Scrapbooking And A Little Bit Of Everyday Life
it's tutorial day on the bella blvd blog, and i just happen to be the one doing the tutorial this week 🙂
find out how i started with this.
and ended up with this. it's almost like a trash to treasure type of thing. you can see the final layout, and all the steps, on the bella blvd blog.
time to pick a winner for a free copy of the new creative spaces 2011 special issue. i meant to take a screen shot of my random number generator's pick, but i accidently closed it out without getting the shot. so, you'll have to trust me on this one. #10 is the lucky one today!
a certain 14 year old in this house picked up some awards at school this week. if you guessed alyssa, you'd be right. partly, because she's the only 14 year old in the house. lol! the high school band had a concert on monday evening, and afterwards they had an awards ceremony. they handed out the participation awards, and then moved on to a few special ones. she picked up one of the two "director's awards" for the freshman band members.
then, on wednesday evening, they had the academic awards at the school. she snagged three awards. a honor certificate, for a GPA of 3.0 and higher for the year. a honor pin, for a GPA of 4.0 or higher (her's was higher ;)) for the year. and a baby buff scholar award (their school mascot is the buffalo) for freshman earning a GPA of 3.5 or higher for the year. we could not be more proud of her, and how well she has done in high school.
i think maybe a certain someone deserves a little something from her family. something fun, to let her know we think she's pretty cool. and do you know what she thinks is pretty cool? oreo cookies! she's not big on candy or junk food. but she is all about the cookies. it's an easy way to make her smile.
have you seen the new bravissimo collection by making memories? it's a fun reward and recognition collection, that can be personalized to fit your occasion. they are perfect for all the big occasions, like birthdays, graduations, and weddings. but they're also perfect for all the little occasions in between. just like giving alyssa her own little award from us, in recognition for all the awards she got at school this week.
the bravissimo collection can be found in michaels stores. they come in a variety of styles and sizes. you can pick out all your own pieces, and assemble them from start to finish. you can find semi-finished ones, that you just add your sentiments too. you can find finished ones, that are ready to go right out of the package. there are extra add-on pieces to really personalize the awards. there are even wands, medals, and shadow boxes. so much to choose from.
the semi-finished bravissimos can be customized with the perfect sentiment to fit your occasion. i chose this red and white semi-finished piece. there are 4 pack sentiment sets, that have 3 sentiments and one metal piece to adhere it too. i chose this fun "you are awesome" sentiment. all the pieces come with little adhesive dots as well. so it really is super simple to assemble these. i added my sentiment to the metal piece, and adhered that to my bravissimo piece. and i was done.
i found an empty jar, and filled it with almost an entire package of oreos. i added my bravissimo ribbon to the front of the jar, and used some coordinating ribbons to decorate the lid of the jar. super simple. but sometimes, simple is all it takes to let someone special know how proud you are of them. i wanted to get a photo of her with her fun little jar of oreos. but the poor thing is so sick right now with allergies. so i'll have to snap a photo of her later.
for more fun ideas, check out the bravissimo blog. it's called a daily dose of happy. how fun is that! and if you're on facebook, make sure and become a fan of the bravissimo facebook page, to keep up with ideas, news, and giveaways.
big, exciting news! creating keepsakes has a new special issue out, called creative spaces. i am such a sucker for anything related to organizing. and if it's organizing scrapbook product and supplies, then it's even better. so i was super excited to get my copy of this gorgeous issue last week. i have been ohhh'ing and awww'ing over all the rooms, and checking out every little detail of how they have arranged their spaces.
this special issue is packed with peeks into scraprooms of all different sizes and types. small spaces and large spaces, and plenty of ones in between. closets, corners off the side of a room, full bedrooms, open areas in the house. there's something for everyone. there are 45 stops into scrapbooker's spaces, and my old studio happens to be stop #44 in the book. want an idea of who else has a space featured in this issue? check out this impressive list.
Allison Kreft (Hambly Screen Prints), Aly Dosdall, Amanda Probst, Amber Packer (My Mind’s Eye), Amy Coon (The Paper Life), Angela Magnuson (Unity Stamps), April Foster (Studio Calico), Becky Higgins, Brooke Walker (Studio 5), Candy Rosenberg, Celeste Rockwood-Jones, Cindy Tobey, Deena Wuest, Elizabeth Kartchner, Ginger John (Glitz Design), Holly Jones (My Cute Stamps), Jana Eubank, Jennifer McGuire, Jodi Sanford (Fancy Pants Designs), Julia Nomichith, Kelly Marie Alvarez (Lawn Fawn), Kelly Purkey, Kim Watson, Laura Vegas, Linda Barber, Liz Hicks, Maggie Holmes, Mandy Douglass, Margie Romney-Aslett, Megan Hoeppner (me), Mou Saha, Nikki Sivils (Nikki Sivils, Scrapbooker), Piradee Talvanna, Renae Curtz (Paper Crafts magazine), Reyanna Klein, Sara Douglass (Stampin’ Up!), Sharon Kropp (Little Yellow Bicycle) , Sharon Laakkonen (Prima), Shelli Gardner (Stampin’ Up!), Stacy Cohen, Stephanie Hunt (Bella Blvd.) , Suzy Plantamura, Teresa Collins (Teresa Collins Designs), Trisha Ladouceur, Wendy Sue Anderson
as i mentioned, this issue features my old studio. here's one of my favorite parts of that space. seeing it again, makes me miss it a little bit. i joked to joe that i was going to move back upstairs to the loft again. he didn't think i was very funny. lol!
