Love you, Mom

Welcome back to another sketch with SSD, but an all new month with new guests and a brand new stamp release! This month we have Angi Barrs as our sketch artist and this week we have such a fun sketch to work with!

You’re getting a sneak peek at the new set being released this month, Beautiful Botanicals. If you are a fan of Dandelion Dreams then you will absolutely LOVE this new set!

Another fun thing happening this month is the team is being sponsored by Scor-Pal and each member of the DT received a Scor-Buddy! I have the original larger sized Scor-Pal and while I love it, I am definitely enjoying a little bit of extra desk space when working with the Scor-Buddy! It’s the perfect size for cards and in this case helped to add a little dimension.

I scored at half an inch across the card back five times so that when flipped over the impression lines would show through to the front in place of a block like in the sketch. I love being able to add some visual interest and texture to my cards with such little effort!

Here’s the sketch we’re working with, we’d love to see what you come up with!

Stop by the SSD Blog for more Skipping Stones Design inspiration!

Grandma

I was lucky enough to spend some time with my family at the end of December and beginning of January this year. I celebrated my birthday there, laughed and relaxed, but the best was just being there with my family and for the kids to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa. These two layouts were another Soul Scrappers challenge with a theme of “grandmas” and were easy to pull together with this great photo of my mom and the kids.

I used some different themes on each of these but used the same layout. I love the differences between Gwynie’s and Brady’s pages.

Bloom

I created this page a couple weeks ago for a challenge on Soul Scrappers and since spring is hopefully not far off, I’m hoping these flowers brighten up my day! ;)

The challenge had been to use flower patterned paper, a flower cluster corner and at least 9 flowers on your layout. I paired up a MME collection with some chipboard flowers to create a blooming garden.

The journaling talks about Gwynie growing up and while I will miss her at this age, I’m excited to seem the beautiful woman she will blossom into. She has a fun personality and I’m glad it comes through in these pictures.

Cowboy Brady

Switching gears from Christmas yesterday, I have a Halloween layout to share today. I still have so many Halloween things, like the pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins, etc. to scrapbook, but I’ve decided to let them just come instead of forcing them since the results will be better I’m sure.

I’ve had these papers and products for awhile and finally put this page together. Everything was from the old Cosmo Cricket “Wanted” collection aside from a few buttons and the washi tape. It was fun making that discovery that they would work so well together.

We’re going to a friends birthday this weekend so I don’t plan on scrapping a lot, but hopefully I have a few new things to share next week!

Joy

This may seem a little odd since we are getting closer to Spring each day, but since it’s been snowy I figured now was as good a time as any to share a Christmas themed layout!

Now, before I share these pages I have to admit that I have my fair share of weird quirks and/or mannerisms, and I often hold my self accountable for things that probably no one else cares about. ;) Once of those things is the way my thought process works on scrapbooking. See, I make each kid a book, and typically I try to do the same or very similar pages in their books. One, it’s easier because all the materials are there and I just cut and do things in two’s and two….well it’s easier, really. ;)

Sometimes though I change it up and will do different layouts for the same photos, but mainly I do the same layout with the same product, maybe only varying the colors. In this case I just varied a couple colors to put these together.

Both pages use die cuts and papers from Crate Paper, and the title was cut out on my Cricut. For Brady’s layout I used blue and orange, and for Gwynie’s I used purple and pink.

It’s such an easy way for me to get pages done for each kid and I love how fast it goes once the idea is already there!

I’m stuck on some pages now because I have several holidays worth of Halloween, Christmas and Easter to scrapbook, but I’m not feeling super inspired by those pictures/events right now, ha. Hopefully some “holiday mojo” comes my way so I can get those done!

Spring Pix

Each year the school does spring pictures, and typically each year my kids forget to tell me about it so I generally don’t end up purchasing those pictures, ha. The one year they told me (and I remembered) I actually bought those pictures, but that was about 2 years ago. Enter this photo, the ONE spring picture I’ve purchased of Brady’s. ;)

It’s a different pose from the normal school pictures which is nice, but sometimes the background/props are weird, or my kids didn’t do their hair nice that day since they forgot and didn’t tell me, or they wore bulky winter clothes in a clearly “springy” background. Luckily though, the one year we were all of the same page I ended up with this cutie picture of Brady. Such a baby back then, this was in Kindergarten! Hard to believe my little man was so little! :)

A little birdie

I love that I can combine different sets to create a new look and use a fun sketch at the same time!

