Wanna Story

Supplies : Pattern Paper by My Minds Eye; Flowers by Petaloo; Cardstock and Brads by CTMH; Foam Letter Thickers by American Crafts

Another layout done at Julie's and inspired by Simple Scrapbooks. The left page was another lift from one of the magazines with the right my created companion. Caitlyn has always been such a little book worm. I can read story after story and still she'll say she wants another one! I adore that she loves reading as much as I do and hope that at least this will be something that is easy for her. She's had a love of books since around her first birthday and it's blossomed and grown to where she loves to read parts of the books she knows best outloud with me.

The basic design is very linear and simply blocked which made this layout super easy and super fast to put together. I added just a few dotted flowers with cute microbead middles for some pop and with the fun papers and cute quote title it didn't feel like I needed to add much more. Some big brads were placed here and there on some of the orange dots to give a little more dimension to the layout and in the upper left corner of the lefthand layout to help anchor the flower a little more. I love how well these papers complemented the colors of Caitlyn's shirts and the books in the pictures.

You have so much Personality

Supplies : Sultry Paper by Basic Grey; Cardstock, brads, photo clips, Hodge Podge Alpha Stamps, and Chipboard by CTMH; vinyl letter Thickers by American Crafts; Flowers unknown (RAK item)

Thanks for the welcome back ladies! It's so nice to post again. Caitlyn cracks me up. She is always being so silly and has so much personality that it's a daily roller-coaster ride just being around her. This layout was made at Julie's. She has a great stash of Simple Scrapbooks magazines and since I don't buy any magazines myself, it's great inspiration to look through the ones she has and see what is new out there. The left side of the layout was inspired by one of the layouts in the magazines (can't remember which, lol). I remember her asking what do you do with really pretty paper like this (the one I used in the layout). I didn't quite know myself since usually I just keep it in my stash since it's so pretty I don't want to cut it, lol. But I think this approach worked gorgeously.

The pictures were just supposed to be of Caitlyn's silly hair but as I started to put the layout together I realized that they showcased a lot of Caitie's funny personality, crazy hair and all. The journaling and title evolved to be more about Caitlyn's personality and how I had snapped the photos to show off Caitlyn's hair but instead of a simple photo shoot, Cait gave me a myriad of funny faces to show off instead. I remember the inspiration layout was only an 8.5x11 and used just one photo. I put the two photos together and used the basic design enlarged to 12x12. I really liked the look of the photos flush like that and carried it onto the right page. I loved the very simple lines and unobstructed view of that beautiful paper. The added plus... it really complements my blocks of photos ^_~

Color Challenge #31

Did anyone miss the color challenges while I have been MIA? Well surprise! I have one for you this week if you want to play ^_~ And it uses one of the new colors as well. Remember to play all you need to do is make a new project using at least 3 of the colors from the challenge. Send me link to your artwork and I will post it too this thread as well! Have fun :D

Juniper
Olive
Honey
Cocoa

Ashley's Awesome Sk8Rbella
Sparkle's Adorable Riley Card
Jena's Darling Cupcake Mouse Card
Kim's Amazing Star Birthday Card

My Sample:


Supplies: Perfect Day Paper, Olive Buttons, Chocolate Waxy Flax, Chocolate Large Alpha, Chocolate Alpha, Friendship Large Alpha, Classmate Alpha, Juniper Brads, Col White Ribbon, Flower Metal Accent, and Cardstock by CTMH; Rub-ons by Bo Bunny; Clear Buttons by Doodlebug; Be Barefoot accent Unknown

I grew up always playing outside barefoot. My mom didn't ever have a problem with this, after all she grew up in the Philippines and went barefoot everywhere out of necessity. And it's funny that I would be so concerned with my girls having shoes on when they play outside. After all, I'm still going around barefoot, why shouldn't they? Well, I think the answer to that is that I'm way more protective of their perfect little piggies. But my girls follow the barefoot heritage of both me and my mom and run around barefoot outside as well. It reminds me of the many summers my brother and I spent outside barefoot and when I remember those times, it doesn't seem like such a terrible thing that they are running through the grass without their shoes on.

I really want to say thank you so much to all of you that posted comments or emailed me with support and encouragement about Caitlyn, or even just to say hi over the past couple months. It makes all the difference to read your encouraging thoughts and quick check ups. So thanks! We've been doing pretty good the past month. It's still a bit hectic, but I think I've got it down to where I can make some time to create at least a couple times a week. Now it's whether or not I can get the creative flow to work when I get that time, lol. Hopefully though, I'll be able to start doing the color challenges consistantly again ^_~. I've got some fun artwork scheduled to post throughout this next week of the very few layouts I've done over the past couple months, lol. So stayed tuned :D Hugs to all my readers out there! Thanks for sticking around!

Hiatus

Thanks so much for the emails and comments ladies! I know I haven't been on and some of you have missed me posting stuff. The first week and a half I just hadn't been making time to get on the computer like I used to or even create, but after that Cait has been in speech therapy and then also getting diagnosed so we've been really busy with that. When she starts school I'm sure to go nuts since she'll still be in therapy as well as going to school. But she loves her therapy time and her speech pathologist is such an awesome gal so I'm sure it's just me that will go crazy with Cait having so much to do. Until I get some of my bearings back the color challenges and my art are most likely going to be on hiatus. I will post if I manage to make anything and I'm hoping that sometime in September I can start on the color challenges again and this time with the new colors!

