Pretty Woman on a Pretty Layout

Hello everyone.  I hope you feel like another layout featuring my lovely daughter, Bethany.  There is a story behind these two pages.  Bethany came home one afternoon after teaching all day and I thought she looked fabulous - especially for a woman who had just spent 8 hours with 20 second graders!  I decided to snap a couple of photos of her.  But of course, Duncan the wonder dog felt like he needed to be in the photos with her.  After some good petting, he gave her such a loving look, then he and Bethany both looked at me and smiled!  The photos were so cute that I had to scrap them!

I actually made most of these two pages last summer at Scrap Convention in a  layout class.  And even though cutting the individual pieces, stamping the individual cuts, adding ink, glitter, etc is time consuming, I always think the end result is so worth while!

My matting color choice may seem unusual, but it actually matches the subtle blue in the background print paper.  Also it matches Bethany's skirt.

I used a lot of glue and fine glitter on this layout.  The flower centers are glitter covered glue.  Also i used fine tip on the glue and outlined the word LOVE and applied glitter to the word.

Family Time and Girlfriend Time....

Hello everyone.  I know it is Monday and that normally means it is time for my weekly Bitten By The Bug 2 post.  However this week I did not get my project finished.  It was all designed, but not cut when I left for a weekend at Lake Murray at my friend Sally's lake house.  And while I accomplished a lot this weekend, I did not get my BBTB2 project finished!  Sad, I know!  I did have a lovely time at the lake and I want to thank Sally and Beth for hosting us again.

I will be sharing some of the projects that I made this weekend later in the week.  I still need to photograph the projects and tonight I am just too tired to do that.  I actually fell asleep sitting up on the sofa checking my email.  My sweet hubby sent me off to bed for a nap, while he made dinner for us!  What a good, good man.

Remember last Monday when I told you that Ian had come home for the weekend?  I so enjoyed his visit that I set up a 20 minute photo shoot with Ian, Bethany & John, Doug & I in the back yard.  I need new photos of Ian and Bethany for our annual calendars I made each fall.  I decided that John will be added to the family calendar beginning in January so I needed photos of him as well.

I thought for a 20 minute photo shoot that we did okay.  I love the photos of Ian and many of those of Bethany & John together.  And of course these two cut solo photos of Bethany - above and John - below.

I managed to get two good photographs of Ian and Bethany together.  In this photo I think they look a great deal alike.

And as we were wrapping up, Bethany snapped a couple of photos of Doug and I together.  I especially liked the photo below.

Please do go over to the Bitten By the Bug 2 blog and check out the Design Team's cats and dogs projects, and to congratulate our new Design Team members!!

Defense Prompt Leads to Fun Layout

Hello everyone.  Today's layout is, of course, one of my LOAD 513 layouts.  The daily LOAD prompt (again they are all from the board  game Clue, or deal with mysteries) was a motive for a crime.  Last Saturday the motive was self-defense.  

I was at a loss for what to do with the self-defense prompt, but I saw several great ideas in the LOAD project gallery.  One of my favorites - someone took a photo of her facial care products and called that her self-defense against aging.  I wasn't as creative.  

I went digging through my photo stash and found this funny photo that Aaron photo-shopped of himself.  I am guess this was based on an X-man movie character. 

During his college years, and shortly there after, Aaron took a series of photos where he is impersonating different characters... JFK, James Bond, a Battlestar Galactica bridge officer, etc.  I took three of those photos and added three of my favorite "Aaron" photos - Aaron teaching, Aaron and Crissie, and Aaron, Bethany, and Ian with Chip and Dale at Disney, and created a this fun, cartoon-ish layout.

I like that even though I used a digital program to scrap this layout, I could still personalize the voice balloons.   I enjoyed coming up with the caption, "Take that, Captain Slime Pants!"

This is a close up of the Aaron photos as well as the hings I added between two of the photographs.

Thanks for stopping by today and checking out my cartoon layout - Defender of the Plant Earth!  This is not my normal style of scrapping, but it was fun to create.

Defining a Generation Through Music

Hello everyone, TGIF!!  I did it again today... I put off the planned post in favor of my latest LOAD 513 layout.  This layout was so thought provoking and fun that I ended up actually turning it into a four page layout.  The first two pages are featured here today and I plan to only tell you about pages three and four.

Thursday's LOAD 513 was a weapon from the Clue game - the candlestick.  In an effort to come up with an idea, I was typing my stream of consciousness - Candlestick, menorah, burning the candle at both ends, burning out, jack jumped over the candlestick.... You get the idea.  When I reached "Jack jumped over the candlestick" I thought of Don's McLean's song, "American Pie" and the reference to JFK in "Jack jumped over the candlestick" lines.

American Pie took me to the thought of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" - a list of historical and cultural events in Joel's lifetime - all but 11 years, also my lifetime.  And then, because I couldn't just pick an idea and go with it, I started thinking of about music that defines different eras or events in my life time.  The sixties and seventies were full of anti-war and peace songs, one of my favorites being P.F. Sloan's "Eve of Destruction", released in 1965.  In May 1970 four student protester's were killed by National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio.  That fall Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released Stephen Still's epic "Ohio" - better known by the name "Four Dead in Ohio".

