How Much Is Too Much #94

This week's How Much Is Too Much? was especially challenging. Elizabeth challenged us to use 9 stamped images and 4 rub-ons. I love using stamps, but I don't think I've ever used that many on a page before. I used a couple of my stamps for the first time, so thanks, Elizabeth! I hope you'll join me in this fun challenge, and be sure to link your creation to this thread over at Two Peas because the challenge hosts always choose a winner for a RAK.

See that cool "Random Memory" stamp? It's by Catslife Press. They have the most awesome stamps that are perfect for scrapbooking, and I saw a little note on their site asking for feedback on what we might like to see for future stamps, so I e-mailed them and asked if they would make a "Random Memory" stamp, and they did! They actually made two different styles! Later, I asked them to make a stamp saying "Reason No." because I had started a book about reasons I love Farzad, and again, they did!

Isn't that a cute picture of my sister, my cousin, and me? It was taken around 1967. (I'm the one with the red sweater and what appears to be a bucket on my head.) I have no recollection of why we were dressed like that, but I know it was some time around the holidays because there were Gram's plastic poinsettias in that tree in the background, so I used the picture for a random memory.

Purple Haze All In My Brain (and a Lost Butterfly)

So this week, Janet sent us purple for the Color Combos Galore challenge! This was a delight for me since I love purple but a total surprise since Janet hates purple! I actually made two pages with this color combo, because the first one just wasn't working for me (it's the one below called "Go Postal"). Not sure why, but the "cottontail" color was really yellow on my monitor. The gray with the yellow just looked sickly to me. I took more liberties with my second page and used bright white instead, and I adored the color combo. I found out there aren't very many purple papers. I had to dig into my really old stash to find this purple paper.

I decided to use the colors for the page I made for the How Much Is Too Much? blog. And thus the story of the lost butterfly. Paula challenged us to use use 3 patterned papers, 3 pieces of chipboard, 3 ribbons, 3 stickers and 3 clear/transparent items. I had a Heidi Swapp ghost butterfly all picked out, painted the edges purple, and then went to stitch on my layout. When I came back to put all my embellishments on the page, the butterfly was gone. Flew away, I think! I looked for that butterfly for almost an hour and then got Farzad to help me--he can always find things. But we searched and searched to no avail. So I used a clear stamp on a piece of transparency, and that took care of my three clear items!



Journaling on the back of this page reads: I can't seem to find the right word for what I felt about Tina's life. I can't really call it jealousy or envy because there was really no resentment. Maybe longing would be the right word? Tina was pretty and fun and cool. She was older and therefore more "worldly." She knew all about teen pop stars and had a cool bedroom and cool clothes. She had a seemingly privileged life compared to ours--a nice house, where we always lived in dumpy apartments. Nice furniture. All those yellow National Geographics lined on the shelves in their den. And that glorious cat, Fluffy. I so wanted a cat of my own. In retrospect, even though Tina was more privileged on the surface, I know her life no less filled with difficulties and sorrows as ours was.



Here's the color combo I used for both of these pages. Come play with us!

Where Did October Go?

Seriously. October seems to have disappeared in a wink, and now we're a week into November and heading full-speed towards the holidays! I've been really busy with report cards and parent-teacher conferences, which has seriously cut into my scrapping time, but I have managed to eke out a few pages in the couple of weeks.

I made this page for the Color Combos Galore blog. I combined it with a Journaler’s Junction challenge, which challenged us to write a 6-word memoir. I played a few tricks with the photo by turning the background black and white and diffusing it because there was a blue plastic bag in the background. I discovered a typo after it was all finished and scanned. Aargh.



Here are the colors Janet sent us that week:



I made this page for the Sketch This! blog. The background is really wood, and I thought the lace cardstock looked like a doily:



Here's Janelle's sketch I used:



I made this page to go in my book about Farzad's quirks for the How Much Is Too Much? blog. It was a real challenge for me because we had to use 9 different colors of cardstock and 2 staples. I'm such a patterned paper junkie! I combined it with two other challenges over at Two Peas, the Pub Ad challenge and the Inspiration challenge:



Here are the ad and inspiration piece I used:





Another one for the Color Combos Galore blog, using a picture from our summer anniversary trip to Las Vegas:



These were the colors Janet gave us:



Finally, here's one I did on Election Day for the Journaler's Junction challenge, which gave us the simple prompt "Today..." I really wanted to do this challenge using my thoughts on the election, but Farzad wasn't there to take a picture of me after I voted, so I tried, unsuccessfully, to get a decent photo of myself, but my arms just aren't long enough, LOL! I was about to delete all the hideous photos of my fat face, but then I noticed this one that had the TV with the election coverage in the background and decided that would be a perfect picture for my layout. I changed everything but the TV to black and white. When I sat down to make this page, I wanted to use a Studio Calico kit I hadn't broken into yet, and I noticed the October Afternoon newspapery pattern had "Tuesday" in one column" and "An Easy Way to Clean House" in another column, and thought, "How perfect!" I just love it when ideas come together like that! (I have private journaling on the back.)