LOAD Day 4 - Twist and Shout (Out)

Welcome back for another day of LOAD 2019!  Today, I am sharing my page for Day 4, using the prompt based on the twister in the “Wizard of Oz”.  The prompt was to tell a story with a twist, but I chose to focus on the twister itself, and tell a tale from my childhood about living through a tornado.

One of the things I love about doing LOAD is that it reminds me of all the stories I need to tell.  I think we often get so focused on the PHOTOS of our lives, that we forget all about the stories and events that DON’T always have photos.  And we are so busy creating pages and albums of our children, our trips, and our holidays, that we don’t always tell the stories of our own childhood or share the bits and pieces of our life that share who we are and where we came from. For me, that is the whole purpose of scrapbooking…to tell those stories so they aren’t forgotten…to share them with future generations who will want to know who we are and how we lived.  

I didn’t have any pictures of my own from this event, but a quick search of the internet turned up dozens of photos I could easily download from various archives.  I printed them at a smaller scale so I could fit more to one page, as I didn’t really think this warranted a 2-page layout.  I also found a photo of the next day’s front page of the local newspaper, so I printed that (reduced, of course) onto parchment and inked it for additional aging.

The background paper came from Basic Grey, sorry I can’t remember which line. I was looking for something distressed looking.  It probably didn’t matter since it’s mostly covered up anyway. I wanted to really add to the sense of chaos and destruction, so I skewed all the elements on the page, and even ripped and inked the edges of the journaling that I printed on parchment paper.  I didn’t think it needed a title in the true sense of the word, since the headline on the paper says it all, but I did add a date near the top, using a rolling stamp. I think the stamp’s messy imprint adds to the disarray of the page.

A word about the parchment paper….  If you follow my Facebook page, Instagram, or this blog, you may have noticed that I’ve used the same parchment paper several times lately.  If I were scrapbooking chronologically, as many people do, I certainly would not have done that because then all my pages would start to look the same.  That’s one of the things I love about scrapbooking in no particular order – I work on the pages as the inspiration comes to me, perhaps telling a story from my childhood one day, and creating a page about my son’s high school orchestra the next.  Since the pages are never side-by-side in the same book, you would never know that I went through an “eyelet stage” or an “embossing stage”, or even a “parchment paper stage”.  So as new products come out, I feel free to use them on any of my projects, and my albums are never “dated” by a certain style or technique.

I also want to give a shout out to everyone who will be at Scrapbook Expo next weekend.  I will be in the crop room most of the time, so if you are there, or if you see me on the floor, come over and say "Hi," and mention the blog. I love hearing from you! Even better, ask for a selfie and post it on your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram page.  You can tag me, Crafty Neighbor, or both!  Your tag will enter you in a drawing for a cool prize pack, and everyone will get a little gift for tagging me!

Next up – our prompt is about being in an unfamiliar environment, and we can use a technique we’ve never tried, or one we don’t use very often.  I’m thinking I might do something digital!  If I do, I may make a process video.  This should be fun!

Keep crafting!

LOAD Day 3 - You Big Ol' Softy

For LOAD Day 3, my prompt was to make a page about a “Softy” in my life, or use something soft on my page. I chose to do both!  My Dad was a real softy, so I used this page to tell how the strict disciplinarian turned into a bit of a marshmallow when his grandkids came along.  

To make this page, I used papers from DCWV “Main Street” collection and a few odd bits of cardstock scraps from my stash. The photo mat is actually flocked paper from the DCWV collection, and that’s where I pulled in the “soft” item on my page. I also softened the edges of some elements with distress ink. 

I wanted a masculine-looking font for this layout, but one that wasn’t too harsh, so I used “Habitat” from a collection I downloaded at FontBundles.net.  They have a lot of great fonts that are free to download.  I used that for the photo caption tabs.  I also used Creating Keepsakes “CK Man’s Print” which was released years ago on a font CD, but which you can now download for free at FontsMarket.com.  The title “Daddy • Dad • Poppy” was made with some stickers from my stash.  They were the wrong color of teal for this layout, but I colored over them with a W7 Warm Grey Copic Marker.  

