Still in LONDON 2012

Our LONDON 2012 crop over at Sisterhood of Scrap is going to be running from July 27-August 12 with a challenge a day so feel free to jump right in! Lots of games, prizes and inspiration!

Yesterday I posted a challenge celebrating the Equestrian events at the Olympics. I grew up with horses and the smell of horses today is still one of my favourite smells! I love the majesty and power of the great beasts. You can check out the particulars of my challenge here  (again I'm offering RAK candy to anyone who participates according to the rules... just sayin')

Here's my example from the challenge - not the most majestic of beasts but warm and furry all the same. :-)

No, he's not "best in show" but he is entertaining!  Once you've met him, you rarely forget him.

Have a scrap-happy day!

LONDON 2012

Over at Sisterhood of Scrap, we're celebrating the London 2012 Olympics! Come on over and play!

I was asked to provide a challenge for July 29 and I chose the discipline of swimming. Here's my challenge and my layout.

Hugely popular around the world as a leisure activity and a competitive sport, Swimming has featured at every modern Olympic Games. Speed, strength and stamina will be key for athletes in the competition which features no fewer than 34 medal events.
You can read more about swimming as an Olympic sport here.
Your challenge for this Olympic event is simple. You need to make a layout (or three cards) featuring these four things:

1. water
2. people
3. the colour blue
4. bling
As a special bonus, if you use one of July's Sunday sketches, BEFORE JULY 31, I will put your name in a draw for a special RAK from moi. This offer ends July 31! Here is my example, based on the July 1 sketch:

 
 
I offer the same deal to you, my faithful blog readers! Come on over to the Sisterhood and see what's going on, just do my challenge using one of the July sketches and I'll do a separate RAK if you mention you came from my blog!
 
Have a scrap-happy day!

Sketch 23-12 and Kiddies are gone..

Well from the sounds of things, everyone arrived home safe and sound last night. It was bittersweet saying goodbye to my little compadres yesterday morning but all good things must come to an end I guess. One of the nicest things that happened yesterday morning was that when I said, "Who loves ya, Baby?" Gabby replied (with enthusiasm), "Nana!"...  yeah, we'll miss them!

Over at Sketches: Creatively Yours today, we're featuring sketch #23-12. Ali writes:


Well, hello there!! ;) So happy to see you again!


Here we are, already time for a new fun, free weekly Sketch!


This 12x12" layout sketch was created with some of my summer 2011 pictures in mind. It features a horizontal embellishment, "bracketed" journaling and a set of 3 photos in varying sizes.The sketch shows the photos matted, but you can do your LO with or without mats. Remember, scrapbook sketches are just a "jumping off" point! Use them to create something you love that reflects YOU and YOUR tastes.

I thought I'd include her write up because I've had some friends who look at my blog wonder how I interpret the sketch the way I do. Well, it's just that I use the sketch as a jumping off point and make it work for me. It's not something I follow directly, but take elements of it to inspire my own creativity. I hope that explains it somewhat!

Anyway, here's sketch #23-12:

and here's what I did with it!

Gabby has been banans for bandaids this past summer, so I wanted a layout that depicted her passion for the plaster.
 
I hope you'll take a peek at what the rest of the team did with  here! for such a simple sketch, it has a lot of interpretations this week!
 
Enjoy and have a scrap-happy day!

London Olympics!

Logged into Sisterhood of Scrap today and saw this! Carla (site owner) had this to say:

Cheerio! We're coming to you from "across the pond" -- Olympic Park in London -- where we're taking in the Games of the XXX Olympiad. Get geared up for a 2-week marathon of scrapping! Our opening ceremonies begin on July 27th, with the closing on August 12th. During the days of the Olympics, join us for exciting challenges, games, inspiration and FUN! We don't have gold medals to give out, but you can be sure there'll be PRIZES!



Let the games begin!


I hope you'll come over and check us out!

Someone who understands

We all want that person in our life who understands, even when they don't really say anything. Just their warm (and in this case, furry) presence is all that's needed to make a day special.

Murphy is such a good pup. He puts up with alot of  "abuse" from the toddlers, but loves every minute of it. He's never gotten grouchy or temperamental with them. He rarely barks and loves to give kisses (he and Hugo are the same height!)....  He's the perfect little pal for Gabby. She takes him places and snuggles with him and loves him to bits. Caught this "moment" on a Very Good Day.

This layout was completed for a challenge at Sisterhood of Scrap's Summer School. It was a daily layout challenge in which we were given some "homework" every day and added it to our layout, not knowing what the final page would look like.

You can find the directions here.  You'll also see the other gals layouts here.

Now I know there are some lurkers here (Colleen) who don't comment but come and look. I'd love to see you over at the Sisterhood giving some of these challenges a try! If you only want to lurk there too, that's fine, I hope you'll show me at least what you've done.

I've joined a challenge at ScrapShotz and have challenged myself to post on my blog 27 times over the summer. I think that this is #10...  I'm super pleased! Wish me luck and don't forget to encourage me by leaving a comment. I LOVE hearing from you!!

Have a scrap happy day!

Heat Wave!

Yes indeedy, we're officially having a heat wave. It's been super hot the last little while and keeping the kids busy but cool has been a challenge. Thankfully we have wonderful friends who take care of us. Johanne (or JoJo as the kids call her) invited us to her pool. The kids found it cold (who can believe they were complaining about being cold when it was so blistering hot?!?).. but everyone almost warmed up to it eventually.

Here's a fun little memory of the day. I did it for a challenge at Sisterhood of Scrap Summer School. Stephanie challenged us to "doodle" on our layouts. I usually do some sort of doodling - outlining letters or whatnot - so this wasn't too hard. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think!

