With Blinders On

Road trips...I LOVE them! The journey is just as important as the destination, and every bit as enjoyable. In the passenger seat, I'm perfectly content to watch the world go by. Back roads, small towns, scenic rural highways and byways are all good.  But Kevin travels differently, and that is what this layout is about:

Below you'll see a trio of Studio Calico wood veneer cows, painted up as Holsteins, and set on a watercolored map background:

And a cluster of fun elements:

In my journaling I related how as children we would play travel games, count VW bugs, and look for farm animals. We were city folk, so cows, horses, barns and silos were fascinating! Video games are Kevin's distraction. Ipad in hand, he travels "With Blinders On", oblivious to the world passing by just outside his window.

What kind of travel habits do you have? 

The Week In Pictures

We planned one last outing before the start of school, miniature golf at City Putt:

Four cousins pose along the course with Mr. Bingle:

Then it's off to lunch at Liuzza's:

Alas, the dreaded day is here. And yet a smile as he goes off to 8th grade:

Back to the hospital with mom. She's home now and doing fine, but the place was SO BUSY on Friday, that she had to spend several hours in the HALL, without meds, water, or food. Crazy!

Saturday was Christening Day for Baby Jonathan. Julie and Tommy were asked to be god parents:

What a cutie!

He enjoys being rocked by his Uncle Mark:

Jonathan's great grandfather, my dad:

Finally, here's proof that I still have it when it comes to calming fussy babies:

I sure had enough practice with my five kids! They were colicky babies, so I had to master all the tricks.

Busy week!

TI"double guh"ER

How do YOU spell "Tigger"? Winnie the Pooh's bouncy, trouncy, flouncy pouncy tiger friend spells it in a cute, unique way: T, I, double "guh", ER. His silly spelling presented me with a wonderfully different title for my layout. Having snapped various photos with every single one of the characters during our lunch at the Crystal Palace Restaurant, and scrapped a few already, I was running out of captivating title ideas. I was glad to have thought of this one! 

Here's the tape and stitching technique I shared a few weeks ago, and used again! In case you missed it:

Washi Tape Heart Technique:

1. Lightly pencil in a heart shape (or other simple shape) on cardstock.
2. Place strips of washi tape edge to edge horizontally to completely cover the penciled in shape. 
3. Using a fairly tight stitch, sew heart shape twice. On the second pass, don't be too precise if you like the carefree, sketchy look.
4. Peel up the strips of washi outside the sewn heart and tear carefully where the thread perforated the tape.

After layering my patterned papers and photo, I reached way back into my stash for the metal embellishments (frame and flowers) that grace this page. Their bright orange color complimented our tiger friend and the colorful KI Memories papers that I chose.

And look! I have remembered to include a little "hidden Mickey". Can you see him tucked in among the suitcases?

Truth be told, it was tricky finding time to chow down between all the character visits, but this restaurant remained one of our favorites, both for the food and the bountiful photo ops. Can't wait to return one day!

Remnants into Cards

After all the layering and piecing was complete on a few 12x12 layouts, there was only one full sheet of paper left from my most recent Scraptastic kit. I had really cut into those papers! With so many little strips and scraps left, I knew just what to do, and assembled a couple of cards. First, a birthday card:

Then a new baby card (it's baby season in our family!):

Both began something like this:

This is such a great way to use up those paper scraps:

• Adhere narrow strips of patterned paper to a cardstock base.
• Pencil in design or letters.
• Cut out and ink edges.
• Attach to card. 

A layout title made with this method would really make a statement! :)

T-Shirt Titles

One of my pastimes while waiting for Kevin's events at interminably long swim meets is to check out all the other team T's and their slogans. I thought this one, "Practice Like A champion" was particularly cool, with an emphasis on the letters, ACT. Of course, I filed it away, knowing it would turn up on a scrapbook page one day...and it did:

The bright orange watercolor cardstock background was made with Gelatos and water, bringing out the little bits of orange in the patterned paper. Uh-oh, do you see the rogue green enamel dot in the middle of my photo?! Hahaha...I didn't notice it until just now! I meant to add only the white ones, little clusters of "bubbles":

Cutting large letters out of the Cameron paper from Elle's Studio, I was able to emphasize the word "ACT" in my title:  

Everything is from Scraptastic's August kit, I Found A Boy, except for the tiny letter stickers and heart brad, leftovers from a previous Scraptastic kit. 

