... just Laura

October Afternoon: September Guest Designer Part 3

Last Friday, my last project went up on the October Afternoon blog, as their September guest designer. I really went back and forth with myself on this project. I really wanted to use the Milk Money mini collection, along with the fun 6x8 album. But I have designated school albums for both my girls that I started years and years ago, so I knew that I really didn't have a need to put together any sort of actual school mini album. I knew I could make it work for something though.

I've been teaching at Creating Keepsakes University this year, otherwise known as CKU. The event definitely has a "school" type theme to it, so I thought I could make the Milk Money collection work with a few photos I've collected along the way. I quickly realized that I haven't been taking many photos at these events, so I'm hoping to snap quite a few more photos at the last CKU in October to finish out the album. This is definitely a work in progress.

I printed out whatever photos I could find, many of which came straight from my Instagram and some even borrowed from other teachers at the event, dug out one of my badges, and started pulling out all of the journaling cards and accent cards that I thought would tie in nicely with my photos and the event. I thought the little graduate girl was really cute, and it ties in since the students "graduate" on the last night of the event.

Very rarely do I ever use my own handwriting for my journaling, but I was trying to save myself some time and decided to put pen to paper. I was reminded very quickly why I don't like to use my own handwriting, as I didn't think about what I wanted to say before I started writing and I made plenty of mistakes. I always journal better when I take my time and type it up, plus I can fit more since I tend to write a little big. The "Pick me!!!" card reminded me of the giveaways that we do in the classes. Everyone loves when it's giveaway time and I pull out the little papers with their names on them to draw from.

I thought the "What's for lunch" card was super cute. But I could only find one photo of food from the events, and it wasn't the best representation of the meals that were provided for the teachers. I really need to get a photo of the bacon at the next show, since I do believe that's our favorite part. Tons of bacon every morning. Loved it! But that's the beauty of a work in progress. I can get a few more photos when I go in a few weeks and add them right in here or even swap them out.

There's a story that goes with this last group photo, and the "remember that time" card was a perfect match to go with it. That story isn't quite one to share with everyone in the class though, so I will be adding that in later! I included those last four photos that I snapped while traveling to the last show. That's when I tend to take the most photos. Not at the event, during the event, or in classes, since everything is always so hectic and busy. No, I take them while I'm traveling, since I have way too much down time than I know what to do with.

 I want to give a huge "Thanks" to October Afternoon for inviting me to be their guest designer for September! I have loved working with their new Daily Flash collections, and I already have some more ideas floating around in my head with everything I have left!

a few winter CHA 2012 photos

i've been holding off on posting photos from CHA. mainly, because i was hoping to "borrow" some photos from those that had their cameras out more. lol. these are what i've managed to put together so far, so i figured i would just toss them up here. a very quick overview of my 4 days there. told only by the photos i have to share at this point.

{alice carman, linda barber, and me}

i arrived on saturday, and helped pretty up the bella blvd booth, with stephanie and her team. i think it took about three hours to get all of the projects picked out and hung up, to fill the booth. alice is on the bella blvd team, and it was so nice to meet her, after months of emailing. and linda has been on the CK dream team with me, for two years. she's such a great friend, and it's always good to hang out at CHA together. after we all finished helping with set-up of various booths, we went and grabbed some dinner at chili's. and linda was nice enough to spend about 15 minutes doing some goofy survey on her phone, all so that we could have that free ice cream dessert ;)

{stephanie hunt and me}

stephanie snapped this quick photo of the two of us, right before the show opened on the first day. stephanie is so awesome, and she does such an amazing job with her company. i'm so proud to be a part of bella blvd! i stopped by the booth a few times each day. they were always super busy, which is a good thing at CHA! we had a super yummy dinner the first night, along with everyone from jillibean soup, lily bee, and nikki sivils

{suzanne sergi and me}

suzanne and i have known each other for a few years. we were on the pebbles team together, and she's also on the bella blvd team with me. this year, we decided to room together. and we stayed up WAY too late, talking about anything and everything.

