts right here.  You'll start with receiving your very own e-copy of the newly released Summer Issue (where you'll find my layout too).

That's it for me.  I'm really looking forward to the weekend.  I have 2 girls going off to a friend's cottage for the weekend, while the other has a date with Daddy for the Taylor Swift concert on Saturday.  Oh check out her face when she opened the tickets last Thursday for her birthday.  Priceless!

She could not have been more surprised, or more grateful.

As for me: I have a crop on Friday night, work on Saturday, then all evening to myself - YAY!  And Sunday, I think we'll take this little one out for breakfast, just the 3 of us.  How about you?  What's up in your corner of the world for the weekend?

As always I really appreciate you're stopping by.  I hope you've been inspired to go and make the day beautiful.

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Let's Get Sketchy Reveal

We have a brand new sketch for you up at Let's Get Sketchy today.  Ashley Horton is not only a fabulous designer, but she creates some pretty mean sketches as well.  Here is what I've done with this week's sketch.

The photos are of our quick trip to Minneapolis at the beginning of May.  It was such a nice time to be alone with only Isabelle.  We haven't been just the 3 of us for over 11 years. We got in some shopping, strolled downtown Minneapolis (ate at the amazing Hell's Kitchen restaurant, best lunch I've had in a long time), spent some time in the pool.  I even got to meet up with a scrappy friend I made online through Instagram.  She introduced me the gem of the store known as Typo, spent a lot of time in there,  so much fun stuff to look at.  We then hit Archiver's for a few scrappy purchases, of course we did.  And after all that we did actually go and spend some time watching Belle actually dance.  She only danced one day, but we had to be there a few days prior, so a mini vacation with our first born was most definitely in order.

Here is Ashley's original sketch.

I used the new Fancy Pants Park Bench Collection, and some brand new Pebbles alphas that I won at Crop & Create Winnipeg.

I hid the journaling on a shipping tag behind the photo.  This flair is a Cre8tive Cre8tions flair piece, you can find the set in Andrea's shop here.  The moustache flair piece is from The Paper Bakery.  Sara create some fabulous flair also.  You can see her sets here.

We've had some really great entries lately, must be all the great sketches, it would be great to see you link up with us.  You can check out what the rest of the DT did with this week's sketch here on the blog.

Thanks so much for popping in today friends, I hope your week is off to a good start. Pin It

Hybrid Titles - Masking

Morning all!

Thought I'd share a tutorial that I had up on the Chic Tags blog with all of you today.

I often use multiple style stickers and/or fonts for my titles, but in this case I decided to incorporate multiple medias as well.

I have no doubt that we all have at least one package of these sitting around.

Look familiar?  Old alphabet stickers we've had for years, that are now falling loose in their packaging.  Creating a masked title is a great way to use these guys up.

The first thing I did was lay down all my elements on the page in my preferred design.  Don't be afraid to lightly press your alphabet stickers down, as there is so little adhesive left on oldies that they remove quite easily once masked.

Once I knew where things were generally going to be, I removed everything I did not want to be masked.

Using my gorgeous Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Primrose I sprayed over my title area, as well as on the bottom right of where my photo/embellished cluster would sit.  Next I splattered a few Mr. Huey's in Lemonade (a nice soft yellow) around the page.

Once all my misting was complete I used my Making Memories tweezers to remove the letters (this keeps my hands clean of all the mist laying on top of the alphabet stickers).

Now I am free to adhere the rest of my page elements.  The word "love" is a Silhoutte cut file that I've sprayed with Taxi colour Mr. Huey's.

After adding the journaling to my hidden Chic Tag, my layout was complete.  But looking at it, I felt it was still looking a little plain Jane.  To fix the situation I added one more shade of Mr. Huey's splatters in Bluegrass, it's pretty much a perfect match to the blue/green shade in the Road Trip Collection.

And this is the finished layout.

Hope you're feeling inspired to give masking and/or a hybrid title a go.  Feel free to pop over the the Chic Tags blog to see links to all the tags I've used on this project.

That's it for me.  As always thanks for popping in today, I hope you're in for a great weekend. Pin It

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Happy Monday friends,

Today is a day off for my kiddos, have I mentioned before how much I love to sleep in?  One of my favourite things to do on earth.  It was a lovely weekend here, a little work, a little dance, a sleepover, a scrappy date, church, and of course the Superbowl.  Good times.

This morning, I have the February challenge at Scrapping Everyday Miracles to share with you.  It's all about where you feel most at home this month.  That could mean different things to different people depending on your circumstance.  For me it truly is wherever I know my hubby and kids will be.  That's home.  If they all chose to live in the Arctic circle, I would have to find a way to make it work, because it just wouldn't be home anywhere else if they weren't with me.  Of course there are times where I love them all being away so I can have some peace and quiet, but what makes that peace and quiet so sweet is the knowledge that soon enough everyone will be back bringing with them all the noises big and small that make them who they are, and in turn make me who I am.

Here is the layout I created for the challenge.  The twist is to add journaling on a tag.

