My Sunshine Girl

We have had the most nasty last couple of weeks here in Alabama... lots of just cold, rainy, gray grey days. And the next week looks like more rain is coming! I normally love a rainy day but for some reason, this year, it has really affected me. 

I have some adorable sunshiney pictures of my baby girl and combined with the Shine Bright kit (a couple still available!), it has perked me right up. Colors make me happy!

I'm glad I got more of those resin flowers from Noel's shop... I used THREE on this layout!

After I made my layout, I realized- WOOPS! I made a little journaling error.

I fixed it easily by just handwriting some words to highlight and adhering down on top. Easy! 

Did you see this deal on the NoelMignon facebook page? Yeah I thought you might have missed it! 

Seven! (Hey Girl NoelMignon Kit)

Before I dive into the scrumptious NoelMignon "Love Life Kit" (there's a few left!) , I wanted to use a few leftovers from the Hey Girl kit. Since my girl turned seven last month, I wanted to be certain to use these bright, vibrant colors to celebrate & document her! 

I loved that the thickers had a few other little designs mixed into them, including these hearts. I just matted it on some patterned paper as a little accent.

As I mentioned in my video, I wanted to try spraying the felt bows with a little mist to see how it would look. I love the results! I didn't completely saturate them because I liked bits of white peeking through, but you could definitely completely change the color if you'd like! 

Hello, Quiet Days

This is one of those layouts that has been "percolating" for a while. The journaling is me, trying to be honest and true, along with a reminder to myself to savor this time. (Scroll down if you are interested in reading the journaling!)

***The Miss Nelson kit is sold out, but the smaller version, the Miss Nelson Project Life kit, is still available!*

To create the title, I used my handy dandy Silhoeutte machine and then added to it with one of the awesome chalkboard style labels in the Miss Nelson kit. I love the contrast between the black and the pastels! To make the "shadow" effect behind the word "days," I used the distress marker first, and then went over it with a white gel pen. 

I was inspired by a layout my friend (and former DT member) Leslie Ashe created a few weeks ago and wanted to do a BUNCH of hearts. I love how they look layered on top of the scribble and paint splatters on the patterned paper. 

Y'all know I love my sequins, and these added just the right amount of random sparkle to the dots on the paper. :) 

Journaling reads:

"For a very long time, I have counted down the days 'til my oldest would be 8 and my baby would be 4. In my head, that would be the perfect equation of ages. they would all be roughly interested in the same activities, there wouldn't be nap times to contend with - nor diapers and bottles. I  had longed to be a mama for so long and babyhood turned out to not be my forte`. 'When they're older,' I thought, 'THEN I can have a handle on this whole mama thing.' (Ha!) I suddenly realized that the ambiguous "then" is all of a sudden NOW. My loud days are now quiet mornings with one little girl at home. Lord, let me embrace the NOW with a passionate and brave heart. I don't want to miss a minute of it." 

Happy Camper

If you didn't get a chance to swing by the NoelMignon facebook group last week, you really missed out... but there is still plenty of inspiration to be found from our "Summer Camp." 

This was one of my challenges from last week, using the "Our Summer" kit. My challenge was to use something from nature. I used some twigs and grabbed the twine from the kit and made a fun frame around my photo block. 

You can click here to see our amazing group members' take on this challenge... I was so blown away with the participation from this group! 

What a great week we had... I'm so pleased with all the inspiration I now have for more scrapping! Won't you come join us? 

Signs of Summer

I dove right into the summery Beach Blvd. kit this week and had so much fun documenting some of the pics I had from last summer. I had a little collection of "random" shots that went really well with my theme. I love all of these little peeks into our life. 

I had some pieces of Melrose still sitting on my desk and I loved the look of the gold accents from that kit with this one, so I went ahead and added some of my faves (the good thickers and the lovely vellum). 

I really had fun using the distress paint on this layout. The tone on tone mustard on the yellow card stock adds a really fun dimension. 

There are still a couple of these kits left! Make sure to grab yours now or check out my video if you need more info on it! :)

My MDO class

My MDO class this year was so 

Sweet. Hilarious. Amazing. Silly. Exhausting. Adventurous. Kind. Loud. Loving. 

Goodness, I loved them! I wanted to document this class with a layout using the Country Lane kit (paper only kit still available). 

