Let's Scrap challenge

The other page I started when my friends came over, was a challenge for "Lets Scrap".  What I am loving about this new site I found is that all the sketches posted are double pages (you can do both sides, one or the other).  When it is a challenge, you get to use any sketch you like, plus the challenge.  Challenge 103 is to substitute a word or letter in the title with something else.  I was able to choose the photos I wanted to use first, then scan the sketches for one that fit in with the number and orientation of my photos.

I instantly thought of these photos of my trip to the cricket with my husband last year, and using a cricket ball for the "O" in the title.  When I found sketch 3-9-11 with all the circles, I thought I would stick with the cricket ball theme.  A quick search on google images found me plenty of cricket ball pictures to print out.
Fun, fun fun!
PS. I also found a tutorial on Lets Scrap on how to photograph your pages for the web.  I still didn't get them quite lined up properly, but I promise from now on to try harder to publish my photos better.

An awesome annual event

the lovely Hannah working on her page

Last year Hannah, (now 13) the daughter of a good friend of mine, was quite sick and missed quite a bit of school.  It was pretty rough going there for a while.  I did a bit of what I like to think of as "art therapy" with Hannah and we did a bit of scrapbooking together.  Happily, Hannah is much better now and is doing awesomely well, it's just that our scrapbooking dates are more like an annual event instead of a fortnightly one.  Being school holidays, Hannah's mum Kathryn and sister Grace (11) joined in the fun, as of course did my Maddy (8 in 3 days).

Hannah;s lovely hand-drawn title

 Here are some of the details from Grace's page

Maddy was absolutely on fire, and did this page about herself and her "BFF" Hamish, as well as another page featuring her two best school friends.

Kathryn's funky 21st card for her niece

And finally, my own work.  I surprised myself and actually got a bit done.  I don't always when I have friends over for craft - it's so easy to just socialize.  I find that the best strategy though, is to have ready on hand is a few "kits" ready to choose from.  I know that I won't be able to journal when I am around other people, so I try to have it already to go, or else accept that I can finish it later.  For this page, "sew cute" I already knew exactly how I wanted it to look.  The circles and title were already cut, the focal photo mounted and the journalling drafted on a scrap of paper.  I just had to stick things down and sew on the buttons.  I even managed to copy down the journalling, as I didn't have to think about what I wanted to write.
To save your eyes, the journalling around the circles says
When I look at these photos of the boys in their matching tops that I made, I think to myself, "how on earth did I find the time to sew?"  And then I remember, that was before I took up scrapbooking!

Three quick cards

I noticed that my 6" pads hadn't seen much use this year at about the same time as I realized that there were a few birthdays coming up. Doesn't take a genius to make the connection there, And I decided that some cards using 6" pads were in order.  I had my ever-willing assistant, Maddy, who thought she should make the card for her friend, and fair enough too.  We were pretty pleased with our results.  They might not win any awards, but they are pretty sweet just the same and, as they say on Masterchef,  made with love.

Maddy designed hers herself, the blue one with the butterfly.  Don't you love how she cut out another flower and leaf to add to the inside of the card?  She said that she "didn't want to waste paper".
That's my girl!

A budget tip or two.

It's hard to imagine here, but in the Northern Hemisphere it's summer time, and Scrapbook Challenges are having a "Sizzling Summer of Sketches".  When I saw sketch  SSO3 , I instantly thought of an enlargement I had made of a polaroid of my husband and I when we were not long married.  It's not in fabulous condition, what with having been hung in our kitchen for who knows how long, but it is special to me as we have so few photos of us together at that time.  Using this sketch allowed me to place embellishments over the worst of the dirty marks!
Have I mentioned how much I love my Basic Grey Marjolaine papers? Well I do, I really love them.  For this page I used one complete sheet, offcuts from 3 other (double sided) sheets as well as stickers from the same range.  All I added was a bit of ric rac and a few rhinestones! Awesome.
I don't know about you but when I mat a photo this size, I often cut the centre out of the paper to use later.  In this case, the second, dark brown sheet wasn't big enough to make a full mat.  I didn't let that stop me as I wanted some distinction between the light mat and the hand-cut journalling block from the same paper. So that's budget tip #1. save the inside of your mat for another day.

