Chalkboard Bubbles

Found this for $1.99 at Michael's, and I had to share. I picked one up a little larger from Etsy a while back, and it was a lot more expensive. Nice to have for photo shoots or reminders, or when your kids need to suck up to their parents. You can see other creative shots using them here and here.

Enjoy your day!

Summer Layouts

I have incorporated a method for documenting the season of summer for each of my children's albums. It utilizes either a single or double page layout spread with multiple photos highlighting the busy season. It works best, I find, for summer, because of the nature of the events, being outdoors, and the number of stories that the summer brings into their lives

Today I want to share a few of those layouts with you. As well as an inside look to my approach to each.

Summor08 is from the middle daughter's album. I formatted these photos on photo paper, and printed them in the grid fashion, leaving some open spaces for embellishments. This is one of the easiest ways to mass photos out for a layout, if you have a home printer. Summer08 houses 27 photos. I utilized bullet point journaling in the hand drawn journal lines. This layout just took no time at all.

This is the next year's layout for the same daughter. Not as many photos, but a great overview on the summer for her. I formatted each of these photos the same size. Cropped each one, then attached to the background paper in a true grid. Again, a few open spaces for some words and embellishment. This time I printed the bullet point journaling and cut and glued on the page.

This double page spread lines the various sized photos across the two pages. This gives you an idea of how to use two pages. I could have added even more photos and filled in the bottom portion of the layout. Many options to play with when you want to get a lot of photos out to show off.

And here is a sneak into a layout for the August gallery...a great opportunity to use fun and summery colors to show off oldest daughters summer of ten. Notice I keep the emphasis on the photos so that my kids can relive their story, and add just a bit of color and items to give it the extra touch it needs. My daughter is moving into the age where there is more emphasis on style and pretty. So I wanted this layout to reflect just that. It just keeps things simple so that I can tell each of my kiddos their story of the season.

Side Note: The kit for August is perfect for telling stories from summer's past as well as summer current. And many of the stickers are just perfect for July4. I used the massed out photo sketch for our July4 layout story. But you'll just have to wait till the gallery goes live to see that.

Have fun documenting your summer. And remember...keep it simple and doable.

Parity

I am here to admit that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the tags that were included in the July kit.  They were really adorable kraft die-cut tags with numbers so the first idea was to create a list of some sort.  I could

• paint them using acrylic paint.
• mist them and create some patterns on them.
• decorate them with patterned papers and dress them up. 
• outline the numbers and journal on them. 
• cut tiny photos and place them in the space on the tag. 

I thought about

• a top-ten list, or a top-nine list, heck a top-eight list, you get the idea. 
• using them as some kind of school layout as in 123, ABC...  
• stringing them together and create a banner. 
• putting together in a straight line and create a border. 
• punching out the numbers and forget the rest of the tags...

In the end, in the process of arranging and re-arranging and arranging again...  the title came to me, a cheerleading chant I learned in 8th grade before I knew what cheerleading was... "Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who Do We Appreciate?!"  Then I knew what I was going to do with the tags and what my title would be...

Now that you have seen how I arrived at my layout title, there are the other tags left waiting to be used: "Oddly enough," "The Odd Couple," "The Odds Are," "Against the Odds," "Defy the Odds!"

Lastly and very importantly... Long Live Mathematics!

• Even =
• Odd =

Ramen Noodle Salad

The only trick to this easy meal is it needs to be made several hours or the night before your event to taste perfect.

Ingredients:
1-2 packs slaw
green onions finely chopped (approx 1/4 cup or less)
1/2 cup toasted seeds (sunflower or almonds--we use both!)
2 packs ramen noodles (chicken flavor) broken into small pieces
3/4 cup oil
1 tbsp pepper
4 tbsp vinegar
4 tbsp sugar
1 of the chicken pack flavorings in ramen noodle package

Directions:
Pour, Toss, and Chill!

Additional tips:
Best chilled over night, so the ingredients really absorb the flavors. YUM!!

Special thanks to my dear friend Jen, who makes this for me whenever I ask. :)

My Scrappy Pins

I thought I'd share some of my pins from Pinterest today. I have lots of categories, but I thought I'd share my board called "Scrappy." These are images that I thought could someday be used on a scrapbook page.

Here they are, in no particular order...

I thought this was a clever twist on the ever popular banner:

I love the sentiment and the lettering on this one:

How fun are these hearts. They seem like they'd be easy to do:

 I love how they put the date inside the wheel:

These handmade flowers are so beautiful. There's a tutorial on how to make them here.

Magnets made from maps--but how cool would it be to use maps for chipboard buttons?

I thought this quote would make a good title page for an album.

 

Thanks for letting me share some of my pins. And let me know if you use any of these ideas on a scrapbook page! I'm going to make an effort to use one of these ideas with my August WIP pages.

CHA-Summer 2011 Favorites

I had the opportunity to attend CHA in Chicago & I had a wonderful time meeting friends, new & current. The best part was the excitement of all the awesome new products that will be releasing as early as August, YAY!

I've shared some images of what caught my eye & are must haves from the show.

Silhouette CAMEO

Lily Bee Design

Jenni Bowlin

Bella Blvd

Amy Tangerine

KI Memories

Crate Paper

Also, check out October Afternoon, Teresa Collins, Martha Stewart/EK Success, Jillibean Soup & Hero Arts. I am so excited to get my hands on all these wonderful products coming to a store & Work In Progress kit near you.

Cheers!