May
May is Scrapilicious!
May is National Scrapbook Month… and in honor of that, I’m posting this hellishly long blog entry!
The first full Saturday in May is considered also to be National Scrapbook Day. It’s also National Duckling Month and National Strawberry month too- and my favorite days in May that I discovered is National Lost Sock Day (May 9th) and National Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you!).
Anyway, May might not actually be full of as much scrappin’ as I’d like, as it’s going to be a crazy busy month for our little family. We went on a mini getaway last week to Pittsburgh and then… big news… we bought a new house!! We’ve loved our little house that we’re in now but that’s just it… it’s little. It’s not super teeny square footage wise, but my biggest issue is that we don’t have a big living space. With Tori starting to take her first few steps, we really need more space for her to run around (and be able to take tumbles without that meaning she’s automatically taking a header into furniture). The new house has about 1000 more sq ft than what we currently have (plus a HUGE yard with a garden and in-ground pool), and we’ve already determined which room would be the cr-office/playroom. It’s got so much space to be both that I am hoping it means I may get to devote a little more time to my hobby since Tori will have a nice play area right next to our desk areas.
We close on our houses (the one we’re selling and the one we’re buying) at the end of this month… so it’s going to be National Packing Up Our Crap Month too!
In other news, my big girl turned 1! Miss Victoria celebrated her birthday at the end of March.
Here’s me and my little lady with the birthday banner. We had the party at my parents house since they have a little more space for gathering friends and family.
She had a lot of fun opening her presents!:
She definitely had more fun tearing the paper and playing with that than the presents, but I suppose that’s what usually happens with little ones. I did feel bad though, because she (with my help) would get a present opened and would look at it for a minute before we took it from her so she could open the next gift.
However, there was this one gift that she didn’t want to put down… and she showed it her usual sign of affection:
…by putting it in her mouth.
She sleeps with this bunny every night… she LOVES it!
And what birthday would be complete with out a smash cake!
Tori does seem to have stranger anxiety so she only put up with people staring at her and snapping pictures for so long. We managed to get this photo before she completely melted down:
We took so many pictures, between me, my sister in law, Gina and my father in law… I’ve determined that her birthday will have to be her own scrapbook!
Speaking of scrapbooking, let’s get to it! 
I went on the spring scrapbook retreat in March. I normally would only go once a year (to either the fall or spring, but not both), but now I’ve determined that those weekends are really the only time I get to scrapbook (for a serious length of time anyway). My friend Andrea and I went this time, and even though we were sans Kerrie, we still managed to pack that vehicle full!!
I was SUPER productive at the retreat. I completed a personal record of 24 pages! I was a lean, mean, scrappin’ machine!
This was a page I had mostly completed prior to the retreat. I just cut out the “bath time” phrase and the rubber duck, which were from the Sugar and Spice Cricut cartridge. (by the way, “duck” is the one word Tori knows, besides “mama”, “dada”, and “uh-oh”… but now every bird is a “duck”! At least that fits with the National Duckling Month theme!).
This page isn’t too fancy… I had a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper that looked like water, so I put that underneath the photos, on top of the blue background. Then I cut out some photos just to fit more on the page. I am definitely someone who tries to cram as many photos on a page as possible (within reason). I actually am not a huge fan of pages that have one picture on it… I do that once in awhile if it’s a really special photo, but for me, I like to use multiple pictures to tell a story. It seems like a waste to me to only have one photo on a page, unless you’re incorporating a lot of journaling. It’s all personal preference though, ultimately!
This was one I completed prior to the retreat but hadn’t photographed. It’s all about the snuggles! The letters were from the “Opposites Attract” cartridge, which, as I’ve said before, is easily my favorite font cartridge. It’s so versatile! The only other element that I really want to point out on here is in the middle bottom. I had come across a list somewhere in my Baby Center emails when I was pregnant that encouraged parents to write down what the wished for their child. I took a few of those ideas and wrote them down and placed it on this page. She’s so little and yet I have so many big hopes for her… ultimately I just want her to be happy and healthy in all that she does!
“My daughter’s eyes” page was difficult to come up with at first. I had all of these cute close ups of her eyes and face and wasn’t sure how to incorporate them. The title of the page comes from a country song and, though I’m not a country music fan, it is a very touching song. I’m just in love with Tori’s big brown eyes… they are so expressive to me! I love watching her study things around her! I must confess that, since this was another pre-retreat layout, I am unsure of the font. I think it was one of the settings on the Jasmine cartridge. I accented with a few baby themed stickers. I wanted her eyes to be the main focus so I kept the decorative elements at a minimum.
I smile when I see this page. I realize I said above that I don’t typically put one photo on a page, it does happen on a rare occasion. The page on the left focuses on a single photo because I adore this picture! She was so teeny and all bundled in her car seat… and it makes me smile, which ties in with the photos on the right, where I finally captured her first smile on camera. The font was… you guessed it, Opposites Attract” and the flower was from the Sugar and Spice cartridge. The giraffe on the right was actually from a card I had saved from my baby shower. I thought the mamma and baby giraffe were just too cute! I cut them out and placed them in the corner and I think they’re the perfect accent! Here’s a close up of the right page:
I know I’m her mommy, but dang, she’s cute, isn’t she?!?
