Design Decisions, Prompt Two (Comparing two different takes on a prompt)

I am still steadily working on the Design Decisions class. Today's pages are both based on the second prompt, but still very different from one another. The first page, "Icy Beauty", utilized my January kit. Some decisions that I made for this page: cardstock background (which I chose beacause the patterned paper was thinner than some of my patterned papers, so I wanted it to have a bit of sturdiness. I used snowflake enamels for the embellishments, and chose to ground the photo on a doily that I had misted with some of the glimmer mist from the kit. I added droplets of mist, and even brought in another bottle of mist (violet Color Shine), for more noticeable droplets.

For the second page, I chose to use mostly supplies from a Disney kit that I have made up for myself, filled with Simple Stories Say Cheese and similar/coordinating products.I did use a doily veneer and a few stars from my January kit, as well. I made different design decisions for this page, such as, a patterned background, stars and pinked circles for embellishment, and grounded the single photo on top of a Mickey ear hat diecut. I do love how both layouts are from the same prompt, but quite different, based on the design decisions that I made.

Thanks for dropping by today, I would love to have you come by again soon, as I plan to keep creating and sharing!

Continuing on with Design Decisions, Day 2 (Still Prompt One)

Today I am sharing another page that I made that was inspired by prompt one from Design Decisions, and  using my January kit:

Here's the base page:

(Yes, I am starting on my Washington DC trip! Yay me!) Almost everything was from the kit, with the exception of the chipboard book stack sticker, the "Create" sticker, and the letter stickers-which all came from my bag of partially used sticker sheets. I felt that the protractor paper was well suited to Thomas Jefferson, as well as the Create and book stickers. Here is the page after I did some journaling about the statue:

I have a lot of pictures, so I went ahead and added a pocket page, and journaled just a bit more:

 Front:

Back:

 And this is how it looks together in my album:

I did write down a lot of info about the making of the memorial itself, because they are details that were most likely told to us as we were touring the statue, but we learned so much on the trip, and there was so much information to absorb, that I will forget details if I don't write them down. And the trip and learning experience was so incredible that I don't want to forget the the things we learned. And maybe I will even learn more, as I am looking up these facts. So, I anticipate this trip album to be quite different from my other scrapbooks, in that I will be mixing historical facts and information about the sites we visited, along with stories of things that happened or moments that we experienced along the way. I think it will suit the trip itself quite nicely, as it was a lot of learning, overwhelming awe at seeing these places firsthand, and fun time with the kids and their friends along the way.

Getting Started With Design Decisions (Prompt 1)

Good Morning! I am back, and kicking off my new series with my first page from Design Decisions. I made my first page for my Disney album from my most recent trip, about one of my favorite rides, Haunted Mansion, and used papers and stamps from my November Counterfeit kit:

And here is my layout:

I printed the song from the ride using the Project Life app (love it when I want to print my journaling- opening a word processing program on my desktop to journal while I am making a page just doesn't work with my process, but this couldn't be easier for me!). I stamped the word Haunted, the skull/book/candelabra image, and the photo corners on white cardstock, then inked them with Old Paper Distress Ink, added lots of little scraps, washi strips, gemstone stars, flair, punched Mickey, fussy cut frames, and one more stamped sentiment (it's in white and a bit hard to see in the photo, but it's in the cluster by the title).

Here's a closer look at the clusters:

If you are just now joining me, I am challenging myself to use up my stash of kits over the next month or two-you can read the details on my blog post HERE. Thanks for joining me today, I will be back soon to share another page inspired by the class!

Kits and Classes, and getting it all done!

With the coming of the new year, for me, there is always an urge to organize and purge unneeded or unnecessary items. I was looking at my ever growing collection of kits in my closet, and I decided that I needed to do something about them. So, I am giving myself a challenge. I have the Design Decisions class from Shimelle waiting in the wings for inspiration. I also have this large stack of kits (although 2 of these kits are Christmas, and one is a bag of 12x12 partially used sticker sheets- it all still needs to be used up!). So, I am going to take this stack of kits and partially finished layouts from other kits:

And I am going to this class for inspiration:

Shimelle's Design Decisions

Of course, out of respect for the class, I won't share the lessons or the sketches that she is giving us, but I will be sharing my pages that I am making from these kits and this class. If I should make it all of the way through the prompts and still have a good bit left in my kits, I will possibly start another Shimelle class, the 20 Project, that I purchased and only watched the videos and made a very few pages from. I'm excited about this idea, and can't wait to get started scrapping and sharing! I hope you'll drop by my blog to see what I am making.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge #2: Zentangles

Now, I will have to be honest. When I saw that this was my challenge, I groaned a bit. I don't Zentangle, and the thought of it sort of stresses me out. I thought and thought as to how I would make this challenge work for me, and I came up with a few different solutions. First I thought, well, I will print out a zentangle that someone else has created and then add it to a page. But then I couldn't come up with any ideas of anything that I wanted to scrap in this style. I could have used some doodle-y papers, like Love, Elsie (yes, I still have some) or some Bella Blvd. But, honestly, I didn't think of that until just now. My next thought was to save a Zentangle jpg and use it as a photo in a Project Life app page  (that is the scrapping style I am really focusing on right now, since I am trying to finish up my Project Life from last year-and I almost have it finished; only four weeks in August left to do). But then I really wanted a camera zentangle, and I couldn't find it, so, back to the Project Life App I went.

