Hands, hovered over the keyboard...

waiting for the first line to come.  Alas, it does not.

So, maybe, instead, we'll just cut to the picture:

First, I have to say that this looks much better in real life.  The cardstock warped when I painted on the gold(ish) hexagons and the top left corner ends up looking dirty in the picture. :(  Wilna Furstenburg recently mentioned on the Paperclipping Roundtable that she uses watercolor paper because it's thicker than American Crafts cardstock and doesn't warp.  One of these days, I'm going to have to try some, because the warping gets on my nerves.  Although, here's the irony: it looks fine once I put it in the album, since the page protector is snug enough to keep it in check.  So the warping gets on my nerves because it doesn't photograph well...or show up on the blog well.  And since I am more likely to scroll through my blog than actually flip through my album, the warping bugs me. :P

And if you enjoy watching process videos, here's one for this layout:



And if you're not a process video watcher, I'll share some sad news from the video.  I think my Silhouette died this weekend. (insert, big crying frowny face, with big, fat tears of despair)  I tried cutting a word, and the software showed that it cut, but the machine didn't budge.  Thinking that maybe my cable was bad, I saved the design to an SD card and inserted it into the machine.  Normally you hit the pause button to enter the SD card menu but when I hit the pause button the menu would flash for a nano second and go back to the normal screen.  I'm simply beside myself that one of my most prized possessions has bit the dust.

I think that rather than sit here whining about it, I'm going to take advantage of the time difference between Ohio and Utah and call Silhouette's customer service and see if they can't talk me through the fix.  (IhopeIhopeIhopeIhope!)

Sorry I'm not more chatty.  Maybe next time.  Thanks for stopping by!

Throw Back Thursday: Are you ready for some football??

Ted just had football camp last week, and you know football season is fixin' to start!  Last year Ted played JV, which meant that his games were on Saturday mornings.  Which means I only got to see two games. :(  (BUT, they were two really great games!)  This year it looks like he's playing varsity, so I'm looking forward to seeing him play a lot more!  (I'll need to do a Kickstarter campaign just so I can afford to see his games though. :P)

So when I was flipping through my album this morning this layout seemed timely for my TBT Layout:

I *love* the "Oh snap!" part of this!  First, I made this layout in 2007, back when "Oh, snap!" was something people actually said.  Second, I knew that Ted played center back in the day, but I had no idea what a center did.  Yes. I am this clueless.  When it finally occurred to me that he was the one to snap the ball every play it was like a million watt bulb turned on for me!  And -- yay! -- that position is nice and easy to take pictures of!  No messiness - no pesky defensive players in the way...just a nice straight shot and there he is!

This year Ted is a vying for the starting quarterback position.  I still don't know that much about football, but I know what a quarterback does, and I know that starting any position on the varsity team in 10th grade is pretty darn good.  I have my fingers crossed for a good season!  But man...I miss the days of watching 9 year olds play...it was so much less scary!

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you're ramping up for a great weekend!

The Spoils of "Another Happy Tuesday"

Hello folks! Today is NOT another happy Tuesday.  Heck, it's not even another happy Wednesday. It's more of a sip-your-coffee-and-keep-all-your-angry-thoughts-to-yourself kinda day.   But the good news is, I have a blog post to divert my attention! Yay for blog posts!

I started this layout over the weekend.  I've mentioned before how hard I find scrapping sports layouts.  I've also mentioned that I don't own and can't find a lot of blue that works with the royal blue in his uniform.   So I feel like I'm scrapbooking with one hand tied behind my back.

That said, I knew I wanted the word teamwork in the title, but I also had another die cut and I couldn't make it work.  I'm not in love with the finished page, but after several hours of shoving around titles and embellishments, this was a good compromise.

I'm also finding it difficult to find sports themed embellishments that aren't juvenile.  Even on my beloved Silhouette, the pickin's are slim.  So for this, it's stars (aren't all athletes stars? Even if only in their own minds...) and arrows (to show the forward momentum of the play) and a semi-generic GO! banner that I made.  (If you're interested in that file, let me know and I'll send it your way).  I worked in a little blue with the accents and figured green, brown and grey would work well enough, for the grass, mud and general overall grey quality of northeast Ohio during football season.

