A puppy pawtay!

A few months back our little man turned two!  Wow, it felt like that last year went really, really fast as he was changing so much and becoming so active.  So active.  He's a real spunky sweetheart with a love for animals, especially dogs.  As such, I thought it might be fitting to throw a dog themed party - a puppy pawtay to be exact!  He loved the idea of it.  And he loved his party.

I have a lot of fun being creative with the kids birthdays, time permitting of course.  I planned ahead but kept things pretty simple.  We planned food with a play on the dog theme - having hot dogs and bonewiches, for example.  We got some black & white balloons and decorated some of them with brown, white, and black ears and sharpie puppy faces.  Those turned out to be one big hit for our son and the other little friends that attended.

We had a small, simple craft where the kids could make a puppy ear hat and decorate the ears with dots.  Little kids love glue sticks!  And instead of letting our guests depart with more sweets or little toys, we decided to fill our treat bags with a ball, rope toy, and bone for the furry friends back home.  That was quite the hit with our four legged companions who had to be alone while their families were gone!  Our son loved seeing the pictures people sent with their dogs enjoying the treats!  My husband had suggested that we ask everyone to bring their dog...but seriously, this is not a dog park and that is not a great idea!  :)  cute, but no.

When I received my order of the new Heidi Swapp September Skies collection, the colors spoke to me and I know the vibrant shades would be perfect for documenting that day of fun.  Heck, there is even a little dog as an embellishment!

 I mixed in some color magic ephemera and banners that I had in my stash and used my Silhouette to cut out a number two.  I actually cut out two of them and stacked them for an added dimensional touch.

 Above I used a clip to hold a fun fold out page with journalling and pictures of the decor.

 A hidden pull out pocket between two pages allowed me to add lots of photos of the fun!

 Couldn't resist creating a flap page for my son to pull up.  It had a picture of him and his cake...he loved that.  He also really loves cake.  To construct this I glued the photos down onto a plain, color coordinating piece of paper, then I measured a new patterned sheet to be exactly the same.  Some careful measurements are needed so you know where your photos are!  Using my craft knife I cut three sides of each flap, scored the remaining side, and then used a punch to make that notch opening.  Some stamping and ephemera really finished it off.

 Another pull out page here shows a close up shot of the kids on the trampoline.  I couldn't decide which one I liked the best so I included both!

 The birthday boy had a lot of fun running around with balloons!

 I even included the invitation right in the book.  Why not??

Finally, I used a Project Life slide out card for fun touch of my selfie with the birthday boy!

I really love how this mini turned out - it's as fun as the day itself!

More Catch Up...

 Play, yes they do!  I have a few more layouts that I made over the past two months that I wanted to share.  The top one is the boys, just taking a break from what they do best - play!  This layout is using mostly Heidi Swapp Mixed Company. 

 Although I created a fun mini with my Mother's Day pics, I still wanted to play around a bit and make a special "big" page of that day with my kiddos.  I used a mixture of Heidi Swapp Hello Today and dreamy, with a Project life card or two thrown in.  I also received some artwork that day from the boys that I slipped into the next page of the binder - a better place to keep it and cherish it than just laying around the house!

And I decided to go back to some winter pictures as I felt the cool air begin to blow around these parts to remind myself that we did have some fun during that long, long, long, longest of winters.  I look forward to more snow filled fun this year.  I used the Mixed Company line again here and painted on some color shine in various colors so the background was not too plain.  I like white space.  But I just always seem to fill it up!

Dreamy Layout

I'm not exactly sure why but I have yet to make a layout with Heidi Swapp's Dreamy line.  Well, the urge hit me and so I grabbed a recent photo and went to work.

I also used some wood veneer letters from Studio Calico and the "adore" from the project life gold value kit.  Seems I can just never leave a plain paper plain.  I used a shape punch in white card stock and made a stencil.  Then I dabbed Studio Calico's Color Theory acrylic paint in mint on in the sextagon shape.  It's subtle but added a great little layer.  Some more mist, stamps, and those cute little gold chipboard embellishments just really added to the loving feel of the page.

