Bridal Shower Bliss

My sister is getting married!

Things have been very busy around here. The wedding is only six weeks away. My future brother-in-law, his friends, my dad and my hubby have been working feverishly to prepare their future home. My mother and sister are busy with wedding preparations. My other two sisters and a close family friend are the bridesmaids. We've been working very hard on the shower for the last few weeks and yesterday it went better than I had hoped.


We did a lot of handcrafted items.

We made all the invitations by hand:
We had a bright theme. The invitations were stamped pink, yellow, orange, green, purple and turquoise. I'll post some more pictures of these later - they only allow me five pictures per post :)
On to the favors:

We made paper bags hand-stamped with the same colorful flower stamp. Each one had a matching stamped tag with a mini picture of Beth and Ben. Inside was a bottle of hand soap.

These are matching photo mini-booklet cards. They are so cool! I will definitely have to post more details later. As you can see, they match the stamps of the invitations and the favors.
I gave one to Beth and have plans for the others ... gifts for bridesmaids, mother, mother-in-law, grandma, etc.

Hope you enjoyed the few pictures :) Now it's time for wedding crafts!

Page Maps Contest

Here's my entry for the Page Maps Blog challenge. I have almost zero hope of winning, but I wanted to do it anyway. It's often nice to have a boost to create something.

Here's the inspiration sketch:



And here's my take:
I love this picture. It's of hubby dearest being playful with some wisteria.
The green paper is from Making Memories Travel collection. I used my Autumn Leaves Swirls stamps, CTMH Big Paper Flowers, K&Co Fabric Brad, CTMH jewel flower, green ribbon and an assortment of alphas including Basic Grey, Making Memories mailbox letters, MME Bohemia Chipboard and Making Memories tiny stickers (so cute).

You can't really tell by the picture, but the texture is pretty cool. I have the textured cardstock, the flowers and jeweled brad and plenty of 3-D stickers. I created a pretty cool effect on the 'U'. It now has a felt-like texture. I inked the original brown letter with green ink. I put a little white ink in the embossed areas and then distressed it while the ink was still wet. This rubbing created a unique feel.

I know it's simple, but I like it that way. Right now it's on my fridge, but I think I'll attach a ribbon hanger and put it on my wall. I like it just that much :) I hope you enjoy it too!

P.S. I plan on posting the next few days about my sister's shower. She's getting married and we did a lot of crafting. I was super inspired.

Baby Book - Page 52 & 53

Well, I was wrong. Here's the latest layout I've done for Justin's album.
It's based off of one of Suzy's sketches.
I used Miss Elizabeth papers, flowers from Joann's, ribbon from Walmart, brads from CTMHy and my favorite metal letters :)

Baby Book - Page 51

Hello all,
I've had several computer challenges and a very busy summer, but I'm back :)

See how big baby Andrew has gotten? He's 3 months now. I'm thinking I might want to start his album even though I haven't finished Justin's or started Samantha's because I don't want to forget these precious moments. I love him :)

This is my last post for Justin's baby book and then I'll start posting some other projects I've finished or are in progress.

Here's the last layout I've done for Justin's book. Just some misc. photos that I like :)

Baby Book - page 50

Lil' Dude
These pictures are from Halloween night 2004. The church had a hoedown themed costume party (notice all the plaid).

I used textured cardstock and patterned paper from Keeping Memories (at Joanne's). I sanded and distressed for the various looks you see.

The cardstock stickers are Me and My Big Ideas and I used a Creative Memories red journaling pen.

The sketch is a variation of one from www.PageMaps.com.

Baby Book - Page 48 and 49

Bathing and Eating - Two things baby's must do :)

These two layouts were designed to coordinate with each other in colors scheme, but that's about it.

Bath time! So much fun. Daddy was able to give Justin almost all of his baths so that they could have special time together.
I didn't have much bath themed things, but I did find this Soft Spoken sticker set from Me and My Big Memories. Some Miss Elizabeth paper I had matched perfectly.

For this page, I was trying to find a way to use all the different pictures I had of Justin eating. They were all good, but I didn't want to create a million layouts of the same thing. So, 13 pictures were cropped and laid out in what I hope was an artistic manner. I journaled around the edges.
The paper in the background is Basic Grey and CTMH. Scrap Metal

Baby Book - page 47

ExploreWalking around the lake with our cute little son :)

Leaf paper that I found at LSS that matched this Basic Grey paper perfectly.
Basic Grey bookplate, rubons and K&Co. glitter chipboard title.

Baby Book - pages 46 & 47

Relay 4 Life

I was part of the local cable channel's filming crew that taped the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life in 2004. Justin and his lovely aunt accompanied me :)

I used CTMH paper and stickers.

Baby Book - pages 44 & 45

I love it when u laugh & smile

I absolutely love this layout. I had it floating around in my head for a while and it just came together so beautifully!

It took me a while to find the right paper. I had a look in mind and couldn't find the right thing! Who knew you can't find navy paper with medium sized green polka dots? So, I found this awesome blue print from My Mind's Eye at my LLS. The dark blue and green distressed-look paper is from my Close to My Heart Autumn Harvest B&T paper pack and the striped accent paper is the other side of said CTMH papers.

I came up with the sketch all by myself :) I loved these pictures so much that I wanted to really make them pop and the large prints do that.

For the title, I used Making Memories rub-on alphas, jelly-stickers from Wamart (when) and a K&Co. glitter chipboard word (laugh).

