ScrapAhead – Halloween or Trick-or-Treat

This is the very first in my series of ScrapAhead™ pages!  These are ideas you can use as a jumping off point to create your own pages, by using either the products I show you, or something similar.  Many holidays are so busy and you might like to get a jump start on creating some scrapbook pages, so that as soon as you can print your photos after an event, you can get them on a page and have completed pages in no time!

Today’s idea is for Halloween or Trick-or-Treat.

The background was not stamped.  We used a stencil which we made by cutting a shape with a die.  Then randomly placed the stencil around the background pages, and sponged on the darker ink.

The black swirly shape was from black paper we ran through a die cut machine using another die.

The skeleton heads are stamped on.  We used a glue pen on the eyes, and added glitter.

The right hand page uses the same boarder elements as are on the left page, but this time they are added to the top.

You can cut several mats and just leave them off the page until you are ready to adhere the pictures.  That gives you options when you put the page together.  The borders on the orange mats were made using a rolling stamp.  You could use these for pictures, or use for journaling.

The little flag has sponged edges, a stamped imagae, and is adhered with a brad.

All the products on these pages were from Stampin’Up, and if you don’t have a consultant, you can shop and get help from my friend Georgia Gugiere!  However, you can certainly see how you could use these ideas and substitute with products you may have on hand.

I will soon be having some ScrapAhead™ classes both online and in person, and will have more information on that coming soon. They are going to be FUN!

Pumpkin Patch 12 Photo Scrapbook Layout

Here is the scrapbook page I promised to show you with pictures of our outing to the pumpkin patch. I have also included a video to walk you through some of the elements of the page and give you some other information about the layout. You may watch it here, or read a brief description below the video.

I decided to make create this page digitally, because I had more pictures than time to scrap them onto several pages. So I decided to go ahead and use a lot of them on a single layout. That’s one of the benefits of using digital images, you can resize them as needed!

 

Since I was going to use several photos on the page I decided I would start with a layered template that used a lot of pictures. I wasn’t sure how many I would end up with but I figured it would quite a few, so I found a layout I liked that already included 9 pictures. I have a set of layered templates from DigitalScrapper.com that are great! In fact there are 12×12 pages as well as 8 1/2 x 11 layered templates! They are called Scrap It Now, so you may want to check them out. They are grouped into sets depending on how many photos you want to use, so it makes it easy to find one to use.  (I receive no compensation for mentioning this product!)

Okay, I’ll stop here and admit I should have decided on how many pictures I was going to use before I selected the template, but I didn’t! I had to add 2 more frames, plus you’ll see I actually used one my photos as the top of the background! It seemed perfect for the overall theme of the page, and really was going to be too small if I used it in one of the frames.

There are so many pictures on the page that I didn’t want to use too many other embellishments on the page because I felt it would become too busy. After the page is printed, I’ll hand write names near the pictures or add any other small journaling very close to the edges of the photos.

If you have any questions be sure to let me know! Come back tomorrow to see a great way to get a double page layout (paper) ready for Halloween and get your pictures on it right away!

Bless this Mess with Junelle Jacobsen

One of my favorite people to watch make art is at it again!  Junelle Jacobson will be the featured instructor at Christy Tomlinson’s mixed media class, “Bless This Mess” which starts Tuesday, October 23rd.  This is a sequel to the first class Junelle did earlier this year.  She is a great teacher and a lot of fun to watch.

I first “met” Junelle at a Layout a Day (LOAD) challenge, and loved her scrapbook pages.  We then were in one of Christy Tomlinson’s first online classes, and we all began to see and love Junelle’s unique and creative touch on all the pieces we were doing.

One of things that is most fun with some of these classes, are the FaceBook groups that go with them!  How fun to see what other classmates are doing and meet people with similar interests from around the world.  I hope you’ll think about joining us!

