Another Reveal - Amethysts and Sapphires and Peridots, Oh My!

I always love a good reveal, especially when I'm part of it. This week our Creative Team did a reveal on using gemstones in layouts that is now posted on the E-Scape and Scrap blog. Make sure to check it out, the other ladies turned in some priceless layouts using a variety of gemstones in different ways.

Finding the Joy in Motherhood

On my first layout I chose to use the Maternal Jem kit that The Busy Elf Designs recently released in the E-Scape and Scrap Boutique.  This kit is filled with jewels and jewel inspired papers.  I used it to create this layout about my sister and her son on a recent weekend getaway.

 

To get the look for the main picture, I created a copy of the envelope and erased the top portion to layer it over my main picture in order to make the picture look as if it were coming out of the envelope.  The heart gem seemed like the perfect element to enhance the theme of a mother's love.

Treasure These Moments

My second layout was inspired by the new Birthstone Charms put out by Lady Bug Designs. This element pack includes girl and boy charms for every month and the files are labeled with both the month and gemstone name to help those of us who aren't experts on birthstones.  I pinned the appropriate birthstone charm to each of us in the picture (I'm all the way to the right; this is a picture of me with both of my sisters and my nephew - it was his first spring break, lol). 

To compliment the charm elements I used papers and elements from Werinka Designs' Hyacinth kit.  Since we're all wearing different (and nonmatching) colors in this picture, I layered 4 different papers from the kit and used the eraser tool to get just the right mixture of colors and patterns in my background to pull the images together.  This wonderful photo mask is also by Werinka Designs.

Thank you for looking!  Have a blessed day.

A Jungle Out There, A Zoo In Here

This week I had the privilege of playing with Ingeborg's new Sketch A Zoo Papers and Elements. It's filled with so many fun zoo animal images and a great selection of papers. My favorite place to observe wild animals such as lions and tigers (but not bears! oh my!) is Disney's Animal Kingdom so I used some of those pictures to work with this kit.

Jungle Explorers
Here we have my sister and her darling son hanging out with Safari Goofy and Safari Pluto.


Welcome to Animal Kingdom
Next up - it's me! This is the entrance to the park.


The Giraffe
The giraffe is my second-favorite zoo animal. This creature possesses a silent beauty and moves with surprising grace. Their long neck twists and turns in their quest to find food. The giraffe spots danger as it approaches and escapes with a burst of speed. (journaling from the layout)

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.