Friday, July 25, 2014

Afternoon Fun in the Sun

As a newer scrapbooker my biggest resoursces have been layout sketches and within the past few months a kit club membership!! I can not say enough about these two things as important tools to new scrapbookers and maybe even veteran scrapbooker too! At first I was so intimadated with making a layout, I wanted it to be perfect, but I sat infront of my collected papers and wondered how I was going to but them on my page. after hours of watching videos and days roaming the wb for scrapbooking blogs I decided I had to get over the pressure I was putting on my self and started looking for layout sketches. 
I am SO Glad I made that choice, it took away the pressure of creating everything and to focus on learning and playing. I found that many times I changed the layout quite a bit and I was learning. I was finally making pages and liking most of them. 
Then a few months ago I finally decided to join a kit club, it has been so nice to get new stuff that was actually new and and try products that maybe I hadn't used yet. I found I love wood veneers! I definitely recommend joining a kit club if you have a hard time picking out ppers that go together or if you want to stick to a budget. 
I started this layout a couple of nights ago, that is when I get the most scrapbooking done. After the kids go to bed, even if I spend a lot of the day thinking about what I want to do on a page. With kids in bed, trying to go sleep I sit down with a sketch, which I actaully hadn't done in a couple of weeks just I had been taking some Shimelle classes and actually making layouts without sketches. I thought that I would go back to my roots, and use a sketch I found SketchSavvy.blogspot.com by Susan Stringfellow, I flipped the sketch upside down and cut two strips of paper from my Scraptastic July kit. I looked at the sketch, thought about how I wanted to chage it up to fit me, thought about what papers would work with my photo and yeah the sketch wasn't working. I decided I wanted to use a triangle in the corner, the green lined paper from Fancy Pants looked kinda like grass and it went really well with the grass in my yard.  Then I started to think about what other embellishments would work with my picture and the papers I had. I wanted to use greens and blues and I needed texture. 
Fast Forward to the next day, Yes I had to wait almost a whole day to work on my page. It sat in my room, that is where I craft, calling out to me. I thought about some things I wanted to do all day. When I sat back done I actually decided to work on the title first, since I thought I had an idea of where I wanted it. Added some emphmera near the title with some hemp twine and buttons. The space under the title was to open for my liking and I thought the title needed something to ground it so it wasn't hanging. I made more strips of paper like the first strips I already had on my page. I wanted to use a tag for the journaling and ended up cutting using three tags. I again added twine and some buttons to match the first grouping of embellishments I had made. 
I really wanted to layer some papers under my photo. I printed my picture at home off our photo printer but this time I just printed it on regular paper to get a different look. I like to try printing on different kinds of printer or photo paper to see what looks cool and what doesn't. Sometimes how I print a photo works and sometimes it doesn't. I mostly used pieces from my kit, but I did add a brown peice of paper from my stash, the flower woodgrain from Simple Stories and a teal dot paper from 3 Bugs in a Rug. I added some circles I punched out to add to the layers and a banner peice from the cutapart sheet from my Scraptastic kit. I added some another grouping of embellishments to the corner of the photo after I had taped it down in the bottom right corner. I added a few more embellishments to each of the groupings like enamel dots, wood stars and burlap hearts all adding texture to my page. 
This layout came together so well, And it was so much fun to make. JUst like the picture of my son trying to drink the water from the sprinkler outside. I did keep the journaling small because I am hoping to make another layout of all my kids from this day. They were so excited that I actaully put the sprinkler on for the first time here at this house. The day was hot and sunny and I was so surprised at how wet they actually got. 
I have learned that it's ok to use help where you need it, like using a sketch. When you are ready to play around you will know it, and it will feel like a great achievement! I hope you have a great day and can create some spectacular today too!!
Hannah

