Visit to Hot Doug's

Claire asked to go to Hot Doug's for her birthday. That got me to thinking of a page I needed to do from last summer. Jason & I finally took time to go to the best ever hot dog place, Hot Doug's. Since hot dogs are one of Jason's favorite things and it was so good we had to take some pictures. I always seem to finish pages with the girls in them first and we didn't actually take a picture with us in it this one kept getting put on the back burner. Turns out I just needed a push because this page went together really fast.

New Page

I have been trying to participate in scrap challenges to get me creating without having to over think an idea. Yesterday I made a page and it had to focus on "Us together" inspired by Valentines Day so it needed to be about Jason and myself. I listen to my ipod a lot and even though my itunes account is pushing 39,000 songs I listen to the same playlist so the same songs repeat often enough. Every time "Smile' by Uncle Kracker plays I really do think of Jason. It has such a relaxing, mellow feel to it and the lyrics are nice and comfortable. I would never say it is the most profound song or that Uncle Kracker is a talent like no other, it is just a good song. Since this song reminds me of how Jason makes me feel I used it as the title and the background of the page. I found three snapshots of us together that I liked and cropped and printed them as 3 inch squares. Then mounted them on the bottom of a red rectangle, in the space you would expect a 4th picture I added a little journaling page to explain my song inspiration. After embellishing the page with trimmed paper, button tag, & brads, I wrote the lyrics to the song on the right side of the base paper. The page is a weathered looking green so I wrote with a grey marker so the words would fade into the paper. If you look right at the page you see them but from further away they aren't there.

Scrapbooking

    I have been doing a lot of scrap booking in the past year. In the last 6 months or so I have been finding my own style in this form of crafting that hadn't really called out to me before. To me it seemed like I would have to learn all these rules and skills that I didn't think would be worth the time. What I found out was that I already had the skills and there are no set rules! You really need to do what is comfortable and pleasing to you. But if you want help or guidelines to get you started there is a wealth of information available to you in books, magazines, internet & classes.
    Here is my first real fully composed and thought out scrapbook page from over a year ago. I was so happy with it I shared it as a make and take at a scrap day. 

I used Cricut and "Straight From the Nest" cartridge to cut the title, tree, birds, & grass. Since the pictures I was using were different sizes I wanted a base for them so they weren't floating in mid air. I cut a brown rectangle and a light blue rectangle a half of an inch smaller then rounded their corners and attached them together. I rounded the photos also because I like the uniformity. I added journaling strips over the bottom of the tree and grass and filled a blank area in the top with a coordinating flower and gem.

I'm Back!

Here I am over a year after first putting this blog together, I decided to really do this. Not only am I going to start posting I am going to open it up to the internet and see if anyone wants to listen. So bare with me while I learn how to do this blog thing right.

I haven't stopped the endless line of creative things I am doing, I just haven't kept track of them or shared them.