More Scrapbook Pages

Sometimes scrapping your child's art projects or drawings is a bit challenging ... at least for me. On some of these pages, I just tried to let his art shine through and not add much to it.

I loved his picture of a treehouse. I am obsessed with treehouses anyway, but I also love the bright colors he chose.

This was a project for science class, where they were studying how flowers grow. Am I the only mom who saves all of these things?

This one is so sweet! "If I were President..." Sadly I think Logan's vision may have changed a little bit since this project in 2nd grade. I think now he would choose to give everyone an xbox and an iPad instead of food & clothes.

This is his 2nd grade class photo. I wanted to incorporate it into the scrapbook, but these posed photos are difficult to scrap. I don't feel as if I made this a very fun page, but I like the color combination.

I love this page - probably because of the red & black together. Mom took Logan to an open house at the fire department and their photo made it into the Halls Shopper. I don't know who was more thrilled, Mom or Logan!

This whole photo cracks me up. Sweatpants? Really? I think we put him in a good shirt to have his school picture made, not realizing they would show his entire body in the class photo! Who knows? First grade was a real struggle for all of us, so it's good I can look back and find something to laugh about.

This page was about the birth of my niece, Hannah, who is my sister's one and only child. We were all thrilled, now there was a boy and a girl in the family.

I still have not journaled on this page about Dad. That's why the one mat is blank. I have this hanging in my scrap room, but I still can't finish it.

I was playing with my new printer and wanted to see how big I could print - this 13 x 19 photo was too big for even a 12 x 12 scrap page. This is my niece, Bailey, playing on the swings. I need to crop it down somehow to make a full photo scrap page!

This was a little flag he made at Vacation Bible School one year. I tried to use paper that had a similar color scheme. I always prefer to use computer journaling because it's so much neater, but I'm usually too lazy to do it.

This is another page about Hannah as an infant. I used clear embossing powder on the little chick and then heat-embossed it for that shiny look. I LOVE Kraft paper, so I really like this layout.

These photos were so sweet. Logan didn't know what to think about such a tiny baby. He wanted her to talk and play already!

Little did I know how true these words would be! She IS a diva!

I'm not sure why I didn't take a picture of the other half of this layout! This was the Dunsmores 50th Anniversary celebration. We had a big concert and gave Dad a plaque. There was a write-up in the Halls Shopper. It was a very special night, one of the last times Dad was mentally well enough to sing. I love the bright, bold paper. I used the huge font to print out the "50" so it would stand out on that busy background.

Making Christmas Cards

Last year I hand-made all of the Christmas cards that I sent out. I started in July and worked on them periodically. I still had to do a few at the last minute. It was a whole lot of work, time, and expense, plus it took extra postage to mail them because they were hand-stamp only.
I wonder if anyone even noticed the handiwork that went into them? Did they throw them away as soon as they opened them? Did they notice the "handmade for you by Kim" stamp on the back?
I enjoyed making them, for the most part, and I had a little bit of help from Logan (only when he was really REALLY bored) and I played Christmas music while working on them - even in July. I just don't know if it's worth all the time and effort. Maybe I should just buy cards this year and stick a stamp on them like everyone else. Artie thinks sending Christmas cards is a waste of time and money. We sure don't receive as many as we used to, or as many as we send out. But I enjoy the process. I like hearing from people, and I like receiving actual mail for a change.
What do you think? Are Christmas cards a dying trend? Do you enjoy sending or receiving them?

My Craft Room

I'm so blessed to have an entire room just for my crafting space. I used to call it my scrap room because I did only scrapbooking in there, but now I have added my sewing machine, so it’s the craft room.

I wanted to wait until it was cleaned up before I took photos to share with the blog, but in reality it’s never completely cleaned up. I mean, there are always works in progress, so I decided to just forge ahead with sharing my room.

Artie helped me set all of this up, but he otherwise kind of avoids the craft room. It’s way too crammed with things and too messy for his taste. He will come in there and sit in the “praying chair” and work puzzles or watch TV sometimes while I scrap or sew, just to keep from us being in different parts of the house. I think his main complaint is that I just have too much stuff. I almost agree – I could probably never use all of my scrap supplies if I scrapped every day for the rest of my life. But ask any scrapper – we are paperholics, toolaholics … half the fun is in collecting the supplies!

This is my desk area. It is quite cluttered! I have my Cricut hooked up to my computer, as well as my two printers. I love the Canon 9000 photo printer. It prints up to 13 x 19 pages, which means I can print an entire 12 x 12 scrap page on one page. This is the only Windows computer left in the house – all the rest are Macs!

This is my Cricut cartridge collection – 101 of them at last count. More than I can possibly use! But I loan them out to friends all the time.

This is my most frequently used cardstock collection. Bazzill is my favorite brand, but I do have some other brands mixed in.