Next up, a layout of a series of photos of, well… of just Tori 
I have to say, thanks to Pinterest and my recent subscription to the Scrapbooks, Etc. magazine, I’ve been playing around with different layout arrangements. I’m trying to break out of my usual page and photo arrangements. I was thrilled with how this one turned out. I had all of these cute pics of Miss Tori from the same day but they didn’t have a flow to them… some of just her, some of me with her, some of Daddy with her… the common theme was her, hence my title “Just Tori”. The font was Jubilee and the flowers and leaves came from a cartridge I borrowed from Andrea- I believe it was called Accent Essentials. I’ve been reading about “inchies” where people make square inch embellishments that are just adorable- so I played with that idea for the border accents. I kept the journaling to a minimum since there really wasn’t a story behind these photos- it was just about Tori.
Here is the cover page for volume 2 of Tori’s first year. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a 3 or 4 volume set yet… I may try to get 6-12mo in one album but I have ridiculous amount of cute pictures!
And as I’m attempting to photograph my pages, Tori decided to come over and give me a hand. I take crappy photos of my pages anyway, but when I only have 3 seconds to set it up and get the picture before little hands get on it… well, I’m lucky my photos aren’t a streaky blur! She loves to look at photo albums and my scrapbooks, which is why I am a firm believer in using page protectors. She’s rough with her board books so she could do serious damage to these fragile pages.
Cursive 101 font was used for this page… it’s a fairly simplistic layout, but I was happy with my color choices- the aqua color on top of the mauve colored paper, with accenting stickers. I think it compliments the color of my shirt and the blue dolphin on her onesie.
I had been seeing several grid layout pages similar to this one, on Pinterest. I had saved a few on my scrapbook dedicated board, knowing that I’d probably have an opportunity to use it. I had many pictures of Miss Victoria but they didn’t all go together… they were all from different moments, different days, but just us enjoying her. I decided that this would be a good time to bust out the grid layout and make this page. It fell together easily and the center sticker ties it all together… little ones really do bring the biggest joy!
I had that page, opposite this page and used the same peach background to mat these photos:
Putting these photos in a rectangular pattern complimented the grid pattern on that page above. I used Don Juan for the font… it was a font I hadn’t seen before and wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but after using it a few times in my albums, I LOVE it! I borrowed it at the retreat, so I may have to get that one to add to my collection. Since these were placed on patterned paper, I kept embellishments to a minimum with a couple of stickers. I also cut the title out on that same peach paper that was on the opposite page and mounted it on the pale green (both colors were in the background patterned paper). Mood Swings definitely seemed to be an appropriate title for this group of photos.
Next up, this two page spread about Tori’s first baseball game. The main element that I wanted to point out is the “State College Spikes” title. This was actually created with Cricut Markers. Basically, you use these in place of the blade in your Cricut machine. I wanted something just a little different than the usual cut out letters and I had been anxious to use these markers. I actually got these markers “free” because I had Cricut Reward Points from purchasing cartridges. (of course I had to pay shipping….so even though I purchased tons of Cricut merchandise, they couldn’t even give me free shipping on my reward… I ended up paying about $2 less than what it would’ve been if I’d just gone to Michaels and bought them… wow, thanks Provo Craft!).
This is a fairly straight forward layout but I liked some of the embellishments I used. I used the “Boys will be Boys” cartridge to cut out the super cute baseball mitt and bats. I used a Creative Memories circular punch and drew red stitching on it to make baseballs. I also had a ticket that I had saved from the day. I like when places give you an actual ticket… so many places are just giving a receipt as your “ticket”, which is BOOOORRIING! I know there are other scrappers like me that greatly appreciate a physical ticket!
Lastly, here’s the final layout I completed during the retreat. This set of photos was actually my goal- I wanted to scrap these photos by the end of the retreat and sure enough, Sunday, late morning, I was creating my page. I got a TON of compliments on this page, which really made me feel good.
This is the full spread- on the right side, I used a 5×7 photo that I had of Tori with a sunflower in the background as the main focus. I added a smaller photo (self taken, by the way) at the bottom, and a circular cut sunflower photo as an accent. Plus, I had these adorable sunflower stickers that had black and white plaid centers- which just so happened to match the pattern on Tori’s dress!
The left side of this spread is my favorite:
I used a couple of techniques on this page that I was really happy with… I also felt like my techniques and embellishments accented the photos, without overpowering them. The first thing I did was turned a close up of a sunflower into a 9-grid mosaic.
I was a little off with cutting this, and the bottom 3 squares are just a teeny bit smaller than the other 6. I can live with imperfection. I’ve done photo mosaics before but this is probably my favorite one, since I used a large bold image.
My favorite part of this page though, is easily the title:
This actually sort of happened by accident (gotta love happy accidents). I had used the Don Juan font again to cut out the black letters. I thought black letters would be nice because of the pattern in Tori’s dress. However, once I cut out the title, I really liked the negative space and decided to use that somehow. I had a couple of leftover pictures that were just of an overall shot of the field. I placed the “sunflower” cut out over them and immediately knew that’s what I needed to use. I used two separate pictures (the seam is between the “l” and “o”). A lot of fellow scrapers at the retreat loved this idea and came over to admire it and ask me some questions about it. I used the cut out letters of “field” to contrast the negative space. Toss on a few sunflower stickers and call it done!
And with that, the retreat came to a close. We packed up our gear and headed home. It’s funny that I actually wasn’t terribly excited about going to the retreat this year… for some reason, the thought of getting all my stuff packed up and going away seemed daunting. I also hadn’t slept well in a few days, and I KNOW I never sleep well at the retreat. But I got into a grove once I got there and actually stayed in that zone almost the entire time! It was excellent!
Not sure when I’ll get a chance to really scrapbook again- with packing and moving, I don’t see much scrapping at all! Hopefully though, once we’re settled, I’ll be able to get back into it! I hope that my friends get to do my share of scrapbooking this month for me!
Happy Scrapbook Month!