Scrap-a-Doodle Stamping

Heros All

Like many scrapbookers are, I'm terribly behind in my scrapbooking! This layout has pictures from Dec. 2008 when my son-in-law returned from his tour in Iraq. Now he's already back there for a second tour. My idea for this lo which I titled "Heros All" is that there are many kinds of heros. Certainly, our military men & women are all heros, no matter where they are serving but those that they have left behind are heros too. For the 15 months that my s-i-l was over there, my dear daughter had to function as a single mom for their 3 children. She is a hero, imo, for the sacrifices that she makes so that her husband can do his job. The kids also are heros because they have to spend that time without their daddy to guide them.  
  For this page, I used So Saffron cardstock for the background, Always Artichoke for the matting and title and Mellow Moss for the journaling box. I ran the Hero (#116229) Jumbo Wheel in Real Red for the bottom border. The ribbon is Old Olive 1/2" striped grosgrain (#113883) ribbon. I punched the arrows from Always Artichoke cardstock using the My Way (#110709) punch. To finish out the look, I used Star Designer Brads (#112572) on the corners of the journaling box.

Obviously, I'm proud of my family members who serve our great nation. I hope that all Americans will take time to say thank you that next time you see a military person. I'm very glad that for my s-i-ls current deployment my daughter & my grandchildren are only 30 miles away from home.

Friendly Album

I think this is a cute little 6 x 6" album that your kids or you can easily do.

  
   This would make a cute 6 x 6" album for your kids to do using their friends school pictures or for a grandmother to do or as a gift to a grandmother or aunt.

I used Bashful Blue Designer Series (#112151) patterned paper. This comes in 12 x 12" so it's simple to cut it into 4 - 6 x 6" pages.

I used a piece of Whisper White cardstock that was 6 x 1" and cut the edge with the Scallop Edge (#112091) punch. I adhered it to the back of the patterned paper. The "friends" title is stamped in Brilliant Blue using letters from the Jumble Alphabet (#115199) stamp set on Whisper White cardstock. I inked the edges with Brilliant Blue classic ink.

For the children faces on the Bashful Blue cardstock (3 x 1"), I used various All in the Family (#113488) stamps and stamped in Brilliant Blue. The dotted circle stamp is from the Circle Circus (#115778) set. this makes a nice place to put the child's name and date.

To top it off, I ran some embroidary floss through a Bashful Blue Button from the Sherbet (#116312) Designer button set.  I adhered it with glue dots.

You could do a page like this for each child and then put in a cute 6 x 6" album. This would be a project that could be completed in an afternoon.

  

Strike Up the Band

OMG! Saturday evening around 9pm, we had a car come off the street and crash into our garage. We have quite a bit of damage but it's hard to know how much until we get an estimate and/or the insurance adjuster comes. Hopefully, that won't be too long. 2 teenage girls were driving way too fast for our little neighborhood and lost control of their car. They flew through the air, across our yard & into the side of the garage/house. Their car was totaled and we are amazed that they weren't even hurt. We praise God because it could have been SOOOOO much worse. God is still in control and He is still good!

There are cracks down the side wall for about 10 feet or so. The garage sticks out further than the rest of the house. The door beyond the birdbath is the "front" door. We're glad she hit the garage and not the living room. See, God does take care of us!

For many years, I would use the same frame for my children's school pictures. I would just put the current picture in front so it could be seen and just leave the old pictures in the frame behind the new one. Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, that's not really the best way to handle pictures! After I retired, several years ago, I really was able to get into scrapbooking and card making in a big way. I started organizing my old photos and getting them into scrapbooks where they belong. With years of photos stacked up, I know that I'll never get them all caught up to date, but I guess that's just life. (lol)

A couple of years ago, I looked at several of the albums that I've done (25+) and thought, "what will happen to these when I die?" I could just picture my kids tearing them apart to each get their own pictures, etc. I do NOT want that to happen. The first thing I did was to type up MY instructions for what should be done with my albums. Then, I started putting together albums for each of my kids. Many years ago, I made each of them an album of their school years but I still have loads of pictures. I've started taking those pictures and doing a dedecated album for each of the kids. I'm putting Daniel's school pictures in his album, Tina's in her's, etc. I'm also putting all the old grandkids pictures in albums that will go to each of my kids. I put all of my grandkids from Melody into her album, Daniel's kids into his, etc. Anyway, I hope you get the idea. With these albums, then the entire album can go to that child without anything being pulled apart.

Here is the layout that I recently did of Tina's pictures from her senior year in high school when she was drum major. I used paper from Stampin' Up!s Kaleidoscope Designer Series paper (115680).

