DTW and Scraptastic

Have I mentioned that I signed up for Scraptastic's Kit Club?  I did.  I also signed up for Studio Calico.  This was back when I was finishing up my student teaching and I felt the need to reward myself.  Also, I thought I was returning to my job at the camera store.  So yeah, I've since cancelled the Scraptastic kit.

In the meantime, I did get a couple of kits.  I dreamed wistfully of these kits, but alas, for the most part I've just been "eh" about them.  And while that may sound mean, I merely mean that they're not "me."  I drooled about these kits based on what other scrappers did with them, but once in my hands I realized that they aren't quite at home there (in my hands).

And then the Summer Nights kit came and first I was like "What?"  And then I was like "Huh?"  I was expecting to not really like it, but the photos of the kit didn't really do it justice.  Plus, the packet of embellishments from Simple Stories was just yummy.

Let's see.  The blue border was actually cut out and laid on top of the white sheet of cardstock, so there's a very thin white border around the whole layout.  And that grey bit of ickiness at the top? That's the matboard that I rest the layout on for photographing it.  It's not supposed to be there and it's going to drive me nuts. :(

The pictures are from a walk I took around downtown Willoughby, which the locals refer to as DTW.  DTW is only 2 blocks long, but it's chock full'o bars, restaurants, galleries, antique shops and boutiques...all of which are closed on Sundays.  Which makes it the perfect day to pull out the camera and go for a walk. ;)  In the fall we did a ghost walk, and we were taken off the beaten path to hear stories.  I've been wanting to go back to some of the spots, and that's what I did one Sunday in early June.  I did it by myself, which makes the photos somehow less layout-worthy...  Does that even make sense?  I didn't take this walk with my family or boyfriend, and therefore it doesn't rate a scrapbook page?  Hmmm.  Oh well.  I made a page anyway. :P

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Slow and steady wins the race.

Or so I've been told.

I cannot believe that I'm still chugging away on this mini book from our trip to RIT last August.  The last time I posted about this book was October 14th, and even that was the most boring thing ever written about  scrapbooking.  No, seriously, go look for yourself.  At least it's short.  And the funny thing is, it actually relates to what I'm sharing today.

This is embarrassing. I sell cameras for a living. I *know* photography. Grrrr.  The beautiful matte finish of the pictures does not capture well.  Sadly, my lovely pizza shot looks dull and grainy.  Alas, it's just the paper finish.

See that library card? See how it's mounted on the black index file folder tabbed whichamajig?  That was the subject of the most boring post ever.  But you know what? I dig it.  The book is still a work in progress and as such it isn't on the book rings yet.  Once it's all put together it'll be its own little page.  What's shown here is the journaling for the next page.

Here's the other side, (the journaling about lunch) shown with the next page.

That is not my favorite picture of Maggie, but it was a HOT weekend.  We all looked a little wilted. She just documented.  Sorry Maggie. :P  

The weekend we went my camera was off in repair.  I had decided while it was gone that I was going to sell it when it came back and, knowing that, I had ordered the D7000.  I had the highest of hopes that my new camera would arrive in time for our trip.  You  know when it showed up? Literally as we were walking into the registration area. That's when I got a text from my boss saying it had arrived. GAH!  For the trip I had a little Fuji Instax Mini camera.  Maggie had the Fuji I had given her for Christmas and Kerig had his camera.  These are the pictures that Maggie took when she was roaming around the campus on her own on Friday evening.  I was really surprised at how similar a lot of our shots were - the campus is huge and I thought I had gotten the "behind the scenes" tour with my former-RIT student/personal tour guide.  These are the pictures that Maggie took.

And these are the pictures I took. :P  One really neat thing about the Fuji Instax camera is the cute little photos.  One really frustrating thing about the Fuji Instax is that the cute little photos aren't very flexible when trying to cram five on a mini book page.  So I made me a pocket!  Take that, cute little Fuji Instax photos!  Besides, turns out my film got a little heat damaged and all the colors are somewhat muted.  But I like the pocket. Right?

Right?

The first "spread."

And the second.

I am not patting myself on the back.
But that's so dern cute.














