My Scrapbooking Blog

Katie & Jane

2011-10-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

Leftovers Bella BLVD

2011-10-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

When I "finish" with a line, I used to put all the scraps in a bag to use another time. But then I just have tons and tons of scraps that I never look through. So now I just make as many cards and blank pages as I can with the leftovers, and chuck the tiny scraps and stickers that I just can't see myself ever using. I'm pretty happy with these blanks! I made a few cards, too, but the pictures turned out so poorly that I'm not posting pictures of them.

Tyler's Album, Movin' Right Along

2011-10-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

Moving along on Tyler's album, using a combination of Bella BLVD lines and their awesome Sophisticates alphas, which I LOVE, especially for a project like this. Always need more letters! 1989

Love the dino holding the football! :)

1992. Next comes a few years with barely any pictures.

Echo Park Life is Good

2011-09-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

I bought Echo Park's collection pack (I adore companies who sell their complete lines in collection packs.) and finally got around to using it the last couple of nights.

The main event! When my scrapbooking girls came to visit, they got such a kick out of reading Katie's 2009 tweets that I figured I may as well put another book on the shelf next to it. I already had the tweets copied from Twitter onto a Word document, formatted, and printed, so it was easy to start. I just chose the paper pack to use, and went to work! Everything in the album is from the collection pack except for those gorgeous blue chipboard letters in "tweets" on the front here. (Those are Bella BLVD.) I LOVE this line!

I still have to add ribbons. And an apostrophe. It's an album with an acrylic cover, from Little Yellow Bicycle. I love this for this album, since each page fits a ton of tweets on it.

I put spaces for pictures, but didn't look through my photo archives for them yet...that's a project for another night. I inked the edges of the tweets, and used Mod Podge on everything to make it nice and solid, since there aren't page protectors.

Maybe my favorite part (except for the tweets themselves, of course) is the back.

I'd give it to Katie for her birthday next month, but I don't think she'll appreciate it for a few years. Instead, I think I'll get her that Sleeping Beauty dress and a big giant lollipop. :)

As a happy by-product of the main project using it, I created two pocket pages for our 2011 memorabilia. With my blog books, I don't do chronological scrapbooking, but I still need a place to put tickets, birthday cards, etc.


And to use up the rest of my scraps (seriously, I only throw away tiny pieces after I've used all I possibly can.), I made a few cards. I end up sending quite a few for my church these days. Especially get well soon cards, can you tell?

Creative Productivity

2011-09-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

These should be last on the post, but I made a few Thank You cards for Tyler to send to his interviewers at EPPA.

I'm in love with these teeny tiny alphabet stickers from LilyBeeDesigns. So cute.

And then I made a few more pages for Tyler's book. Some of these are my favorites yet! Probably because of the Bella BLVD lines. I love that I can use pieces and stickers I have left over from past lines, and they mix right in! Also that I can mix in a little pink without it being too overwhelming to this boy album.
Movin' right along, 1988-1989. Almost a decade down!
It's quite a project.

And then, because the episode wasn't quite over, I put together these little books with my Zutter Bind-it All. Just a 4x6 piece of chipboard for the covers, and 4x6 pictures inside. I made one for Katie awhile ago, and both girls love them. So I printed out more recent pictures and am going to give them them for their birthdays this year. Well, Jane's will be late, but I don't think she'll mind. Or notice.

I love creative productivity!

Tyler's Album...1985-87!

2011-09-10T15:49:00.001-07:00

I know my scrapbooking blog hasn't shown it, but I have actually been down in my scrapbook room quite a bit for the past few weeks. :) Pretty much every night I come down and do a side or two of Tyler's album. I'm still liking the WE R pages with different-sized picture slots. But, it isn't saving as much work/time as I had envisioned because there has only been about two 4x6 pictures yet! And lots and lots of Polaroids. But that's ok. It's still fun to use so many patterns and little detail pieces.

These pictures drive me crazy because they're in the plastic still, but there was no way I was taking out all those papers to take pictures. :) So here you have them, blown up so you can see the pictures.

Tyler had a lot of dress up pictures around 1987. :) With sisters on either side, he was just going along with the game. :)

I like that Tyler's mom saved some newspaper articles about Mom & Dad for each child. They are awesome! (the articles and the Mom & Dad)

It wasn't until I was cleaning up after this page that I found the strip of the cut-up class photo that had the teachers' heads on them! Oops! So it's tucked behind.

