"Ever After" inspired scrapbook page

Here's my first challenge layout for the month, for a new challenge site I've recently come across called From Screen 2 Scrap.  Here's the inspiration for April:

 The challenge is to tell your own "Cinderella story" with bonus points for using bling, and for using a fairy-tale title.  Maybe because we're coming up to twenty years of marriage this year, or maybe because I could count the number of pages I've done about our relationship one one hand, but for whatever reason, I decided to give this one a go.  Here's what I came up with:

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't believe in fairy tale happy endings that rely on the feeling of being "in love" to see them through.  I think it's the work that you put into a relationship that really makes it count.

 My first thought on where to put my journalling was to hide it behind the big butterfly, but it quickly became apparent that there wasn't going to be enough space there, so I settled for a few verses from 1 Corinthians 13 instead:

Powerful words that remind us love isn't just about how you feel, but how you act towards those you have feelings for!

Here's to happy endings, in spite of the fact that we live in real life, not in a fairytale!

Featured page at Lets Scrap

Time to share with you the page I made based on this week's sketch at Let's Scrap.

I was really organized for my Christmas card photo shoot back in 2007 when I took these photos. . . I bought them all new white T-shirts, made sure they had clean jeans and dressed them up one morning during a holiday in the Blue Mountains.  Beautiful location, children that would still pose and look cute for photos . . . bliss!

I had lots of fun using my Echo Park "A Boys Life" papers for this one - they have seen lots of use! 

I must give credit for the button shadow box to Nancy Damiano (here) from Two Peas.

I love how my pinwheels turned out, but let me tell you, 2 pinwheels + buttons facing each other in the album . . . that's one bulky layout!

They must have liked this one over at Let's Scrap, as it's a "featured" photo in the gallery this week.  I hope you enjoyed dropping by too!

Best Easter craft . . . ever

No fluffy chicks or bunnies on this blog . . .

. . . just an empty tomb and a risen Saviour.

Patterned paper only

There's just three of us left at home this Easter weekend; I wish I could say that the one who's gone with his dad to visit the grandparents was going for a bit of quality father-son bonding time, but no-one is pretending it is anything other than the lure of Belco skate park! (Coincidentally, the photos I'm going to show you in a minute were taken on the same day as his late trip to Belco). 

After Good Friday church this morning, I sat down to this week's video from Glitter Girl.  Another topic dear to my heart this week - using patterned paper only and no purchased embellishments.  I took myself straight up to the craft room after lunch for a bit of a first-day-of-school holidays treat.  The photos I decided to use have been sitting with that piece of background paper in my "in progress" folder for ages.  I actually had 3 photos printed out, but I decided to only scrap two of them, Shimelle-style.

Actually, I stuck pretty closely to one of the pages that Shimelle did in the video, only leaving out the strips to the RHS of the photos.  Not that I didn't like the concept- I like it a lot - but my background paper was busy enough, so I turned that space into a title/journalling block. 
It's surprising, given my budget and my mission to banish scraps from my life,  that I don't make embellishments like these windmills more often.  I'll have to remember them again, especially for pages like these which are so boy-heavy.
In the end, I'm not sure that I'm ecstatic with my choice of paper for my windmills, but for now,  a finished page is a finished page!

Quarterly review

Wondering how I'm going with the budget this year?  And the $1 per use guideline?

Well first I thought I'd quickly share with you what I've been working on in the past week or so.  Lately, as each month draws to a close, I look through the sketches and other challenges pinned to my board and see if there's any I really want to complete by the end of the month.  This month,  I realized that it wasn't challenges I needed to catch up on, it was "non-challenge" pages!

When I first started "spend less, craft more" I only knew of the existence of two challenge blogs, and my goal of completing 2 challenges per month seemed almost a "pie in the sky", no drama if I didn't achieve it  sort of goal.  But last month alone I completed 9 challenges, leaving no time for those less challenge-worthy pages I still want to scrap.

