I'm Blushing

Or at least my layout is. ;-) Sus Designs just put out a cute new kit and matching alpha called Blushing and it's on sale at E-Scape and Scrap right now. Here's my first layout using Blushing - the kit and alpha.

Taylor Turns 12

Our First Disney Cruise

Warning: It's a Rave. ;-) It would be much quicker to tell you what I didn't love about our first Disney Cruise - that would be nothing, lol. We sailed The Disney Wonder from Port Canaveral to Nassau, Bahamas, to Disney's Castaway Cay, Bahamas, then spent a day at sea before coming home (4 nights on board). It was awesome. I can't say enough about the excellent service, the delicious food, the fantastic shows (live shows and movie showings), the long list of activities on board and off, the beauty (and cleanliness) of the ship, and the wonderful crew and characters that surrounded us and made the trip extra-special. I recommend it to everyone. And if that's not enough, both my husband and my Dad recommend it too - they walked off the ship ready to reboard.

Mere words can not express the amazing adventure that was our trip, but perhaps scrapbook pages can. Here is the first page in our Disney Cruise album.

Our First Disney Cruise


The model ship in the picture sits in the boarding area of the port.

More to come! My goal is to finish this album by mid-July.

Time for a Reveal

The hardest part about a reveal is keeping layouts under wraps! E-scape and Scrap released two new collaboration kits this week - Doodlicious by Julie Mead and Ruth Davis and Summer So Fine from the Nifty Designer Series. They are both jam-packed with papers and elements, with enough variety that you create layouts without searching other kits for missing elements. I had a lot of fun working with both kits, here are the results:

Doodlicious - a fun kit filled with doodle-inspired elements, offered both in color and in black and white. To sweeten the deal there are quite a few matching papers included in the kit.

Layout 1 - Blessings Caught on Camera
Logan's first tooth picture shoot yielded just as many non-tooth related pictures as it did first tooth pictures, lol.


Layout 2 - It's Her First Car
Tabatha picking up her Honda Civic. I think this kit equally screams kids and teens, the doodles are so whimsical and really fit a variety of themes.



Summer So Fine - a collaboration kit created by all the designers at E-scape and Scrap themed around summer and the great outdoors, filled with papers, elements and even word art. There are a number of floral elements included in the kit and I focused my layouts on these.

Layout 1 - Bloomin'
This picture of John and his parents at Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival was one I have been planning to scrap since the moment I took it, and the elements in this kit fit so well with the floral arrangements in the picture.


Layout 2 - Topiaries
I had to do a second Flower and Garden layout, there were so many elements in the kit I wanted to use.

May is for Mothers

Especially Marvelous Mothers. I know a few of them. ;-) Happy Mother's Month to all of them.

My mother


My mother-in-law


My sister Nicole


My sister Lisa


And my sister-in-law Amanda


My inspiration for all of these layouts was a new kit called Marvelous Mom by Sus Designs.

In Loving Memory of Aunt Cathy

We lost my Aunt Cathy a few weeks ago. This is obviously a belated post, but even though I've been MIA for a while I still wanted to honor her out here. We were blessed to hear from her friends at the funeral that she had rediscovered her relationship with God. That's really all you can ask in times like these - the comfort of knowing someone you love will live an eternity basking in the love of our Lord and Saviour.

This is the tribute layout I created for Aunt Cathy's memorial service.


Journaling:
Once we had a path
And the way to it was clear
Everything was sweet to us
Everything was dear

Then the days turn gray
We can’t see beyond the gloom
We wander here, we wander there,
Yet never seem to move

God works in different ways
He works throughout the night
He only needs our faith
To return us to the light

Time can only tell
For those who go astray
If they’ll ever come back home
If they’ll somehow find their way

We only need to cling
To what we know is right
And pray we make it home
Before the passing of the light

She walked this Earth with us for too short a time: August 22, 1942 – April 23, 2010

Remember to thank the Lord each morning for the beautiful people he puts in your life, no matter how short or long a time they are around.

A Little Bit of This and That

"I've seen a lot of sad people,
I've seen a lot of strange things,
I've seen a lot of bad people, yeah,
Do a lot of bad things.

You know I've done some climbing,
I've done a little bit of this and that,
You know I've done some running,
You know I always come back.