See, I have nicknames for my kids.  Pretty sure most moms do.  Dimples and Curly-Q.  They think the names are fun.  They describe the most noticed feature on both of them and I want them to feel proud about the unique gifts God gave them.  Ayden has the best smile.  And he smiles a lot. It's complete with these adorable dimples on either side, and it kinda knocks people off their feet a bit to see that flashed at them.  And Owen, well, those wild curls are the best.   It's almost like his silly personality is just so big that it had to spill out the top of his head. Well, anyhow, I love how this page will let me remember this time with our two adorable blessings!

Catch Up!

Yeah, so the last two months have REALLY flown by and unfortunately I have not posted any of my latest projects onto the blog!  I do post often on Istagram so feel free to follow me there for photos of my current projects.

Our household has kept busy soaking up the last of the warm weather in August with a flurry of trips and other events, including the first day of 3K for our oldest son!  A big change for our family who has been fortunate enough to mostly call our days as our own and to be only subject to my husband's work schedule.  Alas, it is a wonderful experience for our son and we couldn't be more pleased with his class and teachers.

That whirlwind was shortly followed by our little guy turning two!  Gulp.  Two?  Where did that come from?  Well, he had an absolute blast at his Puppy Pawtay!  Seriously, this kid loves dogs and was so very excited to celebrate his day.  I will get around to a post about it but highlights included all his family and little friends, a puppy cake, and puppy dog balloons.  We were blessed with a warm, sunny day that just made it that much better.

In crafting new, with the release of Heidi Swapp's Project Life lines I have begun my own journey into project life.  I have to say when I bought the kits I thought I would just use them in mini albums and layouts but then I decided to give it a whirl.  I. fell. in. love.  Yup.  Love it!  I love how quick and easy it is.  I love that you can just keep it super simple and fast OR you can spend a lot more time on it making it extra pretty.  I especially love that these kits coordinate with the mounds of Heidi Swapp goods I already have.  And as I have stated before, I am in no way just doing one method of memory keeping.  I have my mini albums.  I also have my binder filled with layouts and project life pages.  All mixed in matched.  With barely a two page spread to be found.  I know that might make some people cringe, but I gave up the two page spread circa 2008 so I'm all good with that.

Ok, enough chatter.  Here are a few of my latest layouts to share:

 Using a Studio Calico kit and this awesome yellow Color Theory acrylic paint, I had a great time playing with this super adorable picture of my kids and their friends.  We had a wonderful day at Bay Beach in Green Bay, WI which is a pint sized amusement park.  The kids loved it.  They crashed with blissful smiles later.  I captured a lot of great photos and videos, most of which are in project life pages!  Yeah, see how great it is!  I did a few layouts and put the rest in project life pockets and can look at all the cutie pie pictures together!

 Using Heidi Swapp's Favorite Things and a few items from the Project Life value kit, I captured a few memories about this little guy right before turning two. 

 Also using Favorite Things, I documented an important milestone that happened over the summer.  Potty training.  It was a long, long road filled with many, many battles, but alas, we have moved past it.  Awesome truly sums it all up.

And finally, using Favorite Things, trying out some misting with stencils, and cutting up a journal card for this gold "REMEMBER", I wanted to document these beautiful curls our youngest has.  The are cute, they get wild, and people are always commenting on them.  Since we are not sure if they will stick around forever, it seemed like a good idea to make sure we capture them now.

Summer Layouts

One afternoon I sorted through pictures seeing what I would put in a mini album and what I would add to layouts.  I wanted to try to make a few quick layouts that incorporated multiple photos.  I had several from events during memorial day weekend that seemed like they would work well.  I also had just received the latest scrapbook kit from Studio Calico.  So why not work with the two!

On a side note, I've been printing all my photos at 3x4 inches lately.  It sometimes gets a little boring but I have some photo credits to use up and I find the size generally works well.  I add the white border in my photo editing program before printing.

