Write. Click. Scrapbook.

and the giveaway goes to . . .

Congratulations go out to 

#63 - Melissa who said:

1. Border stitches or that's how we roll.
2. Something for Christmas
3. Loing [sic] her home decor.

#4 - Lin who said:

Love the bright colors and patterns--I see the potential for a few Christmas gifts .

and #58 - Susy who said:

1)Words, that's an easy one, although I am a paper scrapper I have been really loving digital words lately, either added to my photos or printed onto paper and cut or die cut.

2)Wall art, I have loved seeing the gorgeous things designed in PS and printed and framed for the wall in the last couple of posts so more of that type(no pun intended,lol)of thing would be great.

3)Not going to make a choice, he he.

We are thrilled for the three of you and can't wait to hear from you. A giant thank you to Libby for her kindness in sponsoring our give.away.day. And remember, just because yours was not the lucky number, doesn't mean you have to live without Libby's great products! GO SHOP! & then come back for more from Cheryl!

give.away.day. featuring LIBBY WEIFENBACH DESIGNS

Glued to our screens to see what the ever charming and creative Cheryl would show us next, we have all noticed one name coming up again and again: Libby. Libby Weifenbach. In our effort to please everybody all of the time, we thought perhaps for today's

you might want the opportunity to recreate some of Cheryl's amazing designs. So may we present

Libby began as a paper scrapper who swore she would never try digital, as it didn't seem like "real" scrapbooking. However, in an effort to streamline her scrapping time, she started dabbling in digi. Libby was shocked to find that the process was very much like paper scrapping. (She will tell you that she still starts out with a blank canvas and builds her layouts just like she has done for years--the only difference is that now her medium is Photoshop as opposed to scissors and adhesive!)

Once she made the leap to digital scrapbooking, it wasn't long before Libby got the itch to try designing. She was quickly accepted into Sweet Shoppe Designs, her continued digi home. With her roots in traditional paper scrapbooking, Libby has created products that are very "paper scrapper friendly." Knowing her likes as a paper scrapper, Libby strives to give you the feeling that you are buying paper scrapping products, that just happen to be in digital format!

-If you haven't yet tried anything digital, let Cheryl's easy-to-follow instructions and delightful-to-own creations be your inspiration. And if you still aren't sure that digital products can cross over to your paper world, check out these!

(Samples created by Jen Tapler)

Today, Libby is generously providing three of you with ten dollar gift certificates to her Sweet Shoppe store. All you need to do is to leave a comment telling us 1. what you hope to buy with your Libby Weifenbach gift certificate (if you are one of the lucky three!), 2. what home decor item you would like Cheryl to make for her next week of blogging (that gives her 3 months to work on it! teehee!) and 3. if you are more taken by Cheryl's keen sense of humor or her amazing ability to rock the scrapbooked home decor. Comments will remain open until 8:00 pm PST. The three lucky numbers will be posted tomorrow. Comment well, and perhaps go buy some frames and black spray paint as extra positive thinking! (While you are waiting, don't forget to browse through Libby's blog to see some great page layout examples as well. Great stuff!)

It is the responsibility of the commenter to check back and to provide their contact information to us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com by midnight Saturday. Thank you!

thrift stores and cupboard doors

Happy Wednesday! 

First of all, I'd like to thank you for all the nice comments on my last couple of posts.

Secondly, as usual I have a LOT to say, so let's forget secondly and get started.

None of the stuff I'm posting is rocket science. And I'm sure the bulk of it is not ground breaking, cutting edge stuff for most of you talented people, so maybe we can look at it as a little reminder.

A reminder of, "Hey, I don't have to spend millions of dollars or a ton of hours blinging out the crib (too much?  I thought so...let's replace bling with spruce and crib with home and never speak of this again).

So I went through my house and took pictures of all the things that I've made with scrapbook stuff, my computer and some of the dozens of frames I have hidden deep in the closet and thought I would share them with a few notes on each.

Let's start in my bedroom, shall we?

Another great use for a cupboard door, I scored this little beauty that was already painted cream and distressed for $3 at a salvage shop.  The rub-ons are Heidi Swapp from many many years ago but vinyl or stickers would work just as well. 

