Happy Halloween!

Well, I missed the Halloween festivities at school this year. I had just arrived at school and was walking around my car to get my costume when I twisted my ankle (probably from stepping on an acorn) and down I went! My ankle swelled up like a big softball and I couldn't get up off the ground. They took me to the hospital in an ambulance for x-rays. Fortunately, it's not broken and just a severe sprain. Unfortunately, it HURTS!

So no trick-or-treating for me! Farzad got tickets for us to go to the Kennedy Center to see Hair. Not sure if I'm going to be able to go--that is one humongous building to have to hobble through on crutches. Woe is me! :(

Well, in the spirit of Halloween, here's a trick for you...Do you know about Picnik? If you don't, head on over there before Halloween and zombify--or vampirize--yourself. Picnik is a fun, free online photo-editing site that has some really cool effects, and for Halloween, they've added some special effects. Here's me as a vampire:

And here I am zombified:

Are you scared yet? [Insert evil laugh.] Happy Halloween!

Call for Holiday Projects!

Scrapbook News & Review wants to publish your holiday projects! See the calls here. Your can submit scrapbook layouts (both traditional and digital) from past holiday seasons, cards, or mixed media projects. Take a look at the calls--it'll be fun to see your name in there!

Color Combos Galore #164 is Live!

I've taken the reins over at Color Combos Galore for a bit while Janet is taking care of her mom. I've been having fun making the color palettes and Inspiration Boards. Here's the current one I made:

I love that bedroom--it's the sort of room I dreamed of having when I was a teen. Heck, I wouldn't mind having it now! And here's my layout. It's for my weight-loss album. My Weight Watchers leader says we should celebrate "small victories." And this is one of mine. I haven't been able to wear my rings in a very long time because my fingers got too fat. I just tried them on last week, and they fit! Farzad took a picture of me with my rings, shooting me really close-up because I was having a major bad-hair day. (And, I might add, a major bad-face day, so I gussied it up with the Orton-ish feature over at Picnik.)

Here are a few close-ups of my layout. I used my favorite punch, Iron Gate by Martha Stewart. I had to add some pink gems, of course.

Whatever am I going to do when I run out of Heidi Swapp chipboard letters? I'm running out of the popular letters, which is why I had to make an l out of a k. That gem brad is actually pink.

I've been using my old Doodlebug paper frills a lot lately. I sandwiched it in between some of the layers to add a little interest to the edges.

I hope you'll come see what the rest of the team made and play in the challenge!

November WIP Peeks

The November Work in Progress kits are available, and the Project and Add-on kits have already sold out, so the main kit is likely to go fast, too. It's full of rich colors and textures and features elements from the new Making Memories Paper Reverie as well as some fun Bella Blvd. cloud papers and Little Yellow Bicycle canvas borders and several specialty papers (die-cut, glittery, and flocked), and lot of other scrappy happiness. Here's a picture of what's in this kit:

One of the many things I love about Trish's kits is how well everything coordinates, yet you can make really varied layouts, as you can see from these little peeks at the pages I've made so far:

The Gallery will go live on November 1st, so I'll share my layouts after then. In the meantime, go take a peek at all the cool stuff in that November kit!

Color Combos Galore Challenge 163 is Live!

And I made the colors! Janet's taking a break to take care of her Mom for a while, so I'm taking care of things at Color Combos Galore for a bit. Here is the Inspiration Board I made for this week's challenge:

And here is my page:

I'm not sure why that blue damask pattern showed up so blue--it really has an aqua tint to it. Here are some close-ups. For the stamps, I used teal ink and added clear embossing powder since I didn't have any teal embossing powder.

In case you don't think I used the stripes called for in the challenge, I did. I had a hard time finding striped paper in the colors I needed to use, so I just trimmed some blue and white stripes from a multi-colored striped paper. I love Doodlebug frills--I've been using them a lot lately.

Jules had posted a mini-challenge at CCG to use pink, aqua, white, and brown and to scraplift one of the design team's layouts. I scraplifted Janet's beautiful layout. I thought what she did with that old Chatterbox argyle paper was genius! Here's my scraplift:

Come check out what the rest of the team did, and I hope you'll play along with my first color palette!

