A La Carte

My friend Mel introduced me to a new challenge blog, A La Carte, that started in June. The challenges are presented in a way that really allows you to be creative, yet flexible. They offer a "menu" with six challenges. You are asked to incorporate at three of them into your layout. New challenges are posted on the 1st and 15th of each month.

Challenge #3 was posted on July 1. Here is the "menu" that was posted:

1. Use doodling.
2. Use the colors red, white, and blue.
3. Use a critter.
4. Use the word celebrate.
5. Use four words in the title.
6. Create a double-page layout.

I actually created two layouts based on this challenge. For "celebrate 6 years old", I used every menu item except for using a critter on my page. Unless you count Kevin...I guess he's sort of little critter, huh?
"The Chicks Dig Me" used four of the menu items. I didn't doodle or use the word celebrate.

Challenge 4 has been posted and I hope to get a layout (or two!) finished with it before the end of the month.

June favorites

I did a lot of scrapping in June, but then July came and the boys baseball practice and tournament schedule took over our lives. I haven't been scrapping as much for July, but I realized I also hadn't been sharing much either. Before this month gets away from me, I want to share some of my favorite layouts from last month.


A few months ago, my dad bought a new tractor. I took a few shots of Tom driving it and when I got the pictures back couldn't get Kenny Chesney's "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" out of my head and so a layout was born...

"Covington" was inspired by an Allison Davis layout. I love her work! I found a great use for a felt Fancy Pants monkey on "meet George..."!

I'd been saving this "the flirt" tag from a pair of Old Navy jeans for a while. I loved how it matched these My Minds Eye papers. These photos of Kevin playing with our neighbor cracked me up. I loved the energy of the photos and paired them up with Basic Grey's Lime Rickey papers. I thought the "movement" of the circles I cut out of the paper worked well with movement in the photos.

One of my FAVORITE pages from this summer is "the Wind Up" for Blake. I handcut several stars from the MME paper and then raised them up with pop dots. I even pulled some old MM washers out of my stash to add as accents in the upper left corner.

I love this photo of my dad and grandmother, so this page is a favorite of mine. I was able to use flowers!

I got overly creative and girly for this page. I used Versa Mark and stamped a background on the cardstock. (I rarely use stamps!) This page documents my first time in print. I was excited to be published in Creating Keepsakes Easier Than Ever Scrapbooking 2 back in May.

Here is a simple, but meaningful page. I don't usually do "themey" pages, but the K&Co. Cub Scout line is a must for all the Cub Scout photos I have piling up. We were really proud of our boys accomplishments this year.

As for themey...sports papers are the exception - I LOVE them. LOVED the WRMK MVP line. I wasn't lazy with this layout, I just really liked the look of the "naked" chipboard with these papers.

Can you believe how much Blake changed from November to June??? I'm loving the new MME papers.

More MME...I loved this die cut paper, but didn't like the center of it with my photos, so I removed the center of the die cut, matted the border on cardstock and then used the pattern I removed to cover this large chipboard "K".

And more MME...These patterns were great for these outdoor shots at a Jake's event. So, there you have my favorite layouts from last month. I hope to get back to scrapping more regularly when the boys are back in school. I know I have a lot of memories from this summer to scrap!

From "stash" to treasure...

I remember when the Archiver's opened up in Louisville in the fall of 2006. I was thrilled to finally step inside the store I'd seen advertised so heavily in all the scrapbook magazines. Every aisle contained something I'd only seen in ads in the same magazines. I was in a scrapbooker's heaven!

One of my first purchases at the store was a winter themed line by KI Memories. I bought it all...the papers, ribbons set, the chipboard accents, epoxy stickers, alpha stickers and accent stickers...even little "test tubes" full of embellishments like brads, stars, paper clips and mini letters.

I used some of it, but wanted to "save" it since it was so nice. I remember at the time, I even skimped on using the embellishments since they were sort of pricey...I wanted to stretch them out a bit. Well, you know what happens when you save scrap supplies, right? They sit. They get moved around. They get replaced by your latest purchase and you forget about them.

