Very Excited to Announce ...

I made the design team at Let's Get Sketchy! Woot woot!!

That's it. That's all I wanted to say. Look for my first layout on the LGS blog on Monday September 3rd.

Thanks everyone! Have a great Wednesday!!

Practical Scrappers: 10 Things to do With Washi Tape

Today over at Practical Scrappers we are showing you a lot of different things you can do with the hottest of hot paper crafting trends - Washi Tape. Here is my contribution.

Can you tell what is made with washi tape? On this layout there are 3 embellishments all made with washi tape. The large layered flower by the title and the two smaller flower/ribbon embellishments on the middle left and the lower right. Here are some close ups to help you see the details.

I belong to a scrapping community called ScrapHappy and every month our fearless leader Lain Ehmann holds a webinar to teach us something new. In May the webinar was called "Washi Tape Wahoo!" and it inspired me to start playing with my meager stash. The guest instructor, Monica Bradford, created a similar flower so I gave it a try. Only on a much larger scale!

To create these I started by covering a piece of scrap card stock with the washi tape and then I used my punches to cut out flowers and circles of the different colours of tape. Once layered the flowers and circles create these blue ribbon type embellishments.

I stuck the washi tape to itself and then cut notches into the ends for the "ribbons".

Here's another look at the large layered flower.

Hope you enjoyed these ideas. Please be sure to pop over to the Practical Scrappers Blog for more unique ways to use up your stash of washi tape (I know you have one, don't try to hide it!!)

Let's Get Sketchy

I'm trying to squeak in a submission for the Let's Get Sketchy Blog Design Team call (click the link to read all about it). We were asked to create a layout based on their sketch. Here's their sketch ...

And here's my layout.

I'm still working on ALL those Disney pictures I had printed last month. This time I'm telling the story of how Christine fell in love with the Teacups ride and EVERY time we entered the Park and/or Fantasyland we HAD to go on the Teacups. 

A close up of my title and journalling.

Close up of additional embellishment  and a secondary journalling card - notes that Paige is not in the cup with the rest of us but she did come around later and loved the ride as much as Christine!

Last embellishment cluster. Also, I added some ink splatters and painted the top right and bottom left corners with the same ink. 

Thanks for stopping by everyone! Be sure to head over to Let's Get Sketchy and enter some of their sketch challenges! Wish me luck!!

Long Overdue Family Update

Hey, did you know it's been almost a month since my last family update? Sheesh! I suck!!

My last photos of our family were from our little weekend getaway to Victoria to pick up the girls from Granny Camp and of Christine's bandaged chin after her little spill at the horse races. Since then ... let's see ... there was a week of quiet play around the house then another busy weekend with both Paige and Marley attending separate birthday parties. Then a fun week that saw all three girls attending a day camp (through the community centre) - Marley and Paige were in a Summer Olympics themed camp and Christine was in a Space themed camp. All 3 girls were in heaven and I got a couple hours to myself every morning so I was in heaven too! Until the Thursday that is ...

That was the day I got the call that no Mom wants to get. "Hi there! This is Laura from Paige and Marley's camp. Paige has hurt her ankle ..."

sigh

So I headed over to the Community Centre to check up on her and take her home if needed. It was time to pick up Christine anyway.

She was obviously in a lot of pain when I arrived. The leaders had her on the couch in the vestibule with an ice pack on her ankle and there was evidence of tears on her cheeks. Story was they were playing some sort of dodge ball game and she tripped on a ball and rolled her ankle. It didn't look swollen but she wasn't putting any weight on it, so after getting Christine, she hopped into the van and we spent the rest of the day with ice packs on it. She returned to her camp the next day as they were having their big "Closing Ceremonies" in conjunction with the two other community centres in Delta and she didn't want to miss it. I thought for sure I'd get a call again at lunch time that it was all too much but she toughed it out. To me this was a sign that it probably wasn't that serious an injury - a twisted or sprained ankle at most - and a few days of rest and ice should get things back to normal.

Ha!

A week after the initial injury her ankle was still visibly swollen and tender to the touch. Although she WAS managing to run, jump, hop, walk, etc on it without complaining too much. There was a definite limp though so clearly something was hurting her. A trip to the doctor seemed prudent. This led to a trip to the X-Ray techs and then another trip back to see the doctor the following week to get the results. Results that hadn't even come in yet! But after a call over to the place that did the x-ray and another call to the ER at a local hospital to get a second opinion ... we were informed that there was a suspected fracture in the ankle (in such a place that made them nervous it may be in her growth plate) so could we please go directly to Children's Emergency to see the Pediatric Orthopedic Surgeon? Pronto! Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. Do not drive all the way home to drop your oldest off at soccer camp first or get snacks or lunch or books to read ...
You get the idea. Here are some pictures I shot with my cell phone - hence the crappy quality!

Christine and Paige amusing themselves in the waiting room at the colouring table.

Waiting in the examination room for the doc. 

Ah, finally ... Scooby Doo on the telly!