The powder room. 

That little framed piece is a canvas that sits within a frame.  I just cut a piece of patterned paper to size and slapped it right onto the canvas with a bit of adhesive.  Then I took my emery board and sanded the edges slightly just to take that sharp cut edge off them. 

(Oh and that's Steve in the bowl above, we're going to talk about him and alternate usage of embossing powder, but you have to wait until Friday for that!)

Someone chose a paint colour for this room that we had never used in a house before.

Someone is too cheap to go out and buy money on decor to match.

Someone has a whole bunch of frames hidden in a closet and a big pile of patterned paper.

Someone is kinda handy with scissors and sticky tape.

Someone wondered briefly to herself, self is it rude and/or icky to put a photo of your toilet on the internets?

Someone decided no, just do it.

So you see, I had this big expanse of white space over the toilet (which, yes, is in front of the window, which obviously wasn't thought out too clearly) that I really wanted to fill.  My favourite thing is when my non-scrapbooking friends ask where I got the "art" in my washroom (the scrapbooky friends say, "Hey!  Is that My Mind's Eye paper?  Where'd you get it?")

Again, not rocket science, but effective, I think!

These two sit in the mudroom, the first one is made with traditional scrapbook supplies, the second was done digitally.

(*note:  the ribbon and stickers on the first one are actually glued right on to the glass.)

(products:  paper & ribbon/Making Memories chipboard/Heidi Swapp)

(products:  digital kit-A Very, Very, Very Fine House/Libby Weifenbach)

(note*I also stole the quote unabashedly from the name of Libby's kit, thus saving even MORE time.  I am shameless.)

More cupboard door fun that hangs in my scrapbook room.

 

(products:  All Making Memories)

Notes:  The bottom part has a metal sheet (pilfered from my husband's workshop, but also available at any building supply store, usually if I pilfer it I count it as free) under the paper, then there is a piece of transparency paper over the green cardstock making it into a dry erase board. 

The magnets are chipboard pieces and little Making Memories clips that I glued earth magnets to.  I usually use Crystal Lacquer for magnets because it is much stronger than regular white glue.

Here's a close up of the top.  I made each of the squares separately and then cut thick chipboard to fit snugly in the opening to make sure they didn't fall out.

 
Okay, on to the next segment of our post!

Using one of the three R's.

We are looking at re-using junk, or what silly people THOUGHT was junk, and sent to the thrift store not knowing what treasures they had in their possession.

For example, this is a frame (originally) from a frame shop I found at Value Village for ONE dollar and 99 cents.

Here's something that you might not know...ready for it?

You can paint mats.

YOU CAN!

See how, in the photo above, the mat has a white bevel?  I wanted it black. 

So I introduced it to my bff Black Spray Paint and look what we came up with together:

I'm working on a photo wall right now and I'm hoping to put this on the shelves with all the photos.

Here's another example: 

This mat was a lovely shade of teal blue with an inner mat that was a subtle fuchsia that while gorgeous, sadly didn't match my decor. 

Out came Black Spray Paint's southern cousin, Country White and we toned it down together.

I haven't found a use for it yet, but I'm sure that will come.

Now for the layout segment. 

Well, I didn't actually get a layout done.  So I am going to distract you with this link to something I am SO going to do and challenge you to give it a try as well.

This little tutorial from Photojojo

Cute, right?

If you have any questions at all about how I did any of the projects I shared, leave me a comment and I'll answer the best I can!

Join Marnie tomorrow for a FABULOUS giveaway and I'll see you Friday with some Halloween decor!

until Friday,

Cheryl

yoda is my homeboy

Hey!  Me again. 

When I started to think about today's post last night I realized that as my son Lucas says often, there is "so much to say, so little time...."  Well, to be completely accurate, he actually says, "so many points, so little time" whenever he's beating me at cards or chess. 

Good sportsmanship is one of the many things we are working on at our house.  

That and getting to the point, instead of droning on and on....

So I may have to share a bit more than just the older boy's Star Wars themed room that I had spoken about yesterday. 

I hope that's okay.

So let's get to the point.

I've watched many decorating shows and many designers seem to choose one thing to base the room around.  Our one thing was this quote from Yoda.

