A couple layouts

Creating Keepsakes is hosting a challenge on their blog - you have to create a layout using products from at least three of the Scrap & Paper Cruise sponsors, which is pretty easy because there are a lot of sponsors!

Since that was the only requirement, I thought I'd take the opportunity to knock out some multi-photo layouts, I'm going to try and do some more tonight, but we'll see what happens.

This first one is from our vacation this summer to Vermont.  These photos are from the shore of Lake Champlain.  They have these great swings where you can just sit and relax.  I kind of cheated on this challenge since I just pulled out some Studio Calico kits - since there's all sorts of stuff from all different companies in there, it was pretty easy to grab pieces that matched.  I added in some thickers and Elle's tags.

The second layout is from a morning back in June when the girls decided to camp out in the living room before school.  Of course in Ellie's world this means that she gets a tent and apparently Carina sleeps exposed to the elements.  Ellie was also playing the harmonica under there (I credit this to the fact that she was listening a lot to Kids Praise 5 at the time which is where they go camping).  I went super simple for this one, using the angle and a bit of stitching to add some interest.

I'm not listing all the supplies for these, but if you have particular questions, please ask.  :)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Dear Carina

This is the first of my National Scrapbooking Day layouts.  I created it for a bunch of challenges:
- Big Picture Classes Challenge #5 - Create a layout about someone/something you love
- Echo Park Paper Challenge #2 - Layout of Love
- Creating Keepsakes - Use 10 or more embellishments
- Shimelle - Journaling in a Letter Format

I'm mostly using Echo Park's This and That collection, and I thought I would create a layout to hold a love letter for Carina.  I've been supremely bad about journaling for Carina since she turned one, which was oh, about a year and a half ago.  So I used one of my favorite photos of her from last summer and wrote her a little note about the things that I love about her and tucked it into that cute little Maya Road envelope.

And here's the list of embellishments that I used (10 plus one for extra measure):
1) October Afternoon Woodland Park Washi
2) Neat & Tangled Gold Sequins (I added some of these to the closure of the envelope to dress it up a bit too)
3) Maya Road Kraft Envelope
4) The Twinery - Gold Shimmer Twine
5) Echo Park This & That Chipboard Accents
6) Echo Park This & That Decorative Brads
7) October Afternoon Holiday Style Flower Sack flower
8) October Afternoon Woodland Park Tidbits
9) Webster's Pages Girl Land Mini Messages Sentiment Stickers
10) Amy Tangerine Muse Thickers
11) Machine Stitching

This was one of those layouts that I fussed with a bit more and took a bit more time with, but I'm so happy I did.  It was a labor of love, I'm so glad that I took the time to do this one!

In Pursuit of Eggs - Embellishing and toning down patterned paper

**For the Shaping Up Blog Hop/Giveaways please scroll down



I finally printed out our Easter photos and am starting to scrapbook them.

For this layout I chose this beautiful sheet of paper from Basic Grey's Konnichiwa collection. It's a busier pattern than I am used to using, but it just seemed so perfect. In order to tone it town a little so that it wasn't competing so much with the photos, I incorporated some doilies.

I'm using two sizes here, the large ones are more of the ones that I got from that conference I attended back in April (they were under the candies that were on all the tables). The smaller ones are from Curtsey Boutique. I ended up laying a smaller one on top of each of the larger ones. It adds some extra texture and also further softens the color.



I was almost ready to just leave the layout as is, but I thought it needed a little something. I didn't want to overload it with embellishments, so I ended up adding interest by randomly adding Liquid Glass to some of the little red berries. Creates some shine as well as texture.



For the little embellishment cluster, I pulled a couple crocheted flowers from my stash, layered some of the collection stickers on top, and added a dot of Liquid glass in the center as another accent.



Can you believe that there is NO cardstock on this layout! This is a first!

I'm going to be linking this up with the following:
1) May Flaum Camp Scrap - Doilies
2) Basic Grey July Flickr Challenge
3) CK Summer Camp Altered Sticker Challenge

Supplies Used
Paper: Basic Grey - Konnichiwa
Other: Basic Grey - Konnichiwa letter stickers; CTMH - Liquid Glass, Crocheted Flowers, Bonding Memories Adhesive; Tombow Mono Adhesive; Curtsey Boutique - Round Paper Doilies; Doilies from stash; CM - Photo Splits, Black pen