Best Ever Scrapbooking

Two things that have made my scrapbook so much simpler are: Stampin' Up!'s Simply Scrappin Kits and my Cricut. I have used both of these items for pretty much every page I have made recently. They just make scrapping so much simpler for me. I love them!!! Here are two more birthday pages I created recently using the Best Ever kit. As you can tell, I am not one to do alot of journalling. Really how much can I say about a birthday party, basically every time is the same, the family gathers at the in-laws, the birthday person or people, open the gifts and that's the party. I figure as long as I have the dates and who's birthday it is, I am good. Simple and to the point, that's the way I like things. For the David page, I actually pulled out some of my alphabet stamps I haven't used in ages and stamped eached letter on the squares with Black craft ink.

More Scrapbook Pages

I am so excited that I have been able to get lots of scrapbooking done recently. Here are another two pages that I created. I love the look of simple and clean pages. They come together fairly quickly and I get a sense of accomplishment. As you will notice I don't do alot of journalling I figure as long as the page has who, what, where and when I am happy with that. These pages use some paper from the Stampin' Up! Simply Scrappin Kit 'Best Ever' (now retired).

Scrapbooking

On my holidays recently I was able to spend some time scrapbooking. It was great to have lots of time that I could dedicate just to stamping and scrapbooking. It was so relaxing. I really need to set aside time to do this more often. The Christmas layout was cased from jaymemuc at Splitcoaststampers. The second layout was a sketch from a recent Creating Keepsakes magazine. I find it so much easier to scrapbook with sketches. Whenever I see a sketch I like, I will copy it and place it in my sketch binder which is sorted by number of photos on the page(s). Since I started doing this it has helped me so much with my scrapbooking.

New Year - New Goals

It has been a long time since I last posted. The past few months have been crazy busy. Thankful I had some time off over the holidays and was able to relax, catch up on sleep and spend some time in my scrapbook room. Just like most people I do have a few New Year's resolutions - 1. To scrapbook more this year (I didn't do much scrapbooking last year.) and 2. Post to my blog more often. I am aiming at at least once a week.

The New Year started off great in regards to my first goal, but isn't that the way it always goes ... you make a resolutions and start out really good meeting it and then somewhere along the line it dies out. I spend the first few days of this year in my scrapbook room, I got alot accomplished and so proud of myself. I got a cricut create for Christmas and I must say I think just wanting to use this really put my in the mood to scrapbook. I did about fourteen scrapbook pages in three days and I used the cricut on 75% off them. I am loving it. Below are pictures of the pages that I did, I am not going to include a supply list for each page because that would take way too long for me right now, however if you are interested in knowing any of the supplies I used, feel free to leave me a comment and I will let you know what I used. The layout for the first Christmas page was taken from Stampalooza's June scrapbook sketch challenge on SCS. The layout for the birthday page was cased from Luv2Stamp&Scrap and turned into a two page spread. The K on the Kincardine page is one of the sticky cut letters by Stampin' Up! covered with micro beads and glitter. I have to say the Toronto Zoo page has got to be my favourite, I got the sketch from a Simple Scrapbooks magazine (not sure what month it was in). Okay I am done talking about the pages now for the pics...

December is Over!

December has been a crazy month for me, I am so happy that is it over and hopefully life will settle down a little. As a Christmas present to my in-laws I made up scrapbooks for each family within the family. There was one page dedicated to each couple and a page dedicated to each kid. I had previously asked the family members some questions about their likes and dislikes, and put the questions and asnwers together for this album. The first page in the album had the title "Getting to know the Smith Family." I did four albums with 11 pages in each. It took me alot longer than I thought it would, but it was so worth it. The family members loved it when they opened them on Christmas. I told them that I would update the album every few years as we all grow older and our thoughts and opinions change. This is a sample of one of the pages that I did, it is me and my husband Andrew.

Niagara Falls 2

Here is another page of photos from Niagara Falls, these pictures are from when we went on the Maid of the Mist boat. I was nervous about going on this because I hate getting wet and do not like to be near the side of a boat. But I survived, it was a very different experience seeing the falls from below. This is the first time I have split a photo across two pages. I did not include much of the photo on page 1 but I love how these two pages look together.

