Christmas in July

Merry Christmas!!
:)
There is one more week left in July
so I figure it is time for a Christmas in July
celebration!
It's not too early to start thinking about Christmas cards either!
Recently I pulled out my Bedford Falls kit
(you are in luck...there are still a few left!!)

and knocked out a few cards...

Having a kit full of Christmas stuff sure makes it easier to make my Christmas cards!

Feeling festive yet??!

Here is a little layout inspiration for you too!
I recently submitting this layout for the CK Sketches column in the Nov/Dec issue of

Creating Keepsakes.
Obviously it did not get picked up & I am sharing it here instead!

Everything here is also from Bedford Falls except for the alphabet, twine, & red scalloped border.
*****

I put up a Christmas in July challenge over on the challenge board today.
Jump in and celebrate with us!
:)
Happy holidays!

Zac Brown Band anyone??!

Yes, I am a fan.

So when my friend Jennifer texted me to tell me her date to the Zac Brown concert had bailed and asked if I wanted to go, I could not say YES fast enough!

We had a good ole time!

And of course I had to scrap about it!

:)

I strategically adhered the film strip & pictures to create a "pocket" behind the right 2 pictures.

Then I was able to slip some memorabilia from the concert into the pocket for safe keeping!

I used the Mary Ellen kit to make this one.
However I grabbed that piece of music note paper (The Girls' Paperie) from what is left from my Bedford Falls kit (which is ON SALE right now!!).

And the oh-so-cool film strip was cut using a Silhouette.

*****
Don't forget that the Bees Knees goes on sale on Wednesday!!

YIPPEEEEEE!!
:)
Happy Monday!
gretchen

We Believe

I pulled out my "Bedford Falls" kit this week to scrapbook our family photo from this past Christmas. It's a tradition for us to take a photo in front of our Christmas tree all dressed up in our Christmas best. We definitely celebrate with gifts, Santa, lots of food, giving and more but for our family Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus Christ. I tore out a sheet of vintage sheet music of one of my favorite Christmas carols "Joy to the World" as one of the layers for my layout. A little tip - check out vintage children's books at antique stores for Christmas images in books and music. I loved the rich green cardstock in the kit and used that for my background.

The Sassafras alphabet was in the "Sweet Sue" kit but because I've used up a lot of the letters, I was short on "E"'s. I pieced together a few "O"'s and made my own letter "E"'s. I strung a tiny jingle bell on twine for a holiday accent.

I removed the gold glitter leaves from a Making Memories frame in the kit and placed it behind the embellishment. Another little tip - I covered up a blue chair that was in the photograph with this cluster of embellishments. I couldn't crop it out of the photo and get all of us in the photo so I did a little creative placement instead.

For the stars, I created a tone-on-tone effect by using green mist and stars punched with a Fiskars punch. I decided to outline them with a white gel pen by American Crafts. 

See you next week!

Jill

Sharing some goodies!

Hi all!
We have been totally under the weather here in the Moreno household...the flu and the stomach bug pretty much kicked our booties and we have been down for awhile!! (Hence the reason no Monday posts from me... thanks Gretchen for carrying Mondays by yourself!!)

anywho..
I have been dying to jump into this Truly Scrumptious kit... I LOVE IT!!! (sold out!)
Here is a layout I did of my daughter and her boyfriend, they just celebrated a year of dating! (holy cow... it's hard to believe my baby girl is actually liking boys... shouldn't she still be playing with dolls?) lol
I just wanted to do a layout documenting this special day for my sweet daughter and her boy.

and a few close ups...

 and then I made a quick card using one of the 'cards' on the patterned paper....

Here is a layout I didn't get a chance to share that I did using the Bedford Falls kit...

and a close up...

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Scraplifting myself

It is totally legal and I do it often!

I like to use old layouts as a jumping off point for new layouts.

Take this one for instance that I made with the Bedford Falls kit (hey there are a few left!)...

I really like how that layout turned out so I used it's basic design to make this layout using the Truly Scrumptious kit (you can still get the papers if you want!)...

{Everything is from the Truly Scrumptious kit except the background paper (Fancy Pants) from the Very Virginia kit}

And I love how this one turned out too!

