A few of my favorite things…

So Saturday, May 4, was National Scrapbook Day…  (coincidentally, it was also National Star Wars day… May the 4th be with you!).  One might think that I spent the day happily scrapping away, but alas, I did not.  It’s ok though… I had a perfectly good reason not to be devoted to my hobby that day.

The hubs and I had a little getaway from Thursday night through Saturday.  Victoria spent the time with Grandma & Pappy, while we went to Cove Haven Resort in the Poconos. We had a blast!  There were all kinds of activities available on site: biking, hiking, swimming, rollerskating, mini golf, archery, which is something we both tried for the first time!  We don’t go on date nights very often at all, so if we want to spend some time, just the two of us, we usually have to plan a mini getaway.  Dave and I are far from being able to leave our daughter for long, but 2 nights seems to be a good amount of time for now.  I knew when I booked it that it would coincide with National Scrapbook Day, but a nice romantic trip was much needed.

I decided to do something a little different with this post- a Happy Belated Scrapbook Day, if you will.  I wanted to take a few moments to talk about some of my favorite scrapbook tools! First things first…

Yes, that’s my lovely crafting area.  It doesn’t usually look quite this neat (and you were probably thinking “what a mess!”)… but I am trying to be better about cleaning up as I go!  I’ve got ample work space even with all my storage cubes on my desk.  I try to keep the things I use the most in the cubes on my desk (paper, trimmers, stickers, etc…).  A variety of glue, stamps, decorative scissors and more are in these cubes off to the left:

It also holds my Cricut cartridges.

As you can see in the background (left), Tori has a princess castle.  That whole corner of the room is her play room.  We’ve got her play castle, toys, book shelves full of books and more for her to play with while Dave’s at his computer and I’m crafting.  We both get interrupted often as she comes to us and grabs our hands, and asks “sit down, Mommy, sit down?  play zoo? play choo choo train?” as she leads us to her favorite train and zoo play sets.  We typically can’t resist the chance to play, so we aren’t always super productive with our own hobbies… but it’s totally worth it.

So what are my essentials, aside from photos and paper?

Cutting tools:

Well first… there’s this thing:

It’s probably so obvious that this doesn’t even really need to be mentioned, but it really is one of my favorite things.  I realize that it’s not practical for everyone to own one… but the Cricuts have come down in price pretty significantly (as have the cartridges) that they aren’t that out of reach any more.  This is the Cricut Expression 2.  Prior to that I had the Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter (it cut 6″ x 12″ paper, and the Cricut Expression does 12″ x 12″) for 5 years.  It served me very well but started to do a few funky things every once in awhile… so my awesome hubs got this for me for Christmas.  And it’s been fantastic!

I’m a pretty hardcore crafter/scrapbooker, so this piece of equipment has come in beyond handy for me! Whether it be letters for a title or a cute animal di-cut, I can always find a reason to bust out the Cricut!

This is my photo trimmer- it’s from Creative Memories and I LOVE it!  I first saw it being used at the scrapbook retreat, and thought “I don’t think I’d ever use that if I had it…”  Well on a whim, after I had hosted a CM party, I earned some free merchandise…  and I chose this.  I’m glad I did.  I use the heck out of it!  CM recently came out with a newer, slightly bigger version… but this size has served me very well (it’s small, the longest cut you can make is 6″).

Another Creative Memories trimmer, but this one cuts 12″.  They discontinued this model (they now have a rotary blade version), but I bought a bunch of replacement blades shortly before it was announced that they’d no longer be carrying it… so I should be good for awhile! I use this to trim my 12″ x 12″ paper or anything that doesn’t fit in my photo trimmer above.  That little arm you see at the bottom swings out so you can measure wider pieces of paper.

I swear I don’t work for Creative Memories (though I did consider being a consultant)… but yes, this is another one of their products.  Since the retreat that I attend twice a year is held by a few CM consultants, I get to play with a LOT of different toys… then I figure out what ones I like enough to own.  These. are. fantastic!

These belong to CM’s custom cutting system.  I have the oval and circle set- so there’s an inside track (for small cuts) and an outside track (for larger cuts)- which is what I use most.

