Saturday, October 13, 2007

each day is a gift

Last night was a peaceful, productive night. My fridge was full (yay payday!), my apartment was untidy (yay I don't give a eff!) and the phone didn't ring much. I managed to spend only a minimal amount of time last night on a sweet and fun project, when I usually end up spending HOURS scrappng.

Recently I ordered a subscription to this fabulous site called Scrapologie. If you're reading this and you've never been to Scrapologie, you should go there now, but then come back here. The site is actually being remodeled, so a couple of the functions are disabled now (like the message boards/user galleries). You can sign up for a free membership which gives you access to all the boards, newsletters, etc. I did that at first...like 6 months ago. Every month for the past 6 months I've drooled over their kits.

Evidently there are a lot of independent scrapbooking sites out there, each providing their own kit services. I had no idea about any of this until a short while ago. These sites take products from all sorts of popular scrapbooking companies and compile monthly kits containing elements that complement one another. So the kit you end up with is coordinated but not matchy-matchy from the same line/company. We all do this at home, right? Some of us are better at it than others obviously or these kit services wouldn't exist. Of course, for me the kit service is an oppurtunity to own products which I preivously had no access to other than the internet. Hambly, for instance, is hot and new, but none of my local stores carries it. The same goes for Love, Elsie products. I am in LOVE with Love, Elsie, especially after having the chance to touch and use the products. The beautiful thing about Scrapologie is that you can purchase a monthly kit without the obligation to the subscription! (I have Celine to thank for introducing me to Scrapologie, by the way!)
Okay, so my kit subscription started with August, which means that last week I got 3 kits in the mail! One each for Aug-Oct. For the next 3 months payments will be taken out automatically from my paypal account and I'll get happy surprises in the mail!

You can imagine how itchy I was to use my new stuff...but where to begin? I knew that no matter what I wanted to create a layout using supplies from one month only, so as not to mix the product. This way I can post at least one layout from each kit on the Scrapologie site.



Sharon sent me this lovely picture of us together, and posed a personal challenge: scrap a page using this photo. You can see that the photo is rich in brown tones, with a hint of turquoise (thanks to my jewely), which made it PERFECT for the August kit supplies I had! WOOP! A hidden challenge arose when I tried to print a larger version of the photo Sharon sent. The file was so small that I could only get a wallety size photo out of it. Talk about challenging! I think I pulled it off though...a touching page about friendship that encompases Sharon's funky fresh vibes.



Here is a detailed view:


The notebook paper, star quilt paper, and teal love paper are all Love, Elsie! These papers are even more fabulous in person! I hope I can snag myself some of her other products as well, like the jellies and chipboard. Sorry for the glare...the orange rectangle on the twill ribbon says, "Established 7/2004."
I also really wanted to use the fold over tab that came with a sticker sheet...it says, "fun, proof." I cut the bg piece of paper to looke like a file folder. I cut the tab in half so that I would be able to use both sides rather than folding it over and only seeing one. I stuck the round parts of the tabs to a piece of scrap cardstock, leaving the bottom anchor of the tabs sticky, then trimmed the tabs out of the cardstock and stuck the tabs to the top of the page. So one tab became two! (apologies for the ugly blue border in the first image, it's my cutting mat...yuck I know...wish I had a pink one!)
The photo and surrounding papers, etc, are all mounted on a scrap piece of cardstock. I found this to be the best process, considering I needed to staple the twill on and didn't want it to reach all across the page. I added red ink accents to the center collage to tie it together with the bg paper (filled in the letter holes with red, wrote my journalling in red, and added the dots to the twill).
What do y'all think? I can't wait to see what Sharon has done with this picture!

4 comments:

Jenn said...

LOVE it!!!
Checking out the website you linked to. Looking good.

Nichole said...

Jenn-Jenn! I miss you so much! Still waiting for an email/blog post about the bus tour!

What's so funny? said...

This is so gorgeous, however am I going to compete with this????? I'm touched.

Oh! Didn't know the pic came out so small. oops!

Still love it though.

What's so funny? said...

You know, I completed my weeks ago and have yet to post it. Shame on me! I think you'll like it. When you're back lemme know!