Challenges!

So many fun challenges this week! Here's what I made for How Much Is Too Much--our challenge was in honor of National Chocolate Cupcake Day, and Janet challenged us to use: picture or pictures of food, having a family dinner or a birthday; something that has a picture of food on it--embellishment, patterned paper, or sticker; multiple colors of brown; circles; flowers.

I have to admit, when I first read this challenge, I wasn't too thrilled because brown isn't my thing. I like bright, happy colors, but once I got working on my page, I realized brown was the perfect color for my page! Plus, the challenge gave me the perfect excuse to use some of this old Heidi Grace cupcake paper that's been in my stash forever and to scrap these photos that I've had sitting on my scrap desk for over a year. I goofed and didn't realize we had to include flowers--funny, because I had contemplated adding flowers and then decided against it. Here's my page:

We have a new prompt up at Creative Prompts for You. It was my week to choose an inspiration piece, and here's what I came up with:

I can't remember where I found this image, but I just loved the color scheme and all those fluttering butterflies. Here's the page I made for this challenge. I went pretty literal with the inspiration piece, diving my layout into white and gray, as inspired by the photo. I loved all those fluttering butterflies, and originally tried to mimic the yellow ones on the right and the black ones on the left, but it just wasn't working for me, so I co-mingled them on the one side. The title was obviously inspired by the two circles. The glass elements in the photos inspired my transparent subtitle.

I hid my journaling on the back, and it reads: I promised myself this time I wasn't going to play games. That's why I decided to go with the uniform. I'd wear the same thing every week so I couldn't blame a loss or gain on my clothing. I'd wear the same necklace and watch and wouldn't take it off. I chose clothes that I could wear as the season changed. But as I shrink, my clothes go bigger, and so my uniform has changed--three times so far. So, every Tuesday, my students see me wear the same outfit. I look forward to the day I only have to wear my uniform once a month, at my lifetime maintenance weigh-in.

Here are a few close-ups. I've been trying to use some of my older stuff. Those sparkly things on the butterflies are flower-shaped gems by Heidi Swapp. I used pop dots on the butterflies to give them a little lift.

More old Heidi Swapp stuff--ghost letters.

And I even dug out some vellum I've probably had for 10 years and Heidi Swapp rub-on letters.

I hope you'll visit these challenge blogs to see what the rest of the teams did with these fun challenges, and I hope you'll play along! There are prizes to be won on both of these challenges.

Nose Crinkles {BasicGrey Newsletter}

Every time I look in the mirror, I see more white hairs sprouting on my head and more wrinkles invading my face. It's not a pretty sight. And the more weight I lose, the more the wrinkles come out to play. So, imagine my dismay when my mom pointed out--on my 47th birthday, no less--the wrinkles I hate most on my face--those deep, horizontal lines between my eyes, crowning my freckled nose. "You have the same exact wrinkles I do on your nose." Ummm, thanks for pointing out my wrinkles on my birthday, Mom.

Well, my mom, being the kind soul she is, made the best of the conversation, and I documented it on a layout. I was thrilled when Kelly Goree asked me to make a layout for this month's BasicGrey Newsletter. I just adore BasicGrey, and it gave me the perfect excuse to play with the Oliver collection. I had bought the paper with the monkeys because it was so darn cute--not having any idea how I was going to use it, but this story turned out to be the perfect one to break out those monkeys!

Here's the sketch I got to work with (the sketch was made by Allison Davis):

 

And here's my layout. Scrapping 8 x 8 poses lots of challenges, especially when there's a lot of journaling I want to include. I tried to stay true to the sketch, but my lengthy journaling  made it necessary to make a few adjustments. I love the colors in the Oliver line, and did I mention, I adore those whimsical monkeys?

 

I hope you'll take a peek at the BasicGrey Newsletter to see the awesome layouts Kelly Goree, Allison Davis, and Lady Grace Belarmino made with this sketch. 

The Blue Funk

Do you ever have those days--or weekends--where you are just in a blue mood and feeling sorry for yourself? I had one of those days. I woke up with what I thought was pink eye on Saturday. My eyelid was sore and red and swollen. Saturday is my scrapping day, and I was supposed to do my page for How Much Is Too Much. I was planning to go to a fall festival with my sister and her family on Sunday, so I really needed to get my layout done, but I was in a funk.