I started out using the "sunburst" style paper as the background, but then had it accidentally laid on top of the chevron arrow paper and loved how it looked. So I trimmed it down to size and layered them. Love the dynamic there! 

This is such a fun, versatile kit. I love how it sweetly complemented these school pics without being "themey." 

8 is Great

My oldest turned 8 a couple of weeks ago. I've been a mama for 8 years! It's a little unbelievable to me. This sweet girl has grown up a lot in the last year, and while in the past I would have used copious amounts of cotton candy pink and lavender to scrap a page about her, I loved the navy and gold combo that was in the NoelMignon Melrose kit... thrown in with a dash of minty green, and it reflects the fun but maturing tastes of my big girl. 

I used Julie's sketch  but flipped it on its side instead. Remember that awesome Heidi Swapp fringe trim in the Soda Shoppe kit? I wanted to mimic it and added some fringe to the edge of my layers with my scissors. 

I love a simple garland of tags. It's one of my favorite accents to a layout! 

The embellishments in the Melrose kit add so much variety to a cluster of decor- lots of fun texture. 

Spring Cleaning

The Spring Fling Crop on our FB page has been so much fun this week- and full of lots of great inspiration! Make sure to stop by (and you still have the weekend to participate in all the wonderful challenges). 

Friday's Challenge is - Do a little Spring Cleaning! 

I don't know about you, but every month I 

save things from my kits that I want 

"to use later." 

And then I forget about them! 

Today's challenge is about digging up those 

old treasures and putting them to use.

Use 

items from at least THREE old NM kits! 

(If you don't have any old NM kits, then three older 

items). I can't wait to see yours!

This layout uses items from at least 5 different kits, and probably a few more! :) It feels good to use up some of those things in my stash!

When There Were Just Two

I came across this picture the other day and wanted to scrap it... Julie's great sketch was the jumping off point. It was so sweet looking back at the time before we had four kiddos and the bond that my oldest two created in those days. 

I used stitching to create the "circle" around the design that you can see in Julie's sketch. I wanted the colors to be soft and happy, and the white on white stitching adds a great texture without distracting from the photo..

Vellum (my current obsession) adds a softness to the page and the layers. I love that you can see other elements peeking out through it! 

Created with the lovely Daffodil Hill kit! 

Davida Stafford- you've been scraplifted!

We have such a creative community and I love to see how everyone interprets the items in Noel's kits! 

I was browsing our gallery and found this wonderful layout by Davida Stafford, created with the Lasting Love kit. 

And here's my interpretation of it, with the Daffodil Hill kit! (2 left!!)

I loved her oversized photo, however, I didn't have any printed off at that size and since I have a few sickies at home right now, I couldn't go get something printed...so I made do with what I have. 

Since I had a smaller group of photos, I condensed the size of the entire design. I used to green strips of paper with some random borders punched from them to correlate to her red borders. A funky handful of random pennants cut from the chevron paper, underneath a winding ribbon mimicked her banner. A brad embellished flower and painted butterfly were there to balance out her embellishments. And instead of a paper circle behind my layout, I painted a circle with some mist.

Also, have I mentioned yet how AWESOME this kit is? Good grief I love these colors.

If you haven't had a chance yet, you can check out my video review of this month's kit here: 

Sweet As Can Be

I'm trying to re-ignite my passion for the artistic side of scrapbooking, and am taking an online class to boost that. It's been wonderful and really excites my desire to play with paper and mists and all the lovely things we all love! 

For this sweet layout, I wanted to play with watercolors because they matched the soft, romantic feel I wanted to have complement this pics of my daughter. I borrowed some from my three year old and got to painting! 

I dabbled some watercolors on the punched out butterflies and on the paper underneath (through the negative space). I made sure to make the paint go on unevenly because I wanted there to be different levels of opacity on the painted areas.

I so love the pre-stitched banners and embellishments in this kit! They made it super easy to add more texture and dimension to this layout without the extra time. 

I also pulled up part of the My Mind's Eye sticker that says "I love to see you smile," and replaced it with the stitched vellum sticker... I didn't want the boldness of the red glitter on this particular page, so I just took it off and saved it for another page. 

What sort of creative techniques are you enjoying lately?