And I've relied upon you so,
I've decided on you,
Now I wonder
Do you think about me?"
-- Sister Hazel

Taba and I went to see Sister Hazel in concert this past weekend. I love them and I finally had the chance to introduce Taba to them properly (there's nothing like seeing Sister Hazel in concert to capture the essence of their music). We had a blast, and of course their music has been playing over and over in my head every since. These lyrics are from Think About Me - and now for a little bit of this and that from my latest creations. The products used in these layouts were provided to me in return for scrapping layouts as a member of E-Scape and Scrap's Creative Team.

This first layout is about my Grandma - I still miss her so much.

Kay Eflin's Sew Sew kit felt like the perfect kit to work with some of these precious pictures I have of Grandma. I linked together cutouts of her eyes from the 3 pictures to create a border that would highlight my journaling.


Next we have a layout about a summer spent at Grandma's when she lived on the farm - fun times!

My title was inspired by Sus Designs' Birdie Mini Kit. The fun little birds seemed like the perfect match to my memories of that summer.


And finally a layout with some more recent family shots - here are some of the many special girls that make us smile.

The soft design of Ingeborg's newest painted kit Feeling Blue Elements and Papers complimented these sweet pictures I had of our nieces at a party last year. I used the bubble in the kit to create overlays for each of the pictures and added a bevel effect to make it appear as if each girl (and her name) was in a bubble. I loved the various starbursts included and used them to mat my title letters.


Well, that's all for today, folks! Happy Scrapping.

"Well I know that it's been a long
Time since I've been gone,
It's easy to forget - help me remember.

It's funny but I've never been
Good at staying close
That don't mean that I never remember.

And it's been so long
You've been gone
But feels like we're one again,
So long.

And it's been so long,
You kept thinking maybe tomorrow,
Now I'm going to leave again, believe again,
So long!"
-- Lyrics from So Long by Sister Hazel

Simpler Times - Childhood Fun

This may be my favorite Creative Team Reveal yet! This week for E-Scape and Scrap we did a reveal on Child's Play, or Childhood Fun. The idea was to showcase children having fun the old fashioned way - running and playing outside, enjoying games or toys or each other's company (sans video games). I ended up with four layouts on the subject and I honestly could have kept going. I had a number of fun pictures I was ready to work with and there were so many kits to choose from in the ESS Boutique.

Launching Rockets

First up, the rockets! Nicole and Dana had this great idea to buy rockets (like these) that she could launch with the kids on her Spring Break visit to Florida. The kids loved it and so did we, even though we ended up losing 1 1/2 rockets to the wind. We were so glad we didn't take the time to paint them, lol. This layout shows Nicole, Libby and Trinity setting off one of the rockets. I paired these pictures with the kit All Mad by The Busy Elf Designs; it's based on the Alice in Wonderland motif. Of course I had to use the Chesire Cat's smile, in honor of Nicole.



Connecting with Creativity

Next we'll take a look at the K'nex Roller Coaster. This is another one of Nicole's genius ideas (and I'm not being sarcastic, this was awesome). She had me totally scared before the toy arrived at my house; she called to warn me how big it was. And it's true, it does take up some space, but at least I didn't have to remove any furniture. That would have been a deal-breaker, lol.

Trevor was instantly entranced with this build-it-yourself roller coaster. The first time he built it, he built it to spec. The next two times he rebuilt the coaster, he came up with his own design. The roller coaster car really rides around the track. The battery operated chain that takes it up the incline to start it off is so realistic. And there's a video camera built into the car that will take a 30 second video, showing us what we would see if we were riding in that tiny little roller coaster car. Adding a memory card allows it to take a longer video and then the video won't erase each time you turn the car off. Kay Eflin and Ruth Davis' collaboration kit Snips, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails was the perfect match for what I wanted to do here - I used the perspective and distort tools in Photoshop to bend this open door to just the right angle.



Bianca is on the Move

I wanted to create another layout with Kay Eflin and Ruth Davis' collaboration kit Snips, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails but I was ready to work with girl pictures. The kit worked surprisingly well with this picture of Bianca running furiously around her grandparents' apartment complex. I avoided using any of the elements and papers that said "boy" (literally). I thought this cute little snail, handmade by Ruth Davis, was the perfect compliment to my action shot. I created my word bubble out of a cloud.



Speed Stroller Walking

Last up is one of the older children interacting with baby Logan. Trinity and Trevor were both interested in pushing the stroller but Nicole had to keep reminding them that the stroller was not a race car. They weren't convinced. I'm sure Logan will be ready to have them running his stroller around in circles by the end of the year but it's true that right now they still need to be careful with this precious baby boy. Fittingly I used Ladybug Designs Child's Play kit for the last of these 4 reveal layouts.



Until next time, happy scrapping!