Bear Book: First & Last Pages

Hey kids!  Guess what.  Today I'm finally at the last blog post for the bear book.  Woo!

This is a first year in the family book (adoption) rather than a baby book, so that's why the first page doesn't say "first year" on it.

I think I have just one 3-inch strip of that Baylor bear paper left but the rest all went to great projects :)

I love these paw prints too.  They're cut out of a sheet of pre-printed bear stuff so I have one for Bennet, one for Missy, and a little one for Carleton because Missy wasted no time in teaching him "Sic 'em Bears!"

Today's color palette:  Whisper White, Summer Sun, Handsome Hunter (I'm sad that I'm down to just a teeny bit of Handsome Hunter cardstock), and Early Espresso.

That's it for me today.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Rough Type
Ink:  Early Espresso
Paper:  Whisper White, Summer Sun, Early Espresso, Baylor University DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix Alphabet, paw prints from Beary Patch

Stirling Castle

Hey y'all, how's it going?  I think I got a bit more sleep last night than usual (still not enough, but better), and Ryan went back to sleep after we got up at 4:00 this morning so I got more sleep after that too.  He's still asleep right now which is why I have time to blog :)

Speaking of time, I've actually used quite a bit of time since Ryan was born to work on scrapbook pages.  Like, I'm surprised how much I've gotten done--I've made SEVENTY scrapbook pages this year!  I work when he's sleeping during the day, or I take him downstairs with me and have him on a blanket on the floor next to me if he's happy to hang out for a bit.

But today's layout I made before he was born (I still need to take pictures of a bunch of layouts I've made in the last week or two).

So here's Stirling Castle, which we visited with Lee's parents, sister, and her family a few years ago.  Somehow I forgot to take my handy-dandy trip notebook with me *and* I never blogged these photos, so to be honest I don't really remember this particular castle.  We went to a lot of castles.  My journaling is basically what I looked up about the castle on Wikipedia :)  But I still like this layout!  I love the contrast between the light yellowy green and the dark purple (yes, friends, the dark color on here is Elegant Eggplant even if it looks weird and not-purple on your computer screen).  Haha, I'm wearing that same shirt right now as in that picture on the bottom right.

Title and journaling all in one convenient place.  Crowns are always a good accent for castle pages, right?

Today's color palette:  Certainly Celery, Elegant Eggplant, Basic Gray, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White.  The two gray colors are mostly in the photos.

With luck I'll get to finish my breakfast tea before Ryan wakes up again.  And if I'm really lucky, I'll finish another layout this afternoon!  I really am scrapping with vim and vigor.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet, Rough Edges Alphabet, Artistic Etchings
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant, Smoky Slate, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Certainly Celery, Elegant Eggplant, Whisper White, Elegant Eggplant DSP
Accessories:  None

Loch Ness

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  We had a good time last week with my friend Tiana and her girls visiting us.  And here it is time for another scrapbook layout!

I know it's tough to crack my secret code, but the photos are from Loch Ness in Scotland (is there even another one?  I think not).  See the original photos here.  And click on the photo of the layout above to look at it bigger, I'm rather proud of the alternating Night of Navy and Basic Gray mats on the right page.  Another thing I'm proud of?  The page title.

How'd I do it?  I inked up the letter stamps with sponge daubers so I could do both Night of Navy and Basic Gray ink and got this cool effect.  Obviously it's going to look best with thicker stamps rather than line art, but I love how this turned out on here.

Today's color palette is the long-retired Kiwi Kiss, Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, Basic Gray, and Very Vanilla.  I swear I'm using Night of Navy on almost everything lately.

That's all for now.  Squirt has the hiccups but he's pretty happy in his swing, so I think I'll go get cleaned up and take us both to the grocery store.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Jayne's Type Alphabet
Ink:  Basic Gray, Night of Navy
Paper:  Kiwi Kiss, Night of Navy, Basic Gray, Very Vanilla, By the Seashore DSP
Accessories:  sponge daubers

Elephant Trunk Hill

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I'm working off about 4 hours sleep this morning, and Ryan has his two-month checkup this afternoon where I think he gets some shots, so today is going to be FUN.

