During this time of cramped quarters and limited outings, I have managed to sneak down to my craft room and get creative from time to time. One of my favorite sources of inspiration has been Scrapbook Generation’s weekend mini crops on the SG Scrap Squad Facebook group. These crops are full of great challenges, discussion questions and fun prizes.
Tag: cropping
Back-to-School and Back to Scrapping
Yippee! I finally finished a scrapbook spread for the current year in which I’m living. No, that doesn’t happen very often (I’m still trying to finish a December daily album from 2015). In fairness, I decided to give myself a fighting chance this year by going with pocket pages. . . with the option of a few 12×12 more creative designs.
So here’s my first go at this new approach and I think it might just work for an album that’s, well, “a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.” I’m going to use Simple Stories-ish papers to keep a cohesive feel throughout the months, and I started with the back-to-school Smarty Pants pack. I received inspiration from the Stuck?!Sketches early September challenge and the Scrap Our Stash Tic Tac Toe Challenge. It was pretty simple to combine the two challenges and the second pocket page gave me plenty of space for multiple photos; because let’s face it, it is really hard for me to wrap up a monumental day with just one pic. By the way, I’m not adding my pocket page to this post just because there is a lot of personal information on it and I try to keep my little guy’s privacy as under wraps as possible. Thanks for understanding. I can tell you that it’s a nine-pocket page with six photos and three decorative squares that complements my large design.
The layout for the main page came from the Stuck?! September sketch pictured below. I thought this was a great layout for my main back-to-school picture and I love all the textures and fun elements. I fulfilled the Scrap Our Stash Tic Tac Toe Challenge diagonally by using an arrow, ruler and dictionary paper. This challenge has become one of my favorites, because I get to decide which way I want to combine all these fun items.
One (Very Cute) Photo Trashed My Craft Room
Okay, I had so much fun with the Scrap Our Stash layout challenge that I decided to jump right into their Tic Tac Toe challenge for this wonderful month of May. I used the row across the middle which consisted of the color yellow, clouds and a paper clip. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. . . or not so much. I spent hours on this freestyle layering technique (something I haven’t done much of) and completely trashed my craft room to create this one little scrapbook page. While it may be just one picture and one page, it’s one that will warm my mama heart for years to come.
I’m still cropping the year 2011, so my now six-year-old son was just three months old in this picture. Wasn’t he (and still is) precious!! Surrounding the photo are several layers of paper from Authentique’s Be(you)tiful 6×6 bundle (absolutely one of my favorite collections) and a plethora of embellishments from stamped tickets, washi tape, misted clouds, twine, a tab, buttons, a big old yellow sun and of course a paper clip. All this fun stuff is mounted onto a backdrop of cloud paper from DCWV‘s Sky’s The Limit stack. The two separate paper clouds on the bottom right and the one up top weren’t originally intended, but as I was putting the finishing touches on this labor intensive layout I discovered that I had unknowingly sliced open my pinky finger and left bright red drops of DNA as proof that I had put at least my blood and tears into this one little page (there might have been a little bit of love in there also).