The two pegs on the bottom fit in the track, so you can take the blade the whole way around the oval/circle.  There are 3 different blades: red cuts closest to the pattern, blue the furtherest and green splits the difference.  So what I usually do, is use the red to cut the photo and the green for the mat.  Blue gets used, but not quite as often as the other two.  They just add a nice element to my pages, instead of everything being square or rectangle.  You’ll see in my next post how often I use my oval cutters!  Love these things!

These are my Cutter Bee Scissors.  They are super fine tipped, which is good for cutting close:

It’s good for taking this:

And doing this:

I had several pictures of Tori dancing out by our pool, so I decided to just cut this one out for a whole pool layout I was working on.  My Cutter Bee scissors allow me to do this type of thing fairly easily.  Just a little different way to get a pictures on a page!

This is a common tool of scrappers- the corner rounder. It is certainly not a necessity, but there are some layouts where I want a softer look- without the sharp corners on the photos and mats.

Adhesives:

My glue runner!!  I use glue sticks sometimes, but I find that they don’t have the best long term stickiness… a few things that I did just last year are falling apart.  Very frustrating.  I’ve learned that glue sticks work best for corners that are sticking up or narrow areas that I can’t get with the glue runner.  There are lots of companies who make glue runners… I’m currently using Elmers (obviously) but I’m not really partial to any of them.  I’ve used a few different ones and they all work well… and they have that permanent stickiness that I need for my books!

ooohhh, how I love my Xyron sticker maker!!  This is probably one of the things I’ve had the longest and I use it all the time!  I’ll tell you what it’s most useful for- Cricut letters!  It is small- I can’t fit letters bigger than 2″, but that’s usually the size I need anyway.  I just slide my letters in the top, pull the sticky roll out the bottom- the letters are going between a plastic layer and a non-stick paper layer that has the adhesive on it- peel the plastic layer off to remove the excess adhesive, and voila- I’m left with all my letters that are now stickers!  It makes it so easy to get my titles on my pages.. especially if the letters are tiny.  It’s fantastic!

Other fun stuff:

These are a few of my favorite pens- all serve different functions.  At the top is one of my Micron pens.  They are archive safe, so perfect for scrappin’ and they have a very fine point that’s great for journaling. In the middle, it’s a CM pen- it’s double ended with one marker tip and one fine tip.  If I don’t have a lot of writing to cram into a small space, this is a nice change from the Micron.  The white pen on the end is my red-eye pen.  It’s green ink to neutralize red eyes in a photo.  It works spectacularly well!  You just have to touch the tip lightly to the red area- too much can ruin a photo.

These are my brush markers.  They come in bright colors and are good for doodles or larger writing on a page… but my favorite use for them is to ‘ink’ my stamps with them.  I can apply a few colors to one stamp to get this effect:

Another example:

And the ink stays wet enough while you apply all the different colors. Neat, huh?

Lastly- one of my favorite scrappy bag sets:

I have two larger bags (one is on wheels) but this is my favorite.  It’s from the company thirty-one (which my scrap buddy Kerrie is now a consultant for)… they are a home-based business like Creative Memories, but they specialize in, well, bags.  You can get all kinds of bags, such as purses, duffle bags, wallets, etc, but this is one of their utility totes and a large zipper pouch.  The zipper pouch is enormous and it holds my pens, scissors, cutting tools and more when I go on retreats (hence the ‘scrap crap’) and it fits nicely in the utility tote:

The utility tote has pockets around the sides (perfect for stamps and punches) and a mesh pockets on either end (good for my Xyron sticker maker).  It’s by far my most versatile bag!

I have a fairly wide variety of other toys (punches, stamps, etc) but I wanted to highlight the ones that get pulled out most often. I try to always use a variety of different techniques and have lots of tools to help me with that, but there are always those favorites that I go back to when I’m stuck.

Hope you liked this look at my favorite tools/toys!  Happy belated National Scrapbooking Day!

p.s. I made a Facebook page: facebook.com/MandisPileOfScrap

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!

Happy Scrappin’!

Happy New Year everyone! Christmas has come and gone… the holiday that people spend months preparing for is over in a flash. We had a lovely first Christmas with our baby girl! We didn’t go overboard on gifts for her because we knew she would be more interested in the bows and wrapping paper. However, that doesn’t mean she didn’t get a lot of gifts!! Between my parents, my aunt, my grandma, Dave’s family, and my siblings, Tori made out pretty darn good!

