Look Out World!

I thought I had a bit longer, but when I overheard another mom with a son in my child's grade talking, I realized I didn't. She was talking about registering her son for Driver's Ed. It doesn't seem possible! Wasn't it just a little while ago that he was in this car at Epcot, barely peering over the window, feet dangling far above the floorboard of the car?! 

I chose Studio Tekturek's One Way Ticket collection to set off my photos. The paper airplanes and deep blue celestial print are favorite patterns, with wonderful blues and greens, colors much welcomed when creating boy pages.

Various patterned papers from the collection were cut into squares, then triangles, and finally combined to form a geometric design on the left hand side of the page:

A few mustard yellow accents (stickers, star, enamel dots, a brad and banner of washi tape) bring it all together:

At the time these photos were taken, I couldn't have imagined this day would be here so soon. I'm kinda hoping he's not in such a hurry. In any case: Look out world!

Hoppy Easter!

When I took photos that Easter Sunday many years ago, I had forgotten that I had a black and white roll of film in the old camera, and was quite disappointed when I realized it. Oh no! All the pretty colors of Easter were washed away and replaced with grey. I suppose that's why this photo sat un-scrapped for so long. But now I can happily put the color back into the day with the pretty pastel pink and yellow patterned papers from Scraptastic's Good Day Sunshine kit. Sweet!

Here are a few closeups:

The large Easter egg above was pieced from strips of patterned papers in clean lines, but the smaller eggs below were created in the constructed/deconstructed fashion. Small pieces, torn strips, and tiny sections of punched papers were layered over a yellow polka dot base before being cut apart again into individual egg shapes.

And there's my little Easter bunny friend, admiring his handiwork. ;)

Happy Easter everyone!

Just DO It!

When Kevin began swimming a few short years ago, there were things he never thought he'd accomplish: flip turns, diving head first, and swimming a legal butterfly! Hee-hee. Well now he's done all these and more. At a meet late last year, he swam the 100 fly and cut time twice in one day! I happened to catch him mid-stroke during his swim and used the photo, along with a larger one of the LSU facility, on the page below. I LOVE the colors in this collection, especially the deep blue chevron and aqua dot prints, perfect for pool pics! 

Pebbles' Happy Day collection has a few journal cards and stickers that refer to typical weekend activities (or lack thereof, i.e. sleeping in and relaxing). They had me thinking about OUR typical weekend, and swim meets naturally came to mind. No, we don't get to sleep in. In fact, it's just the opposite with early morning warm ups! It's our get up and go weekend activity. 

The arrows below are not just a decorative element. They represent all the laps my son swims, day in and day out at practice. They could also represent the 100 fly, the event he is seen swimming in the small photo at the bottom of the page. 

A fun element, purely decorative, is the cluster of overlapping banners: 

An arrow sticker is strategically positioned over the small photo, pointing to my swimmer:

Finally, journaling and title work together to tell the rest of the story:

I'm so glad that Kevin continues to love and work hard at his swimming. It's fun to see his progress!

These supplies, most from the Pebbles Happy Day Collection, can be found in the Scraptastic STORE: Patterned Paper: (Pebbles Happy Day- Fresh Air Paper, Game Night Paper, Pick-Me Up Paper, Puzzled Paper, Sunday Paper Paper, and Thinking of You Paper) Embellishments: (Pebbles Happy Day-6x12 Phrases & Labels), Alphabets: (Bella Blvd-Sophisticates-Sienna Chipboard Alphabet-Pickle Juice).

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....

So Proud

My oldest son, intent on becoming a firefighter, worked exceedingly hard to make it a reality. When he graduated from the fire academy, we were so proud of him. And I was really happy to find that much of the experience was documented in photos and videos! The picture of my son and a fellow recruit giving thumbs up during tower drills is one of my favorites.

I started with a basic grid design and built up layers using additional papers and embellishments. The chalkboard quote, "He believed he could, so he did" originally read "she" not "he", but a black marker was an easy remedy! There were so many other great quotes and phrases, perfect for my page: "You are brave", Do what you love", "Just be happy", "Okie dokie":

Everything here is from Scraptastic's Good Day Sunshine kit and add-on. I particularly love the black lettering. Using the both the positives and negatives adds a fun twist to my title:

I stuck with only yellow, black and white papers from kit, and I love the bold and happy look! In fact, I love it so much so, that I've completed two more pages using the very same color combo. Check back tomorrow for one of those pages. :)

Must Have Been The Wings!

I've gotten a bit behind in getting my pages to my blog...ooops! The one below was featured on the Scraptastic blog last week, but it's one of my favorites, and I have to share it. What I really love about this kind of page is that it takes very little planning. I had an idea and simply dove in! All these scraps were hanging around my desk, and instead of sorting and storing, or throwing them away, I decided to put them to use as little flags on a trio of banners running from one side of the page to the other.

The only problem with not planning, was that I couldn't find a place that I liked for my title. A little one here or a large one there...nope, they just didn't work. The solution: no title...or at least no obvious title. In my mind, the title is those last few words of my journaling: Must Have Been The Wings! No need to repeat it elsewhere on the page, right?!

The photo was taken as my son and I enjoyed lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. We had been at a swim meet in Baton Rouge, and were trying to bide our time between prelims finals. He had a great morning swim, besting his time in the 100 fly. When we returned to the pool later that afternoon, he dropped 4 more seconds when he swam the event again. It was an awesome day, and I journaled about it in looping lines right above each banner.

Yep, it must have been the wings. It does make perfect sense since he was swimming butterfly!

Supplies from the Scraptastic Store: Patterned paper: (Gossamer Blue On My Desk), (Dear Lizzy Serendipity), (Pebbles Happy Day), (Echo Park Creative Agenda); Embellishments: (Jillibean Soup Funny Notebook Tags), (Freckled Fawn Retro Star Clips).

Loving The Cut Files

I love that cut files have become a Scraptastic kit staple, and I can't wait to see what's in store each month. This heart design was created for February's It Takes Two kit. But I found it to be so pretty with the soft pastel papers from the Counting Stars kit, and as this was my fourth page with the kit, it was oh so perfect for using up scraps.

The photos above are my engagement proofs, rescued, scanned and reprinted. It seemed to be tradition back then for the local newspapers to announce engagements with a photo of the bride-to-be. I had a photographer take my picture, and one was chosen. This was back before digital, so I had a grand total of four taken! 

I added a couple of leaf clusters at the top of the heart, along with watercolored flowers from the kit, using foam dots to pop the flowers off the page.

Along one edge of the heart, a scattering of enamel dots echo the soft colors of the page. Finally I brought in a bit of gold by adding a tag, embossed vellum, and doily, great for dressing up those old black and white photos.