All sorts of bits and pieces to this one, mostly My Mind's Eye, and Chic Tags product

A little hard to see, but I spread some gesso and blue paint across behind everything.

I wanted the photo to take centre stage, so I literally centred it, then placed "love" themed embellies all around.

Journaling on the hidden tag is a quote I saw somewhere on-line (Pinterest perhaps) 

"We may not have it all together, but together we have it all"

Hope you feel inspired to create a "home" themed project of your own.  If you join us you'll be in the running for a prize from this month's sponsor as well as possibly earn a spot as a future guest designer for us.  You can get all the info, and see where the rest of the team feels most at home right here.

Have a great week everyone! Pin It

You & Me

Just popping in to share a layout I had up, over at Let's Capture Our Memories the other day.  

Have you seen the new Pink Paislee Portfolio Collection?  I just love it.  yellow, cream, and grey seem to be very big right now in the industry, and Pink Paislee mixes them perfectly in this new line.  I had this photo of my little buddy Nyah and I kicking around since summer.  I love this photo of the two of us.  She is one great kid!  I knew I wanted to create a great layout with this sweet photo of us.  With this collection, and the help of my Silhouette Cameo, I think I did pretty good.

 

You can see the Portfolio papers in the shop here.  I added some old Echo Park Charming brads, and some Mr. Huey's, as well as some more of Shelley's flair from that Etsy shop I told you about earlier.  I hid the journaling on the tag with the pull out ribbon under the banner flair badge.  It reads "I couldn't love this girl anymore if she were my own.  I remember praying fore her while she was still in China.  She's been here 4 yrs now, and she blesses us all."

I love the way this turned out.  The muted colours really allow the photo to pop.  Is there a collection you've fallen in love with lately?

Thanks so much for popping in today,
♥ S. Pin It

Let's Get Sketchy

I love using sketches to jump start my creativity, or even just to break out of my box a little when designing new pages. I used one to create this layout of Isabelle the day she got her braces put on last month.  As much as she tried to pretend she didn't want them, I'd say it's pretty obvious from that smile that at least a little part of her was happy to have a little colour in her mouth.

I used a bunch of brand new Chic Tags goodies that arrived in the mail recently, a prize I had won through Ali Edwards Week In The Life Event.  I love, love, love these little bits and pieces, I used 5 of them on this layout alone (one of them being that awesome Hello Sunshine Badge).  There is also some Simple Stories, Lily Bee Design, My Mind's Eye, and Jillibean Soup here.

A few detail shots:

Here is the sketch I used by Let's Get Sketchy.

I rotated it, flipped the photos,and changed their size to suite my needs, but it's still very easy to see the original design.

Let's Get Sketchy announced on Monday that they are having a Design Team Call.  It's short and sweet (I like the way they roll), applicants have until this Sunday to get their applications in.  The announcement of the new team will me made that same day.  The requirements are easy peasy, and the ladies seem like a nice bunch to work with. You can check out the call for yourself on their site here.

I've only recently discovered this site, so my chances may be slim, but I've decided to go for it based on the fact that their sketches offer a nice variety, and would work very well with my style.  They have very reasonable requirements, and, when you look at their team of designers it is clear to see how diverse a team they are ethnically.  That is not something you see very often.  I think it's great, and I bet it adds a wonderful variety and flavor to the community they have amongst themselves. 

If you're a sketch lover too, I'd encourage you to check them out.  This is the current sketch challenge running.

If you decide to give it a go, be sure to link up with them here.  You never know, you could be the winner of this month's sponsored prize.

Thanks for stopping by today friends, I sure appreciate it.  And please wish me luck :)

♥ S. Pin It

One Sweet Neighbour

Meet Kristine.

She's my neighbour, and the mother to some of my girls' best little buddies.  We've been acquaintances for several years already, but have never spent any time together on our own.  As it turns out we ended up buying houses on the same cul-de-sac last year.  What a treat.  It is so delightful to be able to just walk across the sac with a cup of coffee in hand to sit and visit with her for a moment or two after the kids have been dropped off at school.  Or have her and her hubby stop by one evening for a glass of wine out on the deck, as we watch the kids play in the kiddie pool.  Such a gift I tell you.  The best part is that her family loves Jesus too, so we truly are 'the village' to each other as we celebrate the triumphs of our children, and proud parenting moments.  And have each other to lean on, on emotionally charged days when we're left wracking our heads with frustration .  We're still navigating the uncharted waters of new found friendship, learning the body language and tone of the other, and when to push and when to simply listen.  Scripture says, "Ointment and perfume delight the heart.  And the sweetness of a man's friend gives delight by heart and counsel".  That is truly the case with this lovely woman.  I count myself as blessed to have her in my life, and look forward to many more shared experiences in faith, love, friendship, and parenting together.

The journaling is hidden in a little pocket that's revealed when you pull on the green button on the right hand side of the photo.  It should be noted that she hates this photo, but has graciously allowed me to use it :)  Product: Pink Paislee Vintage Vogue papers and embellies, Websters trim, and buttons from my stash.

I pray you know such a friendship in your life.

Have a lovely day friends,

♥ S. Pin It