Thankful for My Guy

This month's Thanks Living lesson was on symmetry.  I love to use symmetry on my layouts.  It pleases the orderly side of me and it is a great way to turn a single page sketch into a double sketch.  I didn't use a sketch for this project and decided to put a twist on symmetry by flipping the page design on the left side for the right side.  To me it's just another tool in my design belt and adds interest.

For this layout I focused on the things about my son that I am thankful for.  I really do have the best kids.  God has blessed me so richly with the family I have and I can't thank Him enough for that!  I love to see the adults my kids have grown into.

The layout

Grow

The Challenge:
Use circles as your main design element

I love circle!  Never  met one I didn't like.  There is just something so perfect, so fun about a circle.  I have been working on becoming a drawer (one who draws, not a receptacle in a dresser) and learning to work with paint.  I put both lessons to use on this layout.  I had a stack of very similar photos, marking the passing days, that I decided would work well all together.  I first cut the photos into circle so we could just focus on this adorable face.  Then I laid them down on the paper where I wanted them and freehand drew a circle.  My intention was to not make them perfect, but keep them playful by letting them be a bit wonky.  After they were drawn, I pulled out my watercolors and painted them.  I liked how they looked and decided that I  would add a bunch of decorative painted circles.  Finally, I spray misted over all the page, to break up the stark white, and added some bright brads among the water colored circles.  Finally I added my title, penned around the edges and colored in the center of the g and o, and place a bit of pom pom trim.

Baron Vs Baron

The Challenge:
Turn your journaling into a decorative strip or some other decorative element

So this Issue Challenge was mine.  Erika had to be out of town and asked me to issue the Issue Challenge (tee hee).  When flipping through my magazine, I came across a super cute layout that had the prettiest paper strips.  I was about to turn the page when I realized that the script strip was actually the journaling for the page.  I loved it, I wanted to do it!  It worked well for a story that required more writing than usual too.

This layout is about the soccer game my family played last summer where only half the other team showed up so they sent players over to play for them so they could actually play and not just go home.  It was a blast!  Everyone was laughing and it was great camaraderie with the other team.  We had father vs son, brother vs sister, husband vs wife, father vs daughter.  At one point Bryon and Kayla were playing on opposite sides and the ball was up in the air, coming toward them.  Kayla was all set to get the ball and go when Bryon started screaming, "DON'T GET THAT BALL!"  It so freaked Kayla out that she just shriveled up and Bryon stole the ball and went on to score.  Kayla talked the ref into giving Bryon a red card (just for fun, not for real).  I think this was my favorite game to watch!

The layout

Spring Sings

Such beautiful colors this week at CSI!  Loved them, loved them together.

For my evidence I used: shiny things, sparkly things, metallic paper, layered elements, music

For my testimony I played with the magnet poetry site and liked what I came up with so I used it!  It says: Spring Sings with a
symphony of a thousand
purple and pink petals
it is whispering the
sweet music of the
garden
a lovely picture
in my dreamy sleep

I also used a sketch from Diana Fisher for her blog anniversary.  I just love her sketches and miss Sketchy Thursdays, so it was a treat to be able to use this one.

The layout

The case file

The sketch

One Cool Dude

The challenge this week at Frosted Design was to used hexagons.  These fun shapes are very hot right now and I really like them.

I used this fun photo of my nephew.  Doesn't he just look so cool?  I thought that hexagons would be a cool shape to go along with this layout.  I paired them with these cool looking letters and denim paper.

The layout

Monsters In My Phone

The colors this week at CSI  were quite frightening!  But then again, there were monsters.  And totally cute ones too!


For my evidence I used the monsters, a zig zag stamp, pom poms, and framed my page in black (hard to see here though)

My testimony begins with "Once upon a time" and reads: Once upon a time, I opened my phone and found all these little monsters!  How did they get here???  John, Kayla and Bryon are their names.

They got a hold of my phone at a restaurant one time and took all these goofy photos while I was distracted, lol

The case file

Play

Whoops!  I forgot to post last week's CSI's case challenge.


Fun, fun colors at CSI this week! Even before I saw the coordinates, the colors spoke of play to me. It was great to have so many fun designs to play with (hahahaha).

For my evidence, I used string (stitching), map paper, pinwheels (for my flowers).

For my testimony I wrote about taking time to play on a nice summer day in a kayak.


The layout

The case

Field Flower

Such pretty colors this week at CSI!  Loved them; so romantic.

For my evidence I used wet mediums (Gesso and gel medium) and ruffles.  I sanded a bit on the chipboard flowers to rough them up too.

