Handprint Sheep

We take our holiday decorating seriously around here. Of course, holiday decorating means holiday crafts! Today Trevor and I made some handprint sheep to add to our growing wall of Easter art. 

I used a foam brush to spread an even layer of black paint on Trevor's hand. He carefully stamped his hand on white paper, making sure his fingers were close together (but not touching) and his thumb was as far away as it would go.

When the paint was dry, we cut out around the sheep. Trevor tore apart cotton balls, making little tufts, which he then glued to the sheep. One googly eye later, and the sheep was done.

 

Trevor ended up making four sheep. They're awfully cute!

This would be a really fun craft to do year after year, with the sheep getting progressively larger!

Working with Sketches

While I love looking through idea books, magazines and galleries, I hadn't used sketches as a starting point for a layout until fairly recently. I wasn't sure how I could make them fit with my pictures or design aesthetic. Now I'm sorry I waited so long to try sketches. I love them! It's a great creative challenge to make a sketch work for me.

In November, I was a Guest Designer at Scrap A Little. Helen Croft makes beautiful layouts and sketches. She assigned me this sketch:

I almost never work with circles, so this was a wonderful challenge for me. I also liked how flexible the sketch was- I could easily turn it 90 degrees and come up with something fun. Here's what I made:

In January, I joined the Design Team at The Scrapping Stamper. Shannon White's sketches are perfect for my style. Here's January's sketch:

And here are the two layouts I made:

Here's Shannon's sketch from February:

And my take:

 Here is Shannon's sketch from March:

 And my two projects:

I'm definitely a fan of sketches now!

National No Housework Day

Flamingo Scraps is participating in a blog hop to celebrate National No Housework Day. Amanda asked me to complete a project that fits the theme. Hmmm... something that ISN'T about housework? Isn't that pretty much everything I scrap about? It's hard to fit the theme when the theme is about NOT doing something! Fortunately, I've been waiting to scrap some photos of Trevor doing some housework for me. I figured that a layout about someone else doing my housework fit the theme somewhat. Here's what I made:

Craft Withdrawal

We spent a glorious four days in Bear Valley this weekend. The weather was gorgeous and they had record amounts of snow. Since it never snows where we live, going to the snow is a big deal for us, something we do only once or twice a year. We did plenty of sledding and had lots of snowball fights. In the evenings, we played games and did puzzles inside the cabin. One thing we didn't do? Crafts. What is a craft addict to do when withdrawal symptoms set in?

This.

Saving Photos

I wrote this post as a member of the Design Team at Flamingo Scraps and wanted to share it here.

Every once in a while, I take a photo that I am dying to scrap with a story I am dying to tell, yet I set it aside and don't scrap it. Here are two such photos:


I took these photos the first time our family went geocaching. For those who don't know, geocaching is essentially a treasure hunt using a GPS. There are more than a million geocaches hidden all over the world and anyone is welcome to search for them. All caches contain a logbook and many also contain trading items or prizes too. From our very first find, we've been completely hooked. I was absolutely dying to create a layout about our new-found love of geocaching.

So why didn't I? Why did I save these photos instead of scrapping them? Basically, it's because I knew that geocaching was not going to be a one-time thing for us. I knew that there would be dozens (hundreds? thousands?) more pictures from our geocaching adventures. I obviously wouldn't be scrapping them all. My absolute favorite layouts are the ones that combine photos from different events to tell a more complete story, so I intentionally waited until we had more geocaching photos, then I put them together to make this layout:

I'm so glad I saved those photos! I love how they work with the other photos in this layout to provide an overview of our first six months of geocaching. For me, saving photos is totally worth it.