"Do or do not, there is not try"

(Now say it out-loud in the Yoda voice.  It's a surefire way to get the eleven year old's eyes a'rollin'. 

He says my version sounds like Grover.  Which I will take as a compliment, whether intended that way or not.)

Those of you who are lucky enough to own a Cricut or other supercool cutting tool like that can make these out of vinyl yourself!  (I'm sure you Cricut/supercool cutting tool owners already know and have done this, and if you have please share!) 

I happen to be lucky enough to have a very close friend who sells these vinyl quotes so that's where I got mine. 

Now if you take a closer look above the noise centre (aka the guitars, by the way, I'm Canadian and yup, we spell it that way. We Canucks are fancy like that. ) you will spy a couple of Star Wars decor thingies. 

Shall we go to the close up?

And here is what they looked like before I printed them out:

fonts used: rub this! , forced reentry (which is a dingbat of Star Wars characters)

brushes used: various from misprinted type

digial paper:  more of Libby's designs

So to make these, I basically did the same thing that I talked about yesterday only switched up the sizes and fonts.  The boy helped me out with the picking of the quotes and just about collapsed from laughing at the pure hilarity of the insults he chose.

(*note - we had to make "overweight glob of grease" a swear word in our house shortly after we googled, mostly because I was tired of hearing the younger boy whine about being called an overweight glob of grease).

I also want to let you know that I consider myself a digital dabbler, not a digital scrapper.  I honestly only know the very basics of The Great and Mysterious Photoshop and just kind of get on there and wing it. 

If you haven't played with it before, try it!  To me, the best thing about digital stuff, is if you mess up it's no big deal! You haven't wasted any product and you can get a do-over.  

And really, who doesn't love a do-over.

Here is the last thing that I made for Jake's room.  We went to Disneyland last year and he got chosen to go up and fight the Dark Side in the Jedi Training Academy. 

Definitely a highlight of the boy's life. 

I took one of the photos we got from what he likes to refer as "the time I dominated Darth Maul", changed it to black and white and boosted the contrast, added a few brushes around the edges, printed it out and shoved it in one of the 100's of frames I have hiding in the closet waiting for a moment such as this and VOILA!  (Almost) instant decor for an 11 year old boy's room.  We placed it amongst all the Star Wars Lego (also referred to as "the Lego No One Touches Unless They Want to See Jacob's Head Spin Completely Around and Fire Come Out His Ears This Means You Lucas")

Honestly, the hardest thing about these projects is hanging them straight (or what I also like to call "hiding the "oops" nail holes I've made in the wall with the stuff I'm trying to hang).

And now for something completely different....

Just a quick idea for Thanksgiving. 

We had our Thanksgiving earlier this month and somehow the Overtons are very good at getting invited places for nice meals. 

Call it a gift. 

We somehow managed to curry invites to TWO (count'em TWO!) separate Thanksgiving dinners that weekend.  

With this great power of ours, comes great responsibility.

Responsibility in the form of a cute hostess gifts.

This is what I came up with:

oatmeal cookies

basket

dishtowel

tag

and DONE!

Cost:

cute little pumpkin shaped basket which happened to be the perfect size for a stack of cookies $4.00

dishtowel in autumnal (say that word out-loud, it's fun!) colour $1.00

stack of cookies (well, I don't know for sure what the monetary cost was, but I made a triple batch and ended up eating 12 cookies in one day.  I'm sure you think I'm exaggerating but I can assure you that I am not.  AndI'm also sure you can imagine what the cost of that was...)

ribbon, paper scraps and cellaphane $.75

So, there you have it! A cute hostess gift for under $6.00!

I suppose I should stop for the day. 

On the agenda for tomorrow:

• more cheap and easy home decor ideas
• one of the three r's and I'm not talking 'rithmatic
• some links of stuff that I have in my "wanna do" file
• possibly a layout with a little challenge (this is a scrapbooking blog, right?!)

Until tomorrow then.

