Merry Christmas from the Murdocks - Two Peas in a Bucket

Merry Christmas from the Murdocks - Two Peas in a Bucket

Yup- I am trying out a new feature (new 2 me) on my blog. Click on the link above to visit a gallery where I have posted one of my recent scrapbook pages. It is a contest and the prize is scrapping stuff. Scrapping stuff is important and valuable to me :) so your help is APPRECIATED! While you are there viewing my work please 'like' my page. Thank you!!

Jayden Mckenzie Scott

This is the way I like to play with paper. I like to start with a photo of a beautiful person. Then add inspiring patterned papers, a bit of old fashioned cutting with scissors, maybe some die-cutting and paper folding, some inking around the edges, sprinkle in some bling, utilize some brass and buttons, and then place a bit more bling somewhere. The results? Artistically B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L!

Cutting out the designs from the pretty printed papers is one of my favorite things to do. This time I was inspired by this pretty 'Pemberly' paper collection made by Close To My Heart. The brass letters are from Making Memories (product I had on hand), Sizzix has the perfect die to make the pretty rosettes. A couple of the flower centers were made with the handy dandy Epiphany Crafts charm setting tool. The beautiful girl is my adorable grand daughter, Jayden. As you can see, I have wonderful product and tools to work with. The most important being the picture of the beautiful girl.

Do Over!

During the task of organizing my craft space I came across a page I had started a couple of years ago, yet had never quite completed. I was so proud of myself when I took the time one evening to actually finish the lay out. All it took was a bit of journaling.

Yet I could not make myself add this page to an album. The happiness of finally completing the layout was outweighed by my displeasure of the results. I did not like what I had done.

I learned a long time ago to not be so critical of my own work. A lot of times the flaws seen by the creator are never noticed by anyone else. So I rarely re-do things I deem as 'finished'. After scowling every time I happened to look at this page I started the process of fixing it.

Of course the paper I had in my stash three years ago is not the same stuff I have now, so I couldn't just replace the strip of journaling that bothered me. I had to take the page to the store and search for replacement product. You know how that is . . . when you have a picture in your head of what you want the likelihood of you finding it diminishes immensely. Luckily for me, B-Jo at Achiver's had the same vision for my lay out as I did. With her help I came home with fresh paper and a vision of how to start playing with it. 

And I am happy to say that I am pleased with the re-do of the page I had started years ago. I can now call it finished and complete, and it will take it's well deserved place in a family album. 

I like the redo better. Don't you? I used patterned paper from Teresa Collins 'Christmas Cottage' and 'Vintage Finds' collection. A bit of a sheet from 'Ghost Gathering' from Little Yellow Bicycle's  Boo Ville line. The journaling spot was stamped using Close To My Heart 'Frame It Up Flair' acrylic stamp set and their newest ink in Slate. A smidgen of card stock by Bazzill in the color Thunder was used to hide a previous mistake. The tiny nickle colored circles are pre 2011 so forgive me when I do not recall where I acquired those. The best part of the layout (the photo and memories attached) are provided by my daughters, Andi and Amanda (in the middle) and their friends. 

Smashing Good Times!

 If you know me at all you know that I love to scrapbook. I also love to spend time with my daughters, Andi and Amanda. These two girls have not shared my love for paper crafting and the art of taking hours to decide which embellishment should go where. But lucky for me, in the spring of 2011, K & Company came up with a name for a simplistic, on-the-fly, no-rules kind of scrapbooking which has been around for centuries. They named this art form SMASH BOOK. They not only came up with a name for it, but they capitalized this re-do of record keeping with their own line of books, pens, tabs, adhesives, tapes, and etc.


 So what is this 'new' scrapping phase? Did you ever have a notebook or binder where you kept your favorite photos, quotes, doodles and little mementos such as ticket stubs, chewed gum, and other random stuff? I did . . . and now someone has put a name to it. And because someone was so clever to rename this style of record keeping and make it so very enticing, I have two new scrapping buddies- Andi and Amanda.



 
So what is the difference?

One is faster, and I would say less structured and somehow less expectations to become a masterpiece. The variety of tools used seems to diminish as a person smashes verses scrapping. The biggest difference- my daughters will 'smash' where they would not 'scrap'.

