it's been a month again....

and at least i can say that i am consitant...in being a bad blogger! but, sometimes i just wnat to read other peoples blogs and get ideas and inspiration, andthen go off to play! that's a big plus, because i came across this blog and am SUPER excited to get started on the project.

check out the website and have some fun yourself this holiday season!

http://www.shimelle.com/classes/389/journal-your-christmas

maybe i'll see you there....

in the meantime, have a wonderful and yummie turkey day!

OK...it's been a "little" while since i have blogged anything; alright, it's been a loooooooonnnnnnnnnggggggg while since i have blogged anything! but, i've been busy. really, i have! the summer has just flown buy, and there is STILL work to be done on the gardens and the stone walls that we are building. then, there is all of the projects that are just waiting to be worked on in my scrap room.

so, the gardens are ready to be pulled out, the vacation in maine has happened (was that almost 2 months ago?!?!?) i survived "nook u" and i finally have some of my work out there for everyone to see! but, just in case you don't want to go all of the place, i have included some of my "university" work right here!

this layout was for business and technology; our assignment was to create a layout about a business that was important to us and to include the logo along with important journaling.

i chose the "doggie bag and day spaw" since i spend a good amount of time their with penelope!

another class was music; this assignment was to create a layout that had a song title as the title. this class was tough, but after going through pictures again and again, i finally stopped and looked at these pics of jimmy watching the sunset in aruba on our last vacation there and instantly "here comes the sun" popped into my head. i had fun with this layout mixing up papers, flowers and ribbon/lace.

yet another class assignment, for psychology/sociology, was to create a layout focused on a daily routine/ritual...5 days a week this is what i see every morning (if it's sunny!). morning walks with penelope start at 6:30 or so and we go for about 2 miles.

people who scarp with me know that i tend to use and keep everything from my supplies...the title is from packaging from mm noteworthy line, i just added a dymo label to finish!

well, i know it's short, but work calls and i have to take care of that! i promise that i'll try to get some more fun photos up soon...i got to spend the ENTIRE weekend in classes with tim holtz! need to download and then upload...

ttfn!

some more pages...

every once in a while, i DO work on pages!

and penny is quickly becoming the main topic! but seriously though, how could i resist making this page? isn't that picture just to die for???? (ok, i might be a BIT biased!) i very rarely use pink, so this page was even more fun to create; the bright pink and orange worked great when i could use a color picture, but it didn't distract from anything on the page because she's black and white!

penny has some sisters...but they're cats (yuk!)

my DH has hardly changed since he was a kid, and i love this page because i can really see it. i didn't want to destroy the stat sheet that his folks gave me, because all of the pictures are fun, but i wanted to concentrate on only 2 pictures, one more than the other. so i cut out two viewing holes from a piece of velum and laid it over the stat sheet and then used a frame and ribbon to really highlight my favorite pic!

this is actually a 2 page spread (i'll figure out how to get images side by side yet!) that was quick and easy to create. i am really liking dry brushing and the subtle effect it has, and it worked out exactly how i wanted. i didn't want to have anything detract from the tulips themselves, but the background paper was just a little too dark; a couple of quick swipes of a foam brush and i had the background that i wanted.

in order to keep the page very clean, i hid the journaling behind the picture on the left page

when 9-11 happened, i was devastated to know that i would never see those buildings again when we would go into ny. i remembered that on a visit to my DH's folks 9before we were married) he brought me to the towers and we went up. now, i save ALL my ticket stubs, and i was sure that i had them in a wallet somewhere. well, after looking almost everywhere i could think of, they were not found, but it had been over 15 years that we had been there. but then, when looking through some misc. papers and pictures, if found the stubs! tucked away in the graduation gift my DH had given me, there were those two little green pieces of paper that mean so much to me. i think we went there in 1983 or 84, and i found the tickets in 2007. i had no pictures, but created this page with black paper representing the skyline, on black paper. the erie embellishment is the clock in the lower left corner, it is 10 of 9, which, when you look at the face, is 9-11.

this page was fun to work on, very layered, and it was the first time that i actually cut out the design from a patterned paper and used it as an embellishment...i think i need to do that more often!


sometimes, just one flower is more beautiful that a bouquet, and sometimes one picture will do just fine on a page. this was a hard page to get started on, but once i got going by pulling out my scrap bag and tearing paper to create the frame, it all just fell into place. i knew that i didn't want to fill the upper portion of the page, but it needed something...thank goodness i collect transparencies; the dragonfly gave me the finishing touch i was looking for.



my "four legged wonder" is always ready to play football, and i had the chance to take some action shots while daddy was passing the ball. again, this is a 2 page spread.

just having "fun"

what can you do with a 2 inch diam. min tin you ask...well, it turns out that you can do quite a bit! instead of scrapping events, i bet you can see a trend on how i scrap...very mixed up! but, that reflects my life a guess, running in all sorts of directions, but eventually it all makes sense!

so this little album is made up of pictures that were all fun (hence the name!) and i brought them all together by painting the round disks pink, green or yellow. what was neat was, that after i painted everything and the disks were set aside to make sure they were dry, i was trying to figure out how to cover the box...well, i realized that i had made my own paper and used the scrap paper from the painting! i new it would match perfectly and tie everything together neater than a bow!

mini file folder "book"

sometimes it is hard to get the creative juices flowing...especially when you go to a crop and forgot your pictures! that is how this mini (tape dispenser shown for size) folder "book" came to be. i had all of my fun supplies with me, but without the pictures, no pages to create. so i sat, and looked at the stuff in front of me on the table and decided to make something just for me, using new supplies that i had yet to try. color wash, crackle paints and new "pebble" words came together and became this reminder of being creative! i hope you like it as much as i do...

"maine found" 2007

so, i wanted to be able to do some scrappin' while away on vacation in maine last year, but what do i bring and how much do i bring? i didn't want to pack too much, so i brought a set pf papers, my basic class bag, a mini album that hadn't been touched since purchase, and some misc. letters, stamps and rub on's. the only other problem was pictures. i'd be taking quite a few, but didn't really want the hassle of having to bring a printer or find a place to print them out. i think that i came up with an awesome, picture-less scrapbook. i can look at all of these pages, as can my DH and get vivid memories of that vacation! so, don't always think that you need pictures...think outside of the box!
this album contains postcards, business cards, my DH's hospital bracelet and prescription papers (he got pneumonia and we had an emergency room visit), a squished beer bottle cap, pine needles and more. it really is amazing how simple, every day "found" items can evoke Strong memories.

be "you" be creative

i have a problem...i buy WAY too many mini albums! but, on the flip side, i do eventually get around to doing something with them. take this album for instance...a wooden front and back, with "file folder" pages. it was neat, i bought it, but it sat for a while. i can't say what prompted me to finally create this album, but i like the way it came out. i used (as i do frequently) left over packaging from another project, and that is the inspiration of the title, "be you, be creative". i only put in a few pictures that represent what i (need) use to be creative in this hobby that i've become addicted to!