Cheryl

PS.  Here is the full shot of the other wall in Luke's room:

The bulletin board was $2 at a dollar store, the surfboard was $14 and my husband cut the letters out of MDF after I used a graffiti style font to pencil them on, then I simply got out a can of my old friend, Black Spray Paint, and sprayed them up.  I really need to talk to my friend about that dresser.

insert "cheap & easy" joke here ->

Hi!

 

My name is Cheryl Overton.  I have been sitting here for the last two months watching this date get closer and closer.  I've been doing other stuff too, but mostly sitting here.  Waiting...

Here are two "fun facts" about me:

 

1) I work well under pressure (usually self induced pressure)

2) I love to decorate but I am cheap (my dad calls it frugal and I have come to the scientific conclusion that it is definitely genetically based so I'm not going to fight it)

 

Also, I guess my counting skills could use some help, because upon review, I realize that is three things. 

 

And I also realize they are not all that "fun".

 

So here's some fun stuff.

 

I have two sons - they turned 9 and 11 this summer and in the spring we decided to decorate their bedrooms.  We move a fair bit but have decided to stay in this house for a while so we thought it would be fun to let them pick the themes and help us. 

 

It was then that I realized how few cool decor items there are suited for 9 and 11 year old boys that don't cost your firstborn (although by the end of our little decor experiment, I would have gladly given my secondborn away.  For free.) So I decided to try to decorate their rooms on a very small budget.

 

Lucas, the aforementioned secondborn, was up first.

 

He chose skateboarding. 

 

Well, actually he chose "skateboarding, snowboarding, skiing, soccer, surfing, (after hearing his list I suggested an alliteration room, but he just kind of shook his head and kept talking) and kitten posters (which was the unfortunate result of being set loose at the school book fair with $5 clenched in his hot sweaty little hand, I think he panicked and bought the first thing he saw, which happened to be a pink "hang in there" poster).

 

So we narrowed it down to skateboarding with a touch of surfing and with a few scrapbook papers (digital and paper) and fonts we got to work. 

 

I was the designer but Lucas had final say for each project. 

Here's the first project, which I included a tutorial of sorts for...

materials:

 

• cupboard door
• black spraypaint
• metallic silver spray paint
• piece of photo paper
• PSE 5 (or similar program)
• sanding block (or emery boards if you don't have someone who has tools you can pilfer from)
• adhesive (I used a spray adhesive, but any good quality double sided tape will work, I probably wouldn't suggest tabs because they seem to eventually lose their "stick" on things that hang on the wall)

1.  measure inside of frame to see how large your piece will need to be, I usually print just a touch larger than my opening because sometimes my measure skills are not the greatest
2. my cupboard door happened to be painted black already, but if you want a little bit of black to show through the silver paint, go ahead and spray that puppy black
3. let dry and give a nice thick coat of silver over the black, now here is my first tip that I learned by trial and error (mostly error) metallic spray paint is thicker and needs WAY more time to dry than regular spray paint.  I am not overly patient by nature (see above comment about waiting...) and can not seem to keep myself from touching stuff to see if it's dry.  I was a premature toucher. My paint was not dry.  So I had to do two coats of silver.  Avoid this if possible.
4. go have a coffee and maybe a cookie while it dries, or play a few dozen games of Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook if you like.
5. when it's dry to the touch, take that handy dandy little sanding block (emery board, sandpaper, whatever you have) and sand the edges down until you can see a bit of the black.  Until it makes you happy.
6. have boy choose font
7. after looking at about 253 fonts, help boy by giving him 3 seconds to choose font
8. go ahead and open up that PSE and pick a favourite background paper (I used gradual gradients from Libby Weifenbach)
9. I opened up a blank document that was 8x10 (slightly larger than the hole I wanted to fill on the cupboard door) and dragged the paper into that document
10. then I used a font called Mike Vallely (found here font that makes 9 year olds happy), made it WAY big and let the boy choose which dingbat (heh heh!...... sorry, I spent quite a bit of time with 9 year old boys) he wanted to use, then I dragged it around and positioned it until I liked the placement
11. i then used these fonts -  Aristotle Punk & Rub This! - to create the quote (again with the dragging and the postioning)
12. next I used a brush, I'm not sure which one, but it was probably one that I downloaded for free from this site - misprinted type (they have a ton of very cool large brushes to download)
13. I changed the brush colour to white and randomly weathered my page until I was happy, I mean the boy was happy, with the outcome
14. print on photo paper and cut to size
15. use sanding tool to distress edges of paper and then the adhesive of your choice at adhere paper to cupboard door
16. display in boy's room and enjoy the ravings about what a cool mom you are

 

approximate cost:

$7.00

Of course, if you have the disease that causes you to buy picture frames for no specific reason, you can use the same premise to make other decor items as well. 