Based on my own self imposed criteria for scrapbooking, these pictures of Thomas playing with my reading glasses would not have made it onto paper yet. Somehow my expectations for smashing is completely different than those I have for scrapping. Smashing has become my scrapbooking way of everyday story telling. And, isn't that what scrapbooking originally was intended for?  I L-O-V-E this page!


 
Bruce and I in Brigham City during the construction of the Brigham City Temple.

The closest the two of us got to Antelope Island.

A simple page showing off Amanda's artistic talents.

Calculations proving the value of my favorite TP.

With Smashing I tend to use flatter scrapping products. Tape, alpha stickers, more pen and a lot less dimensional embellishments. I find that the stickers and ready made alphabets I shy away from

 in conventional scrapbooking get used in Smashing.

Anything goes! Here I made use of the shopping bag my husbands birthday gift came in.
Plus I got to use tape and a banner. I find that in smashing I try out the cute 'new' embellishments which somehow never make it onto my traditional scrapbook pages. For some reason I have a hard time using banners on 12x12 pages.


I enjoy how quickly I can complete smash pages while at the same time adding some colorful creative bit to the pages. Just so you know- I did spray these newspaper clippings before adding them to my smash book.

I find that I am happy to use 'not so perfect photos' in a smash book- where if I were creating a lay out I would be frustrated with the photo quality. Smashing, for me, is a back to basics type of scrapping. After all it is the memories that really count.

Keeping it simple is a key.
 

This smash book was a notebook I had used when planning our trip to South Carolina. I liked the quality of the cover and paper, and liked the fact that it is wire bound. I tore out a few pages I didn't wish to keep and worked around the writing which meant something. From that point on I added whatever was fun at the time. It's a journal with photos. This book is full and I have since gone on to fill others.

Simply Scrapping

Occasionally I do create simple pages.

This one has sat on my craft table since March.

I have pondered what more I should add.

It has text (along the skinny trees on the left side),

five photos, a hand cut title, stamping, inking.

It's done.

But it looks 'simple' to me.

Like it needs a few more layers.

This one of my dad and my grandson Kay

is simple, too.

Maybe it is the layers or dimension.

I like layers, I guess.

Don't take me wrong- I like this page.

The photo came from my previous photo calendar.

I like to add a smudge of paint occassionally,

hand detail with a Le Pen,

something hand cut, and always edging in ink.

I Treasure You

Have to show off my adorable girls.

They truely are treasures.

OXOX

Glue, Paper, Scissors

I found some more time to play.

I am one lucky chick.

  

 This is how I color eggs-

Patterned paper from Little Yellow Bicycle

paper line, modge podge glue, and

tiny plastic eggs.

Welcome Spring!!!!



Ta Da!

    As one of the VERY first and most IMPORTANT tasks I wanted to do upon my retirement(?) from Nordstrom was to scrapbook I just had to do that right away. So I did that first thing!!!!
    Amber was sweet enough to join me at one of my favorite places on earth . . . Archiver's. I had previously staked out the premises and knew which papers I wanted to play with. Little Yellow Bicycle's 'Saturdays' collection was chosen to celebrate my freedom and opportunity for creativity.

    Being in my favorite place, creating with fresh patterns and cute embellishments was absolute heaven. I really like how the reds in the Little Yellow Bicycle Saturdays collection compliment the red in Amanda's shirt. I made the little circle fans with the easy to use Tim Holtz decorative strip die by Sizzix, 'paper rosette'. These pages are the newest ones displayed in my entry way. Stop by and see them in person. Call first, cause I just might be playing at Archiver's.

Sharing Time

    It has been awhile since I have experienced a true 'sharing time'. As A kid in elementary school I had such a difficult time with this concept. What did I have, do, or create which consisituted sharing worthy?
Well . . .that was then, this is now. I am more than happy to share something with you today. I actually took the time to scan a few 12x12 pages I created sometime ago. The three I will share here demonstrate the use of simple designed paper with little embellishment. The extras I added are simple and mostly consist of cutting portions of the already existing designs from the paper and moving it elsewhere on the page or tucking something (like a photo) under part of it.

    I remember cutting paper dolls at a young age. During the hours spent cutting paper as a child I had pondered the significance of the task I was doing. Despite the fact that I really did not like to play 'paper dolls' I was very neat and perticular with the task of cutting. As I cut the intricate designs from my scrapbook papers as an adult I am reminded of the same kind of 'play' as a little girl. That remembrance always brings a smile to my face.