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Down by the Shore

Let's get to the fun, scrapbooking!! I'm super excited to share my first layout with you all!! Being inspired by all the watercolor layouts, I thought I would try another one of my own. Being a newbie scrapper there are so many new to me techniques to try. This was one of them. I wasn't even sure if I could make it work for me. I mean I love bright colors and to be honest I don't even own my own set of water colors. Yeah my lovely children have a watercolor set that's all one color now from being loved!! But I thought, hey I have stuff to bake with right. Why not try those gel food colors that are mostly sitting looking pretty in my cabinet. Not sure if it would work but part of this journey in scrapbooking is trying something. Maybe it won't work at all, maybe I will have to throw it away. But I think I would learn from it too. I would know why it didn't work and it would help me figure out what is going to work. Being a newbie scrapper I know I'm not perfect but I want to learn. Get my hands dirty! And this self discovery is what I love about scrapbooking!! Well and the pretty paper too:)
As I am rambling I will get on with my layout. So I toke out those gel colors and looked through what colors I thought would go with a picture I had of one of our favorite beaches. The amount aims surrounding this beach are gorgeous, Every time we go I take pictures of these same mountains, it never gets old either. The greens and the blues in this picture screamed out to me. Those would be perfect. So I played, let the water and gel colors drip. It was fun. I still wasn't sure how I liked it, but I have found out that you also have to keep playing sometimes a layout starts out rocky. Sometimes it takes time to get the scrapbook mojo juices flowing.
So now it's time to start putting on the picture and papers. What next.. I debating for a while if I wanted a background sheet of paper to border the watercolor page I just finished, which by the way, I used My Minds Eye Bluebell Smile as the background. White probably would have looked nice but in the back of my mind I though I might do some kind of grid design with the papers and I thought that maybe the slight yellow grid lines might work with the colors I had in mind. I ended up not doing that, yes it would have stopped my eyes flowing off the page because of the angle in which painted on my page. But I really wanted as much open space as possible. So yes I'm thinking again about this grid design I might want to use, and I'm thinking about the open space I wanted. I did just paint all




pretty colors on my page and I wanted to see some of it. So I thought about doing two squares above my picture and one square on one of the sides, having my photo in the bottom corner. I look through papers to find mostly blues and greens in summer bright colors, with pops of other summery colors too. Cut out a ton of 2 and a half inch squares and started layering. I used my circle punch on some, I used a corner round on one, decided I didn't care for it too much. I found a cute AC photo overlaying to add as a layer too. This part was fun, it took time to find colors off course because I had to go through a lot of my stash. But picking out the papers is fun!! I went with a lot of papers from the good day sunshine collection from simple stories and I used some old paper from Echo Park, the paradise beach collection too. I added a few paper scraps from last months Scraptastic kit that matched too.

As I layered and taped the layered boxes to my layout I realized I didn't like the open space left open in left corner. So I quickly made another square group of papers and added it to the page and hanged it off, cutting of the extra. I added lots of embellishments that were summery in color or theme. Some tabs, tags, etc and add to the layering. It was so much fun just adding things to these boxes. And the boxes let me add as much embellishments as I wanted but it was contained in one small area so I didn't go too crazy. Which can be so easy to do. I used a lot of simple stories good day sunshine stuff it just went so well color wise, also some older ek success stickers, and old jillibean soup stickers. I used old echo park letter stickers in colors that matched and some green jillibean soup letter stickers too, for my title.
In the end I was happy with the space I had left over. I journaled underneath the photo and embellishment squares, the lines really helped keep it neat too. Over all I think for my second watercolor layout it turned out good. I think now looking at it the title would have been better some where else but I learned a lot. And I was happy I didn't have to use a sketch, which I do a lot just because I am learning about where things work.
I hope you all enjoy this and are inspired to try watercolor techniques or anything you haven't really tired before. Play with your scrapbooking stuff, use tons of embellishments in a contained area so you can go crazy!! Also let your surroundings inspire you!! Aloha and have a awesome scrap session!!!

Welcome

Welcome, I'm so excited this is my very first blog post!! I'm hoping to share with you all my journey as I'm learning to scrapbook and I just love cupcakes too, so maybe I can share some of my favorite recipes along the way too!!! I mean who doesn't love a mini cake to munch on, right!! To start out I will introduce myself, I'm Hannah! I'm a stay at home mom and army wife. I started scrapping a little more than 6 months ago!  I fell in love with this process of putting paper and embellishments on a page. As time as went on I feel in love with journaling process too. I have healed and learned more about myself in this process. But it has been a journey. I'm hoping to share this journey along the way. I'm hoping to maybe help and grow with other scrapbookers too!! Getting started in a community where everyone has been scrapbooking forever has been intimidating, but I had to learn to use their knowledge to propel me to grow!! Once  I got past that, my creativity has been soaring. Some pages come out better, sometimes I go crazy and add to much embellishments, paper, but I'm learning and I had to learn to be ok with that!! I hope I can inspire some others to put aside there fears and go for it. Scrap something hard, do a technique you have never done before, go embellishment crazy!! Be yourself!! I'm so excited to share my journey and I hope you are excited to come on this journey with me too!!!