Fall Festivities at the Pumpkin Patch

The colors and activities of fall are always so wonderful to capture! I feel blessed to live where there are seasonal changes that allow us to capture great outdoor pictures with vibrant hues of yellows, oranges, and reds! This past weekend we went out to Pinehaven Farm to enjoy their fall activities and go out to their pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins!

We had two of our daughters, and their daughters, Princess 1 (14 years old) and Princess 2 (five), with us. The girls decorated small pumpkins as pirates and cats with little sets of adhesive foam cutouts. What a great idea to decorate with stick-ons so that your little pumpkins will last till Halloween and not deteriorate by carving too soon.

A farm has to have animals to be complete, right? Their animals seem like a combination of “regular” farm animals and a zoo. There were miniature horses, (I think I would own one if I was in the country again!) goats with the cutest babies, emus, yaks, sheep, geese, a llama, peacocks….. I don’t even remember what else! Princess 2 was always in a rush to see the next animals before the rest of us were ever finished looking at the ones we were standing in front of.

We rode tractor pulled wagons out the pumpkin patch. Princess 2 barely got off the wagon and found her perfect pumpkin before everyone had even gotten off the wagon. In fact she had to wait for everyone to get off the wagon before racing back up the steps.  She set her pumpkin on her seat and got back down to find another one. We all had fun looking at different shapes and sizes and picking out some other pumpkins. There was some surprise as to how prickly the stems and vines still on the ground were. I heard “Ouch!” more than once.  When we got back to the wagon, Princess 2 spread her arms out, looking around saying, “My pumpkin is gone!” With years of experience under our belts, we braced ourselves to deal with what could be devastation. What were we thinking? She jumped back off the wagon and found another perfect pumpkin just steps away, and quickly climbed back up the steps to take her seat on the wagon. Whew… it’s so nice to have people with a pleasant attitudes!

 

True Scrap 4, October 19-20, 2012

Don’t miss your chance to get in on an incredible weekend “getaway” to get crafty, scrap, learn, and have fun!  You don’t even have to leave home to go!  Lain Ehmann is the hostess with the mostest and she brings us “the galaxy’s ONLY online, live virtual paper crafting event.”

Here’s what you get:

Inspiration and Education from 15 A-list instructors…

Five virtual project make-and-takes…

Pre-Event PJ Party…

Virtual goodie bag…

All for one low price…

All from YOUR computer!

Drum roll, please….. the classes and instructors are:

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, “Dirty Fingers, Clean Design: Messy Techniques with Clean and Simple Results”
Erin Bassett, “Art Journaling 101: A Beginner’s Guide”
Monica Bradford, “All I Really Need to Know About Journaling I Learned in First Grade”
Kellie Crowe, “Get Your Butt out of That Rut!: Kelli’s Excellent Adventure to Find Scrapbooking Inspiration”
Laura Denison,”One and Done: Mini-Album in an Hour”
Jennifer Gallacher, “The Boys Are Back in Town: Making Manly & Masculine Layouts”
Nic Howard, “Tag! You’re It! Using Tags as Canvases for Inspiration, Experimentation, and Play”
Noell Hyman,”Story Core Design: A Storytelling Process for Scrapbooking”
Katrina Kennedy, “Everyday Portraits: Capturing Personality Through the Lens”
Nichol Magouirk, “The Art of Layering: Tips & Tricks for Creating Dimensional Scrapbook Layouts”
Gretchen Schmidt, “Stretch Your Sketch: Take Creative Control of Your Scrapbook Sketches”
Katrina Simeck, “DON’T Say ‘Cheese:’ Natural Kid Photography”
Jessica Sprague, “All About Actions: Photoshop Actions for Beginners”
Heidi Swapp,”Your Memory File: A New Approach to Scrapbooking”
Jennifer Wilson, “Try Hybrid: Go-To Digital Techniques for Paper Crafters”
Find out all the details about the event and the classes at the True Scrap website.  Hurry and don’t miss all the fun.  Oh, if you can’t stay for the whole party, it’s recorded and you’ll have access to anything you had to miss!  I hope I’ll see you there!