Here is page 2 of this layout. I saw these Ghost letters at Michaels last time I was there and just loved them. I knew it was going to be difficult trying to decide how to attach them to a layout, but I decided to get them anyways. I used staples to attach them on this page, this is the first time I have used Staples on a scrapbook page, and I am not sure if I like it and if I will do it again, but I love the look of these letters.

Supplies Used:
Stamps: Short Order Alphabet
Ink: Brilliant Blue
Cardstock: Bashful Blue, Brilliant Blue, Water Patterned Paper
Accessories: Ghost Letters, Staples

Niagara Falls

I love having holidays! Who doesn't? I am on holidays this week but my husband is working, so I have enjoyed being able to spend some time at home. This has allowed me to get some scrapbooking done. I have a strange thing with water. I love to watch water - the waves at the beach, waterfalls, etc. I also don't mind being on the water in a boat or canoe, but I absolutely hate being in water.

I love how this page turned out. I used red and black because of the coke bottle and mountie in two of the photos on the 2nd half of this layout. But I love how it really brought out the photos. This layout was inspired by a card sketch I had seen on SCS. The two white strips say: 1. The Canadian Horseshoe Falls plunges 170 feet into the Maid of the Mist Pool. 2. At the American Falls the water's vertical descent ranges from 70 to 110 feet to the rock at the base of the Falls.


This is the second half of the page. I tried to give it the same kind of look as the other half. All journaling is done on the computer.

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Stamps: Heartfelt Thanks
Ink: Sage Shadow, Bashful Blue, Barely Banana
Cardstock: Real Red, Basic Black, White

Kincardine

I love to just sit and watch the water at Kincardine. My parents have a cottage very close to Kincardine, so whenever we are there we always take a drive to Kincardine and sit and watch the water. Usually we pick up some fish and chips first and eat near the beach. On our holidays this year Andrew and I spent a few days at the cottage, so needless to say we ended up at the Kincardine beach. It was really busy at the sandy part of the beach so we went down to the rocky part and ate our fish and chips.

I saw a page in the Simple Scrapbooks magazine where they put three small pictures inside one big picture. I just loved it, and thought it would work great for these pictures. I absolutely love how this turned out.

Supplies Used:
Cardstock: Certainly Celery, Bashful Blue, White, Four Seasons DS Paper
Accessories: Brads, Flowers from dollar store

Badlands Scrapbook Page

On our holidays this year my husband and I went for a day trip to see some badlands we had heard about through friends. We didn't know exactly where we going, so it was an adventure for us. We only knew what the name of the road was and what town it was near, so we just drove around for a while trying to find them. But it definitely was worth it. This was such an amazing sight. I had a really hard time trying to decide on what colours to use for these pages. As I was going through my cardstock pile trying to pick colours I found that Sahara Sand went really well. It brought out the grey strip in the rocks. I was going to use that for the background colour but I didn't have any of the cardstock in 12x12, and I did not want to wait until I got some. So I decided to use it to mat the photos instead. Here are the pages:

Supplies Used:
Stamps: Office Accoutrement, Jumbo Outline Alphabet
Ink: White Craft, Rose Red, Basic Brown
Cardstock: Close to Cocoa, Garden Green, Rose Red, Sahara Sand, Prints DS Paper - Rose Red
Accessories: Making Memories Chipboard Letter

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Out & About Simply Scrappin, Chocolate Chip, Really Rust, Sahara Sand

I shopped at Michaels!

I very rarely shop at Michael's because I am a Stampin' Up! demo and get my scrapbooking supplies from SU. However Friday night mom and I were at Michaels and a few items caught my eye that I just had to get. I picked up some chipboard letters, page pebbles and ghost alphabet letters. I also got this really cute Snoopy stamp so I can do more cards for Andrew. Snoopy is one of his favourite cartoon characters. Since I had these new items I just had to use them right away. This is the page I ending up making. I inked the chipboard letters with SU's Night of Navy craft ink and then used two of the page pebbles in the bottom corners. I had planned on using the ghost letters on this page, but I couldn't fit the word nephews across the page with the letters, I am going to have to pick a shorter word when I go to use them. This picture was taken a few years ago, however it is definitely time for a new picture, because we now have four nephews.

