Three Cards, Two Challenges, and 1 Layout

I made a few cards the past week for various occasions. The first was Rick's birthday:

The next was to celebrate the birth of a friend's baby (his initials are TC).

The girls also made cards for him. :)

Then I made a card for a baby shower. This one was also for the Surprise Challenge at Challenge Masters. The challenge was to make a "shaker card". To make mine, I cute the bear using the Cricut and the Doodlecharms cartridge. I used a craft knife to cut out the middle of the belly. I cut a piece of transparency to match the size of the hole and glued it over the hole. Then I cut foam adhesive into small pieces and lined the edges of the hole. I poured a few colors of beads into the "bowl I had created with the foam and then pressed the card onto the the tape to attach the accent.

Finally, I made this layout with pictures from my brother and sister-in-law's wedding from last year. I did the Manufacturer Challenge for this one. The challenge was to use products from 4 of the following manufacturers: Bazzill, Echo Park, Fancy Pants, Bo Bunny, Making Memories, American Crafts, and Prima. I used Bazzill Bling for the mats, Bo Bunny for the background, American Crafts Thickers for the title, Fancy Pants rub-ons, and Prima polka dot flowers.

Project 365 Week 5

This past week we celebrated Rick's birthday and started our "school year" schedule, and I got to enjoy my birthday gift (Scrapfest!) so it was a busy week. I only missed taking a photo one day though, so I have included an extra photo from Rick's birthday.


9/13 Ellie making a birthday card for Daddy


9/14 Rick and the kids


9/14 Rick's cake, I used the game Memoir 44 as inspiration

9/16 Ellie before her first night of dance


9/17 Tim Holtz at Scrapfest. If you don't know who he is or about his amazingness, you can check out his blog here.


9/18 Ellie playing Tobago


9/19 Sara and Weston at their shower

Project 365 Week 4

We've had a busy week! So here are my photos from last week (finally!).

9/6- Our friends' new baby, 2 days old


9/7 Flowers from the Farmers' Market


9/8 Where our pillows usually reside. The girls like to make paths, houses, etc. with them.


9/9 Ellie looking at the flamingos at the zoo (one of her favorites).


9/10 Will is 2 months old!


9/11 Rick, Ellie and Addy in the Jim's Apple Farm candy store- it was huge!


9/12 The Memoir 44 board as Rick and I play one of our nightly games.

Two New Layouts

This week I managed to complete two layouts. The first was for week two of Project Scrapbook. Here was the challenge for the week:

Food plays a huge part of our lives, even at gatherings people tend to gravitate towards the kitchen. Scrapbooks are a great place to celebrate those gatherings, however the little times away from Christmas, Thanksgiving and parties tend to get neglected. Remember, ever day life is just as special as the big moments! Take a moment to appreciate the day to day and the great food memories. A special meal you make for someone. The Funny word your kid/grandkid uses for "Spaghetti". Even a funny food story or a trip out for ice cream.

8.5 x 11 - 15 points
12 x 12 - 20 points
12 x 12 Double Layout - 40 points
Title - 10 points
Pictures - 10 points per picture
Embellishments/stickers - 5 points per
YOUR LAYOUT MUST INCLUDE
Journaling (recipes not included)
50 words or less - 25 points
50+ words or more - 35 points

"Make it work" bonus - 100 points (in addition to the above points)
Use a piece of packaging/logo of the food you are discussing in the layout. In addition, you are only allowed to use the colors on the packaging/food item. If you special thing is eating out, use only the colors from the logo.

I was initially going to make a page about how my 3 1/2 year old says avocados (hadocados), but then my husband suggested I do one using the photos from making smores. What a great idea and it gave me more colors to work with for the "Make it work" bonus!

I used some craft foam to make the marshmallow accent. I used chalk on that and the letters to give them a roasted look. I was inspired by a camping layout on page 22 of the August issue of Scrapbooks, Etc. The food labels in the bottom right corner are cut from the actual packages (I had to move my marshmallows to a Ziploc bag). I am much happier with the result of this challenge!

