ladies and gentlemen, the scrappy goodness is back!

I don't know what it is about Fall, but it just brings on the need to scrapbook. Well actually, I know what it is. There were a couple years in a row when we did an annual scrappy retreat in the Fall, in which we'd go up to a friend's cabin in Prescott and eat and play and craft and giggle and eat and play some more. I miss that so much. The hosts were such sweet people and it seemed like everyone who attended had a really fun time--and we got so much done! See my posts from Oct 07 and Oct 08 to see what fun I'm talking about! Anyway, for whatever reason, we don't do it anymore and I really need a substitute. :)

Here's what I did this past weekend.

I totally scrapjacked this one--and I wish I knew who from so I could give them credit. Isn't it the cutest design? I got to pull out my dusty ol' sewing machine for this, which always makes me want to use it more. I am such a slow scrapper. I worked on this simple one for over 4 hours, painting buttons and going thru my paper stash over and over because all I have left is patterned paper and I hardly ever use patterned paper. But in my defense, I was single-parenting it that night while Dan was at work, baking rolls, watching "Smallville" with my kids, putting them to bed, and IM'ing at the same time, so I might have been a little distracted. All's good. I'm happy with it.

OK this one looks crooked but I think it's just the way I scanned it.  It's straight in real life I promise!  I'm not so much a big fan of the 2-pagers any more, but some events lead to lots of pictures and lots to tell and show about them.  Christmas is always 2 pages, at least.  Sometimes it takes 6-10!  I'm trying to scale back, cuz the more pics I take, the more I feel I have to scrap! 

This paper line is made by my personal friend Amber Winward, another gal I met online and became instant friends with.  In fact, we just met for the first time in person a few months ago after being only internet friends for years!  She has a new digital scrapbooking company that you should check out--Lollipop Press. She's such a go-getter and super talented!

 

The fun thing about this one is the stars. You can't really see from this picture, but they look really cool in real life. I cut out stars in cardstock, then covered them in aluminum foil. I then swirled blue and turquoise paint around applying it to the stars. After they were dry, I took the wrong end of my paintbrush and scraped off some of the paint so the shiny aluminum would show through. I thought it was rather ingenious myself. :p

 

This 2-page layout has to do with our Anniversary trip to Snowflake in 09 (which means I'm up to March 09, people!  No more 2 years behind! I'm making progress!) I scrapjacked every single detail of this from a gal named Allison Kimball.  I love the circles and the little pops of color.  She used patterned paper on hers, but I sanded and made this paper and the circles from scratch.  It was way fun and I love how it turned out.  Oh also?  This picture makes me want to color my hair.  It was a great slightly reddish color at the time. . .

Just a quick pic to show you what my table has looked like all weekend:

Cameron and I have been crafting non-stop- - in truth, most of that is him.  He's a creative mess!  Anyway, because our kitchen table looks like this, we had to do this for dinner:

 

Which, I have to tell you, was so fun!  Picnic in the backyard!  And good thing, cuz you can see that grape koolaid was immediately spilled and I was able to just shrug it off and say 'let's eat!'   It wasn't that late, only 5:30 or 6, but for some reason my camera's flash made it look like we were eating in the dark outside.  It was plenty light though.

On a side note, the re-uptake of this hobby has completely taken over reading, so my Book Butterfly reviews will be in short supply this month!