My Opps Page

On May 8th, 2004 I hit a deer with my car, there was hardly any damage to the car though. I decided that I would scrapbook this event. I did not have any deer stamps or stickers so I used some clip art from MS Word for the deer on this page. Here is what I came up with. Journaling reads 'May 8th, 2004 My grandmother was over from England so our family got together to celebrate Mother's day and our 1st anniversary. We spent the day at the cottage in Point Clark, ON. Around 10:30pm we decided to leave the cottage and head to Wingham were we would be spending the night. Andrew said he was tired, so I offered to drive, after all it was only a 30 minute drive. I was driving approx. 80km/hr on highway 86, and all of a sudden I saw a deer jump out onto the road. I tried to slam on the brakes, but I ended up hitting it head on. Surprisingly enough I did not stall the car, I was panicked and had forgot to use the clutch. I was freaking out. Andrew told me to pull over to the side of the road and he would take a look to see if the car would be okay to continue driving to Wingham. I told him he would have to drive, there was no way I could continue driving. As soon as we got into Wingham, we went to the Police Station to report what happened. Then we went to the house and phoned my parents, who were still at the cottage, to let them know what happened. As it was really dark outside, we could not have a good look at the car to see how much damage was done, so we decided to go to bed and look at it in the morning. When we got up Sunday morning we took a look at the car, and surprisingly you could hardly tell we had hit a deer. What a great car, it was a 1992 Toyota Camry. The license plate and holder were bent and the front wheel on the passenger side was making a noise, but we couldn't figure out what it was. We drove back to Point Clark to meet my parents for church and then afterwards, Dad took a look at the car. Andre w and Dad ended up taking the front tire off to take a look, apparently the rotor on the wheel was bent and rubbing on the wheel frame, so Dad bent the rotor back into shape, and the car drove fine after. I thank God for protecting us through this, things could have been a lot worse than they were. This was a really frightening experience for me, and for a long time afterwards I was scared to drive after dark. I am starting to get better with driving, but would rather not drive if someone else can.'

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Stamps: Headline Alphabet
Ink: Bravo Burgundy
Cardstock: Almost Amethyst, Bravo Burgundy, Mellow Moss
Accessories: Clip Art from MS Word

Another two pages

I am doing really good scrapbooking this week, I am so proud of myself, I feel like I have been able to get a lot done. It has been a stressful week and scrapbooking has really helped relieve some of the stress. I did not listen to my own advice yesterday about not scrapping when tired, I started this scrapbook page around 10:30pm last night. However I did not find any mistakes on this page but that could be because I was too tired to complete the title or journal, so I finished if off tonight. I had planned for the title to be the cut out letters themselves, not the cut out section. But my husband, Andrew, really liked the way the cut out looks, so I used it instead. I kind of have mixed feelings about it, I think it is kind of cool, but still not sure if I like the way it looks on this page. Oh well, if Andrew likes it I will keep it.

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Stamps: Lovely As A Tree
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Cardstock: Close to Cocoa, Brocade Blue, Garden Green, Versamark

Don't scrap when you are tired.

I started to work on this scrapbook page when I got from work yesterday, but then I got distracted from it. I had to get my desk cleaned up before I went to bed last night, so I sat down to finish it. I can't leave the room messy because our house is for sale and we never know when someone might go through it. So anyways, I ended up finishing it just before midnight last night. As I went to put the pages in my scrapbook I noticed a couple of mistakes. (That's what I get for scrapping when I am tired.) The first mistake wasn't really a mistake I suppose. One picture is cut in a circle instead of a square, but that's because it was the only copy of the picture I had and it was already cut as the circle for some reason. I can't find the negatives of this picture otherwise I would have a copy printed. If I ever find the negatives I will probably fix this. The other mistake is the title on the right hand side, 'at the Smith's', I meant for this writing to face inwards not out, and of course when I noticed this the letters were already glued down. Oh well, I don't plan on changing it right now because the letters took me a while. It will just have to stay like this. The thing I learned from this experience was - Don't scrap when you are tired!