I was glad to have found this great team slogan, and it worked perfectly for my page. Where do you find title inspiration? 

Team Building Fun (w/faux mist)

The Sharks' Swim Team party began with a feast of fruit and veggies, cupcakes and sports drinks, and, of course, pizza. After the food, came the fun. One of the most popular games in the X-arcade turned out to be this large electronic floor game. It was like playing dodgeball, trying to avoid the blocks of color that would bounce off the sides of the game area, and it was very reminiscent of those ancient Pong games! The kids really had a blast, especially when the coaches joined in. It was tricky to get a photo in this low light arcade, and sharpness is definitely sacrificed, but overall I love this photo:

Supplies include papers from Echo Park, KI Memories, Simple Stories and Jillibean Soup, brads from Echo Park and Basic Grey, an envelope from Fancy Pants, stickers from Doodlebug and Cosmo Cricket, and mist from Heidi Swapp. Fun mix of elements!

I love how the words on the bingo card and sticker so seamlessly blend together with the rest of the title to form the phrase,  "Best Ever, Laugh Out Loud, Team-Building, FUN"! And check out the splatters below:

After splattering drops of blue mist, I wanted to add another color, but didn't have anything in my "mist stash" that would work. I DID have a brand new bottle of Liquid Pearls and it was a perfect shade for my layout. I dabbed on various sized droplets and left them to dry. Easy-peasy! Bonus: I could actually PLAN where they were to go. The trick to making them look like "real" splatters is to vary their size and place them in odd configurations...just like you'd see with typical mists, inks, or paints. Pretty cool! I'll have to remember this one!

Picture Perfect Day

Today I'm sharing a fun page, put together with a lot of washi tape! All those beautiful colorful roles of tape were haphazardly applied to a piece of white cardstock, overlapping in every direction, until a vivid collage of color was created. After punching several circles, I stitched the edges then adhered the  circles to my page as a border along my photos, with bright yellow flowers between each one.

Here's a closeup of one of those circles and my title collage:

This was a fun way to use some of my wildest, most colorful tapes, and provided me with a great accent for this beachy page!

Scrapping A Dark Photo

If you read yesterday's post, you saw this photo in the set of pictures that I wanted to scrap with my newest kit from Scraptastic. And these were the product picks I thought I'd use:

This picture was taken last year during Hurricane Isaac, after we lost our electricity. The constellation paper and shimmery stars made me think of those 123 hours without power, because after the storm went away, we were still in the dark for several days, with only flashlights, candles, the stars and the moon to give us light at night.

This is what ended up on my desk:

The mix of light and dark and the different hues of blue worked well, but I wanted a brighter pop of color. What better than a hurricane flag?!

 Altogether, this turned out better than I expected, and now a little bit more of the story is told. :)

Breaking It Open

Whether it's a kit or an online order that has arrived on my door step, they are tackled much the same...and it always begins with the paper. Patterned paper is my mainstay. If you took everything else away, I could make do, but nothing goes down without the goodness of patterned paper. Nothing.

Today I am breaking open Scraptastic's August kit, I Found A Boy, and its add-on.

Even before my goodies have arrived, I'll sort through my photos and gather a pile of memories that I want to scrap. Once my paper is here, I will spread it out and throw my photos on top:

Next, letter stickers are put to the side, and embellishments gathered into a bowl.

 

Then before I start grouping my photos with paper and embellies, I open up all those packages to see exactly what's in there. The cut-apart sheet from Elle's Studio is cut apart. Then I do something a bit different with the Echo Park Photo Freedom stickers...I mount them on chipboard. Sometimes I will just cut them out, backing and all, so that I can move them around my page without adhering them to the paper, but using chipboard adds that bit of extra dimension.

Woo-hoo...there are a lot of bits and pieces here! Add to that the cork arrows, enamel dots, glitter sunbursts and washi tape...and I've got quite a bit to choose from. So now that everything is spread out before me, I form a couple of photo-paper-embellishment groupings. I want to scrap this oldest memory first and here is what I've chosen:

Ha! Wait until you see the finished page. (I finished it before writing up this blog post.) You will say "Hey, you didn't use that or that or that. And you used these things that weren't in your original pile!" That's usually how it goes. I'm not confined to my original picks, but at least I have somewhere to start.

Here is my second grouping. Who KNOWS where it will go from here, but I DO love that green, yellow, orange, blue and teal color palette!

Tomorrow I'll share that first page, and you can see for yourself what has changed from my original picks!