You May Now Kiss the Bride {Creative Scrappers Sketch #224}

The latest sketch we have up at Creative Scrappers is really unique and beautiful:

Right away, I had a vision in my mind to scrap one of Monica's wedding photos with the long, long title of "You may now kiss the bride."

If you know Monica's story, skip ahead. If not, read on. Monica is my best friend's daughter.  Her 23-year-old husband just died in July after a 6 year battle with bone cancer. Monica and James have thousands of photos on their Facebook pages, and I've been grabbing them from there to make Monica a book so she'll remember the many happy memories in their short life together.

I've been trying to play as much at The Color Room because I love their challenges but with all my CSI work, I never seem to have enough time, so I've been using the TCR palettes for my Creative Scrappers design team work. I used what was at the time the current palette:

So here's what I came up with:

My layout looks much prettier in real life. Here are a few details from my page. The frames on my page were trimmed from a Teresa Collins paper.

I had to use ribbon as part of The Color Room's challenge, so I tied a silver heart charm to the frame surrounding Monica and James. You can see I used an old K&Co. transparency. I've been trying to use more transparencies lately. I have SO many from when they were popular back in the day.

I've also been trying to use up some of my textured papers, of which I have TONS.

Here's a close-up of the flower. You can see I used silk leaves from some silk flowers. That rhinestone brad is really old. It's by Creating Keepsakes. I got a bunch of them at JoAnn years and years ago. They're so pretty but the prongs are a pain to get through the paper.

Here's my chipboard from the challenge in the form of glittery letters. I added pearls to the pink foam letters at the last minute. That blue damask paper is by Fancy Pants. I wish I had more of that paper. It's a pretty shade of blue.

Finally, I wanted to share this shot, but the lighting was really off at the time I took this picture. (I had taken all of the other closeups the day before.)  I couldn't digitally correct it, but I want to get this blog post done because I should've posted it on Sunday! My friend Tracee said the big doily on the upper left looked like they were missing something. She had suggested adding a date, but I didn't know the date. In the end, I decided to add some pretty printed vellum (which is a frosted white with silver writing. I added perfect pearls around the edge of the doily.

The team made some really fantastic layouts with this sketch. Go check it out here.

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

Beach Bums {Creative Scrappers Sketch #222}

Creative Scrappers just revealed another awesome sketch this morning:

I made another page for Monica's book. In case you don't know about her story, Monica is my best friend's daughter. Her 23-year-old husband just died last month after a six-year battle with bone cancer. I'm grabbing pictures off of their Facebook pages to make her a book to remember all the precious memories from their too-short life together. 

I can't remember why, but i flipped the sketch horizontally.

I also used a palette from The Color Room (it was the current palette at the time I made it, but I couldn't share at the time). I see my blue's a little off. Hmmm... I promise it was very close to what I had printed out (I always print the palettes on colored paper).

Here are some details: The little frames came from a My Little Shoebox paper. I had just ordered a sheet on clearance at 2Peas, having no idea what I was going to use it for, and it was perfect for this sketch. I just ordered several more sheets because I liked it so much!

That striped paper is really old Chatterbox. Actually, all the patterned papers (except the frame) are really old. The word stickers are by The Girls' Paperie. I've got a piece of white scalloped Doodlebug Paper Frills tucked in there. Remember those? From before there were border punches that could do the trick? That kraft paper is textured. Can't remember who it's by--it's also really old.

There are some more word stickers that I stitched down. The taupe paper is old too--by Dream Street. I added those pearls at the last minute because my page needed a little something else.

I used some old Prima flowers in place of the paint splats on the sketch. I love these old flowers and never seem to be able to use the polka dot ones but they felt perfect here. I added some perfect pearl dots here and there and on a couple of the title letters.

We had a really gorgeous reveal (as always), so you must go check out what the rest of the team made, and I hope you'll play along. This is such a fun sketch!

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

Click {Creative Scrappers Sketch #220}

We have an awesome new sketch by Jenny Evans up at Creative Scrappers this morning!

I made another page for Monica's book. For those who don't know Monica's story, she's my best friend's daughter, and her 23-year-old husband died last month after a 6-year battle with bone cancer. I'm making her an album to remember all the wonderful times they had in their short life together. I'm grabbing photos off of their Facebook pages for this book. They have thousands of pictures posted, lots of them like this one, and I thought James had kind of a funny look on his face like, "Not another picture."

I also used the palette from last week's challenge at The Color Room.

Here are some details. Most of the papers I used are by Studio Calico, but a couple are from October Afternoon, like the ones I used on the stars below.

The little flair button is also by  October Afternoon. I had that little heart sitting on my desk, leftover from another layout and I thought it worked perfectly here.

I used a Crater's Workshop masking template and black ink in the background. Those black brads in the picture below have been in my stash for about ten years. Back when brads started showing up on scrapbook pages, I bought them from an office supply store. I still have a handful left. The arrow was cut from a Studio Calico paper.

I had printed out the Color Room palette so I could pick out paper and it was sitting there and I thought it would be perfect to add to my layout. You can see in the picture below that I used lots of blue vellum, which has also been in my stash forever. The phrase stickers are by 7 Gypsies.

The reveal at Creative Scrappers is awesome, so come check out what the rest of the team made. I hope you'll play with us. The sketch was lots of fun to work with!

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

Creative Scrappers e-Book Winner (plus my layout)

The winner of the Creative Scrappers e-book, based on this:

is Petra! Thank you to everyone who visited and left a comment.

Petra, please contact Kristine at Creative Scrappers (there's a "Contact Us" tab at the top of the blog) with your email address so she can send you this awesome e-book.

Here is my page that's in this book. That's my husband's niece and her husband who were visiting us recently.

In addition to the sketch Kritine sent me, I used palette #94 from The Color Room as a starting point for my layout:

Here are a few closeups. Thes doilies are by Martha Stewart. They're kind of shimmery and very pretty.

The kraft journaling spot is by Maya Road. I'm not sure who made the other one.

Patterned papers I used are by K&Co, Crate Paper, and My Mind's Eye (the leaves--from a really old paper).

 I highly recommend this wonderful e-book. It's chock-full of awesome sketches and gorgeous pages by scrappers from all over the globe. Thank you for stopping by my blog and looking at my page.

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!

 

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!