I use my Copic markers to change the colors of my scrapbooking supplies all the time…in fact, it was the primary reason I first started buying them.  I used several markers to get just the right color on my embellishments on this page.  The blue-ish chipboard heart was originally a sky blue.  First I colored it with Brown E25, but the surface of the chipboard was slick and it didn’t cover evenly, so I sanded that lightly, leaving it very distressed.  Then I colored it with BG72, G24, and BG13 in that order until I got just the right shade I was looking for.

The remaining embellishments were some hearts from a Basic Grey “Sugar Rush” sticker sheet (I colored one of the hearts with the E25 and BG13 to cover some colors that didn’t match), phrases from Tim Holtz and Heidi Swapp, plus a chipboard heart and a glitter heart that came from my stash.

Thanks for stopping by today!  Come back tomorrow for my layout with a “twist”!

Layout A Day - LOAD 219

Yesterday, I mentioned Layout-A-Day, but I didn’t really go into what it was.  If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know that LOAD (as it’s affectionately called) is a month-long challenge I’ve taken on many times over the past few years.  My first LOAD was in February of 2012, and I joined in after I saw a post from another blogger I follow (Joy Tracey’s Obsessed with Scrapbooking), and I was intrigued.  I wanted to be more productive with my scrapbooking, and this gave me the perfect excuse to do a little crafting every evening after dinner (“You need someone to take you to the store to get supplies for your science project? Go ask your Dad, I have to do this layout for Layout-a-Day’). So I signed up, and have been hooked ever since.

My stack of layouts after I completed my first LOAD in 2012.

The brainchild of Lain Ehman, LOAD typically ran 3 times per year, in February and May, which were open to the public, and in October, which was open only to the members of Scrap Happy, an online network of Lain’s followers.  I wasn’t much interested in the Scrap Happy group, so even though I was sad I couldn’t do the October LOADs, I never joined.  Instead, I just did every February and May, completing every daily challenge on time…that is, until my Dad had a heart attack.  Then I had to drop everything to go home, and it just fell apart after that.  I never finished that February challenge, May got interrupted by something else, and eventually, Lain decided she didn’t want to LOAD any more.  I had heard that someone else bought the rights, but I wasn’t on the mailing list, never found out who it was, and so I was just sad that such a fun and interesting challenge had fallen by the wayside.

Fast forward to January, 2018, and once again, I found myself signing up for LOAD!  I can’t remember how I found it, but somehow I stumbled across a link to the next event, which was starting up the next day, and my heart took a giant leap!  I was so excited to join again, and I did.  But there was a hitch…I was set to leave on a cruise in 4 days, and I would be nearly a week without internet and with very little scrapbooking supplies. Regardless, I was determined to do it anyway, so I packed up a little tote of supplies, a traveler’s journal, my trusty HP Sprocket printer, and I decided to scrapbook on the fly.  I bought the onboard Social WiFi package, which allowed me to upload my photos to the Flickr gallery and still participate in the challenge.

Scrapbooking in my travel journal during my August cruise (MINI LOAD).

Everything went okay for a day or two, but then the girls I was traveling with, my instructors, decided we needed to finish up some work we brought with us.  It turned into a much bigger project than we’d anticipated, and I spent most of the rest of the cruise working on that.  I didn’t get much scrapbooking done, and after I got off track, I didn’t do much on it at all.  Something similar happened in May, when I had yet anothercruise, this time one of our popular Scrapbooking Cruises we do each year.  I was so busy getting ready for the cruise, then teaching classes and leading the group that I fell off my proverbial wagon and failed to finish that LOAD, either. They say bad luck comes in threes, so yep, I missed out on the finish a third time in August, when the new owner, Alice Boll, decided to host a Mini LOADthat lasted one week.  It was right during the middle of a group cruise I organized for my Aggie Moms.  I did get some work done on that one, but not the whole week.  And I’m not sure whathappened in October, which I finally got to participate in because I finally broke down and joined Scrap Happy for the year.

So here we are…it’s February, I’m signed up for LOAD 219 (that’s Layout-a-Day February 2019), and I’m already behind! As I mentioned yesterday, I’m in the middle of a craft room reorganization (watch for a big reveal, soon!) and I have a lot of year-end (2018) bookkeeping that I’m trying to get done. So I missed the launch out of the box, and have been playing catch-up ever since.  I decided I would do 2 layouts a day until I get caught up, which should have taken me 2 days, but then I skipped a couple more days, and one of my pages took longer than I intended, and there are a million excuses, but I am catching up…AND…I am also starting in on Ali Edward’s “One Little Word” challenge at the same time…even though I’m starting it a month late!

