11 Faves (Okay, a Dozen) of 2011

Last year, I posted my top ten layouts from 2010, and I thought I'd do it again because I had so much fun looking through my work to see what I had made over the course of a year.

Here are my 11 favorites from 2011, in no particular order:

Knock-Knock: Love this one because of the funny story and how I managed to cram so many fun things on one 8 x 8 page and leave a little white space. Not to mention I completely ADORE the Sass monsters and I'm going to be extremely sad when I run out of them!

Wisteria: I love the colors (one of the many palettes I created for CCG) and used one of my favorite Webster's Pages papers (the lantern). I also used a lot of really old stash, which always makes me happy. And I'm feeling a little wistful thinking about my old backyard--I'm so happy we took these pictures in the backyard that day to have this memory of my old house that we lived in for the past 20 years.

You're a Jerk: This was my first page on the Creative Scrappers design team, and I thought the sketch was tricky because of the multiple photos (8 x 8, remember...), the ink and the grid stamped in the background (direct stamping and mist spray terrify me), but I think I pulled it off well.

Fearless: Don't know why this one tickles me so much. Maybe that I've got a little white space on here (I'm totally white space challenged). I like the way I used the curvy designs on the paper, and I finally scrapped a picture that had been in my stash for nearly a decade.

-esque: I love how this one turned out. I love the unusual colors (another palette I designed for CCG). I love the marriage between REALLY old stash and semi-new. And I love the story. It marks the beginning of my skype friendships that have become a big part of my life.

I Love Words: I love the topic. I love that almost everything on here came from a kit (Noel Mignon Office Party)--I always find that a challenge to limit myself, and everyone knows I love a challenge.

Recipe for a Statue: This picture makes me smile. I like my appraoch for journaling. I just like the combination of *stuff* I included on here, again, using some really old stuff along with a few newer things. I also opened a tub of gesso for the first time to soften the color of the star paper.

Pieces of Me: I love how this page turned out. It kind of evolved as I was building it, and I love those little Sass party animals peeking out. I thought my topic was interesting. I journaled about the bits and pieces of my body--the good, bad, ugly, as my subtitle says. I had fun using a Studio Calico kit for this one, so that made me happy (I tend to hoard my kits).

Literary Lizard: I absolutely LOVE that I had my camera the day this happened. This page will forever make me smile when I see it. And Leo is getting old and isn't doing well this week. :( I love the textures I used on this.

Rainbow Puddles: I have to admit that I didn't think I was going to be able to use these papers when Nikki Sivils was sponsoring us at CCG. I don't do "cutesy" very well. But I absolutely love how this turned out. I love that I remembered this circle paper that came in a Studio Calico kit and I turned it into a rainbow. I love that I thought of adding those pearls, and I love how I added Glossy Accents to the dots to give them that rain-glossed feel.

Just Visiting: I love this one because--well, the Sass monsters, of course. And that I scrapped a picture of my mom (she's unbelievably camera shy). And that I made a page for my Book of Silly, which I haven't done too many of lately. Gotta get on that because Lord knows I have enough silly pictures!

Sweet Freedom: I just love the colors (I made this palette up too), and this is one of my favorite pictures of me. I used all really old paper, including one of my old faves (that Making Memories branchy one), but I think I did a good job of making my page not feel dated. I love the wispy threads I left on.

It's always fun to look back at the past year's work. I had a long hiatus during my move when I couldn't scrap, so I'm just now getting back into it after a few months, and I'm looking forward to another year of scrapping. I'm especially excited about my new challenge site, CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration. I hope you'll check it out and sign on as a member. :) We're launching in less than a week. It promises to be so much fun!

Thank you for stopping by my blog and reading about my favorite pages!

Soon...

Merry Christmas, everyone! Wow, I can't believe how fast the new year is approaching! And with 2012, I have an exciting new scrappy adventure. In case you haven't heard, I'm starting up a new challenge site called CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration. It's a color challenge with a couple of twists, one of which is near and dear to my heart--a journaling component (that's where the "stories" part comes in). I know a lot of people shy away from journaling, but I think you'll like what I have planned for this element of the challenge.

I am so lucky to have a talented and dedicated group of friends joining me for this scrappy adventure. We are calling the design team "The Detectives." Here is our team:

Anna-Karin Evaldsson

(Me)

Eila Sandberg

Fi Kenward

Jenny Evans

Keandra Perkins-Willis

Nancy Burke

Shaunery Wharton

Susan Stringfellow

Sylvia Mellander

Tina Walker

Wendy Kwok

I'll be having a design team call at some point after we get rolling, so I hope you'll sign up and play along. We will launch our challenges with our first Case File on Friday, January 6 and we have an amazing sponsor lined up for January!  Here's a sneak preview of our first Case File:

I hope to see you there on January 6!