This first page I quickly whipped up about one of Maddy's Taekwon Do gradings, very appropriate with her and Angus grading again just last weekend.  It tickled my funny bone to use a very feminine floral on a martial arts page, appropriate for my once ballerina princess who is now more of a ninja warrior!

This next page is still a work in progress.  It is about Rohan's 11th birthday party, which we had at a sports centre.  I had printed out heaps of photos, and instead of culling, I decided to use Shimelle's double page and a half concept, with a divided page protector in the middle (from 4x6 photo love, sorry not sure which one, somewhere between 9 and 11?)

For this one, I am using papers from my "A Boy's Life" 6" pad, mostly off-cuts.  I decided to let the photos and story speak for themselves: no extra embellishments!  Some of you might have heart failure even considering this concept, but to me, this is somewhat of a relief, not having to come up with embellishments for a boy page beyond just the papers.

And now to the budget . . .
As of the 31st of March, I have spent $55.40, plus a rather large sum on re-inkers (see the least fun experience of the year  to read that story).  I am still working on exactly how they fit into the budget, and probably won't finalise that until I have my swap/sell/re-ink day hopefully early next term.

I have purchased:

• stamps for $17 - used those stamps 4 times and other stamps 14 times, meaning $11 worth of value so far.

• black and white tulle, which I have used enough times in terms of the $1 per use guideline, but there sure is plenty left!
•  2 6" pads at $9 each.  have used these new ones 10 times, and older ones 4 times.  
• spent $18 on empty misting bottles - used 3 times so far.  a good reason to have a review . . . don't forget to keep using them!
•  a sheet of label stickers for $2, haven't used them yet, but have used older stickers twice (I think it actually might be more, but that's what I have written down)
• I've found patterned papers a tricky one, what sort of cap should I put on how many to have in the stash?  Because I do still like the idea of some stash, as long as I am working my way through it! I have bought a total of 18 new sheets of paper this year, and have used 8 new sheets, and 2 older ones. 

So, overall travelling OK, but I seriously need to get out those misters, and keep stamping!
 

A bit of a Shimelle-a-thon

It seems that last week, I found time for everything new that Shimelle was throwing at us.  First there was the "starting point" that I shared with you in my last post. 

Then came Glitter Girl, her video this week was on "three scrap strategies".  If you want some new ideas on how to use your never-ending pile stash of scraps, I definitely recommend you watch this video.  I could happily do all three strategies, but this is the page I made, based on her idea of using strips of paper:

This was a great opportunity to dive into my collection of strips of paper, many of those used being branding strips (I think I could 11 different Basic Grey papers from different collections).  I finished it off with some older stickers and letter tiles (In fact those letter stickers might be the oldest ones in my collection!) and a stamped image tucked behind the photo.

This was the perfect story for this kind of treatment.  It is the only photo I have from the brief period in time about ten years ago when we had a pair of ducks (and no, don't worry, that is not two ducks in the photo, but one duck and a chicken).  It's a story I really wanted to tell in my album, but not one I wanted to spend lots of time and money on.

Finally, at the end of last week, came Shimelle's sketch of the week.  The sketch really appealed to me, in part because it is, once again, so 6" friendly.  I chose some photos and pulled out my 6" pads.  Even though they are very recent photos, I ended up teaming them up with some older paper.  Why?  Because I had a 12" sheet from the same collection also sitting in the stash - look at the words in the strip at the bottom and you will see the answer . . .

best friends . . . someone special . . . I miss you . . . This paper could have been made just for this page, showing photos of Maddy and Lillian (and their respective brothers) when our friends came up to visit from Tasmania.  This page mixes "old" with "retro" tags from (I think) Cosmo Cricket.  That one 12" sheet has been great value, appearing on 3 other pages and 2 cards!  I would have used more on this page, but the others had a bluish green that did not go with this page at all.

Thanks for stopping by!