50 Layout Challenge, weeks 41-44

week 41

week 42

week 43
This is the week where I thought I might switch to digital scrapbooking, but then Rick said that he wondered if the enjoyment for me wasn't more the process than the output, and he must have been speaking to my self conscious, because for the next 2 days all I could think about and dream about was paper scrapbooking, but in 12x12. So for fun I decided to do 2014 as a 12x12 scrapbook to see if I like it.

week 44
One of the nice things about the 12x12 experiment is that I can use "framed" and full page design paper and try scraplifting some online layouts and kits a little easier. This was a Paisley and Polka Dots kit that sold out almost immediately. If it were still for sale I would have gotten it, but as it was I had most of the paper in my stash.

They seriously color boosted the photo, because none of the papers are this bright in real life.

Since I had several of the embellishments for this line, I added in some die cuts and some flair.

 

Only 6 weeks left :)

I had completed the 2014 in 2014 Challenge and the 50 Project challenge in here, but am posting out of order, lol.

For the 50 project challenge, I also counted things like uploading and ordering pics, setting up my Christmas scrapbooking station, setting up the bases for Terri and my December albums, sorting and putting away prints, putting layouts in to albums, etc. All projects, layout/cards or not, that were on my to do list counted.

Project Life, week 15

This week the color scheme is much more me :)

All the journaling cards were made a few weeks ago with the leftovers of one of my counterfeit kits

365 Layouts total: 181 layouts and 5 mini books

Counterfeit kit #5

The kit:

the August 2009 My Creative Scrapbook mini kit. Most of it is MM Giggle Kids, a line exclusive to Archivers. I had most of it, and every time I would take it out, I would end up putting it back and choosing something else, so this was a good challenge to use it up. My take on the kit:
Most of the same papers, some flowers and ribbon, and I switched out the thickers for a set of chipboard alphas. As usual, I ended up using mostly the "b" sides of the papers. For example, the red Sassafrass geometric print? Didn't use a single bit of the red side, but used every bit of the tan bingo grid on the other side.
Allison Davis sketch. Added in: Deja Views journal block and an old MM yellow "a" sticker. I colored the chipboard letters with a Bic Mark-it pen.
Add-in: rhinestone brad

I saw the tan and the greens sitting next to each other than thought they'd make a cute tree, so I gave it a try. The green geometric was already a square, I just trimmed a wavy edge around it. Add-ins: rhinestones I had sitting on my desk, yellow cardstock scrap and Ali Edwards stamp sets.
Add-ins: leftovers from the yellow cardstock scrap, Deja Views journal card, Ali Edwards stamp, twine
On this one, I just started laying leftover pieces down. The alpha stamps are a set I found at Tuesday Morning for $2. One of the things that drew me to them (other than the font and the price :) ) was that there are several of each letter, making it easy to do lines of journaling all at once.
Add-ins: tags, the rest of the yellow cardstock, and Ali Edwards stamp.
Add-ins-Jenni Bowlin journal block and silver "rhinestones" I had laying on my desk. (Obviously I need to clean my desk)
I saw the large square of orange I had left and mixed with the leftover green, thought of pumpkins and realized I had once set of fall pictures left that I hadn't scrapped yet. I searched my Allison Davis scrapbook sketches books for sketches that had a large circle, and used the one I liked the best. I kept the orange as mostly a square shape, since I was afraid trimming it into a smaller circle shape would look weird since I wasn't carrying the shape over to the other page. Add-ins: thickers stickers, a glittered ginko leaf from Michaels, and some K & Co. sunflower stickers (the very last of the set, finally. LOL)
I was out of pictures, so I made some journal cards for PL. I was going to start cutting some larger pieces, when I realized what I had left was kind of patriotic so I came up with this:
Add-in: Bo Bunny journal card.

All that's left is some smaller pieces that I'll stick into the card scrap pile. 10 layouts and some journaling cards...not bad.

365 Layouts total: 162 and 5 mini albums

counterfeit kit #4

My inspiration was the Sweet Peach Crop Shop June 2011 kit, but apparently they closed up shop at the end of December and their website is no longer there to pull the pic from, and I don't tend to save the pics after I print them, so...this was my take on it. The original had a couple pieces of MME Lime Twist and other assorted papers. I had a few pieces from the line, but I really just bought the 6x6 pad and several of the die cuts. Since what drew me to the kit was the the color combo of orange/blue/green, I just went with that and started pulling stuff from my stash.

