Spongebob Forever

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
SpongeBob, of course!
SpongeBob Squarepants, to be exact.

How familiar are you with Bikini Bottom, the Krusty Krab, Squidward, Patrick and the rest of the SpongeBob cartoon crew? Do you have a favorite character? Best loved quote? Evidently, it's a bit of a cult classic for today's teens, as I've overheard the high school students in my carpool discussing their favorite episodes of the show! I asked Kevin to to help me with this page by recanting a few of his favorite quotes. Somehow, most are spoken by Patrick, SpongeBob's less than sharp best friend. Tee-hee.

Scraptastic's Good Day Sunshine kit and add-on were used exclusively for this layout, and again I stuck with a scheme of yellow, black, white, and yellow. The design of the page closely follows Scraptastic's March sketch, created by Susan Stringfellow. It is evidently a popular one, judging by the many beautiful and varied interpretations in Scraptastic's Sketchy Thursday blog post...14 in all!

And now I can't get that cartoon theme song out of my head....

Hello Summer

Yes, I WISH it was summer already. After a few pretty nice days, we're getting ready to have another cold snap around here. Of course "cold" is a quite relative thing. Southerners like myself shiver when it dips below 50 degrees. Bring back the hot muggy days of summer and I promise not to complain. Meanwhile I have a summer-themed scrapbook page to share, based on the following sketch by Susan Stringfellow:

Yesterday was Sketchy Thursday on the Scraptastic blog and this was my contribution to the effort:

Thanks to a loaded sticker sheet from Bo-Bunny, I was able to list all the activities that kept us most busy and amused during the summer months, in circular formation around the page. 

Scraptastic's Sweater Weather kit and add-on were used exlusively on this layout, setting aside the wintery embellishments of course. Stars take the place of snowflakes!

A thick banner was the perfect spot on which to journal about our summer activities. "There was never an 'I'm bored', just an 'I'm hungry'!" That about sums it up!

 Hello Summer...I can't wait to say those words and have you back! ;)

For more interpretations of this sketch, see this week's Sketchy Thursday blog post!

Lake Loot Scrapped

You might remember when I mentioned winning a little radio call-in contest a few months ago, Lake Loot. Just a few weeks later we devoured our winnings, an appetizer and drinks from the sponsoring restaurant. On our way back from vacation, tired and hungry, we stopped to fill up our bellies at The Times Grill and I snapped a few pictures. The photo on the layout below is dark and grainy, but I still wanted to tell the story of that contest. And tell it I did, in several places on my page! (I probably should have confined my journaling to one locale.)

This layout was inspired by Susan Stringfellow's sketch for Scraptastic's September sketch challenge, and all patterned papers, die-cuts, and stamps are from Scraptatic's The Girl kit for September.

With just scraps of patterned paper, I was able to create several pie-chart embellishments. Here's how:

Using my die-cutting machine, I cut circular pie charts from each of five patterned papers and then mixed up the pieces, adhering them in various patterns with cardstock circles as a base. After assembling all three pie charts, I cut two of them into consecutively smaller "pies" and used all three as embellishments on my page.

Pie charts are fun and colorful embellishments, but I don't use them enough! A favorite pie chart page of mine is this overview of my then 12-year old's everyday:

In this case the "pie" isn't only for show. Each segment actually corresponds to the amount of time he spends doing each of the activities in the "key"! I even used a little math to figure out the sizes of each piece of the pie. Ha! See kids, you do use geometry when you're an adult. ;)

Hello Mickey

We haven't been to see the mouse since summer of 2011,  but I took SO MANY photos during our week at Disney World that I'm STILL working my way through scrapping the ones I love best! So every time I get a new kit or collection, I rummage through those photos and try to scrap at least one. Here's the latest. It was our first day there, and we managed to get an autograph and picture with Mickey himself!

Everything on this page, except the background paper, is from Scraptastic's Celebration kit from August. The colors and patterns can't be beat! Check out those carnival-inspired Thickers:

Also check out this great sketch by Susan Stringfellow. Created for Scraptastic's August sketch challenge, it was the inspiration for my layout.

You can find more sketch-inspired pages on Scraptastic's blog post for August 28.

Hello Mickey! I hope we get the chance to stop by and see you again, preferably before Kevin goes off to college! 

Let Them Eat Cake...Pancake!

It's true. The August Celebration kit from Scraptastic and its add-on have a lot of thematic papers and embellishments geared towards birthdays and birthday parties. But here's what else you can do with the kit...and I think it's pretty fabulous.

Consider the patterned papers. The "b-sides" are some of my favorite! Many of the die-cuts and stickers also work well for non-birthday pages, especially the wordless tabs, labels, tags, and arrows. And the colors of this kit are drool-worthy to say the least.

Here's my layout loosely based on an awesome sketch that Susan Stringfellow created for Scraptastic's 4th Anniversary Celebration:

The white die-cut phrase was a leftover from a previous kit and the enamel dots were from my stash, but everything else can be found in the Celebration main kit or its add-on.

I pulled out all my leftover enamel dots and used the smallest to embellish the wood veneer gumball machine:

Funny how the "Let Them Eat Cake" sticker works with my page about PANcakes!

I'll surely create at least one more birthday page (we do have seven birthdays in this very house each year!), but my plan is to use much of the paper for other happy colorful pages and save the extra themed stickers from the kit for cards, as I'm always looking for birthday card sentiments!

The Annual Christmas Pic

The kids have learned to tolerate it...the annual Christmas "photo shoot". It only takes a few minutes, but you'd think we were subjecting them to excruciating torture. All they have to do is stand there and smile, while my sisters and I snap away, hoping to get at least one photo where everyone has their eyes open. We do a photo of each family, and then gather up the cousins for one big group shot. As the kids get older, land jobs, move away, and even have families of their own, it's not so easy to have everyone in the same place at the same time. Last year was pretty successful, with all but my youngest sister's child present. 13 out of 14 is not too shabby!

The layout above was based on a sketch by Becky Fleck, and can be seen with the January PageMaps. Each member of the Scraptastic Design Team was given a different sketch to interpret and use with our kits. Here is the sketch on which I based my page:

A few changes were made and I had my page all laid out. Three photos were reduced to one, my title moved to the doily, and the tag/banner became a major design element. Here's a closeup:

I love all the gold embossed accents in Scraptastic's Home for the Holidays kit. The gold doily and gold vellum die-cuts were some of my favorites, along with the wood veneers.

Do you get many opportunities to take pictures of your extended family? I'm lucky in that most of us live in the New Orleans area. It becomes pretty special when the "outliers" return to spend Christmas with us! :)

Chillin' At The Zoo

Today I am showcasing one more page created with the colorful Rock Lobster kit from Scraptastic. This great sketch by Susan Stringfellow was the source of my inspiration:
 

Five of us flipped, turned, and otherwise twisted this sketch for our use. You can see all of them on Scraptastic's Sketchy Thursday Challenge Post. This is my interpretation:

With so many cards, pennants, and sticker embellies in the kit, it was easy to string up a bunch for a fun summery banner:

I love the riot of color found in the Simple Stories' I *heart* Summer collection:

It's hard to believe that August is on our heels already! I am relishing this look back at the start of our "school's out" adventures, and wish I could hang on to these carefree summer days just a little bit longer.