Winter Retreat 2014 with May Flaum

What is the best way to get some creative inspiration?  Take a class.  I am taking May Flaum's Winter Retreat 2014.  May has gathered amazing creative minds to contribute tutorials to this retreat.  Check out her blog while you're at it.  I have been absolutely inspired to start crafting again after a long hiatus.  I didn't even realize that I haven't posted here since November 2011.  Wow!  So, without further ado, here is my first layout.

My grandma was my inspiration.  I miss her so much!  This picture is of grandama with her sister Liz on the left and Aunty Liz's daughter in the middle.  Grandma lives in Hawaii and Aunty Liz lives in California so I'm happy that I was able to get a picture of them together.  Tuesday I will have the second layout inspired by grandma.

This weekend will be so action packed.  Saturday we will be ushering in the new lunar year with some good friends.  Sunday will be a great day spent on the couch watching the Super Bowl.  Are you a Seahawks fan?  Broncos fan?  My team didn't make it to the Super Bowl so by default I will be rooting for the Seahawks because they are my dad's team.  

I hope everyone has a great weekend.  Happy crafting!

Scrapbook page inspiration

So I promised to show you the inspiration that came from the scraps of Zoeys 100 day project.  I decided that the strips from punching out the circles would make a great background.

Even the leftover punched circles will be used on the layout somehow.

Here is the beginning the stages of the layout.

I needed to add a resting place for those little pics, so I created a horizontal band with the inks. 

Luckily, the inkpads are round, so it lended itself perfectly to put directly on the page to create that soft texture.  I'll be printing out a portrait orientated 4x6 of Zoey and her finished project to add on the right.

Here I added a journal card and a blank piece of white cardstock.  I also took one inch strips of white cardstock, tore them, and colorized them with the colors Zoey used in her project.  I stapled a few of the punched circles to the main photo using my tiny attacher.

Here is the finished page.  I stamped a few sayings from a couple of Stampin' Up! stamp sets, journaled on the big lined journal card, and used glittery foam Thickers for my title.  Overall,  I am very pleased with how this layout turned out.  I am most excited about the fact I was able to use the leftover pieces of Zoey's project, which would have been recycled, to make a layout to remember her eagerness to craft and fashion her own project.  Oops, I just realized that I forgot to stamp the date on the layout.  Oh well, I'll have to go back and do that.  Until we meet again, happy crafting!

100 Day Inspiration

Hi there, 

Long time no see huh?  Well, I'm getting back in the groove and hopefully I don't lose it.  If I do, oh well because that means life is happening.  My littles and not so littles love making life happen.  Just like my disbelief that 100 days of the schoolyear has already came and went.  Whew!  Little Zoey had an assignment to collect 100 things and find a clever way to display it.  As in true Tara fashion, I waited until the last minute to help her complete her task.  Tsk, tsk.  Anyways, if it wasn't for procrastination, inspiration for this project would have fell by the wayside and in enter Pinterest to the rescue.  Friday night Zoey decided to have her way with a few inkpads and my circle punch.  She had tons of fun colorizing the paper, getting inky, and punching out the circles.  The idea was born.  She was gonna ink up a couple pieces of white cardsotck and punch out 100 circles.  The inking stage was a blast.

The punching out the circles was but her teeny hands got tired after about 20 circles.  I forgot to take pictures of that process but here is one of the result of inking and punching.

Then she separated her circles into groups of ten.

She then threaded the set of ten circles onto lengths of yarn.

This was when I helped her out and tied all strips of circles onto chenille stems to fashion a mobile.

She was so very proud of her project.  She didn't fall far from the crafting tree gene pool!

Here she is on her way to school with her project.

Tomorrow I will post my scrapbook page I created to document Zoeys project.  I used the leftovers from Zoeys project to create my background.  Until tomorrow.  Happy crafting!