So let's start off the day with a scrapbook layout.

Pictures are from our 2010 trip to China, see them here. 99% of the time, I don't crop my photos very much at all so this layout is a little different for me.  I like it though.  As ever on my China layouts, I used a lettering template and the Rough Type alphabet for my page title.  Makes these layouts feel like they all go together without having to use the same colors on everything or something like that.

Speaking of colors, here's today's color palette:  Island Indigo, Tangerine Tango, Smoky Slate, Basic Black, and a teensy bit of Pistachio Pudding in the patterned paper.  That Venetian Romance paper is great for travel photos from a lot of places other than Venice (though I used it for that too!).

Wish me luck today, y'all.  Cheers!

Supplies, mostly SU!
Stamps:  Rough Type
Ink:  Basic Black
Paper:  Island Indigo, Tangerine Tango, Smoky Slate, Venetian Romance DSP
Accessories:  lettering template

Bear Book: Happy Birthday!

Okay, I haven't been paying much attention to that whole April the giraffe thing and wondering when she was going to have the dang baby already, but this morning it was all over my Facebook feed that she wasn't faking the pregnancy after all, haha!  And it feels appropriate to share the Happy Birthday layout today from the bear book.

I love these super-bright colors.  The Tangelo Twist might seem overpowering, but when the pictures are in the layout you'll only see a border of the bright orange.

I was not sad to have an excuse to buy this panda birthday stamp, either!  I need to remember this stamp when it's time to make a card for my brother's next birthday (he used to collect panda stuff when he was younger).

And who doesn't love a cupcake.

Today's color palette was inspired by the Birthday Bash Designer Series Paper pack:  Bermuda Bay, Tangelo Twist, Crushed Curry, Cucumber Crush, and Whisper White.  The DSP has Mossy Meadow in it, which is a lot darker and more subdued a green than Cucumber Crush, which is why I switched that one out.

Anyway, I've got a busy day ahead so I'd better get out the door and to the grocery store.  Cheers, y'all!  And congrats to the giraffe for finally having the baby.

Supplies:
Stamps:  Beary Special Birthday from Whipper Snapper, Party Wishes
Ink:  Basic Black, Tangelo Twist, Cucumber Crush, Bermuda Bay
Paper:  Bermuda Bay, Tangelo Twist, Crushed Curry, Cucumber Crush, Thick Whisper White, Birthday Bash DSP
Accessories:  Sizzix alphabet, star punches, Prismacolor Pencils

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I've still got quite a few scrapbook layouts in the queue that I haven't shared here yet, and I've got a bunch of pages I haven't even taken pictures of yet.  If I get the squirt to go to sleep for a couple hours in the afternoon, I try to work on my scrapbook pages rather than cards.  Because crafty time is precious ;)

Anyway, how 'bout today's layout.

See the original pics here.  I think I did pretty good, getting ten photos on this layout!  And really only two of them are cropped very much, the rest of them it's just shaving off a bit to make them fit with a border on the 12x12 page base.  I have travel pictures from SO MANY places that I try to just do one layout per place (first world problems, y'all).

Croatia used to be a huge maritime power, so I thought that using The Open Sea was appropriate for this.

Today's color palette:  Sahara Sand, Always Artichoke, Elegant Eggplant (I know it looks black in that picture, trust me it's purple) and Whisper White.  I've been using a lot of Elegant Eggplant lately...I've got at least two layouts that I haven't photographed yet that are EE page bases.  I kinda go in cycles with colors, but since I usually skip around a lot in my scrapbooking you'd never know if I used the same color combination several times.