I am currently enjoying a nice 11 day holiday break from the art center at the university (I’m unfortunately on the last day though ). It’s been wonderful having so much time to spend with Dave and our little one. I got one scrapbooking day with Kerrie, and was supposed to have one more with both scrap buddies, Kerrie and Andrea but my stomach decided not to cooperate that morning and I was forced to stay home. Sadness!

Until I get some new projects, I’m going to post some photos of a project that I finished about 2 months ago. I apologize for the quality of my pictures- I like to think I take pretty decent photos for my scrapbooking projects, but I have a really hard time getting good photos of my actual pages. It’s definitely a work in progress!

Let me just add that, as of the past 3 posts, you can now click on my photos to get them enlarged… easier to see details now! YAY!
The album I made was for a weekend trip that we went on with our friends Josh and Helen to Baltimore (again) and Washington D.C. If you remember from a previous post, the four of us went to Baltimore for my birthday. Due to some rooms being closed down, our hotel, where we originally had reservations, bumped us to another nearby hotel. We were given a rain check for a free night’s stay within the next 6 months. So in September ’10, we decided to make another venture to Maryland. We went down on a Friday evening and went on a dinner cruise.

I used one of my favorite techniques of tearing paper to give a water effect. I used the Summer Vacation Cricut cartridge to cut out the boat. The font was the upright setting of the cursive font on Opposites Attract. Have I mentioned how much I love that cartridge!? I didn’t have a lot of embellishments for this page, but I don’t think it needed it. The boat and title were enough for this page.

Back to our journey- the next morning, we packed up and headed to my aunt and uncle’s house, since they live pretty close to Washington D.C. The main reason we decided to on this trip was to see the pandas at the National Zoo. In December 2010, they were headed back to China, so we wanted to see them before they were shipped back home. After unpacking at my aunt and uncle’s, we hopped on a nearby metro and headed into the city, towards the zoo.

For this page, I had many different animal pictures and was looking for a different way to lay them out. I used the Keystone cartridge for the title and then used a Creative Memories oval cutting tool for the ‘OO’ in zoo. I used the oval cutting tool to cut two animal photos and made them part of the word. I had this leopard print paper that I really had no idea what I’d ever use it for- lo and behold, I found a use for it! I decided to break up the pattern just a bit by tearing a strip of blue paper and laying it across the two page spread. I was worried that even if the photos were matted, the would get lost on the patterned paper. I think the blue strip really helped. In the corner, I used a bit of a mosaic technique:

I decided to take away some of the excess in the corners, just to give it a bit of a different look. Oh and I’m not sure if you can see my caption or not, but I was totally jealous of the otters! They had a little creek to play in- it was ridiculously hot that day (I think it was around 90) and I was just starting my second trimester, so I was pretty miserable (and Dave will tell you I was pretty grumpy as well)!

Luckily the panda enclosure was cooler and the pandas were hanging out in there, instead of the blazing sun. The female panda was happily eating bamboo while the male was wandering between pens and ended up in the pen with water (of course).

I used the Keystone cartridge again because I really liked the chunkier letters. I also used an extra picture I had to cut the ‘P’ in pandas. I cut out a ‘P’ and used it as a stencil since I wasn’t sure I’d get it lined up right to have the Cricut cut it out. I had some adorable panda stickers that I wanted to use, and I decided to keep the page as a simple black and white motif. I also used my handy dandy technique of using a photo as a pocket for the brochure. I chose this page to use the brochure since it had the adorable pandas on it.

This next page… I think fellow scrappers will either find really cool or incredibly cheesy. We went to the Reptile House because 1) I think snakes are cool and 2) it was a way to get out of the heat (did I mention how hot it was??).
Here’s my Reptile House page:

It’s a snake…. made out of snakes! (oh and various other reptiles and amphibians). I just was tired of always just arranging matted photos on page, so I decided to do something completely out-of-the-box. I know… I’m a wild and crazy scrapper! lol
This actually was challenging to make. I cut a template out of card stock to help arrange the photos. Figuring out placement of pictures was difficult but also kind of fun. It felt like a puzzle that I had to put together! It took some experimenting to determine how large to make the snake, since I still wanted to make a larger border out of striped paper (so that it resembled a coral snake). Eventually, it all came together and I think it actually turned out pretty cool! It’s different from anything I’ve ever tried and I’m happy with how it turned out.

