Weekly Chronicles - Week 2: Reflections

My good friend and personal scrapbooking enabler (everyone needs one of those) Marie encouraged me to participate in Club Scrap's Weekly Chronicles.  I didn't complete the first week (yet), but the second week's theme was "Reflections".  I really loved seeing everyone's interpretation of the theme and I am always so impressed and inspired that so many people are willing to share so much of their lives via scrapbooking.  It makes me try to really think about what I'm scrapping and how I journal.  I'm trying to move away from just describing what is in the pictures (Here is me in Summer of 2011 stuffing my face) to what I was actually thinking and feeling at that moment (Here is me in Summer of 2011 stuffing my face and LOVING IT.)

But seriously.  I decided to reflect on one of my New Year's resolutions/goals of making more of an effort in keeping in touch with friends.  Not just those who live far away, but we have some friends that live literally across the street that we do not see as often as I would like.

The layout is based on the one on the blog hop on Scrapbook Challenges.  I am filling up my Google Reader with a ton of blogs, and I love discovering new blogs via hops.  More blogs to read = less time I have to clean.  So sad.

I added the vellum "pockets" next to the photos and created a little tag with notes about my friends that I can slide out and read.

Overall, I like this LO.  If I had to change anything, I would make sure the horizontal line of pictures spanning the two pages was matched up and I would rethink the oval/heart embellishment on the first page.  Other than that, I love the paper, the color scheme, and the punched border.  And the pictures and memories of all my wonderful friends, of course.

V-Day Cards

I've never really been one to send cards very often, but along with my crafty New Year's Resolution, I also set a goal of staying in closer contact with family and friends.  I love how easy it is to keep up with friends through Facebook and email, but getting a message electronically doesn't really evoke the same excitement as receiving something in the mail.  So I am hoping to combine my goals of being creative and staying in touch with people by making cards more often and sending them along instead of stacking them up on my desk.

So here are my first two attempts at Valentine's Day cards.  This first one has my lovely beginner efforts at coloring with Copics.  Not perfect, but I love how these markers make whatever you color look pretty dang good.  I based this card off of this one from Prairie Paper & Ink.  I also spent an inordinate amount of time watching her series of card making videos instead of cleaning, but that's besides the point:

My favorite thing about this card is the bear.  Because it is So Stinkin' Cute.

Again, not amazing cards, but as a lot of people who do any sort of craft know, when you give a handmade card or gift, if the recipient isn't a scrapbooker or knitter or whatever, you will get the "YOU MADE THAT?" spiel.  And that is always a good spiel to get.

Calendar - January

You know what one of the best things about having friends that scrapbook? They think of you first when they are getting rid of old supplies. :)

My friend Marie (aka, my personal scrapbooking enabler) is such a friend. She generously let me "steal" a bunch of stuff from her stash when she was reorganizing her scrap room.  I snagged a Heidi Swapp calendar set that I think is pretty old as I can't find it anywhere online.  I knew I would need a new calendar for work, so I figured I could make it myself.  My goal was to have the entire year finished in time for 2012, but guess how well that turned out...

So anyways, nine days into the New Year...I finally have January's layout completed:

I had planned on printing out some pictures of past New Year Eves with friends, but again, that never happened.  I dug out an old picture I took in high school of the snowy woods behind my mother's house instead, and I actually like how it turned out.

I based the layout on one I had seen online somewhere that, instead of printing it out, or saving it on my computer, I hand-sketched it out on some random piece of paper.  This was in the dark days before Pinterest.  Now I unfortunately do not remember where I saw the original layout.

I really like the ever-so-popular pennant banner in the upper left-hand corner - it makes everything so festive.  I also embellished the stickers in the corners with some Glossy Accents, just to make them a bit dimensional.

I will hopefully start working on February's layout in time for next month!

Blog Hop Challenge - Snapshots

I have a lot of guilty pleasures online: celebrity gossip sites (the snarkier the better), Pinterest, and my Google Reader.  I get a lot of my inspiration and ideas from blogs I read, whether it be a recipe or a scrapbooking layout I need to try.

So when I came across the blog hop challenge at My Scraps & More, I thought this was a great first challenge to participate in - it would force me to put something on this blog, it would challenge me to use up items in my stash, and I would be able to discover some new blogs along the way.  Win/win situation here.

The challenge was to collect and use "ingredients" in your layout.  I used some Thickers for my chipboard embellishments, I delved into my twine stash to help fancy-up some buttons, I finally used a journaling block that I had lying around for longer than I would like to admit, and I used two fonts for the title.  Here's my crack at the challenge:

This layout is based on one I saw in the May/June 2010 issue of Creating Keepsakes by Lynn Ghahary.  I love recreating layouts!

One of my unofficial goals for the year is to make a baby album of me for my mom - hopefully by Mother's Day.  I have my old one that has unfortunately fallen apart, so I hope I can make a sturdier one for her with all my sweet scrapbooking skillz.  So this is the first page I've completed for that project.  It's funny making layouts of yourself as a baby.  But I love the Polaroids!  Because everything from 1984 is apparently cool again.

New Year, New Blog

I have several New Year's Resolutions for 2012 - the typical "I will eat better, use that gym membership that is dwindling my bank account, not spend three-quarters of my Saturday in pajamas" (so far, no success on that one), etc.  I also made a resolution to spend at least one hour a day doing something creative, which for me ranges from scrapbooking, to writing, to photography, to knitting.

It may seem that this last resolution is kind of cheating, because it is a fun resolution.  One usually thinks of resolutions as boring and tedious with the only attractive aspect being they are supposed to improve you as a person.  My argument is that being creative will still improve me as a person, it will just be more enjoyable than sweating in a Turbo Kickbox class.

So here goes my online collection of inspiration and projects - I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!