I'm seriously in love with this Bella BLVD line, Family Dynamix. The colors are so fun, and work super well with Tyler's turquoise shirts! :)

Ok, seriously? This bunny is one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. It belongs in a horror movie. And I thought our modern-day version with glasses was weird.

What a cutie Tyler was! I hope we have a boy someday who looks just like him. More pages soon!

Katie's Tweets

2011-07-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

Katie has a twitter feed, and on it I write all the funny things she says. I finally got around to doing something with them. I had forgotten about most of them. :) Which makes me grateful that I wrote them down! This mini album is her 2009 tweets. I used a Little Yellow Bicycle book, and Basic Grey's Olivia line.

More Tyler!

2011-06-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

These pictures are in reverse order, but I'm too lazy to re-arrange them. Here's an 8x8 page I made (I also made another one probably for a frame as a baby shower gift) to use up the rest of this adorable Echo Park line. I hope to have a boy named Jack someday. :) If not, I'll switch out the letters. Unconceived Jack also has a baby journal I'm saving for him. I'm a dork.

Here's a blankie...baby pictures of future Jack.

Boy page: I didn't have enough scraps left to do any more of Tyler's book, but couldn't throw any away! I also made about 15 mini cards.

Here are two huge framed pictures that I "inherited" from my Grandma & Papa. Since I don't foresee putting them on my walls (sorry, GG Grandma & Grandpa, just not my style), I made these pages for my scrapbook. I love them. I love how I can see my Papa in his parents and my Grandma in her parents. Family is so important, and I'm so grateful for the heritage I have.

I get a kick out of this one: this is their wedding photo, and can't you just see the bliss emanating from them? They look thrilled! :)

And here are the pages I did for Tyler's book in the past few weeks. We're up to 1985, 4 years down, 14 left to go!

Such a cutie! But I don't think I can see Katie in him too much.

This is a hilarious picture from Tyler's childhood: his older brother Scott dressed as an NFL football player--painted to be African American. Tyler's journaling says, "apparently this costume was socially acceptable in Montana in the 1980's. I'm a pumpkin."

Tyler's mom did such a good job of taking memorable, cute, and characteristic pictures of Tyler. I can't wait to bring the album to show her in Cody in a few weeks!

Birthday Present

2011-06-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

This is my go-to birthday present lately. :) Notebooks are $1, the cute push-tip pencils (who doesn't love those?!) were $1 for a 6-pack. Add super cute Bella Blvd paper and stickers and some Mod Podge, and BAM, a personalized, cutsy gift.

Lovin' We R Memory Keeper Pages Protectors!

2011-05-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

So I started Tyler's growing up pictures! I ordered a few lines especially for these pictures. This is a MME line that Stop 'N' Scrap had for 60% off, so it was less than $4!

Tyler's Mom was really great at writing the date on the back of photos, so it was pretty easy to organize them chronologically. I don't usually scrapbook that way, but rather by event or theme when I have a bunch of unorganized pictures.

But for Tyler's book, I knew I wanted to use these We R Memory Keepers pages protectors. I thought it'd make the album go faster and be simpler, especially where there were two pictures for a birthday or twelve pictures for a year (so different, back in the days of film camera!), three of which aren't very good pictures. I take 12 pictures of the same facial expression these days! :) I'm glad Tyler has so many pictures from his entire life; quite a feat seeing that Tyler was the fifth of six kids!

I like this system because you have your 12x12 pages, and then you mix in these multi-photo pages. I'm using the front and back of the same paper to make the album thinner, and it's turning out so well! (The pictures aren't great because I kept the pictures in the pockets.)

You can, of course, use these 4x6 pages for 4x6 prints, but back in the 1980's they didn't print the pictures that big!

It's like doing mini album pages. I love it!

I had to cut the bottom of the top left corner pocket to fit the Polaroid in; it's too tall to fit in a 4x4 one. Tyler has a lot of Polaroids later in the 80's, so I'll have to plan that in. ;)

Blanks

2011-04-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

So I just finished Benjamin's book, and have sorted through Tyler's growing up pics (pre-me). I ordered some lines that'll be perfect for his "oldie" pictures online, so while I'm waiting for those to come, I decided to finish off a few lines I've had for awhile. I'd already made pages, etc. with these, so used up the scraps on blank pages and cards.