I saw a sketchy camera card in Maggie Holmes' Open Book collection, and the decision was made. "Good Enough!" And, so this is how I went from the zentangle inspiration to my page:

Which, I hope is a lesson in making inspiration work for you. As a side note, would you be interested in seeing more of the pages I make in the Project Life App? As I said earlier, I have most of 2016 scrapped this way, and I am really liking it so far. For my 2016 pages, I am printing them in 12x12 size and mixing them into my regular family album. For 2017, my plan is to complete them all and upload them for an 8x8 or 10x10 book. If there is interest, I would share some of them here, and talk about my process. I am definitely still learning, so I could share what I learn as I learn it, as well.

"Stars and Snowflakes" Counterfeit Kit Challenge Kit for January 2017

Happy new year! And welcome to our blog hop for the Counterfeit kit challenge kit reveal  for January! It's kind of hard to believe that it is January already, and the start of a new year. I love the fresh start and the possibilities offered by the start of a new year. The kit that was chosen for us to counterfeit this month is the January kit from Shop and Crop:

And here is my Counterfeit kit,which I am calling "Stars and Snowflakes" (made up entirely from my stash (some of it rather old!):

 I looked through my blues and greens, searching for patterns that  had doilies, and other prints that I felt would be similar to the inspiration kit. I chose few papers from Basic Grey, a few from the Echo Park "Reflections" collection, a blue snowflake print from an old SEI paper collection, a feather print from an Allison Kreft Collection, a whitewashed woodgrain from Carta Bella, a light blue  patterned paper from Prima, and a blue floral from October Afternoon.

When choosing the embellishments, I looked first for items that were found in the original kit: mist (instead of one, I decided to use the whole unopened set of Winter Wishes Glimmer Mist that I have), die-cut pack-the one I chose was a pack of Dapper Dan from Glitz designs, and I added a handful of die cuts from my bin of leftovers, and wood veneer doilies. Then, I added in a few other embellishments that I felt would compliment the kit,  such as the Vivienne wood veneer shapes, silver glitter word strips from Studio Calico, teal glitter heart stickers from Target's dollar spot, blue chipboard stars from Studio Calico, blue glitter star tape, a couple of doilies, and glitter enamel snowflakes. I love blues, and although I may have to add a little bit into the pages ( like a few more sheets of kraft or cream cardstock), I quite like the kit, and think it will be an easy one for me to use.

Looking forward to the new year, I laid out some of my crafty plans for the upcoming year, such as:

• Cleaning and organizing my craftroom, and doing something crafty and interesting with the old window that I have in there to decorate it.
• Creating a photobook of Project Life for 2017 in the Project Life App, with one page per week
• working on (not necessarily finishing) vacation albums for my two trips last year, Washington, D.C. , and our Disney Trip in October. I have just about decided to mainly scrap the Disney trip in the Project Life app as well, and have a nice photobook made from it, maybe with a few regular pages added in to our family album for the year.
• finish my December Daily album by the end of January (maybe sooner)
• finish my 2016 Project Life in the app (I have about 20 weeks left from the middle of the year, when I was working 50ish hours per week.) I have done about 10 LO's in the last week or two, so it's definitely doable! This year, I am printing the PL pages that I make in the app at 12x12 size, and just adding it into the progression of my regular family album for the year. This makes me feel free to just skip around and tell the bigger stories, whatever I am inspired by. I love knowing that I have them to jog my memory, and if I don't get around to anything else, I am still recording and printing my photos and stories!

If you would like to see a more in depth post about it, the link is here:

http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-expectations-of-christmas-future-by_28.html#comment-form.

I have a few personal/health/fitness related goals as well, such as:

• run/walk 365 miles this year. I know that I will have days that I won't feel like running, such as those days in the summer that I am walking 10 miles a day doing my job (photography) outside, and I think I will have to count it in order to reach my goal, but the main thing for me is refocusing on my health and fitness in the new year
• practicing/improving my skills in photography
• getting back in the habit of sharing more here, on my blog.
• finishing projects...home projects, crafty projects, you name it.
• decluttering! And getting my home back to the clean and tidy state that I love for it to be in, while it is slow at work.

So, I hope to get back to sharing regularly here on the blog all things fun and crafty, so I hope you will check back with me soon.

Alright,  enough about me! Time to hop around to the other designers to see what type of kits they will be using to start their new years out with. Here's the hop list:

Cindy https://cindyscreations-cinmfoster.blogspot.com

Lesley: http://ohblogitifyoucantbeatthem.blogspot.co.uk

Leslie: http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com

Lisa: http://lisahausmann.blogspot.de
Lynnette: http://www.sassyscrapper2010.blogspot.com
Margie: http://scrappinmargie.blogspot.com
Jemma: http://just-jimjams.blogspot.co.uk
Kelly: http://www.honeysucklehillcrafts.com
Julene: http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com/
Clair: http://obstinatepursuit.blogspot.co.uk/

Stephanie: http://skylinepaperie.blogspot.com

Thank you for stopping by today, I hope you will leave me a quick hello and come back soon!