Back to layouts.

 A helicopter had been flying over our home all weekend long giving rides to vets in the area.  It would get so SO close to our house and the boys loved it!  So after the Memorial Day parade we saw that they had landed on a little league field and were letting kiddos climb aboard.  Well, oh happy day for little boys!  Although my older son took right to that fighter gun like he knew just what to do.  And that was a bit scary. :)  I used a grid pattern to group my photos together and layed down some contrasting pattern papers - see the patriotic theme here?  Yeah, some stars finished it off well.  I had acrylic, cork, and sequin stars to add.  Simple, but cute.

That same weekend we had a backyard BBQ with friends and the kids had a fun time playing together.  I love these happy shots of them just being silly.  I kept this one SUPER simple but I love how soft and summery it turned out.  That cloud paper is a but cutesy for me but I did like the portions peeking out and the words "what a lovely day" because that is just what it was.   These kids had been couped up for such a long, cold, cold winter that days like this seem so much more special!

Mother's Day Mini

I have to admit I do feel a bit behind on photos lately.  Perhaps I am just wanting to print too many!  That was one thing I loved about digital.  You didn't have to decide on the size of your photo and have it printed.  You just put it on the layout and adjusted it/cropped it right there to the perfect fit.  It might also be that I'm having some fun experimenting with new techniques too.  Either way, I had a lot of fun putting together this mini album for my Mother's Day photos.

I almost exclusively used Heidi Swapp's Favorite Things collection.  I remember when I got this collection I thought it was bright and pretty but wasn't sure how I would go about using it.  Specifically, there was one paper with a word jumble in the shape of a heart that I thought was cool but was unsure how I would use it.  Well, I looked at it with fresh eyes amid my Mother's Day photos and had an idea.  I used a craft knife to cut about two thirds of it apart.  I kept some of the outer paper in certain areas (such as on the side).  That seems like a lot of work but it was actually pretty easy to do.  I used that bit and some other embellishment for the cover.  I created the cover using chipboard and covered it with papers.  I first put down the pink triangle paper and then the portion of the word jumble heart I wanted to use.

To create some additional interest I used a diagonal stripe stencil and clear magic medium on the pink triangle portion.  I then spritzed it with pink color shine.   Next I mixed some white acrylic paint with cherry color shine and dabbed it around the edge. I then used the plain color shine and dabbed the corners a bit.  Some embellishment and stamping in the corner and my cover was set!

The inside cover utilizes the rest of that heart word jumble.

I decided to put all my journaling into these little pocket pages.  It's a piece of paper folder over and then the holes punched.  Inside is a journal card which is attached to the small tags and ribbon.  Those hang over to hold it into the pocket.

On the backside, I tucked a photo into some ephemera. 

For this picture with my husband I started with a plain background and used a similar color color shine along with a chevron stencil to create a soft pattern.

I made sure to get a picture of just me with my parents.  I mean, how often does that happen now that I have kids?  Here I did some stamping on the plain paper to give it a soft background.

Another journal tag is hidden within this pocket.  It's a bit hard to see but on the tag I used some word stamps and then filled some of them in using my watercolor pen and some color shine.

 I decided to add a pocket page to include a few more photos and a journal card.  Not all my photos fitted the orientation of the page so I just created a mat for them and attached them to the top of the plastic.

And here I found another use for that heart paper!  This time from the 6x6 paper pad with a chipboard word on top.  That's most of the album.  It really was a lot of fun to create.  I used lots of pink!

Layouts

I've continued to experiment with making 12x12 layouts and have two more to share.

The first layout came together as a way to experiment with some of the mixed media techniques I've been learning.  I did some stenciling, some misting, some stamping, and even used a watercolor brush.  Th papers and elements came from the Studio Calico June Kit.

I joined Studio Calico's scrapbook kit club a few months back as a way to get some different products in to work with.  I have mixed feelings about it, but I think that's the point.  I wanted to see some new things and stretch myself to use some new items. 

