Sweet Eliza

You can see a larger version by clicking any of the images...




So my mom took my boys for a sleepover today and I thought Eliza's naptime would be the perfect time to clean the bathrooms... but instead I came into my office and finished this layout. Oops! Oh, well -- preserving our family history is more important than clean toilets, right?!

My big accomplishment with this particular project was figuring out how to add some "inking" to the edges of the photos and elements. I've struggled a little with digi-scrapping because it just didn't have the soft look I love with paper scrapping, which I usually add by doing things like inking the edges. This added a few steps, but I really loved the outcome. I bought this totally adorable digi-kit from the Shabby Princess shop. It's called Gabby, and I love it so much I think I may use it to redesign my blog. I LOVE their digi-kits -- they all have so many amazing elements. I also used this kit to create a little birth announcement for Eliza...



And while I'm on the subject of digi-scrapping, here's a layout I finished yesterday of this year's family reunion. This is another one for the album that I've given to my parents and all my siblings. We always have such a great time together -- I'm glad I can give everyone these layouts to remind them! :) This is another great Shabby Princess kit, called "Wonder."






Both of these layouts use Becky Higgins sketches. Love 'em!

Family Fun -- layouts for our family album

I'm the only scrapbooker in my family (not for lack of trying to convert my mom and sisters, though!), so when I do pages of big family events, I scan them in and get copies printed for everyone in the family (Costco is a great resource for this, btw). I started doing this when my little sister went on a mission for our church, so she would have something fun when she was homesick, and also so she could introduce people to our happy, goofy family. Now that more people are growing up and spreading out, it's more important to me than ever. I love it! I scrap in 12x12, generally speaking, but the books I made for everyone else are 8x8 -- it's just easier and cheaper to print and ship all the pages that way.

My little brother Eric is just as camera happy as I am, and when we are both on a trip we end up with mountains of pictures -- hooray! He's also a very talented photographer, which is why some of these pictures are super nice and some are just run-of-the-mill (those would be mine...) That just leaves me with the dilemma of which to pick, so I always need a lo with tons of picture space. I couldn't do it with just one double-page lo in this case, so I did two almost identical layouts for the book.

I like to coordinate the colors of the pictures with paper and embellishments, but in this case nearly every pic had different colors! I also wanted something that reflected how much fun we had on this trip. I found this great striped paper in my stash (by My Mind's Eye, Magnolia stack) that definitely fit the bill. But I didn't want it to clash, so I mounted the photos on kraft paper (which reminded me of the sand on the beach at the lake). I also added some decorative stitching and used my Heidi Swapp edge-distressor on the kraft paper (love that tool!). The flowers are cut from some coordinating pp, and the title is cut with the Cricut Base Camp cartridge. I cut the journaling block with SCAL. TFL!