Like this one:

I used a skateboard dictionary I found online (thank you Google) and with a few fonts and a frame I picked up at the Walmart for under $20 a couple of years ago made this. (*note - for this project I printed each definition out separately, not all together on one sheet)

And here it is hung up:

And then, well frankly, I was on a bit of a roll.  I had (yet another) frame that needed filling and using a font called logoskate that just about made the boy's eyes roll back in his head from excitement when he saw it, I made this:

 

Here it is all together:

 

And here a closer shot of the little drawer unit thing I picked up at IKEA, we used the logoskate font to make little labels for each of the drawers:

Then the other side of the room needed a bit of attention as well.

I had a bit of plexiglass leftover from a class I taught at a retreat a couple of years ago and using more photo paper, a couple of chipboard pieces that I had and two leftover pieces of black cardstock I had Lucas choose another quote and threw this together to fill up the space on his wall beside the bulletin board:

Lucas considers Tony Hawk a wise, wise man.

Oh! And if you look closely at the corner of the bulletin board, you can see that I also used some heavy duty glue to glue a couple more of those chipboard pieces to thumbtacks to "pretty them up". 

Well, I just realized that this post ended up being about 8 times longer than I thought it was going to be. 

I hope some of you made it through with me!  I'll share our Star Wars bedroom tomorrow and then I promise we'll move on to some other stuff!

Cheryl

Be Faithful

photo and quote selection by Cheryl Overton

Rules to Live By: Our Final Challenge

Happy to see so many of you entered yesterday's giveaway! While you were hoping to win a cool set of actions from Maggie Holmes, Wendy and I were driving from Cheyenne, through Buford, Laramie, Walcott, Wamsutter, Green River, Lyman, Evanston, and on to Salt Lake City. An exhausting drive that was nevertheless filled with interesting conversation.

To close out my week-o'-blogging, I'd like to post the final challenge from our adventures in Cheyenne. While at Elizabeth's house, Wendy and I were flipping through her beautiful scrapbook albums, and we were both really taken with a pictureless layout she created that detailed a handful of reminders and thoughts about motherhood. We decided to both try this approach on a layout of our own, and Elizabeth also updated hers to cover a different topic. Here goes:

This is the original inspiration: Elizabeth's "E" layout. And this layout was in turn inspired by an old Anthropologie ad Elizabeth stumbled across years ago.

This is Wendy's "W" page, and her journaling covers all the things she does to live a rich life. To brainstorm her list, she just tried to think of all the things she does that bring her happiness and fulfillment, and she turned them into second-person statements that serve as a list of rules to live by. Elizabeth now has 12 fewer W's in her scrapbook stash. Hopefully she doesn't plan to create very many layouts about Wamsutter, Wyoming.

To create my "A" layout (note: scan is crooked), I thought through all the words of wisdom and bits of advice that are important to me. My layout covers the rules I TRY to live by and the values that matter most to me. It was very therapeutic to brainstorm this list and capture it on a layout. Sorry, Elizabeth, for snatching a dozen A's from your stash. I know I personally sometimes find my vowel stickers to be in short supply! (Perhaps I'll mail you an "A" package someday soon. :-)

Taking a new spin on her original layout, Elizabeth brainstormed a list of reminders, lessons, statements, and advice that relate to being an Air Force family (which involves moving across the country every few years). The unintelligible word in the center of the layout is actually the family's initials: Matt, Elizabeth, Maddie, Gracie, Bridget! Her color palette and approach were inspired by an art piece that Emily Pitts posted on the Tumblr bulletin board:

Are you inspired? Try this yourself!

