GreenChicken31

  I finally am getting around to scrapbooking some more.  I made this paper background for a different reason, but it just became the perfect background paper for this layout.  The watercolor top brings out the rainbow goggles so much.  This has been such a strange year, but I'm glad we got to enjoy some water and sand.  I worked on this layout while I was cooped up inside from all the wildfire smoke.  I'm so glad for my clean rainy air again!  

So this is a layout that I made for a mixed media challenge and it isn't at all how I planned for it to turn out.  It started with a long hunt on finding my daughter's girl scout camp photos.  I knew that there were more of her at camp, but never found them.  I wanted to do a layout filled with triangles, but I couldn't cut a decent triangle for the life of me.  Then I saw a cool sketch with hexagons and planned on doing that.  I happily made a shape on my silhouette and then used it to cut all my photos.  I was playing around, but couldn't get my photos to line up like the sketch.  I was super puzzled and then I realized why.  I made pentagons instead of hexagons!  I played for a long time with my pentagons trying to get a layout that I liked and eventually came up with this flower shape.  Overall, it's a fun layout that is drastically different then my normal layouts, so it's a refreshing change.

Here is my crazy hair layout that I made for a NSD throwback sketch challenge.  I have been super into hand stitching on my layouts lately.  I love the texture it makes, but it definitely takes a long time to do.  I have a ton of cross stitching floss that came from my aunt when she passed away.  My aunt was into cross stitch and so was my oma.  And my mom still does cross stitch all the time, but my mom likes to do ones that have beads and buttons.  I don't have the patience for those big projects, but I don't mind it in little bits on my scrapbook pages.  I also used water color and gel medium on my page.

I'm slowly working my way through scrapbook layouts.  I didn't make a single page for my littlest guys 2018 scrapbook.  Now I have one!  I found paper with dino footprints in my stash, so I thought that would be cute to use to document his first steps.  I had to dig for a long time to see if I had anythings else that was dinosaur related.  I eventually found this dino paperclips.  It took a while for me to get the paperclip part off of the red dino, but it was worth the effort.

I can't believe how much scrapbooking I've been doing lately. I love the colors of this page.  It reminds me of a cool summer day.  I did some sewing on the background to add texture.  I wanted to add some Gel Medium with the stencils, but it was all dried up!  And because of the strange times we are in, I wasn't going to be able to drive down (it's a literal down because I live on a plateau and Michaels is at the bottom lol) to the store to get some.  I did order some online, but who knows how long it will take to get here.  Anyways, I used some white gouache paint instead.  It's not as shiny and opaque looking as I wanted, but it works.

I just made this fun and bright double page layout.  It uses a lot of rainbow and birthday themed paper from Bella Blvd, Pebbles, American Crafts, and Recollections.  My daughter's jazz dance was party themed.  The costumes were so bright and colorful, so I had to use as much bright paper as possible.  But because the papers were all so crazy, I had to go really easy on the embellishments.  There is just a little bling, a few buttons, a couple of stickers, and one die cut on this page.

I think I have already made more layouts this year then I did all of last year.  I have found that I can work on a page in the morning while my kids are doing some work on the computer, that is if my littlest guy isn't asking me for snacks, to get a toy out and set up, or to help him in the bathroom! This bold layout has a little tab that pulls out to show the ticket we used to get into the zoo.  The tickets bright green color helped me choose the paper for the layout.  If you look carefully, you can find a toucan, a polar bear, and a flamingo on my layout.  We didn't see many animals.  We just saw a lot of lights.  This was one of the few activities we could do, because of his brother's concussion he got on Christmas day while running through the house.  No running in the house has become a completely valid rule.

Wow, what a year this has become.  I'm so bummed that my daughter only got to dance at one competition this year.  Thinking about all the money spent for dance costumes that only got to be worn once is rather depressing.  Then recital probably will not happen and we already bought all the costumes for that too!  So many things being cancelled is very overwhelming.  Then the homeschooling stuff has been a small disaster.  All three of my kids need my attention all the time.  I don't know how I even managed to get this layout done.  It's a simple layout so that helps.

Here is my second layout for the year!  It's a bit of a challenge to try and make three different layouts using the same photos.  For my daughter's layout, I pulled the blue from her shirt for inspiration for the paper I used.  Blue typically isn't a color that screams fall, but the this hue really reminded me of the cool refreshing air fall brings.  Her layout also has three gnomes on it!  I kind of feel like I need to put gnomes on all my layouts now. lol!  Back when she was little, I put a tiny ladybug on all her pages hidden somewhere.  It's kind of a fun challenge.

I just wanted to share this layout I made for my littlest guy.  Just like on his brother's page, this layout also has three gnomes on it.  I really love those little gnomes.  They are so stinkin cute!  I did some hand stitching on this layout for the title.  I love the look of hand stitching and really want to add it to more of my layouts in the future.  So far I have started the year strong and made two layouts so far!  I home I can keep up the pace.  I really enjoy scrapbooking so much.