Here's the first mat

And here's the second one.

After I finished this page, I moved straight on to another page, this time about my oldest son turning 12 (a recent page for a change!) on which I planned to use the same range of papers.Can you see those two smaller blocks of paper on the right hand side?  Where do you think they came from?  Pretty cool, hey?

work in progress.

Oh, and here come budget tip #2:  I've started to feel a bit guilty about all the paper and ink I am using printing out sketches and "scraplift" type challenges which I might or might not do.  so now I:

• print on the back of an unwanted sheet of paper
• resize if necessary to get 2 sketches on the same page (by turning sheet around and sending back through the printer
• print in "grayscale" if it is coloured
• print using "superfast draft" mode.

Less paper, less ink, less eco-guilt! Yay!
PS. and have I told you how much I love my Basic Grey Marjolaine papers?

A new place to play

Wow, the blog hop was so much fun, but so many blogs to look at it was too hard to really have a good look at all of them.  I did come across a few new challenge sites (not that my TAFE course will thank me, it's easy enough getting distracted from study already!) I am particularly excited about one site called "Scrap our Stash"  .  Sounds like my kind of people!  I have already completed a "pagerise" challenge;  the winner of the last challenge posts a layout of their own for you to "scraplift" in any way you choose. 
For me, this was another chance to do a bit of a budget page.  It was made using only one sheet of patterned paper, offcuts from two shades of cardstock, some very old letter tiles, machine stitching, stamps, sizzix dies and punches.  The green border strip is the reverse of the page.  I then decided  that I could cut the title from the background as well, so had to cut some more away.  This big hole is of course covered by the strip of photos!

scrapbook challenges Blog Hop On

Well, I have never done one of these before, but when I saw the sketch for the scrapbooking challenges "season of change hop on I decided to give it a go!  To start the hop on from the beginning, you will need to go to Brynn's blog,  here.
When I saw the sketch, I thought it needed to be about something fun, or perhaps to do with imagination. Then I came across this photo of my kids when they were little on the lounge together reading and I instantly thought of the Dr Seuss book, "Oh the Places you'll Go" and I thought, that's my page!
As usual for me at the moment, all the papers and cardstock used on this page are offcuts, except for the backing sheet.

The smallest star is a sizzix die, but I decided on it's own it wasn' big enough.  I laid it down on a second scrap of paper, and drew a slightly larger  star around it. I then cut that one out and repeated the process to make the largest star.  Voila! 3 stars of different sizes!

I used rub-ons for the word "places" and stamped the other title words.  I wasn't sure whether burgundy or raspberry would be a better match, so decided I would stamp a sample on a scrap of paper.  And the winner is . . . scarlet!  Lucky I tested them first!

the other thing I am enjoying doing these days is trying to add a tiny hint of extra meaning into my pages without necessarily journalling it.  In this case, the heart represents (of course) my love for my children as well as our shared love of reading.  The three stars represents my three "reading superstar" children!
Making the page was the easy part, wish me luck as I attempt to follow all the  blog hop-on instructions!

A useful gift (finally!)

Do you remember far enough back in scrapbooking land when stickers were THE number one embellishment?  Well then, as now, I didn't use stickers a lot except the occasional alphabet ones. 
But I had this lovely, very well-meaning friend who used to go to our local scrapbooking store to buy me a birthday present, and I think she must have thought, "well Julie likes this shop so she must like stickers".
So here it is, I don't know how many years later, and I finally have a use for these "fairytale theme" stickers.  Made for a quick, simple page on my daughter's 5th birthday party.

Can you see the cute crown sticker on Maddy's head in the top photo?