Succession of Moments

I am getting on the Scrap Girls site a lot more regularly now. With one of my Christmas gift cards I purchased the Scrap Girls club, which is a monthly deal where you get collections for a reduced amount. I think they say you get $27.99 worth of material for $9.99. It's a recurring charge unless you cancel. But, you can also purchase 6 months or 12 months at one time for an even bigger savings. Anyway, I've really liked it so far.

Also, on the website, like most other scrap sites, they have lots of challenges to participate in. So I've started participating occasionally. This layout was for a quote challenge. They give the quote, and you do a layout for it. The quote was "Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed." It took me a long time to even decide which photos to use for this. I started out with some of Jason's and my engagement pictures, but then I wanted to do something with one of the kids. I liked the idea of using a photo that depicted an everyday moment because to me that's what the quote is getting at. I used these photos of my dad holding my nephew, Kyle (he was only 2 then, so cute!) while he was grilling. I love that Kyle was wearing my dad's hat. Almost all of the materials are from Amanda Sok's Watercolor Whimsy Collection (this month's club offering). The star brush is from the Scrap Girls Refresh collection.

Moments to Cherish

I wanted to do a year-in-review layout for 2008 when I started scrapping last year. I never did it, but I decided to do one for 2009, after seeing a challenge on the Scrapbooks, Etc. website. I decided to do a 2-page layout, with highlights from the year and favorite photos. I hadn't realized how much has changed in 2009 until I did the layout. I loved all of these pictures, it was fun making the layout. I don't usually do that many pictures. Most of the supplies are from Brandy Murry's Angel Dust collection at Scrap Girls. It also uses Brandie Valenzuela's Rippled Paper template and the "these are the moments" tag is from Chere Edwards. The 2009 was designed by Durin Eberhart, I just recolored it.

I put my Photoshop on my laptop, so now I can scrap while sitting on the couch. It's been nice, because if Jason plays his PS3, then I can still be in the room with him and scrap. Also, when he's at class, I usually watch my shows. Before, I had to be in the other room to scrap, so I couldn't get that done if I was trying to catch up on the TV. Now, I can do both. Yay!

A Legacy of Love

I mentioned this layout in a couple of previous posts, but I wasn't able to post it until after Christmas, because it was a gift for my grandparents. This was the first layout that I was able to print, and I must say, that it looked great seeing it in real life and not just on the computer monitor! In August, my grandparents celebrated 60 years of marriage. We had a big party for them, and at the party we displayed a bunch of pictures from the last 60 years of our family on a ribbon board. The picture on this layout is a photo of that ribbon board. A few days before the party my grandmother said she wanted to display the center picture (of her and my grandfather just after they were married) and she had thought about displaying the other pictures of the family, but since she hadn't told anyone, she figured we wouldn't do it. But I thought it would be a great idea, and Jason thought of using the ribbon board, so we were set. It was great at the party, too.

I had started working on a layout that was just using the old picture of my grandparents, and I wanted to give that as a gift for the party. Of course, I didn't finish it, so when it came time to think about Christmas gifts, I thought I would just do it then. But then I thought that it would probably mean more to have this picture of all their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and I decided to use this photo. Once I did, it started going a lot quicker than the other one had done, so I knew it was the right way to go. For the paper, I used a paper template, Appassionata, designed by Amanda Sok. The tags and strings were embellishment templates designed by Paula Wright, both available at ScrapGirls.com.

This was my favorite gift to give for Christmas, and I know my grandparents liked it. My grandmother already told me that my grandfather wanted to hang it near the front wall so everyone that comes to their house can see it. I definitely appreciate the example of love and commitment that they've been to our family, which was why I wanted to make it.