September Sneak Peeks: My Creative Scrapbook

I don't know if you have ever joined a scrapbooking kit club, but they are a fun way to scrapbook. I find it easier to scrapbook using a collection or a kit, instead of hunting through my stash. 

I started been designing for My Creative Scrapbook in 2012 and it's always a great surprise to see what's in this month's kit. The designers get a hint a few days before our boxes arrive, then we stalk our mailboxes!

Some months, the kits are an especially good fit with my style. Like this month: lots of bold colors plus a fun travel theme. 

Here's a sneak peek at what I made: 

September 5th is reveal day. You can find out more information about My Creative Scrapbook on its website here.

Another Day In Paradise: Summer Layout

Hello, everyone!  I'm back today with another summer layout from the August kit at My Creative Scrapbook. 

I took this photo of my son on what we consider the first day of summer. Of course, that's the day after the school year ends. We always do something particularly summer-y on that day. It usually involves water and ice cream! On this day, we hit the pool and had a frosty later that afternoon. 

I needed a spot for my journaling and wasn't sure where to put in on the page. I decided to type out a sentence or two and tuck it in vertically alongside my photo. Even though it's very short, it covers the basics of Who, What, Where, Why and When. Well, not who. But I have only one kid so I know who is in the photo!

The kit I used featured the Summer Sun collection from Fancy Pants Designs and included this cute set of cards. 

I used several of these cards on the layouts I made with this kit. On this particular layout, I used the three circled in yellow. 

The card with the orange strip circled at the bottom is the vertical Take Note card seen above. It was the perfect landing spot for the die cut that reads: Another Day in Paradise. 

The card that says Travel: I tucked that card under the top of my photo.  I used the Hello Summer card at the top of my layout, and layered a few die cuts on top. 

Here's a look at the layout with the cards circled. 

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful weekend! 

Swimming Lessons: Little Fish

Hello everyone. I am back today with a summer layout about my son's swimming lessons. 

After a scary incident last August when Cory fell in a lake while on vacation with my parents, I enrolled him in private swimming lessons. While he had previously been in group lessons, those lessons for young children seemed more geared toward play. I wanted him to really learn how to swim. 

I initially enrolled Cory in a series of 8 private lessons at our local aquatics center. Swimming is a hard skill to learn and it was clear that it would take more than 8 lessons, so we continued with another set of 8 lessons, then another set and another. 

Cory did great in the water. A year later, he can now swim the front and back crawl for 50 meters (the length of an Olympic size pool), can tread water, do a standing dive, and is learning the breast stroke and butterfly.  

I'm proud of him and of course, I wanted to do a layout about his accomplishments. I used the August kit from My Creative Scrapbook, which featured the cute Summer Sun line from Fancy Pants Designs. 

You can find all the kits from My Creative Scrapbook here. Thanks so much for stopping by! 

My Happy Place

Hello everyone!

I went through my son's baby album a couple weeks ago and tried to identify any missing milestones or favorite photos. I had just been introduced to scrapbooking when my son was born and, oh boy, I am tempted to redo a couple of those first layouts!

This is a photo of my son and me that I had never scrapped. Cory is just two weeks old here and we went outside on a beautiful Spring day. 

I used the new August kit from My Creative Scrapbook to make this layout and primarily used just one sheet of patterned paper. The paper is from the Summer Sun collection by Fancy Pants Designs. 

I saw this paper and immediately thought: baby!  I loved the fading soft colors. I cut the paper at the sign post and turned the paper upside down so that I had only polka dots. 

I cut off the blue strip under the bicycle and sewed it to the bottom of the yellow polka dot paper to ground the page. Voilà. Baby paper!

The yellow strip above the polka dots is the reverse side of the same piece of paper. To complete the page, I added a bit of floral paper to the top and a few simple embellishments. 

Here's another look at the layout: 

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful weekend! 

ABC and 123: My Creative Scrapbook Reveal

Good morning!

The summer has flown by and we are just a couple of weeks away from the first day of school. As I gathered together my son's school supplies, I remembered that I had taken a photo of him last year asleep with his favorite composition book. 

Ah, Kindergarten. I loved how excited my son was about going to school and writing his ABCs. He took this composition book with him everywhere, even to bed. 

This was a fun layout to make. I used the new August kit from My Creative Scrapbook, which featured the Summer Sun line from Fancy Pants Designs. The kit included a large, colorful set of alphas and I thought they would be cute to feature in a design. 

I laid the alphas out against a dark background to make sure I had enough room for them all, leaving a spot for my photo. Once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I lightly tacked them down, then sewed across them. 

Here's the kit I used: 

You can find all the August kits from My Creative Scrapbook on its website here.

I'll be back later this week with another layout using this kit. Thanks so much for stopping by!

Avoiding the Sharks: A Surfing Layout

My family just got back from the North Carolina coast, and, yikes, it was a little scary for this Mom whose young son loves his boogie board. The sharks are circling and two teens lost limbs to shark bites at a neighboring beach. 

I didn't want to make my son afraid of the ocean, so I didn't say much to him. Just tried to keep him as safe as I could: swimming in groups, avoiding the pier area and only going out in mid-afternoon (with lots of sunscreen). 

Success. No sign of sharks and, best of all, I had a cute photo from last summer of Cory with his boogie board. 

This is one of the layouts I made using the July kit from My Creative Scrapbook. I used a simple design with a long vertical strip down one side, very similar to the design I used last month for a different beach photo. 

I loved how bright and sunny this kit was. You can see all the MCS kits here.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend! 

Sweet Summer: My Creative Scrapbook Reveal

Good morning. I hope you had a great Fourth of July holiday. It's always nice to kick back, have a cookout, see old friends, light a few sparklers and raise a toast to our founding fathers. 

The new monthly kits are out for My Creative Scrapbook and they are perfect for documenting the Fourth of July or any other summer gathering. Like this one: 

I designed with the Creative Kit which has a colorful mix of summer lines from Pebbles and Doodlebug.

I'm trying to be a little more purposeful about including visible journaling on my layouts. I sometimes journal on a tag I slip under the photo (I also like that method) but then I have to remove the layout from the protector to read it. 

I took a card from the kit and ran it through my printer to add my journaling. I left a little room at the bottom for my title. I love these fun little cards that are featured in so many collections these days. 

Here's a photo of the cute kit I worked with:

You can see all the kits offered by My Creative Scrapbook on its website.

Thanks so much for stopping by!