Scouts and School

It seems like I am getting short bursts of scrapping energy. One day last week, I managed to churn out six pages! It does help when you duplicate previous pages and keep things simple otherwise. Caleb's Cub Scout album is "caught up," in that all the photos I had printed are scrapped. Of course, that only takes me to January of this year, but it does make it the most current album I'm working on. I am slowly trying to make progress on the boys' regular albums. They are both now a year behind, which is better than the two years behind my album is.

And, as if I didn't have enough ongoing scrapbook projects, I seem to have added another one. It's pretty simple, though. I decided that the boys' school pictures would go into their own albums, rather than being part of their regular albums. I have several reasons for this decision. One, I think it will be nice to have all the school pictures in one place to easily watch their growth over the years. Two, it will be easier to maintain these albums from a chronological standpoint. I keep their school pictures in frames until the next year's are taken, so it has been a challenge at times to squeeze those pages into the albums after the fact (when I've actually had their albums current, anyway!). I can be pretty OCD about keeping my albums in chronological order. Once I decided to go through Aaron's albums and pull out all the school pictures (individuals and class photos), I had a time of it trying to keep them in chronological order. The mix of one- and two-page layouts made it more difficult. It seemed that every gap coincided with a two-pager and I had to rearrange and end up with things out of order. A little tough to swallow (some of you can relate, I'm sure!), but I'm happy I decided to do it this way. Caleb's was much easier, since I only had one page to remove--a combination of me being behind and him not having been in school as long.

Hopefully I can get some more pages done soon. Usually posting some to the blog gets me a little motivated. Motivated or not, it gets a little tough in the summer to do any scrapbooking, if for no other reason than one of the boys is camped out at my desk on my laptop on a regular basis. Maybe I'll have myself a mini scrapping marathon next month when they spend some time at Grammy's house. Who am I kidding? I'll be too excited at having the TV to myself and end up watching 18 hours of North and South or some other guilty pleasure TV (that's what I did when they were at Grandma's house last week {hanging my head in shame}).

Anyway....here's the latest batch.

Papers: DCWV, K & Co
Die cuts, rub-ons: K & Co
Cricut Cartridge: Doodle Type
Punch: Fiskars

(I think this was based on one of Amy's sketches, but really I just copied this page from Aaron's album)
Papers: DCWV
Stickers and rub-ons: K & Co, Making Memories

Sketch: Amy Alvis
Papers: K & Co, Paper Studio
Stickers: K & Co

I used the same sketch as above for this one. These are for different albums, so why not? I like how different they look even using the same sketch
Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

Papers: Provo Craft, DCWV (the background actually had a "Dick and Jane"-type birthday scene in the bottom right corner. I turned it upside down and covered it with the photo)
Stickers: Paper Studio
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters
Punch: EK Success

Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: Opposites Attract
Sticker: (maybe) Paper Studio
Sorry for the photo instead of a scan. For some reason, my stitching program kept doing something wonky on this page. I wonder if it had something to do with the graph paper background? I don't know anything about the program so it was easier to do it this way.

Scrapping Scouts Again

Since Aaron has an entire Cub Scout scrapbook, it's only fair that his brother get one, too. I bought the same album and tracked down another Cub Scout paper pad. I still had plenty of embellishments left, knowing that I'd be able to save them for Caleb's album. Then about two weeks ago I was sitting at the pack campfire, watching the boys cross over into the next rank, and I realized that Caleb had already been in Cub Scouts for a year and there were no scrapbook pages to show for it!

My current project, therefore, is getting that album caught up (at least until January 2012, since that's all I have photos printed for). So, with the exception of one "everyday" page I snuck in before I realized I needed to work on the Scout album, that's what all this batch of layouts is. One thing I like about doing the Scout pages, though, is that they go pretty quickly, and it doesn't matter if they all look the same. They are much easier to work with, too, because of the great Scout products K & Co puts out. Some of these pages are literally sticking the photos down and adding some journaling. I don't mind these types of pages, since I think I've said before that my scrapbooking is primarily for memory preservation, rather than artistic expression.

Caleb's Cub Scout album will end up being shorter than his brother's, though. He just crossed from Tiger Cubs to Bear, and will skip the Wolf year. He decided to do this since he is skipping second grade and going into third grade in the fall. He decided rather than staying with his den he started with, he would rather be with the rest of the third-graders. He knows most of them anyway, since he was in a second grade class with them part time most of the year. I'm glad he decided this way, since he will finally be able to identify with one grade (he split his time between two grades for the past two years).

Anyway....(sorry, I get a little sidetracked sometimes) here is a bunch of pages I've done over the past week or so. I know some of these are not much to look at, but my out of town family at least likes to see the photos.

Papers: DCWV, K & Co
Punch: Martha Stewart
Cricut Cartridges: Mickey Font, Lyrical Letters
On this page I used one of my favorite tricks. The green paper is actually from a mat stack, but by putting the white strip across the page, I could "stretch" it to fit the whole page.