I'm really close to being done this project and I'm so happy that I can end it on a happy note.

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Day 4 AL*

*AL= After LOAD

(blah blah blah, skip ahead if you know this already: LOAD is a layout challenge hosted by Lain Ehmann in which participants create a LayOut A Day for every day in a designated month.  Since we're all busy, this is part challenge, part exercise in insanity.  But the sense of accomplishment at the end of the month is amazing.)

So one would think that after creating 31 layouts in the month of May that I would have that particular bug worked out of my system and I wouldn't want to touch a photograph for months.  Apparently there's something wrong with me.  When I was young people would say "Oh, I'll bet you get so sick of McDonald's food, working there all the time."  Uh, hello?  No.  Give me a plain double cheeseburger and watch me smile while I chew.  Nope, it never happened.  And while I find the need to move on to move onto other activities post-LOAD, I do so because I have to, not because I'm sick of scrapbooking.

Here is the abridged version of my weekend: Laundry. Baseball. (beer!) Baseball. Baseball. (pizza!) (scrapbook!) Baseball.  Softball.  Laundry.  Items in parentheses represent treats along the way, as opposed to the obligatory nature of the other items.  I don't know if you noticed, but that's A SHIT TON of baseball!  And for someone who's not - by any means - a sports fan, that's a full on metric shit ton.

Today Ted had two games in a tournament.  The first game was painful.  We had lost by the end of the second inning.  First, the other team was enormous - 75% of the team was bigger than Ted, and Ted is by far the biggest kid on our team.  But they weren't just big, they were good. They hit well, they pitched well, and, on the rare occasion we made contact, they fielded well.  Add to that: we just didn't play well.  We were run-ruled in the 5th inning.  I didn't even pick up my camera.

The kids took a break for lunch and I had a nice chat with the coach.  Every time I go to one of Ted's games (which isn't often enough unfortunately) people tell me how great Ted is.  Today it was the coach.  He told me that the team unanimously voted for Ted for team captain.  He said he loved having Ted on the team.  And then he said "You did a really great job with him."  Wow.  Typically I don't run around taking credit for Ted.  I am pleasantly surprised by him nearly every day.  But I suppose that wasn't entirely an accident.  Maybe his father and I have helped fine tune his already good character.  At any rate, what an awesome compliment.

Game two was a better match up, so it seemed worth while to pick up my camera.  Ted was pitching (38 throws with 31 strikes) for the first couple of innings, but my favorite shots came from an exchange on first  base.  Ted is not small.  He's 5'8" and probably 160 pounds.  He looks like he can hit.  (He can)  He doesn't look like he can sprint.  So he was walked.  Once there he was immediately taking the lead, looking to steal second.  I don't know if they really thought that they'd get him out or if the goal was to wear him out because he was the pitcher.  Considering the first inning was three up three down, it wasn't a bad strategy.

So here's how the exchange went:
Ted takes a couple big steps towards second.
Pitcher whips the ball to the first baseman.
Ted dives back to safety at first.
Ted gets up, first baseman throws the ball back to the pitcher.

Ted takes a couple big steps towards second.

Pitcher whips the ball to the first baseman.

Ted dives back to safety at first.

Ted gets up, first baseman throws the ball back to the pitcher.

Ted takes a couple big steps towards second.

Pitcher whips the ball to the first baseman.

Ted dives back to safety at first.

Ted gets up, first baseman throws the ball back to the pitcher.

Ted takes a couple big steps towards second.

Pitcher whips the ball to the first baseman.

Ted dives back to safety at first.

Ted gets up, first baseman throws the ball back to the pitcher.

No lie.  FOUR times that pitcher forced Ted back to first.  But the fifth time Ted made it, sliding into second.  By the end of the exchange Ted was covered in dirt - face, arms, hands and both sides of his uniform.  

I have about 20 pictures from the exchange, and I wish that I could use them all to tell the story, but there isn't space, so it gets boiled down to this:

Mini Vacation

Fresh from the craziness of the Christmas season and a huge project and a final, I am perfectly content - verging on deliriously happy - to have four days off in a row and spend them in pajama pants and a fleece hoodie.  Especially since the first two were spent in my scrap room channeling Nichol Magouirk.

