Calendar Creations

I went to Big Bear in December on a scrappy retreat and got some great pages done, including a great 2010 calendar I made for my sister using Creative Memories Storybook Creator Plus. The whole thing only took me about 8 hours (and probably would have been faster if I hadn't been chatting so much!)

Where have I been...

...well here, but working in my day job A LOT! I'm an accountant and we have a 6/30 fiscal year end so I've been putting in long hours at work and not spending too much time scrapping. I have been trying to make new memories with my hubby & son when I'm not at work so when I can scrap again I've got lots of topics. I do have 1 layout I finished recently that I'll try to post this weekend. In the mean time, happy scrapping!

Scrappin in the Desert

I had a great time this past weekend out in Palm Desert with some girlfriends, cropping away at the Desert Scrappers Retreat. Laura always does an amazing job. This trip was really cool because we got to see her new baby boy, Levi. What a little cutie.

On Friday I finished up the rolodex album class I took from Leah Fung at Scrapbook Royalty's Royal Slumber Crop in March. It is adorable.

Then on Saturday I worked on the pictures from my cousin's wedding and finished a whopping 28 pages in about 12 hours. That is by far the most I've completed in a day.

I also took this great class from my friend Dawn. She is a talented scrapbooker and cookie decorator. It's a perpetual calendar. Click here to see pics and what Dawn wrote about it. http://dsweekendretreats.blogspot.com/2009/04/these-are-days-perpetual-calendar-class.html

I also took a great glimmer mist class from Jennifer Priest. When I finish my page I'll be sure to post a picture. She is VERY talented.

I'll try to post some pictures of my favorite pages soon.

Confessions of a Scrapbook Addict

So I have to confess (and I only finally did confess to Zach) that I bought about $200 in fonts when Scrap N Fonts retired all the CK fonts from their website back at the beginning of May. Only to later find out that CK is now offering some of their fonts for free on Fridays on their blog. I hate it when that happens. So as soon as I clicked “confirm purchase” I said to myself, this is ridiculous, I’ll never use all these fonts.

I downloaded the font thing tonight (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~scef/tft.html) its freeware that lets you view all fonts installed on your computer with sample text or all the characters in the set. I discovered that have about 1000 fonts. Needless to say I won’t be getting any more fonts any time soon.

If you’re interested, there are some cool sites out there for free fonts. Here are a few: http://www.dafont.com/ http://www.fontface.com/ http://www.kevinandamanda.com/fonts (these are cool handwriting fonts) http://www.1font.com/

So, what have you bought and thought to yourself, what was I thinking?

I'm looking forward to this weekend. My friend Audrey & I are going to a wonderful scrapbook retreat in Palm Desert (http://desertscrappers.samsbiz.com/) organized by the wonderful Laura Miller. I'm taking Friday off work to go, which is awesome because I've been working WAY too much lately and not creating nearly enough.

I did make it to a crop a few weeks ago. Here are a couple of pics of some of the pages I completed that day.

I like the simplicty of this page.

This page was fun. I was showing some of the girls at the crop how I like to sew on my pages. Plus I like how the rub on turned out.

My beautiful cousin. Again, simple, a little doodling.

What a weekend

This was quite the weekend. I've had a cold since last Monday and missed two days from work this past week. I'm feeling much better now, although still pretty congested, but because we're under a deadline to do quarter end financials I was up until 3 am last night working on them. I worked on them all day yesterday, and could have today, but decided if I stayed up and finished, that I could hang out with Garrett today and get some scrapping done. And that is what I did.



The kit for Pink Pineapple's book club last month was the new "Magical Wishes" line from Webster's Pages. Its got a great vintage feel to it, so I decided to do a page about my grandma Joyce who passed away a few years ago. The paper I chose is so busy I kept my embellishment to a minmum.



The journaling says:


My sweet Grandma Joyce…she was a wonderful person with a great heart…very caring and thoughtful. She lived on very little but was always full of joy. When I think of her I think of lavender, her favorite scent, how she always had a smile on her face and a cup of coffee in her hand, and I hear her singing “when the red, red robin comes ba ba bobbim along, sweet song, its time to wake up! Wake up you sleepy head, get up, get up, get out of bed. Live, love, laugh and be happy.”

Words she seemed to live by!

Some Traditional Layouts

The sketch for this one came from "Best of Becky Higgins Sketches" I love the clean lines and how the the color scheme simulates a cloudy sky, one thing I remember most about San Francisco!

This sketch came from CTMH Inspire. The entire background is stamped.

This page is all about distressing. I thought that Zach's desert camping trip really lent itself to the technique.

I always have fun with layouts that aren't boy focused. Since most of my personal albums are focused around my son & hubby I used A LOT of blues & greens. Its nice to use pink once and awhile.

I am a member of the Pink Pineapple Scrapbooks "Book" club. This layout uses techniques I learned there and goodies from one of the kits. Stephanie Ackerman came and taught us some doodling techniques for titles, which I incorporated and used my Souffle pens. One of our kits came with the Fiskars Threading Water border punch which I just LOVE!

I did this layout for a challenge for a yahoo group I participate in. We had to use glitter so I traced some of the design from the patterned paper with CTMH liquid glass and added some glitter.

Another CTMH idea book layout. I used my cricut for the title and inked a lot of the edges.

Another favorite layout. I love the October Afternoon paper and the clean lines.

Digital Layout Mania

Although I'm generally a traditional scrapper, I do like doing full digital pages, if for example I have way too many photos from an event, if I've taken photos that I want to use for a background, as in the two layouts below from Julian, or if I just feel like it.

These were created using CM's Storybook Creator Plus and my background paper is a picture I took while we were in Julian.

I had a first year frame that I was filling up, but I liked the idea of doing it digital so I could easliy make a copy for Garrett's grandparents.

Bling your Blog

I'm so excited. I am taking a class through http://www.scrapinstyletv.com/ called Bling your Blog. So far I've created the template for my blog and the header. I've always thought that so many blogs looked fabulous but wasn't sure how to do it. So now I am learning, and I'm pleased with the results thus far. The best part is that I can update it as I wish. Yeah!

Its also gotten me a bit more familiar with Photoshop. I've been playing with it for years and been frustrated because there was so much I knew was possible, just not how to do it. I'm still not there yet, but I've got a few new tricks up my sleeve!

Now that I'm happy with the look of my blog I'll start uploading some pages I've done.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog. I’ve created this blog to showcase my scrapbooking layouts and advertise my custom scrapbooking services. My hope is to post new layouts weekly.

A little about my scrapbooking style. I’m an accountant in my non-scrapbooking life, so as you can imagine, I like clean lines. I’ve recently joined a few online communities and participate in their challenges. I’ve found it a great way to keep me from hitting a plateau in my albums.
I’m a big fan of inking, distressing, stamping, eyelets, ribbons, etc.

My favorite tools are my Crop-a-dile Big Bite and my Cricut. I’m also loving using my computer for journaling, and a few digital pages here and there.

So I hope you enjoy my work. If you’re in need of a custom scrapbook, please contact me at kierstinscreations@gmail.com for pricing.
Thanks!
Kierstin