{jill yegerlehner and me}

jill is the owner and creative genious behind jillibean soup. i loved being on her design team for two years, and i love hanging out at the jillibean booth every CHA. i'm great friends with everyone on her team, and they're all fantastic girls and great designers. whenever i had those moments of needing familiar faces, or just needing to chill out for a bit, i would always head to either the bella blvd booth or jillibean soup. both feel like home to me :)

{megan hoeppner, deena wuest, suzy plantamura, kim watson, cindy tobey, stacy cohen, and me}

our CK group (minus linda, who was working in the lily bee booth the entire show). i had never met cindy or deena before, so it was great to meet both of them for the first time. i spend most of the show walking the floor with kim, stacy, and suzy. we also had a CK dinner one evening, which was a lot of fun. always nice to hang out with everyone, and chat with the editors for a bit.

{amy tangerine, kim watson, suzy plantamura, stacy cohen, and me}

the adorable amy tangerine and her cute booth. i'm pretty sure we visited her every day of the show. along with elizabeth kartchner, who was right around the corner from her. one afternoon, amy had this fun little photo thing set up, the photo went straight to her laptop, and we were able to email it to ourselves. i thought that was a really fun touch.

{me, linda barber, and kim watson}

linda finally escaped the lily bee booth on my last day there, so that she could walk with us for a few minutes. too bad she had come down with a cold, and was feeling so bad that she ended up leaving early to go home and rest.

{me, stacy cohen, suzy plantamura, and kim watson}

GCD studios had the most adorable booth, and also had this fun photo setup. they printed out the photo right there for us. i scanned it to my computer, but the coloring was so funky that i had to change it to black and white.

and that's my CHA re-cap. short and sweet. and stricktly told according to the photos i had on hand. if i had more photos, i would probably tell you more about my time there. each year, i say i'll take my camera and take more photos. and every year, i fail. miserable. and every year, i come home, and regret that i didn't get photos with about 47 different scrapbooking friends. i'll eventually learn, right?

slice informercial - a layout share

i'm back with another layout share for you. another layout that was started, then put away and forgotten. only to be pulled back out last week. this one is about my slice informercial trip that i took about 2.5 years ago.

i had started this layout forever ago. but i really didn't get very far. basically, i had two sheets of white cardstock, and all of the photos attached, just like you see here. i was lifting myself, from another layout i had done about a different trip, and using the same sort of photo placement. so the photos on here were all arranged and adhered, with the idea that i'd be adding all my pattern papers around them. 

then i created THIS layout for an assignment. which didn't work out, so i blogged it. and i even mentioned the fact that i had this layout started, but had just never finished it. even though i had a layout done, i still wanted to finish this one at some point. it had more photos, and more room to tell the story. 

while at CHA, kristin and linda at were sweet enough to share some of their new lily bee papers with me. i decided to put them right to good use, and pulled out several sheets to use. i started with the pink polka dot strip across the center of the pages. when i went to adhere it, i realized that my white cardstock page wasn't quite 12 inches wide. which seems strange, since cardstock is 12x12. lol! it was a noticeable amount too. so i decided to trim down a tad bit from the top and bottom as well, and then mat both pages on green cardstock.

i used a notebook paper border punch on some of the aqua and yellow dot pattern papers, and then layered them together across the top of the pages. i also used a scalloped edged punch on the yellow patterned paper, to go across the bottom of the pages, and a small strip next to the photo you see above.

all of my photos across the bottom of the pages are 2x3 inches in size. such a great way to get lots of photos on a layout. i have 16 photos across the bottom, and 4 larger focal photos across the top. i also pulled out some fun flowers from bella blvd, to embellish the page. i had wanted to give a little seperation between the word "slice" and "infomercial" in my title, and the flower was perfect. there are four flowers in a pack, so the other three decided to find a spot to stay as well.

i used some of my bella blvd simply simona chipboard alphas for my title. they fit perfectly on that pink strip of pattern paper.

i had plenty of room for journaling on this layout. i fit the first part of my story, on the first page. and then a larger journaling piece on the second page. i printed my journaling on some older scenic route grid patterened paper. love that stuff.