A Fond Farewell to HMITM

It is with sadness that I'm announcing that we are posing the final HMITM challenge this week. I have played at this challenge for years, long before I was invited to join the design team. HMITM is one of the longest running scrapbook challenges out there, so it was an extremely hard decision to retire it. In the past year or so, participation in the challenge has dwindled, and so we decided it was time to put HMITM to bed. (I'm refusing to say that we're retiring it completely because I'm secretly hoping that some day we might resurrect it.)

Anna-Karin's challenge this week is a perfect complement to this week's challenge over at The Color Room. She named her challenge "Frosty the Snowman," and she asked us to:

• Do a winter or Christmas themed layout
• Depict snow on your layout (here are a few examples: snowflakes, torn white paper hills, dry embossing, organza, paint, vellum etc.)
• Use glitter
• Use at least three shades of blue (but you can use other colors too)
• Use something shiny or transparent

Here's The Color Room challenge:

 

And here's the page I made. I used Lydell's sketch as well as the palette as my jumping off point. (Yikes, I see that my colors are way off now that they're posted right near each other! I had the challenge up on my computer screen and I could've sworn that I was using the right colors!)

 

 

Here are some detail shots. I used some REALLY, REALLY old stuff on this page. The snowflake papers are by Debbie Mumm, Rhonna Farrer, and Sandylion (2005 is the date on that paper). I also used vellum that's been in my stash for nearly a decade. The beaded snowflakes are old Jolee's stickers. I love those and bought a whole bunch of packages so I won't run out! I initially was going to go the lazy route and use glittery Thickers for the glitter part of the challenge but in the end, I felt like a cheat, so I broke out the Stickles and added some glitter to my punched vellum border.

 

I've had these kraft word stickers by Making Memories in my stash forever and never used them before. I wanted to include journaling but really didn't have anything much to say about these silly photos, and I found some words that worked in this package.

 

These snowflakes were cut out of an old Rhonna Farrer patterned paper. There are some more sparkles on that "Limited Edition" sticker.

 

The snowmen are cut from a My Mind's Eye paper that came in a giant paper pad I got a couple of years ago from Michael's. They have sparkly scarves. I was giving my layout a last glance before photographing it and decided it needed a little something else. That something else came in the form of these sparkly domes that I thought looked just like snowballs.

I'm having second thoughts about saying goodbye to HMITM as I'm typing this blog post. :( It really does make me so sad, but I've witnessed it dying a slow death and it just pains me to see the interest continue to dwindle. Thank you for letting me share my sad goodbye. And thank you for stopping by my blog and reading about my layout!

 

Coming Soon...

I'm so excited!

I have a new adventure beginning with the upcoming new year...

I've gathered an amazing team of designers, and we are going to have some FUN! I will be introducing the designers to you in the upcoming days. 

We will launch our first challenge on January 6. The site is  still in a rough-draft stage, but if you want to take a peek, come see us here and please sign up. I'm exicted to announce that Dusty Attic is going to be our first sponsor, so you will definitely want to come and play in our beginning challenges!

I would like to say a special thank you to Lydell Quin, founder of The Color Room, an awesome, inspiring site, for helping me with this fantastic blinkie. Lydell is helping me out with the look at the CSI site, and it's going to be fabulous once she gets done with it!

Celebrate Wacky December {at HMITM}

It was my turn this week to post a challenge at How Much Is Too Much. I have a source for wacky holidays that I share with my students, and I consulted my wacky holiday calendar for December and found out:

December is Bingo's Birthday Month.
It's also Rising Star Month.
And it's National Tie Month.
The first week of December is Cookie Cutter Week.
December 5 is Bathtub Party Day!

So...I challenge you to use:
* A bingo card (if you don't have these in your stash, just google "bingo card" under Google Images, and you'll find a gazillion).
* Use something that you can tie--ribbons, twine, raffia, etc.
* Use at least 5 stars.
* Use punches or cutters or a shape templates.
* Use your imagination and whatever product you want to create "bubbles" on your page.

(It's a good thing I didn't choose National Gazpacho Day!)

I used the sketch and palette from the current challenge at The Color Room to make my page.

When I saw this color combination, I immediately thought of Dawson, one the original collections by BasicGrey. My husband loves the cheesy touristy photo ops, and I'm doing a whole album about that called Poser. This page is going into that book. I'm still trying to find a good place in my new home to photograph my layouts.

Here are a few closeups. To make my "bubbles" for the challenge. I punched circles out of one of the Dawson papers and added glossy accents to give them dimension and mounted them on the stars with pop dots.

I found a Jenni Bowlin Bingo card that had the orange and blue to match the colors in the palette. There were other colored numbers on the card, so overlapped to hide them. I used my Zutter Distrezz-it-All to rough up the edges on my page.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and taking a look at my page today!