You can't see it very well in the photos, but I made circles using brads. I used several colors of blue and green.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Baby Book - pages 42 & 43

Merrily we Glide AlongJustin never really crawled - he glided. He'd much rather stand holding onto something than crawl.

This is CTMH paper, CTMH stickease stickers and a CTMH Cherish layout (slightly altered). I love how the paper has all the colors of Justin's outfits. It's not easy to find light blue and red.
The letter stickers are also CTMH, but the 'Glide' letters are Provo Craft.

Baby Book - pages 40 and 41

Time to Play
Back to posting :) Hopefully I'll have some time to do some actual scrapbooking soon and not just chase after my three kids :)

This layout is of Justin playing before he could walk. Kids are so cute at this age and so easy to photograph :)

I used Basic Grey Color Me Silly paper - retired PP.
I used my Creative Memories Cutting System to cut several circles out of black cardstock in varying sizes.
I was all excited about a Adirondack Paint Dabber in White that I had just got, so I tried to get a specific aged and rustic look on the edges of the photos and some of the paper blocks. It didn't turn out the way I wanted, but it doesn't look too bad.
The arrow journaling block is from Maya Road.

That's it for now. Check back soon because I only have a few more layouts to post from the baby book. Then I'll show you some of the really neat projects I've worked on recently :)

Just to prove I had a good excuse for not posting lately ...

Andrew Timothy was born happy and healthy on Wednesday, May 7th at 8 lbs. 14 ozs.We're thrilled and loving the new baby!

Baby Book - pages 38 and 39

Buell's Orchard 2004

My family has been going for years to a local orchard, Buell's, for their Columbus Day activities. Hayrides, donuts, apples and fun :)
This layout is of Justin's first time.

I used Daisy D's Gypsy Harvest paper.
The layout is based on a sketch from Suzanne Powell.
I used silk leaves from Walmart ($1 a bag) as accents
'buell's' is spelled out using chipboard letters from Making Memories and Basic Grey. I inked them a purple color and then covered them with CTMH liquid glass for the shine. I used a metallic gold marker to add some highlights.
I stamped the other words using my CTMH Doodle Alphabet stamp set and purple ink.
I used two antique embellishments to accent the date and the word, 'fun'.
Add my special pictures and I love this layout!!!

Baby Book - Page 37

Baby DedicationMy sister did this layout.
This is one of the first pages we ever did in September of '04.
I've been tempted to redo the earlier ones, but this is special because she did it - back when we were very new and very bad :) It's her first page ever.

Baby Book - page 36

Page 36
Grandparents

This is Justin being held by some very important people in his life.
Top Left is Kevin's Dad.
Top Right is Kevin's Mom.
Center is my Grandma (Dad's side).
Bottom Left is my Grandpa (Dad's side).
Bottom Right is my Grandma (Mom's Side).
(yes, they're technically great-grandparents ... )
I wanted to highlight these photos since we don't have many pictures of them. The only person still alive that is missing is Kevin's Grandma and I have a picture of her and Justin at Christmastime.

I used some scrap paper I had from the CTMH Heritage collection.
The letters are a bronze color with scroll work. I love them, but Joann's doesn't carry them any more. If you look closely, I didn't have enough 'Rs' so I used a 'P' and drew in the leg with a metallic marker and used liquid glass to add dimension. It's an imperfect fix, but I love these letters!

Baby book - pages 34 and 35

I really like this one.
This is Justin meeting Kevin's family and his cousins for the first time.
Since it involved other people, I was able to go a bit more girly.

The paper is from Basic Grey with some Bazzill cardstock.
The flowers, rhinestones, brads, accessories, etc are from CTMH.
The letters are Scrap Metal with a Basic Grey silver rub-on (can't see it very well).
The ribbon is from Walmart.

Baby Book - pages 32 and 33

Silly FacesI really like the way this layout turned out.
I did this one after I realized that I couldn't do all of Justin's pictures in chronological order or I'd end up with thousands of pages. So, I grouped together some really cute misc. pics from the first few months with the resolve to condense from here on out whenever possible.

The paper is Basic Grey. I love the froggy paper! Too bad it's retired :(
The title is K&Co. Addison Chipboard Letters. The colors match beautifully, but everything was so busy ... my sister put the letters on dark blue CTMH cardstock and I think it works well :)
The layout inspiration came from Suzanne Powelle.

Thanks for looking!

Baby Book - page 31

Labor Day Picnic- 2004Man, I need to figure out a better way to get pictures of my pages!

Anyway ... I remembered after I did this page that Labor Day is not a patriotic holiday ... and I was so excited to be all Red, White and Blue. But, as all my friends said, people think in Red, White and Blue for Labor Day anyway ... so it's ok :)

baby book - page 30

Sleepy HeadPictures of Justin sleeping during the first few months.
I did the Red, White and Blue theme to match the page on the right (posted next).

Sorry for the delay in posting, but we had Internet and computer problems. We should be back to normal now.

Baby Book - page 29

Playtime with Mommy
Pictures with Mommy ... believe me, it becomes a rarity.

The journaling reads: "Playtime - We loved to just play with Justin. Everyday he could do somethng new and something better. This day (September 7th, 2004), at 6 weeks old, was one of the first days that he started carrying weight on his own legs and bouncing up and down. So cute!"

The patterned and blue paper is from the Basic Grey Oh Baby! Boy PP
The green textured cardstock is Colorbok (Walmart)
All green and white polka dot ribbon and white sheer ribbon are from Walmart - I should really look up that brand...