Bo Bunny...I love this line.

I also LOVE this Earth Love line from Cosmo Cricket. I made tons of cards and these layouts with all the cute little mushrooms and birdies.

Most of the time, I envision which pictures I'll put on a page, even if I haven't taken them yet. This one is destined for a good Calvin/Katie/Ryan one.

This one is for a Ryan in his garden one.

And this is, I think, my very favorite Bella Blvd. line ever; One Fall Day. I love the colors, and as you can see, it goes with so many different colors. Now I need to take a lot of fall pictures to go on these!

Done!

2011-04-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Yay, so Benjamin's albums are all done and put together. Only Christy's books left to go!

Here are the last few pages I did. Canberries Rock.

I play the Kielbasa. It's really called a cabasa, a percussion instrument, but Benjamin didn't exactly know that. :)

You're Nice Guy.

All about Abbey. I love how this one turned out!

Christy & Benjamin's crazy pictures.

Almost Done!

2011-03-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

I'm getting really, really close to being done with Benjamin's album. Like 6 pages left, I think. So before I do the last few, I'm going to put the completed pages in albums to see where I have an extra side to see how to do the last pages (1 vs. 2) so they all fit nicely. So exciting! Then he'll have completed scrapbooks to look at at his graduation party next spring. So, I need to see what albums I'll be using (definitely 3-ring binders, probably Making Memories or American Crafts). Here are a bunch of pages I've done in the past few weeks. I have done a few 6x12 pages for variety.

For some reason (sisters younger and older than him?) Benjamin has a lot of pictures of just him. So my options were to group them in themes somehow, scrap them singly, or do this: and at this point in the album, I'm ready to be done. Plus, for most of these, I don't know a story or anything about the picture except that he's cute in them. So there you go. Some collage pages.

I love these pictures. They're not the greatest quality, but I love them...Benjamin in his carseat in the front seat (!?) and Mom just obviously loving her little boy.

Lots of Christy & Benjamin pictures, too. Lots.

Blanks

2011-02-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

A baby boy page with this line.

A Few

2011-02-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

Here are a few random pages I hadn't done yet for my own albums.

Bella BLVD One Fall Day Mini

2010-12-25T19:38:00.000-08:00

This is a mini album I WON from Bella BLVD a few months ago and put together when I really should have been working on Christmas presents. Oh well! I LOVE it, especially the teal paint! I used pictures of our fun activities in the fall (and deliberately dressed myself and the girls in teal to match this album, haha!).

I love how the acetate back worked out with these pictures.

Easy Happy Sunny Skies Mini Album

2010-12-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

Here's a mini album I made for Hikaru, our beloved Japanese sister. After living with our family for a year, she is now back in Japan. We miss her a lot!

Happy Sunny Skies, Plus 3

2010-12-07T19:18:00.000-08:00

I had lots of fun playing with this bright, happy collection from Bella BLVD. Wow, I love (and used!) every single paper & sticker from this line. I have in mind some pictures to use...I'll re-post them with pictures when they're added!

And some One Fall Day for my brother Benjamin's album.

And some Midterm...before Abbey left for Japan, Benjamin loved to flash peace signs at her nonstop. She got pretty tired of it! :)

Some Time Life Is Hard

2010-12-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

A little album for my girls. I made this awhile ago, but just yesterday got some Zutter coils to finish it off. I used a variety of papers, mostly MME.

The journaling is a message about life to my girls:

My dear Katie & Jane, you were so sad to have to get in the stroller to go that day. In your lives, you will have hard times. Sadness, pain, loss, and tragedy are all part of the world in which we live. We cannot avoid them nor should we, for without knowing the bitter, we could not cherish the sweet. The hard times in your lives will teach and strengthen you more than an easy and carefree life ever could. Through the hard times, you will develop empathy. You will understand a little more what our Savior, Jesus Christ, understands. You will be able to love more deeply and find more joy in your relationships and daily life. As your mom, I never want to see you have hard times, but sometimes life is hard and I know you will be strong enough to meet it when it comes. I love you. Mom

Busy Bee

2010-10-07T18:39:00.000-07:00

I have been busy scrapbooking! Check them out.

I had this (freebie) Yellowstone sticker forever, and actually love how this page came together. I'm in love with this corrugated cardstock by Creative Imaginations. I think it's $2 per sheet, but totally worth it!

