Cowboys

Watching the Grammy Awards the other night, I was inspired by the Highwaymen performance (Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, and Blake Shelton). Now, I'm not much of a country girl myself, but I do love seeing living legends of any genre performing! When they sang the song "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grown Up to be Cowboys" my mind went right to a pic of my kiddos back in 2005 that has yet to be scrapped. This was a perfect time to finally get this photo in the scrapbook!

Aren't they so stinking cute? This was from a vacation to Texas back in 2005, they were very happy with their new cowboy hats! To do this layout I had the help of a few great challenges, starting with this great sketch from Creative Scrappers:

 

The triangles were a lot of fun to play with, not something I had done before, and a great way to use all those scraps in my stash!! Because I LOVE to combine challenges, I also used the Navy, Teal, Pink and White color scheme from Practical Scrappers, of course this goes perfectly with the COWBOY challenge at Simon Says Stamp, my photo is out in the gorgeous desert for the OUTDOORS theme at Shopping Our Stash, and I used typewriter stamps for my title for the JUST MY TYPE challenge at Paper Issues. 

Thanks for stopping by! =) T

Pocket Scrapping- Week 5

Well I finally decide to give this whole "pocket scrapbooking" craze a try. Since I am an avid scrapper, I felt like the only way you could do a Project Life style project was to ditch scrapping, and I was NOT ready to do that. But after watching many you-tubers who do this in smaller formats, I decided that was they way for me! I already had a cute Sn@p Life 6x8 album and a TON of supplies, so it was an easy, and cheap, project for me to dive into! We are already beginning WEEK FIVE of 2014, so it's definitely time to get started. Here's what i have so far...

This is my opening page, snapped a little pic of each of us holding a chipboard # to represent the year:

 and this is my Week 1:

This page obviously has a red and turquoise color scheme. I'll be changing this up as I go, but it will mainly be bold colors like this, maybe I'll add in some yellows and greens.

I have a few friends joining me in this adventure, and we had a blast Friday night playing with all of our new Pocket Scrapbook goodies, sorting product, looking at pics, and drinking hot cocoa and chocolate wine, soooo good!

This brings me to the point of this post, I'm going to do a weekly PS post with 5 tips and tricks that I'm using in my project, and you may want to use in yours. So...onto the tips:

1. For those snapping pics with iphones/ipads, there is a fun app called Font that allows you to add text, filters, etc to your pics. So Fun! I'll probably do this when I don't have much to say about the photo. Remember that hot cocoa and chocolate wine?
   
   
   
2. What's a Pocket Scrapbook without the goodies? My friend Erica just started subscribing to Studio Calico's Project Life Kit. Can't wait to see what arrives in the mail for her!
   
3. Need to organize all those goodies? Love this tip from I Am JuJu using silverware drawer organizers to sort all of her cards.
   
   
   
4. Most Pocket Scrapbookers out there are doing the standard 12x12, but there are also other options like 6x8 and 8.5x11. Check out this idea for a 2014 Life Planner at Simple As That.
   
   
   
   
5. There are some very talented paper crafters out there doing their own Pocket Scrapbooks. One of my favorites is Mercy Tiara. I was watching one of her You Tube vids recently and she said, "Come up with a system that works for you and stick to it no matter what anyone else is doing". Love that bit of advice, thank you!
   
   So grab those pics, and lets start filling those pockets! =) T
   
   To see all of my weekly PS Tips and Tricks categorized for handy-dandy reference, click on my Pocket Scrapping page.

Best Friends

Time for another layout, this time it was an all-scrap layout (other than the cardstock base). I had a cute pic of my daughter and her BFF that I pulled off her iPod- this is a treasure chest of cute pics my kids take of them and their friends. I love uploading from their iPods every few months to see all the silly little photos they've taken!

I had been working on a layout for a class I'm teaching next month, and had a pile of scraps leftover from the kits I had put together. Several strips and scraps of paper from the American Crafts valentine collection, along with a scrap of red cardstock I had punched hearts from. All these scraps were making their way to the recycle bin when inspiration struck! Since I was working with a single photo, and had a pile of scraps I wanted to use, this sketch from Sketchabilities fit my needs perfectly:

 

 

After building layers with all of the scraps, I went over to my favorite challenge blogs for ideas on how to embellish. Twisted Tuesdays has a fun challenge going on right now, to use Washi Tape, and something that begins with the letter "T", "A" "P", or "E". I put 2 little strips of Washi up in the top right corner next to my little birdy rub-on (also from my stash, probably 5 years old!!), and then threaded a piece of Twine (for the letter "T") through the button. =) T

