Easter Trip to Lookout Mountain 2012

This weekend I discovered that I am almost at the end of my pile of photos to scrapbook! That almost never happens! I guess that means it's time to get out and do some stuff worth taking pictures of!

Here is the second part of our trip to Chattanooga last April. The first part was here. I'm not sure where the super cute cars and buildings paper came from (it was a gift), but I love the colors and it just seemed to go with these pictures. The polka dot paper on the sides is actually the reverse side of the patterned paper, which makes for easy color coordination!

We had the greatest visit with Aaron, Megan and their family. I love scrapbooking events with them, mostly because their kids are outrageously cute. You pretty much can't go wrong with scrapbook layouts of kids, in my opinion.

Here is my layout in my new We R Memory Keepers 3-ring scrapbook album. I wasn't sure how I would like the 3 ring look, as opposed to all my other post-bound scrapbooks. I have just gotten so fed up with how difficult it is to add pages to post-bound albums, so I'm giving this a try. So far I really like it, AND these huge albums will last me years!

Wedding Cards

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! We had a very laid-back day. Ate way too much food, watched fireworks from the back porch of my parents' house, and tried to comfort the dogs through all the loud noises.

And of course I did a little scrapbooking! My favorite thing to do on days off :-)

For today, I've got wedding/congratulations cards. This first one was super simple. Beautiful paper will pretty much do all the work for you, and with this card I used a DCWV paper pack. The colors and patterns are so fun and happy, and everything coordinates so that makes it even easier.

For both cards I used the same "Congratulations" rubber stamp, but here I embossed it with white embossing powder and a heat gun.

This second card was a little more time intensive. I used a border punch to create the detail for the wedding cake, and then layered that paper onto a piece of the same size and color paper. You could also do two different colors and I think that would look cool too. Three tiers of that makes a wedding cake, and I added some flower embellishments to the top, a ribbon along the bottom, and stamped it on the side. The background paper is also from a DCWV paper pack.

Here's a close-up of how the border punch looks on the cake.

Gingerbread Houses

Happy weekend! So far I've spent my weekend cleaning up my house (which was really overdue), taking care of a sick doggie, watching a cute family of ducks that live on the lake by my house, and reading this book:

Okay, I know I've read it about 50 times already, but it's just too good. Probably my favorite of the HP books. I got hooked on it again this morning and couldn't do anything else until I finished it. Now I'm tempted to start book 4, but not too tempted since it's one of my least favorites in the series (after #2). 

Here's my layout for today. It's from back in December when we decorated gingerbread houses. I finally overcame my fear of my sewing machine, and did some zigzag stitching. It took a few tries, and I'm still not good at figuring out the right tension, but it worked here! I've always wanted to do that. It's such a fun way to add subtle embellishing. I found a lot of good tips on how to stitch on paper here and here.

The paper is from a fun Paper Studio pack from Hobby Lobby. I really liked the patterns because they didn't scream Christmas, but they still give a Christmas-y feel. The title was done using my Cricut and free fonts I found in various places. 

Spring Layout

I am THIS close to finishing a super cool new layout, but sadly I didn't have it done in time for this post. It will be cool though, and I tried a new technique (successfully!) that I've been wanting to do for ages.

So instead of posting that one, I'm posting an old one from two (or three?) years ago. This one shows how easy scrapbooking can be, even if you don't have a lot of supplies. It's another one of those layouts that includes random photos that didn't warrant their own page. So I just put them all together under the heading "Spring Fun." I used colorful background paper, some coordinating solid green and yellow paper, stickers for the title, and some brads and ribbon scraps. The yellow paper under the words "Spring Fun" I stamped with green ink to give it an interesting background (I like that it looks like patterned paper, but nope it's just a stamp!).

One thing I really miss about living in Georgia is the spring bulbs--crocuses and tulips especially!

Oh! I must share a wonderful new tool I discovered the other day. You may have noticed how I like to pack (as much as possible) my pages with lots and lots of pictures (to me, the pictures are the point of the scrapbook). Well, I usually run into a problem since the majority of my pictures are 4x6, and you can only crop 4x6 pictures so much (and since I zoom so much in my pictures, cropping is usually very minor). I've always wanted to be able to print some of my pictures at a 2x3 or 3x4 size, which I know I can manage with photoshop, but wow is that a pain.

Photosheet solves that! It lets you put multiple pictures in a 4x6 sheet, then you can print it at any photo place for the normal price of a regular 4x6. Genius! (This would also be great way to save money on wallet prints, if you are needing those). This way I can print out tons more photos, some in smaller sizes, and still fit them all in my album. Plus it breaks up the 4x6 monotony! So if you have tons of adorable baby pictures, or maybe a million vacation pictures, this would be a great way to include them all without sacrificing too much space (or money).

I've got one to two super crummy layouts that I want to re-do. I think I'm going to use Photosheet reprint the pictures and include even more in the new layout.