2 hours later Greg came to pick up Marley and Christine so that Marley could get to her camp - a little late but there finally! Paige and I waited. And waited. And waited. They re-x-rayed her ankle. They discussed it. They discussed it some more. I think they even called the original company that x-rayed it to discuss it some more! The final decision was that even though they couldn't see any definitive break, they were going to play it safe because somebody, somewhere had seen something. A cast was in order. Well, that did it for Paige. She had been cheerfully (if not a bit nervously) waiting this whole time but as soon as they started getting her prepped for the cast the tears started flowing. I don't think she was worried that it would hurt so much as it would make her different and decrease her ability to have fun for the rest of the summer. Fair enough.

So here we are a week later and she is still pretty miserable. For the most part she happily hops around the house with or (more often) without her crutches but something will happen or someone will stop by to see how she's doing and give her a small gift and she retreats into that special little world only she's allowed into. It's sad to see. We keep telling her that she will most likely still have the cast and crutches when school starts in a couple weeks which also causes her to retreat. I think she thinks she's going to get a "sick pass" or something!

Just to prove my point here is a picture of her at the Soccer Camp Wrap-up this past Friday.

It took both Greg and I a good 20 minutes to convince Paige to get out of the van. And it only happened because Greg carried her! 

Once she did, it took another 5 minutes to convince her that she was perfectly capable of getting back to the van under her own power! Look at this face! So sad. Not even the promise of a Slurpee could bring a smile at this moment.

Just so this is not a total downer post, here is Marley at the end of her Whitecaps Soccer Camp.

She did SO well! When I pulled up on this day, a friend of mine stopped me to say how good she thought she was. How hard she was working (and this was during our little heat wave so it was well over 30degrees on the turf!) and how skilled she was. Ah, what mother doesn't like to hear praise of their kids, eh? I'd been noticing a difference in her this week too. Even though it was boiling hot, never once did she complain about going to soccer camp. She would go outside to practice at odd times during the week too! Her face was always beat red when I picked her up but she was too busy bubbling over about what they'd done that day to complain about how hot and tired she was. Let me just say there were a lot of Slurpees/smoothies/popsicles consumed that week!

So that is the story of Paige. 

Oh, and in between the "sprain" and the "break" there was a quick little trip to Seattle, 

 a day spent at the zoo and some back-to-school shopping. I'll try and get photos up of that trip later. Tomorrow (it's now Wednesday, I starting this post on Monday!) is Greg and my 10th anniversary so perhaps the zoo pics will have to wait until the weekend. Greg's going to Montreal so I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to post ... right? Ha!!

Until next time ... have a good one!

Continuing with Disney

I realized I had several assignments due today for various scrapping commitments but before I got to them (sorry, can't show you them yet) I wanted to finish off the Paige and Pooh Bear story. On Tuesday I shared two pages with you and mentioned I had more pictures and another story I still wanted to tell. Here it is.

I've been wanting to try out scrapping in these divided page protectors for awhile and I've got to say, I really like them. What a fun and easy way to add a ton of pictures while still allowing your creative juices to flow!

Anyway, here the story is about Paige overcoming her fears of mascots and people in full body costumes. This trip would not have been possible if Paige had been her old scared self! As I said in the post on Tuesday, Christine was fast asleep and Marley uninterested in getting Pooh's autograph so it was just Paige and Pooh Bear. She did awesome and I am so glad I had a ton of pictures of the event and could properly celebrate this developmental milestone in my scrap book pages!!

Speaking of which ... here is the layout side by side with the first of the Pooh Bear pages - this gives you an idea of how it will look in the album. 

And some close ups - sorry about the glare. It's next to impossible to take a picture of something in the page protector without getting glare!

There's the Mickey bling again! :)

I wanted to make sure this page looked like it belonged next to the other one so I tried to use similar colours. I didn't have anymore of the Pooh Bear paper or the yellow striped Echo Park but when I found this yellow hexagon (an older Echo Park) I knew it was serendipity! Honeycombs for a honey loving bear?! Are you kidding me? How perfect!

The back side of the paper has these cute bees on it plus it's blue which ties back to the slight bits of blue in the original pages. To further tie everything together I introduced papers seen in the other pages as well as design elements like the border punch and the alphabet stickers, washi tape, flowers, bling, etc.

Here is the back side of the divided page which has the continuation of the story on it. I basically just put an arrow at the bottom of my journaling on the one side (see above) and an arrow at the top of this page and kept writing!

And this is how it will look in the album next to the second of the original Pooh Bear pages (the one about Christine sleeping through the whole thing!)

I used Elle's Studio journaling tags for all the journaling on these two pages. Love this one with the doily image on a yellow chevron!

Another tying element are these word stickers (I used "Celebrate" in the title on the other side). With another Elle's Studio tag, it creates a nice little addition to the photo and the story.

Well, there you have it. What do you think? Do you use divided pages in your scrapbook albums? I'd love to see how you've used them if you can leave a link in the comments section I'll come check them out. 