After the zoo, we decided to head downtown and do a little bit of site-seeing before heading back to my aunt and uncle’s. The next day, we went to the International Spy Museum. We did a really awesome mini spy adventure- we were with a group of people and we had to find the traitor who was selling a nuclear bomb trigger to the enemy. We had to go through a whole set that was made to look like we were in a foreign country- we had to listen in on phone conversations and unscramble them, watch surveillance videos, interrogate a suspect and we had to break into a room and search it for clues. We had to hide in a sewer tunnel and avoid being seen- and run into the back of a van to make a quick get away (and this ALL happened in the Spy Museum!). The sets were all elaborately designed -for instance we entered the “van” by leaving the room we broke into, and go through a door that looked like a pull down door (think back of a UHaul). We got in and our tour guide pulled the door down… the room rocked back and forth to feel like we were in the back of a van. When we exited, we left through a door in the side which dropped us off at another room… so it felt like we actually traveled somewhere different, without actually going anywhere. The puzzles were fairly simple, but it was also designed for all ages over 12. So it was fun for our little group of adults, but also easy enough for younger children to feel like they were solving a mystery. It was really fun (a separate cost from the museum, but worth it, in my opinion). Of course Josh and Dave didn’t think it was challenging enough and that they should have an adult version for 18yrs+, which might be a good idea… but I think we all still found it enjoyable! http://www.spymuseum.org/experiences/operation-spy -check it out… it’s a good time! (only downside- no photos allowed during the experience- big bummer for a scrapbooker!)

I had a tough time figuring out what to do with the photos from the Spy Museum. There aren’t exactly a ton of stickers, embellishments or Cricut cartridges with a spy theme. I had to be a bit more creative than usual.

I used the Cutting Up cartridge for the title. I like the quirky letters for this. I included tickets as the “embellishment” but my favorite part is my magnifying glass.

I had a photo of the air duct that you can actually climb through and spy on people below (super cool) and then made a magnifying glass over one of the spy windows… I made a dashed line to the photo below of Dave, in the air duct, by one of the windows. Dun Dun DUNNNN!!!

There were lots of displays on spying through the years and throughout different countries. There was even a James Bond display.

I made the little “Top Secret” envelope out of white card stock (and hand wrote the “top secret” on it). I used Stonescript for the font and chose an appropriate title for the page, which was, of course, James Bond inspired.

The museum was awesome, but I’ll admit, I don’t have a ton of patience to read every little paragraph by every little display. Dave, Josh and Helen seemed to want to read every bit of what there was to read. I don’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones or what, but I was just fidgety by the end. So I decided to be a spy… and spy on my friends! I snuck around corners, took photos over my shoulder… anything to take pictures without them knowing. I used a couple of common phrases found throughout the museum as my titles:


I made the little spying faces myself… I think they turned out rather cute.

I ended my book with the usual mixture of photos left over. I used Mini-Monograms for the title… I think it might be too busy for the already-busy background.

I really like my mosaic at the bottom of the page though- the pieces didn’t all perfectly fit together, but I still think it turned out well!:

Mosaics are tricky… you have to make sure you’re keeping track of the pieces pretty well. These weren’t as bad since there were clear subjects in them, but if you’re doing this with just a landscape, it can be tough. It is rewarding though, when you get one that works well!

So that’s it for me for now… I sure hope I get some more scrapping in within the next few weeks. I have easily 1000+ photos of Tori that are desperately in need of scrapping… I’m guessing she’ll be in her early teens by the time I finish her baby album… or let’s be real- albums.
Here’s hoping that 2012 is filled with fun, family, friends… and scrapping!

