January 31, 2012

LOAD 2012 Past Perfect

Ok, so I did not do so well with Journal Your Christmas last month.. but it is a new year and I am determined to do better! I have signed up for Lain Ehmann's Layout a Day Challenge for February. I may not write up an actual blog post every day, but I will be making a layout every day in February! My goal is to complete the 2009 Disney album, and scrap some pictures from our year with Sira. Wish me luck!

January 11, 2012

Disney Cruise Album.. and a tip

I was actually quite productive in the craft room this weekend! I put away all of the seasonal stuff and made 5 layouts for the cruise album! As with my other cruise layouts I kept the same color scheme and used the Two Peas 4x6 Photo Love course as inspiration. 3 of the layouts below are all based on the same sketch (February's), but I rotated the layout and used different photo sizes so that they were not identical. 
I am not loving all of the white space on "Waiting to Board"  I might add some more paint/ glimmer mist splatters... but I am not sure yet. The flat top eyelets and letter stickers have been in my stash for YEARS and I am glad to finally use them.

This is the page that faces "Waiting to Board". It is not exactly a 2 page layout, and there is a piece of paper between the two pages that has the boarding itinerary on it, but I wanted it to flow.
For "and so it begins" I based the layout on the January 4x6 photo love layout. I know that the January layout had only 1 photo, but it was still the inspiration! The title was cut on my Cricut and came from Kerri Bradford . I love her stuff and have purchased a bunch of titles from her for my scrapbooking! The title is cut from CS from my stash and PTI's Bitty Dot Basics paper. The buttons I have had in my stash for a while. The bling is from Michaels and was colored red with a sharpie.
As I was digging though my paper trying to find the paper that I had set aside for this album I ran across the Echo Park - Splash Collection, and it fit with my color scheme perfectly!  "I love swimming" uses the February 4x6 photo love layout, rotated 90 degrees.
"dance" also uses the Echo Park - Splash collection. I added stickles to the swirl to match the Dance sticker, and also added her nickname "Lolo" in the bottom right corner in stickles.  The yellow star is actually acrylic that I added some yellow paint to the edges. The silver star charms are more from my very old stash. Of course as I was looking through Kerri's blog to find the title for "and so it begins" to add into the supplies list I saw the PERFECT title for this one in a set that I already own (Say What #1)! I am not sure if I am going to change it or not...

Ok.. if you made it through all of the layouts that I finished this weekend I have a tip for you! I put 12x12 - 6up photo sleeves in the back of the album that I am using and put all of the pictures in them in order. That way when it comes time for me to make a layout I have all of the pics ready and visible.
 I also punched holes in the Navigators (the daily schedule that we had on the cruise) and put them with the pics. This helps jog my memory since the cruise was over 2 years ago, and I am keeping them in the album between the pages!

Supplies used:

January 9, 2012

My gift from Amanda

My sister made me the most amazing piece of art for Christmas, tailored to the colors that I want in my craft room!

It is huge, and gorgeous, and filled with all sorts of texture and glittery detail! The butterflies have multiple textures, and bling! And there is this beautiful glittery swirl going on in the background. I absolutely LOVE it! Now I just need to move my curtain rods that display my finished layouts so that I can hang this above my craft table.

Amanda posted a tutorial on her blog.. go check it out!