Belief {Sketchabilities Sketch #71}

We have a fabulous new sketch up at Sketchabilities.

My almost-93-year-old Gram has the most wonderful collection of photos of herself in sassy poses taken over the decades, and a number of years ago I made her a "cheesecake" album featuring these photos, and she just loved it. I started scrapping these pictures for myself so I could have a gram cheesecake album, and I just decided I should make one for my mom. I used the sketch to make the first page of mom's book and gave it to her for Mother's Day.

Here are some details. I have to thank my friend Tracee for recommending BasicGrey's Granola collection. I never would've thought "beach" with this collection, but she made me see sea scallops in the brown pattern and water splashes on the paper I used for the flags.

Here are some details. I've been wanting to use the view finder thingy by Echo Park ever since I got the paper. I thought the pearly flower brad by K&Co looked like a starfish and I replaced the sapphire rhinestone with a pink pearl to go with my Gram's outfit.

Pardon the shadow on the next picture. I used old Heidi Swapp chipboard letters. I think I must've bought a hundred packs of those things back in the day when those were the only chipboard letters available. I added some cheesecloth that I dyed with some Tattered Angels mist.

One of the fun things about making this album was finding the perfect quotes to go with the photos. I have Tracee to thank again for suggesting I mat the word strips with white.

The Sketchabilities team made some gorgeous layouts this week. You'll have to pop over and see all the beautiful creations! I hope you'll play with us. This was a really fun sketch to work with!

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and reading about my page!

Burn, Baby, Burn!

So, I'm down 12.8 pounds after being on Weight Watchers for five weeks. A decent start--about 2.5 pounds a week. But I want more! So last weekend Farzad and I went shopping for a recumbent exercise bike. Our first stop at Fitness Resource proved to be a bit much for our pocketbook, so we headed to Sears, where we found a Schwinn model that fit our budget. Farzad assembled it while I was at Weight Watchers last Tuesday, and the very next night I hopped on.

I've decided to start on the low tension since I'm SO out of shape and set it to burn 300 calories each day. It takes me over an hour to meet the 300 calorie goal, and I find that my butt starts getting very numb after about 150 calories, so I take a break and then get back on to do the rest. I'm hoping this give my sluggish metabolism a little boost and speed up my weight loss a bit.

On the scrappy front, here's what Made over the past two weeks...

These were for the Sketch This! blog:

This one's for my book of silly family photos. I love those swirls on the We R Memory Keepers paper. I cut them out and mounted them with pop-dots.

I've been lamenting the fact that all those cool label-shaped papers are made for 12 x 12 pages, so I was delighted when I found an 8 x 8 paper pack by Making Memories that had some of the cool shapes. I scanned one of the sheets and reduced it a little and then printed it on the back of the BasicGrey paper and cut it out. I added some Stickles to that wavy strip at the bottom and mounted it with pop-dots. These pictures are from our trip to Vegas last summer:

Here's one I made for the How Much Is Too Much? blog. My challenge was called "The Whole Kit and Caboodle," and we had to use a kit we hadn't yet used and put as much stuff on it as we could fit on the page. I used the December kit from Scarlet Lime to make this page. It's a little wild and crazy, but I wanted it to be that way! A couple of summers ago, I made a book that I called "Cheesecake" for my Gram's 87th birthday, featuring a whole bunch of sassy photos taken of her over the years. I love those pictures so much, that I decided to make a Cheesecake for Me book. Again, I used that Making Memories 8 x 8 shaped paper as a template, only this time I traced it and then cut it a little smaller. I wish I had figured out the scan thing sooner because the paper is a little crooked.

And here are my pages for the last two challenges at Color Combos Galore.

I was happy to play with the new Porcelain line by BasicGrey. I just adore those birdcages! That's my little sis and me in the bathtub forty-some years ago:

And this page, believe it or not, took me the longest. I'm not happy with how it turned out. I pushed the papers around on the page for what seemed forever. I almost gave up on it and e-mailed Janet, but I hung in there. The scan is horrible. In retrospect, I would've moved the journaling spot to the right, but I had assembled and cut the red border in pieces, so it wouldn't have worked without me reworking the whole page. At the last mintute, I punched those circles and adhered them with pop-dots. This page is going into a little book I'm making about all the little everyday reasons I love Farzad: