It's Spring Time!

The weather is finally starting to feel like Spring here, which means I once again have to juggle being outside in the beautiful weather with my compulsion to sit on the couch with my computer.  There's a balance somewhere in there, I'm sure.

But I have been scrapping even with the beautiful weather, and twice with my friends in real life, which makes any day great! I also pulled the photos off my two memory cards (one for each camera) and used photos from each upload in the pages I made this weekend.  (Also a bonus that our trip to Best Buy today resulted in a new charger for my camera battery, which means new photos with the good camera again!)

It was Danyale's birthday earlier this month, and she celebrated by creating this great party themed kit full of color and texture.

On my point-and-shoot card, I found some photos of Maggie blowing her candles out at her last birthday that are perfect with the colors in this kit.

And the newest installment of Isabel's Project 2011 series was released today, Project April.  I found some great pictures of Johnny enjoying a beautiful February day to use with this sweet kit (and yes, I realize the irony of using April's kit for February photos, but you gotta go with the inspiration!).

There are also matching Alpha and Bits & Pieces kits for Project April.  Now I'm off to scrap a little longer tonight.  

New Etc Shop Opening!

I'm so excited to share that Etc by Danyale has opened up shop at The Digi Chick!  As a member of her team, I've known this for a few weeks now, and have been waiting patiently, well sometimes not, to be able to show off her latest kit, which is only available at her TDC store.

I love the colors (they're some of my favorites right now in scrapping, home decor, and life in general!), so had a lot of fun playing with this kit.

I ended up getting a little deep with my journaling, since I was also making this page for the LYM Challenge titled "Soul Searching," so I apologize for the blurry text, but I loved the page too much to start all over or rewrite anything.

I had another shot of inspiration after a trip to Hobby Lobby this weekend with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law.  I happened to pull out a poster  and said how much I loved the image.  It was a graphic text print, and my sister-in-law reminded me that I could make that!  So I went home and whipped up a similar image, changing the word (the original said, "Imagine") and using some of my favorite fonts.

Now I just have to get it printed and hung up above the desk in my crafty room. :)

Thanks for stopping by today.  I should have some more exciting news tomorrow (if I remember to come back and post)...  I'm trying to make the most of my last week of Spring Break, but here I am with only 4 days left, and I still have a to do list a mile long!  Off to see about crossing a few things off (like maybe, the taxes.  They have to get done still!)

Looking Back and catching up

Catching up on my blog reader this morning, I was reminded of some other layouts I haven't posted here yet.

I used photos of my great grandma that were scanned a few years back to include with my family history research. So far, these photos pretty much sit on my hard drive, moving from computer to computer over the years. Danyale's Looking Back kit inspired me to create with them though.

Created using Looking Back Kit, Looking Back Borders by Etc by Danyale

Created using Looking Back kit, Looking Back borders, and Looking Back Monograms & Decos by Etc by Danyale

Also, I have a freebie cluster available on Danyale's blog using her cute Egg Huntin kit.  It's available here.

Again with the Challenges.

So most of my scrapping this month has been based on completing the LYM challenges.  It was a longer month than I had anticipated, and it feels great to finally be able to come up for air!

The Log Your Memory Forum and Gallery are closed at the moment, pending a server move, so I've linked these pages to other galleries where they are posted for credit purposes.  All materials used are listed and linked in the galleries. (Read: I'm still recovering from the last three weeks, and an up and back drive to Cheyenne, and don't have the energy to post individual links to each product...sorry!)

Week 10

Image is linked to Gotta Pixel gallery for credits

Week 11

Image is linked to DST gallery for credits

Egg Huntin'

The blog silence is broken! It's been a crazy few weeks here, so I haven't made it to the blog in a while.  But I didn't give up scrapping during that time, so I will try to get a few things posted this week to make up for the silence. But first, a new release!

Image is linked to product in store.

Just in time for Easter, Danyale (Etc by Danyale) has released a great kit.  Know what's even better?  It's also been released just in time for Pixel Tuesday! There are matching alpha and word art sets too.

Here's my layout I made with the kit.  I haven't added my journaling yet because sometimes my daughter likes to look at the pages, and I don't want her to read the journaling, as she still believes in all holiday things magical and mysterious, including the Easter Bunny.  It will talk about how this playset was intended to be from the Easter Bunny, but she found it the day before Easter in it's hiding place. There was some frantic searching for a new present, but the Easter Bunny came through after all, and Maggie got two special treats near Easter that year!  (Note to self...must figure out what year that was!)

I hope everyone enjoys their week!  It's Spring Break here, so I will definitely be enjoying some much needed time off (and scrapping as much as I can!), though there are several projects on my to do list that look remarkably like chores.  I guess there's no fun without a little work, right?

Challenge Love

These are my most recent challenge layouts completed for the challenges at Log Your Memory.

Week 8:

Kit: Cold by Jen C Designs
Word Art (at the bottom) by Etc by Danyale
Fonts: Everyday Ghost, Freebooter Script and Pea C-Squared

Week 9 (which isn't until next week)...I'm ahead!:

Kit: Carefree by Crisdam Designs
Stitching by Crisdam Designs

The kit I used in the Week 9 layout is NEW today from Crisdam Designs.  I love the teal and block combo with pops of orange.  I'm hoping to use this kit again a couple times this week...but we'll see how much scrapping time I really get.

As part of the Challenge Team at LYM, I have to complete two challenges per month from the Memory Log Book. But in some aspects of my life, I am a bit of an overachiever.  This is one of those aspects.  I have been working hard to keep up with the challenges, completing all of them, in order.  Somehow last week, I forgot.  Completely. To complete the challenge.  I'm still trying to figure out how, but I missed week 7.  At some point I plan to make it up, but for now I am continuing to push forward and keep up.  Missing one is not a big deal unless I make is so, right?

Also on the Big News front, I've had my first layouts published.  As in, IN PRINT! Log Your Memory has just published their 2010 Real Life Scrapbooking Yearbook with inspiration for each day of the year gleaned from their gallery all last year.  I am so excited, and I need to go order my copy so I can see them.  My contributions are this layout and this one. The first layout is one that I lost in my computer crash, so sad because I love it so much!  But now I can see it in print, even if I can't print it out myself.  It's all good!

Again with the Catching-up!

Day three and still going strong.  Hurray for scheduled posts, right? Ok, so I did not really write this today...but if I posted all these posts and layouts on Monday it would be blog overload.  A little at a time is much easier to digest. (If only I could remember the same about Girl Scout cookies!)

I've used two of Connie Prince's new kits in the last little bit.  My Favorite Things, which is her offering for Grab-A-Byte at scrapbookbytes.com (and was also used in the Puppy Love layout for one of my DIDer lessons), and Main Street Magic.

Kit and Template: My Favorite Things by Connie Prince

I don't usually use much purple in my pages, but love the way this looks with the green.  And on the subject of my favorite things, I couldn't resist scrapping about my love of my kindle and all things book-ish again.  My Kindle had an unfortunate run-in with my elbow last weekend, and is now in Kindle heaven.  I am anxiously awaiting it's replacement in the form of a 3rd generation Kindle (with a new case, of course) which SHOULD arrive by Thursday if the tracking information is correct as of Monday afternoon.  And yes, I think I have learned my lesson, and the Kindle will stay in it's case so I can't smash the screen.  And it will stay on my nightstand, not underneath the comforter where it can't be seen. Yup, lessons learned.  (I did mention in a previous post that I am a learner, right?)

Kit: Main Street Magic by Connie Prince
Template: For the Love of Layers Vol 9 by Connie Prince

Oh, I have scrapped Maggie recently, I wasn't thinking of this layout when I wrote the end of yesterday's post.  While I don't have any Disney pictures, which is hinted at in the title of the kit, I loved the energy of the papers and colors, and thought they would be perfect for a birthday page.  I was actually the "excited" tag that brought the birthday idea to my mind, and I meant to journal about how excited Maggie was to have a skating party, even though she was not a proficient skater before the party.  By the end of the session though, she had figured it out and was skating very well. You can bet we'll be skating more often this year, especially now that she has her own skates (part of the party package).

I'll be back for one more post this week on Friday.