Sketch: Amy Alvis
Papers: DCWV, K & Co
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters
Stickers: K & Co
I used my other favorite trick on this one. I only had one sheet of the yellow cardstock, so I cut it into 3" strips and stuck it to some patterned paper that I knew I'd never use. The other papers just went on top. That's another reason I love these sketches so much. Many of them you can get away with using small amounts of paper.

Sketch: Amy Alvis
Papers: DCWV
Stickers: K & Co
Cricut Cartridge: Alphalicious
I used the same trick on this one. I can use up ugly patterns and conserve my more precious solid cardstock (although a lot of the time I really only have one sheet of a color)!

Papers and stickers: K & Co
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

Papers: DCWV, K & Co.
Stickers: K & Co
Punch: EK Success

All Supplies: K & Co
(This one goes into the "at least it's done" file)

Papers: DCWV, K &Co
Stickers: K & Co
Embossing folder: Cuttlebug

Another "It's done" page
Paper: K & Co
Cricut Cartridge: Doodle Type

I'm Back!

After nearly two months, I am finally back to the blog, and with new pages to share. I guess after finishing the Disney album, I felt a little burned out on scrapping and needed a break. I started to get concerned, though, when a month had gone by and I still wasn't ready to do any new pages. That's not like me. Usually if a week goes by without working on something, I start getting a little itchy.

I have kept myself otherwise happily distracted. I've been doing a lot of reading lately. I also finished knitting two baby blankets and crocheting at least a dozen dishcloths. Whenever I do get around to scrapbooking 2012, though, it shouldn't take me as long. I realized I am hardly taking any pictures these days, and most of the ones I am taking are with my phone. I haven't printed any of my camera phone photos yet, but I'm curious to see how they turn out. A few weeks before Christmas, we upgraded to "fancy phones" and I am not sure whether to be amazed or sad that the resolution is higher on my camera phone than on my DSLR!

We do have some picture-taking occasions coming up, though. Aaron "graduates" from fifth grade on Tuesday night and Caleb crosses over to the next rank in Cub Scouts next weekend, so it's probably a good thing I spent some time this morning freeing up space on the memory card.

Here is what I've been working on over the past two weeks. Since I am back to working on the boys' albums again, I am up to my old tricks of doing duplicate layouts. If I have the same set of photos for both albums, why reinvent the wheel, right? Sometimes I'll even do both pages simultaneously, so it really is like killing two birds with one stone.

Doesn't get much simpler. I need to do pages like this sometimes to jump start the motivation. Ignore the big purple slashes. I was just trying to cover up the names and I am not a skilled editor.
Papers: Old stuff from my stash. I think the patterned is Scrap Book Wizard
Punch: Fiskars

Here's essentially doing the same page twice. I used slightly different papers, and rounded the corners on one of them so they're not completely identical.
Sketch: Sketch Savvy
Papers: DCWV
Stamps: PSX

Sketch: I thought I based it on one of Amy Alvis' sketches, but I couldn't find it. I have plenty of links to her blog here, though.
Paper: Paper Studio
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: George and Basic Shapes
Punch: EK Success

Sketch: Amy Alvis
Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridges: Mickey Font, Doodletype

Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters
I did both of these the same, only changing some of the journaling, so only posted the one.

Disney Album Finished!

I have--FINALLY!--finished my 2010 Disney scrapbook! It's been almost two years since the vacation, so it feels really good to finally have this trip "in the books." This was the biggest project I had ever undertaken for a single event, and I have to admit, I'm not in a hurry to repeat it. I have serious doubts about doing another traditional scrapbook for our Christmas 2011 Disney trip. That one just may be captured in a Shutterfly photo book.

Here are the last of the pages for this album. You may notice several things about them. One, it just may be obvious that I started to phone in these pages. I have always considered my style simple, but some of these are even beyond that. Another thing is, as I got closer to the end, I realized I still had a fair amount of 2010-themed items left. I knew I would have no use for them after this album was complete (I did the boys' pages on this trip long before now), so I started to go a little overboard with them. On the plus side, I did manage to use most of them up!

Next up: working towards getting the boys' albums caught up. With the exception of Aaron's Cub Scout album, I am now a year behind in their books. Plus, I need to start Caleb's Cub Scout album. I surely won't run out of things to do any time soon.

Papers: Disney, Provo Craft
Stickers: Disney
Punch: Fiskars

Sketch: Amy Alvis
Papers: Disney, Scrap Book Wizard
Cricut Cartridge: Calligraphy Collection
Stamps: Hero Arts

Paper and Stickers: Disney

Sketch: This was the basis. I've used this one on several other layouts and was working from memory. It took a little searching to find the actual sketch.
Papers: Disney, Provo Craft
Cricut Cartridge: Mickey Font
Letter Stickers: Provo Craft
Punch: Fiskars

Sketch: Amy Alvis (I flipped it, though)
Papers: Disney, Provo Craft
Stickers: Disney
Eyelets: Making Memories

Papers: Disney, DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: Mickey Font
Punch: EK Success
This is the last page of the album.

Hollywood Studios Done

Before my latest scrapping hiatus, I did get some more pages done for my Disney album. Our Hollywood Studios day is now complete, and I have just one more day to finish.