Anyway, that's it for now.  Maybe one of these days I'll get more cards made, but in the meantime I'm enjoying the scrappiness of it all.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Rough Edges Alphabet, The Open Sea
Ink:  Always Artichoke, Elegant Eggplant
Paper:  Sahara Sand, Elegant Eggplant, Thick Whisper White, Always Artichoke DSP
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents Framelits

Keukenhof

Y'all, it definitely feels like spring here.  I went for my first run in, like, forever last night and the weather was SO FABULOUS I wanted to stay out twice as long.  And I hate running!  Srsly though, I did a lot better than I expected to on that run, but thanks to that and going to the gym for the first time post-baby on Monday, I'm pretty sore.  And also craving chocolate.

Okay, back to spring thoughts! (Does Easter candy count as a spring thought?)

Here are the tulip pages I promised on Monday!

Closeup of the quote stamp, which is totally apropos for the layout and also fit nicely in the stripes on the patterned paper, which makes me happy.

I did two tulip layouts (say "two tulips" five times fast) and I still had a bunch of printed photos I didn't use...and tons more that I didn't print,  I think I took about 200 or so flower pics on this day.

Same color palette as last time: Wild Wasabi, Rose Red, Daffodil Delight, Pacific Point, Blackberry Bliss, and Whisper White.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm getting really good at typing one-handed, but the squirt is starting to cry so once again I go to change a diaper.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Fabulous Florets
Ink:  Pacific Point
Paper:  Wild Wasabi, Daffodil Delight, Blackberry Bliss, Rose Red, Whisper White, Painted Blooms DSP
Accessories:  None

Amsterdam

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Today's layout is one of the last few I made before Ryan was born, and it's pretty springy so I thought it was appropriate to share now that we're in April.

Hubs and I visited Amsterdam in April of 2013; you can see the original pictures here.  The main draw was going to see the tulips (more pages of those are forthcoming), but we also visited the Anne Frank House, the Rijksmuseum, a Van Gogh exhibit (the Van Gogh museum was being renovated, so they had an exhibit at the Hermitage I think, and apparently there's more than one Hermitage museum in the world), and did a couple of walking tours of the city (and went through the Red Light District multiple times).

Thought I'd accent my title with some tulips.

We didn't take any pictures of people on bikes, but that is the main mode of transportation in Amsterdam, so I had to put the bicycle on here.

And some butterfly die cuts because I needed another accent and couldn't think of anything else ;)

Today's color palette is taken straight from the Painted Blooms patterned paper:  Blushing Bride, Blackberry Bliss, Rose Red, Wild Wasabi, Daffodil Delight, Softy Sky, and Whisper White.

Tulip pages coming soon.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Sweet Shoppe Alphabet (upper & lower), Painted Petals, Timeless Talk
Ink:  Rose Red, Blackberry Bliss, Wild Wasabi, Garden Green marker
Paper:  Blushing Bride, Rose Red, Blackberry Bliss, Wild Wasabi, Daffodil Delight, Soft Sky, Painted Blooms DSP
Accessories:  Bold Butterfly Thinlits

Bear Book: February

Okay, now that Sodapop is six weeks old we're kind of settling into a bit of a routine.  Sort of.  At least, for the last several days, he's taken a pretty long nap in the afternoons, so I've actually made some new scrapbook pages!  But today is Saturday and I still have a few layouts from the bear book to share, so here's one of those.

Usually I use a pink for the February layout in a baby book, but I found that patterned paper that just seemed like the right one for Missy so I went with the retired Riding Hood Red instead.

And isn't this little bear Cupid the cutest?  The dark color is Early Espresso, not black, in case you wondered.

And there's the embellishment on the journaling block, an arrow to go with my Cupid bear.

Today's color palette is Riding Hood Red, Early Espresso, Pool Party, a smidgen of Pretty in Pink, and Whisper White. I thought they made for a nice little boy Valentine layout, what do you think?

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies:
Stamps:  Cupid Bear from Whipper Snapper, Filled with Love, Love you More
Ink:  Basic Black, Early Espresso, Riding Hood Red
Paper:  Riding Hood Red, Early Espresso, Pool Party, Pretty in Pink, Thick Whisper White, Love Letter DSP
Accessories:  Circle Framelits, circle & scalloped circle punches, Sizzix Alphabet, Prismacolor Pencils