A Jellyfish and a Challenge

Have you ever made a piñata before?  They are relatively easy to make and SUPER in-expensive.  I actually buy all my supplies at the Dollar Tree for about $10.  So far, I've made two piñatas in my life and they turned out AMAZING!  (sorry for bragging) I followed THIS TUTORIAL BY HONESTLYYUM.  

Last year, my good friend, Bonnie,  asked me to make a jellyfish piñata for her daughter's "under the sea" birthday party.  Of course I said yeas, I'm always up for a challenge.  And a challenge it was.......planning this ridiculous jellyfish was no easy task.  So I asked for help from the most crafty girl I know, my neighbor Jessica.  She had so many awesome ideas for getting this thing to resemble a piñata.  Take a look:

Didn't the tentacles turn out cool?  They were Jessica's idea.  They are actually made out of strips of plastic table clothes from the Dollar Tree.  

I made this layout as a Guest Designer for CSI.  This month they are having an amazing challenge with awesome prizes.  The challenge closes on Jan 31st, so you still have tons of time to join in the fun.  Here is what Major Case File No. 151 looks like:

Scrapping these photos has me itching to make a piñata again.  Have you ever made a piñata?  

P.S.- I miss you Jessica!

My 2015 Scrappy Happy Resolutions

Happy New Year!

Before I go any further, I need to be honest.  I have never been a big New Year person.  I think because I'm still partially in a Christmas mode and sort of frustrated with the holiday decorations, trees, and boxes that need to be filled and stored. However, this year has been a little different.  I found myself thinking back over 2014 and realizing what a great year it has been for our family.  I think scrapbooking literally shows me everything we have done together and how much my son has grown.  I now can honestly say that I appreciate the New Year and the fresh-start-feeling it brings.

Yesterday I started making a few "New Year Resolutions Lists" including: Our Home Cleaning & Decluttering, Blog Goals, Scrapbooking, and Our Home DIY Projects.  I'm only sharing one with you today. Here they are in no particular order:

My 2015 Scrappy Happy Resolutions

• Put finished layouts in page protectors then into albums.
• Journal more. 
• Try a 2015 "Keeping up with the Joneses" album.
• Stick with a monthly Project Life approach.
• More Mixed Media and Artsy stuff.
• Scrap more about me & my childhood.
• Scrap more about my husband & his childhood.
• Scrap more family members, near and far.
• Make Youtube process videos.
• Make my own sketches.
• Go through my Studio Calico online classes again, start to finish.
• Use more stash items.
• Budget my purchases
• Schedule my creative time.
• Apply for design teams.
• Use more Project Life cards on my layouts.
• Organize my scrap area.
• Build a shelf for my albums.
• Organize photos on computer.
• Print photos at the beginning of each month.
• Learn more about photography.
• Actually send out cards and mini album gifts ON TIME!
• ALWAYS HAVE FUN!!!

This this seems a little intimidating, but I keep telling myself that I have an entire year to complete these things.  And even if I don't do all of them, at least I may improve with a few new ideas.  What is your #1 Scrappy Happy Resolution for 2015?

I love sketches!

I love a good sketch.  I found one at Scrap Our Stash Challenge Blog.


December Sketch & Stash Challenge #21: Use the sketch as inspiration for your layout AND use as much product from your stash.

Here is my take on the challenge:

#1: I love this sketch so much that I hardly changed it.  My son's 2011 Christmas Morning photos fit perfect with the design.

#2: All my product for this layout came from my stash.  Most of it is Crate Paper's DIY Shop Line.  I love how it gave a vintage feel to my photos.

Do you use product from your older stash frequently? Or do you stick with the new stuff?

Mee-Mee, Our Elf on the Shelf and a CSI Challenge

Christmas is my favorite holiday.  Even as a young child, I waited impatiently for this magical season to arrive.  I call my husband "Clark Griswald" during the holiday season, because he loves Christmas just as much as I do.  Our son is 3, and every year becomes more and more exciting.  He is understanding the whole Santa Claus thing and getting into all the Christmas magic.

Last year, Santa sent a special elf to spend the holidays with us.  My son, at 2 years old, named him Mee-Mee.  Maybe not the most thoughtful name, but cute none the less.  Mee-Mee is an interesting little elf.  He looks over us all day long and watches every little move we make. (kinda creepy).  When we sleep, he flies all the way to the north pole and reports our behavior to Santa Claus.  Before we wake, he flies back home and "usually" positions himself in a new spot in our home.  In the morning, my son searches the house until he finds him (the fun part).  The only important rule is to not touch him or he could "loose his magic".  Simple enough.  When Christmas Eve comes around, he flies back to the North Pole with Santa until next year.  Do you know what's crazy?  I actually miss him.  He's only been gone for a few days, but I miss his creepy little elf eyes looking at me like I've done something wrong. I'll get over it.  See you next year Mee-Mee!

