Garden Delights

Today I have a layout to share with you - based on sketch #2 that is posted at the H2H Scrapbooking page.

These photos were taken of various parts of my garden this past summer - when everything was blooming and beautiful (and before the hot, hot, hot sun started making them look blah!)

I have so many photos that need to be put into scrapbook albums so hopefully you will be seeing more layouts through the year - at least until I get caught up!

Thanks for visiting!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The challenge this week at Corrosive Challenges is to recycle something and use in your artwork. I have been on a mission to get caught up on some scrapbooking so I incorporated the challenge is a layout:

These are photos from a summer birthday celebration that included my Mom, Aunt and son's birthdays. I worked with DP that included colors from the layout - lots of blues and a little red. The layout design is from the Imagine publication from Close To My Heart (love these "blueprints"!) And my recycled item? Take a closer look at the flowers at the top of the page:

The flowers were die cut from magazine pages! I wanted something with a little design to add some more texture and interest to the page but I didn't seem to have another DP that blended well so I went through an old magazine that was sitting nearby that needed to be recycled and found a couple of pages that had similar colors to my layout. As a matter of fact, the pictures these were cut from are a combination of Halloween pumpkins (sprayed white with gold) and a blue decorated Christmas tree! Added a couple of buttons and I got me some embellishments for next to nothing!

I hope you wil try adding something recycled to your artwork this week. Then come link up over at Corrosive so we can see what you reused! Have a creative week and I will see you again soon!

Scrapbooking comes to H2H

Today is the 1st day of a new area at H2H Challenges - an area devoted to scrapbooking inspiration! Every other Thursday, I will be posting a 2 page layout sketch for you to try and a sample layout. There is no challenge (aka, no prizes) - just a chance to have a new idea and to get some photos into your albums! Here is the 1st layout I created:

For the sketch and more information, head over to H2H Challenges and click on the tab at the top that says H2H Scrapbooking.

Enjoy!

Chi Chi Chihuahua

This week at Heart 2 Heart Challenges, we are creating scrapbook layouts! (or if you don't scrapbook, you can create any project that features a photo).

I recently visited my brother and sister-in-law and their new puppy, Chi Chi. Now try as I might, I can't possibly describe to you just how small this puppy is! Think smallish guinea pig. That might be the closest I can get to a description. She only weighs 1.9 pounds! And she is A.DOR.ABLE. Like I can't even tell you how much I wanted to bring her home with me but I knew she would have ended up as Leia's toy! (Leia is our 70 lb. lab).

Anyhow, I did remember to take my camera so I could get pictures of this tiny cuteness and I decided that I would create a layout that my brother and sis-in-law could frame and display of their new "baby".

All products are from CTMH except some of the buttons and the heart sticker on the tag. I made the page in an 8 x 10 size so it would fit easily in a standard frame. the layout itself is based on the Ensemble Piece layout in the Imagine book from Close To My Heart (the right hand layout). I just adjusted it to fit my size and used the components that worked for me.

I hope you will play along with us this week over at the challenge blog. And be sure to check out what the other team members, including June's Guest DT, Dawn, have created for this week - awesomeness, I tell ya!

One last thing before I go - the winner of my strawberry jam tags is CELESTE! Celeste, if you see this post, please contact me by email with your mailing address so I can send a little goody package your way! Congrats!

Until next time -

MyGrafico Monday on a Scrapbook Page

I started my "creative days" when I was a kid - I loved to play with playdough, color, draw, eventually learning to sew and embroider and even dabble with knitting a bit. But when I started scrapbooking, it opened even more days into creating - paper crafts. I started scrapbooking to assist my daughter who had an interest in scrapbooking and that was about 15 years ago.

During that time, I was also introduced to stamping and fell in love! While I continued to scrapbook regularly, I also worked on learning more about stamping and the passion grew! I joined Close To My Heart almost 10 years ago and began to focus more on the stamping, mostly because making a card is quicker and easier than creating a layout. But I still love scrapbooking and once in awhile, get inspired to create a page or two for our family album. (A little over a year ago, I completed an album for our son who was graduating from high school. This album covered the years that we had been in our current home - 6 years - and included a LOT of pages. Since then, scrapbooking has taken a bit of a backseat - I think I burned myself out a bit!)

But when I saw the images we were going to work with for MyGrafico Challenges today, I immediately though of a layout. I knew the image would be almost large enough to create a border on my page and would have in fact been 12" long if my printer could accomodate 12" paper! And I've had these photos around for a couple of years so they were a perfect fit!

Now let me tell you a bit about this challenge first and foremost. Our hostess for the week is Katie, another Design Team member, and she created a 1-2-3 challenge for us. We were to use 1 image (that would be the squirrel on the tree branch - all of that is one image), 2 patterned papers (one you see is leaf printed and you can barely see at the top and the bottom of the layout, a brown printed paper - sorry the photo doesn't show it better), and 3 embellishments - I have brads holding the word "nutty", a couple of gold metal leaf charms, and a photo clip on the bottom left photo. (Click the picture for a larger view).

We have so many squirrels in our neighborhood, usually 6-7 in our yard at any given time, romping, chasing each other, driving the dog crazy....this day, there was just a loner hanging out in the yard, chattering at me. So I grabbed a few photos and voila, now a layout!

Want to play along? Create something with an Autumn theme, preferably using images from MyGrafico. Then head over to the challenge blog and link up! You might just win this entire set:

If you would like to see an awesome corkboard project using this same image, be sure to check out out guest designer, Mel and visit the rest of the team to see what they have created as well.

Thanks for stopping by and have a creative week!