Winner and a layout! {Echo Park: Walk in the Park}

Are you on Pinterest yet? If not, let me know, I'm all for bringing people over to the dark side! See...I saw a pin by Kayla. It was a layout of Jan's. This one: 

Isn't it great?! Clouds, kites, banner...ahhh!

Instead of printing it out, saving it to a folder on my desktop or bookmarking it, I "pinned" it. Then as I was working on a layout for a challenge at Birds of a Feather...I needed some inspiration. I was stuck. Off to my "Scrapping Board" at Pinterest I went. And when I saw Jan's layout, I knew it was the one I would lift! And this is what I came up with:

 Obsessed with banners much? Guilty!

The only thing not from Echo Park is the "sweet cutie pie" element there on the left. Well...the twine, too ;) Our challenge at BOAF was to scrap the title or lyrics from a group of Birthday theme songs. I have saved this picture knowing what that the title would be "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" so this seemed like the perfect time to scrap it! I think this is my current favorite layout of mine. :)

Speaking of birthdays, I have a blog hop winner to announce! I can't figure out how to actually post the image from random.org here on my blog, but with 19 comments, it told me that #2 was the winner which is JennyBean! Congrats, Jen!!! I'll be messaging you here very soon with your gift card info to Scrapbook.com. Thanks to everyone for commenting!

August Project 12 {Echo Park: Life Is Good}

I'm entering this layout into this week's challenge over at The Paper Variety to use stickers. The flourish and flowers are all stickers. The blue flower & brown circle w/pink flower are stickers that I took the sticky out of before adding dimensional stickers to the back. I also used stickers for the date and title. 

I actually finished this layout a while back but haven't felt motivated to post it. August was a hard month here. I had spent the summer preparing to go on a 10 day vacation to Oregon and Washington to visit family and also get to meet an online friend. I worked so hard to be prepared for the trip and then the school year starting right as we returned. Two days before we were to leave, and the day after we told my daughter about the trip, we lost a very important family member. I am still glad that I prepared so much in advance for the school year so that I wasn't thinking about that while also dealing with the trauma of loosing a loved one.  So August wasn't what I thought it would be and that alone made it difficult to scrap. I didn't want the focus to only be on what we lost, but I also couldn't scrap just the happy, beginning of school times.

I realized toward the end of the month that it was a month of beginnings and endings so I went with that for a "title".

 With the obvious ending of a life, we also ended karate lessons for my oldest daughter. In just one more month, she would have been in it for 2 years. In turn, she was able to start a new gymnastics class, which she LOVES. She also started Kindergarten and we had a special dinner the night before to celebrate (idea for that stolen from here, but not quite as fancy!). We celebrated one birthday in this house and at least 2 birthdays for friends...ending one year and starting another.

I originally thought I would use a different sketch...because how could I fit everything in with just 3 pictures? But then I decided that the most important part was documenting the girls at this moment in time, and not every picture from every event. If an event is important enough to me anyway, it deserves its own layout.

I really did want this layout to focus on how much this month has changed our family and the heavy emotions that we have felt all month long. This is partly why I chose to print the pictures in black and white - to create more of an emotional, somber feel. However, in my journaling, I tried not to focus on the loss so much as get in all of the day to day details that aren't documented in the photos.

So sorry to have rambled on and on so much in this post ;-) and thanks so much for looking (and reading if you made it this far!).

Last of the ducks! {Echo Park: Victoria Gardens}

I sure am glad I am done scrapping this set of pictures! I created a layout for each girl and then a few extra layouts and I'm ready to move on to something else ;-)

I lifted the design from Linda's layout here:

I thought it was so smart to use the journaling cards for part of the grid design. I will be doing this more on future layouts! A closeup of the journaling:

Everything on the layout is from the September kit at Birds of A Feather. Since I have scrapped LOTS of layouts lately using Echo Park, I thought I would enter this into the favorite company challenge at The Paper Variety. To be honest though, I never can choose just one favorite scrapbooking company! ;-)

Welcome Princess {Echo Park: Victoria Gardens}

I've been busy this weekend trying to complete all of the challenges at The Paper Variety for their blog birthday party! I'm entering this layout into their favorite embellishments challenge shown here. 

