All Ears & Crossing Fingers

Both of my DT reveals fall on the same day this week. 

Reveal #1: Sketchabilities - All Ears. After a long day at Magic Kindom at Disney World, Rheagan was worn out but she was still in great spirits as we headed out of the park. She was proudly showing off her "big ears" but you can tell through her forced smile that she was tired. She's still as cute as can be though.

My 2nd reveal is actually my last reveal for Nuts About Sketches. :( I did not try out for a 2nd term but I really enjoyed working with Shawn and her sketches.

Reveal #2 xx crossing fingers xx
This layout was to much fun. I doodled the border along the edge freestyle. I wanted the outer blue border to look like watercoloring so I watered down some re-inker and then painted it on several times to get some color variance. Then I fussy cut the butterflies in coordinating paper. The journaling is hidden behind the red photo section. The big red flower at the bottom right is actually what pulls the journaling out (see below). What is really hard to see here is ALL.THE.STICKLES. that I applied to this layout. I stickled: the edge of each butterfly, all the dots and lines and circles within the butterflies, the edges of the brackets, the edges of the layout, the big red flower, and the doodled loops on the layout and journaling tag. I am sure I forgot something that got hit by the stickle bug ;)

Making Waves Wherever You Go

This layout, based on this week's Nuts About Sketches sketch, is more than what you see.  It represents a little girl's passion for the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the devastating oil spill.  Rheagan was sad when we told her the water may have oil in it and we wouldn't be able to swim but her attention quickly turned to all the sea life and who would help them.  Once we got to the beach, we were happy to see that the beach and Gulf didn't have any tar. We had a great day at the beach. 

Check out my tutorial on how I made the seashells.

Nuts About Sketches Sketch:

Flock of Seagulls

I took a little more liberty with this Nuts About Sketches sketch than usual. I had a couple of events that had multiple photos but just couldn't get them to work the way I envisioned so I went with a recent trip to the beach that had fewer photos. There are 4; can you spot photo #4? As you look at the sketch, hopefully you can see that I did the left side of the spread using the top 3 photos, the title on the left, I turned the 6x5 photo into a background for the 3 photos and added the border at the bottom third.  As I was thinking about journaling options I went to a few of my favorite blogs for inspiration and remembered a layout that my IRL friend did a while back that I loved. I don't know if I scraplifted it subliminally or what but as I looked at the background patterned paper and border, it's almost identical so what the heck, I did a similar journal spot and titling. I was going to angle the photos where they would overlap a little bit but I really liked how Audrey did hers. Thanks for the inspiration, Audrey.

BTW, I am going to go back and scrap one more photo I took during this feeding frenzy moment, which was of Reese's daddy holding a cracker up with his hand while a seagull swooped in and ate it.  This was after Reese had attracted him so I didn't want it to take away from Reese's seagull moment therefor I didn't want to include it on the layout above. Reese was standing next to him so it will tie in nicely.  I think I will use the right side of the sketch for that.

not your typical SCROOGE

Here's this week's Nuts About sketches reveal.  I created it while on a business trip to NYC and I really like how simple it is but I think I may have to embellish it an itsy-bitsy bit more once I get home and have access to all my goodies. 

I decided to complete just one side of this sketch but as I look at the layout I did I think I may go back and do another Christmas layout for Reese on a separate topic that compliments the side I already completed.

Christmas in July

My goal is to get Christmas 2009 layouts completed for the girls by July.  I just made this goal up right now (half way through July) as I am typing this so I've got some work to do and I hope I have enough of this paper to have it coordinate (at least a little).  Here's my first stab at this aggressive little goal.  I used the adorable CTMH Jingle paper pack, Chocolate Alpha Small stamp with Chocolate ink, True Friends stamp with Juniper ink, chocolate waxy flax, Tulip ink and blending pen (for the artsy look under the word 'cookies') and their Sparkles.  I also used MM Shimmer Alpha Red and The Paper Studio Groovy Jazz Pink Chipboard alphas.