Working on my One Little Word album.

So for today (and the next few days, too), I’ll be sharing with you my layouts from LOAD 219 and OLW, along with some info about my processes and supplies.  I hope you’ll enjoy it, and maybe it will give you some inspiration to challenge yourself.  After all, you don’t have to sign up for a challenge to create a layout every day.  Just get out your supplies and do something.  Be creative every day, whether it’s a scrapbook page, a card, something you made for your home, something from paper, something from fabric, or something you’ve drawn.  It all counts – as long as you DO IT!

LOAD Day 2

Yesterday, I told you a little bit about LOAD, and I mentioned that Lain was using world travel as the basis for her daily prompts.  For each day of the week, she assigned a general theme, and then on that day, she gets more specific.  Lain’s prompt for Day 2 (Tuesday), was “Airplane”. 

Monday – Color

Tuesday  – Transportation

Wednesday – Culture – test it

Thursday – Language

Friday – Landmark

Saturday – Geography

Sunday – Food

Some of you might know that I am a travel agent by day, so there were lots of obvious choices of pages I could do to fulfill the prompt, but I decided to go for my first plane ride instead.  Since I have no photos of this event, I chose to let my journaling paint the picture.  I used travel-themed papers and ephemera in layers to give it a “busy” feel.  Do you miss the picture?  I don’t.

Layout a Day!

I can’t believe it’s already February.  Do you know what February means?  Layout-A-Day (LOAD), of course!

What is LOAD?  It’s only the most fun, challenging, and best scrapbooking challenge out there!  LOAD is hosted by Lain Ehman, founder of True Scrap and Scrap Happy.  Each February, Lain brings us a month-long challenge to create at least one layout every day.  Each challenge is themed, so she gives us prompts that we can use, bend, or just throw away.  The prompts are designed to help you think outside the box – to create pages you might not have thought of creating – and to generally just get you started.  Our finished layouts get posted to a Flickr group so we can all admire everyone’s work, and in the end we’ll wind up with a whole bunch of finished pages, some fresh ideas for even more pages, and maybe even a few new friends.  Oh, and I mustn’t forget the prizes! 

In the past, Lain has also run this challenge in May and October, and I have delightfully participated, which has really helped me grow as a scrapper.  Unfortunately, I hear this is Lain’s last year to host it.  She is passing the torch to someone else.  I hope the new hostess will be as fun, challenging, and organized as Lain has been.  I look forward to participating in years to come.

So for LOAD 216 (February 2016), the theme is Around the World in 29 days.  Lain is pulling ideas from world travel to create her daily prompts.  Our prompt for Day 1 was based on the colors of the flag of the Netherlands: red, white and blue.  Being the patriot that I am, I had to do a page about Independence Day and a new tradition we’ve started in our family.

If you are interested in LOAD, you can get more info at LayoutADay.com, and you can look back at all the pages I’ve done over the years by typing “LOAD” into the search box at the top of the page, or by clicking on the word “LOAD” in the tags cloud at the bottom of the page.

Day 24 – School Spirit

When Lain gave us the prompt “School Spirit”, I could have easily reverted back to working on my son’s Texas A&M scrapbook, or I could even have done something from my high school years.  But when I was flipping through my supplies, I found this little “Aggie Mom” pennant that I bought when Steven first started school there, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to create a page about my own Texas A&M experience. 

Luckily, I have quite a stash of Texas Aggie scrapbook paper, so coming up with a quick page was not difficult at all.  Part of the journaling is my own story; the rest was compiled form information found on the internet.

Day 23 – Playground

The title, embellishments, and merry-go-round were all part of a rub-on sticker set.

Lain’s prompt for Day 23 is another page that has no photos.  I’ve been wanting to tell this story for a long time…ever since I found this awesome merry-go-round rub-on sticker for sale on a Facebook scrapbook group.  The page is simple, and features muted colors.  The focus is the merry-go-round and the story, as it should be.