... just Laura

Kerri Bradford Studio: One More Cuddle

 

Hey everyone! I've got a new 6x8" spread up at Kerri Bradford Studio. As soon as I saw Kerri's new Hey Kiddo stamp set, I knew that it would be perfect for so many photos and stories that I still have to document. Late last year, I closed up my home daycare business after 17 years. While my daycare kiddos have moved on and are spending their days with new daycare providers and new friends, I still have some stories that I want to get down from my time with them. 

 

But first up, I decided to get some current feelings down on a page, about how much I miss them. In all honesty, I don't miss the job itself. But I most definitely miss those cute little humans! I used the digital Hey Kiddo stamp set to create a 6x8" spread digitally in Photoshop and then printed it out to add into my album. 

 

 

I used an enlarged 6x8" photo for the left side of the spread, picking out one of my favorite photos that sums up the cuddles that I miss from all of those kiddos. I used the digital "cuddle" stamp for my title, along with the heart stamp, changing them both to white and adding a drop shadow to help them stand out a little more. I also lowered the opacity on the heart to make it a bit more subtle, as to not distract from the title. 

 

 

I created a large "journaling card" for the right side of my spread, starting with Kerri's Journaling Template, which I cropped to a 6x8" size. I added a black and white diagonal stripe border across the top, using the Simple Staples kit. Then I got to work on my journaling, keeping in mind some of the Hey Kiddos digital stamp words/phrases that I wanted to work into my journaling.

 

 

I love how easy it is to tweak digital elements to fit your needs - like how I added an extra "s" to the "cutest human ever" phrase to have it read "cutest humans ever" (because I watched a lot of little humans!). 

 

 

I changed the colors on my digital stamps so that the words would stand out more, pulling the green and burgundy from my photo.

 

 

Once I had everything done to my liking, I printed the left page (my enlarged photo) on photo paper, and the right page (my journaling) on textured cardstock. Once trimmed, I simply slipped them into my 6x8" album. So happy to have documented some current feelings that have been on my mind!

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Entertaining With Snapchat

Hey everyone. I've got a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio. So, I'm really not a fan of being in photos. And yet, I apparently seem to have no issues taking Snapchat selfies. Especially when I take them with adorable kiddos! Lol. I used to entertain the daycare kiddos with funny Snapchat filters at least once a day, so I've accumulated a lot of photos over the last few years. I decided to pull out some of my favorites and put together a two page spread. 

I printed 14 photos as 3x3" squares, and arranged them around the outside edges of my two page spread along with some 3x3" squares of patterned paper.

I printed my photos in black and white, since there were so many colors happening in them. I love that this allows me to use any paper colors that I want. 

I die cut a circle background from white cardstock, using Kerri's Background Basics kit, cut it in half lengthwise, and adhered the two pieces across the center of both pages. 

I didn't really have any patterned papers in mind when I started this. Not sure how it happened, but I turned towards my patterned papers, and immediately thought about the You Are Loved collection from Bella Blvd & Illustrated Faith, that my good friend Stephanie Buice designed. I never did take the time to use her gorgeous paper designs, and thought this was the perfect time to dig into them. 

I printed out Kerri's "Living Our Best Life" (from the Living Our Best Life kit) on white cardstock, as I wanted a 3x4" filler-type card to go side by side with my journaling card, which I also sized to 3x4". The metal rimmed tags are super old, both from American Crafts and Making Memories.

I had also printed the "Love This" (from the Click kit) circle on white cardstock, so I wanted to have a few additional circles to embellish the page. I arranged them on the left page of the spread, to fill in the empty space.  

This two page design is one that I use quite often. Arranging photos/papers around the outside edges, whether 3x3" in size or 3x4" in size, and then using the space in the center to add my title, journaling, etc. 

I love using the Weathered Door Alpha [All] kit for titles. It's a great choice for words that you may not be able to find specific cut files for, and I just love the chunky font with the option to die cut the outline of each letter as well. I pulled the "entertaining" from the Happy Stuff kit, and paired it with my die cut "snapchat" to complete my title. 

Well, I guess I also added some tiny alpha stickers for the "with" part of my title - so that completed my title ;)

I also added machine stitching around the outside edges of each 3x3" square of patterned paper. I did this before adhering them to my pages, and then machine stitched down the strips of striped patterned paper once the layout was assembled. 

These photos just make me smile. I realize the kiddos may not look all that thrilled in so many of the photos. But trust me, they loved doing them with me.

Seeing as how I actually started this layout last summer (all I had done was adhere my photos to white cardstock), I'm so glad I came across it and took the time to finish it.

Jillibean Soup: Beautiful Reasons To Be Happy

Soooo. If you happen to miss this little tidbit of info (I shared a bit about it on both Instagram and Facebook), with the sale of our house, I also made the decision to close my daycare as well. Here's what I shared about a month and a half ago: 

17 years ago, after moving here, I opened up my own daycare business in our home. I love and adore kids, and I knew it would also be a way for me to be home with my girls while they were growing up. Each and every child that came into our home was special and so very loved. Not just by me, but by my girls and Joe as well. Sure, some were more special than others (I can’t lie - it happens). But each and every one will hold a special place in my heart forever. Over those 17 years, I was lucky enough to spend my days with 54 precious kiddos. Babies, toddlers, and school aged children. Some were with me a short time, and some were with me for 4-5 years. I am so thankful that I got to play a small part in all of their little lives, and for their parents trusting me with their babies.

With this move, I knew that it was time to make a change. The decision to close up my daycare was so very hard to make, especially since it meant letting go of the 4 special kiddos that made up my last “squad”. But I’ve felt ready for a change for a while, so I knew the timing was right. Don’t ask me what I’ll be doing next, because I don’t know yet. I’ve been job hunting, since I do have to work. Just one more change that’s happening in our family right now. We’re deep in a transition phase and doing the best we can. But I sure do miss my little friends, as it’s been a really quiet week since we all parted ways ❤

Along with those words above, I also shared several collages of photos that I had put together. These collages were made up of 45 of the amazing kids that have meant so much to our family. There were 9 more kiddos, but they were during my film years, so I couldn’t easily track down their photos at the time I was creating the photo collages. 

I knew that I needed to work those 45 photos, of 45 adorable faces, into a layout. So that's just what I did for one of my Jillibean Soup layouts last month. To start, I used a photo template from Kerri Bradford's Travelers Templates, which held 15 photos, and I created three collages. I knew I would make this a two page spread, so I sized them to fit one on the first page, and two of them on the second page. 

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I created my layouts for last month using very limited supplies, as I was in-between homes for a few weeks and I didn't have access to all of my scrap stuff. I lucked out, in that I had this circle background already die cut and mixed in with my Jillibean Soup papers, since it was created with a Jillibean cut file. I had actually die cut it a few years ago, and didn't end up using it. I think if I had had my Silhouette handy, I most likely would have die cut that circle background from white cardstock, for a white-on-white look. But I love how the kraft looks mixed with the patterned papers and the white cardstock. 

I used patterned papers from the new You Make Miso Happy collection for this spread. This 3x4" card, from the Bite Size Bits patterned paper worked perfectly for my title. I matted it on a piece of black patterned paper, to help it stand out a bit more. I love these floral die cuts, from the Pea Pod Parts pack, and have been using them quite a bit on my projects. 

I've also been using lots of these die cut houses. Without really thinking about it, I used it on a layout this weekend that I created for next month's projects. I added some journaling strips along the bottom of the two pages, but I also added a little journaling block in this empty space on the first page, as I had a bit more to say.

I used that old school paper tearing technique again, just like I did on the layout I shared yesterday, as I didn't have any border punches or special tools - but I didn't want a straight edge, so the tearing adds some texture and interest. 

I've created a few layouts over the years, where I've included a photo of every kiddo that I've taken care of. You can see a few HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. It's fun to see how the number of faces grew over the years. I won't lie - I miss seeing those little faces greet me each morning. It's been a good change, but a weird change too. I'm so thankful that I still keep in touch with the majority of these kiddos and their families, and I can continue to see cute photos of them, hear cute stories, and watch them grow up. 

Chaos & Cuddles

Happy Friday everyone! I wanted to share one of the layouts that I created for my design team submission for Jillibean Soup. I've used quite a bit of Jillibean's products over the last year. It just so happens that they were projects for things that I wasn't able to share. One of my favorite products are their die cut alphabet packs. I love the larger alphas, and knew that I wanted to use them on one of my layouts. 

I don't do layouts about the daycare kids as often as I used too (personal choice), but every once in a while, I like to add one to my collection. I had a title in mind when I went to pick out my photos - a mix of the good parts of this job, and the chaotic parts of this job. I created a photo collage using a template from Kerri Bradford Studio, and changed all of my photos to black and white.

I knew I wanted to mix a die cut word in with the die cut alphas for my title, so I picked out one of Jillibean's cut files from the Silhouette store. "Chaos & Cuddles" - that's exactly the kind of mix I have here on a daily basis. 

I also used one of their background cut files to create a white-on-white background for my page. You all know that I love a good circle background, right ;) 

The fun messy circles are also Jillibean Soup cut files, and they're a cut file I can see myself using a lot. Once I had my die cut alphas picked out for my title, I then picked out several patterned papers to coordinate with the colors of the alphas. I lined up four pieces of patterned paper along the left edge of the page, and added a die cut messy circle to each of those pieces. 

I added a few super old Jillibean buttons (I still have those from when I designed for them years ago!) to the die cut messy circles, and a die cut heart from their Pea Pod Parts pack. I also added a few small puffy heart stickers here and there. 

I'm so looking forward to designing for Jillibean Soup this year, and have already started working on some new projects for next month. I'll share my second design team submission layout with you next week, along with a few cards :)

Just Because: Cuddly Boy

Hey everyone! After a bit of a creative break here on the blog (since I have been creating lots here in real life), I'm finally back with some layouts to share. Yep, layouts! I know I haven't been making quite as many layouts this year, as I've been focusing more on my Project Life album and other random album projects. But a week or two ago, I was inspired to create a handful of photo collages with the intention of creating some layouts. And this past weekend, I managed to create three new layouts, just for fun.

