Create Often Crop in Oregon

I just returned from a great retreat in Oregon. The Create Often Crop was so inspiring. These are the pages I completed while I was there. I kept a couple out for the Design Team Entry coming up but here are the rest of the pages I completed. I loved the Authentique and Pink Paislee papers we got at the crop. They are such great papers. I also fell in love with Helmar's 450 Quick Dry Adhesive. In total I scrapbooked 17 pages during the crop. OK so two were already started but I am counting them too.

Getting Ready for a Crop

Getting ready for a crop is something that took me a really long time to wrap my mind around. The first couple of times I brought two rolling suitcases with a bag over my shoulder which was pretty much my entire scrapbooking supply collection just in case I needed something. This drove me crazy not because of the mass amounts of stuff I had to crawl through to find things but because when I got home, I had to reorganize everything put everything away and much like my filing it never got done. Plus I didn't get much done because I spent most my time trying to figure out what I was doing and where to find things.

So after a few of these times not knowing where anything is and spending most my time organizing my stuff at the crops instead of scrapbooking I created a system. This system allows me to scrapbook mass pages during a crop and have to put away very little when I come home.

First of all I pack my basics bag. This bag has the basic pens, cutting board, scissors, adhesive, ribbon, and tons of letter stickers in it.

Then I pack a bag of all my favorite embellishments. My current bag is a Clinique giveaway. (On a long trip I might pack two of these bags.) When finished this bag stays packed on my desk for me to pull from at any time. Pulling embellishments from a small bag saves me tons of time on my layouts.

Then I start on my photos. I take my memory cards in once a month to get pictures printed. Immediately after getting them printed I place each event in a 2.5 gallon resealable bag.

Then I place them in a Ikea storage cube until I am ready to make page kits. Sometimes I will have an idea or a piece of paper that really fits these pages right away and I slip those ideas and products in the bags before I even start making page kits.

Next, when I run out of page kits or before a crop I do a mass taking over of my living room and layout all of the bags with photos in them.

I start in one corner and work my way down the lines filling each bag with an idea from a magazine or printed online.

Then after all the bags have ideas I match the ideas and pictures with patterned paper. Making sure to Look at the idea I have and determining if I could use scraps or if full sheets of paper are needed

Then lastly I add my basic solid paper to all the bags.

There is one more step but I rarely get to it and that is journaling. I try to journal on all my pages and journaling is one of the hardest things to do at the crop. So if I am very organized I will look through all my page kits and write down the subject of each kit in a small notebook. I slip the notebook in my purse and while waiting for appointments or during breaks at work I bring out the notebook and pre-journal for the page. then I bring the notebook with me to the crop and I will have both journaling and titles for the pages ready to go. Like I said rarely does this step get finished but I try and when I have this done, that is when I can complete 10-15 pages in one night.

So in all the only things in my page kits are photos, ideas from magazines or printed online, patterned paper, and solid paper. Now when I am ready to crop I grab a bag, some page kits, and my embellishment bag and I am ready to go. On a short trip I can get away with just bringing my one bag and a cutting board. That is a big difference from the two rolling totes and and shoulder bags.

Live Laugh Love Wall Hanging Weeks 2-3

These are pictures from week two and three of my wall hanging. I created a canvas with textured tags this week. I also did the cutouts on the frames and glued a whole lot of stuff down on paper. The tags are made by Pebbles and the patterned paper from Authentique and My Minds Eye.

Lily's baby Gift

My cousin is having a baby shower today. Unfortunately I am sick and can't go but I am sending the gift I made last night. ;) I am getting much better at creating Subway Art now. My first project will ironically go on my wall and is not the best but that is OK.

This is a grouping of four 7x14 canvases and then I used vinyl lettering that I cut with my Cricut then put layers and layers of paint on to make the subway art. To make the subway art two different colors I painted the dark grey layer, laid done the letters, painted a light grey letter, laid down the flourishes, and then painted the last colored layers



I also made the card last week. I didn't even know they were the colors of her baby room. :) The background stamp is Hero Arts, the Butterflyes are made by Studio Calico and the paper is made by My Minds Eye. The sentiment reads "Welcome" "Little Cullen Cousin"

My newest crafty activity is to make a new camera strap cover for my new Christmas toy. I need some sewing practice. ;) I have only sewn on fabric a few times this last year. Paper is my sewing material of choice. The pattern is from http://littlebiggirlstudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/tutorial-camera-strap-cover-with-lens.html

