I love combining challenges!

It's something I used to do a lot but haven't done so much lately, but I just love when I manage to do it. I managed to plan this double pager so that it met 4 different challenges! Two of the challenges were DT challenges at ScrapShotz and two were from an email crop amongst friends.

Aimee had given us an October Quoted Inspiration challenge to use a great quote by Judy Garland as inspiration for a layout. I loved this quote and thought of my DD as soon as I read it. I knew I had to use it on a layout about her. Though it doesn't show up at all in the picture the quote is written on the right hand side of the two pager. It says "Always be a first rate version of yourself, instead of a second rate version of somebody else." One thing that I love about my DD is that she is not afraid to be herself and I absolutely love who she is.

In Wendy's Sixth Sense challenge she posted a layout she had done and challenged us to do a layout inspired by her layout. I loved her layout and decided to scraplift it so her layout gave me the basic design for my double pager. Her's was just a single page but I just mirrored it to make it a double pager.

I have a great group of friends on an email list. We are a group of Christian home educating mothers from all across Canada. The list is special because everyone on the list has been known in real life by someone on the list and invited to the list by that person. We are a very close knit group. Recently we discovered that a number of us were into scrapbooking so we set up a special list for us to share our scrapbooking. Every once in a while we put on a crop through the list. We are in the middle of a week long crop right now.

One of the challenges was to use stamps in a layout. Once again it doesn't show up well in the picture but in real life it looks real cool. I used an Autumn Leaves Flower stamp and versa mark ink to stamp all the plain cardstock I used in the layout. It looks really neat in person.

Another of the challenges was to use 5 or more different ribbons. I had just recieved my prize from winning the Sisterhood of Scrap Card day contest and in it were a bunch of beautiful ribbons. I used 5 of them on the double pager.

My DD is a hat fanatic. She's rarely seen without a hat of some kind on her head. She has dozens of them, all different styles, and she looks great in them all. I had decided I wanted to use some pictures of her in her hats and she happened along while I was picking them out. She started talking about her hats and how much she loves them and how each one makes her feel different and she said the phrase "you have to feel your hat." I loved it, and decided I had to use it as the title of the layout.

So, here's what I created:

Mini album - finally!

I finally managed to get pictures of the mini album that I made a while back. I am really pleased with how it turned out. Jen, at Creative Crafts and Stickers, challenged us to make a fall themed mini album, while Amy, at the same place, challenged us to do a hybrid project. At the same time, Heidi, at ScrapShotz, also gave a mini album challenge and included instructions on how to make an accordian fold mini album. All of these challenges were inspiration for the mini album I created. The album's theme is pictures of my children taken in the fall. I created the cover, title pages, and name tags digitally and printed and pasted them into the mini album. Love how that turned out! It took some figuring out but I finally figured a way to use the accordian fold album so that I could tie it shut with ribbons on both sides and so that all the pictures on one side were of the boys and the other side of the girls. I just love the final product! And, yes, Mom, it's a present for you. I'll bring it to you this weekend. :)

The top picture here shows the cover and then the next two show both sides of the album opened out:



I have some other things to post too but I think I'll wait until tomorrow to post them.

Layout Tag Again

I can finally post my layout from the layout tag game at ScrapShotz. It is so much fun to see how that layout changed as it passed hands! You can see all the layouts if you scroll down through the pages at the link to ScrapShotz above, but here's mine:



I haven't managed to borrow a camera yet to get pictures of the mini albums. I also have to get a picture of the layout I did at an actual real live crop this past Friday night! It was great to have a night out but I didn't accomplish much scrap wise, but I did manage to do one layout. I don't especially like the layout, but it's done. The crop was a part of the Creative Memories Great Gathering and I found out about it through a Facebook Page. It was put off byWendy Power and Renee Mason. When I finally manage to borrow a camera and get pictures of the mini albums I'll post the layout, as well as a couple of cards I've completed.

This Weekend's Layouts

While I'm not a fan of Halloween, I couldn't resist checking out the fun at Creative Crafts and Stickers Creepy Autumn Crop this weekend. I had a little trouble getting into anything there at first but finally managed to wrap my head around some things I could do for some of the challenges. In the end I completed 3 layouts and a mini album.

The first layout was inspired by Jess's Title Challenge. She listed some titles to inspire us. I tried some new techniques on this one. I used a stencil and acrylic paint to paint a border around the cardstock. I also did the title with stencils and paint.



This next layout was inspired by Ally's Sketch Challenge.



The last layout was inspired by Tara's photo challenge. One of the games at the crop was a photo treasure hunt run by Tara. She posted a list of things that we had to try to get pictures of. One of the things on the list was a horse in a field. DD loves horses and she was helping me with the treasure hunt and she took some beautiful pictures of a horse in town that she likes to visit once in a while. When Tara posted the challenge to use one or more of our treasure hunt pictures in a layout I knew right away which ones I wanted to use. The design of the layout is based on a Christy Mack sketch which was featured at the Sisterhood of Scrap blog.