This layout is kind of an update on a layout I created a little over a year ago. You can see that layout HERE. The photo collage on that first layout was all of the rocking chair photos I had of Derek his first year of life. That year when he would only nap on my shoulder, while I held him, in the rocking chair. It was a LONG year. Lol. Then he was home for the summer (mom's a teacher), and when he came back to me he was super good about napping on the floor with his other friends. He was only 14 months at that time, but napped right on the floor. 

But it never failed. As soon as his little eyes would pop open, he would come straight to me, wanting to get some snuggles in. Every. Single. Day. I'd pick him up, and we would head straight to the rocking chair. Sometimes, he would fall right back to sleep and we would hang out in the rocking chair until his friends woke up from their naps. Sometimes, after a bit of snuggles, he would be energized and ready to play. 

And I found myself, once again, taking those super fun rocking chair photos. The first photo in the collage (upper left corner) is Derek at 14 months, and the last photo in the collage (bottom right corner) is Derek just days after turning 2 years old. Basically, these photos are his second year of life. And I just love it. I love collages like this, that show an assortment of photos taken over a long period of time. And once I realized how many of these photos I had, I knew I wanted to do a second version of that first layout. 

I kept with the same collage template, from Kerri Bradford's Storyboard: Instagram Style kit, as it works perfectly for my square photos. Once again, I ended up with twelve photos. So once again, I left three spaces in the template empty, knowing I would add my journaling there. I arranged my photos by the date they were taken, so they all go in order from oldest to newest. 

This past weekend, I was inspired to dig out some older products when creating my layouts. There's a lot of color going on in this photo collage, so I didn't set out with any particular colors in mind. I think I actually started with the white embossed cardstock, from Core'dinations, as I had also pulled out another color of that same cardstock for another layout. That strip was all I had left, and it ended up being the perfect size to hold my title. 

The green dotted cardstock came just like that. It wasn't something I die cut, although I think most of you know I'm a huge fan of die cutting circle background pieces like that. It was actually a part of a super old kit-of-the-month from Creating Keepsakes, and again, all I had was that strip to work with and the size was perfect. From there, I came across some older Studio Calico patterned paper. The striped paper just seemed perfect to go with my photo collage, as it had a lot of the same colors. 

For my title, I searched in my Silhouette library, looking for something like "snuggles", and while I couldn't find that, I did find "cuddly". That would totally work. I added "boy" from one of Kerri's cut files, to get my "cuddly boy" title. Derek is seriously the cuddliest boy ever. None of these other kids here cuddle, or even sit still on my lap. Except him. He's up for it ALL the time. 

When I went to add some buttons to my layout, I may have said "who has buttons that would match that striped paper" out loud to myself. I had a few jars pulled out, and then remembered that I had some Studio Calico buttons I had picked up on a big sale a year or two ago. Since the striped paper is by SC, it made sense to use SC buttons. 

I wanted to add a little something under my photo collage, and had this yellow tone-on-tone dotted paper pulled out. I punched some quick half circles, and adhered them across, tucking them under the collage. 

Little dude is home for the summer again, and I miss his already. I miss his snuggles. He'll be back before I know it, and I'm feeling pretty confident there will be more of these rocking chair photos to come ;)

Daycare Album Project: Part Two

As promised, I'm back to share a little more more of my daycare album project I've been working on. I won't bore you with photos of all of the pages, since it's 95% photos. But I thought I would just quickly share the divider pages for the three other years I have completed. 

The first two years that I picked to start this entire project was 2007 and 2008. I'm not sure if I had a reason for picking those years. But I do know that between those two years, I had a massive amount of photos. I was really into photography during that time, and I had tons of kids around me at all times. I was also super good about editing my photos, as opposed to a few other years where I'm going to have to stop and edit photos before I can even think about printing them.

I don't think I mentioned this in yesterday's post, but for my 6x12" divider pages, I actually trimmed down large page protectors for these. While there are actual 6x12" page protectors out there, I happen to have a ton of the full 9x12" protectors, and I was pretty sure I would never get around to using that many. So I simply stuck my 6x12" patterned paper inside the protector, machine stitched along the side of the paper, and then trimmed off the excess with my trimmer. 

  

After finishing up 2007 and 2008, my next choice to work on was 2015 and 2016. These years contained mostly phone photos. With a small handful of DSLR photos mixed in. There are definitely some phone photos that aren't the best quality, as it wasn't until a year and a half ago that I finally got myself a real iPhone, instead of using an Android or an older hand me down iPhone. But, photos are photos, and I'll use the low quality ones over not having any photos at all. 

  

So, that's where I left off on this album project about a month ago. I mentioned yesterday that I did just order my photos for 2013, and there are all of 32 photos for the entire year. Kind of sad. Lol. Seeing as how there are so few photos for that year, I'm not quite sure why I haven't taken care of them and worked them into the album. I think 2009 will be my next year to tackle. 

I'll be back on Thursday to share an updated look at my girl's school albums ;)

Daycare Album Project: Part One

Hey all! Hope you all had a wonderful Easter! I've got a few album projects that I thought I would share this week, and I'm going to start with the daycare album project I've been working on. I want to backtrack a little bit, and share what I wrote about this project back in January (in THIS post), when I had just started on the idea. 

I've had this idea in my head for over a year now, in terms of doing something with the years and years of daycare photos I've accumulated. I've been doing daycare in our home for 15 years now. For many, many of those years, I would take photos of the kiddos constantly. And for many years, I also scrapped all of those photos as well. At some point, I made a conscious decision NOT to scrap the daycare kiddos so much. And somewhere down the road, I made the decision to turn a huge majority of those layouts into a digital book (shared HERE and HERE), and gave most of the layouts to the families to keep. 

  

So while I still have three albums that hold layouts of the daycare kiddos, and I have a few digital books of various kinds of them, I can't help but think about all of the photos that are just hanging out on my external hard drive. Or in a box, or on negatives, seeing as how the first five years I did daycare, I was shooting with film.

Just this past weekend, I started working on the plan that I've had in my head. I'll be doing a few 9x12" pocket page albums, and the albums will be 95% photos. I really won't be adding much to them, other than divider pages and maybe a small page of journaling for each section. I randomly started with 2007 and 2008, and put in a huge order for photos from those years that will be here at the end of the week. I hope to share more about this project really soon.

Ok, now that I'm done backtracking, I can get on with what I came up with. As I mentioned, I'm using 9x12 albums, and pocket pages. The pocket pages will consist of ALL photos. I'm not trying to work in cute filler cards, or journaling cards, or any embellishments. This project is all about getting the photos in albums. 

I'm breaking this project down by year, tackling a year or two at a time. And for each year, I'm breaking things down by quarters. I'll share more on that later in the post. I wanted to address my divider pages first, since that's the first I'm sharing in these photos. This post will walk you thru one full year in my album, which is my 2016 photos. 

I created 6x12" divider pages to mark the start of each quarter in the album. I have tons of this white grid patterned paper, so I thought it would be perfect for these pages. I planned out my months in my Silhouette software, using cut files from Kerri Bradford Studio. I die cut the first and third month in each quarter in a larger, chunky word from colored cardstock - and then die cut the middle month of each quarter in a cursive word from black cardstock, along with the year. 

I ran the two colored cardstock months thru my Cuttlebug, using a few different embossing folders. Just to add a little texture. I adhered all three months to the bottom of the 6x12" graph patterned paper. 

I added a large strip of patterned paper along the top of the 6x12" page, matching it to the photos that showed to the right of the divider page. I ended up using all Bella Blvd patterned papers for this project, since I have so much of it in my stash. I also added a scalloped border strip along the bottom edge of the patterned paper. 

I used a second piece of the graph patterned paper on the backside of the 6x12" divider page, adding a large strip of colored cardstock along the top, with a scalloped border strip of black cardstock. 

My thought for the backside of the divider pages is that I could possibly add some journaling at some point. Or notes. Or just little tidbits of whatever I can remember from the time the photos were taken. Could be what kiddos I had at the time, what our schedule looked like, or any funny stories that pop into my head while looking at the photos. Or maybe they'll get left as-is, and I'll never add anything to them. We'll see what happens. 

As I mentioned before, I broke down each year into quarters. Three months worth of photos in each section. I pulled the photos from my external hard drive, and copied them all into new folders on my laptop. I copied over pretty much ALL the photos from each month. From there, I would see how many I had to work with and start narrowing them down if needed. 

There are 3 different styles of 9x12" pocket pages. There's one with a few 4x6's and a few 3x4's, one with all 3x4's, and one with all 3x3's. I decided that my goal would be to use one of each design for each quarter. That would allow me 56 photos total for each quarter - and breaking that number down, I knew I would need (4) 4x6's, (28) 3x4's, and (24) 3x3's. 

There were a few quarters so far (as I've only completed 4 of the 15 years) that didn't have enough photos for the three pages, or that had so many photos that I wanted to include that it required a fourth page, or that needed a different mix of pocket page designs (depending on what my photos looked like orientation wise). 

I took each quarter as it came, even though I tried to stick to my original plan when I could - using three pages, one of each of the three pocket page designs. If I had to adjust the plan, I did. I worked on a few older years of photos, and narrowed down a huge amount of photos to just the 56 photos without any problems. I think I had a tendency to take multiple shots of the same thing back in the day, when I was using my DSLR more. 

I found that when looking thru the photos from the last two years or so, I had a harder time narrowing down my photos to just the 56. While I did have some that were very similar shots, I didn't have the same type of multiples that I found in earlier years. 

I would say that 95% of the photos from the last few years are phone photos, so I think I ended up with a wider variety of shots as opposed to earlier years. When I used to take photos with my DSLR, I would tend to pull out the camera and take a bunch of photos at once. While with my cell phone, I take them more randomly here and there. 

Once I would get my photos narrowed down to whatever number I settled on (usually 56, but sometimes less or more), I would start prepping them to print. I usually started by picking my 4x6" photos, since there was only 4 of those most quarters. It was easy to spot which photos needed that full 4x6" space, and couldn't be cropped into the smaller sizes. 

From there, I would then move on to the 3x3" and 3x4" photos. Some photos will only work as 3x4's, as they're all vertical orientation in the pocket pages. A large majority of my photos can work in the 3x3" size as well, especially since I take most of my photos on my phone as squares. But it's fairly easy to find which photos will work better as 3x4's or 3x3's, and some will work either way.

