Do You Ever Just Get Stuck???

HELLO! Last week I had to rush to get Emma into the Kindergarten I wanted her to be in, and I had missed open enrollment for our district. SO HAPPY to say she got into the school we wanted! WooHoo! It's amazing a little over two years ago she was entered into pre-school with a "Severe Delay." Now, she's going into kindergarten and is almost at a "gifted," level with reading and math levels in the first grade level! What a journey it's been and I am SUCH a proud mother!



Now on to crafty things, do you ever just get stuck on a layout??? I was recently taking a stab at some boy-ish layouts since I don't have boys. I took this picture of, ok, it would take me half a post to figure out how this adorable little boy is semi-related to me, but just go with it... So, I took this photo around the holidays for some family. Isn't Andrew adorable? What a little heartbreaker. I knew I had to scrapbook it... I loved the coppery-reds in the background of the photo, the black and white of the dog and the blue jeans. I generally don't scrapbook right on top of patterned paper, at LEAST without mounting on cardstock with a 1/8" around the border (I'm a little crazy)... but I just LOVED this Glitz design patterned paper.
I knew I didn't want to hide it with other papers and "shtuff." I thought about doing circles... since it was kind of a "burst" pattern, it reminded me of the Sun... the sun is circle, so it makes sense, right? LOL... I whipped out some Technique Tuesday tiles that I LOVE LOVE LOVE but hate using because they're just so pretty. I also busted out three colors of glimmer mist; Midnight Blue, Coffee shop and Oriental Poppy and misted up three of the circles. I also had in my arsenal (and it's been a goal of mine to use more of my stash) some old Basic Grey Rub-Ons with a boy and a dog, a Jenni Bowlin Bingo card and some transparencies. I kind of situated it all on my scrap-island and looked at it. The photo and the circle just seemed to be floating in the middle of the page; I didn't like that. So I wanted to "ground it." I tried out two different pieces of of paper; well one was patterned paper the other was a strip of transparency. Now here's my little scrapper trick. Sometimes when I can't decide what I like best, I take a photo...


Sometimes when I take a photo and look at it, I'm able to look at my layout from a different perspective. I try and see which option makes my eyes "at ease," if you will... does anything stick out like a sore-thumb, or does the whole thing just look like a wash of the same colors? I decided I liked the green...

Next I added a couple more elements, I decided I liked some transparency flourishes I had printed out using photoshop as opposed to the little fancy pants flower. I then couldn't decide which way I liked tilting my little Bingo Card... photo time!

From here, things just flowed... I decided to change up my Bing Card for a "Lucky" one, and sanded down the numbers, applied another rub-on, because this made it stand out a little more than the last one. The title came pretty easy. Seriously, Basic Grey alpha-sheets are my scrap-crack. They can work on ANY layout. ("MY" & "Companion"). I chose the Heidi Swapp Black and White alphas for the "Constant" because it kind of went back to the "Lucky" title. I also decided to add some brads... notice I said SOME brads. It started with Five in the upper right and lower left corner. Then I though I wanted a couple more... and a couple more... soon the whole friggin' circle was surrounded. Hey, it's all good. No one uses enough brads anymore!

I hope you like the Final Layout! Here it is again!



For the rest of the week, I want to do something a little different. Tomorrow, I'm going to post one of my FAVORITE recipes, Tortilla soup, with step-by-step photos how I make it. Then Thursday or Friday, I'm going to be posting a video of my new scrapbook room... you get your own private tour... and maybe, just maybe, there will be a little giveaway involved... oh, yes... you know you're excited. If you've seen my scrapbook room, you know I have WAY too much stuff!!! Also, I had some interest in posting a tutorial on how I created my mini-grungepaper book and box that I posted last week. If anyone else is interested please let me know! The more the merrier! Have a Happy Tuesday!!!!