You are Loved A Lot Card

There are a lot of boys and men in my family and I love it when I can make hearts look masculine. 

All my stamping supplies come from The Stamps of Life, and the color palate is full of rich colors like this midnight and green apple. I paired these solid colors for the card, and used a die to create the polka dotted card.

Two layered green hearts provided a place for my stamped sentiment. The only "girly" thing on this card is the bow. I needed to fill some space. I chose a grosgrain ribbon with white stitching. I didn't want the ribbon to look lacy or even "soft".

This is a simple valentine's card appropriate for one of the special men in my life!

I Love You card

Valentine's Day is just around the corner and I absolutely love making heart / love themed cards. Here is one of my favorites!

Hot pink is definitely one of my favorite colors - and I love how it pops with black and white.

I used hearts2love stamp set from The Stamps of Life. This scribbled heart is one of my favorite stamps, and the square border and sentiment are included in that stamp set. 

Gone Fishing

Here's another layout from our stay at Give Kids the World Village. We went fishing . . .  and caught a turtle. My mom took so many pictures and I had a hard time narrowing down my choices to the twelve prints you see here.

I'll be completely honest - other than the blue rectangle you see on the left side, all the other paper used on this layout are scraps from the layout I made about hanging out at the pool that I showed last week. They were scattered around my scrap table and I was feeling a little "burnt out" on creativity, so I created some banners and layered them under my photos. I used the same letter stickers from the pool layout to give it a cohesive look in the album.

I had these dimensional fish stickers that had been in my stash for years. The colors of the fish weren't a perfect match to the papers I used, but they were close enough and completed the layout nicely.

Hanging at the Pool

This is a layout from our Baking Memories 4 Kids trip. The boys absolutely LOVED the pool at Give Kids the World Village. It was completely accessible. It had beach access which meant that you could roll a beach wheelchair (which they provided!) right into the water. Caleb could get into the water without being transferred onto a lift! Whenever we weren't at Disney or Lego Land the boys wanted to be in the pool!

I put this layout together using my favorite inspiration, a Scrapbook Generation sketch. I picked out my color scheme using the cut out characters in the 5x7 photo. It was actually Alyssia's idea to use the blue polka dot paper to mimic the bathing suits and the blue beach ball Zach was playing with in the top left corner. 

The large yellow strip on the left page gave me a perfect spot for my 5x7 photo. I love when I can use multiple size photos on a layout. Which takes me to a great scrapbooking tip I learned from Allison Davis of Scrapbook Generation . . . 

Scrapbooking Tip:

If you have photos you can crop down, consider making them into "polaroid" pictures. This is so easy to do, and a great way to use up scraps of white paper, of which I always seem to have an abundance!

To download or purchase Scrapbook Generation sketches visit www.scrapbookgeneration.com. 

Snowflake Flip-It Card

Here is a simple card I made using the supplies in my September 2018 Card Kit Club from The Stamps of Life. 

The sparkly snowflake in the center was a sticker that came in the kit. I paired it with a snowflake print from the Jingle & Jangle  pattern paper pad. To help coordinate with the red circle, I inked the edges of a the snowflake paper with strawberry colored ink. I used the Exclusive Flip-Its Circle Card die and Dotted Circle die. 

This card came together in five minutes and probably looks like it - but I'd rather throw together a quick card than let my scrap paper sit in a basket!

One Incredible Birthday Card

This was one of my favorite cards to make! My nephew Jude had asked for The Incredibles video game for his birthday and when I saw the logo on the case I knew that I wanted to make a matching card.

I started with a red card base and then pulled out my dies from The Stamps of Life. I cut two ovals of the same size out of black and orange cardstock.

I then took an oval die two sizes smaller and “nested” it in the orange oval. That gave me an orange oval outline.

(Note: The only oval dies I had were dotted oval dies which would have punched dots out along the border of the oval. No problem though - I traced the die and cut out the oval with scissors!)

I then cut the oval in half.

To mimic the look of the orange oval on the logo, I had to "thin it out". I  trimmed down the width by first tracing a line in pencil and then carefully cutting it down.

I adhered the orange oval pieces on top of my black oval as shown in the above picture.

I then took a scrap of yellow card stock and using my paper trimmer cut a rectangle to form the lower case "i". I cut one end of the rectangle at an angle. To do that I simply drew a line with a ruler. 

Then I die cut a yellow circle and a smaller white circle to dot my "i".

I then adhered the "i" to my black and orange oval. The yellow extended over the edge of the oval which I trimmed with a pair of scissors.

Then I adhered the oval to my red card base.

The finished card looked almost professional and it was a fun challenge to take a logo and design a card around it!

Happy New Year!

This layout captures memories of the boys and I on New Year's Eve 2015. It was just the three of us and we would not be staying up until midnight. We watched some movies and as I put them to bed, we toasted the new year. I had bought some sparkling white grape juice, thinking it would be a special treat and neither boy liked it. I tried to take a picture - just one picture - and silliness ensued! What I ended up with was a whole bunch of cute pictures of silly faces.

Because most of the pictures were selfies, I couldn't really crop them down, so I picked my favorite prints and laid them out on my cardstock. That did not leave much room to work with, but I had a Simple Stories' New Year's mini collection which provided the perfect paper and embellishments. I love this layout, not because it is a particularly spectacular scrapbooking creation, but because it reminds me of  a very fun night with two precious little boys.

Scrapbooking Tips:

Do you ever have pictures lay in your "to scrap" stash for years because you want just the perfect paper, layout, embellishment, or stickers? Those are the pictures you should pull out right now to scrapbook! These pictures, although not perfect or even pretty, were very sentimental and I love the results of my simple layout. Don't let Pinterest or idea books  keep you from getting your pictures in your albums. And always remember, less is more!

Also, don't be afraid of placing stickers directly on your photos! I attached stickers with foam adhesive and placed others directly on the pictures. It can really change up the look of your layouts.