Here's CSI's current Challenge Case #150:

Here's the Layout I created as a Guest Designer:

Here are the clues I followed for the case challenge:

The Scene:  I was inspired by the elves in the inspiration picture.
The Scheme:  I used all five colors.
Evidence:  I used stripes, arrows, holiday accents, decorative borders, string, branches, and labels.
Testimony:  I documented the holidays and wrote my journaling in a How-to format.

1 Layout - 2 Challenges

This is the first time I've ever done this.  I combined two separate challenges and made one layout.

The first challenge was from The Studio Challenges Blog.  The Challenge is "Childhood Memories" which meant to find an old childhood photo with a story behind it.

The second challenge I participated in was for Stuck Sketches Blog.    I am participating in the December 15th sketch:

This sketch is totally "me".  It has a lot of white space, tight layers, and tons of room for embellishing.

He is my take on the fabulous sketch:

As you can see, I stuck pretty closely with the sketch.  I added a few additional layers to create more dimension and crammed in a bunch of embellishments including: rub-ons, emphera, wood veneer, stamping, doilies, puffy stickers, resin stars, and gray ink splatters.  

Lets go over the photos, shall we?  The challenge was for "Childhood Memories" photos with a story behind it.  The photos were taken by my mom on Christmas Morning 1989.  The photos actually show two very important Christmas Memories:  

#1: The pajamas:  My mom always picked out the most festive Christmas PJ's which we opened Christmas Eve Night.  It was always something I looked forward to as a child, and she actually did this up until I moved out of the house in my 20's.  I try and pass on this tradition to my son every year. 

#2 The stocking: "Santa" was the King when it came to my family's stocking stuffers. We always had candy and little gifts wrapped up individually like: lotions, toothbrushes, toothpaste, nail files, make-up, little toys, PEZ dispensers, and basically anything that would fit in the stocking.  I also try to pass this tradition on to my son and his christmas stocking.

Want are some of your childhood memories that you pass on in your life today?

Working with a Sketch

Every Sunday,  Studio Calico has a Sketch Challenge.

Every Sunday I participate in the Sketch Challenge.

Here is the layout sketch from last Sunday:

When I first started scrapping, I rarely used sketches.  I thought of it as cheating, like it meant that I wasn't being creative enough or something.  Truth be told, maybe I am being less creative when I use a sketch, but I don't really care.  If I am being too critical of myself and my creativity, I suck all the joy out of my favorite hobby.  What I like to do is keep it simple.  When I sit down to create and I don't have a clear vision of what I want to do, I reach for my folder of sketches.  I refuse to sit there and rack my brain for an original idea for hours.  I simply flip through my folder of sketches a pick one.  That's it.  Simple.

Here is my take on the sketch:

For this layout, I stuck to the ordinal sketch pretty closely because I loved it.  Sometimes when I use a sketch, it looks nothing like it.  I normally use sketches for inspiration instead of a blueprint.  But because I liked last week's sketch so much, I used it more like a blueprint for my design.  

Do you like to use sketches? Or do you think of sketches as cheating?  

Using Flowers and Pink on BOY Pages

 In the beginning of my scrapbooking hobby,  my BOY pages were kept masculine.  However, I am drawn to girly crafting supplies. I love pink papers, flowers, hearts, diamonds, glitter, basically.........anything that screams girly girl.  So, here's the problem with that:  I live in a house filled with boys. Well......except for one of our dogs.  Those beautiful girly papers and dainty little doilies would call my name and beg for me to use them.......but I resisted the urge because I thought it just wasn't right to use them with pictures of my son and husband.  And I usually only scrap photos of them because I'm behind the camera 99% of the time.

I don't remember the exact date that I caved in.  I threw all my rules out the window and just went crazy.  The photos of my husband and son were no longer safe.

They were getting GIRLI-fied.  (sorry boys):

Let me just tell you:  I've been having so much more fun with my new "NO RULES" mindset.  My creativity took on a whole new meaning.  I didn't feel trapped in a "boring masculine-only" box.  I am finally free.

The Studio Calico Blog has Challenges hosted by members  in their Message Forums.  For December's LOAW #4  (use pink) I made a layout:

Do use use feminine touches on your boy layouts?