I've completed four years so far, and I think I ended up with maybe 3-4 empty spots total. Like the page above. I ended up using 4 pages for that quarter of 2016, but was just one photo short of filling the full 4 pages. I figure I'll just add in a 4x6" filler card, or even just a piece of patterned paper. I haven't done it yet, but I'll get to it at some point ;)

When prepping my photos to print, I knew how many of each size photo I needed, and I would work from that list as I went. Once I had my 4x6's picked out, cropped and saved, I moved those original photos to my "used" folder, so I could keep track of what photos were left to work with. I would slowly move photos to the "used" folder as I went, which made it easy to see what was left when picking my sizes. 

 I named my files for printing so that I could keep track of what was what - the photos for this section were named "DaycarePL_2016_Qrt3_1", "Daycare PL_2016_Qrt3_2", etc. I combined (2) 3x4's on a 4x6" print, and combined (2) 3x3's on a 4x6" print. So I ended up printing about 30 photos total for each quarter, since most of the photos actually had two photos, which I cut apart. 

I've used two different sites for my printing so far. The first batch of photos I ordered from Persnickity Prints, as I had a large print credit for 4x6" photos that I had bought when they had a big sale about a year ago. Since then, I've been adding a batch of photos to my FreePrints order each month, since anything over my 85 free prints a month is only 10 cents each (and it doesn't affect my shipping at all). 

Once I have my photos in hand, I sort them by sizes, and then just start slipping them into the pocket pages. I don't over think it, but I do try not to get too many of the same kiddo on one page, and try to split up photos that look too much alike. 

I was looking back at layouts I've made, and I think I've only created 6 layouts in the last year and a half about my daycare kids. I just don't create them like I used to years ago. That's the biggest reason that I wanted to do this album. 

To get all of those photos of all these adorable kiddos off my computer and my hard drive, and into something that we could all look at. If I do get around to getting all 15 years worth of photos in these albums (which will be a challenge, since 5 of those years were film photos and involve negatives), I'm sure I'll end up with more albums that I think I'll actually need.

Then again, I have a few years that have next to no photos at all. Sadly. Those were the years I touched my DSLR far less, and didn't have a cell phone with a camera yet. I just printed my photos for 2013, and I have all of 32 photos total. For the entire year. So that year will only have one section. I think I have two more years that will be very small. 

That wraps up my 2016 year of photos. I'll be back to share a small portion of my 2007, 2008, and 2015 tomorrow. I won't be sharing all the pages, as they're just photos and to anyone but us, they might be a little boring. Lol. But I thought I would at least share all of the divider pages. Plus, it gives me a reason to do an extra blog post this week ;)

I've actually got a similar album idea in the works for my girl's sports photos. I have them both started - lots of photos already printed and in place, and divider pages made up that include team photos, individual photos, and die cut team names. I'll have to see if I can finish up enough of the albums to do a post on those. 

While I love making layouts, or more involved albums, there are times when straight up "photo albums" just work. And this was totally one of those times. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: My Fantastic Squad

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. Quite honestly, I went back and forth, and then back and forth some more, trying to decide what to create for Kerri this month. I actually started two other projects, and then tossed them to the side, before starting what ended up being this layout. 

I was scrolling thru my Instagram photos the other day, and came across a photo of myself with several of my daycare kids. I had written something about how I ever had a "squad", these little people would be my squad. I've been better about getting in the photos with the kids here and there, and I knew that some of those photos would make a great layout. 

I went digging around for photos from the past year, so that I could focus on my most recent kiddos. I was able to find photos with all but one of my daycare girl's, who moved away a year ago to another state. They're not all the best quality photos, but I love them all the same. 

I used a template from Kerri's Storyboard #1 kit to collage my photos together. I left one space in the template empty, knowing that I wanted to add either my title or my journaling there instead of another photo. I simply trimmed a piece of cardstock to fit over that area on the template once it was printed and adhered it in place.

After I printed out my photo collage, I went looking for patterned papers to use. I ended up picking the recent Lovely Day collection from Dear Lizzy. That painted striped patterned paper just felt like it matched really well, with all of the color I had going on in the photos. 

I matted the white cardstock, used to cover the empty space in the collage, with some of the pink patterned paper that I used along the bottom of the page, so that it would stand out more. I then used the Weathered Door [all] kit to create my title, die cutting it from blue patterned paper, and completed the title with a few alpha stickers and Kerri's One Fine Day stamps.

I wanted to add a little something along the left side of my photo collage, so I die cut a flower border from the Borderlines #1 kit, and tucked it under the edge of the collage. The "hey, hey, hey" card that I cut from one of the patterned papers covers a lot of the border up, but it still adds a little something-something. 

The crochet flowers are from an older Dear Lizzy collection. They have cute little brown crocheted centers to them, but I decided to add some coordinating buttons to the centers. I also added a few navy blue enamel dots near the crochet flowers.

Sadly, we've lost quite a few members of our "squad" over the last year. We had one move away to another state, and two that moved on to pre-school. And then a few unexpected departures, that I didn't see coming. But all for good reasons, as a few of the little ones are able to stay home with mom and/or grandma now. But our squad is smaller right now, and we're hoping to add a few new members very soon :)

Scrapbook & Cards Today: A Peek Into My Work Life

After sharing so many older layouts over the last 3-4 weeks, it's nice to be here sharing a NEW layout with you all. After making the decision at the end of last year to step down from the Scrapbook & Cards Today team, it was so nice to be invited to contribute to the Scrapbook & Cards Today: Fall issue a few months ago.

I was asked to create a layout for the Take A Number feature, which centers around the idea of working numbers into our projects. I was asked to give a few ideas that I might want to try out for my layout, and one of them had to do with breaking down my work day by the numbers. 

When I started thinking about this layout, and how I would break down my work day by the numbers, I had SO many different ideas going on in my head. I knew I had to settle on just a few main numbers, so I decided to focus on the number of hours I work each day, the number of kiddos I have each day, approximately how many meltdowns we experience each day, and approximately how many hugs & kisses I receive each day. 

The numbers that I used for the hours I work each day and the number of kiddos I have each day are accurate and easy to figure out. When it came to the meltdowns and hugs & kisses, it was more of a guesstimate. With a little exaggeration mixed in for humor, of course. 

I was also asked to work a fun technique into the number part of my design. I immediately thought of my embossing folders and using them on chipboard. I used the Silhouette chipboard, and die cut my numbers with my Cameo using the Weathered Door Alpha kit (which also has numbers) from Kerri Bradford. I'm totally drawing a blank on whether I cut two or three of each number to layer together. I know I definitely layered at least two together, to make them thicker.

From there, my original plan was to paint the numbers, with coordinating paint colors, and then run them thru the embossing folders. I had paint colors that matched my papers perfectly. They were crazy old Making Memories paints, and sadly, three of the four colors ended up being totally dried up to the point I couldn't make them work (I have been known to use halfway dried up paint and love the texture it gives). 

So instead, I die cut the numbers once again, from coordinating patterned papers, to layer on top of the chipboard numbers. From there, I ran each thru the embossing folder, and then lightly rubbed some sand paper over the embossed areas. 

I arranged the numbers on three inch squares down the left side of the page. I also used my Cameo, and a cutting file from Kerri Bradford again, to cut some little 3" wide background pieces (I think they were 3x4 to be exact, and then I trimmed off the excess) from white cardstock and then layered those over the bottom cardstock squares. I machine stitched around the edges of each square, before adhering to the page. 

I also cut some little tabs (using another cut file from Kerri) to go alongside each numbered square. I wanted to add what each number was for, and this seemed like the best way to do that. I used my older stash of Lily Bee tiny alpha stickers to add what each number represented. And I totally lucked out in having enough letters, in black, to do all of them.

For my title, I combined a few brush script word cut files from Kerri Bradford, along with some alpha stickers from Jillibean Soup. As for my patterned papers for this layout, I used lots of Pink Paislee, a little My Mind's Eye, and some old Studio Calico for the title. 

I kept my embellishments simple, and stuck to buttons, one of my all time favorite types of embellishments. I went digging around for buttons to match my patterned papers, and even though I only needed three colors, I ended up pulling buttons from Basic Grey, My Favorite Things, and Fancy Pants to get the ones I liked. 

For my photos, I pulled up a few photos that I thought gave a good little glimpse into my work day. I used a template for Kerri Bradford to create my photo collage, and changed all of the photos to black and white, since I had way too many clashing colors going on. 

I made sure to include more details about each number represented on my page in my journaling. My work days can be crazy and insane, and I may lose my ever-lovin mind more than I care to admit. But my days can also be filled with laughter and smiles, along with more hugs and kisses than I probably deserve. I love my little people, my squad if you will, and I never take for granted the role I am lucky to play in their little lives. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: {inter} National Scrapbook Day

This coming Saturday is {inter} National Scrapbook Day, and all this week there's been fun stuff going on at Kerri Bradford Studio, leading up to the big day. She's got something different on sale each day this week, as well as announcing a few new items! Kerri's design team has been sharing new inspiration all week long, and today I've got a new layout up! 

A week ago today, I had one of my favorite daycare dudes, Mateo, leave me as he moves on to preschool. He's been with me since he was just 4 months old, and is now an awesome 4 1/2 year old. I made sure to get a good photo of him last week, as I was preparing an album full of photos for him to take with him on his last day. I loved seeing one of the first photos I took of him alongside the last photo I took of him, and knew that I needed to create a layout using both of them.

I wanted to create a white on white background for this layout, and I knew that I wanted to incorporate lots of stars. I used one of Kerri's basic star cut files to fill an entire page of stars to cut from my white cardstock. I ended up cutting two full sheets of stars, and only had a few leftover.

I adhered the stars in rows on another sheet of white cardstock, adding the adhesive to the center of the stars only so that they weren't fully adhered to the page and had some dimension and lift to them. Once I had all of the stars adhered, I spritzed the entire page with navy blue and green misting spray.

When I went to pick out some patterned papers for this layout, I had a few specific papers in mind from Pebbles. I didn't find the ones I was thinking about in my stash, but I did find these super old patterned papers from boy collection that I had always loved. So all of the papers on here are from Pebbles, but nothing that you'd be able to find these days (unless they're hiding in your stash as well!). 