Last month, I was reacquainted with this KI line of supplies. I was completing a challenge to "crop a photo creatively." I had a 5x7 of Bake waving in the snow and I decided cropping it into three pieces and matting them on the same mat was about as "creative" as I would allow myself to get. When I went through my bin of papers, I came across the KI line and I decided to get some use of the whole thing.
To my surprise, "Keep Warm" is a layout that I really like. In fact, I think I love it. I used the embellishments freely because I felt bad for them sitting in a baggie for almost three years!

But, I didn't stop there..."The Big Snow" is another layout that makes me happy. I still had some paper scraps left (and too many embellishments), so I used the scraps to finish "All Bundled Up". I should note that I don't get fixed up to go play in the snow when it's freezing cold, so excuse the mug shot of myself as we drive off to the farm to go sledding. ;)

At the end of my scrap session, I had three layouts that made me smile and an empty "kit" bag. I think I need to dig back through my bins more often in addition to grabbing my new favorites to work with. I also realize that I don't need to "save" my supplies. I need to enjoy them!

Happy scrapping!

Champions!!!

It was a fun weekend for our family. Blake's team wasn't playing, so we all attended Kevin's baseball tournament together. The team won both of their pool play games on Saturday to earn the #1 seed in the single-elimination tournament on Sunday. Sunday, they won both games, finally defeating the tournament host (and the only 7 year old team to beat them this summer), to become CHAMPIONS!!!

It was nice bringing home a trophy! Congrats, Kevin!!!

July PageMaps Sketches

On Saturday, we returned home from baseballs games and were then stuck inside because of rain. I checked out the message board at Personal Scrapper and saw that someone posted a challenge to use a specific July PageMaps.

"Practice Makes Perfect" is the LO I completed for that challenge. I already had these four pics on my desk and cropped them and altered the sketch to fit them. I used a paper pack/slab by We R Memory Keepers - their MVP line - that I picked up at Michael's a while back for around $10 by using a 50% off coupon.When I checked out the PageMaps site to see the sketch, I realized I loved all ten of the July sketches. I spent last night and some time this morning scrapping to use all of the sketches. I continued using the WRMK MVP line and various sports pics from the boys' 2006 season.

Everything for "Tournament Time" was included in the MVP slab except for the diecut journaling cards (from the same line) that I picked up at Archiver's. These pics are from Kevin's first year of teeball - he's grown so much!!!

"2nd place" uses the slab, a couple journaling cards, some vintage rick rack, and American Crafts foam Thickers ("nd"). The "2" is a cut out from a piece of patterned paper that I raised up with pop dots.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but "first uniform" has a row of stars above the photos that I punched out with my old Creative Memories star punches. Some are raised up with pop dots. I remember how excited Kevin was to get his first official uniform!

I love how "Rookie" turned out. Sometimes it's hard to scrap posed photos. I turned the sketch I used for this LO on it's side. It was also an 8-1/2"x11" sketch that I altered into a 12x12. It's one of my favorites.

"Night Games" documents a big thrill for the boys - playing under the lights. It's hard to believe that in these pics Blake was the age Kevin is now! It looks like there is a red circle with a star in the center of this LO, but the circle is actually silver. I think it might have picked up the reflection of my red shirt!

The sketch I used for "18" appeared pretty girly, but I added stars to toughen it up! I don't usually use the same photo twice on a page (it's a pet peeve of mine), but I thought it worked ok here.

"Sideline 2006" is of a couple random shots I had from Kevin watching Blake's games. I liked using the newspaper patterned paper.

The sketch I used for "Champs" was actually a 2-page 8-1/2"x11" LO that I made into a 2-page 12x12 LO. It's probably the sketch I altered the most to accomodate all my photos. These are good memories!

I was able to use my Bazzill stitching templates for "in uniform". I tried to get creative and make the circles in the sketch into baseballs.

Usually I have so many sports photos that I am overwhelmed when I try to scrap them. I might just have to pull up the PageMaps archives to see if another month of sketches will inspire me to scrap more of my huge collection of sports photos!

Happy scrapping!