Day 2

Some cute old Doodlebug paper/stickers and I used the nifty free fonts at http://www.kevinandamanda.com/ to finish it out. I promise the pictures aren't blurry in person. I wonder if I need to clean my scanner bed.

With all my free time

I joined another Layout a Day challenge. See the cute blinkie?





So here's the page I did for today. The plan is to do one page/spread a day for the whole month of May. It works well for me since the kids are in school until June 5th. We won't start the whole swimming lessons, park visits, trips to visit distant relatives craziness until June and July.

I used papers from a Diecuts with a View pack and I'm pretty sure the little journaling card is from My Mind's Eye. My fantastic local scrapbook store sells them by the front registers and since they're decorated on both sides, there's no manufacturing information anywhere on the cards. I was lucky to find one of my CTMH inks that matched the card, so I used my extensive design knowledge (ha!) to tie the page together by inking the patterned paper in the same color. Truly, I live on the edge. For the non-scrappers out there, this is a technique that came into vogue about 6 years ago. I'm still happy that I put the idea to good use. I think it's cute here.

From Spring Break

Here are the pages I completed on my break a few weeks ago. There are several others in varying stages of nearly finished, but I'll wait to post those later.

If you think they're skewed towards the youngest, you're absolutely right. She pointed out (accurately) that she doesn't have a baby book and she'd like to look at her pictures. So I've been working to get more of her pictures done so she is more fairly represented. I also finished a Crazy Hair Day page for Numero Uno, but I just went through all my little partial bags and didn't find it. Hmmm. I guess that one will come later, too.

Not for a scrapbook...

but I felt like showing it off.


The pictures are only 2 weeks old and I picked up the frame at Joann's this morning (half off, go me!). My 7yo wants to paint the frame, but I'll just be pleased if I can get it hung on the wall during Spring Break.

Speaking of, it is Spring Break and I have grand plans. Most of them involve catching up on schoolwork and housework, but I also want to spend at least one evening scrapping. If not, I'll at least get some pages scanned and loaded. I went to a crop a couple of months ago and I'd like to share what I made. It was all part of my time-honored tradition of blowing off studying the weekend before a big test. It paid off when I got a 94 on the first big nursing exam. Failed to crop the weekend before the next one and only got an 88. So you can see that it's in my best interest to spend Saturday night with pictures and paper.

I sincerely hope to post again soon. :)

10 year old pictures

I found these in my little photo storage box and kinda freaked. I mean, they're Polaroids and as gung-ho as I am about archiving one of a kind photos, I'd never scanned them. Well, I have now! And they are backed up on the external hard drive.

I leaped another milestone by finally scrapping some of my son's earliest pictures. These are the pictures his doctors brought me while I was trapped in my hospital room for 2 days after he was born. The blurriness helps to hide how skinny he was. I was so surprised when I finally got to see him in person. He had a little round face even at 2 pounds, 6.5 ounces.

On a funny note, I showed these to my 4yo because I know she's never seen them. Her response? "Yick!"

The paper is from a retired Close To My Heart pack and the little printable journaling spot came from a Cathy Zielske class at Big Picture Scrapbooking.

Back to digital

With the help of a great tutorial by Cheltzey, I was able to finally use a PSD template to create a page. I typically use Microsoft Digital Image Suite for digital scrapbooking, but it can't read Photoshop layered files, so I've been trying to learn the free GIMP instead. Most digital scrappers use either Photoshop Elements or one of the big Photoshop products and I have considered joining the crowd, but even when I carefully follow a tutorial, I get very frustrated with Adobe's non-intuitive menus. In no time, I begin to swear and throw things. This is not the best way to ensure your computer's longevity, so I'm gonna keep tackling GIMP.

There's no hope that Microsoft will bother improving functionality because they discontinued the product last year. Too bad, because I realize I've been using Microsoft everything for just under 20 years. Anyway, GIMP did a great job and once I'd gotten the hang of pasting papers to shapes, it was pretty darned easy. Their drop shadows are way more customizable than what I used in DIS and I am thrilled about that! I couldn't figure the text insertion out easily, so I bailed and went back to DIS for a quick touchup.

This first page uses kraft paper by Ronnie McCray. That kit is worth it just for the great variety of interesting kraft backgrounds. The blue paper is from Stephanie Burt, but I bought it at her closing her store sale, so I can't provide a link. The font is CK Journaling.


I found the journaling for this page saved to my external hard drive. It was sweet, so I went diving for the accompanying photos. The template is #58 from Heather Ann Designs. The gingham paper is from Jenn Ulasiewicz and I used a pink background behind that from Beth Kern. The fonts are Bodoni MT and Pea Jenny Script and Pea Shirley (the J - I didn't like the other.) The Pea Font site has tons of free handwritten fonts, along with some cute doodles. Good to know, eh?

One thing that makes me chuckle is how the photos of my daughter eating a single sandwich quarter included both a fish face and cheesy grins. What a nut!


It's time for my semi-annual asthma-a-thon, so I hope to get more digital pages done. I'm too wiped to manually cut and paste, but clicking a mouse is just my speed. Besides, I've had a lot of good ideas lately and this lets me get them out of my head quicker.

Made From Scratch

My friend Becky hosted a very cool craft day at her clubhouse. Our weekend was hectic, so I only got to visit for 2 hours. Here's what I made while hanging out with Becky:



I started from scratch with both pages and was happy to get them together so quickly. I cheated a bit by using the same patterned paper on both pages, but it worked with both sets of pictures, so who cares? The title letters were cut on the no longer supported Xyron Personal Cutter (sniff) and I used some old Making Memories Heidi rubons for the lower page. The notebook paper is not really notebook paper, it's actually from Scenic Route, so it's nice and hefty.

I've begun taking my scrapbook bag with me while I wait for my son in Cub Scouts. I bought a magnetic dry erase board and some magnets so I can work on what I want in the car. It's sort of a poor man's Arccivo. The point is that I should continue to have some new pages to post, at least for the next few months.