Life Outside the Fishbowl

November Pagemap

We have another pagemap challenge for November. Just stop by the store and pick up some items from this month's design team display of the SEI Moravia line and create a layout based on this sketch.   

I didn't follow the sketch exactly this month, taking a few liberties with the overlapping blocks and turning them into a collage. For the circle I pulled out some old circle templates and traced around one with a thin marker. I used my line for a journaling guide.

Just 18 days left....

Which reminds me. I need to order my "I'd rather be in Forks" sticker for my car ...

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Volturi Featurette

Trailer Park | MySpace Video

Design Inspiration

Now that it's November my mailbox is filled with all sorts of catalogs. I have no idea why we keep getting sent these things - we never order from catalogs. Anyhow, add those to all the magazines I have (mostly "home porn" as Tom likes to tease me -- House Beautiful, Kitchen Remodeling, etc.).  Why not put these to good use, besides filling the recycling container?

So, my challenge for Method Playground is this - take a magazine or catalog and find something inspiring. A color, shape or pattern. A page layout, a font - anything and use it to inspire a layout.

I took a page from a Martha Stewart Living magazine:

And used it to inspire the collection of embellishments to the left of my photo:

You've got until Nov. 15th to link your work to my original post here. Now go!

Halloween

So we had a very small crowd here for Halloween - very disappointing. I'm wondering if there's some inverse relationship between the amount of candy I buy and the number of trick-or-treaters.

Rachel wore her Ahuru (?) Star Trek costume and Thomas reverted back to Star Wars. And, traditionally, we took too long to get the pumpkins carved & set up and the kids in their costumes to get any good outside pics. So, instead here they are in their Star Trek ones from last week's Boo at the Zoo. She spent a lot of time telling everyone that she's the only person in a red shirt who doesn't die....

I picked up a fun Martha Stewart pumpkin "tatoo" kit on sale at Michaels. Gotta say, it was easy to use and came out great.  While Tom likes the traditional jack o' lantern, I like to mix things up.

Almost Halloween

One more day. The kids can't wait. I'm hoping that I not only have enough candy, but that I can keep myself out of the remaining butterfingers. Sigh....

So to keep my mind off the candy stash upstairs, I put scrapped an old photo of Thomas from Halloween when he was two. Such a cutie. I really have a hard time scrapping older photos, mainly because I cringe when I look at them -- they were from my old film point-and-shoot that I got shortly after college. Crappy quality for sure

This photo, in particular. Unfortunately I don't have many photos from that Halloween and this was one of the best. This was before I realized you need to take a photo inside or before it's dark. Duh. Here's the original - not anything to be proud of ;)

I had to play with it quite a bit in Elements. I ran Coffee Shop Barista's action and adjusted the saturation, among other things. And here's the result. Ahhhh... much better.

Halloween Layout

Here's a double-page Halloween layout I did for Scrapbooks Plus this month. The photos are from Rachel's costume parade from preschool last fall. I *love* the chandelier I made with the Spook Alley cartridge for Slice.

Just a quick layout

Before I take my iMac to get more RAM. So I can finally load Snow Leopard - and upgrade to PS Elements 8. Whee!!!

We had a busy, busy weekend and the pics are still on the cameras waiting for me to download them .... so in the meantime I'll share a layout I did for Scrapbooks Plus this month with the Jillibean Soup papers:

Using Sketches

This month the Scrapbooks Plus DT was given a sketch to use for a layout as part of our monthly contest. You can see what we all did with the sketch here (although my tree had fallen down when they took the photo. Argh!).

Sketches are great tools when you're planning a layout. But don't be afraid to make them work for you. Turn them, flip them, use one element or idea.

Here's the sketch we were given:

I had vertical photos I wanted to use. No problem - I just rotated the sketch. Then, I decided to flip it, like this:

And here's my finished layout:

Paper, journaling spot and alphas are from Jillibean Soup. The fun fabric tree is from Prima's Donna Downey collection.

Revisting Our 1st Challenge

We're starting our third year at Method Playground and welcoming our fabulously talented new Playground Girls -- Amanda Berens, Kimmy Jaster, Michelle Neddo, Miwako Shinohara, and Helga Vergara. Check out their blogs & galleries - they have some truly beautiful projects.

So, we're revisiting our very first challenge - creating patterned paper from plain old cardstock.

Here's what I did:

The orange cardstock was sprayed with Maya Mist. I used a Tim Holtz mask to make the spider webs. Now had I realized that I was going to use the overlay before I sprayed, I would've probably positioned them in different areas. C'est la vie.

The black cardstock is layered with black die cut shapes cut from the same paper. I used the Spook Alley cartridge & my  Slice.

The overlay is from Fancy Pants, tag from Reminisce, paper from Making Memories, and of course, I've got my Thickers.

World Card Making Day

In honor of world card-making day today, here's two I did this week with the October Scrapbooks Plus kit - all from Jillibean Soup. Totally fun paper - a mix of colors and kraft. Yum!