The rest of my baby girl bag...

And baby boy stuff...

Bella Blvd Super Stud...

Again, the corrugated paper from Creative Imaginations...love it! Also, my first time using glimmer mist!

Basic Grey. I LOVE this line, and LOVE the pages I ended up with!

Bella Blvd Plastino:

Little Yellow Bicycle, and a BG paper.


This layout is about my nephew, who thought that the guy speaking over the PA at a track meet was Jesus. :) He is the best scrapbooking subject ever.

A mini album I made a long time ago in an Asian class I taught...finally added pictures to it! They're really small pictures (the album is made up of 3.5x3.5 wooden squares), so resizing them in Photoshop took forever, but I ADORE how it turned out!

More!

2010-10-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

(You put two 4x6 pictures on the bottom of this page; the 2 paper is not part of the layout. :) Sometimes I use papers I won't ever use as a base to build on. Also, those 12x12 white papers in your album refill pages work well for this.)

Is it crazy...

2010-09-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

...to want to have a baby boy because of scrapbook layouts? :) I made a pocket page for Benjamin's birth papers...

...and then made a few pages for my future son. (No announcements, just hoping we'll have a little boy in our family someday.)

This Heidi Grace line (one of my all time faves) had a ton of stickers. I could have kept them to use eventually, but that's not my style...anymore. :)

Keep On Truckin'

2010-09-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

I'm working on Benjamin's book still. In part, I think, "He's a guy. He won't care what these pages look like." So I'm happy to use up my old stuff, repeat layouts. But it's not as satisfying as making a page I love. So I'm doing a little of each. :) Maybe his future wife someday will like them.

So, some simple pages, using paper I bought "because I liked it." Some of it I've had for awhile...

And some old class kits. As much as I may have liked these at one point, by now I'm pretty tired of looking at them. :) So I'm glad to get pictures on them!

The rest of a Basic Grey line...

for BJ.

And for me. My friend Christina always scrapped without photos, which I never understood. But now I do. My pages turn out completely differently when I scrapbook without pictures.

And Bella Blvd for Benjamin.

And some Bella Blvd for me. :)

Lovin' the Process

2010-09-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, I am LOVING this new process. I made this layout.

Then used the rest of the line on this one. (Which I like even better.)

Made this with the last of my Christmas bag of scraps. And can't wait to put a cute pic of my girls on Christmas morning in it!

I made this one...

And then finished off this line for this, to be used either as a double or two singles.

It's sort of sad to see the last of lines I love, like this October Afternoon one, but there's always new stuff to use, so I'm going to use what I've got and try to keep up with the new stuff! :)

Benjamin's Book

2010-09-07T06:26:00.000-07:00

Some more pages for Benjamin's book. A bunch of random Christmas pictures that I didn't want to leave out, but for which I didn't want to make separate pages. I think the only reason I like how this turned out is because of the Thicker title. :) All scraps from my Christmas bag, which is now pretty much empty.

A super simple page. Just a slit in the top to put a newspaper article into.

And, finally done with Cross Country & Track 2009 layouts! Yay!

Finally, I got out a frame and looked through my paper to find the perfect background for these nativity guys (and girl) that Amber & I made last Christmas time. We just got a lot of coordinating paper and folded them over paper rectangles so they look like kimonos. I love it! I'm either going to spray paint the frame black or sand it so it looks rustic. Can't decide which.

My New Process

2010-08-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

I mentioned before that I keep my collections of paper (either by theme or by manufacturer line) stored in 12x12 plastic bags. So now as I make layouts for Benjamin's book, I'm going to use up the rest of that bag, or put the remainder of the bag into my bags for embellishments or general scraps. That way I'll have more finished layouts for which I can then print pictures. It's easy to make another layout as long as I have all the coordinating stuff out. It just means I'm less productive at actually getting pages done for Benjamin's book. But I have an entire year before he gets home from Switzerland, so no rush. :)

So I made this one:

And then used up the rest of this Making Memories line I'd been saving.

And this one. This is one of my favorite patterned papers of all time, so I bought a whole bunch of it. These are my last two sheets (whew...) and I had these chipboard letters that match, so out of the seven that were left, I tried to make a word and came up with this title. :) Funny how the theme for a page can come together.

And one more. The words are all from a rub-on sheet I bought on clearance...cute, hey?

