Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop: Ready For My Close-Up

Hello!  If you found your way to my blog through the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog Hop, welcome!  If this is your first time here, I hope you'll take a few minutes to check out some of my other posts. If you're one of my regulars and want to follow along with the entire hop, you can begin at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge site.

I've been following the Counterfeit Kit Challenge for a while now, but this is the first month I actually made a kit and actively participated.  You can see the "original" kit here, and my "counterfeit" kit here.

For this Design Team Inspiration Challenge, we were asked to visit the Design Team's blogs and be inspired in some way to create a project using our own kit. There were so many great projects to choose from, but I ultimately was inspired by this layout by Jemma aka JimJams. 

I think I was drawn in by the cute doggie pictures as well as the overall design.  I ended up doing a pretty straightforward scraplift of her design, even using my own "cute doggie" picture!

The sweetie-pie in the picture is my four-year-old Chocolate Lab, Melody, who is a very willing model! I kept the layout fairly simple, choosing to layer lots of patterned paper, and go easy on the embellishments.  Those little acrylic flowers are by Webster's Pages, and I love them, so sweet and tiny! They were a recent purchase, but everything else had been in my stash for a few months to a few years!

My page uses patterned paper from three different manufacturers (Echo Park, Bo Bunny, and Scenic Route) which is quite a departure from my usual one-coordinated-line per page style, but I'm happy with the result. Definitely need to do this more often!

Thanks for stopping by!  Your next stop on the hop is Julie Ann. Enjoy!

All About Us layouts

Hello! Hope that all of you who celebrate had a lovely Easter. My husband and I enjoyed a nice day at home with my parents. A few things I learned:

• It's worth the 40 minute drive to the Polish Market in New Britain. Their Easter ham was delicious, and I'm sure the kielbasa and pierogis will be too!
• I am a good cupcake baker. Good cupcaker decorater? Not so much! My first attempt with frosting and a pastry bag left a lot to be desired!
• Just like a little kid, I still enjoy showing my parents my latest crafy work. Had fun showing off my pysanky egg and explaining how I made it.

Here are some recent additions to my All About Us albums.  I have one album devoted to layouts about myself, my husband, and the two of us together. This used to include pet pages too, but they now have an album all to themselves.

I made both of these at last weekend's crop, and used the January sketch from Shimelle's 4x6 Photo Love class for both of them. I think this was the first time I used the same sketch for two layouts in one sitting, but I love how it showcased just one 4x6 photo.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Things we do" layouts and a quick poll!

Hello! Thanks to all of you who left me such nice comments about by Counterfeit Kit projects.  I hope you'll come back on Thursday the 28th to see what I create as part of their blog hop! This will be the first blog hop I've participated in and I am definitely looking forward to it!

I'm taking advantage of the long weekend to play around on my blog. I'm taking Shimelle's Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers, so expect to see some tweaks to my blog design over the next few weeks. I happy to report that I successfully learned how to add a background design!  What do you think of the new look?

It's a dreary morning here, so I've been playing on the computer, editing some recent layouts in PSE. I have a lot I want to share, so I thought I would spread them out over several posts and group them based on the album they ended up in.  I follow Stacy Julian's Library of Memories/Photo Freedom system for organizing my photos and layouts, and I stick pretty closely to her four main categories: All About Us, People We Love, Places We Go, and Things We Do. If you're interested in her approach, she will be offering a revamped version of her Library of Memories Class over at Big Picture Classes this summer (it will now be called Finding Photo Freedom).  This will be my third and final time taking the class (the original class I took in 2009 included two free sessions as an alum) and I really looking forward to re-connecting with the other LOM alums and meeting new classmates. I will be on break from the college where I teach, so I should have lots of time to play and tweak my system!

Here are the layouts that I recently added to my "Things We Do" albums (divided into Everyday Life, Celebrations, and Traditions & Treasures). Please click on any of the images to zoom in.

Basic Grey paper, brads, and letter stickers.

Journaling close-up

Bo Bunny paper & stickers

More Bo Bunny paper

Fancy Pants paper

Journaling close up

Even more Bo Bunny paper

Journaling Close-up

I'm curious about your own organization systems...can you spare a minute and take this quick poll?

How do you organize your completed layouts?Market Research

Thanks for stopping by!