I cut a few tabs from the Simplicities: Best Thing Ever kit to tuck under each photo, so that I could add the year and Mateo's age to go along with the photos. I dug thru a lot of my alpha stickers for adding the year and age, but was having a hard time finding stickers that were small enough for the allowed space. Good thing I still have a ton of Making Memories stickers on hand, as they're always perfect for little spaces like this. 

I had a few title options in the works, and kept playing around with them to see what stuck with me the most. I actually had a totally different design in mind for this layout when I started, but once I finally decided on my title, it changed up my plans a bit. I settled on using the "forever" from the Grateful kit and "always" from the This & That: Family kit, adding in a few letter stickers (from Jillibean Soup) to complete the title.

I wasn't sure how I was going to print my journaling, until I remembered that I had created another layout with a punched star background a few years ago (seen HERE). I went to see how I had added my journaling to that layout, and realized my go-to journaling strips would be perfect.

Mateo has been gone for just one week, and I miss him something awful. He really was the life of this house, in so many ways. And not just with the daycare kids. Even within our little family. He was part of our family in a sense, as he was here so much. It's been a long time since I've had a main kiddo leave me, especially one I was so attached too. But he's doing good, and that's what matters. It's part of the job. You spend so much time with them, helping raise them into little persons. And then you send them out into the big world of preschool and kindergarten, and hope that they remember you years from now. But my little Tator Tot had better come back to visit me or else ;)

Kerri Bradford Studio: A Labor Of Love

I've got a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I recently made a comment to my oldest daughter Alyssa about how I don't take that many photos of my daycare kids anymore, and she said "just all of your rocking chair photos with Derek". If you happen to follow me on Instagram, you'll know what this is about ;) I said that I take so many of those because I'm stuck in the rocking chair with him all the time and I get bored, and then said that I should probably print them all out and make a layout about it. And that's exactly what I did, as I knew it would be perfect for my next layout for Kerri.

I started by collaging all of my photos together, using a template from Kerri's Storyboard: Instagram Style kit. I tend to take photos on my phone in the square format, for whatever reason, and I have also shared each one of these photos on my Instagram, so the rows of square little photos were just what I needed.

I knew I had quite a bit of color going in all of my photos, and yet when it came time to pick out my patterned papers, it was really quite easy to come up with a color combo that I liked. I had the red tone-on-tone dotted patterned paper in mind from the start. It's an oldie, but still goodie, from Scenic Route. I ended up finding the rest of my papers in that same section of my stash, as I thought the aqua tone-on-tone dotted paper, the black paper, and the grid paper were a great mix with the red. All super old patterned papers, but I knew I'd use them someday.

I trimmed strips of both the red and black patterned papers, to fit along the left edge of the page, knowing that my photo collage would go all the way to the right edge of the page. I used a border punch along the white grid patterned paper, and tucked the border strip under the black paper strip to break up the darker colored papers. 

As I browsed thru Kerri's kits for a good title, I came up with several different options. I ended up going with "a labor of love", because I don't think I would be willing to spend so much time rocking this adorable baby boy, and helping him sleep, if I didn't love him a ton ;) I sized it to go the length of my photo collage, and cut it from both the black and red patterned papers to layer together.

When I went thru my photos, to find all of the ones I've taken in the rocking chair holding this adorable baby boy, I ended up finding twelve photos. I arranged my photos by date taken, leaving three spaces of the template empty, which is where I planned up placing my journaling. I've done this several times before, and love the look of the journaling mixing right in with the photos. 

I knew the layout needed a little something more at the top of the page, and I happen to have these fun little 2x2" cards from a Project Life kit sitting out by where I was scrapping. I dug thru them and found a few that would coordinate with the page. Once I pulled out that grey "date" card, I went and found a grey scalloped border sticker to add along the left side of the page to add in more grey. A fun little fact is that Kerri helped design these cards for an older Project Life kit several years back. So it seemed fitting to add these to this layout.

I also did a teeny, tiny amount of stamping with a few of Kerri's stamp sets. I added the "absolutely" from her Stamps: One Fine Day stamp set, to go along with my title, and the dashed line from her Stamps: Oh Yeah stamp set underneath.

A Quick Little Album For A Special Little Girl

Hey there! I know it's been quieter on the blog lately. I was doing so well for a while. I was creating more, which meant that I had more to share. Then I got a new three month old baby in the daycare, and the ninth month old baby decided he would only sleep if I'm holding him. And that, my friends, is when my life apparently fell apart. Lol. Anyways. 

One of my little daycare girlies, Luna, had her last day with me this past Friday. I started watching her exactly three years and one week ago, when she was not quite nine months old. And now, just months away from turning four years old, she's moving on. Literally, as they are moving to another state. 

I had this idea to make her a little album, so that she could have some photos of her friends to remember them. I actually had the idea for a few weeks, but it wasn't until the night before her last day that I decided to actually throw something together. 

I had picked up a little 4x4" album from WRMK a few weeks ago, just in case I did decide to create the album. I knew that I didn't have a ton of photos, so I wanted something small. I also knew that I had a bunch of little 2x2" photos already printed that I could incorporate into this size album, with the little divided page protectors. 

I started the album with one of those divided page protectors. I had some crochet hearts from Bella Blvd sitting out, that I had torn off of other projects. Since they didn't have the adhesive tabs on the back anymore, they were easy to slip into the pockets. I then machine stitched along the openings to close each pocket up so the hearts don't fall out. 

I followed the opening page with the "lucky" 4x4" clear card that I found in my stash (from Heidi Swapp) and slipped into a full page protector. I honestly don't have many photos of Luna. One reason being that she was always part time, so she wasn't around every day. And one reason being that she didn't really like me to take her photo. But I did have this really cute one from when she was smaller, so it's the main 4x4" photo of her in the album. 

I included just two 4x4" journaling cards in the album, and wrote my journaling by hand on both. Mostly because it was quicker, as I would always prefer printed journaling for sure. 

I then printed out one 3x4" photo of each of the kiddos that have been her with her over the last three+ years. All of the 2x2" photos in this album were all phone photos that I had printed a while back thru the FreePrints app. I didn't have a plan for them at the time, so I just went thru the pile and tried to find two photos to go along with each of the kids. 

I don't take that many photos of the kids these days. Not like I used to years ago, when I would have tons of photos of them, month after month. Abby here was one kiddo that I just didn't have many photos of, as she moved on a while back to preschool, and is only here during the summer. So I just included some random photos next to her photo.

When it came to filling the pockets without photos, I ended up turning to my Bella Blvd stash. While most of the collections do contain a few 2x2" cards that can be cut out from one of the patterned papers, some of the older collections had Candid Cards, which contained lots of smaller 2x2" cards to choose from. 

Most of the cards, I simply slipped in the pocket and that was it. There were a few cards that I did add an enamel heart too, because they were simpler cards that seemed to need a little something extra. 

Next to the 3x4" photos of the kids, I added a piece of star patterned paper. I actually cut 4x4" pieces of white cardstock for these pockets, and adhered both the photo and the patterned paper piece, and then machine stitched along the edge of the photo.

I found a coordinating tab to go with each kid's photo, pulling them from the Paper Pieces from some older collections. I tucked those under the side of the photo before doing the machine stitching. 

I also added each child's name to their photo, using some alpha stickers. Easy peasy.

This is a super simple album. Like I said, I threw it together in just about two hours, start to finish. I kept thinking I should add more, to bulk it up a bit. But in the end, I decided it was just enough and that Luna would love it. 

I snapped this photo of Luna, and three of the other kiddos that were here on her last day. These are the four older kids, and the ones she always played with the most. So it was nice that they were all together on her last day. I printed it out during their naptime, and slipped it in the last page of the album. 

Luna's mom said that Luna loves her album. She told me that she was trying to get a photo of it, but Luna wouldn't let go of it, and that she even slept with it Friday night. So cute. I'm really going to miss that girl.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Week After Week

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I've accumulated so many photos of my daycare kiddos lately, all taken with my phone, and thought it was about time to do another layout about what a typical work week for me looks like. Quite honestly, a typical work week for me looks almost exactly like any other work week I've had over the last fourteen years of doing daycare. Just different faces, as kids come and go.

I picked out a few photos that show a bit of the crazy moments of my days (kids making huge messes, huge amounts of kids, and lunchtime), and a few photos that show a bit of the calm moments of my days (sitting on the floor with little ones in my lap, and rocking babies to sleep), and combined them into one of Kerri's collage templates from her Half Pints #1 kit.

The colors in my photos were definitely all over the place, but I ended up picking my patterned papers pretty quickly. I find that when I don't have any particular papers in mind, I will often turn to my collection of Dear Lizzy and Amy Tangerine first to see what I can find. And that's exactly what I did for this page, as I ended up with a mix of patterned papers from the two of them. I thought the days of the week patterned paper would tie in nicely with the "week" theme I had going, and added a strip of it across the top and bottom of the page. 

I was going to link up another layout I created about the daycare kids last year, and when I went to find it, I realized I had created it for my January layout for Kerri also. Must be a January thing, that I like to scrap the daycare kiddos. It's THIS LAYOUT, and I thought it was a fun coincidence that I talked about the colors being all over in my photos, and that I also turned to my Dear Lizzy patterned papers for that layout. 

For my title, I loved the chunkier "week" found in the Life Additions: Weeklies kit, and cut it twice from my aqua patterned paper. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I love a title combining a chunkier font with a cursive font. The "after" was actually taken from "afternoon", found in Kerri's Today kit, and was perfect for adding in between my two "weeks". I also cut each of the three words from black cardstock, which I layered behind my patterned paper words, slightly offsetting the two for a little dimension.

I left plenty of room to add my journaling, as I had a lot to say on this layout. I could have gone on and on about what makes up a normal work week for me, but I think I touched on the most important ones. I love doing layouts like this from time to time, as so much of the facts remain the same, and yet there's always bound to be a few new tidbits that stand out more at different times. Some years I've had less kids, some years I've had more kids. Some years, I've had lots of babies, and some years I've had way more toddlers. 

This past year with the daycare has been the busiest year I've had in a long time. Anyone that follows me on Instagram already gets peeks into the craziness that makes up my days! Right now, I've got a 8 month old boy, 2.5 year old girl, 3.5 year old boy, 3.5 year old girl, and a 4 year old boy. I have another 2 year old girl that's been home with mom on her maternity leave, and will be back soon, along with her 3 month old baby brother. Like I said, it's pure crazy up in here. I love them all to death, but they seriously suck the life out of me daily. Every night, I wonder why I'm so tired - and then I think about my day, and say "oh yeah, that's why". 