We’re back with another sketch for SSD and the DT and our guests have some fun inspiration with the sketch!

I paired up the bird from Garden Kiss with the sentiment from Heartsong to create this simple little number!

I love that this bird is a silhouette and can be treated in different ways for different looks. In this case I had some fun patterned paper going on so paired the bird with a matching color. This set is also fantastic for stamp kissing and is just so versatile.

Make sure to stop by the SSD blog and visit the rest of the DT!

Love & Joy

We can be silly and don’t act quite like grown ups, but that’s one of the many things I love about my relationship with Jake! :)

There was a song lyric challenge (SLC5) at Soul Scrappers previously and I realized I hadn’t shared that layout yet. The challenge is to be inspired by the lyrics from Celine Dion’s "Because You Loved Me.”

I will be honest, I couldn’t decide what photo to use for this and had a hard time until committing to use a strip of photo booth photos from a work party last year. From there it just seemed to click for me and everything fell into place.

The idea behind the challenge is to take a lyric or a word and use that on your layout. The patterned paper (Bo Bunny) was perfect as it actually held several of the words and even a phrase or two from the song!

I used a punch to create the movie strip piece for our photos, and then added some little embellishments in to round out the page. The mini bag holds a tag I journaled on. It talks about how Jake makes me laugh he will be silly with me, but that while we may grow old together, I hope we’ll never grow up. :)

Here’s the tag pulled out.

I have a few more layouts to share, still working on making a dent in my huge stack of photos. :)

Sassy Cats Release!

Welcome to Sketch Challenge 115 and the release of Sassy Cats! If you just came from Taylor’s blog, you are in the right place. If you just happened along my blog today, start at the beginning of the hop at Skipping Stones Design. The entire hop order is there and you can hop from blog to blog with ease.

Be sure to hop along and leave comments on all the fabulous designers’ blogs. This month we are welcoming Cyndi Bundy and Barb Turpin to our team as Guest Designers! Kazan Clark will be providing all the fabulous sketch inspiration this month including the sketch we're using in today's hop!

 

Sassy Cats is such a funny set filled with great cat sayings for all the cat lovers out there! 

Here’s the sketch we’re working with today!

Also, the Tweet Heart sale has been extended! You can still Buy 3 and Get Heartsong #2 FREE before you can buy it! See the SSD blog for more details!

Head over to Barb's blog for some more Skipping Stones Design inspiration!

Wendy J.
Karen
Kazan
Shannan
Cyndi
Taylor
Kandi
Barb
Wendy P.
Stephanie
Jingle
JoAnn
Katie

Feature Friday!

It’s my turn to post on the SSD blog today! For the month of February Garden Kiss is our featured set and I wanted to show off some of the smaller stamps in this set. Birds, butterflies and prints are the larger stamps in this versatile set, but I choose to focus on the circles in this set for a simple little valentine for my guy.

I started off by making a heart mask and stamped in the center of the mask so only the inner heart shape would remain making it a one layer card. Once that was complete I outlined the shape and added washi tape, a few staples and the sentiment from Grunge 2.

A cute little card sure to make him smile, and just one more use you can get out of this fantastic set!

Skipping Stones Sketch #114!

I took a bit of a blogging hiatus for the past few weeks as we’ve been running around like maniacs and feeling super busy. It was needed to stay ahead on our day-to-day happenings, but I really missed it! Hoping some of the craziness subsides and we see some of our time come back to us. ;)

This week we welcome some new guests for February and not only that, but you can get the first peek at a new set being released in April! In case you missed the SSD post yesterday, these talented ladies are joining us for the month of February! Kazan Clark is our Guest Sketch Artist, and we have  Barb Turpin and Cyndi Bundy joining us as our Guest DT members!

First up, here’s the sketch we have to work with this week.

I choose to use Victorian Summer and some pretty floral patterned paper (Crate Paper) for a simple birthday card. You can never have too many of those in your stash!

For the large flower I stamped in Red Riding Hood ink on Neutrals White cardstock, and then used an orangeish colored pencil and a blender pen to fill it in.  Funny you would think it would be more of a pink color, but the orange looked best with the ink for the desired effect I was hoping to achieve. The lace was a nice pairing for an elegant/shabby look.