yay! another trip and adventure scrapped and in the albums! feels good! i will most likely print out my blog post about this trip, and add it into the album somehow. i love going back and reading those, since i tend to have more info in there, since i usually blog about it while it's fresh in my mind.

winter CHA 2010 - a layout share

every once in a while, i find myself in this "get-er-done" mood. where i pull out things i've been putting off taking care of, and dig out things that i just never got around to finishing. sometimes, this applies to things around the house. and sometimes, it applies to scrapbooking stuff.

when i got back from CHA two weeks ago, i was feeling super inspired and really wanted to scrap and be creative. then i realized that i was creatively drained at the same time, from all of the projects, blogging, etc, that i had done leading up to CHA. so i went into my "get-er-done" zone, and decided it was a good time to tackle some of my half finished layouts.

winter CHA 2010 was the first CHA i had attended, a full two years ago. and i started a layout about it shortly after the trip. i was all gung-ho, and wanted to get these photos scrapped and in the album. originally, i had the top 2/3 of what you see here on my two pages. white cardstock background. new dear lizzy pattern papers across the top (new at the time, since that show was when she released her first collection). all the photos were just like you see them here. then i had a transparency across the bottom of the pages, along with some thickers for my title. i never did like the letter stickers i choose for my title, the transparency didn't look right, and i had a ribbon on there that just wasn't doing anything for me. that's how i left it. never finished it.

then about a year ago (probably after CHA last year), i pulled it back out to re-work it. i ended up taking off the transparencies from the bottom of the pages, and replaced them with the aqua polka dot paper. and then i left it again. never finished it. no title, no nothing.

another year later, and i decided that it was about time to actually finish this poor, neglected layout. i'm sure if i was starting all over, from scratch, this layout would look totally different. but i worked with what i had going, since i really did like the arrangement of the photos and the patterned papers. and truthfully, i really didn't stress over anything i added. just grabbed stuff and went with it.

kind of like how when i look at the placement of these glittered chipboard flowers and the flair buttons now (only hours after having added them to the layout), i'm not sure i love where i decided to adhere them all. but it's all good. every now and then, it's nice to NOT have to worry about making every layout perfect or trying to make it live up to what someone else thinks it should look like. i deal with that in assignments and "work" layouts. so i enjoyed these "just for me" layouts.  

for my title, i wanted to find some chunky chipboard letters, since "CHA" is such a short word. i came across these super old glittered chipboard letters from making memories, and decided to use them. i like the mix of lowercase/uppercase, and fonts. the little wooden letters were in a bag next to the glittered letters, so i just went with it and used them for "winter". once again, i was just grabbing whatever i came across first.

my intention was to put "2010" under "winter". the number stickers were the last thing i added to this layout. once i picked the peachy thicker numbers (to match the peachy ribbons), they didn't fit next to my title. so i just adhered them at the top of the page.

not sure that wooden letters and glittered letters really go together. but they're both brown, and that's all i cared about at the moment ;)

for my journaling, i typed up three seperate text boxes, and then printed them on a grid patterened paper. i wanted to trim them into tag shapes. i made a few of my cuts a bit too close, so that when i cut the corners off the tops, i came super close to cutting off a letter or two. that bugs me a little. but i wasn't about to waste good grid paper to re-print it. lol! just went with it.

i even cut a bit too much off the bottoms, and they looked too short. so i dug some scrap pieces out of my garbage, and adhered a strip to the bottom of each tag, to make it appear longer. i'm sure no one would have noticed that. but now that i pointed it out, you can totally see it on this one, right? lol! i finished the tags by stapling some dear lizzy ribbons to the top of each tag.

and there you go. my winter CHA 2010 layout is finally done!!! two years after i started it. i love how working on something like this, and finishing it, makes me feel SOOOOO accomplished. silly, i know. but it does. and i have two more of these "get-er-done" layouts that i'll be sharing soon. a layout about THIS trip. and one about THIS trip. both layouts were started forever ago, and then pushed to the side. feels good to have them all done finally.

infomercial vacation - a layout

i finally got around to scrapping my infomercial trip that i took, a year and a half ago. it's been on my to-do list for a while now.

