Glitter, Glitter Everywhere!

I started this layout last night but it got late and had to put it aside to finish today after work. As much as I LOVE glitter, I have to admit that with it being the challenge at TWO of the Challenge sites I visit often, I will be GLAD to see the end of the glitter for a little while! This one has it packed on! There is a light aqua border of glitter around the whole layout, the chipboard letters are silver glittered and I got them on the clearance rack at Michaels after Christmas, the felt snowflakes I picked up at the Dollar Store over the winter and while they say they are glittered, they weren't cutting it for me! I had to add glitter SNOW by Magic Scraps to them! The small flowers are glittered and by Petaloo Dazzlers. The large pink flowers that are folded in half are Heidi Swapp and the pearls are from my stash.   Enough glitter? Nope....there's also a Fancy Pants Glitter cut under the title and running onto the photos. The papers are SEI cardstock, Bo Bunny (pink paper) and My Minds Eye (aqua). I have made such a mess making this layout. There is glitter EVERYWHERE, including my eyes! This layout is submitted to the following challenges:

1. Frosted Designs - Use Glitter

2. Practical Scrappers - Use Loose Glitter or Flocking

3. Sketch Inspirations - Sketch
4. The Pink Elephant - Use a black and white photo.

I think I'm done with the glitter for a while. I know its only Tuesday and I could get a few more entries in for the drawings, but let's just say, GLITTER wins!

Layout: "Relaxing"

All papers are LilyBee Design Lovely collection, as are the chipboard flowers. Letter stickers are Basic Grey. The brown ball trim is from my stash and the "Family Times" rub-ons are from a swatch book from Creative Imaginations that I found on the clearance rack at Michaels as well as the glitter frame by Making Memories that I paid .49c for.

Speaking of.....if you have a Michaels local and have not ventured in lately, you should. The have completely redone their paper crafting aisles (for the worse if you ask me) and since they started this about a month ago, there has been a TON of stuff on the clearance ends. I got boxes of Prima flowers for $1.49 and lots of other odds and ends for pennies. I'm not impressed with the re-set though.

Believe it or not, I only managed three challenges out of this layout!

1. Practical Scrappers - Sketch

2. Frosted Designs - Glitter (on the frame)
3. Pink Elephant - Use Black and White photos

Its a simple page, but I like it. I snapped these photos when the kids weren't looking. We were just having a nice day at a local historic colonial village near our home. There are quaint little shops, a lovely lake and wildlife and a yummy bakery! We were bored one day and took a ride (its only 10 minutes from home) and just sat on the benches "people watching" and having a donut from the bakery! It was quality time spent, just the three of us.

And now, I MUST close my eyes. Actually, they aren't giving me an option...they are closing on their own! Sleep tight my blog friends!

Mom's Star

I hope everyone is having a great weekend so far! I haven't had much time in my scraproom, even though I was off work yesterday. My daughter's birthday is tomorrow and I was running all over creation on Friday making sure my baby got the gifts that she asked for! All she really asked for was a digital camera. I got her a small Polaroid Point & Shoot on sale at Target for $50! As a surprise, I bought her a hoodie and 5 t-shirts from Hollister (off the clearance rack of course!) for under $50 so mom was THRILLED! Hollister, for those that don't know, is VERY expensive in my opinion. $25+ for a t-shirt branded with their name all over it! A pair of shorts that wouldn't cover much behind were $29! YIKES! My daughter is only turning 12 yet a lot of her friends have Hollister clothing and I could never justify it. But I wanted her to be surprised so I checked the clearance racks. I was so happy when I got to the store to find out that they were offering an additional 30% off their clearance prices and there was TONS to choose from! One of the t-shirts I got her ended up being a little over $3 yet the tag says $24.50! Now that's what I call a great deal....mom is happy with the price and daughter will be beyond happy with the shirt! We are about to get ready to go out for her birthday dinner to Famous Daves. Yummy BBQ! She is bringing her BFF, Alisa, and I let her open her camera so she can take pictures at her b-day dinner!!