Onto some family info, Caitlyn has finally been diagnosed. She had PDD NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified). Basically she has some symptoms of both Autism and Aspergers but doesn't fit into either. PDD is on the autism spectrum disorders and Caitlyn has more of the Asperger symptoms than the Autism ones. She has above average IQ on her visual intelligence but below average IQ on her verbal. What the psycologist told me was that basically the right side of her brain is developing and working great but the left side of her brain is having a hard time. The good news is that with therapy and early intervention she should be able to attend regular school (she will most likely need speech therapy for the first few years of grade school still as well) and with our help can learn to cope with or overcome some of her learning challenges. She'll most likely grow up to be a fully functioning adult which was a big worry for us when we were told she could have autism, so we are happy to finally have an official diagnosis and a more specified treatment plan. Our speech pathologist had already started us on a great path to helping teach Caitlyn more efficiently and Cait has been catching onto social conversation so much quicker than before. And now with a diagnosis and some recommendations from the psycologist we can change her IEP to fit her even better for school too.

For some other good news, Paul's internship has credits now so he won't be doing a full load of school plus tutoring and then plus the intership. The internship will just take the place of one of his other classes, and since he's working on a documentary he'll be able to put his work from the internship on his professional resume :D That means he won't be gone from home as long which is a big deal to me. I love having my hubby around ^_~ And not to leave her out, Audrey is doing great. She's talking up a storm almost at Caitlyn's level already and is starting to learn to count. She still has trouble with some colors, but she's getting it and is finally letting me read more to her. It was so different with Caitlyn since Cait LOVED books even at just over one and always wanted story time (still does, lol. In fact she just got 3 more new books!). Audrey is also starting to be night time potty trained, yay! So the day of the diaper is almost at an end! All that plus their aunt spoiled them with stuffed animals this last week. There is a huge bear, bigger than Audrey, so Audrey didn't sleep in her bed last night, she slept on top of the huge bear on the floor, lol. Just some of what's been going on with us. Thanks for all the check ups everyone ^_~

Color Challenge #30

Alright, I'm up on time this week ^_~ Colors for the challenge are inspired by my hubby's wardrobe since this next week it's his birthday. To play use at least three of the colors and send me a link to your art so I can add it here to this post. Have fun!

Cranberry
Grey Wool
Black
Bamboo

Barb's Lovely Envelope Card
Marcia's Hot Bikahbella Card
Sparkle's Adorable Teachabella Card
Jami's Cute Fella and Bella Cards
Noelle's Classy Make It Count Card
Laurel's Sweet Oh-So-Pretty Bella
Jena's Darling Turn that Frown Layout

My Sample:


I was actually looking for a picture of Paul to use when I found this picture of Caitlyn. I have scrapped all her baby photos and this was a duplicate that had been changed out of a frame, but it fit so perfectly with the color challenge that I had to scrap this photo as well. Plus back then I didn't scrap the stories, so here was an opportunity for me to write a little about how much I loved to make Caitie wear hats ^_~ Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

No Mojo?

So all week long I've felt like I've had no mojo. But after looking at all I made this week I'm thinking that I either I did okay without mojo, or I had at least some mojo, lol.


Supplies: Life Delights Paper Pack and Stickease; Tag Book; Chipboard Alphas and Flowers; Gold Eyelets; Lilac Mist, Blush, and Chocolate CS; Garden Green Safety Pin; Blush dot ribbon; All CTMH

I started with this tag book since I couldn't get in the mood to scrap earlier this week, but have been wanting to use up my old papers. I've had this little tag book since I signed up with CTMH almost 2 years ago, lol. Just easy peasy stuff using life delights and the matching stickease. It used up most the rest of my papers so that made me happy :D

Supplies: Life Delights Paper Pack and Stickease; White Daisy Paper Flowers; Hollyhock Accents and Ricrac; DE Bookplates; Boutique and Sans Small Alpha Stamp Sets; Chocolate, Cocoa, and Col White CS; All CTMH

I used almost all the rest of the scraps of my Life Delights paper with this layout. I have one scrap left. It's of the butterfly paper and I already have an idea of what to use it on. So one more page and my life delights will be another paper pack to add to the list of all used up ^_~

This was my huge use-up-all-of-this-paper-pack-now project that took me about 4 days. I have had this paper F-O-R-E-V-E-R, lol. So I thought I needed to just use it up. Here are the 7 pages I made from this paper. I created only one layout way back when and had nearly the entire paper pack to use when I started this project.

I used the Imagine book for this first one. I've never used this layout before because I was always intimidated by the slanted cut photos but they were actually really easy to do. Everything CTMH on this layout except the rubons on the Temple picture, they are from Basic Grey.

It's been a long time since I've used a Cherish layout and this is another sketch I've never used before either just because I usually like to only do 2 page layouts when I have 5 or more pictures. But I really wanted to keep this one open and even with all the space, I like the way it turned out. All products CTMH.

The layout that I did forever ago was of one of Audrey's Blessing portraits. She was holding a red rose and just looking at it and I had bought these papers just for that. These were some of her at home blessing pics and I thought I might just use these up to go along with the theme I started. This one uses a new Aug '08 pagemaps layout. I altered it to fit more pictures. The transparency overlays are by My Minds Eye, the rhinestones are just regular craft rhinestones and all the rest is CTMH. On all three of these double page layouts I used the B&T as my base pages as well instead of cardstock. This helped use up the papers quicker as well as not using up my cardstock which I want to use with new papers :D

And this was the last layout of this set to use up all those funny shaped scraps. I didn't embellish very much on this one since it already has so much going on with the layers, and it felt a bit like a quilt so I simply added some edge stitching to bring it all together. And yay this paper pack is now history! I'm going to try to use up a lot of old papers this month since the new CTMH catty has come out. I won't get to order anything this month, but hopefully by September I'll have a crafting budget again and can get some new fun stuff ^_~