Smile {CSI Case File No. 178}

Well, school's been kicking my butt this year. I'm teaching a new grade after 25 years as a fifth grade teacher. But it's all good. Kids are awesome, my new team is awesome.

I'm home sick today (stress always does this to me), so I thought I'd do some catch-up posts on some layouts I made for CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration since I last posted. Today I'm sharing my latest, and I'll schedule the last few for upcoming days..

Here's our current Case File:

And here's my page, another for my book of Debbi and Tracee's Epic Adventures. Don't you hate it when you spot a mistake after you've uploaded your page? Can you spot it?

Clues: I switched up the sketch a little by turning it sideways and making a few adjustments to fit my pictures. Evidence - stripes, cameras, polaroid frames, film strips, numbers, typewriter, transportation accent, sort of pie charts, light bulb, metal, word/phrase stickers, flair badges, stamps, borders, arrows, animals; Testimony: Write a haiku, document a selfie, inspo word, smile.

Here are some details. The chipboard bits I used are all by 2Crafty. The arrow and plus stamps are by Denim Tampons (Denim Stamps, in English), one of our sponsors this month, and the Laugh More stamps are American Crafts. The flair badges are from A Flair for Buttons. Papers I used are Bo Bunny (rust polka dots), American Crafts (diagonal stripe and the pie-chart-looking circles), Scenic Route (light blue), Pink Paislee (gray text).

I cut the typewriter from an American Crafts Paper. I always print out a swatch of the CSI palette on photo paper to match up the colors, and I decided I'd use it on my page. I outlined the colors with a fine pen, as I did with my papers and photos. The blue washi tape is by Recollections. The little metal dots are by Colorbok. Here you can see my haiku. Kind of lame, I know, but it tells the story.

One of the things I love about scrapping silly photos is that it feels perfectly comfortable to add quirky, unrelated elements. That light-bulb is by Maya Road. The little car was cut out of an old Cosmo Cricket paper. And how fun is that little cat puffy sticker. Tracee and I recently acquired a slight addiction to puffy stickers. This quirky cat is from a set by Funny Sticker World I snagged from ebay.

We've got some awesome sponsors this month, so you'll want to come play. Come check out all these sponsors and see layouts by our team and guest designers here. This Case File stays open all month, and the creators of our five favorite layouts will be invited as guest designers as well as be eligible for our prizes.