If you don't know Nichol, take a minute to follow the link.  I think she's a goddess, and she's easily the one scrapper I'd like to be when I grow up.  She has a way with patterned paper that is somehow both whimsical and delightful AND clean and uncluttered.  Plus, she has the innate ability to just pile on all sorts of doo dads, and they look completely effortless.  Every staple, every mini paperclip - they all look like they're exactly where they're supposed to be.  There's nothing forced or "trying too hard" in her layouts.

Nicole first hit my radar as a Silhouette design team contributor.  Since I'm all Silhouette, all the time (or so it seems, even to me) I quickly started to realize that she has a way of putting unrelated things together in a way that just plain works.  She takes shapes that someone else designed and uses them in a way that you're just sure the original designer must have intended for them.  One of the things that I love most about the Silhouette is how easy it is to customize shapes, and Nichol does that...only at the next level up from everyone else, mixing and matching titles and shapes and using all sorts of patterned papers resulting in pages that are pure eye candy.

I know there are avid scrapbookers out there who are very organized about saving layouts that inspire them.  I have not been one of those women.  First, I have it ingrained in me from God knows where that "copying" is cheating.  Really?  Where are the scrapping Refs?  Do they wearing polka dots and Pima flowers?  Are their whistles covered in bling??  It's silly.  I know.  And oddly, I don't think less of someone else who scraplifts - heck, I even admire them for their ability to let go and not get mired down in not reinventing the wheel.  Anyway, as someone who's always felt it was taboo to borrow too heavily from one source at a time, I've never felt the need to have an inspiration folder on my desktop.  But then, as magazines go belly up, and then fill their pages with designs that really don't make me excited, I find myself turning to web more and more for inspiration.  And finally it occurred to me.  Right click/New folder/"Nichol Magouirk".  Right click/Save picture as...and voila: a year and a half's worth of very inspiring layouts, all in one place, with no interruption. 

So that's the first one.  Clearly, Nicole has nothing to worry about, but I'm pleased, to say the least.  I love the fun title, the collage of pictures (I've done this before, but this time it's all about channeling Nichol), the fun number border (and how it relates to my typical December, which is about counting down, money, time, balancing gifts for 4 kids...numbers swirl in my head all month long),  I even like the way I handled a mess up.  I made the white border just a smidge too short.  I was tempted to recut it, but decided that putting it down and covering the one end with a cluster of embellishments would work just fine.  You can still see that the white border doesn't go across all the way, but now I say "Who cares?  Looks great!"  I am NOT one to embrace that kind of imperfection, so this feels like quite the accomplishment!

I can't tell you how much these photos have troubled me.  I've really wanted to get Ted's football recorded, but look at those uniforms!!  All that hideous red!  Don't get me wrong.  I like red.  It's one of my favorites.  But that red...it GLOWS.   Pre-Nicole, I would have tackled the red challenge but using grey and black cardstock with red pieces thrown in here and there...but not too close to the photos.  It would have been boring, and a little non-sequitur.  After all, the only grey in the photos is the stands in the background, and the only black is Ted's UnderAmour.  Not exactly the kind of stuff that dictates a color scheme, right?  After Nichole, I went to my patterned paper box first.  Granted, I got REALLY lucky, but still...I wouldn't have even looked before.  I love the Game Day title, it's rugged looking...not cartoony or juvenille.  I used black ink and a stippling brush to dirty it down.  It was just to perfect looking at first, but the black ink grunged it up and made it gritty enough for the page.  I used that same technique on the football lace border, and on the journalling block.  Both were far too pretty and pristine to start with. 

I'm really pleased with how both of these came out.  And more than that, I'm pleased with how quickly they came together and that I finally feel more comfortable using the patterned paper I've been amassing for YEARS.  I also like that by thinking about what it is that appeals to me about Nicol's style allowed me to break it down to very concrete ideas that were easy to incorporate.  I'm a decent scrapper in my own rite.  I won't deny that.  But it doesn't hurt to be truly inspired.  Or to get out the ruts I find myself in occasionally.