Bella Blvd: In My Heart Forever

It's time for another "Spread It Out" feature over on the Bella Blvd blog today, which means that I have a new two page layout to share with you.

I've been a home daycare provider for a little over 14 years now, and have had close to 36 kids (the 36th was actually born yesterday and will be coming here soon!) that I've taken care of throughout those years. There are actually a few more kiddos that have been in the mix, but these are my main ones.

Lately, for different reasons, I've had a lot of these kids on my mind and I felt this need to do a layout focusing on all of the little ones that I've been lucky enough to spend my days with, and to have a small part in helping to raise them during their first few years of life.

The amount of photos I needed worked out perfectly, since I love to line things up and collage photos together. I printed them all as 2x2" photos and they fit across the page in three rows of 12 (minus the one new baby, who I will add in when he gets here).

Finding all of these photos took me forever. Which is crazy, since I did THIS FRAMED PROJECT about two years ago, and I honestly would have thought I had saved all of these photos in a folder somewhere to work from. But I hadn't. So I dug around for hours on my external hard drive, looking for photos of each of these kiddos.

I arranged the photos in sets of four, so they were directly side by side and I could treat them as one "photo" when trimming them from the sheets after printing. I just had to cut some of them in half, since I had 6 kids in each row, on each page. I should have been a little more careful when trimming them, as I left a little white border along the top and bottom, and they're not all even. But they're close enough.

Once I knew where on the pages I would add my rows of photos, that left me the areas to fill with patterned paper. Since I printed all of the photos in black and white, I had way more freedom in choosing my colors for the page. I decided on a black, white, navy blue, green, and yellow color combo, and set out to find patterned papers and other elements in those colors. And I have to point this out, only because I just noticed it. That navy blue 2x2" card says "selfie", and I totally thought it said "captured". My bad. Lol.

I pulled patterned papers from the Daily Chevies, Lucky Stars, Fresh Market, and Whatever Is Lovely collections. I actually had more that I wanted to say on this layout. My original plan was to add my title along the top, and have journaling all across the green patterned paper along the center of the pages. Once I added my title to the center of the page, that didn't leave me with as much room for journaling, so I kept it short and sweet.

I went back and forth for quite a while on my title, finally settling on "In My Heart Forever". Because honestly, every single one of these kids, no matter how much or how little I see of them after they leave me, do have a special place in my heart forever. Ok, if I'm being totally honest, there are 2-3 on here that I haven't thought of since they left. Lol. But that's another story ;)

I kept the rest of the spread pretty simple, since I wanted the focus to stay on the photos, with strips of patterned papers, a few border stickers, and some simple embellishments. I used a few 2x2" cards, either taken from a sheet of patterned paper on the Candid Cards that used to come with some of the collections. I did add a few enamels at the end. But other than those few things, I didn't feel the need to add anything else to the pages.

And that one little spot in the bottom right corner is reserved for the new baby boy, born yesterday morning. Brother to the little girl two photos over. I'll just remove that little square of patterned paper and add in his photo later.

Kerri Bradford Studio: The View From Up Here

I have a layout up today over at Kerri Bradford Studio! A while back, I had been searching thru Kerri's cut files in my Silhouette library for a totally different project, and I came across one from the Pack Your Bags kit that said "the view". It might have come from a travel related kit, but it immediately gave me an idea for a layout about some of my daycare kiddos.

One of my favorite ways to take pictures of the little ones is to stand above them and wait until they look up at me, which is when I snap the picture. i find that when I'm trying to get them to look at me, it's so much easier to get their attention when I'm standing up and holding something interesting above them. It makes them look, because they want to know what I'm doing. Or I will have one of them sitting in my lap, and I will hold the camera above us and snap away, hoping that one actually captures us in the frame. I thought it would be fun to gather up a bunch of these photos from over the years for a layout.

I used one of Kerri's collage templates from the Storyboard Instagram Style kit for my photos. I used the template that had two rows with five photos on each row. I created two of these collages, as my original idea for the page was to have the two collages separate from each other. In the end, I ended up combining them together, so that it actually looks like one large collage. 

I had a good mix of colors going on in these photos, so I wasn't really sure where to start in picking out papers. Oddly enough, these are often the times when I end up making simple and easy choices.

I had this itch to use some of my Dear Lizzy patterned papers, and came across a good mix from the Lucky Charm collection that seemed to go well with the photos. The polka dot paper is actually a sheet of vellum.

I cut my title, "the view", from the yellow and red patterned papers and from the navy blue patterned paper as well, so that I could layer them together to add a little dimension. I don't always remember to cut my titles out twice, once from a darker paper. But I think it looks so much better when I have the two pieces to layer together.

That aqua circle is a die cut from the Lucky Charm collection, and it just so happen to be the perfect size to adhere my "the" too. I didn't even plan that. Love when things just magically happen! And since I am almost always guaranteed to lose the dots from my i's when I die cut my titles, I added a little enamel dot in it's place.

I wanted to add a little something across the bottom of the page, but didn't really want to use a single strip of patterned paper. So I punched out some half circles from several coordinating patterned papers (two of which I used for my title), and layered them across the bottom strip on the page.

I pulled out some of the coordinating embellishments I had from the Lucky Charm collection, and added some stickers here and there on the page. I had to use that fun little "hello sunshine" badge too. The enamel dots are all from Doodlebug.

I had really wanted to print my journaling on this little die cut, lined journaling card from the collection. But I just couldn't get the text to line up on the lines. And it would have bugged me to no end if everything hadn't lined up right. After much debate, I finally gave up and printed it out on white cardstock. I know when to admit that I'm not smart enough to figure something out :) 

Digital Book Share

Sorry it's been so quiet around here. We're in that last week before Christmas, and I'm far from being ready. My girls have half days at school this week for finals, before getting a two week break. Which means I have extra kiddos here during the day, with school being out. Last weekend, we started our winter soccer league, which keeps our Saturdays busy. And to top it off, it's CHA time, which means I'm spending a lot of time doing general CHA planning, and will be creating projects as soon as the new product shows up on my doorstep. Yep. Just a little busy around here.

I thought I would quickly share my digital book that I blogged about HERE, as it arrived about a week ago. It took barely a week to come, and I couldn't wait to open it up. I think it turned out great I did second guess myself a bit, wondering if I should have upgraded the paper. I can't even remember how much extra the other two paper options were, but it might be worth checking into next time.

What I love the most about this book, is that at 163 pages, it's so nice and compact. It's not even as thick as a roll of my Bella Blvd designer tape. If you saw the other post, and that huge stack of albums, it'll show you how much shelf space I'm saving my combining all of those layouts into this one digital book.

I won't bore you with photos of every page in the book. Because honestly, all of the layouts are right here on my blog and in my galleries. But I thought I would just share a handful of pages, just to give you an idea of how it all turned out. And excuse the awesome glare on the left side of the photos. I obviously didn't take too much time taking these photos, or I would have ended up with some better ones to share.

So far, I've only handed out one stack of layouts to one previous daycare family. I've been too busy to track people down, and I don't think ahead enough to take them with me if I'm driving by one of their houses. Eventually, I will get them all handed out, so they can enjoy them.

Turning Layouts Into A Book

"What do you do with the layouts you make of your daycare kids?". That's a question that I've been asked a lot over the years. And my answer has always been the same. I keep the layouts. Sure, I show them off to the parents. But they are layouts with photos that I've taken, stories and/or journaling about what happens when these kids are with me, and they are memories of the time that I spend with these kids. I hope this doesn't sound too selfish, but they are MY memories of MY days with them.

I was searching my blog for something last week and came across this photo from many years ago. At that time, I had accumulated 5 full albums of layouts about my daycare kids from over the years. I believe shortly after this was when I sorted through the layouts and did actually give some away to a handful of the parents. Just a little narrowing down, you could say.

{consider yourself warned: these are ALL cell phone camera pics, and I'm not lucky enough to have a really nice cell phone}

As of two weekends ago, this was what my collection of daycare layouts looked like. I still only had 5 full 12x12 albums, although there were some being stored in a 6th album as well (and notice I had changed my album style at some point). I also had 2 full 9x9 albums, since several years ago I was scrapping a ton of layouts in that size.

This was the massive pile of layouts that I sorted out and put away in albums two weekend ago. There were close to 80 layouts in that pile. I don't scrap the daycare kids as much as I used to, for a few reasons, but I did have about 10-15 layouts in there to add to the daycare albums. And they wouldn't fit. Which got me thinking once again about an idea I had the last time I was putting layouts away, earlier this year.

A while back, I pondered the idea of taking all of those layouts and turning them into a digital book. And then passing the layouts themselves along to any parents that I'm still in touch with. I felt like it was a huge decision. Having pictures of layouts in a book is kind of like seeing layouts online, on blogs, or eve in magazines. It's cool. But it's nothing like seeing layouts in person, where you can appreciate the details, layers, textures, etc. 

But at the same time, I was thinking of the space these albums are taking on my shelves. Have I mentioned that I have over 60 albums??? It's one thing to have that many albums of my own family. But when I think about having 7 albums of just the daycare kids, I have to wonder how important they'll be 10 years from now, 20 years from now. When I think about it like that, I actually like the idea of having one compact book that features all of the layouts in one spot.

I have done quite a few books thru Shutterfly and Blurb, and love them all.

I've done several blog books, which is basically turning an entire years worth of blog posts (text and photos) into a nice compact book (SEEN HERE).

Three different years, I created a photo book of just the daycare kids, summing up their year in just a few photos of each child (usually done using a free photo book code, and one of them can be SEEN HERE).

And I also created a book for a daycare girlie that had been with me for 3.5 years, and included tons of photos along with all the layouts I've created of her (SEEN HERE).

Once I made the decision to actually do this, I started by pulling layouts out of their albums. I made it through about 2 albums before I became completely overwhelmed and thought about turning back. Luckily, that passed and I continued on. I already had all of my layouts organized by child (or family, if I had watched siblings) within the albums, so it was easy to pull out each child/family and make a pile for each. I worked with everything from 2001-2011. It was a good cut off point, since the kids that have been here the last 2 years are still super current in our life.