Live Laugh Love Family Wall Hanging

It feels like I haven't posted in a very long time. But that doesn't mean I haven't been eating, sleeping and dreaming scrapbooking. lol

I know that the next Craft Warehouse Design Team call should be coming up in the next couple of months and decided to start a project that I can hopefully use. I have wanted something to hang in an empty space in my living room. I wanted it to be a big focal point in my living room highlighting our family. So after a lot of thought I came up with a three foot by 2 foot collage inspired by many, many things I have loved and seen this year. I love the wire wall hanging of Gina Hanson and all the canvas projects from last month's make and takes. I also love the covered frames of Athentique and few spins of ideas I have thought up and never used. I have incorporated all these ideas into one massive project.

Here's the plan:

After the first week this is what I have:

I will keep you posted on what I get done this week. I might, however, have to stop and make myself a quilted camera strap cover that I bought fabric for this week.

Elizabeth

Cards for Friends

I stayed up until midnight making these two cards for friends. The first one is for a woman who took the time to send my yearbook class a 1917 Sunnyside High School Mirror Yearbook. It is now the oldest yearbook we have for our school. We didn't even know the yearbook was produced during that year. It was so nice of her to send it.


The second card is one that I made for a friend that was dying. We were told he wouldn't live past the week. He was a great guy that did a lot behind the scenes with kids. I wanted the kids to send him a thank you for all he had done. After all, we don't work with kids because it pays well. I thought he would love to hear how the kids appreciated all his work. A co-worker delivered it for me that next afternoon and he died that night after he got the card. I don't know if he actually was able to read it but I know the family will appreciate it if he didn't.

Captain Adorable

Josh running around the house with his little footsteps is a treasure. Add that to his Captain Adorable jammies and it is priceless. :) These are October Afternoon Papers and stickers. The All Boy sticker is My Minds Eye and the gray letter stickers and wood stars are Studio Calico. The paper star is a Sizzix star die cut out of a coffee insulator.

Praying Friend

I am very excited to get to scrapbook not just once but twice today and today isn't done yet. :) This little "praying" friend showed up one day when Josh was sick. He was a foot away from his face staring at him while he was sleeping.

I used American Crafts Embellishments and paper. The Journaling paper is Basic Grey. The Letter Stickers are October Afternoon and Studio Calico. I am having lots of fun with a corner rounder today.

Spud-Authentique Free Bird Paper

There are just some papers I hoard because I love them so much. This is one of them. The Free Bird Authentique line is so cute. I LOVE the oranges and blues of this line. (I know. There are several just as wonderful lines in the Free Bird series.) These colors are perfect for pictures of my little boy or home decor projects. I just wish they would make it big sized too. :) The round letter stickers are and typed lines on the left are also Athentique. The large banner that says "Best Buddies," the bakers twine on the card, and round sticker under the star are by My Mind's Eye. The stars are cut with the stars Sizzix die out of coffee insulators.

This page is in tribute to Josh's bestest little friend Spud. Spud is a baby seal from Aunt Alyson and Josh loves it and carries it everywhere.

I even had enough time to make a card from my scraps. :)

Yakima Brides Magazine Photos

My photos were published in the Yakima Vally Brides magazine this month. It was fun to see them in print. I was surprised to see the photos they picked to publish and how many of them they actually printed. So fun. :)

Scrapbooking Fun in Edmonds

This last weekend Shawn and I had to head over the mountains for a Dr's visit. Shawn suggested I bring some scrapbooking with me because he knows I love to do this stuff when I have time without the kids. Or, so I thought. Shawn had other plans. I didn't know the Rosebowl would be on and since this hotel had cable...well, I enjoyed myself and got several pages done. I even finished a couple of pages I started a couple of years ago and didn't finish.

Present Tags

Every year the kids and I make tags for our presents. This year Josh helped me Stamp and emboss each tag. It was really cute. The table is a little red now but it is worth it.

Two Photoshoots in One Day

Today I took photos for a friend and took photos of my kids. I needed new photos for my wall since Josh was under one the last time I took photos. Here are a few of my favorites so far.

December Daily

This year I decided I would try to make a December Daily album. That is really saying a lot since I really do not like daily albums. I thought December might be fun though. There are so many fun things going on during December. The book has twenty five pages and twenty-six dividers with numbers on them. I put the book together early so that I would only have to worry about placing photos during this busy month. Here are a couple of photos of pages I liked and a large shot of ALL the dividers. There were a lot!