I woke up on Sunday, and my eye was worse, so I had to cancel the outing and go to the urgent care instead. I had a couple of hours in between the time I phoned Kaiser and my appointment. Farzad was watching the morning news and pointed out to me that today was 10-10-10. And that's when I got my idea for the HMITM challenge. It was a fun, interesting challenge called "Ten Things I hate," posed by our guest challenger Liz Kordek: 

generally we do things we love or like. Create a layout documenting ten things you hate or dislike (maybe pet peeves), and include on your page ten things from your stash that you don't "love" anymore--we all have those things we bought and now wonder why--now's a good time to use them!

So I grabbed my camera and headed for the kitchen where we had the most light and held that camera in front of my face and snapped. Ugh what an ugly picture, but it was just perfect for the page I had in mind:

 

 For my ten products I dislike, I started with smooth cardstock (I prefer textured). I used letter stickers (I prefer chipboard ones). I remember seeing all these layouts using Rouge de Garance paper a few years ago and I ordered a whole bunch--and it was expensive because it was coming from France. When I got it, I immediately regretted it. The stuff is hard to work with and looked much prettier online. So there it has sat in my stash until today. I used two sheets. I used these white brads for the date that I hate. I bought them at the office supply store when brads started being popular. I had these Scrapworks rub-on flowers that I didn't really like. I have packages in a bunch of diferent colors. I knew I wanted to use eyelets and fiber because I still have a ton of those things (the centers of the flowers are decorative eyelets). I also used a stupid Karen Foster strip brad (why on earth did I buy those?), and a Narratives sticker from a sheet that look sort of like fortunes, and for some reason, I don't really like them. 

So there you have it. Ten things I hate about today using ten products I hate. It turns out I like the layout okay, though. (Well, except for the hideous picture of me.) And an update--I went to the doctor, and it turns out I have blepharitis and not pink eye. Which really doesn't sound all that much better, does it?

Another Work in Progress Page

As I said in my last post, I think October is my favorite Work in Progress kit yet! I made three more layouts, and I would've done a lot more if I'd had time--there's so much cool stuff in this kit!

Hidden journaling reads:  Since our new TV doesn't have a clock on it, Farzad went in search of a clock for our family room. But when you're a gadget guy, an ordinary clock won't do. No, you need a fancy-schmancy, bells-and-whistles kind of clock.

Clock number one was the "Floating Message" clock from Brookestone. It has this arm that moves back and forth at lightning speed and displays not only the time, date, and temperature, but other messages you can program. The only problem: you have to sit and wait for the dumb thing to go through all those messages before you see the time. I just want a clock to tell me what time it is! So back it went to Brookestone.

Clock number two was the obedient clock. You were supposed to ask it what time it was and it was supposed to reply. The only problem: this clock wasn't obedient, unless you were right in front of it and didn't have a Persian accent. That one went back in the box.

Clock number three was the projector clock. This gadget shines the time on the celing. The only problem: you have to be right under the image to see it. Oh, and the room has to be dark. Yep, that one went back, too. So now, I am still clock-less. Can't we just get a plain-old clock that tells time? Nope, says my gadget guy. The quest continues.

My  layout started with the clock border in the kit. And then I noticed that the street map paper had all these 24s in circles on the, which seemed perfect (24 hours). I decided this would be the perfect kit to tell the funny story of the clock quest, and all the road-signs from the BasicGrey Wander collection were perfect, since Farzad's quest to find the perfect clock had him running all over town.

I knew I wanted to use that cute chipboard airplane, so I used it to hold part of my title. I mounted the Jenni Bowlin Stickers on a piece of the ribbon tape that came in the kit. It was bright yellow, so I inked it to make it match the gold-yellow in the paper and embellishments. I love those great big bold BasicGrey letters that came in the kit and I outlined them with black pen to make them even bolder.