I admit, I have really lost my motivation for this project, but I have a slightly renewed interest in it now. I've planned out the rest of the pages (at least which photos are going on what pages), so I can actually see the end in sight. I think six more layouts (or about eight pages) will do it, and I can get back to my everyday albums.

Since I didn't meet my goal of finishing the album by the end of February, my new goal is to finish before Easter. There are two reasons behind this: one, my family is coming to visit for Easter and I'd like to have a completed album to show them; and two, Easter will mark about two years since the trip took place. I don't know that I've ever been two years behind in my scrapbooks. One year? All the time. Even a year and a half is fairly standard, but two is unthinkable. Unless I really get a move on, though, two years behind is going to be my new normal. I guess it's time to start thinking again about going digital....

Here are the Hollywood Studios pages.

Paper: DCWV
Stickers: Disney

Sketch: Amy Alvis (This sketch was the basis, but I did change it around a little)
Papers: DCWV, Disney, Provo Craft
Stickers, etc: Disney

Papers: DCWV
Stickers: Disney

Sketch: Amy Alvis
Papers: DCWV
Rubons: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: All Mixed Up

Papers: DCWV
Stickers: Disney, Colorbok
Punch: EK Success

Papers: DCWV, Paper Studio
Stickers: Disney, Colorbok
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

Papers: Paper Studio, Provo Craft, Creative Imaginations
Stickers: Disney
Cricut Cartridge: Mini Monograms

Papers: DCWV
Sticker: Disney
Punch: Fiskars

Cub Scout Album Finished (Almost!)

I knew I had taken a break from scrapping and blogging, but I didn't realize just how long. Last time I posted, I was trying to finish up Aaron's Cub Scout scrapbook before he crossed into Boy Scouts, as well as get the Disney album finished. Unfortunately, neither of those things has quite been accomplished.

The Cub Scout album actually did get caught up before the Blue & Gold Banquet/crossover, which was a month ago already. With the exception of two or three pages I need to do of that day (and, naturally, I don't have those photos printed yet), that album is done.

Here they are:

Sketch: Amy Alvis (it's the first one in the post)

Papers: DCWV, K & Co.

Cricut Cartridge: Opposites Attract

Papers: DCWV, K & Co.
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters
Punch: EK Success

Papers: DCWV, K & Co.
Embellishments: K & Co.



Papers: DCWV

Embellishments: K & Co.

Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

I sewed the half-sheet of cardstock to the background to make a pocket to hold some of the fliers, etc.

It's a little hard to believe that Aaron has moved into Boy Scouts. It's not so much the scouting aspect I have trouble with, just the fact that he is growing up so fast. He will be off to middle school next fall, and I at least feel better that we finally decided on a school. We had been debating for a couple months about whether to send him to our home district middle school, or apply for open enrollment at a neighboring school. We applied, and he was accepted, but ultimately we decided on the home school anyway. I'm still stressing about it a little, hoping we won't be short-changing him, since our final decision was based more on community factors than academics. I trust he will do well wherever he goes.

And, as is often the case, I went off on a tangent. This is also why my scrapbooking has gotten so sporadic as well. There is so much else to distract me. I've been on a reading kick lately (along with my newest addiction of collecting free Kindle books), and trying to get baby blanket knitted. I am one down and one to go on that front. Plus, we've gotten an early spring here, so with the weather so beautiful, it's easier to sit outside and read than stay in and scrapbook.

Anyway, I plan to do another post shortly showing my Disney progress. Stay tuned for that.

Taking a Break From Disney

I know, I said I was going to keep plugging along on Disney while I still had the motivation. I guess I must have lost it. I pulled out some photos to work on a page over the weekend, and then couldn't bring myself to do it. What is a little frustrating is that I was starting to feel like I could see the end of project. Once I finally get that album finished, I will still be almost a year and a half behind. I think I left off at July 2010 before I finally started on the Disney album.

I do have good news, though. I am fairly certain Aaron's Cub Scout album will be finished in time. I have it caught up except for the stuff that happened last month. I still need to get those photos printed, though.

Here are the latest Cub Scout pages I've done. These are probably even simpler than my usual simple pages. That's just the way this whole album has gone. Having all the Cub Scout supplies really has made for easy pages, though. If Cricut ever comes out with a Cub/Boy Scout cartridge, I will be totally set!

Don't worry, I'm sure the next post will Hollywood Studios!

I'll make my descriptions a little less repetitive. Unless otherwise noted, all papers, stickers, etc. are K & Co.

 Other: Cuttlebug embossing folder

 Papers: DCWV
Cricut Cartridge: Doodle Type

Additional papers: DCWV, Provo Craft
Punch: Martha Stewart
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

Additional Papers: Provo Craft
Cricut Cartridge: Lyrical Letters

Cricut Cartridge: Tear Drop
Cuttlebug embossing folder

Papers: DCWV
Stamps: PSX
Rubons: Making Memories
Punch: EK Success

And, just for reference, this is the photo I'm referring to in my journaling. I didn't have the page saved on my computer. This is from September 2007 and he had just turned six.