i got to play with the new all star design card for the slice, today. it's perfect for all sports, and has lots of great shapes to work with. right away, i knew i wanted to do something for my girls soccer albums. yes, i have soccer albums. i came up with a plan about 6 months ago, and started getting them all organized. one thing that i knew was on my list to do, was to make divider pages, to seperate all the years.
i knew my divider page would serve as a sort of intro page for each soccer season in the albums. i got the idea to use THESE page protectors late last night, right as i climbed into bed. luckily, i remembered the idea this morning. the middle section is 6×12.5 or so. it's a bit longer than 12 inches, since all the squares on the top and bottom are 3 inches in size. so there's some extra wiggle room in the large center area. i knew i would add their age division, and team name, to that large part of the page. and then use squares of cardstock and pattern paper in the other spaces.
i have a ton of this white grid pattern paper, so i figured it would work good for these pages. i have 18 teams to do, between the two girls. since this area is longer than 12 inches, i just added a few strips of kraft cardstock and pattern paper to the left side, to make the strip a bit longer. i love the font on the all star design card. i decided to do a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters for the team name. partly because some of the team names are pretty long. these letters are all either 2 inches or 2.5 inches in size. for the age division, i sliced the "U" and the number in a 3 inch size.
this is a soccer album. so there should be some soccer balls, right?
here's what it looks like finished, and in the album. this is for alyssa's last soccer season. her last year on under-14's. i added her jersey number, which was #5, to one of the squares. i will be adding the year as well, to the bottom white grid paper. need to find some stickers for that, i think.
now, pretend this intro page was for sarah's album. because i havn't printed the photos from alyssa's arsenal season yet. but sarah just happened to be on the arsenal team the previous year, so this page could easily be her's too. just to give you an idea of what i have going in their albums. this is what i set up last year. i have some 8.5×11 page protectors, that i slipped their team photo and individual photo into. i also have their game schedule, and any newspaper clippings in there. at some point, i will do something with those, and make them a little neater. but for now, it makes sure i have them in the right spot and they're not floating around the house.
following that, i have THESE page protectors. i simply choose an assortment of my favorite photos from the season to print, and i slip them into these protectors. i don't stress if i have vertical photos. it doesn't bother me that they're sideways on the page. although, they do make divided page protectors that will hold a mix of vertical and horizontal, if it really bothered you.
i honestly don't scrap many soccer photos, on actual layouts. although, i do have a really fun one that will be in an upcoming CK issue 😉 when you're dealing with 8 years of soccer, and 18 different teams, that's a lot of soccer photos. and i can't come up with that many ideas for layouts. lol! the photos are in an album. and if i get some notion to scrap a layout, i can simply pull out some photos and scrap them. i do have a few layouts done, and they're slipped right into the album, behind the divided page protectors, for the right season.
here's sarah's into page for her all-star team, that just finished up this past march.
this is the first one i did this morning, and you can see that "revolution" is a much longer team name. which is why i switched out some letters to lowercase. i like the loopy letter stickers that i used for "all stars", and it makes me want to add a little sub-title to my other intro pages.
when i went upstairs to check on her jersey number, i realized their jerseys were blue, but with touches of red. i should have added red as an accent color, instead of green. i choose green, because of all the grass you see on the field and in the photos. although this pattern paper does have stars on it, and this was for her "all star" team. i didn't really do that intentionally, but it's fitting 🙂
and here's what this page looks like in the album. so i have two intro pages down, and 16 to go. totally do-able, right? lol! honestly, yes, it IS do-able. these can be mass produced. especially, if i'm cutting everything from black cardstock. i'm not about re-inventing the wheel, when it comes to certain things. and albums like this (or my school albums, vacation albums) are meant to be easy and simple. so i will be keeping this design, all throughout both the girls albums. i can sit and cut a ton of soccer balls one night. or do all the age divisions one night. and the team names another night. cut all the papers one night. and then piece it all together. easy peasy, right :)
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just stopping in to wish all of you mother's out there, a very happy mother's day! we're having a quiet day here. joe's gone for about 7 hours, umpiring two games, since baseball apparently does not rest, even for mother's day. lol! he did clean the entire house for me yesterday, and he will appreciate me giving him props for that on the blog. the girls and i will be hanging out at home, and heading to my brother's house for dinner later.
this is an older layout, that i made in 2008. these photos were from when alyssa was just 11 years old, and sarah was just 8 years old. it seems like so long ago. and yet just like yesterday. all at the same time. kind of crazy how that works.