:)
Happy Monday good people!
gretchen

Funny story...

Happy Monday!!
I made this layout for the "She gets misty" challenge going on now.
I am a misting rookie and I have to admit that it kind of scares me!
I am a messy scrapper anyway, so if you add some mist into the mix I might have to move my scrapping out of the house completely!
However, I will admit that my first experience with misting was fun!

I was just practicing on some white cardstock but I liked the way the silver mist (from the Very Virginia kit) looked so I used the practice cardstock as the background for my printed journaling here.

I hand cut "funny" out of white cardstock.
But it was just too white for my liking so I gave it a little spray with the mist too!

{Made with the Bedford Falls kit but the mist is from Very Virginia}

The rest of the layout/design is pretty simple!

P.S.
I ran out of "t"s in the pack of Thickers in the Bedford Falls kit so I ended up cutting the top off of an "f".

You never would have known, would you??!

P.P.S.
Please notice that this is not a Christmas layout!

That Bedford Falls kit is quite versatile I tell ya!

Happy Monday!!

Remember this

What do you do with cards you get from other people?

I have to admit that the ones I get usually just end up in a box on a shelf in my scraproom.

I surely can't throw them away!
But I got a card this Christmas that needed something more special than a place in that box.

So I scrapped it!
***
OUT FOR

PUBLICATION
***

{using the Bedford Falls kit of course!}

Short & sweet from me today!
Happy New Year friends!!
I hope it is treating you well so far!
:)
gretchen

Santa, Stop Here!

Hello long lost friends! I've missed you! My computer died a couple of weeks ago, which was, to say the least, not cool. I wanted to share with you guys the layout that I made for the current challenge (but was unable to get to Noel due to the whole lack of computer thing).
I chose to scrap about our little town Christmas parade. It's been a tradition for our family to go to it each year since we've lived here. The kids especially look forward to seeing Santa go by (and getting candy too!). I used the Bedford Falls kit to make this layout. Make sure to grab this kit to scrap all your holiday memories! :)
I took a hint from Gretchen and pulled apart the Making Memories embellishment in the kit to stretch it farther. I didn't need the whole frame on this layout, but I loved the bit of sparkle the golden leaves added to the page.
The little deer actually came from last year's Christmas kit. I've been saving that little cutie for just the right spot. I think it found it's home.

I'll talk to you guys next year! ;) Hehehhe Sorry, I just couldn't resist. ;)

(p.s. Make sure to check out "my" kit, the new Very Virginia kit! I'll be releasing details about my companion class this Saturday, so be on the lookout and grab your kit today!)

white Christmas

Christmas at our house had an unexpected surprise - SNOW!!! I should also say that I live where we do *not* get snow on Christmas (or hardly ever for that matter). So it was very exciting to see snow flakes and to see some of it actually stick! 

I'm having a lack of scrappy ideas lately so I turned to the December Pagemaps for my inspiration on this layout. You can check them out here. You'll have to excuse the photo in my layout. I'm having printer issues and the photo machines at Walmart were all down. Bah humbug!! I plan on replacing the photo with a better one once I can get some printed out.

Everything in my layout is from the Bedford Falls kit. Hurry up and snatch one up before the last of them are gone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!

No lights

Happy Monday!
I hope everyone had a great Christmas weekend!
*****
Today I am sharing with you my layout for the newest challenge.
This one is all about how you decorate outside of your homes for the holidays!
Scrap outside of the house: your outside decorations, how your town celebrates/decorates, or a favorite place you have visited for the holidays!
I scrapped about how for like the 8th year in a row we have talked about putting up Christmas lights on the house but still have never once done it!!

{Everything is from the Bedford Falls kit here except I added the teal-ish bling from my stash}

*****
I can tend to get quite wordy with my journaling.
When I originally put the journaling strips on this layout, they totally overwelmed the page.

And I just did not like it.
What I ended up doing was shortening the journaling so there were less strips on the page (as seen above).

Then I rewrote the full, original journaling on a piece of cardstock and attached it to the back of the layout.