Last, here’s an excellent stamping deal and a peek at a set that is sure to be one of my favorites! You can get Heartsong 2 (the follow up to the super popular Heartsong and Christmas Song) before it’s release in April for FREE today! If you buy any three Skipping Stones Designs stamp sets starting today through next Tuesday before midnight you get Heartsong 2 absolutely free and pre-release!

 

Make sure to stop by our guests and our Design Team to see what they’ve whipped up with this sketch!

Jennifer Ingle

Joann Valderama

Karen Baker

Katie Gehring

Shannon Teubner

Stephanie Mino

Taylor Usry

Wendy Price

Wendy Jordan

Blog Hop Release!

Welcome to Sketch Challenge #110 and the release of Grunge Two!  I have been gone on vacation (Florida was gorgeous!) and unfortunately didn’t receive my Grunge Two set while I was away so I’m not active on the hop, but I can’t wait to get that amazing set because it looks fabulous! Have you seen the amazing inspiration from the rest of the designers?!

This month we are welcoming Candice Fields, Emily Leiphart and Julie Day to our team as Guest Designers!  Pamela Young will be providing all the fabulous sketch inspiration this month including the sketch we're using in today's hop!

Since I don’t have Grunge Two yet I pulled out my much loved original Grunge set to go with this weeks sketch!

 

I wanted to do a masculine thank you card since I never seem to have enough of either so figured this would be a good opportunity to add a fresh card to my stash. Using the diamond plate, splatter and sentiment from Grunge I put together a quick card that is simple enough for any guy.

Thanks for stopping by on the hop today! Make sure to head to the Skipping Stones Design blog for more inspiration!

The Wait

Surprise, another layout! ;)

This was for another challenge on Soul Scrappers. What has been great for me on my layouts that I’ve been working on recently, is that the idea or products are already there, I just needed the push/motivation to get it done. Enter this challenge and a page I’ve had in mind for almost a year is now done!

The EIC6 challenge was to incorporate black and white with any shade of blue. Since those are the Stallion/Peak wrestling colors this worked out perfectly!

I had told Jake my idea for this page and he said it should be easy to get the info together, but for me the hardest part was getting all the stats. ;) Luckily, Brady has a wrestling profile (when you register for tournaments it logs/records all of that) so I was able to figure it out fairly quickly, yay!

Brady puts in so much effort and energy into this sport and I’m so proud of his commitment, dedication and work ethic. Honestly though, the waiting is the worst! We can wait hours between matches some days and have spent 8+ hours at some tournaments on a Saturday. For wrestling up to 6 minutes per match and for only 6ish matches at a tournament that’s a lot of down time!

I hope he looks back on this and remembers his first year wrestling with fond memories!

Beach Babe

I had so much fun playing with the sketch challenge last week at Sketchy Thursdays that I just had to join in again, especially after seeing the sketch!

This page went together super quick. I’m big on simple scrapping and the patterned papers help to lend a bit more flair to an otherwise simple page for me. This sketch is perfect for mixing and matching papers, and I loved these mixed with some pictures of Gwynie and our family at our neighbors house for a birthday party.

Here’s the sketch from Sketchy Thursdays. I did the photos a little different from the sketch to fit the photos I had on hand, but essentially the sketch and inspiration is there. This would also be really fun rotated!

For the Holidays

Welcome to Sketch Challenge #106 and  a Blog Hop to feature many of the wonderful Texture Sets from Skipping Stones Design!  If you just came from Katie's blog, you are in the right place.  If you just happened along my blog today, start at the beginning of the hop at Skipping Stones Design.  The entire hop order is there and you can hop from blog to blog with ease.

Be sure to hop along and leave comments on all the fabulous designers’ blogs.  This month we are welcoming Tosha Leyendekker, Kendra Sand and Windy Robinson to our team as Guest Designers! Jen Del Muro will be providing all the fabulous sketch inspiration this month including the sketch we're using in today's hop! The DT is also being sponsored by Canvas Corp all month long with fun products and fantastic paper!

Here’s my take on this sketch! This sketch was was a little tricky for me, but overall it has a fun whimsy to it.

The background of distressed red dots was stamped with the Blocks and Borders - Dots, and a layer of super cute Canvas Corp stockings paper provides a fun base for the trio of ribbons. The gingerbread man doesn’t actually come from a Christmas set, but is included in the humorous set Funny About Men along with the sentiment.

Here’s the sketch for this week, we’d love to have you join in with us!

Head over to Windy's blog for some more Skipping Stones Design inspiration! A full list of designers will be posted at the SSD blog!