I did it!!

Today marked the end of my work on Eric's album for awhile! I can't explain how happy that makes me. It's been fun getting him caught up, but it gets a bit boring working on the same thing for too long. I did intersperse his layouts with a few family album ones, but now I will focus on the girls' books. I am very far behind in those!! And I'll keep plugging away at the family album. The nice thing about the family book is that there aren't a ton of layouts to do each year, so once I'm caught up with it, it will be fairly easy to maintain.

I'm back to simple layouts. I've kind of lost my mojo, so it's been a bit of work to get it back. I've been flipping through magazines and looking for ideas. I'm fine with that since I always make it my own anyway. Sometimes, it's a colour combination that jumps out; or an embellishment or a page map. At any rate, the finished layout never looks like what is in the magazine which is a good thing. I've put my own spin on it!

This layout is one I did for a special verbal exchange I have with Eric all the time:

Me: Eric. Can I tell you a secret?
Eric: Yes.
Me: I love you.
Eric: Oh Mom. That's not a secret.

We went to Build-A-Bear in September for his birthday and built a Darth Vadar bear (he's obsessed with Star Wars at the moment). We recorded us saying that little exchange above. He was so excited and I know that down the road it will be fun to listen to it.

The layout itself is pretty simple.


It's basically just a piece of patterned paper with the upper corners rounded, then some ribbon. I chose a nice fat ribbon to take up more room. I journaled along the bottom and then highlited the exchange on the red strips.

I'm starting to get my creative juices flowing again and am excited to create, so hopefully I can keep up with this for awhile!

It's been awhile

How does it get to be so long in between posts?? I haven't been stamping much lately. I've done some scrapbooking, but not this week, so I guess I figured I didn't have as much to say. I'll try to fix that. I have tons of card scans, so I'll try to post some of those.

Here is a really quick layout I did of Eric (have I mentioned that I'm almost caught up to his 5th birthday??? Just a few more layouts and I can put his book away and sigh a bit of relief). Eric is very dramatic and I joke that he's my little Drama Queen. I can't imagine him as a teenager. I took this photo and it reminded me of his nature, so I wanted to try to capture that.


It's a pretty basic layout. I matted my photo and then just stamped a little frame with a Magenta stamp. To figure out where I wanted the frame, I just marked the four corners of the photo and then removed it and stamped my frame. I cut out a couple pieces of matching paper using Spellbinders Labels 8, but they seemed to get lost, so I inked the edges in a dark navy ink. I wanted to journal on my one label, so I just measured it and typed it out on the computer and printed it on bond paper. Then, using repositional adhesive, I stuck it over where it had printed on the bond paper and ran it through the printer again and it printed perfectly on my label which I then adhered to my layout.