I just remembered that I actually did two mini albums this weekend - one I just finished tonight and the other that still doesn't have photos or embellies yet. I'll post about them tomorrow if I get a chance.

Christmas Card Crop

Thanks to the two great crops I participated in this weekend, I had a very productive scrapping weekend. I made 9 Christmas cards and 3 layouts. I also started one mini album and have plans in my head for more mini albums, cards, and layouts, but I didn't have time to do any more this weekend.

The 9 completed cards are thanks to ScrapShotz's "12 Cards of Christmas and a Mini-album in a Pear Tree" Crop. At first I wasn't sure how much I was actually going to get to do because my one and only Christmas/Winter related stamp is a snowflake. I have absolutely no Christmas sentiment stamps and the alphabet stamps that I have are really too big to make them to fit the cards, but I came up with an alternative that I hadn't thought of before and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. I printed what I wanted using a program on my computer! Anyway, here's my cards:

This one was inspired by Julie's CrissCross Card Challenge. Julie posted great instructions for making this unique card style. I used yummy paper that Carla sent me in a wonderful Rak last week. Thanks again, Carla! The card is actually like a little pocket into which you insert a notecard type thing. The picture shows the card tucked in the pocket and then out of the pocket.



Jen's Whimsical Monochromatic Card challenge was the inspiration for this one. The stamped image was part of teh RAK from Carla. I colored it using pastels and added some glitter to it.



Carla's 5 Step, 5 Minute Christmas Card Challenge took me way more than five minutes to created but I had fun doing it and will probably do more like it, especially after seeing all the great creations others came up with for this challenge. The top picture shows the card closed and the bottom picture shows it opened. Once again I used papers from Carla's great RAK.



This was a fast, easy one inspired by Nonie's Scraplift Challenge.



Another fast and easy one was inspired by Wendy's Card Sketch Challenge.



Amiee's Trimming the Tree Challenge had me stumped for a while but I'm pleased with what I came up with.



I had great fun with Carla's Non-Traditional Christmas Card Challenge. I used another of the many stamped images Carla sent me in the RAK. The top picture shows the front of the card and the bottom one shows the inside.



Had great fun with Aimee's Frosty Footprints Challenge! The challenge was to trace a child's foot print and to use the trace to make a snowman for the front of a card. I also used a technique my sister told me about. I glued a used dryer sheet onto the footprint and sprinkled it with glitter. I used some bling for the eyes and buttons, some ricrac for the scarf and cut out a hat. I also cut a piece of white paper to make a snow bank and cut out a couple of trees from another paper to put on the snow bank.



Here's another fun one inspired by Carla's Pop-Up Christmas Card challenge. I cut a tree out of a patterned paper to use as the pop-up and made a fun card to give someone who had their tree fall over on them last season. The picture on the left shows the front of the card and the right shows the inside.



I'll post about the other crop and my creations for it tomorrow, hopefully, right now little one needs my attention.

Lots of Layouts this week!

I've had great fun creating layouts this week. My inspiration were sketches from a few different places.

Ally's sketch on the Creative Crafts and Stickers blog was the inspiration for this one. I also used mostly materials from the CC&S's October kit which Ally rakked to me.



Used materials from the same kit for this one, which was inspired by a Patti Hutchinson sketch that was posted at Sisterhood of Scrap.




This double pager was inspired by a blog sketch at SnapShotz and also by Julie's October Catch Phrase challenge to use the phrase "eye on the prize" as inspiration for a layout. The sketch was actually for just a single page but I just mirrored it to make a double pager.

Scrappin' Tag Games

I love playing scrappin' tag games! I actually posted a post about it on my old blog where I explained all about it but I thought I'd do it again on this blog just in case someone might not know what it is. Also, the game is fresh on my mind because I just finished a game with a group of friends and I'm in the middle of a game on ScrapShotz.

I was first introduced to the game by a friend. She organized a game for a group of us friends to play online. It was so much fun! I was hooked.

Here's how it works. An organizer decides to organize a game and asks for people to sign up if they're interested. People sign up to play and the organizer makes a list of them in the order they will be IT. The organizer picks out either a layout or a sketch and, either does a layout herself based on it, or else forwards it to the first person on the list to do so. Once the first person is finished they usually forward the layout they created back to the organizer, who then forwards that layout on to the next person in line. This continues with each person creating a layout based on the layout of the person ahead of them until everyone has had a turn. Then comes the big reveal when everyone gets to see all the creations everyone made. It is so much fun to see how things change as they go through the line.

The tag game can also be made into a race. I was introduced to this idea at Creative Crafts and Stickers. Here they divide the list of players into two teams and the teams try to race each other to the finish. Sometimes each team starts with the same layout but sometimes they start with different layouts. Personally I like it best when both teams start with the same layout because I find it even more interesting to see how the same layout changes as it goes through two different teams. The race adds a little more excitement to the game but it's really fun either way.

The game I just finished was another one with my online group of friends. We're just some Canadian home educating homes that hooked up on the internet and this past year we discovered that there was a group of us that were interested in scrappin'. Here's the layout I did for the game: