Monday, March 30, 2009

I love birthdays...

I love birthdays. I love the cake...the cards...the presents...the surprised looks on my boys' faces.

What's not to love about a birthday? Well, the stacks of pictures that seem to pile up after a party is one negative! I realized earlier this month that I have birthday pictures unscrapped for both of my boys going back to 2005. I realized I avoid scrapping birthday parties. I just end up with WAY TOO MANY photos! Then I noticed I have party pics for cousins piled up, too!

So, I decided to pull out a collection of birthday themed papers and scrap until I ran out of paper. The first line I selected was the "Surprise" line by Scenic Route. I've had these papers for months, but hadn't even attempted to use them yet!

I started with Kevin's birthday last fall - his 7th. I was even able to use the negative space from a giant Rusty Pickle chipboard "7". I did painted it up and dotted it to match the papers. The fun felt accent at the top of the page is by Creative Imaginations.
This was the year I realized I took too many photos at birthdays. I tried to cut back on how many I take, but also started doing photo collages to make my pictures smaller. By fitting 2-4 photos on a 4x6 or 5x7, I'm able to get more images on a page like I did in this page also for Kevin's 7th."Lucky Number 7" is a page for Blake's album about Kevin's "friend" party this fall. I completed this page for a challenge by millermath/Debbie over at Personal Scrapper. For Blake's 10th, I didn't have any more of the large chipboard numbers so I improvised and used letters to make a "10" out of a lowercase "L" and "O". By mixing it with smaller mis-matched chipboard letters, I'm hoping no one will ever notice!Both boys got lucky last fall and each had two birthday parties - one for family and one for friends. We won't do that every year!I even scrapped a page about my birthday last year! The "Making Memories" ribbon is acutally packaging off of a Making Memories brand apron that I won as a crop prize! I can be thrifty!
After I finished this year's birthdays (except for Tom's...I'll get to his sometime!), I went back through the photo boxes and made this page for Kevin's album about Blake's 8th. They've both changed SO MUCH!
Finally I made a page with SR scraps of my cousin Emma's party in 2007. It also happened to take place at a benefit we had for my cousin Tiffany who battled brain cancer. It got a little emotional scrapping the group photo with her. I can't believe she's gone. (FYI: "KILL TED" came from the t-shirts/bracelets we all wore to show support as Tiffany fought to "kill" her tumor she named "Ted.")
With the SR Surprise line exhausted, I remembered I had the Basic Grey "Cupcake" line that would also work for birthdays. I scrapped Kevin's '06 birthday party at during his Storyhour at the public library.
Now I'm throwing in a non-birthday layout, but it's cute and one layout I can mark off my to-do list. I don't know how many times I've tried to work with these pics from 2005, only to put them back in the photo box. The Cupcake line had a sheet of paper with trikes on it. I could use that!!!
Back to birthdays...
On a recent trip to Archiver's, I found three sheets of patterned paper by The Paper Company that I really liked. Remember: THREE sheets. 12x12 sheets. REMEMBER that!
First I scrapped these 2 2-page 12x12 layouts for Kevin's album. These photos are from his cousin Dane's party in January 2008.
Then I made a page for Blake's album about Kevin's birthday at home this past fall.
I decided to finally tackle the MANY, MANY, MANY photos I had from Kevin's "friend" party last fall. Luckily I had used a photo editing program to make collages (smaller sizes) before I had them processed!
I completed THREE 2-page 12x12 layouts and a single 12x12 from the friend party.


I love how they all turned out. They were too fun. Remember I did all of these with just three sheets of 12x12 patterned paper. A little goes a long way. (I need to remind myself of that the next time I shop for paper!!!)

I also used a coordinating transparency from the same line to complete a page for Blake's album about his cousin's birthday party in January.

Now I have all of these great times documented and in albums. That feels great!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

oh my goodness girl you got a TON of LO's done!! They all look great! I love how you used the numbers lace cardstock on the bday ones!! so cute!

Jess Stevens said...

oh. my. goodness. Amy you are an amazing scrapper! You inspire me to just pull out all old party pics & just go for it!
I love the imperfect, Perfect 10 LO, awesome idea!

Unknown said...

WOW Amy! You are on a role! Great job! I love the circle of friends LO. What a cute idea!
All of them are good! You go girl~

Lynette Jacobs said...

Amazing....I am gobsmacked! Amy, you filled how many albums!

Great work...you are the most prolific scrapper I know!

Lynette Jacobs said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Melanie said...

You amaze me with your creations. Your family is so blessed to have all of the pages you make. I love all the fun bright colors you used on these celebration pages.

Star Rork said...

you are rockin the bday layouts! love the train cake too!

Erica said...

Wow Amy! That is unbelievable. I couldn't even count them all! You inspire me with getting a whole bunch done at once! Love the sports or birthday scrapbook themes you do!