This second layout uses mostly Maggie Holmes.  I did add a few elements from Heidi Swapp.  In this layout I actually used three journal cards and it was fun to look at them in a new way.  One I cut to make the tab behind the photo. For additional layering I slide that cut excess under it a bit.  The tag was cut from a journal card and I even hid some of that excess under another layer too.  It was a great way to add depth without using more product.

A new perspective on journals

This past April I had a really fun day.  I drove about an hour to a scrapbook store to take a class from Heidi Swapp.  I really love her style and ideas so this was pretty much a bucket list worthy day for me - well, if I had a bucket list!  The class was simply great and she had some pretty cool ideas to share and also some new products (at the time) to let us play with.

 The class used her new mixed media kit as the base for the project along with items from both the Dreamy and Hello Today collection.  They do work so perfectly together!  We were making a journal!  I've always wanted to keep a journal but I think I'd rather end the day reading a book and escaping into another story than trying to relive mine, plus I'd probably get all Type A and add every last detail and miss the point of the exercise.  However, this was a new concept for me.  Heidi introduced the idea of journaling with prompts.  She had a list of sentence starters she had used and they were wonderful but I did end up taking things in a similar but different direction.

 This pretty little item now adorns my craft/office space.  We decorated this very VERY thick chipboard with the magic medium mixed with mint color shine.  I was introduced to Thickers stickers which I now love.  With a little stamping and some additional play time when I got home, I like the soft look of the book.

One request Heidi made was that we include a selfie on the first page of the book.  I had just taken this fun one with my pup and so I thought it would work well here atop this beautiful paper from the Dreamy collection.

This fun acrylic piece comes with the mixed media kit to which we added a sticker from the Hello Today collection.  You can see below another dotted acrylic banner that is also very cute!

And so we added page with paper and with photo pockets and continued to make the whole thing look very soft and pretty.  What I decided to do at home was to use the pretty lace cut paper and other epherma as the actual prompts for my journaling, which actually can just be a list or statement.  I date them and just add to it as I please.

For example, this beautiful tag with "hope" on it is a place to list out my hopes.  On the opposite page I used a stamp "big plans" and list out things I am looking forward to.

Some are just decorative cards with good sayings on them.  It's hard to see but I pulled this "10 things I love about you" sticker from the Vintage Chic collection and even (gulp) wrote down 10 things I love about myself.

I am in love with this concept.  I've already found that writing down a few things I want to accomplish has helped me actually do it.  I also know it will be a great place to find little memories about my life in that moment and to see just how quickly things can change.  There are few photos in this book, but lots of memories will fill the pages!

Tag Cards

I'm just not great at handmade cards.  Perhaps I have high expectations but I'll start and generally end up disappointed at the end result.  For Mother's Day this year, I really wanted to make my mom a card. I mean she loves anything I make for her...still...all these years later so how could I not win?  True, but I still wanted it to be cool and unique.  I was searching the web and pinterest when I came across this.  She called it a Pretty Large Tag Card and I just loved the idea!  So I ran with it.

And I love how it turned out.  I grabbed all kinds of pink papers and ephemera.  I also grabbed my pink and blush color shine and set to work.  I cut different tag shapes, added elements, and stamping.  Each piece has sentiment on it such as love, cherish, and celebrate. In the back I stitched a small piece of paper onto a tag on three sides allowing me to tuck a note inside.  This was quick and easy to make, super fun, and looks amazing.  I loved watching my mom look through it!

So being on a bit of "high" with my tag card, I wanted to try it again.  I have a few friends that I have really grown closer to and bonded with during the year. Not only that, but they are moms too and always have invaluable advice and support to offer.  I thought Mother's Day might be a great time to just say hey, thanks for being a great friend.  So I made a little gift of an emery board, nail polish, and some nail polish removal pads in these tiny buckets I found on the Target dollar rack and added a tag card to them!

Again, I hit up my stash for mostly pink items.  They are all similar but not the same.  I love how they turned out and it was just a great way to say thank you and enjoy your special day!