Added in a Martha Stewart chipboard number, a MME frame, white buttons, and a Martha Stewart round tag from her new office supply line. I kind of went with a mama and babies feel with the flowers to echo the sentiment of the pic.
After I trimmed down the paper, I cut the remaining clouds from the discarded piece and pop dotted them onto the layout for dimension.
This photo was cracking us up last night. Look how small they were!
The diagonal stripe paper is the backside of the number paper, so I just flipped it over and added Karen Foster letter stickers, since I wasn't sure how well the green ones would show on the blue paper.
Mustache cut from a scrap of Echo Park paper, Martha Stewart office tag, and Karen Foster alpha stickers added in. Based on a Becky Fleck/Pagemaps sketch.

I still have a few sheets that didn't get used, and a decent amount of embellies left, but I lost my mojo for the paper after layout #6. Still pretty please with the six I got out of it.

365 Layouts total: 128 layouts and 5 mini books.

Counterfeit Kit #3

My 3rd counterfeit kit is from A Million Memories, March 2010 but I can no longer find the image on their site or blog, so...here is my take on it. Basically their kit was a few pieces from Cosmo Cricut Material Girl and Garden Variety, some green alphas, a lot of ribbon and some buttons. I stayed pretty true to that since I have the Material Girl/Garden Variety double deck paper pad, except I left out the dressmakers pattern patterned paper and substituted greyish ad patterned paper instead and substituted a different blue patterned paper.

It's overcast today and late afternoon, so not great photos, but here are the layouts I made.
Layout #1...I'm not especially pleased with it, but I've been moving the pictures around for 7 years, so I'm glad to get them scrapbooked. Just a couple pics from my trip to Phoenix for my sisters community college graduation and the story of calling Rob "captain", as he was driving an "Enterprise" rent a truck that weekend. Added in a BoBunny sun journaling die cut and an MME frame.
Not really sure what I had in mind for this layout, but I think the result is cute. Not often I use lace and flowers on a layout, so go, me!
This layout started out as something completely different. The left hand side is a sketch by Becky Fleck/Pagemaps and was supposed to have a pic of Brandon from several years ago in the makeshift "office" he created in the corner of the living room to be "just like dad". As I was working on it, I couldn't escape the fact that I only see these papers as "gardenish" and I finally gave up, created the second page, slipped the yellow strip in on the left hand side to balance out the yellow and added the chipboard die cuts. Now, I have a layout ready for garden pictures this spring. :)

Still have some paper and scraps left, but after moving them around for 2 days, I conceded defeat with 4 different sets of photos and put the scraps in the "make cards" file and called it good.

365Layouts total: 39 layouts and 3 mini books.

Mini Book Monday

I'm trying to get in the habit of making all the little mini books that I have planned, so first up was making one using some of my leftover Counterfeit Kit #3 papers.

There were a couple of sheets of paper that had 4 6x6 squares on one side, so I let that guide my albums size. I use a 12x12 sheet of packing corrugated cardboard and cut it into fourths for my covers and two insert pages to give it some stability, then I started "decorating" the inside pages.

I've seen several "this I believe" layouts where scrapbookers recorded their basic beliefs, so I wanted to record mine, and this little album seemed like a good way to do it.

Counterfeit Kit #2

For my second Counterfeit Kit, I chose Little Red Scrapbooks March 2011 main kit, which is essentially the Echo Park For the Record kit with a few accents. I already had the FTR kit, and just added in stuff from my color drawers. At first I was struggling because I don't have a lot of flowers or little doodads, and it finally dawned on me that I was making it harder than it needed to be. Finally I added stuff in that matched in color and "feel" rather than trying to match item for item. This is what I came up with:

Pressed Petals yellow chipboard letters, CI filmstrip border, EK Success button up buttons, MM red twistel, KI Memories word border stickers, a Sonnet's metal rimmed tag, MM felt flowers, Paper Studio Spare Parts black polka dot flowers, an old Colorbok tag and a few misc. doodads.