And the journaling tells why it was worth it for me to get the page done when I just wanted to abandon it and move onto something more scrap-friendly.  I love this picture.  On the way home from this game Ted and I were talking about the game and he asked it I saw that one play where Sushi was carrying him.  Uh. No.   I have no idea what you're talking about.  He went on excitedly, telling me about how in the one play when they were starting off at the 15 yard line he ran the ball and just as he was about to be tackled by South, Sushi was right there behind him and "he carried me for like 20 seconds!"  Later that today I was scrolling through my pictures and noticed this shot and sure enough, Ted's feet aren't on the ground, and sure enough it was Sushi (#71) and #70 who were hoisting him up by his jersey and carrying him - and the ball - down field.  Judging by the fact that my camera shoots 6 frames per second, he was only off the ground for about 2 seconds, but still: that's teamwork.

These are a few of my favorite things:
Flair: Minimal 1 flair at aflairforbuttons.
Wood veneer: Arrow Wood Chips from Freckled Fawn and they're colored with a dumb ole Sharpie and sanded a bit.
Enamel dots: Ombre Black Enamel Dew Drop Stickers, also from Freckled Fawn.
The washi at the top and bottom is also from Freckled Fawn.
The font on the main title is Blackout Midnight from Font Squirrel - and you know you want to check them out based on the name alone.

So that's that.  Things are probably going to be scarce here for a while.  It's Christmas in retailland, and theoretically we're coming up on final exam time for school, but I'm thinking that's not going to be a big deal this time around.  And no, you won't hear me complaining about that!

Thanks for stopping by!  Don't forget to say "Heyyy" in the comment section.  Not gonna lie: I love a comment or 2 here and there. ☺

QB and a number of random thoughts

1) I have NO patterned paper that even remotely matches the royal blue that Ted's team wears. I started poking around looking for papers, and I'm very underwhelmed by the choices.

2) I used the Silhouette print and cut feature for the cluster on the left side.  I need to experiment with different papers to see which types work the best.  I always forget how much I like this feature, and it bailed be out on this layout, because apparently I have no sports themed embellishments.

Which leads me to:

3) Why are sports themed embellishments all so juvenile/schmaltzy?!  This football thing isn't going to go away anytime soon.  I'll have a kid that plays college ball and I'll still have embellishments that are geared for the peewee league. NOT COOL.

Which leads me to:

4) Maybe I'll just do his sports pages digitally and keep with the style I was using with his baseball pages a couple of years ago.

5) Can you tell I'm just not happy with this page?  I've sort of prided myself with how I've managed Ted's sports pages, and I'm just not feeling this one.  Totally lack of appropriate colors and embellishments'll do that to a girl.

6) And this really bugs me, because I'm:
         a) really loving some of the shots I'm getting;
         b) really wanting to document Ted's accomplishments.

7) I'm really feeling hog tied with 8.5x11 lately.  For a very long time I was a one-photo-a-layout gal, so 8.5x11 was perfect for me.  But here lately I've wanted to use more photos. And I'm finding that my journaling has been really truncated because I have to get my point across in such a small area.

8) But I really don't want to go back o 12x12.  Mainly because the albums are HUGE. Ugh

9) Changing gears here: I don't want to jinx anything, but I've been feeling great lately.  After almost a solid month of feeling sluggish, run down, feverish with body aches and weird temperature swings I finally feel like my old self.  I'm so happy to be complaining only about my arthritis instead of all of that other stuff AND the arthritis. It's funny how a bout of ickiness  really makes you grateful once it lifts.  A nice reminder to cherish health.

10) I should have mentioned that those pictures ^^^ where taken on Ted's birthday weekend, so they feel extra special.  SO glad I got the day off to see this game and their amazing win.

Okay, 10 seems like a great place to stop.  Plus, my boss is working on actual work stuff, so maybe I should go help.  Doh.

Thanks for stopping by!  I