Thanks for stopping by today. I'll try to get another family update posted tomorrow but if not, have a great weekend!

Making a Start

WAY back in July (sheesh, is it already August?!) I made my foundation pages for our Disneyland trip album. I thought I'd manage to quickly whip off a bunch of pages even after the girls returned from their week with their grandparents. Ha! Here we are a month later and I have finally made a start on the album. I was spurred to action by a couple of challenges. The first is the Creative Accents August challenge to use the colour yellow (features pretty heavily in my foundation pages) and the second was this week´s sketch at Sketch Inspiration.

Starting with the page for Creative Accents ...

This will be the title page of the album. The yellow chevron circle is actually fabric - Stampin`Up Essentials Designer Fabric to be precise - which I cut with my pinking sheers. I loved the bright happy yellow and felt it was the perfect way to start the album. This page was created brand new for this challenge (i.e not one of the base pages I'd created) but it will fit in perfectly as I have kept all the patterns and colours consistent by using leftover scraps from my other pages. Also, none of the other pages have embellishments on them yet so I can create continuity that way too. 

The title. The Disney Vacation plus the balloons/fireworks was a title sticker while the May 2012 were added using glittery foam letter stickers. 

I figured the title page probably doesn't need a ton of journaling so this little tag did the trick.

There are a few things I mean to add to pretty much every page I do and you can see some of them here. The fabric flower, the dots (I think they are called Candy Dots) and the Mickey head shaped bling. I've got a few different washi tapes that will get added here and there as well as little word phrases (cut out from a 12x12 piece of patterned paper.)

This next layout is for Sketch Inspiration using this sketch.

I wanted to use these portrait oriented photos so I made some changes to the sketch to accommodate them. It's not too far off though.

This is one of my pre-made base pages but the paper strips in the background worked for the sketch. 

More fabric flowers on this one as well as a word sticker.

Instead of the horizontal element shown at the top of the page in the sketch, I chose to anchor my photos with a horizontal element at the bottom of the page. You can also see the Mickey gem too!

My title may be a little hard to read so I'll write it out here again - Up Close And POOHsonal. Ha, ha, ha!! A little play on words there!! The journaling explains it. It reads: "Christine was fast asleep and Marley was saving room in her autograph book for Princesses so Paige got some one-on-one time with Winnie-the-Pooh!"

I have quite a few pictures of this particular event and had created a companion page during my base layout stage. This is not a double page spread but they will face each other so there is more "communication" between the two single page layouts than you'd normally see. Here is it - While You Were Sleeping - and tells the other half of the story.

I used a sticker journaling spot for the title and wrote my journaling directly onto the back ground paper. To further anchor the photos I added the other half of the strip of black card stock from the layout above as well as some washi tape and white border punched card stock. The word sticker seemed appropriate!

Here's a better look at the anchoring line.

I added the Mickey gem to the flower accent in the top right corner. I also repeated the washi tape and punched white card stock up here.

I still have more pictures of Paige with Pooh Bear and more story to tell (like how awesome it is that she will now hug mascots when she used to run away in terror!) so I will likely add a divided page protector between these two layouts with those photos. I didn't get to that today though.

Well, that's all I have for you today. Thanks for stopping by!

Celebrating the number 3

Practical Scrappers is celebrating their 3rd Anniversary all week and today the Design Team created projects highlighting the number 3. Since I have 3 gorgeous girls, I decided to feature them in this layout.

I have been wanting to do something like this for awhile. I've seen lots of examples on various sites but I'm afraid I can't give a specific shout out. I'd say I've been inspired and influenced by many!!

During  my pre-garage sale purge I found a few packs of these large glittery white alphas. One was complete and unopened so it went into the garage sale pile but the incomplete ones stayed in my stash. I pulled them out for this layout and prayed I had the letters I needed. Well ... I had almost all the letters! I took the L, O, V, Y and U and sprayed them with a couple different Mister Huey's to get a reddish pick colour. It's a pretty close match to the patterned paper which was my goal. I wanted all the design elements (photo, title and journalling) to read as one block in a sea of white alphas. 

Here's a closer look at the title and journalling tag. I used an Elle's Studio tag - the journalling reads: "My {heart}. My soul. My Life. All in 3 beautiful packages."

I tucked 3 punched hearts under the letters to represent my 3 daughters.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this. I had a lot of fun doing it and may try this technique again. I am never at a loss for half used alphabet sets!! Remember to enter the giveaway over at Practical Scrappers!

Have a great week everyone!

Practical Scrappers Anniversary and Giveaway

Practical Scrappers is celebrating their 3rd Anniversary and besides many gorgeous projects (look for one by yours truly on August 5th) there is a giveaway you can enter too. Head on over to the blog (http://www.practicalscrappers.com/) and enter to win. Here's what's up for grabs ...

Good luck everyone! And Happy Anniversary Practical Scrappers! I am so honoured to be on this team of amazingly talented women!!