2016 Calendar Toppers

In Kindergarten my son learned to mark off the days on a calendar. Last year I threw together a Shutterfly calendar for him, and he seems to really enjoy having family pictures on his wall. This year I've been using the Scrapping with Liz Calendar Templates each month. I'm a little behind since I haven't done August yet. For September, I'll wait until the month is over, so I can pick from all the September photos. Here is what  have so far.

Anywhere Elements and Papers; Wired No. 2 Alphabet by creashens
2016 Calendar Template 7 by Scrapping with Liz

Strawberry Bliss by creashens; 2016 Calendar Template 6 by Scrapping with Liz

Live Free and Dapper Kits, and Silver Wire Alpha by Digital Design Essentials;
2016 Calendar Template 5 by Scrapping with Liz

Colors of Spring by Anita Designs; Wired Alpha No. 2 by creashens;
2016 Calendar Template 4 by Scrapping with Liz

Sprung Papers by Karla Dudley; Let's Go Outside Elements by Sugarplum Paperie;
Wired Alpha No. 1 by creashens; 2016 Calendar Template 3 by Scrapping with Liz

This Weekend by Anita Designs; My Story Papers by Mari Koegelenberg;
Glow Papers and Wire Alpha 1 by creashens; 2016 Calendar Template 2 by Scrapping with Liz

Clueless Collection by Anita Designs; Wire Alpha 2 by creashens;
2016 Calendar Template 1 by Scrapping with Liz

Now that I see them all together, I'm starting to worry they are too girly for a 3rd grade boy. Oh well. They are what they are.

Displaying My Own Photography

Every once in a while I take a photograph that I really love. Eventually I had enough of these "great" photos that I thought I should display them on my walls. I had a couple of large frames that were not being used, so I threw out the old prints in them, and designed some displays of my photos.

I used Photoshop to set up simple templates with several photo spots on large canvases (I believe they are 16x20 and 16x16 inches). I had them printed and slipped them into my frames. And here they are on my entry wall.

The frame on the left has several different nature photographs: mushrooms, a western fence lizard, a cuttle fish, and a hummingbird.

 

And here is a funny, or maybe not so funny, story about that. I was so pleased with my photo gallery and was anxious to show it off to the scientist. I think he was out of town when they arrived. Anyway, I cornered him in front of the pictures and said, "I love how my pictures turned out." He said he loved them too, and it was ironic that most of the pictures were actually taken by him. Oh, really?! Exactly one of the four pictures was taken by him - the mushrooms. The other three were all mine! Now, I guess I can kind of understand how he might think the cuttle fish picture was his because he took similar pictures of cuttle fish when we were at the aquarium. I could even understand how he might think the lizard picture was his because he often caught lizards with our son and he sometimes took pictures of them, although they were all out of focus. The scientist specifically said the hummingbird picture was his, which I cannot understand at all because I have never known him to take a single picture of a hummingbird. So that's the story: how a scientist who took 25% of the pictures quickly came to the conclusion that "most" of the pictures were his. Is that funny or disturbing?

The other collection of three photos was a series that I had been wanting to do for quite a while. It is three pictures of a weed that I remember fondly from my childhood. They start as little pink flowers. Each flower grows into a long, multi-segmented spear.

Then as the spears dry out, the segments separate into several seeds with long tails. The tails twist into a really tight spiral with very fine hairs sticking out. They stick to you when you walk through them. These were the least painful of stickers you could get stuck to your shoe laces when I was a kid (the painful part is removing them). I guess that is why I remember them so fondly: stickers that were easy to remove. Or maybe it is because that spiral is so cool.

Thanks for stopping by!

Living Room Wall Art

I'm happy to say that digital scrapbooking has helped me to be a better home decorator.  Several months ago, I realized that my natural decorating style (as far as wall art) was to place random pictures and decoration on every distinct wall area in my home.  The space above the couch:  that's a wall area, put a picture there.  The space to either side of the dining room entry:  those are wall areas, put a picture in each one. And similarly all through the apartment.

Here you can see the lone print on the large living room wall, and the strange collection of frames on either side of the dining room entry.  I'm embarrassed to show these, but I'll just be brave and do it.

It's not very pleasing to the eye to have all these spaced out lonely pictures.  Just like with scrapbooking - it's generally more pleasing to have items grouped in a focal point as opposed to scattered across the page

Why it took me so long to figure this out, I have no idea.  In the recent weeks I've been looking around my home, seeing how I could create groupings, recycling the frames I already have. I left the living room print where it was, and added next to it the larger frames that were flanking the dining room.  I made up three new prints to place in the frames (using my digital scrapbooking supplies), and here is the result.

 

The heart was made from a ton of different paint platters in kits by Gina Marie Huff. The spider (for Miller) and the flowers are by Julia Makotinski. I think both kits might be retired. I had toyed with the idea of a picture of beer (for the scientist), but dismissed that idea in the end. The cream colored mat looks a little off, and I'm thinking I might try spray-painting it a light gray color. But this is such an improvement from before, I'm happy to leave it as is for now.

It's an interesting study of human psychology to ask what was the motivation to get this project done ... next week I'm hosting Book Club at my house. That was the motivation. Didn't want all those mommies to see my hideous home decoration.

Here are a couple layouts from the last week or so.

These are pictures of the space houses that I've built for Miller, to accompany his Imaginext toys. I got a kick out of the comments I've received on these layouts. Everyone thinks that I scrapped these in Miller's voice. But the truth is that I'm the one who loves to build these things, and I actually was scrapping in my own voice. Miller loves these buildings in a different way. Once built, he will not tolerate any changes or improvements. I, on the other hand, am constantly looking for ways to make them a little better or more "useful" for the astronauts who live and work in them.

Simple Album Templates by Scrapping with Liz

Simple Album Templates by Scrapping with Liz

This was my last layout made for The LilyPad, with the September Build Your Own Collab products. It was just pictures of a park expedition from earlier in the year. I had read this line in a book many months ago: "Take care. You carry my heart with you." I have been wanting to use it in a layout for a long time.

End of Summer Papers by Jenna Desai
Little Pockets and Sprinkles V4 by Valorie Wibbens

The LilyPad ladies graciously allowed me to stay a couple extra weeks on the guest CT, to round out the month of August.  So even though I keep saying that I'm on this scrapping break, it was really just a farce because I was constantly tempted by new products.  But now that my guest position has ended I really have been slowing down a bit.  Thanks for stopping by!