The most important thing that I took away from this week in Cheyenne is how important it is to take time to recharge yourself creatively, and how energizing it is to spend time with like-minded friends. So I encourage you to do the same! Even if it's just for an afternoon, plan a short getaway that will lift your spirits and refill your cup. And if any of the challenges this week have inspired you to scrapbook, follow that spark and get to it!

To connect with Wendy or me any time you want, join us on our blogs, The Possibilities are Endless (Wendy) and Yeah, Write (me).

Thanks everyone!

p.s. Many thanks to Elizabeth and Wendy, who deserve equal credit for the blog posts this week. Elizabeth took all the pictures for me AND resized them, not to mention the beautiful design contributions from each of them. And we all helped figure out the challenges together. So this week was definitely a group effort!

and the giveaway goes to . . . .

 

Congratulations goes out to:

#9 -ShellyJ, who said:

Love her actions! ... I've been saving up to get some, but I'm also scared that I won't know how to use them correctly. A favorite "action" would be Bond movies... I loved watching them on rainy Sunday afternoons with my hubby before the kiddies came into play ;) Now our action consists of tea parties, hide-n-go seek, and card games.

#7 - Carrie, who said:

Lately I've been really liking the Vintage Honey action from CoffeeShop. And does this giveaway apply to the Elements Actions from Maggie Holmes Photography?

and # 97 - tape, who said:

My favourite action movie is Casino Royale. :)

We are very excited for you and for your awesome new actions. Thank you to the lovely Maggie Holmes, for her generosity in providing our gifts! We hope that those of you who haven't tried actions yet, will give them a try. And don't forget to try Maggie's when you do. You will love them!

Shelly, Carrie, and "tape," we look forward to hearing from you shortly! We just need your full names and email addresses sent to writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com. Thanks again and come back later to see what scrapbooking antics Angie has up her sleeve today!

give.away.day. featuring MAGGIE HOLMES PHOTOGRAPHY

There is something magical that happens when a scrapbooker becomes a photographer. Suddenly your photo is not just well lit, well composed, and well shot, but it also, and importantly, captures the essence of the relationships, and the personality of the photographed, and often does it with a background that reflects who you are and what you love. So it is with Maggie Holmes. Her photos are not only exquisite, but also charming and delightful.

Now when that same amazing photographer creates some actions to edit her photos, you know they will appeal not just to your inner photographer, but also to your outer scrapbooker. You will love how the colors pop,

and the way you can play with the hues to be more evocative of the photo's mood.

Photo actions simply add that extra bit of love that help to make your photos embellishments, too.

So today, it is lights, camera, action! Or actions, actually. For it is

and we have joined forces with

to bring you not one, but three action sets!

The first is Maggie's Color Action Set which includes four actions: Simple Color Boost, Color Pop, Extreme Color, and Lighten Up. The Simple Color Boost is perfect for your every-day photos, giving you a little more color and punch without having to spend a lot of time editing. Color Pop and Extreme Color enhance the vibrant colors and help provide an artistic contrast. The Lighten Up action is a bonus action that you can use as an initial step (before you run the other actions) if your original image is underexposed or dark. You can check out some before and after examples here.

The second is Maggie's Color Mix Action Set which includes five actions: Urban, Sun Kissed, Antique, Urban Cross, and Urban Cool. With these you can make your photo more moody, more sunny, and just more cool. Again, check out examples here.

The third is Maggie's Vintage Action Set which includes three actions: Basic Vintage, Warmer Vintage, and Yellow Vintage. Softly desaturating, while leaving an antique hue behind, these actions help bring an bit of edgy antique to your contemporary photos. Before and after examples are here.

Now, if you have basic questions about what an action is, you can read here. If you have questions about running an action, Maggie has instructions here. And Maggie keeps a remarkable photography blog wherein she often posts photos and tells you the edits and actions that she has run. If you are not picked as the lucky number, you may purchase any of Maggie's actions or if you want to learn to improve your photography skills to give you a better starting photo, we suggest you look into Maggie's Photography Workshop. It's a beginning/intermediate photography workshop that runs 6 weeks and teaches you all you need to know to shoot in manual mode and helps you to take your photography to the next level. Maggie has a remarkable ability to explain things in a way that makes difficult concepts seem easy. You will quickly be shooting in manual mode and you will be so proud to see how much better your images can be after just 3 weeks of the course. Maggie's next class starts January 4th and registration is currently open. What a great early Christmas present!