I then took photos of each and every layout. I actually have photos of all of my layouts, but they're resized for the blog, and for the books you need the massively huge image files. I would take each set of layouts, one child/family at a time, and photograph the layouts in order. I didn't stress too much about this part, as I only took about 3-4 shots of each layout (normally, when I photograph layouts I take at leat 10-12 photos). Then I would move on to the next child/family.

I would upload them to my laptop in batches, pick the best shot of each layout and then do some very quick editing. Most of them just needed a little lightening up, and maybe a slight color adjustment. I cropped them all, sharpened, and saved. I created a folder for each child/family, so I could keep them all seperate and easier to work with.

I knew I would use Blurb to create my book. It's easy to use, and the prices are really reasonable. I also knew that I wanted to make a 12x12" book, so that the layouts were just like their original size (instead of going with a 7x7" book, as I have used before). I kept things super simple, with one layout on each page, leaving a page inbetween each child/family to use as a divider. And since I named my images with the child/family name + the number for what order they went in, it took me NO time at all to load all of the images into the book in perfect order.

For the divider pages, I basically created a digital title page in Photoshop, that I could then upload as an image. I have a HUGE collection of digital products, so I just pulled in some patterned papers, a notebook page (in several colors), some tapes (in several colors), and staples. Once I had the page set up, it was super easy to just swap out the elements to match whoever the page was for. The beauty of digital!

 

The longest and hardest part of this project was trying to upload the finished book for ordering. It didn't help that I was trying to get in on an awesome sale, which apparently a TON of other people were trying to get in on as well. They actually extended the sale a day, because so many weren't able to upload their books.

After a lot of persistance on my part, and some magic on Blurb's part, I finally got my book all uploaded an ordered. Soon, I will have a 163 page 12x12" hardbound book in my hands, that won't take up much space on my shelves.

I did end up with a pile of layouts that I can't part with. A lot of those are layouts that include a bunch of the kids together, as I have created a lot of those over the years expressing how much they mean to me. I'm keeping layouts that included my girls, as a lot of the previous kids became their best friends. I'm keeping the layouts that document my typical work day, and the things we do here together. But any layouts that were strickly about the individual kids are being passed along to parents that I'm still in touch with (which is about 70%).

It gave me a good reason to use up some really old post bound albums that have been taking up space on my shelves. I made up albums for each child/family that had a good amount of layouts. A few are just in a bag to pass along. And for those that I'm not in touch with anymore? I'm not sure you want to hear what I did with those layouts. Are you sitting down? I threw them away. Yes, I know that's pretty drastic. But I was 100% fine with it, and had no regrets after doing it. 

I love creating layouts and cards, and doing everyday scrapping. But honestly, I love when I have some free time from assignments to work on fun projects like this. I feel like I accomplished something big, and it feels really, really good.

October Afternoon: September Guest Designer Part 2

I am up on the October Afternoon blog again today, with my second project as the September guest designer. I have been having lots of fun using the new Daily Flash collection, and today I'm focusing on the All Boy mini collection. I was immediately drawn to it when I pulled all of the goodies out of my box. I love a good boy collection, even though I have two daughters. Luckily, as a daycare provider, I have plenty of boy photos to scrap!

While I knew I wanted to use the divided page protectors, I also knew that my plan was to use one as an insert page in between a traditional two page spread. As I was working on this project, I did all of my planning knowing that the divided page protector would be in between the 2 pages of the spread. In the end, I realized that if I simply removed the divided page protector, my two page spread actually looked pretty cohesive on it's own. That was pure luck, since the only time I placed these two pages together was when I added my journaling.

Here's a look at the spread, with the divided page protector mixed in. This is how I had it laid out as I was working. You'll notice that instead of having a full 12x12 divided page protector, mine is a bit smaller. I wanted it to be obvious that there were 2 pages to the spread, with the divided page protector in the middle, so I choose to trim one row off the page protector. So instead of four rows of four 3x3" pockets, I ended up with four rows of three 3x3" pockets.

I LOVE the woodgrain pattern on the No Girls Allowed patterned paper. It's gorgeous! But I knew I wanted to create a die cut background from it, so it was a little less overwhelming on my layout. I used my Cameo to die cut the circle background from the full 12x12" sheet, cut it half to make two pieces, and then adhered a piece to each page of my two page spread. I love a good circle background, as those little openings are really fun to fill up with embellishments.

I added the 3x3" and 2x2" square cards to the top corner of the first page. I knew I had to use the "dude" piece, as I call all of my daycare kids "dude". And I teach them to say "dude" when they're really young!  

I had such fun digging thru my files to find some favorite photos of three of my absolute favorite daycare boys. I knew I had photos of each of them in Mr Potato Head glasses, or random sparkly glasses meant for the girls ;)

The Words & Arrows washi tape was perfect for adding a touch of that darker green to my page. And if you're looking to read my journaling here, and it's not making much sense, it's because I ended up extending the top two lines onto the second page. I needed more room to say what I wanted to say.

I printed out 3x3" photos to add to the pockets in the divided page protector, and filled in the remaining pockets with the 3x3" cards. I added some journaling strips to a few of the cards, but pretty much left them all as-is, without any extra embellishing.

Here's a look at the second part of the spread, after you flip over the divided page protector. I love having the die cut woodgrain paper on the outer edges of each page of the spread, as you still see the darker brown no matter which way the divided page protector is flipped.

This is the backside of the divided page protector. Just like the front side, I filled the pockets with either 3x3" photos or 3x3" cards. I ended up with four photos of each of the three boys, ranging from when they were just little babies, up until they were little boys.

On the first page of the layout spread, I choose photos of the boys in the silly glasses. For the second page, I dug up photos of the boys and myself. Most of the photos I end up capturing just show a child hanging on me or climbing on me. But I still love them!

The Tin Pins and Snap Caps made for perfect little embellishments to add randomly to the circles of the die cut woodgrain paper. And I know I mentioned before how much I love the October Afternoon buttons. And these circles are perfect for adding some buttons too. So I think it's really odd that I never even thought about adding some buttons to this spread. I might need to go back and add some :)

You can check out my project over on the October Afternoon blog as well, as I know they love the visitors. And check back next Friday, when I'll be sharing my last project! I think I might just have to break out this fun mini album. Wish me luck, since I can't remember the last time I've worked on a mini album!

Kerri Bradford Studio: Seriously? Seriously.

I finally have a new layout to share. Seems like it's been a while since sharing a layout over at Kerri Bradford Studio, as I recently did a framed project, my kitchen backsplash project, and the sports album. Loved getting back to a 12x12 inch canvas.

Meet Devon. He's 10 months old now, and I've been watching him for the last six months. He's adorably cute, and has the most precious little face. On the flip side, he's super clingy and demands my constant attention. Meaning that if I'm not holding him, or sitting right smack next to him on the floor, he screams and cries non-stop. It's a little ridiculous, and it wears on me. I'm not sure he gets that I have other little ones here that need my attention too. Or maybe he gets it, but he is still under the assumption that the world revolves around him.

I am constantly finding myself saying "Seriously Devon? Seriously" to him, over and over. When I've been sitting on the floor with him for half an hour, and I simply stand up and walk a few feet away to get a drink or something, and he immediately starts screaming. All I can do is turn around, look at him, and say "Seriously???".

So when I decided to scrap a few recent photos I took of Devon, this is the first title that popped into my head. The "Seriously" title is from the Design Team Picks kit, from 2012. I used all My Mind's Eye patterned papers on this layout. Some of them older papers, and a few newer papers. I cut the title from a greyish paper first, and then from the yellow and red polka dot papers to layer on top.

I also knew that I wanted to use the cute little polaroid frames from the new Sliders kit. I was working with regular 4x6 photos that I trimmed down to fit, so I sized the frames to fit the photos once I cropped the photos down and focused on just having that adorable little face in the frame.

I went looking for some shapes to embellish the page with, and decided on using some arrows from the Need Directions? kit. The only other embellishments I added were a few stickers and a few simple silver brads.

While I love layouts filled with dimension and layers and texture, sometimes a simple design of paper and stickers is just what I need. I loved sitting down after a long work day and creating a layout in one short sitting, instead of spending so much time making decisions and digging for products that in the end, make for a longer layout design process. 

And I have to give little Devon some props today. We've made a few adjustments on the schedule front, which means that I'm actually watching him a lot more than I was before. We're hoping I can tough-love him out of this clingy phase he's been in for over half his little life. And today was the first really good day we've had in months. I don't want to jinx it by saying more, so we'll just wait and see how tomorow goes. Positive thinking has me imagining tomorrow being a good day too.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Framed Collage Project

Happy Monday everyone! I had such a productive weekend, and got a TON of scrapping work done. More than I even thought I would, and what's even more surprising is that most of it isn't even due for another week. Anyone that knows me, knows that I never work ahead. Lol.

In case you haven't heard yet, there is a brand new photo template kit up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today! I know how much I love working with Kerri's storyboard templates. I love a good photo collage when it comes to scrapping lots and lots of photos. 

I had been kicking this idea around in my head for a few months now. Well, not this exact idea. The photos I had in mind were of Alyssa's band friends that she's collected this past school year. She did send me copies of all of her photos so that I could try my idea out, but there's a lot more photos to work with (100+), so I thought I would start smaller and go from there.

So I decided to use photos of my daycare kids. Not just the ones that are here now, but a photo of every single child that I have watched over the years. I have created a few layouts that contain a good amount of these kids in one place, but I thought it would be nice to create something that could be displayed out in the open for everyone to see. I think that would help convince any prospective parents to bring their children to me, right ;)

When I first saw Kerri's Storyboard: Instagram Style kit, I knew it would be perfect for this type of project. I chose the template that held 16 photos. I then did a quick count of how many kids I have watched over the years. This was actually fairly easy, since I'm required to keep a "roster" of sorts for the state, which I have been filling out and adding to for the last eleven years. I counted out 35 kids. Which seems like a lot, and yet at the same time, I thought would be a higher number.

Then came the hardest part. Finding a photo for each child. For some of these kids, it wasn't so much finding a photo, but picking just ONE photo. Some of these kids were with me for one year, two years, three+ years. How do you chose just one photo, and from what age to you chose it. What about the ones that came as newborns? Did I chose a baby photo, or one from when they were older?