My bookshelves are loaded to the brim with scrapbooking supplies, books, Jim Shore figures, sentimental what-nots …

This is the sewing corner. The sewing machine cabinet and this machine were my beloved Mamaw’s. Artie got me a new Singer machine for my birthday, but we alternate between the two. I’d rather use Mamaw’s just for sentimental reasons, but it’s a little more complicated. I still have a looooong way to go in the sewing department!

Rubber stamps galore. I love stamping on pages or cards, but I do not use my stamps very often. Such a mess to clean them off each time. And if I emboss, even more mess with the embossing powder.

These four shots are different angles of my work table. It is actually quite clean at the moment, compared to its usual status. This is where I actually sit and put pages or cards together.

I try to use all types of creative storage ideas for my many, many, maaaannny supplies. This is a jewelry display that I’m using to store die-cuts on. You can also see the baby wipes I use to clean my hands after using any stamps or inks. My small photo trimmer is here and my basket of adhesives.

These small ink pads are great for inking the edges of a page or mat. I enjoy keeping them in this jar because I can see whatever color I’m digging for at the moment.

My Stampin’ Up ink pads. I have the entire set, but as I said, I don’t stamp as much as I should.

I love these storage drawers and shelves. They used to hold ALL of my scrap supplies. That’s hard to believe. I try to stay very organized, but it’s difficult when you have this much STUFF!

This is another work surface that Artie built for me. I have a small workspace in between my tool collection. Here you can see my Tim Holtz Vagabond and my dies and templates to use with that. You can also see some of my embellishments hanging on pegs. I have so many of them that I can’t even remember what I have to use them when I need them!

More embellishments, flowers, candy dots; my Slice cutting mat and my big paper cutter; the heat embosser; the electric distresser … so many tools!

More paper storage. All of my paper shelves are filled so full they won’t hold any more paper. I have not bought any in several weeks, but there is a new October Afternoon line out …

I love getting ideas and inspiration from my scrap magazines. I keep this basket next to my “praying chair” and read or look for ideas when I want some quiet time.

These are a few of the mini-albums I’ve made. I like to display some of my work in the craft room.

Here are a couple of my scrap pages.

And the decorated dress forms. I got this idea from my favorite scrap store, Scrappin’ in the City. They have a BIG dress like this. I wish I had room for more of these. I see them at Marshall’s & Ross all the time, but as you can see, I have NOWHERE ELSE to put ANYTHING in this room!!!

Scrapbooking Beach Photos

I have finally finished a scrapbook of our 2007 family vacation - just me, Artie & Logan in Clearwater Beach. I will share some of my better pages with you here.

This photo is of Logan on the balcony of our hotel room, with the bay side of the island in the background. I bought a few postcards while we were there to use in my scrapbook. I purchased the die cut "Florida" at the Scrapbook Superstore in Sevierville. They have a lot of laser cut items. Looks are deceiving though. That one laser cut has 8 layers which have to be carefully stacked together and glued for that 3D look. I love this paper, which already looks like rays of sunshine. I didn't have to add much to the page because of the great paper.

This page is from the highlight of our trip, which was our visit to Discovery Cove in Orlando. We will never forget that experience! The best part of the day was swimming with the dolphins, which ended with a kiss. I tried to keep the page fairly simple because I thought the images were the star of the page. I mean, how often in life do you get to kiss a dolphin?

This page is one of my favorites. I used five different papers from the same line, and played off of the pinwheel design in the paper to add some pinwheel embellishments. The ribbon next to the photo is bright orange and picks up on the orange in the papers, as well. I also added some Stickles to the flowers and pinwheels on the white background paper. The photos are of Logan playing in the kids area at Pier 60, and I loved the "Fun in the Sun" embellishment, because that precisely described this moment in time.

First of all, I love these photos of Artie & Logan. I mean, come on, they are my two favorite subjects, for sure! I added a sepia tone to the photos before I printed them out. This gorgeous paper was a great background, because I do "Adore" them. I used a border punch to make the holes in the paper. I thought they looked like bubbles. And the bingo card just happened to contain the right dates for me to circle. What a great memory, watching the two of them together!

These two photos were taken at the two different hotels we stayed at during our trip, one in Orlando and one in Clearwater. I loved the fern effect of the felt sticker tape and thought it coordinated well with the photos. Logan looks so young here - he has certainly changed a lot in the past 4 years! I punched butterflies out of the same paper I used to mat Logan's photos. The felt word sticker says "Be Glad," and I am VERY glad to have such a wonderful, handsome son!

For this page, I played off the color of Logan's fluorescent green goggles. This beautiful beach paper has so many colors in it, but I think the green jumps out. I actually purchased the paper-pieced swimmer boy on ebay! I have bought many paper piecings on there because I have not mastered that art yet myself.