If you would like to be considered for the action sets, please leave a comment telling us your favorite action. It doesn't just have to be a photo action. It can be a karate move, an action movie, an act of kindness. Anything that comes to mind if you hear the word, "action!" Comments will remain open until 11:00 pm PST. Three lucky numbers will be selected and posted tomorrow. Be sure to check back to see if you are one of the lucky ones!

It is the responsibility of the commenters to check back to see if their number has been selected. Lucky numbers must provide their contact information to us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com by midnight Saturday.

Fun With Fabric

With Project Runway planted firmly in our brains from Tuesday, we couldn't keep ourselves from heading to the fabric store today! (Today = Wednesday still in my world, because even though it's after 1 a.m., we are still awake and scrapbooking, and boy does it feel good! It won't feel quite so good tomorrow morning when we set out on our 8-hour drive starting at 7:00 a.m., however.)

So, today's challenge this time was quite a bit simpler: find a way to incorporate something fabric-y onto a scrapbook page. I've got to admit it; this was a first for me (unless you count fabric stuff that was made for scrapbook pages). I may be the most experienced quilter in our trio, as we clearly established earlier, but I still cruelly let Wendy and Elizabeth flounder as they attempted to thread the bobbin all on their own. (Bwa-hahaha!)

Here are the highlights:

To start things off, little Bridget turned the tables on me. I was supposed to be putting her socks on her, and yet somehow she ended up trying to force her socks on my big feet. I felt like a character in Cinderella (and not the one I always dreamed of being as a little girl).

With appropriate-sized footwear finally adorning our feet, we headed to this lovely quilting store, where we instantly spotted several fabrics that strongly reminded us of scrapbook paper.

Like this fabric, for example, which is identical to the patterned paper Elizabeth bought yesterday for her scrapbook page! The fabric and the paper were both designed by Anna Griffin. We also spotted our fair share of BasicGrey designs.

Have we died and gone to heaven? Yummy, yummy, yummy!

While Wendy and I posed outside the store with our finds, Bridget showed us how she really felt about hour excursion to another "don't touch" store. So, in retaliation, we didn't allow her to make a fabric page with us. (She was too busy playing Pocket God on my iPhone, so she didn't care.)

Sew, Wendy! Sew like the WIND!

And here was our 12:30 a.m. reenactment of 4-year-old Gracie's earlier attempts to "help" me scrapbook by shining the cow flashlight (which does actually moo), on my layout, no more than 4 inches above my hands. Clearly, Wendy appreciated it too.

Here are the results:


Elizabeth bought a lovely swatch of pink fabric and sewed it to her background as an oversize photo mat. A simple straight stitch around the perimeter of the fabric was all it took. Her tip? Stick your fabric in place with a bit of dry-dot adhesive to keep it from slipping. Super easy! She also chose a supporting accent for her page that ties in to the fabric theme, with the adorable faux-stitching around the framed phrase.



While Wendy was playing with her fabric of choice, she decided she didn't want to do something with fabric that she could just as easily do with paper. Otherwise, why not just use paper? (Finally, the look of paper, with the convenience of a special trip to the fabric store!) So she trimmed a fabric strip, gathered and folded it, and then stitched it to her page with a straight stitch. Elizabeth and I declared this the winning fabric look of the day, hands down.

And me? I took the easy route by picking up a piece of pre-sewn bias trim and just sticking it to my page with glue lines. The girls wanted me to suffer just a bit more, so they suggested that I sew a border around the edge of my page for a more finished look, and I have to admit that they were right! I love the results. I also purchased a few "fat quarters" that will surely make their appearances on future projects, but they weren't quite working for this page. (Note: it was surprisingly fun to scrapbook photos that had just been taken earlier in the day! These memories are as fresh as they come—just minutes old.)

Well, that's it for today's Cheyenne-based scrapbooking adventures! Wendy and I may be on the road tomorrow, but we finished another joint challenge today that we'll share with you Friday, so we hope to see you then! (And not at 1:00 in the morning.)

Until next time,