Life's a Beach

Hubby and I were lucky enough to have a little get away to Cuba this past April. Our first trip in 4 years!!!! and first trip leaving the kids alone! GULP! But I'm happy to report that they didn't kill each other, there were no block parties at my house and they didn't trash the place. There was however a little fender bender involving Scott the morning before we arrived home { he got re-ended, mild concussion but surprisingly no damage to his car????}... I knew something was up when Chelsea's first words to me when I got off the plane were" Now, Mom, he wasn't hurt so don't freak buuuuuttttt..."  and let's not forget one VERY SCARY close call with a huge moose in the middle of the highway as we drove home late at night from the airport . Seriously ... I needed another vacation as soon as I got back! Oh my nerves!

So it's now mid August and I'm finally getting around to printing a few photos. I had purchased the entire set of  Graphic45 Travelogue pps to do a mini album but still haven't gotten around to that yet. However, CoraLee over at Cropcircles on Facebook { a great group of mostly Nfld ladies!},  posted a challenge this month called " Sun, Sand and Sky". I figured it was just as good a start as any so I gave it a try. I didn't actually use any of the G45 ...will save that for my mini but here's what I did create.....

This is dear hubby and I strolling down the beach on our first day in Cuba. I think I nailed all of CoraLee's prerequisites. We had to include :

Kraft paper to represent sand....check!

Blue or grey to represent the sky.....check!

Yellow to represent the sun....check!

Here's a few close ups....

The clouds are DUSTY ATTIC -an Australian chipboard company that I luuuuuv. I painted the clouds with white acrylic paint, then inked the edges with a bit of Black Soot Distress Ink and finally finished by painting on a layer of Stickles "Star Dust" for a touch of shimmer. The sun was made with some pps from the "Country Garden" line from Bo Bunny . I posted a tutorial on how to make this sun back on May 7th which you can find  HERE .

The cheese cloth was dyed with just a bit of "Vintage Photo" Distress Ink reinker in water . The title was colored with " Vintage Photo" distress ink.

The " Life's a Beach" chippie title and all the shells are also DUSTY ATTIC pieces.  I  altered these by first stippling on some molding paste with a stipple brush and then painting them with acrylic paints { peach, magenta and a turquoise color} and a sparkly coat of "Star Dust" Stickles to finish. I love me some sparkle!

 Now I just have to attack the other 283 printed photos from that trip!lol...no...I'm not joking...and that's only the number I actually printed. I think I took over 800 photos on our trip! Don't you love digital cameras? Can you imagine taking that many with film?

As I sign off for today I just want to share a card I made for an acquaintance from work who just bought a house three doors down from me.

 She liked it so much she said she's putting it in a frame to hang in her entrance! How sweet is that? I'd also like to say congratulations to her and her partner on the birth of their son. Seems she was a tad bit busy in the labour and delivery room when I was knocking on her door...so I hung the little gift bag holding the lemon loaf and card on her back door. Glad the rain held off till her partner got home that night.!

Have a great scrappy day and thanks for stopping by! Toodles!

A Few New Sketch Inspired Layouts

Up until about a year ago, I rarely ever used other people's sketches. I always created my own with graph paper and a pencil. Somewhere along the way though, I've come to recognize the value of someone else's hard work ...and how much it cuts down on my prep time ...and let's face it , we never have enough scrap time now do we? So anything that cuts down on the tedious part and lets me get to the fun part faster is good in my books!

Yesterday, SUE , over at Canadian Scrapbooker posted the August Sketchy challenge. Another awesome sketch  by Jill Sarginson . What do you think? Cute , eh?

and here's my take on it!

                               " PICTURE PERFECT"

Most of the supplies on this LO are from the beautiful July kit from ScrapThat  featuring some lovely products from Fabscraps. Aren't these beautiful pictures of my dear daughter? You know how some times everything just lines up perfectly? On this day a combination of beautiful light, a honeysuckle smothered in blooms and a daughter who looked particularly beautiful in a new dress her momma bought for her all equalled out to some gorgeous photos. I think I took well over a hundred { yes, I said a HUNDRED!} photos of Chelsea that day.

Well it seemed a shame to waste all those photos and not sneak in at least one more layout, so.............

I fell in love with this gorgeous sketch by Susan Stringfellow over at her awesome sketch site  called SketchSavvy. Thanks to my fellow Crop Circles gal, Yolande who found it and shared it with my Facebook group. Here's the beautiful Sketch #72 from Susan .

 Here's my layout based on that lovely sketch.

"DELICATE BEAUTY"

As you can see, I substituted hexagons for circles and a square 6x 6  of patterned paper for the heart, but otherwise I stayed pretty close to the sketch. I'm always a sucker for banners and really hope it's a trend that will be around for a long time to come yet. All the patterned papers on this layout are from a 6x6 My Mind's Eye paper pad. The smaller hexagons were the size printed on the paper but the larger were hand cut by me after downloading a template from the Internet.

So stop wasting time trying to figure out where to start with your LO and take advantage of someone else's hard work. It lets you get to the fun part faster! Hope you are having a wonderful summer. We are having the nicest summer in years here in Newfoundland. Thanks for stopping by! Toodles!