TIP: If you're like me sometimes you choose the wrong color for your title and it just doesn't stand out the way you want it to. I picked the gray cardstock because parts of her uniform was gray. Well, that just didn't do the job when I glued it on. What I did to help it stand out better was to use my Basic Black Stampin' Write Journaler(#105394) and trace around the outside of each letter. You have to take your time doing this to be sure the pen goes where you want it to but I think that it really helps it out. The title has more power to it this way.

Friends for a Lifetime

I placed a Christmas family picture and a Christmas card on this layout. The older couple in the center are the friends who first introduced my husband and I. We've known them both for many years. Our kids grew up together and we are all working on grandkids now.

I used paper from the Merry Moments Designer Series paper (#115672) and cut the title from Glorious Green cardstock. The ribbons are Real Red 3/4" polka dot grosgrain (#115608) and Real Red 1/2" striped grosgrain (#110714) ribbon. I stapled the striped ribbon to the journaling box.

Fly Away

I just love the Tall Tales Designer Series paper (#115678) that Stampin' Up! has in the current catalog. I guess it appeals to the elementary teacher in me! Here's a layout I did with a school picture of my youngest grandson. I cut my title letters from So Saffron cardstock. The ribbon is So Saffron grosgrain that I've had since last year's Sale-a-bration. The star brad is from SU's designer brads (#112572). I painted the brad with Yellow Oxide acrylic paint. I got the paint down into the crevices of the brad. Then I wiped off the paint from the top surface. That left the paint in the recessed areas. The So Saffron "hill" is a perfect place to add some journaling.

Winter Patterns

Winter is definately here! We are expecting to see temperatures in the teens in the next day or two and will continue for several days. Many parts of the US are much colder than we are here in Central Texas. There have been lots of fridged weather, snow and very low temps. I decided to share some wintery patterns with you. You may use these patterns in any way you wish (except selling them as your own). I hope that you will find them useful in your paper crafting.

Here are ten ideas of different ways to do scrapbook layouts of winter scenes. Try taking pictures of:

an outdoor thermometer

someone shoveling snow

scrapping ice off the car windshield

salt or sand on the frozen roads

snow boots/gloves

kids looking out the window/ try taking this with you on the outside, shooting in

a before and after of bundling the kids up to go outside

a snowball fight/snow fort

a mug of steaming hot cocoa

warming yourself before a roaring fireplace

Some of you who know a lot more about snow than I do can probably come up with a lot more ideas! Here are my winter patterns.

Family Traditions

Wow! Today was a pretty crazy day for us! It started out great because we were going to get my new car(which I LOVE) and then, with getting all of that done, getting the insurance switched over, etc, we had Chris AND Melody wanting us to do things for them. Any one would have been ok but all 3 at the same time felt a bit wild. Then, to top it all off, when I was checking out at Wal-Mart, my debit card went flying (well, ok, so it had help from my carelessness) off the check out stand and we had to hunt for it. We thought that it went between the counter and the bagging rack and we kept trying to find a way to get it out. By we, I mean, David & I, the man in line behind us, the W-M cashier and the service manager! It took quite a while, maybe a half hour or more. It ended up that it had fallen under the bagging rack in an open space where they store plastic bags. We were about to give up and call the bank when it was found! All of the W-M people were really nice with it. The man behind us was very nice also but I felt awful for holding up the line!

Ok, our scrapbooking tip for today is to choose a family holiday tradition or just a fun thing about your holiday and present it from different view points. When Tina was a teenager, she had an older Mercury Comet to drive around town. Well, that was the year that the song "Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer" came out so all of her friends started calling her car the "reindeer." Comet was done of Santa's reindeer, if you remember. A few years later I found this singing moose and of course, he sang "Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer." We all thought that it was cute. I had David, Tina and myself write our story about Tina's "reindeer" car. I did this layout several years ago so I'm sure none of the papers are available any more but Stampin' Up! has several really great sets of Christmas themed designer series papers that would work great for your tradition.

I matted a picture of each of us on cardstock and then put Stampin' Dimensionals on 3 sides to raise the pictures up a bit. I then cut out some Sizzix tags, typed each of our stories and mounted on the tags. Each story slides behind the picture of the person whose point of view is told on that tag. Since I always use post bound albums with page protectors, I used my craft knife to carefully slit the page protector and put the ribbon of each tag through it. That way people can pull the tag out to read each story. You can mount your story on both sides of the tag if you need to. Have fun with your family traditions and different family members thoughts and ideas on that tradition.