In 1971 Don McLean released "American Pie", a musical poem that details music history of the 50's and 60's, with cultural and political references included.  McLean never really calls anyone by name, but the Music that died was Buddy Holly, The King was Elvis, the Marching Band that took the field was the Beatles, etc.  Jack Flash jumping over the candlestick - where this all started - was the assignation of President Kennedy.  When asked what the song meant, McLean once replied, "It means I will never have to work again!"  He was probably right!!

Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" is a highly percussive song from 1989.  The song was written because a student told Joel that his generation was inheriting a world that was a mess.  Joel thought about it and realized that the world has always been a mess - We didn't start the fire - and that it would continue to be so.  Good point.

These four songs - and yes, there could be others, I feel define my generation socially and historically.  I grew up in the 60's and 70's, watching in wonder the Civil Rights movement, the anti war protests, the British Invasion, the cold war, soldiers coming home, the POW's coming home, the American Bicentennial, Watergate and the Nixon administration which robbed us of our innocent belief in government (though truthfully that trust has been sold out LONG before).  I sang along with John Lennon as he Imagined... and with Elton John as he Crocodile Rocked!  We as a Nation protested the Olympic Games hosted by Russia, and we protested Apartheid.  So yes, these four songs do come close to defining my generation....

I used Studio J to digitally scrap these pages.  This was necessary because of the photos I chose to use.  I found era specific photos as well as the candlestick and fire images.  After selecting specific phrases from each of the four songs, I began writing my journaling.  I must say it is very difficult to cover this topic in one journaling block!

I enlarged the journaling for you so that you can understand the difficulty of fitting this information onto the pages.

I truly enjoyed researching and scrapping these pages.  Page three and four feature the same "papers" and colors, but no photos.  Just a title, a couple of embellishments, and the lyrics to the four songs.  Do you know HOW LONG American Pie is?  Two full columns in very small font!

If you would like to see this entire layout larger, just click on the photo below and it will open in a new window.

One last note, one of the funny things about my LOAD 513 experience?  I am sort of missing the boat.  It is supposed to inspire quick layouts from the prompt.  Well, clearly this was not a quick layout... And even though I am doing LOAD my way, I am having a great time with this!

I hope some of you might consider joining me in the next LOAD adventure - because I WILL do this again!

Life Lessons I Learned From Scarlett O'Hara

Hey-o everyone!!  I had a completely different post planned for you today, but I decided to bore you with yet another LOAD 513 layout - because I had so much fun with this one.  Yesterday's prompt was the "Miss Scarlet" character card from Clue.  A lot of people used red on their pages or embarrassing moments, etc.  But I went for the original "Miss Scarlet", Scarlett O'Hara-Hamilton-Kennedy-Butler!   I am assuming that I do not have to add that Scarlett is the main character in the Gone With The Wind saga.... If you did not already know that, sign off of your computer right now and go to the nearest library!!

As I contemplated Scarlett O'Hara (for several hours, btw), I realized that even though I do not like her as a person (or would not if she were a person), there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from the way the character lived her life.  Both positive and negative influenced lessons.

I did a Google search on Scarlett O'Hara and found a lot of photos, character analysis, and funny comments.  The photos from the movie and having read the books, helped me compile my list of life lessons.  Without further ado:

I am not going to comment on every lesson listed above, but I am going to mention a couple.  As obsessed as Scarlet was with Tara, she was the sister who saved the plantation and the family, admittedly through scheming and hard work.  If we get rid of that scheming element, home and family are very, very important and are worth working to save - And that was a good lesson.

I confess, without the corset photo I would not have thought of the good underwear lesson. But hey, we do need quality underwear to hold all of parts where they are supposed to be instead of where gravity tries to place them!

Finally I would like to mention "Fiddle-dee-dee".  I always thought Scarlett was being dismissive when she said this.  My thoughts on that phrase have developed with age... I think she was saying "don't tell me it won't work, don't tell me I can't do this, don't try to hold me back...."  If nothing else, through most of the book/movie, Scarlett believes in herself and her ability to get what she wants.  As women, we can learn from that.  Believe in yourself!  Trust yourself!

I hope you enjoyed my Scarlett layout.  I add the photo able so that you could see the circle stitching... This is a great way to add texture to card stock/backgrounds.

To see this layout larger, click on the photo below.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out Miss. Scarlett today!

Struttin' It Like a Peacock

Hello everyone.  I have another LOAD 513 layout to share with you today.  The prompt for this day was Mrs. Peacock.  It was suggested that we could use literal Peacocks, use the color peacock, use feathers, etc.  I started thinking about Peacocks and I came up with the idea of a peacock strutting and showing off his feathers.... And that thought took me to our family peacock - Mr. Aaron!

All three of my children have very unique, fun personalities.  Aaron is very outgoing and charismatic, Bethany is a social butterfly, and Ian is more introverted, but very caring and funny.  When thinking in terms of Peacocks, Aaron's sense of "acting like himself" presents many opportunities to strut his feathers.

I looked through my photos and grabbed a few current photos of Aaron to use on this layout.  I could have gone back in time and found photos of his crazy actions that would have been vastly amusing and come closer to making my point of him being the Peacock, but those photos have already been scrapped.

Creating this Peacock layout made me realize that I need to do two more layouts - one each for Bethany and Ian, describing their personalities and uniqueness.   In fact, I should probably do more layouts about our family as individuals and less events.  Gives me something to think about.... One more good lesson learned though the LOAD class.

Thanks for stopping by today.