The weekend means time to craft!

Hi all! Hope you are enjoying the start to your weekend. Mine is being very much enjoyed by me, especially after a very hard week at work. I got through it and now I can spend some quality time in my craft room. I got one layout done, using lots of patterned papers, and I wanted to do something more styled and clean instead of my usual shabby, grungy layouts. Just felt like these papers deserved it.

I loved these pictures I got of Nanouk outside playing in the snow. I used Winter Wishes by Echo Park that I got from Tina's Scrapbooking. I love the colours together. And now you can see how juicy these papers are.

And of course I had to play along with one of the Scrapbooking from the Inside Out challenges for the Harmony kit. I grabbed what I had from the kit leftover and started to work on a fun page, that's just a little artsy.

I guess I was in an aqua mood today!

I hope you'll join along in the SFTIO challenges. If you do, I'd love to leave you some love. Show me your work!

Have a great weekend.

My week's round up

What a week it has been! I would say for the most part, this week has included some extremes in a lot of aspects of my life. There's been frigid temperatures, which would freeze your face, with accompanying frost bite warnings on the radio, and in the same week, temperatures that had the snow melting, and had us thinking about whether or not we actually needed winter boots that day.

There have been moments at work filled with laughter and fun, and days that have been very hard and stressful, and quite honestly had me thinking about throwing in the towel (we've all had days like that, right?). I've had nights with no sleep at all and nights where my slumber was so sound, I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning.

So with all these extremes, I needed a stress-reliever. Something to bring me back to centre from the effects of this swinging pendulum. So of course, that meant scrapbooking.

I got my design team kit for Scrapbooking from the Inside Out this week in the mail, and was absolutely thrilled because I had arranged to go to Auntie Em's Scrapbooking this weekend with some girl friends, and that meant I could work on my assignment, but also be assured of some crazy good fun. We had a blast. I managed to get three layouts done, and I even tried some different styles for my layouts. I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

Then we headed off to a friend's for a lovely dinner with family and friends around the long table, with stories that had us doubled over laughing, crying, shrieking with laughter. The food was amazing, as was the company, and it was just what I needed. And I wasn't the only one that had a hard week. Many of us did, but you wouldn't have known it unless you asked. At the end of the evening we offered our listening ears, our compassion, and our shoulders to cry on, if they were necessary.

It made me think more about harmony, which is the theme of this week's Scrapbooking from the Inside Out kit, and I think that's something more that I need to explore in my life. What brings me true harmony in my life? When do I really feel in balance? So this week I've decided to do a couple challenges at SFTIO based on that theme, which I think will lead me to finding some answers. There are great prompts, quotes, a Pinterest board, and challenges to help you think about what brings harmony in your life.

I hope you'll join me and tackle one or two challenges as well.

Zany to Zen in the same day? I don't think so!

Just a quick post for tonight dear friends. Have you had one of those days where the pendulum of life was swinging from one extreme to another and back again. I've had quite a few of those more recently. So why not scrapbook a page about it? With Scrapbooking from the Inside Out's January kit Harmony, it just seemed to fit. After all, most times I'd love to have some peaceful harmonious moments in my life. But that's not how life works. A lot of the time, we have the more zany moments.

I really enjoyed doing this layout. I tried to use a little more symbolism than I normally do... the embellies on the zany side are more playful and whimsical, while the embellies on the zen side are more elegant.

I really had fun making this layout. It's a crazy picture of me, but I'm glad someone took it because it really shows off part of me.

Snow boots and more fun!

Hi all! Hope you are enjoying your weekend. We finally have resolved the leaking water issue, thanks to the January thaw, which totally threw us for a loop this past week. Once the problem was dealt with by the rental company, I could relax and find some time to do a couple layouts.

I started one last weekend but hadn't finished it before the end of the evening, and the same really goes for the second layout too I guess. I started using this amazing paper, and then realized that I had no snowflake embellishments. Tragic! So of course I had to take a trip to my local scrapbook store and get some.

 Originally I hadn't thought of scrapbooking this photo because it was blown out a bit. They I decided that it was too cute not to. So I started scrapbooking this onto some kraft-coloured paper that I stamped for some additional texture, and filled the right side with some border papers. I like how it offset the cluster in a simple way.

The next layout made me realize that I really like dark backgrounds. They just really make your page pop.