Rheagan and Reese's pj both said Santa's Favorite so I thought I'd play off that for the title of this particular layout.

This layout was based off this week's Nuts About Sketches sketch:

Coloring Eggs...AND HANDS???

It seems I always put off scrapping the holiday photos for some reason.  I must be the mass of photos I take.  Needless to say I am very far behind on Christmas and Easter photos and have lots of catching up to do going back a couple of years, I'm afraid.  Here's a start at Easter using Week 115 Nuts about Sketches sketch.  I have been dying to scrap this set of pictures ... look at Rheagan's hand!!!

The circles in the sketch got me thinking about going to Archivers last weekend with my friend Audrey and I really liked the way she was incorporating circles on her layout that night. My circles are a combo of the sketch, a scraplift and my own originality.  I also used Shimmer Spritz (Bed of Roses) on my green cardstock to give it some pizazz and then I combined 2 thread colors in my hand stitched circles.  Like how I strategically placed the flower in Rheagan's hair?

You

Here's last week's Nuts About Sketch layout.  I'm posting it almost a week late because I just couldn't get it to look like what I wanted.  Here's the final version.

Pure Delight

I really enjoyed working on this layout.  As usual, I added a few handmade elements.  Here's the Nuts About You sketch, my take on it and a few close-ups. 

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Want to make your own pinwheel flowers?  Here's a link to the tutorial.

You Are Sooo CUTE!

I went on a somewhat spur of the moment crop at a LSS store with my sweet friend Audrey this weekend.  It was great to catch up with her but it wasn't long enough.  I did get a couple of pages done for the Nuts About Sketches Design Team.  I'm revealing one today and the other next Monday.  I had a lot of fun with this sketch and I got to play with the Noel Mignon Playdate kit I purchased last month that I hadn't had a chance to dabble with yet. The kit is unbelievable, there's so much in it.  I will definitely be checking into more kits, including 2 Audrey told me about, soon.  So here's the Nuts About Sketches sketch.

And here's my take on it. I blocked out portions of certain photos.

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From the kit I used: Dear lizzy crochet flowers, Quite Contrary "TOKEN" ticket, yellow ribbon, My Mind's Eye Jack & Jill "Cute" Paper, October Afternoon Title, Shimmerz Spritz "Bed of Roses" on the title and ticket. I added some CTMH tokens, photo corners, waxy flax and bling accents, Cloud 9 "Rain" Dots and a handmade journal raindrop and scallop frame.  Here's some close-ups. Click on any of them to enlarge.

Aquarium Life

Here's this week's Nuts About Sketches Sketch. This was a great layout to capture 9 photos on one spread and I had the perfect set of photos.

The sketch really made me challenge myself. I didn't want to add too many patterns since the pictures would make the layout busy enough as it was and since it left little room for embellishments I really had to think through this. Here's my layout. BTW, I have no idea why there are white tigers at the aquarium.

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Since I was focusing on our recent trip to the Downtown Houston Aquarium and I didn't want to make the layout too busy I decided to make waves.  This gave me a chance to use all that vellum I had stashed away that I never use anymore.  I used 3 different colors of vellum. I cut the waves out of the darkest color first, then I cut another set of waves to overlap in the empty spaces of the first set of waves and then I repeated with the 3rd piece of vellum.  To make it look like an ocean wave I drew white lines and dots on the edges and sporatically placed "whitecaps" at the top of some of the waves and on the dots of the i's, made of tiny irredescent pearly bits that were strung together like pearls. I also added them to other elements of the layout.

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Lastly, I used two sets of ribbon as a border to the bottom photos.  I wanted to make the ribbon look like a wave so I ran the top ribbon like a loop, placing it down with a glue dot, then running it over my finger to make the loop and adhering it back down on another glue dot and repeated that many, many times. 

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