Then there were the kids from the very beginning. I took tons of photos of them too, but that was before the digital days. I have all of my negatives organized and can easily find what I need. But that's still a lot of digging around, taking the negatives to Costo for reprints, and then they're still not an actual digital file to work with. My scanner only works when it wants to work, so I didn't want to mess with that. Some of those earlier kids I was able to find photos of when they were older, since I've taken family photos for some of them. So even though they might not be the same young faces that I took care of at the time, I'm ok with using a slightly older version of them for this project.

There are three photos on here (the first collage I showed) where I actually took a photo of a photo, from one of my layouts. It didn't work perfectly, but it will do. And sadly, I had four kids that I just couldn't find photos of. I feel bad leaving them out.

I had picked up a poster sized frame that was 12"x36", so my plan was to create three 12"x12" photo collages to fill the frame. Since I ended up with 31 photos, I decided to fill the first template completely, and fill the top two rows of the second template, and the bottom two rows of the third template. I was bummed that I had that one empty square the bottom. And about a week after I finished this project, I got a new little daycare baby. I'll have to add her in there at some point.

    

Just to give you an idea of what my plan was, I created a 12"x36" canvas in Photoshop and copied each of the collages over, one on top of the other. Because I only used the top part of the second template and the bottom part of the third template, once I stacked them up, that left me a 12"x12" section to fill. My plan was to just create something to lay on top of those using cardstock and patterned paper. Keep in mind, I had each template printed seperately. But if you found a spot that would print something 12"x36", you could print something just like this all on one large photo.

This is a terrible photo of the completed project, but it's honestly the best I could get. I even took out the plexiglass, thinking that would help. But I was still getting lot of glare anywhere I went in the house. Hanging it on the wall didn't help. So you'll just have to trust me that it really looks good in person.

I adhered all three of the printed photo collages to the paper that actually came in the frame, just to hold everything in place. I had my collages printed at Costco, and each were $2.99, so $10 for all three of them.

I wanted to keep the paper area of this project pretty simple, since this is going to hang in the playroom (which is really our living room/dining room, so it's right when you walk in the door). I added a sheet of white cardstock that I very lightly misted with pink spray mist. I chose the "If you're happy and you know it ... clap your hands" phrase from Kerri's Happy kit. I wanted something fairly large and I think it kind of ties in with the whole daycare/kids thing. It's a song that plays on about 38% of these toys too, so I find myself singing it quite a bit!

To finish it off, I simply dug out a really old piece of heart patterned paper, a few aqua cardstock border strips, and a piece of brown polka dot ribbon. Easy and not too busy looking. When I get new kids here, and am ready to add a few more to the frame, I can add them right into the templates, since I saved them all as working files. All of the kids are in the order of which they started coming to me, so I would most likely just shift everyone up to make room at the bottom for the new ones. I can always make that paper area smaller as well. 

Next on my list is to find a spot to hang this. I had a spot in mind, and when I hung it up there, it just looked too small, oddly enough. So for now, it's propped in my scraproom. And with the school year coming to an end soon, I need to get working on one for Alyssa with all of her band photos from the year.

A Couple Of Digital Boy Layouts

Computers. I don't know about you all, but I have this love/hate relationship with my laptop. I love it to death. When it works and does all of the stuff I want it to do. I hate it with a passion. When it gives me problems, and won't let me do the things that I normally do. And lately, I'm definately leaning more on the "hate" side of our relationship. So frustrating.

I've been in this funk lately. I havn't done any actual scrapping in almost 2 full weeks. So weird for me to go that long without cutting paper and gluing stuff. The craziness of life is wearing on me. Girls back in school. Soccer in full swing. Daycare kids running me wild. Scrapping jobs sucking down my creative energy. Just been really, really tired lately, which makes me avoid my scraproom. So last night, I thought I would make a few quick digital layouts, just to do something creative.

Meet Mateo. He's been with me for about six months now, and he's just about 10 months old. He is unbelievably adorable! And such a great baby. I really love this age, where they are developing such strong personalities. I love that he is more mobile, crawling around, pulling himself up, cruising around the furniture. But that also means he can get to where he wants to go. And that's usually straight to me. Lol. He loves to hang on me, and have me sit and play with him. Which is all good. Except that sometimes, I do actually have to get stuff done around here. But it's so hard to resist that cute little face!

As for the layout. I have used this digital template before for another layout (seen HERE). I love this template, and figured I would just use it again, for both of these new layouts. It's not like these layouts will be side by side in my albums, so it's totally fine with me to use the same basic design.

I've already introduced you to Zachary. He's getting so big. He's two and a half now, and he's a real character. While we tell Mateo how adorable he is all day, we tell Zachary how hilarious he is all day. On days when he's not here, it's so quiet and sometimes a bit boring. He definitely livens up this joint, and keeps us laughing. He's even funny when he's trying to be all serious. He gives us these straight faces, with the pouty lips and one raised eyebrow, and we just bust up laughing because he's so funny.

And if Photoshop had let me finish this layout, and add my journaling, it would have said something to that effect. How he makes us laugh all the time. BUT. Photoshop kicked me out last night.

As in, it literally kicked me out and apparently decided to un-do my layout that I had saved and re-saved about 10 times as I created it. When I went to open it this morning, my file showed nothing but a red line on it. Lovely (said sarcastically, in case you didn't pick up on that).

So I pulled up everything I had picked out for this layout last night, and re-created it this morning. However, I cannot get into my folder that has all of my digital journaling stuff. That's the same folder that started locking up my computer last night. So I gave up on the journaling for now. Just imagine that I have journaling strips on that blue diagonal striped paper. If I can get it all working later, I'll swap out the finished layout.

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Every Picture Tells A Story

I have a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. It's quite a bit different than my normal style, but I kind of like it.

I have no idea why, but I was randomly thinking about these photos of two of my previous daycare kids, Miranda and Nikolas, last week. I have used these photos on a layout before. But it was using a kit that I was doing some package samples for, and the products I had to use didn't do much for me. So I pulled up the photos and decided to scrap them again.

Now, I am really loving the look of Instagram photos. However, I don't have an iPhone, or a cell phone with a decent camera, or anything special device with a camera. So my personal way of using Instagram is a bit involved. I find the photos that I want to share (or this case, add a filter and print), and email them to myself. Then I take my older hand-me-down iPod Touch, and pull up that email. I save the photos to my iPod, and then from there, I can load them into Instagram. I add the filters that I want, and turn them into the cute square images. They automatically save themselves, and then I email them back to myself. Then I go back to the laptop, pull up that new email, and download the Instagram photos. Lastly, I pull them up in Photoshop and get them ready to print. Time consuming? Yes. LOL.

All of the papers I chose for this layout are from Echo Park. I am in love with using grid patterned papers lately, for my backgrounds, and this one here is from the Note To Self collection. The green, pink, and yellow papers are all from the This & That collections. When I dig around for titles to cut on my Silhouette, I love to look for ones that have a fun mix of fonts. The mix of a more block-ish font, along with a cursive font, is my favorite.  

Since my photos were all squares, I thought it would be fun to use a few more square pieces on the page, and just fit them all together randomly on the page. I'm such a linear scrapper, and love to line up my photos, that I wanted to be a little more random in design for this layout. I found these sunburst shapes in the This & That Freedom kit, which is geared towards Independance Day. While this would look awesome on a full 12x12 (sadly, I don't have a Cameo yet), I just cut them into smaller squares to use.  

Lastly, I set out to find some embellishments to add to the centers of the sunbursts. Normally, I would go straight to my buttons, but I decided to try and stay away from them on this layout. I came across these tissue paper flowers from Studio Calico, which for whatever reason, I have never used. There are three different sets, and the colors all matched my papers perfectly. Such a simple way to finish the page.

 

suddenly a boy: a bella blvd layout

i have a new layout up today, on the bella blvd blog.

i look forward to our "free-for-all" layout days, which our designers have once a month. it's a chance to scrap about whatever we want to scrap about. no rules or restrictions to what collections or products we use. it's a great way to create some layouts that i've been wanting to do, just for fun.

it started when i took this photo of him last week. 26 months, going on 27 months. 2+ years, if you will.

and it made me think back to this photo of him. 7 months old. just a little thing.

time really does fly by so fast these days. it sort of seems like he magically became a full-fledged boy out of no where. he still had a few of those "baby" qualities about him. and then one day, he didn't. he was suddenly a boy.

i'll be honest. it bugs me just a teensy-tiny bit that my journaling printed a little crooked on the ruled pattern paper. lol! i'm sure no one would notice that except me. and i'm sure i'm weird for feeling the need to point it out to you all.

all of bella's new products started shipping out last week. so keep your eyes out for them, at your LSS's and online retailers. i know you can find them HERE at 2peas ;)

four foto friday

i'm short on time this week. i'm not short on words, but just don't have time to share them here on the blog. too much going on. so i'm taking the easy way out, but still getting something cute up here to look at. it's four foto friday.

seems like zachary was just a baby not too long ago. apparently, when i had my head turned, he went and grew into a full fledged boy. a little dude. 2 years and almost 3 months old.

and still quite attached to me. literally.

which is all good to me, since i find him quite entertaining and super adorable.

he's one of the funniest little dudes i've had the pleasure of taking care of. we all love him to pieces!

hello - a layout share

the this & that charming collection, from echo park, was one of my favorite new collections at CHA. i already managed to pick up a lot of my favorites from the show, and have started to play with all of them. i put this layout together over the weekend. it's pretty simple in design. but sometimes, simple is a nice change ;)

so, here's the story behind this layout. a few weeks ago, on a day i didn't have any daycare kids, i got a phone call. turns out, it was zachary, who had gotten a hold of grandma's cell phone and managed to call me. i was the last person she had called, and he must have just hit a button to re-dial me. he was talking a mile a minute. i didn't understand a lot of it, being that he just turned 2 years old at the end of december. there's a ton that i DO understand though, which is fun. after about 10 minutes of yapping away to me, grandma realized that he was actually talking to someone, and not just pretending. she was trying to get the phone back from him, and they ended up hanging up on me.

but zachary wasn't done talking to me, i guess. because he called back. at one point, i heard grandma say "laura. i can't get the phone from him, so just hang up whenever you have to go". lol! i finally told zachary that i had to go, and that i would see him the next day, and i hung up. well, he ended up calling me back two more times. it was all pretty funny. apparently, he had a TON to say to me.

later, grandma then sent me an email, "from" zachary, thanking me for talking to him. i thought it was so cute, so i saved the email. i thought it would be fun to scrap the story. well, when i was digging for photos last week for some other layouts, i came across these photos of zachary from a few months ago. he was talking on our old-school playskool phone. the one with the rotary dial. lol! i decided these photos would be perfect, to go with the story about his phone calls to me.

i copied and pasted part of zachary's email to me, and used it for my part of my journaling. click on the photo, to see it larger, if you can't read it here. feels kind of nice to have an idea for something, and get the story scrapped within a matter of weeks.

what i am doing - a creating keepsakes layout

i wanted to share a layout that i did for july/august issue of creating keepsakes, about 10 months ago (i seriously had to do the math on this. that seems like forever ago). i was asked to create a layout for the "peekaboo, i see you" article, written by mou saha. a few of the layouts, along with mine, ended up in the online section of this article, which can be seen HERE.

 
as seen in an online article for the July/August 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. copyright creative crafts group. posted with prior permission from the publisher.

i was asked to create an accordian style element on my layout, that would allow you to include lots of photos, but not overwhelm the layout. when i got this assignment, zachary was about 10 months old. he had this one week period, where he started to do a lot of things at once. crawling and standing up, being the biggest things. i had taken a ton of photos of him one day, and i thought they'd be perfect for this idea.

