Sketchy

Ah, sketches. Sketches are great to me because they give you a starting point and then let you bounce off into your own creative stratosphere. In this sketch, from PageMaps, I did stay pretty close to it, and for the most part used all Crate Paper products--a mix of their Farm and new Love lines. We did it as a group challenge at an all day crop and it was really fun to see everyone's different take on it. I find it funny though, that whenever I'm doing a sketch or a scraplift, my layouts seem to take eight times as long as when I'm just plopping them out myself. I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing. Maybe it's a case for Judge Judy. That woman is MEAN. And likely a bit psycho, although if push came to shove, I could probably knock her down and run. If I had to go to televised court, I think I'd go on Judge Mathis. He seems to be the most compassionate of all those TV judges. I find the whole "People's Court" sort of thing fascinating. I went through a period where I was watching those shows every day while I was at home working, because there was nothing else on. There were about a billion of them on the air--maybe there still is, but I haven't watched daytime TV for years. What fascinates me about these shows are the people that go on them and some of their stories. Why in the heck would you subject yourself for public ridicule that way? You owe somebody 200 dollars because you ate their parrot? Pay the man. If you know that you're going to look like an idiot on the air, I think I'd just find a way to scrape up that money. It might be fun to set up a fake case with a friend, though, and make it the most bizarre one ever-- "Stephanie borrowed 600 dollars from me to buy Vaseline for her idea of greasing up everything in the house to make it a fun "socks off" skating rink. I thought it was a good idea, but she took the money and bought doughnuts instead. Now she won't pay me." I guess they might see through that one, though.

So anyway, I've forgotten what I was originally talking about, which was this layout and scraplifting. Scraplifting. Sounds like another case for Judge Judy.

Don't Try This At Home, Kids

This is a layout that I did at my LSS Paper! Paper! at a crop. She'd found this awesome Little Yellow Bicycle Sketch online and made it a challenge for the day, so because I can't resist a challenge, off I went. Yes, those are indeed silhouetted photos that you're seeing. Back in October of 2000, when I started scrapbooking, I was smugly sure that I wouldn't mind cutting up priceless family photos (and not very well either, mind you) into odd shapes and/or silhouettes. I was also smugly sure that those lovely Paper Pizazz and Precious Moments papers would be the way I'd want to represent my photos forever. As hard as it is to believe, I was absolutely wrong. After my scrapbooking had progressed a bit and I stopped doing 8x10 AND hacking away at my photos, I redid some of those horrible pages and others I just took apart to do again some other day. I rescanned the photos and tried to trim them a bit better and have had to come up with creative ways to sort of fix the horrible mistake I made. So anyway, this long winded description explains what is going on in this page. I can't believe I hacked up photos of me meeting my beautiful niece, Samantha, for the first time. (I'd also cut the bottom of the photos of my mother with decorative edged scissors. Ugh.) So, don't try it at home, kids. It's not worth the pain. Silhouetting your pictures will only lead to heartache. So, back to this layout. I'm also endeavoring to use up old products along with my new. I'm not sure where this paper all came from, but it looks like some old stack papers. I used some of the papers to cover the flourishes, added some lace and used the Cricut for the title. I still look at it and see those blaring silhouettes but what's done is done.

Sleeping the Day Away

Ah, here's another layout of my nephew, Chris, snoozing away after being a general whirlwhind. There's just something precious about kids sleeping. Isn't he so cute? I could just eat him up. I tried that once actually. My brother had to restrain me and then distract me with a hamburger. Kids are so lucky--they can just pass out and be asleep at the drop of a dime, no matter what is going on around them. I'm such a light sleeper that I wake up if a grasshopper sneezes outside. I can also be an insomniac, which doesn't help matters either. Anyway, this is another of my layouts doing pretty old pictures. As you might guess, if you've seen some of my other layouts (and if you haven't, then never mind), I'm working on some 1990-1991 fun. It's nice to travel back in time a bit, even if my mind doesn't quite remember all the details. Since Chris was too young to remember the details as well, I can always embellish the truth along with my pages. I used all Echo Park's new "Boys Life" on this bad boy. I really love Echo Park--in a purely platonic way, of course. I have a harder time using their bright and buoyant papers but they're still stinkin' cute. This is a pretty minimal layout for me, too. It's SO tough for me to leave any sort of space, but in the fight between space and I, space came out the victor. It's so hard for me not to want to put something in every nook and cranny. Even now, I'm pondering changes. But I won't. Because space was the victor, after all. I made the little circle embellishments myself with a couple of punches and those handy dandy Pop Dots. And a couple of brads. Have I told you how much I love brads? In a purely platonic way, of course.

9 Months Old

Monday, Monday...what the heck are YOU doing here? I was all totally into the whole weekend thing and then YOU had to rear your ugly head. I had a super weekend, including the 12 hour crop, that I made it to, snow and all. Growing up in the snow belt of Ohio, you'd think that snow wouldn't phase me. We'd literally get dumped with a foot and a half of snow in an hour. They sometimes have snow on the ground in May. People laughed when I moved here and said, "Oh, wait til you see our New England winters!" and I laughed back jovially and said, "I'm from Ashtabula." (Yes, Ashtabula. It's an Indian name for "River of many fish." I'd probably add "and toxic waste" to that, but I digress.) Anyway, I used to drive with no problem in the stuff but now having lived in New England for 11 years and because I work at home, I've grown unaccustomed to doing so and I totally wuss out about it. And these roads were pretty bad on Saturday. But, as you can see, I lived to tell the tale and to scrapbook a few pages, and engage in general mirth with my scrapbooking homies. This is one of the layouts that I did there. I'm slightly dubious about it because it's not totally my style. I'm more of a "add everything and the kitchen sink...plus the decorative soap" kind of scrapbooker. I admire people who can leave artful space on their layouts but I seem to find a way to add something to just about every nook and cranny. The photo is of my sweet nephew, Chris--when, as I'm sure you can read since it's SO huge, he was 9 months old. He's 21 years old now. Ouch. So hard to believe THAT much time has elapsed when in the same period, I've only gained 10 years. Weird how that works. The papers are all a My Mind's Eye Fourth of July collection. I don't do very many patriotic pages because we never seem to have Fourth of July plans, but I do really love red and blue as a color combo and well...his outfit pretty much stipulated that I use it. That and the steely "use blue and red" glare in his eyes. Originally, I'd planned on making flags instead of a banner, but was convinced by my friend Laura that the banner was the way to go. Once she'd showed me the light, I embraced the idea. I held it for awhile and then finished the page. I pulled out one of my Cricut cartridges (Cuttin' Up) to make the title, added some twine and some cute buttons, too. I still look at it and feel like there's something missing, but I've decided to leave well enough alone. I hope that doesn't make Well Enough feel badly.