Love me a good scrapbook weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!! Why am I blogging today, instead of eating turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy? Well, some stupid germs decided to infect my sweet baby girl, making her run a fever and be all congested. So while she’s napping, I’m blogging!
I was able to finish a few scrap projects, as well as start some new ones, so I have lots to write about!
During the first weekend in November, I went to the fall scrapbook retreat with my scrap-buddies Kerrie and Andrea. They had each gone with me separately in the past (Andrea went twice) but, despite the fact that we have all known each other for several years, we had never gotten to all go together. Having kids spread out over the span of 3 years may have had something to do with it.
We were very excited to have the chance to go together and spend a good chunk of time scrappin’ and sharing stories. We all were able to leave our respective work places early, so we could rally at my house and leave around 5 (I live a little further out from them, and it’s only about 25min to the retreat from my house). We got there around 5:30 and were able to get unpacked and set up before night time; something I had never gotten to do in past years. It’s the little things that excite me!
After getting our cabin gear unloaded, we headed to the dining hall where the scrappin’ takes place. It was nice to see people that I really only get to see once or twice a year at this retreat. I’m sure I’ve described this in previous posts, but the retreat takes place at a camp that is primarily a kids’ summer camp, complete with small cabins (with showers, toilets and PLENTY of heat), a dining hall and lots of fields to play in and woods to explore. One time, I took a walk through the woods with Andrea, and we stumbled on a ropes course. It’s a nice campground and, in the off-season, perfect for a bunch of scrappers.
It’s actually been over a year since I’ve been to the retreat- last time I was there was spring in 2010. I was busy during the fall retreat in ’10 and the spring one… well… I didn’t go since it was scheduled on my due date (which, I ended up having her a little early, so I was actually still in the hospital during that weekend)!! I was so happy to be able to go and also, share this experience with my friends. My awesome and supportive hubby was in charge of Tori for the weekend… I had/have full confidence in him, but I’ll admit, I was nervous since it was my first time being away from her overnight. Of course, I had nothing to worry about, but that didn’t stop me.
Victoria’s baby album was my focus for that weekend. Luckily, I had just finished an album that I made for a weekend trip that Dave and I took in September 2010 with our good friends, Josh and Helen. I was literally 3 pages from finishing it before the retreat, that I pushed myself and was able to have it complete- which was awesome, because that meant I was able to spend that entire scrap weekend concentrating on Tori’s album. Yay! (I’ll post photos of that album soon)
It took a bit to get going, as it always does, but I was able to complete a couple of pages my first night. I don’t have a photo of the first page yet, but I got a few pictures of some of my favorite pages so far.
Even though I got to scrapbook for probably almost 18hrs, I didn’t get as much done as I would’ve liked to, but that’s fairly typical for me. I think I just get into too much detail with pages and, while they look awesome, they definitely take a long time to finish.

This is the front of the album- cute, huh? This was a $9.99 purchase from Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. They have overstock things, like Big Lots or various other discount stores, but Ollie’s definitely has the best selection of scrapbook stuff I’ve ever seen at a shop like that. I’ve gotten a lot of things from there- they typically don’t have paper, but they do have a decent variety of stickers, embellishments, and MANY albums.
I decided to use the first few pages to document my pregnancy and shower. This page was easily one of my favorites of the weekend and it got a lot of compliments from fellow scrappers:

I bought some stickers about pregnancy and used the trimester ones, plus the title. I had some photos of the pregnancy test- I actually took the test at 4am (TMI story- I was actually doing a fertility & nutrition study for PSU so I had several pregnancy tests stashed in the bathroom already) Luckily, the results stayed on the little screen until we got up to get ready for work. Dave snapped these photos of the test and result window, so I couldn’t resist including them.
For the pregnancy timeline at the bottom, I used my Cutter Bee scissors. These are fine tipped scissors that I absolutely love! I like to cut out people and things from photos and these allow you to really get close. They were a pricier purchase ($9 for scissors!?) but I use them often! Here’s a close up of the pregnancy timeline:

The opposite page was, more or less, corresponding ultrasound pictures (they aren’t a perfect match, but it’s still a timeline for her). I had several ultrasounds and some of the techs took LOTS of pictures for me! I’ll confess, I’m a little concerned with how these will keep over time since they aren’t printed on regular photo paper and the “inks” had already started to wear off on the backs of the ones in front of it, but I may run this page through a laminator sometime, which might help. Hopefully having them mounted like this and in a page protector will keep them safe for awhile.