1. Sketch Inspirations - Sketch
2. Pink Elephant - Use a black and white photo
3. Frosted Designs - Use glitter (title)
4. Stuck on You Sketches - Embossing (I embossed the two larger stars)

 5. Scrap Fit - Use a machine - used Cricut and Cuttlebug

Two Awards today!

What fun!!  I received two awards today!!

The first was this one for winning the weekly challenge at the Pink Elephant:

And the second is this one! I made the top 3 at Frosted Designs! How neat to be able to post these on my blog!!

That's all I have for tonight!  I started a layout this afternoon but have a long way to go to finish it.   Matt had a baseball game tonight and it was such a GREAT game against the toughest team in the league.  We were down four runs for the majority of the game!  We have 2 of our better players out with injuries including our best pitcher.  In the 6th inning the coach put Matt in as a pitcher (I HATE when he pitches!).  Well he did FANTASTIC and quickly got our team out of the inning.  We were still down 4 runs going into the 7th and last inning.  The opposing team's coach (who was obnoxious the entire game) was loudly boasting that this game was in their bag and they were going to the playoffs...all they needed was 3 outs.  Even the parents on the other team were nasty.  Saying horrible things to our kids.  In 15 years of kids baseball I've never seen anything like it.  Our kids heard them loud and clear and in response my son was the first batter up and walked.  He then stole second and third.  Next batter walked.  Next two batters had singles, scoring Matt and loading the bases.  Two more batters, two more singles.  Still no outs.  Next batter gets a double, scoring two more and we WON THE GAME!!  Boy you have never seen a team exit a ballfield so fast.  Those mean, nasty parents had nothing but smack to say as the walked past our team.  It was really sad that they took the fun out of the game for their kids but WE ARE GOING TO THE PLAYOFFS!  Take THAT E.H.T. A team!!

Busy day tomorrow....hopefully will get some scrapping in but I have to do some shopping for my baby girl who will turn 12 on Sunday!!  Where did the time go?

Pink Elephant Sketch

This morning I mentioned a site that I had never heard of before called The Pink Elephant. I clicked on over and when I saw the sketch I instantly knew what I wanted to do.  (Thanks to my friend Debbie for letting me know about this site!)

Even though I knew right away how I envisioned the layout, the problem was that I could not find the picture that I wanted for my focal photo. I have over 1000 photos of our trip to Antigua on my computer, but I couldn't find this particular one. John reminded me that it would be around where all the "fish" pictures were. OK, I can't find any of them either! Somehow, on both my hard drive and the External Hard Drive I have for a backup AND a CD I found with the Antigua photos, this group is GONE! I logged into Shutterfly and found them there so I'm not totally crazy....I did have the photos at one time because I uploaded them to Shutterfly! Of course, once you do that, you can't re-download them to your computer with the original quality and I was unable to print a large scale of the photo I wanted. I'm hoping that I have the originals in a folder on my work computer. I'm almost sick to my stomach over this but trying not to let it bother me too much until Monday when I can check at work. One thing I have MAJOR issues with is photo storage and organization. I have CDs, DVDs, External Hard Drives, my home laptop, my work computer and several memory cards and there is no rhyme or reason to any of it! One of these days I really need to get a grip!! While I was looking for this particular photo, I did find several sets of photos that I had forgotten all about though....so that was neat! Anyway, to the point....I liked the sketch and decided (after wasting an hour looking) to use this photo of John on a Hobie Cat at our resort as the focal piece. Along the bottom I included random shots from around the resort. I changed the sketch just a bit, increasing the size of the focal photo to a 7x7 print, and adding an extra smaller photo at the bottom. Once I had the photo debacle sorted out, this layout came together in about 15 minutes! I used mostly scraps and one full sheet of paper from Bella Blvd. All Inclusive line, 3 square metal brads and some chalk ink and Core'dinations Cardstock and this puppy is in the book!! Here is the sketch and my take on it...PS - the original layout is straight....I am to cranky to fiddle with the cropping too much and it looks like I glued it all down crooked!: