Valentine's Day

For anyone who is not 1 or 2 of Craftyx2, last year Terri and I decided that we were just going to exchange homemade Valentine's between each other since the husbands...don't really care about homemade stuff or Valentine's.
Terri's valentine to me: an awesome box of goodies to play with.

My valentine to Terri: a "love" paper bag album with lots of inserts and place for photos and stories.

SuperBowl cookies

A sampling of the 3 dozen sugar cookies that Brandon and I made for the SuperBowl. We made it easy and used the Wilton cookie icing straight from the bottles, but I gotta say, I may have to go back to buttercream frosting because the icing is almost too sweet.

February 1

Relatively quick and easy one. The paper is 6x6 square from pad, some really old suede photo corners from MM mixed with some new accents from MME. Jounaling is on a hidden libary card, and talks about his personality and interests at age 12.

This is not how the Merry Christmas card was supposed to look. Between the time I started it, and the time I finished it, Jacob had wandered into my room and decided it was his personal coloring playground. I think it turned out ok, though.

I left this one sitting on the desk forever, trying to decide if I wanted to add the crystal swirl or not. It's been fun to mix old photo layouts in with current ones.

Two quick cards from the leftover background paper. This was the last snowflake from that embellie set. Stamp on the second one is from that set we got for dirt cheap at Target last year. I like the open snowflakes in it.

This should have come after the layout, but oh well. The little leather "smile" tag was part of an old EKSuccess set from a batch at Tuesday Morning.

One of my recent favorites. I don't normally use this color blue, especially for a background, but this combo kept speaking to me while trying to pick papers. Love the KI Memories word stickers, and that I can snip it in half to make it look like it spans two pages. It wasn't until I was flipping through the bluebonnet pics, trying to decide which ones to use, that I realized that Brandon managed to avoid having pics taken of just him. I'll get him this year.

Again with the backward photo placement. I didn't plan that very well. I'm blaming 5 hours of sleep out of 48. The "a little hello" stamp is one of the Paper Studio clings from HL. It didn't cling to the acrylic block by itself, but it was ok with a small strip of double sided tape that came off easy afterwards. Totally didn't plan it, but it the stamped image fit perfectly over the flower.

No real reason for this layout, other than I promised myself that I would include more photos of myself in the albums. Finally got to use my BG Stella Ruby paper. I like them, but uh, pink. I may eventually incude some journaling.

2nd Annual Ditch the Kids Crop

One of my favorites of the night, and it was also the last one I did. BG #1

I intended to right in the jounraling with a brown pen when I got home, only to discover that, thanks to Jacob, I don't currently have a brown pen. BG #2

Yay, I used the Stomp dino themed paper for something other than dinos. Allison Davis inspired.

Realized that I had the wrong date on the tag. I'll have to decide how to fix that.I need something red up in the right hand corner to balance it out, just not sure what yet.

The purple paper was leftover from a page I did in 2005. Never expected to actually use it up. Cursive 101 cartridge. BG #4

George cartridge (for heart). BG #5

Picture by Brandon, who told me I HAD to scrapbook it. BG #6

One of my all time favorite photos of Brandon. BG #7

Don't know why I feel compelled to take pics of butterflies and moths, just do. Finally used an embossing folder. :)

Still need something orange down on the border strip.

When I got the photos from this weekend trip in 2006 printed, I said I would probably never scrapbook it since it's such a bad photo, but here it is.

First layout of the night.

Trying to use up some of my Daisy D paper. Sniff.

More Daisy D. Storybook cartridge.

Rick was very good and took his time to read and look at every single time. He even pointed out my typo on here. Nice.

Just a cute, simple one, waiting for journaling. The bugs were part of a present from Brandon. Cursive 101 and Doodletype cartridges.

My favorite photo of me and the boys. BG #8

Finally making my way through all the Thomas stuff. It might be confusing, though. When I showed it to Rick, he thought some of the letters had fallen off and that it was supposed to spell out "loves".

My Community cartridge for the pencil.

OTC paper pack finally getting put to good use.

One of my newest cartridges (Country Life) and some of my oldest Die Cuts (Cockadoodle)

on a roll

Well...look at that big ol' typo. Oops. Luckily I had another one of those journal spots to redo it.

Two cards from the leftover MME glitter paper. Trying to use up a lot of my preprinted die cuts.

Used the leftover craft paper from my scrap used for the flower card to make a bunch of little 2" square cards. Started with the pink butterfly in the back and then went, hey I have butterfly punch. These are what made me realize I needed a little thank you stamp.

Paired some old Daisy D pattern paper with a Bobunny sticker for an easy layout.

Used up the rest of the paper for these. I think my lemon looks a little wonky.

Love this airplane paper.

The green is the backside of the airplane paper and the black is leftover from framing the pic.

This was the layout that I was orignially going to use different alpha stamps on, but they were sticky. I like this better, anyway. The stripy strip is the backside of the cream notebook paper that is the background.

Two quick projects using the leftovers. Still have half a sheet of these sunflower stickers left. I'm going to use the tag on a layout.

No leftovers on this one. Pages are 6x6 squares directly out of the MME pad from M's last year.

Hey, look what I did!

Used an Alison Davis sketch from her blog and some of my MME Stomp paper. The title actually says "Dino Spike" but it's really hard to see the smaller letters. It's been a while since I really used stamps on a page, but I'm having fun with it. No misc. small products with the leftovers, since the leftovers are still pretty large pieces that can be used on other pages.

BG paper. Blue swirl is the front, brown/blue polka dot is the back. K&Co. glitter snowflakes.

Used some of the leftover strips of paper for a card and a tag. The card is ok. Like the color combination. Not sure what I'll use the tag for. Discovering that pigment inks really don't work well for my acrylic stamps and have been sticking to dyebased inks.

K & Co. paper, LYB title, and MM felt "25" and holly leaf. Glitter borders are from HL. Adapted a Becky Higgins sketch.

I really kind of stink at cards. The polka dot pattern is the backside of the present paper. Bracket labels are from the Anna Griffin Valentine journal pad. Stamp is one of the little $1 stamps from M's. Flower was part of a huge MM set from Target that I got on clearance a few years ago. Almost through them all.

The 6" squares of paper are from a sheet of WRMK paper. Just set the other two aside to use on a different layout, so no leftovers.

MME paper, LYB die cut journal box, old AC rubons and Wubbzy cut from a DVD sleeve last year and set aside. I think I may have to ditch the rubons; at this size they look fine, but IRL you can see how they cracked during application. I think time and too many temp changes are taking a toll on them.

I really liked the green paper for how versatile it was. I think it was part of a more vintagy/hertiage stack, but it looked good with just about everything. I traced a tag onto some script paper and tried to go for a slightly shabby feel. I was thinking of adding a pic to use as an accent on a future page. Next was a little brown bag tag hidden journaling thing. Had them forever. Out of 10 in the package, I think I've used about 4 now. Added a MM felt poinsettia and some gingham ribbon. Going to use it for journaling on a page in the Christmas album from 2008. The two easy cards. The first one is a MME card from the big Peachy Cheap order paired with some Prima flowers, and the second is a just a BoBunny stickers. Easy, but I like them.