 

i actually had an entirely different layout started, for this trip. with a ton more photos. but i just couldn't get myself to finish it. so i decided to start fresh, and narrow down my photos to the ones that summed up the trip.

i decided to focus mainly on the photos of the girls that i spent the most time with on this trip, cindy and carla. and then included photos of us throughout the experience. i will add some divided page protectors directly after this layout in my album, so that i can include the rest of my photos from the trip.

 

i've been making a huge effort to not use so much white cardstock on my layouts lately. i take out a sheet of white cardstock, every time i start a layout. but i was starting to feel like some of my layouts were starting to look too much the same. i have created so many layouts that i can't share with you for a while. but my plan has been working, and i've been very proud of myself for mixing it up more.

and i like to think i accomplished this on my layout here. part of me wonders if those bottom papers really match. but part of me just loves the randomness of them, and how they look together. so i'm cool with it. i mixed a few manufacturers together, instead of just pulling from one travel collection, which was my originally intention. the map paper on this first page, is actually a transparency. i simply adhered it to the white cardstock that i built the entire page on. 

 

i dug out some older flowers and journaling spots from my stash, and layered them together using pop dots, to use in a few spots on my layout. for this smaller flower, i also added the suitcase rubon to the journaling spot.

 

i love these larger flowers. i layered two flowers together, using pop dots. and then hand journaled on the journaling spot, before adhering that with pop dots too. have i mentioned that i LOVE pop dots? lol! i plan on printing out my blog post, all about the trip, and including that on the back of my layout. so i didn't feel the need to do a huge amount of journaling on here.

 

i printed all my photos seperately, and then adhered them to white cardstock to make my collage. i believe all the photos are about 3 x 3 inches in size.

 

the second page is pretty simple. tried to keep the focus on the photos. i did add another flower, with a journaling spot pop dotted in the center. i added the light blue airplane rubon to the journaling spot. and i also tucked a few decorative pins in between the journaling spot and the flower.

my utah trip scrapped

i finally got around to scrapping my trip to utah, from two years ago. this was a trip that my friend deneen and i won, from the golden ticket contest that creating keepsakes put on, back in 2008. we won a 2 night, 3 day trip to utah (which we turned into a 4 day, 3 night trip). we got to visit the CK offices, meet the staff, have a personal tour of the offices and have lunch with lisa bearnson (the founder of the magazine). we also worked in a visit to the making memories offices, lunch with a bunch of great internet friends, and some awesome warehouse sales. i blogged every detail of this trip, which can be seen HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

since i was so great about blogging the trip as it happened, and including all the photos in my posts, we thought for sure that we would have this trip scrapped right when we got back home. we even had a plan of sorts. we had some papers and embellishments picked out to use. we had plans of doing mini albums. i actually do think that deneen started her's. i remember her showing me something not too long ago. but i never did get around to it. but as of this past weekend, i can say that it's done. different from what i had originally planned. but i'm happy with how it turned out. this is how my stack of stuff looks in my album. love the varying sizes of page protectors going on.  

i decided to use the pack your bags collection, from little yellow bicycle. i loved the bright colors, and their collections always have so many embellishments to chose from, that make putting layouts together so effortless. since the majority of our photos had a lot of dark colors, i chose to chance them all to black and white. i know black and white can still be dark. but it opens up all sorts of color choices, when choosing products.

since i had a lot of photos, i printed the majority of them in the 2x3 inch size. i love that size photo. and then i chose two of my main photos to print as regular 4x6 prints. i lined up two rows of the 2x3 photos, going across both pages of the layout. so i was able to fit 16 photos on here, in addition to the two 4x6 photos. so 18 photos total.

once i adhered down the photos, i started building the page around them. adding some strips of pattern paper below the 2x3 photos, and also above them. adding a larger piece of pattern paper to the top half of the layout. i carried all the papers from one page to the other, so that it all tied together.

i added a fun journaling page to the top corner of the first page, where i knew i was going to add my title. i picked out two fun chipboard titles, and combined them along with some letter stickers, for my title. on the "escape" piece, it had two notches at the top. so i added some blue twill through them, along with a few mini brass brads. makes it look like it's hanging from the top of the layout. then added a fun arrow sticker, a chipboard car sticker, and a clear airplane piece.