This page is one of my all-time favorites. Very simple, letting the photo take the lead. I used a sepia tone again on this photo, and it makes a very simple page with the muted tones of the paper and photo together. I love this photo and thought it deserved a page of its own.

"Oceans of Fun" - For some reason, I always have to take a photo UP the beach and DOWN the beach. I thought this page was a good way to display that beautiful scenery, plus it carried on the orange theme I used on so many pages of this scrapbook. It really seems like a sunny, happy book with all the bright colors and great memories!

We went to play mini-golf at a place called "Congo Golf & Gators." They had LIVE gators there you could feed with a stick and a string. We fed them hot dogs, of all things. The mini-golf course was awesome! It involved a crashed plane, a jungle boat, a few waterfalls, a cave, a giant snake, and of course, the live alligators. We are not very good at mini-golf, but it was a very fun outing!

The star of this page is probably the adorable paper piecing, "Let's Go to the Beach." For some reason the guy in the piecing reminded me of Artie - maybe it's the expression on his face. Again with the orange theme in the paper, and more adorable photos of LOGAN, of course.

This is just a fun page because of the paper and fish. It looks like water with the wavy lines and the swimmer - holding his nose like I do. This paper piecing came in the set with the other swimmer boy that I bought on ebay. The photos on this layout were from a giant shark slide that was set up at the pier. Logan loved it and had to do it over and over and over. It was fun for him, but very HOT for us standing out on the sand taking multiple photos. Isn't that what vacation is all about? The kids having fun and the parents following them around in the heat taking pictures? :)

Hope you enjoyed my pages. I'm sure most of you do much better work than this, but I'm proud of my scrapping. I sure enjoy it!

Quilt is Finished!

I can't believe it! My first quilt is finished! Mom came over last night and helped me (i.e. "did most of the work") to sew the binding around the edges. It is so soft! I love all of the colors in this one. My pre-cut squares came from my favorite scrap shop, Scrappin in the City. I bought a fleece blanket at Ross for $6.99 to be my lining, and my backing is an old sheet. The tacking thread came from Hobby Lobby, although I think I'll choose a thicker weight thread next time. The true test of how good a quilt it really is will be whether or not it ends up in Logan's room. He sneaks downstairs and "steals" the good quilts and blankets out of the laundry room during the night and takes them to his room. Here's Mom with the finished product. I am very proud and can't wait to start another one. My next one is going to have an ocean theme and I'm going to create squares with sand dollars, starfish, shells & sea horses.

Scrapbook Pages

Do you see this messy work space? So much work can go into ONE single scrapbook page, and so many supplies can be dragged out to get that perfect effect. Sometimes I rush through a few pages just to get them done, but I prefer to take my time and make them really special. That is often a problem for me since I am a snapping queen with the camera. I take way too many photos, and then feel like I have to scrap ALL of them. The entire green album in the photo is dedicated to one vacation trip that the 3 of us took in 2007. Yes, shamefully, I said 2007. And I'm still finishing it up in 2011. I have more ideas in my head for scrapbook pages, as well as entire books, than I will ever be able to complete.
It doesn't help that I'm distracted lately by my new sewing machine and the quilt I've been working on. I guess I haven't accepted it yet that working 10+ hours per day at a "real" job doesn't afford me much time for quilting, sewing, scrapbooking, and the attention I need to give to my husband and son. Some of my scrapping friends stay up until the wee hours of the morning after everyone else is in bed so they can get that creative time in. I'm not a night owl anymore; if I'm up much past 9:00, I start to really fade. Plus I have to be at work so early (usually 6:45) that staying up late is really not much of a fun option for me.
I see some of my friends' pages and I think wow, that must have taken DAYS to complete. Then I feel like my work is sub-par. But you know what? It's still a memory that has been beautifully preserved, whether it took me 5 minutes or 5 days to do it. Right? I should enjoy the process, isn't that part of the joy of creative pursuits?
I have enough scrapbook supplies to fill my own store, so I should easily be able to create any type of pages that pop into my head. It is just having the patience and taking the time.

Sand Dollar Fun

While we were at the beach this year, we found over 300 sand dollars while digging with our toes out on the sand bar. Logan would dive and bring up 8 to 10 at a time. It was a sand dollar BOUNTY! :) So Kristi & I decided we would decorate some. I haven't seen any of Kristi's yet, but here are some of my "masterpieces" of sand dollar art. I doubt they will ever be in the Smithsonian or anything, but they are cute for a first try.
Artie & I are going to have a sand dollar Christmas tree this year for one of our many trees. We will use the plain, unadorned ones for that, but I have definitely been having fun playing with different ideas for these.
We just booked our Labor Day weekend trip, which means Artie, Logan & I are going back to Clearwater for the long weekend. We wanted one more "summer" getaway with just the 3 of us. I am very excited about it. More sand dollars are definitely in our future.