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Stamps: Holiday Tag Team
Ink: Always Artichoke
Cardstock: Always Artichoke, Brocade Blue, Barely Banana
Accessories: Ribbon

This weekend I was able to get most of my pictures all sorted out and organized, so that when I go to scrapbook, the pictures of the same events are all together. This will make it so much easier when I am looking for pictures. I was also got a couple of pages done this weekend. I decided to do some photo's from a couple of Christmas' from a few years. Looking at these picutres really brought back memories, and I can't believe how much the people have changed in just a few years. My husband and I also had a couple of good laughs from the pictures taken inside our house before we re-decorated. The rooms just seem so funny looking compared to how they are now. Anyways, enough of my rambling. Here are the two layouts I did.

This first layout is pictures from 2002. This layout was inspired by a page I saw on the SCS gallery by scrapbookmonster.

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Stamps: Crazy for Christmas, Short Order Alphabet & Numbers
Ink: Rose Red Craft
Cardstock: Bashful Blue, Mellow Moss, Rose Red

This is the second layout I finished today, it is from 2003 and contains the pictures that made us laugh so hard.

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up!)
Stamps: Short Order Alphabet
Ink: Real Red
Carstock: Real Red, Whisper White, Sparkling Holiday Simply Scrappin Kit

It is finally finished!!

After one year and 4 months, I have finally finished the scrapbook of our trip to California in Feb. 2006. This is the last page of the album. I was stuck for ideas on this page because I had no photo to go on it, but I found these really cute 3-D stickers at Michaels a few weeks ago and thought they would be great to add some fun elements to the page. Now that I can put this album in the finished projects pile, I can start catching up on scrapbooking the events that have happened over the past year.

Supplies Used:
(All Stampin' Up! Unless Noted)
Stamps: Pure & Simple Alphabet
Ink: Real Red
Cardstock: Bashful Blue and Night of Navy
Accessories: 3-D Stickers from Michaels

Knott's Berry Farm

Today I took advantage of the holiday Monday and worked on my California scrapbook. I scrapbooked our pictures from our day at Knott's Berry Farm. I got four more pages done now. I am almost finished the album. I only need to do the last page, which will be our trip home. Here's the pictures of the pages I did today.

Supplies used:
Cardstock - Ballet Blue

Supplies used:
(All Stampin' Up! unless noted)
Cardstock - Brocade Blue, Certainly Celery, So Saffron
Stamps - Simply Circles, Headline Alphabet, Everyday Flexible Phrases
Ink - Brocade Blue, Certainly Celery, So Saffron, White Craft
Accessories - 1 1/4 Circle Punch, 1 3/8 Circle Punch, Vellum Metal Edge Tags, Brads

More Sea World

Sea World was a beautiful place and there was lots to see, but my husband went a little over board with the photos. And he told me I had to scrap majority of the them. So needless to say I ended up with 10 pages of my scrapbook dedicated to Sea World. I actually did these pages a couple of weeks ago and only just getting to posting them now. Hope you enjoy looking.

Sea World

I haven't done any scrapbooking in what feels like forever. Other things have distracted me lately. But I finally sat down today and did another two page layout for my California album. I got the idea for this layout from a simply scrapbooking magazine I was reading earlier this week. Andrew took almost two rolls of film when we were at Sea World, so I love that on these pages I was able to get 14 photos on them. Here's the page:

Gilmore Girls

I am currently scrapbooking the pictures from our trip to California last February (I know I am a little behind, but I am almost done now). On our trip we took a tour of the WB Studios, and we were able to see a number of the sets for many different shows, but the highlight for me was the Gilmore Girls sets. Gilmore Girls is one of my favourite TV show, I have seen every episode and cannot miss it on Tuesday nights. I was really hoping to meet some of the actors, but I didn't see any, and we didn't get to see any of the indoor sets, but we did get to see the outdoor sets. Which was great! I was so excited to see anything from this show. So here are the pages I scrapbooked with the pictures I took. I did add some pictures that I got off the internet of the actors.