That way I can remember the full story without all that journaling taking over my layout!
*****
Alrighty folks!
Enjoy the rest of 2011!
and happy scrappin'!!
:)

gretchen

Oh Christmas Tree!

Merry Christmas, friends! My layout today uses the gorgeous "Bedford Falls" kit, and I created it for our new challenge to scrap outside decorations. When I learned we were doing this challenge, I knew that I wanted to scrap about my hometown's annual huge Christmas tree that is placed in the middle of main street. My hometown has less than 1,000 people and yet this tradition is upheld every year. But, I didn't have any photos of the tree so I sent my mom on a mission for me. The pictures she e-mailed me were not ideal for printing (only 121K) so today I'm going to share a fun little application with you that I used on my photo. It's called Poladroid and it's completely free! You just have to download it to your computer and drag your photo to the application and wait for it to expose. To print my photo, I went back into Photoshop and re-saved the photo to a size I could print. This type of photo treatment works so well for those photos that aren't great - they might be blurry, overexposed, etc. 

Here are a few close-ups of my layout...

I added a Jenni Bowlin label from my stash.

A fun little cluster of embellishments (Making Memories patterned paper, Pink Paislee die-cut, Making Memories snowflake and rhinestone, My Mind's Eye brad)...

And here's a look at all the patterned paper I put together at the top of my layout....love all the choices Noel included in this kit! 

Have a very Merry Christmas with your family!

Until next time,

Jill

Christmas lights

I love Christmas decorations...especially the outdoor ones. I've always been the one to do the outdoor decorations, even when I was a teenager. Of course these days my husband helps with the lights that require the extension ladder. But the rest is left up to me! So for this week's challenge I thought I'd scrap about my inner desire to be Clark Griswold ;)

I used a Virginia technique here by writing my journaling on some masking tape :)

Journaling reads:  Oh how I love Christmas decorations, especially outdoor decorations. Truth be told if I had my way I would have the entire yard decked out in lights dancing to music. Maybe one day! Each year I try to add a little bit more than the year before. Maybe one year my house will look like the Griswolds!

I also have a quick tip/idea on what to do with old Christmas cards. I don't like to throw them away, especially the photo cards. Someone went through the time and effort to send them out so I like to keep them. But what do you do with them?? Well, here's my solution:

I bound them all with a big ring like a Christmas book. Now, I didn't put every single Christmas card in there. Mostly the photos, photo cards, letters & a few cute Christmas cards that I really liked. For every year I put a title page to keep that year's photos together. I also marked the year on the back of each in case they ever got mixed up.

And that's it! Now we have a fun holiday book that we can look through year after year. I'll have another idea of what to do with your leftover Christmas cards on my blog tomorrow :) Happy Christmas week everyone!!

Rediscovering Christmas

How's the Christmas season going for ya so far??

So far, so good for me!
We have had some not-so-good Christmases in the recent past...family drama, you know!
I really want this year to be different and better!

And because of that, this layout was born...

{made entirely with the Bedford Falls kit!}
*****
Let me point out a funny thing about that layout...

In the Bedford Falls kit, there is this embellishment from Making Memories.

FYI: this is 1 embellishment, not 4!
I thought these were all individual pieces!!

I mean, I even thought (as I am pulling the pieces apart), "Geez, these things are really stuck together!"
HA!
Well they were supposed to be!
FYI: this 1 embellishment can be pulled apart to become 4!
:)

And P.S. I have a post up on the Tips & Techniques blog about how I did the journaling on this page.

Happy Monday!
5 more days until Christmas!!
:)
gretchen

A Kiss... or Two!

I just love all these little photos of my older three.... all I wanted was a picture of the older boys giving Madison a kiss on the cheek (I had just got a real cute shot of Matthew kissing Kenna and wanted to try it with the older ones too)....

yeah, not so much!

What happened after the request is THIS...

I really wanted to include all the outtakes of these pictures so I printed them in photo strips, I love the way this turned out and loved even more including a total of TEN pictures on this one page layout! wahooo! :)

Here's a quick little card I whipped up using the Bedford Falls kit too..

Everything from the Bedford Falls Noel Mignon kit!!

Thanks for stopping by!
I hope you all have a VERY Merry Christmas, god bless!
-Kim