 I'm guessing that most people are getting sick of banners right about now, but I still love them! I'm getting better at making different kinds and this is my first time to use just a couple of pennants by themselves. Love the look!

 All of the papers and embellies (except for the Princess card for the title-thanks Kayla!) are from the September or August Birds of a Feather kits. The design is based on a PageMaps sketch.

Thanks for stopping by and if you haven't seen the challenges yet at The Paper Variety - go check them out! You have until Tuesday to enter ;-)

*That* Sweet! {Echo Park: Victoria Gardens}

This layout is made using the September kit and for the September sketch challenge over at Birds of a Feather. I guess I was too touchy feely with my alphas because I can't get all of the letters to stick down :-\

 I'm blessed with such sweet girls, but this one, my goodness. It's almost sweetness overload! A close up of this butterfly pin....

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Girl {Echo Park: Victoria Gardens; Birds of a Feather September Kit}

 When I saw the September kit at Birds of a Feather, I knew these pictures needed those papers! I have at least two more layouts to complete from this photo session and can't wait to use the kit for them. I took the girls for some pictures and I was trying to be serious about them but then my daughter busted her hands in front of her face and reminded me to have fun :-)

She has this thing about painting her nails in a pattern - makes this former math teacher so proud! I have to admit I thought I would never use the lamp post rubons in the kit - but I love the look of this one with this layout! I was in a bit of a time crunch trying to get the color challenge done for August, so I didn't play around too much with this or maybe I would have distressed the edges of the papers. But I did manage to squeeze in some stitching in a few spots and that makes me happy :-)

 Thanks for stopping by!

Fun Day {Echo Park: Splash}

Look familiar? It's very similar to yesterday's layout ;) I switched which daughter was the focus and I also used Echo Park's Splash instead of Fancy Pants. 

 I still added some stitching and used some black & white photos...

 as well as other fun details - like google eyes & a banner!

This one came together in record time because I had so many great pattern papers and embellishments to choose from - they happened to be just the right size!

May Project 12 {Echo Park: Life is Good}

I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to be blogging today! Our computer died on Friday and we've already gotten it fixed :) It's amazing how different an empty computer is...I had to download Picasa again and  these layouts are the first pictures downloaded on to the computer! Luckily, I had been backing up all of my pictures so none of those are lost. I'm thinking I need to take a picture of our computer for my June layout ;)

Without the computer as a distraction, I completed 4 pages (and LOTS of chores) this weekend ;) The first 2 are for my May page:

 I couldn't pick just 5 pictures so I split one 4x6 into two smaller photos and then I added two small square photos under the flap on the far right.

 I'm so excited that I remembered to type text onto the pictures before I had them printed....I always like the look when I see it on other pages but never seem to remember to do it.

 I just love the right side of this page - with the houses, the clouds and the sun. My husband thought I made the houses myself and told me I had too much free time on my hands, lol. I DID however make those clouds and sun :)

Thanks for looking!

Merry Mermaids {Echo Park: Splash}

Another layout that is not for a challenge! It took me days to complete it because I didn't have a sketch to start with.

 This smaller splash on the left side is cut from the cover sheet of the collection pack as I needed another splash but the sticker sheet only had one. Only to find out minutes after all that fussy cutting that there are some EP images available for the Silhouette!

 I got a little crazy with the stickles on both splashes!

Thanks for stopping by...I hope to get working on this week's challenge at The Paper Variety since I have some end of school year pictures to scrap :) I'm definitely feeling the need for a challenge or sketch to get me motivated ;)

LIttle Fish {Echo Park: Splash}

This layout is one that I made just because - not for any challenge! I did use a PageMaps sketch and some of my new stuff from Echo Park. LOVE the matching alpha stickers that come in the collection pack.

 A bit closer of the left...

 and right...

Thanks for stopping by!