Git 'Er Done Challenge at The Inspired Scrapper...

This week's scrapbooking challenge over at The Inspired Scrapper is to finish an incomplete layout/project. I am guilty of having several (or more!) pages in varying states of completion, so I had plenty to choose from. I settled on the page below, which is about my youngest child's 3rd birthday last year. He will be four in a few short weeks, so I thought it was timely.

*Photo Disclaimer - I don't take very good pictures of 2-page layouts! This is the best that I could do...how sad is that?!



I felt pretty good about the basic composition, but this page is obviously lacking those 'finishing touches'. When I first sat down and started staring at this page, I was completely lacking any kind of inspiration or direction. I was in the process of packing it up again and choosing something else when I told myself to stop!! If I did that, I would just end up having to look at it again sometime, and I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to push myself through a creative block.

Here is the finished layout:



I must say, I am very pleased with the final product! I have been wanting to try an oh-so-trendy banner for a very long time and it was so easy - I love the result! The huge bonus for me is that I used some very ancient Basic Grey Vagabond fiber to hand the banner's flags from. I loooove using up older product!! I also added some older DCWV rub-ons, and I dug into my abundant stamp stash and used three different older and rarely-used acrylic stamps.

Go check out The Inspired Scrapper for some more finished layouts and their 'before' states, and get yourself motivated to finish one or more of your own!

It's About Family!

Hello, Blog! Yes, I've been away for a long time. But now I'm back so let's just carry on without any explanations or excuses, shall we?!

Scrapbooking! That's what I want to talk about today! I haven't done any scrapbooking for awhile, and I feel a big urge coming on...I've been card making because it somehow seems like less of a time commitment, but it's time for scrappin'! I've had all kinds of ideas percolating in my brain today and I've decided to start work on an album about family. In fact, I just might call the album "It's About Family"! I want to incorporate stories about traditions and sayings and random memories from my side, Steve's side, AND from our little big-ish family that we've got together! Once the mind starts running, all kinds of funny thoughts and memories come forward out of the mist! :) Just off the top of my head, under the heading of 'Random Childhood Memories', I've got 'The Green Chair', 'Sneaking up on Grandma and Grandpa', 'The Magic Fish', 'Banana Pancakes (including Dad's vibrating hum)', "The Mall", the Easter of the Ralph Lauren perfume, the morning that I came downstairs to find the cut-up construction paper...See?! The memories just come pouring out! And under the heading of 'Family Sayings/Isms'? There's 'Pernima', 'Jid, Did, and Nels', 'Dad's Foghorn', 'Mr. Hey Hey', and also 'Qua' - but that one will have to be handled 'delicately', so as not to embarrass or anger certain individuals...And what about 'Family Secrets - AKA - 'The embarrassing/unflattering/tough kind of stuff'?' Like...the wooden spoon, 'The Mary Jane Discovery', the CB, painting with poo. Ah yes. Quite the list. These are the stories that (mostly) just make me and my brother and sister laugh (cringe?!), the stories that MY children have maybe heard bits and pieces of, and that I want to have written out so that they can be looked back upon over the years, laughed about all over again, and also - added to! So now - I can leave the blogging of it for now, and actually get to the 'getting it started' phase. And this is one of those projects that, while eventually ongoing, I really hope to 'finish' soon so that the groundwork is done, and the 'adding to' process can begin! So here I go! Wish me luck, and 'chat' with you again soon! :)