Wedding Relief

I am trying to make as much progress as I can on my daughter-in-law's wedding album while I am on Summer break and today, I just finished another page.  I have been taking an online class from Get it Scrapped called On a Shelf.  It is a very interesting class, goes a little fast for a person who primarily makes cards, but still has been helpful to me while I make this book.
Here's today's page which is based on Lesson One where you make a scrapbook page with one picture on the imaginary shelf:

The page has one of my very favorite wedding pictures taken just after the ceremony concluded.  Andy and Ashley had been nervous wrecks in the hours leading up to the actual ceremony.  Once it was over, their mood totally changed to one of total relief.  Relief that they could relax and breathe again.  Ashley was laughing and Andy was so happy.  I love this picture, especially printed in black and white.  The layout is practically the same used in the lesson and I added some embellishments both stamped and cut with dies and on my Silhouette.  It is hard to tell  in the picture, but there is a sheet of polka dot vellum underneath the photo mat and some zig zag stitching at the top and bottom.  The patterned papers are from the digital collection I am using for the entire album.  To see some of the other pages for the wedding album, just click on the label Scrapbook on the right hand side of my blog.

Page Maps Sketch Challenge

My son's wedding has come and gone and now it's time for me to get going on the wedding planning and event scrapbook I have promised his new wife for their first anniversary.  *If you would like to see the first few pages of the scrapbook, just click on the label "scrapbook" on the right hand side of 

my blog*

The patterned papers for the book are from a digital collection and every page will have some combination of lavender, cream, black and kraft which were the wedding colors.  Have you ever heard of Page Maps?  It is a really great site with all kinds of sketches, primarily for scrapbooking, but they also have a section for card sketches too.  Here's a link to the sketch challenge I am playing along with and this is the sketch:

I was really focused in on the circles and completely missed the square layer behind them so next time I really need to pay more attention.  I was going to re-do it, but I have way too many pages to make, so it stays as it is!

Here's my page:

For a little explanation of what's going on in the pictures, here is the journaling card.  I asked Ashley to write down what stood out to her about their food and cake tasting and the first thing she said was that Andy was not smiling in any of the pictures.  Look through the first few scrapbook pages and you will see what she meant.  When she asked him to look like he was having fun, he starting posing like an idiot...like in the picture on the right.  Here is some of what she wrote:

Scrapbook pages are hard to photograph...especially 12 x 12 versions, so in case you can't tell by the picture, I used Lil Inker Stitched Mat Circles, Folding Tag, Original, Of the Heart and Stitched Mat Rectangles for the die cuts and the Smile sentiment is from the Darling Diamonds Stamp Set. 
I added some machine stitching on some of the circles, buttons and twine on others.
I think Andy and Ashley will like this page and I hope they laugh when they remember Andy's silly smiles.  I am not sure which was better, serious or idiot.  What do you think?

I'll Meet You Here

I've been working on a wedding scrapbook page for my daughter-in-law Ashley and finally finished one today.  This page is about the day they shopped for their wedding venue.  They really only had to look at a couple places before Ashley KNEW this was the right place.  Andy...just nodded his head and said he liked it which was the right answer!

I used a layered template from Sweet Shoppe Designs for the design using Photoshop Elements which gave me the size of each element, then I laid it all out on my cameo and printed the pictures and all of the elements on my machine.  I was even able to add the digital patterned paper to the shapes before I printed and cut them.  I had some help from my friend Joyce of Cards by the Sea with the title, but ended up having this title pop into my head at the last minute.  I plan to use Joyce's title ideas for later in the book.  Ashley hasn't seen the page, but I showed her the pictures that were going to be used and she wrote up a journal entry of her thoughts from that day.  So, Page 3 done...17 more to go!

What have I been doing?

It appears as though I haven't been doing anything crafty for awhile, but in reality I have been taking 3 online classes through Jessica Sprague trying to learn how to use my new birthday present to myself, a Silhouette Cameo.  I have a Cameo at work where we teach kids how to make vinyl stickers...but until I got my own, I never realized how much that machine can do!  It is true, "You don't know, what you don't know!"

The three classes I have been taking are here.

I took Getting to Know You, Oh, the places you will go and I am in the middle of Designer Studio Edition.  That is the one I have been the most excited to try since it apparently teaches you how to use digital cuts files, although I haven't gotten that far yet.  There is a bit of homework involved...and if you are like me and haven't taken a class in many, many years...it took a bit of time to figure it all out.  Here is the final project I made for the second class.

 It doesn't look like much, and it is something I could have made myself provided I had all the dies and stamps, but I made it all on the Cameo.  You even lay the whole thing out on your computer screen so you can see just where everything is going to go, what color it will be, etc.  My favorite part is the circle background.  It started off with just a single circle.  Then you add another circle, then a star, weld it together, replicate it a bunch of times, squeeze it all together and finally cut it down to the right size.  Whew.  It took a while.  The layout is one that came with the class and I got Warren to come in and take a picture of me (notice...no makeup-less face is showing!)

 The chevron stripes are print and cut files...you just print them with registration marks on your paper and then the machine automatically knows where to cut it.  Very neat!  The little banner was one of the tasks in the lesson and the think.think.think. tag was made with a rounded rectangle and I added the type and color...printed it and again, the machine cut it off.

I also made a tag on the machine..it looked just like this one, only with no score marks, so I ended up using a PTI tag I liked better.  Honestly, the only independent thought I added to the project was the Lil Inker mini bow, just because I think it is cute.  I plan to frame this and keep it up on the wall in my craft room as a reminder of the many hours I spent trying to learn how to use my machine!

