Finally….

It occurred to me this weekend that although I try to do A Day in the Life each month, I never post the pics here. And since it’s a time-consuming, photo heavy taking day, I thought I should share some of what I capture.

Here’s a few from April:

7:37am – Ella

7:53am – breakfast

8:10am – Molly off to school

9:13am – Instagram with Gabe

10:52 – getting ready for our walk

12:02pm – walking home from school

1:37pm – homework

4:12pm – self timer pics with Gabe

4:46pm – taking pics of retreat LO’s

6:36pm – evening bike ride

Simple Scrapper Blog Hop & GIVEAWAY | May 2013

07 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook, Simple Scrapper

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Scrapbook Layout, Simple Scrapper, Sketch Templates

The story starters and templates were amazing this month! I love them every month but there was something special about this set that I really enjoyed. Maybe it’s because I got to have fun with one of Gabe’s crazy pics or maybe it’s because my Mom did the journaling for the other. Either way, this is a great month to be a member!

And we’re doing a giveaway so make sure you use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter for a one month trial membership at Simple Scrapper! This is an awesome way to test the waters if you’re not a member yet. There are three ways to enter and three winners will be selected. To be eligible, you must enter by 11:59pm CDT on Wednesday, May 8.

My first LO is from this month’s templates and uses one of Gabe’s crazy face pics.

Since the picture wasn’t the main theme of this LO – his funny quote was! – I chose to minimalize the photo and make the title/quote really stand out by using an Amy Tangerine Stitching template. I was iffy while making it (and it was a lot of work to be iffy about!) but I love how it turned out:

I used a bunch of layers to mat the photo and make a space for my journaling tag:

The second LO was inspired by one of this month’s Story Starters and my mom provided the journaling and the title:

I used an awesome paper by Pink Paislee for this one – it’s a resist and when I misted it with some Heidi Swapp Color Shine the pattern popped and shimmered like crazy! I also used the mist on some Heidi Swapp hearts to get the same colour embellies with a different resist pattern, plus added enamel dots and glitter paper for more bling:

I had some awesome glitter letters but they didn’t show up on the background so I tinted them with the Color Shine as well:

And here’s my mom’s journaling – she was at home so I had to print it on the computer but I’m planning to get her to hand write it and add that to the LO:

Want some more inspiration? Check out the rest of the team – as always, they blew me away with their creations!

Simple Scrapper (Jennifer Wilson)

Lisa Corbin-Polak

Ronnie Crowley

Margrethe Aas Johnsen

Sara Case Strickland <– that’s me!

And finally, don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a free month of the Premium Membership!

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/MjcxM2I1MjhjNmI4ZmY2MGNhN2NmZTI3ODk1OWVkOjU=/

The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping. Each month members receive a new collection of sketch templates and Story Starters, story-focused prompts for pages and projects. Want to work with our collections for FREE? Simple Scrapper is having a call for new team members.

A bit of this, a bit of that – and some tissue wrap for good measure!

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Sara in Art Journal

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Art Journal, distress paint, Mixed media, tissue wrap

While I was at the Paperie Retreat last weekend I demoed some products for the girls who were sitting close to me. And the demoing got done in my Art Journal.

A bit of Distress Paint marbling, showing how easy it is to clean the dabber tops of said paint, a bit of mist, some primary elements, molding paste through a stencil… You get the drift.

It’s enough to say that those two pages were a disastrous mess once I was done. Seriously. I should have taken a picture, I thought there would be no redemption for them!

Then I had the brilliant thought to tone down all the vibrancy and clashing colours and chaos with some Ranger Tissue Wrap.

And it worked better than hoped. So well in fact that I don’t want to cover it up – I love it now!

Don’t you think this would make an awesome scrapbook page background? Even the random lines and squiggles add to the texture of the base when they’re pushed to the background.

For a soaking wet, colourful mess of random stuff, this ended up being an awesome success – yay for playing in Art Journals!

update: I finally finished the page and covered my beloved base layer – see it here!

The Undones aka Layouts ala KP

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Sara in ScrapBook

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Dina Wakley, Kelly Purkey, Scrapbook Layout

Today I’m channeling Cathie and posting some “Undones.”

While I was at The Paperie retreat this past weekend I finished up the LO’s we did while Kelly Purkey was here teaching in March. They’re super simple but all done!

Apart from adding some washi tape (Thanks Cathy!) this is pretty much the LO that Kelly did in class – a bit of misting through a stencil, some awesome Dear Lizzy glitter alphas, and fun beaded adhesive strips:

I completely changed up the next one because… well just because I wanted to!

I stamped the stencil after misting through it, changed the colour of the flowers and the placements of the pics, added a tear strip under the photos to ground them, and punched a border on the edges. However, I did keep the flowers centres – the dots from the i’s on the sticker sheet, pure genius:

Finally, I went kind of in between – this started out as Kelly’s LO and then I just kept adding blocks so it’s a little fuller than hers was but has the same base:

I love the clear embossed resist ampersand:

And I added the popped up “happy” diecut from the Dear Lizzy pack:

This was a super fun class and Kelly used some awesome papers, stencils, and mists. I think it’s safe to say that we all had a great weekend when she was here!

In other news, The Paperie finally announced this weekend that Dina Wakley is coming in August to teach for a whole weekend! If you live in Atlantic Canada, plan a trip to NL for mid-August because this is going to be an incredible opportunity to learn from one of the best in the industry with regards to Art Journaling and Mixed Media. To say I’m excited would be an understatement – vibrating might be more accurate!