Weekend Scrapping!

For the first time in a long while I actually had some success with scrapping on the weekend and getting more than one layout finished! I'm so happy with myself, lol! The first page here I finished on Friday for the Anniversary Crop at AMM. I'm kind of sad that I only got one of their Crop challenges finished, but it was a fun one regardless! DT member, Tonya Dirk's challenge was a cute "menu" challenge where she gave us the chance to pick which halloween menu items we wanted to use for our page, but we didn't know what each item represented until after we chose them. For instance, everyone was given the "starter course" of Blood Orange Sorbet which represented GLITTER, so everyone's page had to have something glittery on it. My other pick's were Pumpkin Juice=Polka Dots, Witches Wart Soup=Journaling must be handwritten, Mummy Mushu=Buttons, and Moon Pies= Photos must be titlted. Like I said, FUN challenge!

For this and the next page I also finally busted out my Pink Paislee Amber Road yummies that I've been hoarding for weeks! I just love this collection, probably because I'm such a Fall fanatic, but I also love the color palette with that gorgeous dusty green-blue with the cinnamon red and brown! Yum!

This second layout below I did yesterday and I followed Sketch #32 over on the Inspired Blueprints challenge blog. It's been awhile since I've done any layouts with sketches, but it really was a help because I wanted to scrap these photos of us from our recent weekend get-a-way, but I was really stumped on how to begin. Sure enough, I found the perfect sketch to give me the inspiration I needed. I LOVE their sketches at IB... I really should use them as a resource more often!

Again, I also used the PP Amber Road here, but I also found the perfect striped and colored ribbon to use, hiding in my stash. The Fancy Pants ribbon from their Dapper collection perfectly matches back to Amber Road... practically made for each other! The scroll and scroll-leaf accents and the title were all cut out using my Cricut with the Ashlyn's Alphabet cartridge. I've had this cart for about a month now and I just now used it for this page. I wasn't too sure how much I'd like this one, but now that I've used it, of course I've fallen in love with it and I can see using this alphabet and it's images over and over again. It's a beautiful font! Ohh, and I also embellished the cut-out accents with some Kaiser Craft pearls.

The title was certainly more time consuming for me to make than it would've been to just slap on some AC Thickers and call it done... but I really think the results are well worth it! I worked on cutting out and constructing this title last night while watching my weekly fix of Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters! I wanted the lettering to have more of a customized look to compliment the diecut Amber Road paper, so I started by cutting out each dusty green letter 3 x's and layering and gluing them together to create a thicker and sturdier letter, similar to a "Thicker". Then I ran each letter through my Cuttlebug, using the Victoria folder as to give the letters the look of tooled leather. I then cut out each of the letter's shadow in brown 2 x's each, layered and glued them and then put them together with the tooled dusty green letters. So all together, each letter is 5 layers. Time consuming, but gorgeous!

This last layout that I finished this weekend then is my entry for GCD Studio's latest challenge, and it's a sketch one as well. Had to use at least 50% of GCD product on here, and GCD is kinda hard to come by around here... I have some, but not much... only pp :( So I used up some of the pretty black and white damask from the Cosette collection along with some of the "gold" side of the Ciante paper. I just can't get enough of the textures of the GCD paper though. Luv the stuff!

While I'm into discussing scrapping, I also wanted tell you all that I was THRILLED to finally get one of my card designs picked up for publication from CARDS magazine! This one has been a long time coming for me, as I've been submitting to this and Scrapbook Trends publications for almost "2" years now hoping to get something accepted! FINALLY, is all I can say! My... two years is a long time. I can no longer complain... although I do hope that this will just be the first! I'd hate for it to be the first and only, lol!

Thanks for checking in and I hope everyone has a great week ahead... enjoy!