I'm Scrappy

I had a super super super weekend this past weekend! Jason was off having a fabulous time riding his motorcycle with new moto friends and I was hiding out at home scrapping the days away and avoiding leaving the house. It was awesome.

I bought myself flowers from Trader Joe's last week, and I've decided I should do that more often. These orangey beauties made me happy several times a day! Until they died; now I'm just hoping they'll magically disappear. (I don't know what my problem is with throwing away flowers, I just hate it! It's right up there with getting gas in my car. Leaving dead flowers on my counter won't leave me stranded anywhere, though, so there's less incentive to get it done.)


Anyway, back to the scrapping. I get monthly kits from Scarlet Lime, and I highly recommend them. I LOVE their kits! They always have a good selection of papers and embellishments. The colors of their latest kit just got my creative juices flowing and I wanted to make something right away. I semi-recently got a Silhouette machine, and I freaking LOVE it. I bought the unlimited downloads package (with a half-off coupon, thanks Cheryl!!) so when I saw this "What a Lovely Bunch" design I downloaded it right away. The photo that Zanne took at Inspired is a perfect match for the phrase (thanks, Lady!).


I don't know why it took me so long to realize that I can cut shapes out of patterned paper, too, but DUH. Love this "Lovely" in red and white patterned paper, as well as the lacey border in green and white patterned paper.


Jen took this photo of us at Inspired and I love it. I didn't realize it while I was scrapping this, but everything about this layout has an Inspired connection! I got the hymnal page in Jennifer Stewart's class. The owl rub-on is from the Glitz Girls, whom I met at Inspired (where I found out Jen loves owls, too!). The dress-form is a love of Donna Downey, creator of Inspired, and has become one of her symbols... I cut it on my Silhouette, which I bought from the store Cheryl manages (...where I took a class with Donna last year and further convinced Cheryl to sign up for Inspired this year!). The little notepaper is from a set that Katie gave me at Inspired. The adore bingo card is from Jenni Bowlin, whom I also met at Inspired this year. Even the little brown corduroy flower has an Inspired connection--it's from one of my Scarlet Lime kits from Christy Tomlinson... and yes, I met her there this year, too!


Jen calls her daughter's best friends "besties," hence the title because she is one of my besties for sure!


The next pages were created from a desire to actually USE some of the patterned paper I hoard have. I tend to love the colors and styles of the paper, buy the entire coordinating line, and then only use one different pattern on each scrapbook page (along with plain colored cardstock). So I challenged myself to use a whole bunch of different patterned paper on each layout, just to see how I liked it. (These papers and most of the embellishments are from the K & Co Que Sera Sera line.)


I kinda like it! It was fun to make, anyway, and fun to use borders, stickers, rub-ons, acetate, bling and glitter stickers all in one place. And to break out my corner rounder--I had to dig through a couple piles before I found it! The title, Hard Laughter, is the title of a book by Anne Lamott. The book is not her best (it's her first), but I love her and I love hard laughter and I love these two ladies, Heather and Deitra, who always make me laugh--and laugh hard--whenever I'm around them. (I think Jen took this photo, thanks Jen!)


One of my favorite places in the world is Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon. It's so big they hand you a map when you walk in. I'm not kidding. You must go there. Anyway, last time I was there I took some photos to document my love.


I really like this layout for several reasons, almost none of which have anything to do with the overall design of the layout itself. First, I love Powell's. I love that I chose my colors based on their sign out front (in front of one of the entrances, anyway), and then I actually found stuff in my "stash" and made it work. The papers all had stark white and it looked wrong, so I just used an off-white ink pad to sponge on top and make all the white off-white. I love how the flowers go together even though all the layers are all from different manufacturers (which means I have them stored in different places because I'm crazy, so the fact that I even found them all is amazing). I love that I finally used some of those dang Thickers and felt borders that I have stockpiled. I love that it's raining in the photo, because that's so Portland. I love that Jason looked at it and said, "Oh, those must be tourists, they have umbrellas instead of raincoats with hoods."


Back in September of last year I drove down to Richmond to meet with Deitra and take three classes from Donna. I didn't do anything with the photos then because my favorite one was taken without a flash and I couldn't fix it in my photo editing software. But I decided that I love the photo anyway so I went ahead and printed it out and used it on this layout, another experiment with using a bunch of different patterns on one page.


I decided to add in some journaling so I cut out the scalloped circles on the Silhouette machine and just wrote directly on it... which is another thing I'm doing more often, I used to only type things out on the computer.


After all those colors and different patterns I wanted to get back to the basics, so I "scraplifted" this from the Scarlet Lime gallery. Simple, simple.


The scroll is chipboard I painted white, and then I brushed a little blue along the edge to make it coordinate with the blue used above.


Simple and pretty.

I have a couple more pages in the works but I think this is way too much enough for now. :) Thanks for looking! :)