This & That

A Little Bigger Push

So this layout technique is just a little further "out there".  Just a little.   A little more scary.  But not so scary that I ran screaming from the computer monitor when I saw it. The challenge was to create a clear page.  Now clear pages and elements have been around for a bit, and I actually did a clear Christmas-themed mini album last December, which turned out pretty well, I thought. I'm putting in a couple of pictures....
Anyway, working with clear stuff isn't hard, you just have to consider what's going to show on the other side. And fortunately for me, the class provided a template for the journaling that went on the back side.   All I had to do was download it, change my background (fill) color from turquoise to red, and type my journaling.  The class suggested using a photo of something we love, thus being able to use X's and O's from the letter stash.  Then it was just a matter of matching them up, back and front.  The example for the class used just a plain office transparency....the kind used for classroom overheads, but I had a big enough chunk of a Hambly transparency that was printed and thought it might give an interesting look.  Of course, this is the SGB on our recent cabin trip.  I printed out the photo but didn't like how it looked, so I printed it again after applying a "warm up" action to it.  I'm happy with the layout, but look at that face.....how could I not be? :)

A Little Nudge

When I take a class, I like to be pushed just a little bit....to try something new, but not so outrageous that I won't be able to accomplish it.  So here is another Have More Fun layout.  The purpose of this class is just that, to try something a little fun, a little out there, but not so that it scares a body.  I'm easily scared when it comes to "out there" kinds of stuff.  So the assignment here was to grab a photo that tells a story, go with the colors in the photo and punch a bunch of circles.  I can do that.  I have a circle punch.  And I like how it turned out. First off, I love the BG Phoebe papers. I think they came out last year and I bought not one, but two whole collection packs of them because I think they are absolutely perfect for tween and teen girl photos.  Did the top layout last year.  The one I did for this specific class is below it.  DD and the SGB, documenting their relationship right now.  Took me all of about 30 minutes to do and it was FUN!
And can you believe how much she's changed in two years??

One of These Things is Not Like the Others.....

As is required by my testosterone-overrun household, when they come home from a week of backpacking, fishing, hiking, horse riding and general wilderness activity where they aren't required to shower or shave, the guys always want a beard photo, documenting their ruggedness.  Taking it a step further, this time DS#3 suggested that I send out pictures of chins to the whole family to see if they could guess whose is whose.   It's not much of a contest really, since there are only the three of them.  Two out of the three can grow a decent beard.  Preemie Boy is still working on it.  But since the two who can have vastly different beard colors...like I said, it's not much of a contest.  Still, in the spirit of good fun, it's the chinny, chin, chin game.
And just in case you want to check your answers:

Something to Cross Off the List

Psychotic dog and kennel repair update.....when my DH and family pulled into the driveway on Saturday afternoon, said dog was sitting in the driveway waiting for them.  He is no longer my problem.

Last fall I took part in two POTD (picture of the day) challenges...one through the SA board and one with a BPS class I was taking.   The last project for the class was to file the pictures into a small, inexpensive photos album.  I used one that was less than $3 from Target.  Just one that I could slip the photos into...no cardstock, no embellishing.  It came with heavy paper slipped into the clear front and back covers which I took out and replaced with pieces of Basic Grey Periphery paper that I had embellished slightly so the covers wouldn't be too lumpy. Have I expounded on these BG papers recently?  Love them.  I bought the whole collection and some of the sheets are winding down into scraps.  I will be so sad when they are gone.   I slipped the 2 photos for each day into the page "protectors" side by side with just a little bit of explanatory journaling and holy cow!  Done and done.  And another project crossed off the list....another chunk of the stack taken care of.  I'm toying with the idea of doing this during the month of December on the new website.  Completed Christmas album by December 31.  Could be good. :)

Psychotic Dogs, Wire Weaving and a Language Barrier, Pt. 2

When we last left our heroine, she was watching the tail end of the psychotic dog running down the street even after she had tried to keep him in the kennel with a hasty repair job. 
So I made the trip to the *sigh* farm supply place and asked 3 separate people where to find some wire to fix the kennel.  I finally found something that would work and headed home to work on the kennel.  Imagine my surprise to find Houdini sitting outside the kennel, pleasantly wagging his tail like nothing had happened this morning.  Stupid dog.
I let him in the kennel and proceeded to start wire weaving on the hole he escaped through.  And all the while I'm muttering under my breath....something to the effect that I'm a City Girl and shouldn't have to deal with farm repair which I know nothing about and if we didn't have the dogs, I wouldn't have to mess with this, etc, etc, etc.   I set my chubby self back on my haunches and admire the work I've done, all the while hoping that it will hold at least until DH and the family gets home, so it can become their problem to deal with.  And good scrapbooker that I am, I documented the whole thing.  I know some of you are looking at this face and wondering how I could ever have hard feelings toward this poor, poor animal. Don't let his face deceive you.  Behind those innocent looking eyes lurks a devious brain and I know he's already planning his next escape.

