A Military Send-Off

On Friday, we attended a farewell dinner for our 19-year old nephew, Sean, who has joined the Marines. He ships off today. I made him this card:

 

I used a double-sided patriotic paper for the background, topped it with a license plate die-cut, then added tiny little silver rhinestones where the license plate screws would go. While I think the little license plate die-cut is adorable overall, I'm not a fan of the whole "USA #1" sentiment ... especially during this election year as Americans are making it clear to the world that we have lost our collective minds. I don't think national pride should be a competition. There are things I love about our country, as I suspect is the case for people in many other countries. Pride yes, and respect as well. It's actually the license plate's subtitle of "Land of the Free Because of the Brave" that struck me as so appropriate for the occasion. Good luck, Sean. We're proud of you and wish you the best.

NSD: Any Way But Straight Sketch Challenge

I really like sketch challenges, so I knew I wanted to play along with the "Any Way But Straight" challenge at Scrapbook.com. The objective was to use the provided sketch any way except as is; in other words, you had to flip, rotate or otherwise change up the sketch when making your layout. Here's my page: 

And this is the sketch that inspired it, designed by Bev Code:

As you can see, I flipped the sketch horizontally so that the title was on the right and the embellishments on the left. I doubled the number of photos and moved the photo block up above the striped strip of paper, which I cut down to hold the embellishment cluster. I added journaling to the empty space on the bottom right. I really like how it turned out. 

Next week I'll be sharing some of the kids crafts and other projects I've been doing lately, then I'll be back the following week with more of the scrapbook pages I made on National Scrapbook Day.

NSD Challenge: Life in Full Color

As soon as National Scrapbook Day challenges are announced, I go through all my photos and start planning which I can use for each challenge. Sometimes it's really easy. A pet challenge, a Disney challenge, or a selfie challenge all make it pretty clear what the photos need to be. That was not the case with the "Life in Full Color" challenge. The directions specified that the page should have a rainbow of color on it. 

I didn't have girly photos that needed a rainbow or photos of actual rainbows to scrap. I didn't want to just plop a rainbow randomly on a page. For a similar challenge in 2014, I made a layout about dyeing Easter eggs that worked well with the rainbow theme. I didn't want to go that same route again. Then, serendipity.

I'm enrolled in the free CreativeLive class called 30 Days of Genius. Each day, I get an email sending me to an interview of a fascinating and successful creative genius. The interviewee on the morning of National Scrapbook Day? LeVar Burton. I'm a little bit too young to know him from Roots; I know him from Reading Rainbow. The theme song popped into my head and with it, this idea:

I'd had no plan for how to scrap a photo of Trevor backwards on the couch reading, but it worked really well with the Reading Rainbow lyrics as a title. The layout came together really quickly and I'm happy with how it turned out. It's completely different than the many other layouts I've made of Trevor reading.

NSD Wrap-Up: Washi Tape Challenge

I made this layout about our 2015 fair visits for the "Show Us Your Washi" National Scrapbook Day challenge at Scrapbook.com. How many different uses of washi do you see? 

 

There are three. I used a glittery blue washi tape to create a border, wrapped a strip of red/white striped washi around the title and journaling cards, and punched stars from white cardstock that I'd covered with gold polka dot washi.

Incidentally, the title? Of the four letters in the word fair, the only letter sticker I had left on the sheet was the a. The f is an upside-down j, the r is cut down from a k, and the i is the rest of the k plus the dot from the j.

Any of you entering in your county fair? Trevor and I are filling out the last of our entry forms and paying entry fees this week! Can't wait for the fair(s)!

NSD Wrap-Up: Celebrate in Style

This is the layout I made for the "Celebrate in Style" challenge on National Scrapbook Day. The only guideline was to scrap a party. I used the photos from Trevor's 9th birthday party at the ice rink to make this page:

 

It's hard to tell unless you enlarge it, but the background paper has teensy colorful polka dots in bright colors that coordinate with the balloons. I didn't want to go a winter route with the colors or decor on this page. True, there's ice and the kids are in jackets, hats and gloves, but it was 100° outside on this June day and using snowflake paper would have felt really weird. I like how clean and simple the page is. I may have to repeat the design soon, because Trevor is having his 10th birthday party at the ice rink next month!