Big Project

The lack of recent scrapping posts indicates I've been swamped with something.. and here it is! A good (great, really) friend of mine asked me to do her kid's baby books - a first year book for each of them. That was towards the beginning of November and the goal was to get the first one done in time for Christmas. Well, I didn't quite make it (there are a lot of pictures for a first year!! :), but I did take her a decent sized book of 33 pages and she seemed pleased. Which of course was thrilling for me.

We all know how many pictures there can be of our first baby's first year. So there was plenty of picking and choosing that had to be done before we began, and we've decided we'll go for around 50 pages. I'm thrilled with this decision, because there are so many great pictures, it could easily go on 100. I'm sure some of you who scrap ALL your kid's pictures have book upon book like this. But doing a commission book requires some limits, right? So I'm learning a lot about these limits and how this works.

Here are some of the pages. Yay!!

(You may notice some blank areas... there are some spots open for journaling for the fabulous mommy to add her 2cents! :)

Sophia's Invites

Sophia made her birthday invitations today, and I thought I should share since she has been featured on here before. :)

She turns 6 next week and is having a few friends over for a little party after school that day. The party has a loose theme of Taylor Swift, horses, and being a girl. :) It should be fun. As usual, she was in charge of the design. I had picked up some materials I thought she would like, and she took it from there. I'm always impressed with her ideas. I know I'm biased. It doesn't matter. Either way, I'm so glad we get to work together on something we both enjoy!

Untie the ribbons.

One of my favorite creations ever. It was our Christmas card a few years ago and on the back I included a bit of a Christmas letter explaining our eventful year. I love the picture of my girls, the colors, and the quote - something we should all keep in mind. Not too complicated, not too busy - just right.

Stitch It

This is my layout for Practical Scrapper's week of stitching! I usually stay far away from the sewing machine, but for this project I stretched out and headed to my mom's. She tried to teach me to sew in the early years of 4H, but it didn't trip my trigger.

But I saw a layout like this a few weeks ago, and immediately knew it was what I wanted to do for this week's challenge. I cannot for the life of me find the article from which I scraplifted it. I know it was in a Creating Keepsakes and when I find it I'll give credit to the original creator!! But it worked out great for this page that is a part of a commissioned baby book. (My first!) Not too complicated, except you have to have a sewing machine. For the star, I hand stitched. My time with the sewing machine went so well today that I'm thinking maybe I should try the sewing thing again. I LOVE making things, and being able to at least put together some curtains seems like a reasonable task. We'll see!

I haven't had much mojo lately to post on here, but this baby book is helping get me going, so hopefully I can share more soon! The holidays and deadlines are keeping me on my toes!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Fun with Paints

Acrylic Paints. Ah, how fun they sound!! But how often they are avoided. After this challenge I now realize how great they are, especially in the right situation. I loved using paint on the back of my transparency. I will definitely do that again. I think I'd like to use it for a title background and add a rub-on to it as well. And hello - on chipboard it will come in so handy. I've had these for a while, but they will be getting way more use from here on out.

Rough it up

Color core and white core cardstock. I'm going to have to get some more of this. I really enjoyed playing with it. I have such a paper addiction... :) And Practical Scrappers really has forced me to use stuff I wasn't using. Which means it's about time to go shopping!

Simplicity

Practical Scrappers has a new feature we're calling Simplicity. I'm excited about this for a few different reasons. So far designing with Practical Scrappers, I've been challenging myself to do layouts that I probably wouldn't have made before PS. It's been great. I love the creativity and the stash I'm using!

But when I sat down to do a Simple layout, I was more excited about the process than I have been in a while. For a long time I've wanted to focus on clean&simple, and now I really have an excuse to do this. I need to have a specific goal and challenge to be simple and creative at the same time. That's what I've aimed for in the past, and now it can be like my job. :)

Btw, we are featuring something different every weekday: (M)Layouts, (T)Cards, (W)Cricut/Cuttlebug Projects, (TH)Altered Projects and Simplicity, and a (F)Guest Designer along with my little analysis of the week's challenge. Lots of beautiful pages and ideas over there from some incredibly talented women! Our new design team is up and running, bringing with them some fresh looks. Oh, and over the next 2 months we'll start running lots of Christmas projects and ideas which will be fun and festive. Can you tell I'm excited?! I LOVE this stuff!