First up: the not-bluebonnet pics. We waited too long to go this year and completely missed the bluebonnets, but we were able to find a little patch of yellow wildflowers.
It started off as an Allison Davis sketch (Feb 2010 from her website, not Sketch Support), but didn't end up looking like it at the end. The left hand side is pretty true to the sketch, two stacked vertical pics and a pic next to them, but the right hand side got changed up a little. I wanted to keep the background in the pics, so didn't trim them down into squares, which meant I had to overlap the last pic. All of that (and my smaller page size) meant the background paper placement wouldn't work, so I just went with some paper strips. I like how it turned out.
I've been wanting to tell this story for awhile, so I was glad that the pic went with the papers. Added in an old MME frame and some $ stamps from Michaels.
The border on this paper worked well for cutting down and piecing back together, but I thought the 4th side overwhelmed the small area too much, so I left it off. The only thing not from the kit is the baker's twine.
Probably my favorite from this group. There was a day back in December that Jacob just wanted to be cuddled, so Rick took some pics of it. The yellow letters were to big and bold, so I used some green Thickers from my stash, and some of the alphas from the kit. I really liked the rose stickers from the kit and wanted to use them somehow and after I had cut them out from the sheet and set them down, I realized how it looked like a momma and baby, so that's how I ended up using them on the layout. The ruler-look border strip ended up working well, I used a glittery MM ring tag to bring attention to it and use it to show Jacob's age.
Sadly, the only picture from Mother's Day this year. The black alpha stickers are the third style from the kit.
Brandon, ready to head out to one of the scout camps. The letters are big and bold, so I didn't do too much embellishing.
Still had quite a bit of paper left over, but was out of pictures that I had selected, so I started playing with paper and moving pieces around until I came up with this. At Christmas I get to see two friend that I haven't seen in a long time, so I'll probably use it for that and use some little off white shipping tags peeking out from under the mats for journaling.

These layouts also mark the begining of my Layout a Day challenge. I'm going to try and complete 365 layouts in 365 days, starting on November 1, 2011. I decided not to wait until the first of the year, since I had several projects coming up and wanted to be able to count them. :) I fully admit that it probably won't be one layout a day, but rather, as this month has proved so far, an average of one per day.

So, 365L total so far: 7

Counterfeit Kit #1

There are monthly kit clubs offered by several companies, and they intrigued me. Boxes of goodies, the latest and greatest products, picked to coordinate and delivered straight to your door...what's not to love? Well, some of them cost up to $50. A lot of them, you have to subscribe for multiple months. And, just because you love what they've come up with the last 2 months, there's no guarantee you're going to even like the next 3 months. And therein was my problem. Enter the idea of counterfeit kits (which was totally not mine). Basically, you find inspiration from a kit, and then go dig through your stash and come up with your own, and you don't even spend a penny.

I have to admit, though, that this is backwards for me. I usually choose pictures, then product. Choosing a bunch of paper and embellishments and then finding groups of pictures to work with...I haven't done so well with it in the past, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying it, and liking the layouts a came up with.

I went to several different kit club websites and found 40 or so that I liked, and then took the 10 that looked the most interesting to me, and made up my kits. First up:

Little Red Scrapbook's May 2010 kit. Look at all the happy colors! And, if you look closer, it's all October Afternoon paper. Is it any wonder that I was drawn to it? And is it all that shocking that I had most of it? No. (And that is something that I discovered about a lot of the kit clubs, upon closer inspection, most of them aren't mixing and matching manufacturers anymore). And here's my kit:
Since the bottom row of paper from the kit club papers is the flip side of the top row papers, I had to actually get creative, since I usually just buy one sheet of each design. Not a lot of embellies, since I don't own a lot of birds and such.
I would have never chosen these papers for these pics, but I really like how it turned out.
extra project: a cleaned out container from the Target bakery that was filled with packets of nuts as a gift for Terri. The paper also rings the actual container.
I don't usually use blue cardstock for backgrounds, but since it was part of the "kit"...Inspired by an Allison Davis sketch.
One of my favorites. I've had these metal letters for awhile, but since there is only one of each letter, I had to get creative. The second E is actually an F and an L layered together.
I like how this turned out. The paper on the top half has been a favorite, even if I didn't know what to do with it for a long time.
Some old scans of one of Brandon's books. He declared that this was Rick and me (always cleaning/always causing mischief).
Eh.
Pictures I took of one of Terri's sons while I was watching him. The colors fit perfectly with this kit,which is good, because I have an appalling amount of pink paper for never using it.
I have no idea what I'm going to do with this layout. I was putzing around with the pieces I have left (which is actually a lot) and ended up with this, and liking it, but having no pic to put on it yet. It will eventually find a home.

I should have had plenty of cards from the rest of the leftovers, but my creative mojo for cards is currently hiding. So, that's it for now.

100 projects total: 37