Here is my point breakdown:
12x12= 20 points
Title= 10 points
Pictures= 4x10= 40 points
Embellishments= 5x 12= 60 points
Journaling= more than 50 words= 35 points
Make It Work= 100 points

Total= 265


The second layout was for the Technique Challenge at Challenge Masters. The challenge was to do reverse masking. With reverse masking, you are altering the paper within the mask/stencil and preserving that around or outside it. For mine, I flipped over the striped border strip and used an ink pad for the border on the left of the photo strip. I also used a circle template with white acrylic paint and green chalk under the title.

New Projects and Project 365 Week 3

Well, it's been a busy week, but I have found a little time to get some scrapping done and take pictures each day. I will start with my scrapping projects. The first is a layout that I used this sketch from Sketchy Thursdays:

Here is the layout. It was fun to just play around with product and use one of my new border punches.

I've decided to start building my card stash by using the scraps from the layouts I make to create a card. Here is the one I made using scraps from the above layout.


Here are my photos for the week:

8/30 Our friends' newborn baby


8/31 My water bottle and flowers collected by my girls at the park


9/1 My girls playing in birdseed in the driveway


9/2 A polar bear at the Como Zoo


9/3 My daughter in the ball pit at open gym


9/4 My daughter having a smore


9/5 Bottles and pump pieces, my life has revolved around these things for the past week as we try to figure out what is going on with my son's digestion

Blue Ribbon Scrapping

This past month I entered some projects into a couple of area county fairs. I have been doing this for a few years because it is fun to show off some of my work and sometimes there is a little money involved.

The first fair was the Dakota County Fair. I haven't had a lot of success at this fair in the past, but this year I entered two projects: the wedding album I made for my brother and sister-in-law and a travel album I did of a trip my husband and I took last spring. You can see it here. I received a blue ribbon on the wedding album and a red (2nd premium) on the vacation album!

I also entered a couple of projects in the Steele County Fair. For this fair you are only allowed to enter 2 12x12 pages per entry. The great part of this fair is that the winner of the scrapbooking division receives a $50 gift certificate to the scrapbook store in Owatonna. I won 2 years ago... and won again this year!! The store has a post with photos of the winning projects here. The other project I entered was my "Park Play" layout from this post. This layout received an Honorable Mention ribbon.

Until next year! :)

Project Scrapbook

This week began "Project Scrapbook" at Challenge Masters. Our first challenge was:

Dig out those birthday pictures and let's scrap that dreaded topic! This past weekend my daughter turned 3 years old and now I have gift bags galore, wrapping and tissue have taken over! Don't let the subject matter intimidate you! You can do it!! Let's make use of those party supplies scrappers!

I know a layout can be hard without pictures and some of us just don't have them so for this challenge a card is acceptable too!

Card - 10 points
8.5 x 11 - 15 points
12 x 12 - 20 points
Title - 10 points
Journaling
50 words or less - 25 points
50+ words or more - 35 points
Pictures - 10 points per picture
Party Supply - 10 points per party supply.

"Make it work" bonus - 100 points (in addition to the above points)
Use ONLY party supplies with the exception of pictures. Stamping on/or altering the supplies is just fine, but everything on the layout/card MUST be a party supply. Journaling is acceptable, but if it's on a "journaling block" the block needs to be made out of some party supply. Greeting cards, wrapping paper, gift bags, napkins, party hats, plates... anything goes, but it must be a party supply. No card stock or pattern paper allowed!

This was quite the challenge for me as we don't have a lot of party supplies around. Most of what I used on the page was wrapping supplies. I am pretty happy with the page, but I am not crazy about how the title turned out. Not sure what to do at this point, I may redo it if it bugs me too much.



Here is how my points added up:
Points
12x12= 20 pts
Title= 10 pts
Journaling (49 words)= 25 pts
Pictures x6= 60 points
Supplies= wrapping paper background, gift bag cut up for photo mats, plate cut up for title tag, tissue paper on embellishments, box cut up for base of page and embellishments, ribbon x5= 110 pts
Make it work= 100 pts

total= 325 pts

I also made a birthday card this week for my niece using scraps from the "Reception" layout I did the other day. It was so easy using paper that was already out that I knew worked together. I may have to do this more often!