Here’s the page I created for the moment I met our little angel:

I used the Opposites Attract Cricut cartridge to cut out the title. I love that cartridge because of the two font options on it, either a print type or a cursive type. I also used Creative Memories oval cut tools for the photos and their mats. Creative Memories products are great, but they are definitely on the pricier side. They have a whole collection of shapes (plastic with tracks in them) and blades (that fit in the tracks), and the whole set cost over $80. I just purchased one of the sets I thought I would use the most (ovals) and a few of the blades. I may build this collection as I go, but I’m content with the ovals for now!
I kept the embellishments fairly tame on this page. I used a “Labor of Love” sticker above the photo of me with oxygen, because that’s truly how it felt! (I’m just glad my hubby didn’t take photos of me before my epidural… of course, if he had, either the camera or Dave’s nose, may have ended up broken!! )
I don’t know if you noticed, but journaling is a big feature in this album. I’ve always left room for captions and stories, but for this album, I just wanted to make sure I documented as many memories as I could about this special moment.

I had a collection of photos of her being cleaned up and us snuggling with her in the hospital room afterward. I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with them. Looking at the photos of her screaming and turning red made me think- she was really scared! Here she was, safe and warm in my belly, food coming to her through a tube attached to her belly, and suddenly, she’s forced out into the cold, away from her food supply and away from her safe zone. I came up with the main title on the left and then the secondary title on the right. I want her to know that, yes, it is a scary world, but her dad and I will do everything in our power to keep her safe.


These are close ups of the two pages. I used the Opposites Attract font again. It has a nice option of cutting out the cursive font in wacky trapezoid shapes. I used the print font on the same cartridge for the rest of the title.
So I totally stole this idea from someone on Pinterest- side note: I LOVE Pinterest!! It’s so fun and I’ve gotten so many fantastic ideas from it. Anyway, someone pinned this and I decided I needed to do this in Victoria’s album:

The cost of things the year she was born- Talk about a scary world!! Although, sadly, when she’s showing this to her own children, she’ll probably be saying “can you believe gas was only $3.89?”!

Most of my immediate family was able to visit in the days after she was just born. My brother and sister in law in FL weren’t able to make it, but they got to meet her later.
I wanted to document everyone holding her- while I was making this page, my friend Kerrie said “Isn’t it neat how no one can hold a baby without smiling?” So true.
Again, this page was more about journaling, less about embellishments, but I did include a handful of stickers. I borrowed someone’s cartridge at the retreat for this one- Cursive 101. It is a slightly different cursive than the one on Opposites Attract. I borrowed it for my wedding album at a previous retreat and I love it!
Next is one of my favorite pages that I made. It’s a single page and it took me awhile to make it because I put a lot of detail in it with the title.

I used Opposites Attract (again) for the “Precious” and for the baby girl, it was a pre-designed word on a special cartridge called Sugar and Spice. As you can guess, it’s all stuff for a baby girl. It was a little tricky getting it cut out since I flip-flopped the color in each word and I had to make sure I made the background bigger than the color on top. I was also making this one later in the evening on Saturday, after a night of not sleeping well, so my brain was just not functioning! I used Doodlecharms to make the flowers in the corner, and most importantly, a photo of my precious baby girl, just days after being born. This photo (as my journaling describes) really was the moment that it hit me- I was someone’s mom! Giving birth and the first 48hrs were sheer craziness… on my last quiet morning in the hospital, I was holding her and she was just looking at me with those giant brown eyes. It was a moment that made me cry… I just want to do everything right for her. I know I won’t be perfect and that I’ll make mistakes along the way, but I will always try to do right by her, make her feel secure and show her lots of love!!
Lastly- here’s the final page I made while at the retreat:

I love that newborns can’t control their face… and we took lots of photos of her making funny faces at us. Even with all those goofy facial expressions, she’s still our beautiful little girl!

And with that, the retreat came to a close. On Sunday afternoon, we packed up and headed back home to our hubbies and little ones. I didn’t create any earth-shattering pages, but I am very pleased with the ones that I did bring home. Hopefully I will get some time in the coming weeks to add to her book. I’ll probably still be working on her first year album when she’s 10!

Andrea, Kerrie and I are going to set up a weekend or two in December for us to get together at one of our houses. It won’t be the same dedication as an entire weekend, but it will still be good to get together with friends and dedicate some time to our hobby!