Psychotic Dogs, Wire Weaving and a Language Barrier, Pt. 1

It never fails.  Sometime during this week when DH and the family are enjoying their primitive pee-in-the-wild (and believe me when I tell you I could do a whole post on peeing in the wild, from both gender's points of view...*eyeroll*), something invariably goes wrong.  With an appliance, a pipe, an animal.....it never fails.  Since I only have 1day to go until the horde comes home, I foolishly thought I was home free.  Enter the psychotic dog.  We discussed a little earlier in the week that caring for the dogs while the males are gone is just a big pain for me.  They are hunting dogs, high strung and the only time they show the least bit of brain power is when they're out in the wilderness sniffing for pheasants.  We've also already established that I'm not a dog person....no offense to those of you who are.  Dogs are perfectly acceptable as long as I don't have to deal with them.  Back to the psychotic dog. 
One of our dogs needs a name change.  Right now his name is Laser.  His name should be Houdini.  He needed to be a cast member of The Great Escape. He's a Griffin Wire Hair Pointer.  We used to have a dog house in the middle of the kennel.  He would get on top of it and jump over the fence. We took the dog house out.  The kennel is made of chain link.  He has developed the ability to pull on the links with his teeth until he stretches them so far out of shape, that he can slip through the widened hole.  So we wired plywood all around the bottom two feet of the kennel so he couldn't get at the places he's been know to go after.  Well, guess who met me in the driveway this morning as I went to feed the beasts.  Yes. Houdini.  And he'd obviously had a great night of cavorting in some kind of water and doing heaven-knows-what else. I headed out to the kennel and sure enough, he's worked a hole right above where the plywood is.  A hole that's not more than 6 inches in diameter and he's wiggled out through it. To top it off, the dog has an infallible sense of direction and after his nights on the town, always comes home for breakfast. 
I need to digress here.  Point number one is that I'm a chubby woman.  Built just like my mom and boy, isn't genetics a crap shoot?  I couldn't get the tall, lean genes of my grandfather. No, my baby brother got those.  So I've got my chubby frame bent over this hole in the chain link, trying to vainly bend the loops back into some semblance of their previous shape, using scraps of wire to twist them around, thinking that it might be able to hold the dog until I can go to the , *sigh* farm supply store to get some more wire to weave in the hole.  Farm supply stores are like those big, scary building supply places, where I always feel so lost and dumb.  And THIS DOG is making it so my whole morning is going to be spent either in farm supply store H*** or out by the stinky kennel weaving wire in this stupid hole.  Stupid dog.  
Digressing again to point number two.  I grew up in a fairly typical Mormon family.  The exception was that my dad, like his mother before him, could swear a blue streak when he got angry.  I don't know if that's a nature or nurture thing, but I seem to have "inherited" this failing.  When I get really frustrated, my language really deteriorates.  It's a fault I've worked on my entire adult life, and I have a pretty good handle on it most of the time.  But on rare occasions, it bursts forth, much to my chagrin. So you have to have the visual here.....early morning beastie-feeding session and me and my chubby body and my irritated mouth are having a party out by the dog kennel as the wet dog cheerfully waits to be let INTO the kennel. I finally get done with my ad hoc repair job and head into the house so I can get ready to go to the farm supply place.  And you can imagine how I'm feeling about that.  And I look out the window and see that you-know-what kind of a dog racing down the street.....

What a Nice Thing!

Jen sent me an award! What a really nice thing.  And it came on a day when things weren't going quiet right.....more on tomorrow. So thanks for the pick-me-up, Jen.  I appreciate it.  How did the dad put it in A Christmas Story??  "It's a major award!!" :)
These are the rules for this award:
1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.
2. Link to the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you have nominated.

And I'm nominating these blogs:
1. Karen
2. Pam
3. Janelle
4. Laura
5. Liz
6. Anita
7. Mary Ruth

Is It Possible to Have Even More Fun?

I guess so.....as I work my way through the class assignments.  And do you know what is the most fun about it?  I have given myself permission to totally skip techniques in my 52 Pick Up class that I will never, ever use. I've done the same with the Have More Fun class and that's OK.  There are a couple of assignments that just don't quite click, so I'm moving on. Here are the latest two layouts....one documents my DD's Garden Fashion....and the 13 year old Look of Death. The assignment was to provide multiple points of view, or a survey.  I tweaked that to use the 1-2-3 concept on my journaling cards.  The other layout adapts the design given and makes it a one page layout rather than two.  This actually came together really quickly using a 2" punch.

Many of you know that the Scrap Addict site that I have worked with for more than 4 years is closing.  Many of us were very saddened by this and the possibility of losing touch, so a couple of the former members and I have decided to start a small website.  We will not be affiliated with any store or sponsors, will not have a design team and will be looking mostly to stay in touch and communicate in a fun way about scrapping.  There will be a message board and gallery and an occasional challenge, but we're really looking for this to be a low-key, welcoming environment for anybody who is interested in just jawing about what's going on in the industry or in our lives.  Right now we're on a pretty steep learning curve as we try to learn the ins and outs of behind-the-scenes work, but as soon as it's up and running, I'll post a link here for anyone interested.    

Having More Fun

That's the other online scrapbook class I'm trying to get caught up on.   I've finished 2 so far and it feels good to have some time to get scrapping done.  The first layout was supposed to be timed.  30 minutes from start to finish...pick 2 or 3 photos of someone playing and got to it.  I tweaked the design a little bit to fit my photos better, but that's me at age 2.  I still have that stuffed cat somewhere in a box and I really liked the photo of me wearing my dad's shoes with the frilly socks showing above them. 
The bottom layout was an assignment to use scraps for the background.  I combined that with old/bad photos of DS #3. He was a very exuberant little boy.  It's interesting to me that when I take pictures of him now, I will sometimes get faces like this, very reminiscent of the little boy he was but in reality, the bottom photo is much more his personality these days. Very serious, very straight arrow, very intense, very regimented.   But every once in a while, he'll let the little boy out to play and that's always fun to see.

Transparency.....

Yes......sorry......it's just a transparency you can get at an office supply store.....like for overhead projectors. It's the combination of printing the photo on it and putting the patterned paper behind it that gives it the different look.