 

so this layout is about what he was doing. right then and there. at 10 months old. i used some of my favorite foam letter stickers from american crafts for my title, and then added some smaller letter stickers from making memories to finish off the title. if you see this in the online article, you'll see the green letter stickers outlined with a thin brown marker. they wanted them to stand out more. i used a fun mix of star embellishments (lots of old product) to embellish that upper corner.

 

the papers and stickers are all from pebbles. this was an older boy collection, that i had always loved, and was glad i had the perfect chance to use it. i'm a huge fan of blue, green, orange, and brown for boy layouts.

 

i decided to print out my focal photo as a 4x6, and then print all my other photos in the 2x3 size. i wanted to make my accordian style book to go the entire 12 inch height of the layout. the actual width of the book is 2.5 inches, so it doesn't take up a lot of room.

 

i started with a sheet of 12x12 green pattern paper. and then i scored it (top to bottom) every 2.5 inches. that allowed me to have a nice, clean fold. i would fold it over one way, and then the opposite way on the next fold. like when we used to make paper fans as kids ;)

i did end up wanting an extra fold in there. with the extra half inch on all my folds, the paper wasn't quite wide enough to get as many folds as i wanted. so i just took an extra sheet of paper, and adhered it to the last fold, to extend it out. not sure that makes sense. but i'm not sure how to explain it. lol! i basically just added paper, to make it the size i needed.

 

then i adhered the backside of my last fold, to where i wanted it on my layout. i have a total of 12 photos on this accordian booklet. 3 on the front. and then 3 photos, in each of the 3 folds. i adhered the 3 photos, top to bottom of the paper, adding in a block of 2x3 pattern paper.

 

and then i added some letter stickers, to describe what zachary was doing. playing. standing. crawling. i also added a few stickers. i kept all flat papers and stickers, since the accordian book already adds some bulk to the layout.

 

i forgot to add, that before i adhered my accordian booklet to the layout, i figured out where i wanted my ribbon to go on the book. i used a few glue dots to adhere it to the back of the book, and then adhered the book to the layout. when i had the book all completed, with photos and stickers, i tied the ribbon on the front to keep it closed. i also added a small metal clip up at the top of the book, and dangled a cute little felt star from it with a beaded metal chain.

hard to believe i created this a full 10 months ago. now, this same little boy, is running in circles all over this house. it's hard to picture a time when he just stood next to the table, holding on for dear life ;)

can i do buttons?

i think i mentioned that haley has been back with me for the summer, while she's on break from preschool. one of the things that she asks to do the most, is buttons. "can i do buttons, laura?". i don't mind sharing my buttons with her (except my good ones. i hide those). i used to teach classes at a LSS years ago, and had bought like a kazillion buttons for class kits at one point. so i have a good stash of them.

 

she started making this request quite a while back. i tend to work on a few projects here and there, during the day, while the kids are eating or running around. and when i would take out a jar of buttons, she would always ask to "do buttons". at some point, i came up with a way for her to do just that.

we usually make a card base, since it's something smaller in size, and she can take it home with her to give her mom, dad, or her grandma. i cut a piece of cardstock (this one shows kraft cardstock), slightly smaller than the white card base. then i run that piece of cardstock through my zyron, so that the entire thing is covered in really sticky adhesive. before peeling off the backing, i use regular adhesive on the other side and stick it down on the card base. then when i peel off the backing, the zyron adhesive part of the cardstock is on the top. so the entire front of the card is now sticky.

 

and then i give miss haley a big bowl of buttons. she loves green buttons, although i did get her to do red buttons once. she will sit and pick out the perfect buttons, and she starts pushing them onto the sticky cardstock. she keeps going, until she gets the entire thing filled up. and she's really good about making sure to press them all down, really well, so that they don't fall off. she's always so proud of her button card.

 

and what is zachary doing, while haley is "doing buttons"? he's got his potato head glasses on, and his plastic pretend keys. and then he proceeds to try and blow this joint ;)

look at me, i'm crawling - a little yellow bicycle layout

bonus post today! this is my second layout share of the day. so if you missed the first one, scroll down to see it. as the may guest designer, i have my next project up on the little yellow bicycle blog today, along with part three of my Q&A session. it's a layout, using their new baby saurus collection.

 

this collection was perfect to scrap some photos of little zachary from last year. when i saw the chipboard sticker slider embellishment, i knew i wanted to scrap these photos of zachary from the first time he crawled.

the base of the layout came together very quickly. i choose 2 of the pattern papers, added in the little dino border strip i cut from another pattern paper, and picked out the blue and orange canvas border sticker. i arranged them all from top to bottom, and added my photos, and the "bones" of the layout was complete.

 

then i added the chipboard sticker slider piece, in between my photos. you can move the slider up and down, so that it points to whatever you're scrapping about. i could have done quite a few of those, but these photos of him crawling matched the collection so well.

i had some empty room up in that top corner, so i used my circle cutters on a few pattern papers. that cute little dino chipboard sticker looked like he had something to say. so i added the little word bubble sticker, and added "zachary" with tiny alpha stickers, so that it says "zachary says rawwwr!".

 

it seems so long ago that he was just learning to crawl. although he waited until he was 9 months old to finally do it. seemed like forever, until he moved around on his own. now, he's 17 months old, and i love to chase the little dude all over the house. it's a game we play. i scream like a crazy person and chase him, and he giggles his head off and runs from me. we do it over and over, until i make him take a break to catch his breath. he's lots of fun :)

keep your eye on the little yellow bicycle blog, as i have two more projects coming up before the end of the month.

i love you kiddos - a pebbles layout

this week on the pebbles blog, it's all about scraplifting. i took this definition of "scraplifting" from the pebbles blog, since it's so well worded. "Scraplifting is the the act of "lifting" or copying ideas and/or designs from another person’s scrapbook page to use in your own pages.  Designs or ideas can be copied in whole or in part.  And most importantly be sure to give credit where credit is due.  If you do "lift" someone else's idea be sure to mention where the idea originated."

 

we were asked to choose a layout or project by a fellow design team member to lift. i choose this layout, by eva pizarro. the grid pattern and all the small squares of pattern paper and photos really caught my eye, and i knew it was perfect for my style.

 

and here is my take on eva's layout. i started, by picking out a few photos of the daycare kiddos. haley hasn't been around as much, since she started preschool. but i had a few from when she came back to visit over the holiday. i pulled the oranges and pinks from molly and haley's shirts. then i added in some greens and yellows. i machine stitched around each of the squares of pattern paper, before adhering them to my white cardstock. i trimmed my white cardstock to 10.5 x 10.5 inches, and adhered it to the center of my green cardstock background. i used a scalloped border punch along some white cardstock scraps, and then slipped them under the edges of the white cardstock.

 

i loved how eva added a fun assortment of embellishments to each of her pattern paper squares. i choose a handful of different embellishments to fill my squares. some paper flowers, some chipboard pieces, brads and flair, and a sticker. to keep the embellishments easy on the eye, i choose to color coodinate them with the paper. pink chipboard heart, on the pink pattern paper. yellow paper flower and brad, on the yellow pattern paper.

i added a strip of yellow dotted ribbon underneath the photo and paper grid. i combined some letter stickers and a rub on phrase for my title, and added a tree sticker to the side. i didn't feel like this layout really needed any journaling. "i love you kiddos" seemed to sum up my thoughts perfectly :)

we love you - a creating keepsakes layout

remember THIS BOOK that i made for haley, back when she left for preschool? i had created a few last minute layouts to add to the book, before having it printed. and this is the final layout, that was at the end of the book.

 
as seen in the February 2011 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. copyright creative crafts group. posted with prior permission from the publisher.

i originally created this layout for one of my jillibean soup monthly assignments. then it got picked up by creating keepsakes so quickly, that it was never shown on their blog. and i had to hold off sharing it, when i shared her book.

for the photos, i went through my files and found sixteen of my favorite photos of haley that spanned her three and a half years with us. they are all in order by age, left to right, top to bottom.  so fun to see her growing up through these photos. because i had so many colors going on in these photos, i changed them all to black and white, to simplify things.

 

i printed each photo as a 3x3 inch square. sometimes, when i print at home, they actually come out a little smaller. no idea why. i print as a borderless 8.5x11, but it still shrinks everything just a teeny tiny bit. this makes a difference, when i'm lining up my photos from one side of the page to the other. so i was left with a little gap on one side. just worked it into my design. but i had wanted the photos to go all the way across, just like the filmstrip patterned paper.

 

i printed out the dates when haley started coming to us and when she left, along with her ages. i was going to hand journal it onto the journaling sprout. but everytime i use my own handwriting, i feel like i ruin my layouts. lol! i know that's not the case, but it's how i see it. yes, i'm my worse critic.

 

i kept this layout pretty simple. it's mainly photos and paper. one of my "flatter" layouts, if you will. with the exception of some pop dots behind a few of the journaling sprouts.

 

i loved having this as the ending to her book.