RIGHT NOW memories

 

I'm very excited to share this quick and simple project that will help you document your memories quickly.  I make a point of saying that because I often hear from my friends "how do you find the time to do that!"  Well, not everything is a big project but it can be just as cute.  However, my main goal is always to record the memories - I just enjoy being creative and playing with pretty papers in the process!  This idea was inspired by this post.  I loved this new way of folding up a memory file.  While it was used as a gift-giving card in that project, I thought it would be a perfect way to quickly document my family members right now.  I used a memory file from the Mixed Company collection by Heidi Swapp.  I decorated it by stenciling with some color shine and magic medium.  I added ephemera and also the stickers from the memory file kit to indicate each person's section.  There are four of us in my family so this worked out easily.  I kept the cover simple and decorated it with the date - May 2014.  On the back side (after folding) I adhered a tab from the ephemera pack just to keep it all closed.  It's important to be generous in your folding so you have room to insert the journaling cards and photos.

 I used a 4x6 journaling card from the Heidi Swapp Hello Today collection and also some Project Life lined cards to capture my thoughts - those right in the moment thoughts.  I love looking back at the funny things my kids said or little things they were into.  For example, my youngest son has decided to call his pacifier a papi...not sure how he decided this but it's a fun little memory that will likely be forgotten as time passes.  Next, I printed some individual photos of everyone that highlighted the month and added those.  Ok, so how simple is that?  I really think anyone can find the time to do this small project to capture some great RIGHT NOW, right in the moment stuff to remember.

Dreamy Memory File Kit

I've been excited about working with the Dreamy collection by Heidi Swapp for some time.  I just had a lot of other projects to finish up but I'd tried out some of the ephemera and just couldn't wait to get into those papers and memory file kits.  The memory files are in different shapes than past collections but I also wanted to challenge myself to use them in different ways.  So I cut them up and got creative!  Above is the cover where I chose to cut that memory file up into approximately and 8 x 8 inch cover featuring the brush script "life is beautiful."  I used modeling paste with the pin dot stencil to create the slightly raised dots.  A little ephemera and some sequin stars left the cover simple but pretty.

On the inside cover I used the new clear magic medium with a spritz of Mustard color shine to add the octagons via a stencil and some dabbing.  I really like the soft color it created.

I also cut apart the photo stack in the memory file kit and used it in various ways.  Here, the shortest of the stack, makes a great cover intro for a small section about my oldest son. I added some of the dreamy stickers above his name.  You can also see some canvas peeking out below.  That is from the mixed media kit.  I spritzed it with color shine; however, I wouldn't recommend doing that.  While it was easy and looks great, the residue is coming off on other pages of the albums.  Next time, I'll try it with magic medium or paint.

This is just a small part of the yellow "choose happy" memory file that I cut up.  I put both front and back together to add photos of my oldest son and even tucked a funny photo behind a journal card from the Hello Today collection.  I do enjoy how the two mix and match so well together!

Here I have stitched two pages of the photo stack together along the side, the other being bound by the binding wire, to create a little place to slip a large journaling tag. The tag was created with some of the left over memory file I'd cut.

So I cheated a bit here - I had some left over brown with dot/blue memory file from another project.  I stitched the two sides together and adhered it as a pocket.  I made some large tags and added photos.

Here I added a mini memory file without cutting it up.  I love that ticket design!

Inside I decided to add the remaining photo stack using the same stitching/binding method to hide another big tag.  Love the contrast of these colors!

On the back I wanted to add a journaling card with some thoughts.  My writing is on the back side and I used some washi tape to adhere it to the album.

I needed to put in some pictures of our sweet pup - his personality is as big as the kiddos after all!

Here on the last page I adhered one side of the remaining "choose happy" file folder.

It opens up to include photos of our youngest son.  Again you can see some mixing of the Hello Today with the Dreamy.
I have to admit, I do love this collection.  And I love how this album came together as I challenged myself to think about putting it together differently.  I'll have to do that again!