Oh So Cozy

First and foremost, I want to say congrats and welcome back to Sketches in Thyme! I decided to end my 3 year run with the blog in August, and it has been taking a little rest for a few months. But now it is up and running again as Vanessa breathes new life into it! This is wonderful news because SIT is a great resource for sketches and fabulous design. So, since there is a new sketch to play along with, and since I have finally gotten my scrapping mojo back...here's the latest SIT sketch:

 

and here's how I interpreted it:

 

 This was a fun sketch to play with, I love a simple single-photo page with lots of white space and room for layers! For my colors I chose the current challenge over at Color Q:

 

I LOVE the combo of Poppy, Grey, and White with the Indigo and Pool Party! And even though I didn't have ANY of those colors in my photo, I think it works just fine. Besides, life's too short to worry about "do my papers match my pics"...just have fun and scrap!! 

I also used 3 other favorite challenges to this layout. 1-They are playing with GLITTER at Child's Play Challenges, so I used fabulous glitter stickers from my stash for the word "cozy". I also sprayed my white background with indigo glimmer mist, but I don't think that really shows in the pic. 

2-The challenge this week at Pile it On is WOOD, so I pulled out my wood grain embossing folder and used it on the indigo cardstock behind my photo mat. 

3-Finally, at Lasting Memories, their challenge is to use a snowman. I thought this would be the perfect LO to incorporate a snowman embellie, but I searched and searched in my craft room and I had nothing! No snowmen on ribbons, no snowmen stamps, no snowmen stickers, what is a scrapper to do?? Well, I went over to good old Pinterest, searched "snowman embellishment" and found this adorable card with a little Jillibean Soup snowman stamp on it: So...I pulled out the pencil and pens and drew one of my own, thank you Pinterest! And thank YOU for stopping by! =) T

Together

2nd post for the day! Sundays=craft day for me, and I've been having a blast! Here's my next LO to share:

 

As always, I turned to a few of My Favorite Blogs for the jumping-off point. I decided to go with the sketch at Stuck?! that worked really well for the 3 pics of I had. 

 

Ialso wanted to do the POLKA DOT challenge at Frosted Designs, so I went back to the same Dear Lizzy 6x6 paper pad I used in my previous post, by cutting those red and yellow pieces in 1/2, it gives the illusion that it was a much larger piece that stretches across the page, I love that! The pink chevron strip is actually the little strip at the top of the paper when you tear it from the pad, it was just too cute to toss!  Enjoy what's left of the weekend, =) T

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Good Sunday morning! Continuing my scrapping journey today with another "lost pic". Over xmas break I was scrolling through old and abandoned pics on the computer and found lots of photos that I had originally chose NOT to scrap, maybe the quality wasn't great, or it didn't fit with the theme of the page, but now looking back there are some great moments I passed over. Here's one:

This was taken at a family xmas party a few years back, and it just captures such a nice moment between my mom and niece. How could I have passed this one over? To get started with this layout, I first used this sketch from Unscripted:

 

I think it's meant for cards, but I'm a scrapper and can ALWAYS find a way to make a sketch work for me! The lines across the page  gave me the chance to use an assortment of papers from a Dear Lizzy 6x6 pad. I have used this pad over and over and over, and really had very little left to work with, but little strips were all I needed! I then popped over to Desert Island Crafts Challenge and used 3 items from their itinerary: METAL (I have 3 copper brads under the photo), NOT A CARD, and JOURNAL IT. My journaling for this LO is short and sweet, "Not sure what they're laughing about, but it sure is funny". =) T

On the Sidelines

Hello! So if you haven't already noticed, my layouts are very soccer-heavy! I had at one time considered setting aside an album devoted strictly to all the soccer layouts (as I do for my xmas and Halloween albums), but then I thought it would just be a bit too much soccer!! Between my 2 kiddos who have been playing since they were 3 (and are now 12 and 13), and my husband who is always coaching at least one of their teams, we seem to eat sleep and breathe soccer! Me? I'm the "family historian"...I gladly watch every game with a travel mug of caffeine and my camera in hand ready to capture the next amazing moment on the field! This layout shows one of those moments OFF the field, just a simple pic of father and son watching my daughter's game- I just love this photo!

As always, I had the help of some great challenge blogs to get me scrapping! First I started with this fabulous sketch from Sketch N Scrap:

You can see I had to tweak the sketch a little to make it work for my 1-photo layout, I added 2 pieces of the rust dot paper in place of the pics. i also played with the fun color combo from Perfectly Rustics, the orange and greens worked well with the grassy green photo. 

 

And for one final challenge, I did the "D is for Dazzle" challenge over at The ABC Challenge. Not sure if you can tell from this photo, but see the red spots here and there on the layout? Those are dots Stickles I added along with the splats of green glimmer mist! They are much more sparkly up close and personal!  Thanks for stopping by! =) T