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!