Monday, July 28, 2014

Never A Dull Moment

Good Monday morning!  Surprise, surprise, I have another layout to share!  I am trying really hard to get back into the swing of things.  The Powers That Be might have helped a little.  Much of last week was spent dealing with weather-related headaches.  The most comfortable room in the house (the cool basement) also happens to be where I craft. Awesome coincidence!  Anyway, on with the share, yes?



The photo is from Mother's Day this year.  I've held off from scrapping it because I couldn't decide on design.  I've loved multiple sketches that in the past two months, but none screamed out to be matched with this page.  Colors have been tricky, too.  Also, my printer was bratty and made this far too blue. I still might not have gotten the color choice right, but it was high time I got this photo taken care of.  THAT was enough struggle for me.

Confession of a Challenge Junkie:  I've relied on inspiration from other people for so long -- give me a sketch to follow; tell me what colors to use; tell me what elements to use -- that I stopped trusting myself.  I learned a BIG problem with that in the past few weeks.  While I LOVE participating in challenges, and likely will continue to do so, I will actually STRESS about fulfilling them; all of them.  I will stress over esthetics, time management, and rules to the point that my blood pressure spikes even more than some stupid chemo drug can manage and then I'm physically worse off than I would have been otherwise.  Then nothing is fun, nor relaxing.  Screw that, right?  Agreed.  So, while I am looking forward to seeing what fresh challenges await in August, I am going to practice chilling out and seeing what I can make all on my own.  On that  note, how about some close ups?





First off, this is how it all started.  I wasn't sure if I really liked it (or if anyone else would, either), so I posted this in the Facebook group, NicoleJones911.  I then got loads of great ideas from others.  Thank you so much, ladies, if you happen to stop by!





One of the big changes I made was to create a lot of torn layers.  It's such an easy thing to do -- tear paper -- but I have hesitated to do so for... over a year.  I know! So, I did it.  I also happened to pull out this little airplane while I was grabbing tiny bottle of sequins.  Yep!  Aint no party like a sequin party!



Initially, I was just going to use the layers of torn paper below the photo.  Unfortunately, that headache I mentioned earlier also meant that all of the patterns and colors were too much for my eyes. It was fun to create but painful and distracting; so I layered some vellum overthe top.  Instantly, I was able to concentrate on the photo again. As for the journaling, I kinda wanted to add some interest and attention to the area, so I used up roughly half a sheet of alpha stickers.  I really like the alphas from MME, but I can see how it will be wise, going forward, to buy two packages of the ones I like.  They played it well by NOT supplying enough vowels.  OR I can play it my way and stop giving them money because I kinda think that's a shady thing to do.

Back to the page, I had originally intended to put the title on top of the vellum, but the shiny gold Thickers just weren't working for me.  Also, I discovered a card that had my desired title, "Never A Dull Moment" that won the day.  Instead, I snagged a coordinating photo frame, attached left-over strips from the cream cardstock and worked on adding journaling.



Basically, "See the vellum hearts that I cut out by hand?"  This was the awe-inspiring moment in the FaceBook conversation that started a complete overhaul.  One member of the group suggested I trade out the stars in the circle for hearts; to match the bockeh in the photo.  Then it became vellum hearts.  It's possible that the was also thinking that I should ditch the circles and stars altogether, but I just couldn't do it.



More vellum hearts and a stray, clear, sequin.  It amused me so it got it's own photo.

I still feel like I want to add more to the page, but I'm making myself stop.  It's supposed to have a light feel with the vellum. It could be counter productive to add more, right?  Also, in this moment, I've getting 104 comments in the background about Minecraft.  I'm a distracted human being.  As always, I will work on posting this page to my galleries at A Cherry On Top and Scrapbook(dot)com in the next day or so.  There, you can find links to all the of the products I've used.... or at least as many as I can find on those sites.

Thank you for stopping by!

Friday, July 25, 2014

Let the Rhythm Move You!

Hello!  Long time no see, huh?  For those "in the know," I'm okay.  Mostly.  As is the way with this current chemo cocktail, I got one issue sorted out just to have another rear a very nasty head.  Now, this current issue is almost sorted out and I'm able to get back to my scrappy ways..... Only, that month-ish break really hit my creativity hard.  After watching a metric ton of YouTube videos, and signing up for a class at Shimelle.com, I finally have something to share. Today's share is from the class, Return to the Collection.






Earlier in the Summer, DS had a chance to attend a family barbecue and local parade.  My MIL sent me these pictures, to show how much fun he was having.

Since the goal of the class is to use *a* collection *and* a richer tapestry of embellishment, I can easily say that most of this page is somehow brought to you by Fancy Pants Designs.  In this case, it's the Everyday Circus collection.  The red alphas are MME; and other details are listed below.



  • The three monkeys on the bike are actually cut from the 6x6 version of the larger cut-apart page.  
  • The red foil stars were cut from a sheet of FP foil paper, months ago.  I also saved the negative space from all of that die-cutting for  background strips on other pages.  
  • The wood veneer smiley is from Freckled Fawn; the sequins are from Doodlebug.
  • The red stitched arrow started off as a simple stamped image, using an arrow set from Sassafras Lass (as is the image of multiple arrows below it).  Something in me insisted that the space needed to be filled AND that I needed something soft.  Red floss to the rescue!....And followed by a "thinker's" headache that lasted the rest of the day.  
  • The same arrangement was repeated in the lower left corner.
  • I decided to use the rays of the background paper as my journaling lines
  • Also, I used a recent birthday purchase -- one of those mini inky dauber doohickies to edge the photos, paper and many of the elements.  According to that link, it's a blending tool.  Of course, "doohicky" seems to work well with me right now.

And "doohicky" is probably also a really good clue that I should wrap things up for now.  If you actually stopped by and had a look, I thank you.  Within the next 24 hours, I should have this page also posted in my galleries at scrapbook(dot)com AND A Cherry On Top; with products noted.  I'm going to try to come back and share at least one more page I have recently made; hopefully getting back into a groove.  I'm not even worried about participating in challenges this month and I'll take next month a day at a time.  Stressing about crafting achievements isn't exactly on my to-do list right now.