Oh... Hugo made a great friend of JoJo.. one day I'll show you the photos of how they "hung out" together! Priceless!

Stay cool and have a scrap happy day!

LO TAG!

Of course summer school wouldn't be complete without a good old-fashioned game of tag, would it? I started a thread at Sisterhood of Scrap's Summer School and found a few fun friends to play with!  I started both teams off with this layout of Gabby watering the peonies in Papa's garden.. she also watered Papa but that just goes without saying. :-)

I used a sketch #212 from Creative Scrappers for this layout. Isn't it awesome? I loved it and hope you do too!

Have a scrap happy day!

New Wellies!

At Tech School a couple of weeks ago, we learned how to turn tin foil into a sweet little medium for scrapping. It took a few tries, but I finally made a little ladybug tag. I think it goes well with this layout of Gabby's new boots, don't you?

They had so much rain in NH this spring that she needed a new pair. Since ladybugs are her favourite, these wellies were a natural (she calls them her "welly boots") choice. Her mom told me that every time they come and visit and DON'T bring wellies, it rains. Every time they do bring their wellies, it doesn't. Well, we are now in drought conditions around here so obviously bringing wellies did the job a little too well!

This layout was also done for a Summer School challenge at Sisterhood of Scrap this past week. I used a sketch, by Laura Lee Audit (of Boys Rule Scrapbooking) created for us this month.Why not give it a try? Lots of fun. :-)

Have a scrap happy day!

Sweet (backyard explorer) Boy

I'm late again with my sketch work for Sketches: Creatively Yours! I'm really trying to keep up this summer, but it's tough with the whole family around and the heat and my MS reacting adversely to it all! Thank goodness Ali is such a forgiving and generous woman!

Anyway, here is my take on S: CY 22-12. Check it out at the blog to see what the rest of the team did with it this week!

You'll notice the tag in the middle of the layout, I made this in one of our "Tech Classes" over at Sisterhood of Scrap this week. I'm surprised at how well it turned out!

It's a very cool technique that would never have occured to me to try on my own. I'm certainly glad I did it though. I may even do another. You never know!  Come on over and play with us, Summer School is going great!

Have a scrap happy day!

Wasps!!

Back again with a little story from our neck of the woods. The other day Papa found where the wasps are hanging out this year. He was stung while weeding. Being ever diligent, he took the time to "take" the nest and then due to his natural inborn curiousity he opened it up. We were all very fascinated!

For these pages, I used a really cool technique I learned at Sisterhood of Scrap's Summer School. Each week "teacher" is challenging us to use various techniques. So far it's been all paint but I've had fun being "out of the box".

I hope you've enjoyed these layouts. Let me know what you think and have a scrap happy day!

S:CY - LATE!!

I started this layout several days ago but life intervened (again). Here is a fabulous sketch from designer Ann Seleshanko over at Sketches: Creatively Yours today.

I missed the deadline to get mine but wanted to show you anyway.

This year the grandkids weren't with their daddy on Father's Day so had to make do with a Skype call instead. The journaling reads:

Often the biggest highlights of our day is skyping with daddy. Even though you are away, Skype makes you seem just a teeny bit closer. xoxo

Sometimes the speed of technology leaves me gasping for breath (or am I just out of shape? ) but having Skype around is sure a wonderful thing when a family has to be separated.

Thanks for looking!

June Scrapshotz Challenge Layouts

I'm so far behind on my blog posting that I thought I'd just show you a few my June Scrapshotz challenges at once!



Jess's Challenge - Your challenge this month is to create a project made soley out of photos off your cell phone! (or someone else's... sooo easy to email the pics or print them off FB )



Gail's Challenge - Hexagon's seem to be all the rage right now. Most companies have paper lines that include them. So for this month I'd like to see hexagons used on your project. Can't wait to see what you come up with!



Rosie's Challenge - If you are anything like me you have a whole bunch of die cuts hanging around. So my challenge to you this month is to create a card/layout/project using as many die cuts as you can!

 
I love all these photos and hope you like the layouts I did as well. Let me know what you think!

 I love them all!  See you tomorrow with more. I have a little girl who is asking me to hold her right now. :-)

I'm a "Sister"

Life's been so crazy lately that I haven't even taken time to let you know that Sisterhood of Scrap has asked me to be part of their design team! This challenge blog is full of wonderful ladies that are easy to work with and to love. I've been so inspired by them that I accepted their offer and count it a privilege to be a part of this wonderful team.

Come on over and play with me!

Week 1 - ABC 123

Another one of the great challenges our "teacher" Helen is giving us for summer school! for this challenge, we needed either to scraplift Helen's example, or use the sketch provided... either or! BUT... the twist was that we needed to have something with ABC and 123 on it!!! It had to be a layout.

Here's mine.

A - Adorable Kid Angled photo!

B - bling

C - Cardstock corners

1 - journal block

2 - fonts for title

3 - borders

Edited to add: She wants you to know she was "nakey" on that couch! LOL  I've been hanging on to this photo since January waiting fo the perfect moment to scrap it. What do you think??

Summer School!

I'm just going to show you a few of my latest layouts. With the grandkids here, things have been MORE THAN BUSY!!  Yikes!  So without further adieu (the kids are playing behind me!)  Over at Sisterhood of Scrap.  we're playing Summer School and having a BLAST!!  Week One challenges were so much fun.

This is my layout for Math Class (one of my least favourite high school subjects!)

Tomorrow I'll post more of my "subjects" from Summer School. Come on over and play with us!

I'll be back tomorrow!