if i ever too the time to plan ahead, i could easily have put four 2x3's on a 4x6 canvas, and print as one 4x6 photo. then i would have just adhered four 4x6 photos, going across the page. which would still give you those same 16 photos. but i wasn't that prepared. so i printed these all as 4x6's (with 4 smaller pics on each), and then cut them all apart, arranged them on the layout how i wanted them, and then adhered them down.

i adhered a fun journaling page, and hand journaled my top 10 memories from the trip. i know i have "lunch" on there twice. but we had a great lunch with lisa bearnson, and then a great lunch with our friends. also added some cute chipboard suitcases. i didn't feel the need to journal too much on my layout. i already had a plan for getting the story in the album.

supplies:
LYB pack your bags blue woodgrain paper, LYB pack your bags compass paper, LYB pack your bags orange hexagon paper, LYB pack your bags 6x6 decorative edged paper, LYB pack your bags chipboard embellishment stickers, LYB pack your bags favorite pieces cardstock stickers, LYB pack your bags clear cut shapes, LYB pack your bags epoxy stickers, LYB pack your bags journal tablet, LYB pack your bags word chipboard stickers

i'm so glad that i took the time to blog about every single part of this trip, as it happened. not sure about you all, but i forget most of the things that happen in my life. lol! i love that almost two years later, all the details were there on my blog to look back on. i simply copy and pasted all my journaling from those four blog posts, into a word document.

i wanted to use ali edwards, the story of today 8.5x11 overlays, to go with my journaling. i found it easiest to print the overlay onto white cardstock first. i then set up my journaling to fit the empty space on the overlay, by holding up the paper to the screen and doing some eyeballing and measuring. yes, i eyeball and measure all at once. i'm talented like that. lol! once it was set up, i printed my journaling right onto the cardstock page with the overlay on it. and i did use the correct days overlay, to go with what day of the trip it was.

for example, the journaling here is from friday, december 5th, 2008. it prints the day in bold print, and then i simply circled in with a pen. i hand wrote the date on the bottom. then i added a strip of coordinating pattern paper (from the layout) to the empty space above the date. i ended up with 5 pages of journaling, all taken from my blog, word for word. i added those to the album, in 8.5x11 page protectors.

even though i got most of our photos onto the two page layout, i still wanted to include the original photos in the album. that may seem redundant, to have them in there twice. but this was a very special trip, and i wanted them in there. plus, i might scrap a few of these photos again. i have always had the intention of scrapping about winning the contest, or getting those two golden tickets, or meeting lisa. or doing a layout about some of the great friends that i've made online, and about meeting them in real life. so the photos are here, and when i'm ready to scrap addition pages, i know exactly where to find things. and if i don't get around to extra layouts, everything will still be here, in one spot.

had to include my golden ticket, signed my lisa herself.

we totally missed out on having lisa bearnson sign anything for us, after meeting her and hanging out at lunch with her. so we later emailed and asked if she could possible sign something for us. she wrote us little notes on 4x6 pieces of white cardstock, and mailed them to each of us. and see that "loved seeing your published work"? i'm curious if she looked me up at some point, after meeting. i remember mentioning it at our lunch, about how i had submitted for years and entered every hall of fame contest, without any luck at all. guess my luck turned around months and months down the road, when i finally caught someone's eye at CK :)

 

i used the 12x12 divided page protectors, by we r memory keepers, to hold all the photos.

such great friends, that i was so happy to meet in real life for the first time. loved spending time with industry friends that "get" what it's all about, and the craziness of what we do.

and last, but not least, were the odds and ends that i still had from the trip. my plane ticket, a utah road map, my luggage tag, the hotel room key, the envelope that the golden ticket came in, and a few 5x7 photos that i had already printed. i wanted to keep this all together, so i stuck everything inside of a 6x12 page protector, by american crafts.

i think that about does it. that was a whopper of a post. lol! and stay tuned, because i have another post planned for tomorrow. it's a big one. school album related. and it might even include a video ;)