Where the rapids are grand.

Happy Monday, y'all!

We had a busy weekend (taxes - fun! cleaning - funner! grading - funnest!). I'm down to one pile of essays, so I'm feeling a bit less stressed on that front. Whew!

That's not what you're here for, though, so how about a mini? A month ago, Andrew and I went upstate to Grand Rapids for a few days -- he had a conference, and I usually go along. The rapids haven't been grand for something like a century (they wanted to use the river for commerce, after all), but the city itself is pretty nifty.

Before we left, I decided I'd like to document our trip, so I threw together this mini from, essentially, the scraps that were in reach! The cover is leftover Kraft Funday from MME, on which I embossed the title (love that Lawn Fawn alphabet!) and did a bit of mist splattering. The whole thing is about 5x6 or so.

Inside the cover, I adhered a section cut from a bag -- as you'll see, Vertigo Music is one spot we try to hit at least twice whenever we're in town.

{click any photo to enlarge}

Here's a few of the inside pages -- while we were on the trip, I adhered everything but the photos (I'm not that hardcore -- no travel-sized photo printer for me!), but I did put in little notes indicating which photos went where. I took a couple rolls of fun tape, little scissors, my Smash pen (which has a glue stick on one side), scraps of paper and cardstock, some small letter stickers, and a bunch of labels from Martha Stewart's collection at Staples. Everything, including the album, fit into about a quart-size ziploc. Simple! Clockwise from top left: my favorite photo (and the last one we took) at HopCat, some photos and ephemera from the Public Museum, a handful of photos from Vertigo (I had a lot to choose from), a couple random photos along with some ephemera from the conference.

Here, you can kinda see how I made the album itself -- basically, I cut some scraps down to vaguely-appropriate sizes and then scored and stitched them right down the middle. They aren't all the same size, which I think is kind of interesting. Additional flaps and smaller pages were stitched in afterwards (didn't want to kill the sewing machine, after all). I even stitched in a little glassine bag from a Thai takeout place once we got home, which you can see in the second photo.

I tied some of this twine around the spine to emphasize the travel-y-ness, and stamped the date here on the back. There's something about the variety of page shapes and patterns that makes this a lot of fun to look through -- and it came together so easily! I just spent a few minutes on it each morning in the hotel room, then printed and added the photos when we got home. I liked preserving the memories while they were still fresh, and this is something I'll definitely do again. Yay!

Ok then, time to get back to the real world. Have a great day!

Authentique x2

Me again, looking up briefly from my (larger-than-usual) mountain of essays to grade. Luckily, I made these layouts before the landslide :)

These two also feature the latest goodies from Scrappy Chic, namely the Celebrate collection from Authentique. Here, I'm celebrating a new Design Team year -- check it:

Aw, ain't we cute? I wanted to use a PageMaps sketch that's kinda been stuck in my head (it's one from January if you'd like to go hunting), and I also wanted to break out a bit of stash in addition to my new goodies. In this case, I went with some tiny clothespins from Canvas Corp. that had been sitting in a jar since I won them a year ago or more -- oops!

(other supplies: May Arts twine, AC Thickers, tiny attacher)

I think this picture is hilarious. From what I can tell from my first time meeting these ladies, this is a pretty good representation of their personalities :) Looking forward to checking out their creations all year long.

Since I had a good mess going already, I thought I'd whip up a second quick layout:

Different, no? Very manly. Aside from the background, I used mostly scraps to document my husband's favorite watch. An odd subject, maybe, but he really loves this watch, and I really love this picture. (I also love the potty people paper, by the way -- reminds me of a certain stamping pal of mine). Also, if I may get design-y for a minute, I like the way the strong diagonal line in the photo leads the eye to both the journaling in the top corner and the buttons in the bottom. Meant to do that. Yep.

(other supplies: AC Thickers)

I even used my twine scraps to thread those buttons. Not easy -- that May Arts twine is thick! Pretty, though.

Anyway, that's it for my DT creations this month -- next month we'll pick up speed, since CHA goodies are pouring into the store now. (Don't forget: you can keep tabs on what's coming in on the store blog here.) I grabbed some fun Dear Lizzy papers and stamps the other day, and I can't wait to break 'em out.

After the dang essays. Blergh.

Have a lovely evening!

Challenges all around

Howdy there -- hope you're having a lovely Sunday, wherever you may be.

February marks the start of a new year for the design team over at Scrappy Chic (you can see us all here...or in an upcoming blog post right here, if you're patient). One of the lines in my kit this month was Tiny Woods from KaiserCraft (yes, that's really the name. yes, I think it's funny. sometimes I have a seventh-grade sense of humor.)

This line has really lovely colors, but they're challenging -- fall-ish (makes more sense in their home country of Australia than here, I suppose), and it's borderline theme-y, design-wise. So, I challenged myself to make at least two layouts using it, and I turned to a couple of online challenges to get it all done. Whoa. Challenging, indeed.