We bought our dog Nanouk some booties for the winter, because he injured his foot on some ice we had a few weeks ago. Once he had them on though, he didn't want to move. I practically had to drag him into the backyard to test them out. Made me laugh! I really loved this paper collection that I picked up at Tina's Scrapbooking  and of course, I had to go back there to get the additional embellishments. I found some white snowflake buttons, and some gorgeous Studio Calico wood snowflakes. I touched them with some Prima chalk ink edgers for added punch.

But the real story that I'm excited about is this Liquitex glass bead gel I used through a snowflake stencil. It added subtle texture and then once dry I hit the beads with some Prima chalk ink edgers in light blue and white.

I love how they just add something extra to the already complex design on the page.

I also bought some crackle paste this week, and I'm definitely going to be posting the results of trying that out. I'm thinking that might go into my art journal first, to experiment.

So I'm heading into the craftroom today to do a little organizing and also play a bit with my new mediums. Have an amazing weekend and remember to link me up to your galleries so that I can leave you some love.

Let's get an exchange going!

Morning everyone! How's 2013 treating you? I'm trying to make a point this year to not only gather a file folder of inspiration that I can use at any time, but also commenting on the layouts, blogs and websites where I find this creativity. I've always been a bit of a lurker in forums, galleries and other social media.

I figured that it's time to get working on being more social, more grateful, and more appreciative of the creative pieces that others have made that provide me with more creative mojo. So I'm starting in January, with galleries, like the one at Scrapbooking from the Inside Out, and I'm going to leave more honest appreciative feedback so that other KNOW that they've inspired me.

I'm hope that you'll let me know where you post your creative works, so that I can show my gratitude to you as well. Leave me a link to your blog so that I can follow you, and hopefully we can exchange some creative juices for 2013!

A Peaceful Walk in the Park

I've been playing more and more with paper layering, and having a fun time of it with the Harmony kit from Scrapbooking from the Inside Out. For this layout, I stuck with a fairly simple background paper, with some coloured splats, ink and some stamping. There are some very fun border strips that come in the kit, so I used those in a couple areas, and then layered a chipboard embellishment, and some paper strips, along with the word art title. I love the fun chipboard pieces, and made a few glossy circle accent pieces to add some whimsy. But my favourite part of this layout has to be the shabby handmade flowers made from the papers.

Walking in the park as a family definitely brings me joy, so I used that theme using the Harmony kit. If I'm feeling out of sorts, what has always worked to bring me a sense of peace and harmony is getting back to nature. 

I've posted a tutorial on how to create your own flowers from paper scraps to complement the kit, on the bulletin board at SFTIO. Make sure you visit today to check out the tutorial and while you are at it, catch all the inspiration.

Looking for some inspiration?

I'm always looking for new sources of inspiration. I use the typical sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr, but most times that's provided a cursory boost to my mojo. I rarely get anything of depth into my layouts by checking out those sites for help. Sure they provide you excellent resources for techniques, sketches, etc. but I need more. I get a wealth of sketches from Creative Scrappers blog.

If you visit the Scrapbooking from the Inside Out message board, you'll find a whole sub-forum dedicated to prompts, challenges, and ideas for how to use this month's kit. I particularly like the quotes that they find. I'm a big user of quotations or lyrics in my layouts and art journal pages.

I love the Pinterest board that the design team uses as well to give ideas for how to scrap using this month's theme. Go check it out, and let me know in the comments what you found that inspired you.

Have a great weekend!

Tiptoe through the tulips - in January?

I'm absolutely thrilled to be posting my first layout for Scrapbooking From the Inside Out! This month's kit is a delightful mix of fun patterned papers and whimsical embellishments. The theme for January is Harmony. 

I've always been known as a nature lover. It's where I feel most happy and at peace. My husband is also a nature lover, and it's part of what makes us work. For our anniversaries, we always head outdoors, to the Tulip Festival, to celebrate our favourite flower and the great outdoors...here in Ottawa, it's also a sure sign of spring. So this layout celebrates the harmony I feel I have with nature, but also with my husband, because we both have this love as a core value.

I used a lot of green accents on this page, not only to balance the yellow, but also because it really feels like nature to me when you use green embellishments.

Make sure you pick up this wonderful kit this month, and visit SFTIO to check out the prompts, challenges and design team layouts for inspiration. I already love this team because it's making me take a deeper look at scrapbooking and why I do it, but also putting more meaning on my pages.