For my testimony, I wrote a haiku.  I haven't done that in a 100 years!  Thanks, it was fun.  It reads:
Flower of the field
Full of beauty and of life
Buzz, buzz goes the bee

There is a small be on the flower, but it is kinda hard to see.

The layout

The case

Church in the Park

The Challenge:
Use gray, yellow and white as your color combo.

I am usually not a huge fan of color combos, but I loved these colors together!  So pretty.  And the gray paper does a lot to help the photos stand out and looks so pretty with the yellow.  I decided to add bead to my stitching to add a bit of elegance and I love how it turned out!  I will be doing that one again.  I have lots of seed beads.  For this layout I used the sketch that my Chinese Whispers group used, but it looked nothing like the sketch by the time I got a hold of it, so I wanted to use this super cute sketch.

The layout

The sketch

Love At First Sight

This is a layout I did for the February round of Chinese Whispers at Club CK.  It's where you are placed in a group and the first person gets a sketch emailed to them.  They create a layout based off the sketch and email a photo of the layout to the next person, but not the sketch, the next person makes a layout and sends it to the next person and so on.  By the end of the round you can see how close or just how far you are from the original sketch.  It is loads of fun!

Here is my layout

The sketch that stared everyone out.  I was about halfway down the list.  It changed a lot!

Church in the Park

Frosted Designs Fab Friday challenge was to us a banner.  I love banners!  There is something so fun about a banner waving on your page.  I picked the photos of our church's Church in the Park because, well, it's like a celebration to hold service out in the sun in a beautiful park!  We also hold baptisms and that is a reason to celebrate too.  And then there is the fun and games afterward, so this layout definitely deserved banners!

I also used this layout for the weekly challenge at Club CK.  She posted an adorable sketch to use.  And it had a banner in it too!   Providence.

The layout

The sketch

We Are Family

The Challenge:
Scrap about babies.

Well, the baby in my life right now is my nephew, so this just fit right in with making his first year album!  I also incorporated Ashley Horton's April sketch into the design.

I've had this piece of SEI paper since around my beginning scrapping days.  It was time to use it.  I pulled it out thinking that the circles would be nice for the left hand side of the sketch, but the photos covered up too much of them and the right side just had this boring space staring back at me, so I put it away and searched on.  Nothing really was jumping out at me, so I pulled this piece back out again and thought the circles don't have to be on the left, they can be on the right, so I flipped it and it spoke louder to me, but was still flat and boring, so I pulled out some spray mist and gave it a good misting.  I was getting more excited about then!  I looked at those circles and still thought they were missing something, so I pulled out a black pen and doodled on one of them.  I figured I could cover it up if I didn't like it, but I did so I kept going.  I loved the circles then, so I decided to doodle the edge strip on the left side of the sketch, and I had planned on matting the photos, but decided I would doodle frames for them.  I then pulled out this cute lettering stencil I had and penned in the title.  I was looking at the blank spaces and thought they would look cool colored in so I got out my watercolors and colored them in.  I liked it a lot so I started coloring in the other doodles.  I decided to leave the circles alone since the circle was already colored.  As it turned out, a layout I was so not excited about turned into something that I love!  And I don't consider myself a doodler!

The layout

The sketch

Paddle

I have a new layout for this week's CSI challenge.  You should check out their site.

The colors this week were all different shades of teal and I have been loving using teal lately!  I loved all these different shades. I was worried about having any paper left with some on, but not to worry, because CSI now has coordinates!  I love these.  The theme fit my photo perfectly and I loved all the little elements included.  A big thumbs up from me!

For my evidence, I used balloons, stars, cloud, and fluffy batting inside the clouds.  For my testimony, I journaled about what it takes for my husband to train for racing.  Working out no matter the weather be it sun, wind, snow, rain or cold, he is out there training.  It was actually really cold this day he went to the lake, but he looked so cool in the setting sun.  One of my new fave photos!  I also wrapped the tag in twine.

The layout

The case file

Thankful For This Girl

I am doing a year's worth of layouts on the things I am thankful for over at Club CK for the Thanks Living challenge.  It is all about getting you to see that you have so much to be thankful for while learning new design principals.

This month I chose to do a layout expressing my thankfulness for my beautiful daughter.  She brings so much joy into my life.  She is so pretty, funny, smart and just plain fun!  I am so very blessed to have her as a daughter.  This month we worked on layering and clustering.  I thought this would go beautifully with the photos I had of her.  I loved all the pretty flowers that came with this paper line and they were easy to layer with the fun photo frames and cute butterflies.  I used an 8.5x11" sketch from Page Maps.

The layout