Then I switched over to this line from Junkitz (miss you, Junkitz!) and went back to Benjamin's next season of track.

And a bonus page, and this line is gone!

Lately...

2010-08-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

I've been working on Benjamin's (my 16-year-old brother) scrapbook lately. Here's a page from Scout Camp using Bo Bunny's line. Love it.

Then when I have only a little bit of a line left in my bag (I separate the lines into 12x12 bags, and stack them on my shelf.) I sometimes make a blank layout for future use.

Same here. I was finishing up Benjamin's baseball pictures, and he's out of the baseball scene now, having chosen other sports for high school, so I wanted to use up all the baseball stuff I had. I don't see me needing baseball scrapbook stuff for a few years, and then I can buy new. So I was trying to use up everything I had. :)

The title on this one is sort of hard to read. It's sisters in rhinestones. Anyhow, this page is about my two funny girls on our trip to Utah this summer.

A couple of pages for Jane's book using Bella Blvd.

And Benjamin's book again. I'm doing the sports pages, can you tell? 8th grade track. Because of my dad's good camera, I have a lot of "series" photos. I like these photos, but am having a hard time doing them any different ways. Ideas?

Easy page. Haha.

My favorite part of this page is that I used a Mexican paper I bought a long time ago for our cruise and didn't end up using it. I thought I'd never be able to use it. :) Thank goodness Benjamin decided to be a Mexican Box Cow for Halloween.

And more series photos.

I did all of Benjamin's basketball photos in a mini book from KI Memories, and so put his 2008 ones onto the same (oddly not oval) pages to add to that ring-bound book. Since he's done with basketball also, I was trying to use up all of my old basketball-themed stuff, too. :)

This is where I ran out of baseball-themed papers. :) You don't always have to use baseball paper to scrapbook baseball pictures! Instead, look at colors or shapes. I used the uniform colors to choose the pp, and they happened to have circles (like baseballs) on them. It works.

And some other ones...a bunch of birthday years for which he only had a few photos. So they got combined into one page.

Love how this one came together. so simple.

For Benjamin's albums, I'm using American Craft's D-Ring albums, and one of my favorite things about them is that you can add different sized-pages in there. This time I'm not doing too many 8.5x11 pages, because I like the bigger format, but I'm going to add some 6x12 pages in there for variety.

And that's all for now!

My Bellas

2010-07-29T17:24:00.000-07:00

This week was the Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) show in Chicago. I helped my friend Stephanie Hunt in the Bella BLVD booth, and it was a blast! I met so many new people, saw so many old friends, learned a lot, and had a lot of fun with my girls. I hadn't seen my scrapbooking friends from Milwaukee since just after Jane was born last fall, so I brought this little mini book to show them recent pictures. I used Bella's Estate Sale line, and I LOVE how it turned out. My two little beautiful girls.

I used the Zutter Bind it All tool to punch the pages, but hadn't bought the coil to bind it when I was done because I wasn't sure how thick it'd be and it's my first mini book using that tool. Of course, I was finishing this book the night before flying to Chicago, so I improvised the binding with twine, thinking I'd re-do it later. But I like it a lot, so it's staying like that!

Getting Ready for CHA

2010-07-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

Every 6 months before CHA, I spend a lot of time looking at all the sneak peeks, and planning what I'll do with each line I fall in love with. Then I look around my scrapbook room (Yay! I have a scrapbook room again!) and notice that I have a lot of stuff I was really excited about from LAST CHA that I still haven't used. So I get to work.

I've been staying up super late about every other night lately (Tyler's back on night shifts.) and have been getting some pages done! I've been using a lot of Bella Blvd especially because (1) I'm going to be working in the Bella Blvd booth and feel especially inspired by it, and (2) I just might get my act together and apply for their design team in a few weeks. Maybe.

Here are a few. Sorry for the horrible pictures. I had the idea to shoot them outside...but didn't realize that little pieces of grass overlapped the pages. But you get the idea.

Oops, this one is missing a photo still.

A couple for my fabulous sister-in-law...

Isn't this baby the best?! She's absolutely adorable.

And a kit from Scrapbooks Etc. in Mesa, AZ. Thanks, Mom!

Maude & Tom's Sign In Book

2009-05-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

For their wedding May 24. I was super excited because, besides the album, I used all stuff I had. That's amazing.