 

I had to include a big clock somewhere on my, so I raided my stash and found this Maya Road sheer clock. The BasicGrey cog sticker with the arrows was perfect to go on top of it. Since he was sort of going round and round in circles looking for the perfect clock.I cut out the "Wander" title from the tear strip of the paper--it perfectly described what Farzad was doing!

There is an update to the story. Farzad found a clock that I can read from my scrap room. It looks like a plain digital alarm clock with big red letters. I thanked him profusely for getting a plain clock that I can read. It wasn't until that evening when we were watching TV that I looked up on the ceiling and there was the time projected! My sneaky gadget guy!

My Work in Progress Pages

Now that the October Work in Progress gallery is live, I can start sharing my pages. I think the October kit is my favorite yet!

Here is my favorite page I made. Trish sent us some little Work in Progress buttons, which is where this layout began. It's a little ripply from gluing on the letters, which is why it has that weird shadow (but it's calming down now).

Here's a close-up of that button. I trimmed a Martha Stewart label and adhered it to a punched circle on top of a silk flower I got from Michael's.

I love how all the little bits of varied patterned papers look lined up together. Love, love, love the fabric tape Trish included in the kit!

I love the way white letters look against white paper. I've done that on many layouts. I added some scraps behind the openings of some of the letters.

Here is a layout I made for Color Combos Galore. The kit was perfect for this palette:

I made a page for my weight-loss album. This picture was taken  last winter. I've lost more weight since then.

The tabbed border came from a Teresa Collins paper in the kit. I cut it out and trimmed it down to fit my 8 x 8 page. The fabric tape was from the September WIP kit, and I pleated it before stitching it down. LOVE the Crate Paper ruler paper that was in this kit!

Trish always includes really nifty die-cuts in her kits. This month, she sent us two little olive trees. I painted mine brown to go with the palette and added stitching. One of my favorite embellishments iw word stickers, and 7 Gypsies are my favorite. I added some phrases from the "D is for Diet" sticker set. The report card is cut from a Crate Paper sheet that was in the kit. What a fun way to journal!

Also in the kit was a Bo Bunny paper that has all these little flash cards. A million of them! So I have lots left for other layouts.

I'll share the rest of my layouts during the week. In the meantime, be sure to go check out what the rest of the team did with this awesome kit!

Creative Prompts for YOU!

...and it should've also been for me, but I goofed! There was an "all play" challenge at Creative Prompts for You, hosted by Team A, and I'm on Team B. I had a total bonehead moment when I thought the all play was for all of team A. Sigh. It's a really fun challenge and I missed it. Here's the challenge, crafted by Team A:

Nicole - use twine
Ro - use some masking tape.
Regiane - use tissue paper
Natalie - use paint to make a mess!

I did play last week, though, and that was a cool challenge too (they're ALWAYS cool challenges at CP4U). Here was that prompt:

And here's what I came up with. The theme of the fashion photos obviously inspired the topic of my layout. This is a layout for an album documenting my weight-loss journey. I've lost almost 60 pounds so far, and it's a major accomplishment that I'm wearing jeans!

This was a tricky challenge for me since the first thing that drew my eye was all the neutrals. I love to scrap with lots of color. I chose muted colors along with lots of neutrals for my layout. The trio of narrow, vertical photographs inspired the basic composition of my layout. I took some details from the clothing to embellish my page. From the first picture, I drew from the blue carpet (yes, I admit--I staged the photo and wore a blue shirt that I thought matched the blue in the inspiration piece). The boots in the second photo led me to add the row of brads on the right side of my page. The fuzzy collar on her coat reminded me of all those crazy fibers I just had to buy when they were all the rage but are now gathering dust, so I added some fuzzy fiber to the dress form. The belt in the third photo inspired me to dig out an old metal buckle that's been languishing in my stash for years.

Overall, I was trying to add elements that felt like fabric. The plaid patterned paper reminds me of fabric; the ribbon, lace, and silk flower are all made of fabric; and the chipboard dress form has a fabric finish. Finally, I added those word stickers saying "Fabulous" because that's what I always imagine fashion designers and fashion photographers saying as the models are strutting down the runway!

Go check out what the team did for this challenge and the current challenge. Be sure to give the current challenge a try--there's a chance at winning a gift certificate to My Little Bit of Whimsy.