sarah came down with her laptop last night, to show me some old video's that she was looking at. turns out, quite a while ago, she had taken a few of the video's, and put them together into a little movie. she even had an intro and credits. which i think is pretty cool, since i have NO clue how to do that sort of thing. no idea how she learned to do that. these were also from back in 2008. i love looking back at how silly and goofy they both were. the good news, is that they are STILL that silly and goofy.
did you catch the part when sarah talks about how they had this "special talent", and she makes the super scrunched up, huge smile? that's because the girls used to give me those smiles ALL the time, when i had my camera out. want more proof?
here's a layout i did a few years ago, after finding a bunch of those photos. actually, i made this in 2008. i'm not saying that, because i can remember when i made it. that's what the file info on this image tells me. lol! so i made this layout with old pics, the same year that the girls made those video's.
and another older, simple layout. photos from 2009. two girls that are still silly and goofy. i think i'll make it my goal to get another photo of them today, showing the same thing 🙂
today, on the bella blvd blog, it's challenge day. the challenge is to scrap about yourself, from a mother's point of view. this one threw me a bit. but i think the layout i came up with was a pretty good take on the theme.
here's a peek at my layout. head over to the bella blvd blog, where you can see my full layout and all the journaling HERE. you can also see another take on the challenge, by beth gerlach.
this is my second post today. keep scrolling down for a new layout!
i almost forgot to pick a winner for the hands free kit from making memories. drumroll please 🙂
In Colorado the weather in the spring is tricky! It was snowing three different times over the weekend. Nothing stayed on the ground, but it was cold. Today is sort of sunny, but still cold. I'm hoping spring weather shows up soon!
Posted by: Jennifer Wilson
congratulations jennifer! please email Maricarmen at mnecochea@makingmemories.com, and she will get your hands free kit sent out to you. thanks to everyone who took a few minutes to share your good and bad weather with me. lol! we're expected to hit 90+ degrees today. alyssa has her last soccer game, so she's not loving that forecast right now.
this week, on the pebbles blog and american crafts blog, the designers have all teamed up for a very creative week. we are all creating projects, using BOTH pebbles and american crafts products. we wanted to show off not only how easily our products work together, but how fun it is to combine them to make great layouts, cards, and more.
i love doing projects like this. i think collections are brilliant, for taking the guess work out of matching up papers and embellishments. but i always enjoy the challenge of picking out papers from numerous manufacturers or collections, and finding the ones that go perfectly together. so that's exactly how i started this layout.
one of the things that i love the most about so many of pebbles and american crafts papers, is their tone-on-tone patters. i love patterns, and i love having a lot of different patterns on one layout. the tone-on-tone look is so subtle, but still has lots of interest. from pebbles, i chose papers from the happy go lucky collection and the ever after collection. and from american crafts, i chose papers from the campy trails collection, the peachy keen collection, and the hello sunshine collection. all tone-on-tone papers, with one strip of kraft mixed in, that ties all the colors together. for the top of the layout, i used the backside of some kraft pattern paper, and ran it through my swiss dot embossing folder.
i have been doing a lot of mixed titles lately. most of them, are on upcoming layouts for the magazine, so you'll have to trust me on this. lol! but i have been making longer titles, for once. and mixing lots of different types of alphas and colors, to form my titles. for my "sunny summer days" title, i used green foam thickers from AC, magenta chipboard thickers (i know they look red, but they're a deep purple) from AC, and brown letter stickers from pebbles.
i can't do a layout without ribbon. so i chose a green polka dot ribbon from pebbles, and a fun yellow pattern ribbon from american crafts. the paper flowers are called "delights", and are from american crafts. super cute, and tons of texture. the toothpick flag is from pebbles, and tucks right behind the paper flower.
take some time to check out the pebbles blog, as we're featuring 5 new projects every day this week. also make sure and visit the american crafts blog, where they've been sharing tons of new projects each day from their design team as well. and with these two generous manufacturers, you can be sure there will be a giveaway or two this week too 🙂
it's mom's week over on the bella blvd blog. lots of inspiration planned, just in time for mother's day. which is this coming sunday, by the way. i'm hoping that i'm not the only one that didn't realize this. lol!
yesterday, one of my gift ideas was featured. you can read more about what's inside this jar, and just how simple it is to make one of your own, right HERE.
bella blvd also announced a fun contest for mom's. here's all the info:
Laura Vegas 
Empty Tic Tac containers are great for brads & eyelets. And I repurposed a thread rack as my homemade clip it up. Posted by: Sandy
congrats sandy! email me your mailing address, and i'll have your copy mailed out to you! enjoy!
the amazing creative editor megan hoeppner is the brains behind this special issue, and she did a fantastic job on this issue. i have loved seeing all the excitement over it online this week. megan filmed a segment for studio 5 television yesterday, talking about ideas for creating your own creative space. lots of fun ideas, that are taken right from the issue. in fact, i now have this strange desire to paint my scraproom, and make it more personal and fun. you can view her segment HERE.
thanks to all of you, for taking the time to share some creative organizing tips. i saw lots of great ideas, and a lot of ideas that i already incorporate into my space. and a few that have me thinking of new storage ideas to try out as well.