Here's the first take:

Analog memories, indeed. Andrew has a lot of fond memories of this old tape recorder -- high technology back in the day! I thought the vaguely 70s colors of the paper were perfect for this particular topic.

I used Studio Calico's Sunday sketch from last week to help me out:

By making the shift from 12x12 to 8.5x11, I had to squish some elements, bumping the journalling below the title instead of next to it. Otherwise, I was (surprisingly) faithful to the original.

other supplies: ranger tag, pebbles alphas, cosmo cricket tiny type word, twine, bazzill cs, amy tangerine washi tape

The tag with my title on it is misted very lightly with Mister Huey's Clover, and I typed up my journalling on the B-side leftovers of my main paper. The buttons are chipboard from Bazzil, and I misted the heck out of those with the same Clover color. Did you know that Scrappy Chic will be carrying Mister Huey's any day now? That makes me very happy.

While I was at it, I tackled the challenge from The Creative Type to scrap your celebrity crush. How fun is that? The samples on their blog are great, too. I had no trouble at all choosing my crush -- the hardest part was choosing a photo from the interwebs. Here's what I came up with:

other supplies: authentique alphas, studio calico stickers, signo pen, kaisercraft really tiny alphas, doodlebug flock (under the stickles, dang it)

Oh, Paul Rudd, how is it that such a funny dude can smolder at the camera that way? Sigh. Anyway, you can see I used the same paper as above, plus a subtle woodgrain pattern. I'm less than pleased with my splatters -- the blue were supposed to be flocked, but the flock didn't stick well enough, so I had to do a second coat with Stickles. And then, when I was setting the thing up for photographing (almost 24 hours later, by the way), I smeared the white splatters (dang you, OA Sprinklers!). So, whatever. I still like the end result, warts and all. I'll just skip the close-up, ok?

In the end, my challenge-based layouts made the challenging paper line less of a challenge. Dig? Dig.

Feel free to go watch a Paul Rudd movie now. Enjoy!

12 on twelve: January

Happy Friday! It's sunny and warmish and boy, do I need a nap!
Instead, how about a layout?
How about one that features NOT my usual one or two or three photos, but one with TWELVE, count 'em, 12 photos instead?

Okay, then, here you go:

Ella Publishing is doing this Take Twelve challenge all year, and while I know there's an "official" challenge with a kit and contests and templates and stuff, I decided to just take the idea as inspiration to visually document a whole day every month. This here is January, and my first real experience using Instagram, and I liked it! (I'm a Hipstamatic fanatic, usually.)

The photo-strip look is a bit of a fake-out -- I just printed the photos as a collage, then sliced them up and reconfigured 'em. As you can see, my day was pretty random, so my design reflects that. I also pledged to myself to use mainly older products on these layouts (stash busting is craft resolution #1 this year) -- the floral paper and alphas are both newer Basic Grey (Picadilly - from Scrappy Chic, natch), but everything else is old(er).

I did, however, use a new technique with my old glitter -- it basically involves splattering watered-down glue all over the page and then glittering it up. I learned it through this video tutorial from Rahel Menig (whose style I admire quite a bit [and she has the cutest voice!]). Surprisingly, I didn't walk around coated in glitter afterwards, and so I decided that this is one technique I'd try again.

I have photos from 12 February ready to go, too -- this time, I think I'll try something really clean and geometric, just to see if I can :)

In the meantime, have a great weekend! (I get to go see Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert tonight -- what's not to love about that? Yay.)

Happy Valentimes!

No, that's not a misspelling. Well, it is, but an intentional one. More on that in a sec.

In the meantime, I thought that after what, three or four weeks of bloglessness, it was high time to get back on track. And since it is indeed Valentine's Day, how about a look at the card I whipped up for my sweet husband?

Aside from paper, there are very few things I love more than beer. Turns out, my hubby is one of them!

I figured it was high time I broke out my cute Lawn Fawn stamps -- love that polaroid frame (thanks, Em!), and the outline alpha set makes me happy. Paired with a bit of stickles, some Echo Park papers and a pint of beer, I think this is one cheery Valentine. (Gold star to the first person who can tell me where my "pint glass" is from!)

In other news, a new Design Team year has just begun over at Scrappy Chic, and I have a brand-new team of ladies to work with. Exciting! Keep your eyes peeled for projects made from great new CHA products soon.

Now, back to the "Valentimes" -- if you're a 30 Rock fan, you already know what I'm talking about, and if you're not...I'm not sure we can be friends. Kidding! But it's really, really funny.

If that image doesn't jog your memory (What, not everyone knows Vlem the prostitute?), feel free to watch an oddly-spliced 30 Rock clip here. Rachel Dratch's cameos are always memorable.

All right then, I hope you all have lovely plans with your sweeties today. If not, I hope you have plans with some paper!

Have a lovely Valentine's Day!