Waltzingmouse Blog Party- February (Doilies)

I have been looking forward to this month's blog party...the theme fits perfectly with a scrapbook page I have made for my soon to be daughter-in-law Ashley.  This month's theme is doilies.  What better way to use doilies than on a wedding dress scrapbook page?  I can't think of anything better.  Here's my page:

I took these pictures a year ago right after Andy and Ashley got engaged.  Their wedding was then 16 months away and now that it is only 2 months away, I have started my year long project of making Ashley a wedding scrapbook.  Her wedding colors are lavender, cream, black and kraft, so expect to see lots and lots of things in those colors coming from me in the coming months.  Scrapbooking a wedding book for my first daughter-in-law Katie was what got me interested in crafting and it took me one full year to finish Katie's book, presented to Matt and Katie on their first anniversary.  I plan to do the same thing for Andy and Ashley.  Here are a few detail pictures of the page:

I found this tutorial on how to make an adorable dress from a doily.  I modified mine a bit, but it is very close to the tutorial.

This is a picture of Ashley and her mom admiring one of the dresses she tried on.  I thought Waltzingmouse You're Lovely was the perfect stamp set to use for this page.  My Beautiful Girl is exactly what I imagine her mother was thinking on this special day.  The background is stamped with WM Vintage Christmas Background for a very subtle texture.  I distressed all of the background patterned papers, Ashley loves a vintage look and I think she will like all of the rough edges. I also printed out some of the pictures in color, some in sepia and some in black and white...Ashley will love this detail.  She loves black and white photos.

This was Ashley's favorite photo...and this is THE dress she chose.  It was one of the first she tried on and we all could tell it was THE one.  I used some digital patterned papers that I bought called Lavender Shabby Chic.  I plan to use combinations of these papers throughout the book as I can print whatever color I need with no worry that I haven't bought enough!

I used WM Vintage Labels #18 for the journaling frame and the lines are from WM Candy Jar Christmas.  I want Ashley to write her memories of that day in the hopes that their future children can read about what she was thinking as she tried on her wedding dress for the first time.

One last little stamped detail is also from WM, the cute little Vintage Style sentiment from You're Lovely.  I added lots of little roses and some heirloom border trim.

That's it for me today...you still have time to make something for the Waltzingmouse Blog Party...here's a link with all the details!

Engaged Scrapbook Page

Today I am sharing Page 2 in Andy & Ashley's Wedding scrapbook focusing on their engagement.  I saw a really pretty scrapbook  page and cased the design seen here.  Ashley finally chose her wedding colors and my page now incorporates those three colors, black, cream and shades of lavender. 
Here's the page I created:

This time, I printed out the photo, digital papers and used my cricut to cut the title letters.  I stamped the journal with PTI Happily Ever After stamp set and layered it all onto a 12 x 12 sheet of cream cardstock.  There is a zig-zag stitching on one of the  layers and a couple little embellishment that were diecut from silver cardstock using spellbinder dies. 

I want to tell you a little about this digital paper.  I found a digital paper pack I liked from Peppermint Creative that included all the black and cream papers, but the accent color was gold.  Here's the link.  Since Ashley chose lavender, I had to start looking for some papers that would compliment what I already had.  I found the neatest person, Marissa Hansen on Etsy who custom made 28 sheets of patterned papers, in the exact shades of light and dark lavender that Ashley wanted.  Thee are damask patterns, stripes, polka dots and even some custom wedding text paper.  She also made me some great distressed solid sheets that she custom matched to the tones of the original papers I was using.  All that for only $16 and she did it in less than 24 hours.   I can now print out as many pieces as I need to for the next year while I am working on this scrapbook.  I was pretty excited at that one.

Their Story Begins Scrapbook Page

Making a scrapbook for my future daughter in law three years ago is what got me started with stamping and cardmaking.  When I look back at that book, I realize how far I have come and also, how much more I have to learn.

My second son, Andy got engaged on Christmas Day to Ashley, his girlfriend of four years.  About time, don't you think?  We are all very excited.  The wedding isn't for quite some time, April, 2013.  It sure takes a long time to plan a wedding these days, much longer than when my husband and I planned out 32 year ago.  I am going to make a wedding scrapbook for Andy and Ashley that highlights both the planning of the wedding and the actual wedding day.  I have been googling and pinning inspiration layouts for weeks now.  Here is one that caught my eye:

Credit

It is sweet, simple and I love the forever words overlapped over the black and white picture. If you notice the picture is in black and white and it looks like their jeans are colorized to bring out the navy color of the background  paper.  I have no clue how to do that!  So, here is my somewhat cased scrapbook page.

This is going to be the first page of the album and I wanted it to be flat.  It is made using digital paper, which is a smokey shadow gray color.  The stripes are ivory and the dots are bright white.  I took this picture of the happy couple in black and white because once I started snapping pictures I realized that since it is Winter, there are no leaves on the trees and those poor leafless trees looked pathetic in color.  The sweet pose was actually Ashley's idea and we both thought it would look cute.  Andy went along with it because he wasn't about to argue with both his fiance and his mom.  Very wise son I raised.  I used a digital brush for the Forever words and added the Title and their names using  a beautiful scripty font. 
The wedding colors are black, ivory and lavender, so there just wasn't any way to work lavender into this page without it looking too bright and I also couldn't find any digital rhinestones to use, so this page is very muted.  I am looking forward to learning more about digital scrapbooking as this scrapbook progresses, some pages with be totally digital and some will be hybrid, which is  part digital and part real paper and traditional embellishments.  Wish me luck with this project and if you know any good blogs or find any great wedding layouts, I would welcome the advice. 
Details:
Digital Papers: MissMintClassicWedding by Peppermint Creative.com