Boy

I had to put this page in before we were finished with our 30 days of layouts. It's got to be one of my favorite portrait pages of all times, I loved the pictures so much that it made the page really easy to do!

My background is just plain green cardstock. The orange polka dot and the brown plaid is scenic paper route. The green polka dot and the stripe is Bo Bunny. All the stickers are from a Bo Bunny sticker sheet, they matched my pictures perfectly! I spelled Ethans name using doodlebug button letters. 

The brown frog and green flower are felt shapes I got from Fancy Pants a long time ago. Again I mounted my stickers on chipboard. The orange ribbon is from American Crafts and the fibers and green ribbon are from All My Memories. I also used some brown snaps from We R Memory Keepers and some matching buttons. 

Posting these pages has been a lot of fun for me, I have had a great time looking through my albums and stirring up some of my old memories! Sure makes me miss my chunky little babies though! 

Keep an eye out for our upcoming page kit giveaway! 

Ridin the Rails

One of the best rides at Disneyland would be Big Thunder Mountain Railroad! There are so many fun things to see and take pictures of as you wait in line. Our whole family loves this ride, and sometimes are even pretty specific on who they will ride with. In these pictures my son wanted to ride with his Uncle Patrick, and  informed him that they had to scream, but not some lame girly scream, he wanted to scream like men! I was lucky enough to sit in front of them so I got to listen to the low pitched screaming throughout the whole ride! It was so funny and I will never forget it!

I went searching online for an idea for this page and found the perfect idea, so I scraplifted it. I'm not sure where I even saw it now, it has been years, but as soon as I saw the mountains and the railroad track I knew I wanted to that with my page too. The railroad ties are small popscicle sticks, I cut the rounded ends off of the top and bottom using wire cutters. That was a messy project because it shot little wooden pieces all over my kitchen, I was finding them for weeks, then I stained  the fronts and side with acrylic stain. The track is just made out of gray paper, which I cut first then arranged my ties in the pattern to match.

It was tricky glueing this, there was a lot of shifting of railroad ties, and maybe even a little swearing was involved. But once it was done it was so cute! My next step was creating my mountain, which is just a piece of paper that I tore to make it look rugged at the top then chalked with my Pebbles crafting chalk. 

I used plain colored rust cardstock for my background. All the pattern paper is from Rusty Pickle, as well as the sticker sayings and the sticker letters used in my title. For my title I used burlap that I stained using my distressing ink. The blue strip down the center is just a piece of denim and I attached it with metal brackets from We R Memory Keepers. The word "The" is done with scrabble letters. I mounted the sticker letters on black so they would stand out, also because it made them easier to glue to the fabric. The lasso is just made with thin twine.

Because I had so many cute pictures and so many cute embellishments I made a half page to go in the center. You have seen this done on an earlier post, it is such a great idea! I distressed a lot of this page so that it would look  more rugged. and all the metal embellishments you see are We R Memory Keepers.  

This page was fun! It took a long time to do it, but was so worth it when I was done! 

California!

 I really love they way they have updated the California Adventures park these days--it feels much more like an actual Disney park now than it used to.  But back when they had the huge letters that spelled California, we used to have quite a bit of fun with them.

One morning as we waited for the park to open, we decided to get some fun pictures in the letters.  I believe these pictures were taken just about a year before they removed them.  I had the kids pose in or around each letter and snapped away!  The pictures turned out really cute and presented me with the problem of fitting them all on one layout (I couldn't very well have a page that stopped short of spelling the whole word...)

 
The paper, ribbon and chipboard letters I used are all from We R Memory Keepers--the Diner collection.  I love We R Memory Keepers coordinating stuff--the colors are great and this particular collection's colors really worked with the photos.

My sister used Adobe Photoshop Elements to stitch two pictures into one panoramic shot of the whole word.

 I used the big chipboard letters to spell out the word "California" and a bunch of various white rub on letters to add a word that started with each letter to the block it was in--preferably something that had something to do with our trip.  For some of the lighter colored blocks I chalked some darker color onto the paper before adding letters so it would show up a little better.

I put the letters in proximity to the picture with the same letter.  Luckily since the park wasn't open yet I didn't get any guff from the kids about taking all the pictures--they were nice and cooperative, even enjoying trying to figure out how to pose differently for each letter.

I had seen many pages with this color blocking idea and just loved it.  It allowed me to make the page colorful, use lots of different patterns of paper (although just small pieces of each, so I didn't really use that much paper when all was said and done) and I was able to fit a LOT of pictures on one layout.

I especially love this page now that all those letters have been taken down.  It's fun to see the differences in the parks over the years and my kids have been lucky enough to get to grow up and experience each new thing as it came along.  Have I mentioned that I really love Disneyland lately?

My Family loves In-N- Out burger!!! Before it came to Utah we always looked forward to stopping there on our way to Disneyland. I wanted to make sure I took pictures of all the vacation, not just Disneyland, even if we did look a little weird taking pictures in a burger joint!

I had a lot of fun scrapbooking this page! I paperpieced the title by just going on line and finding the image. I sized it the way I wanted and traced it onto tracing paper. I use carbon paper to trace the image onto the different papers I want to use and then layered it.

I just used plain white paper for my background. The yellow arrow paper and the red checkered is from a foil pad I got from Hobby Lobby a long time ago, I can't remember the brand of paper or the name of the pad. I used the cricut to cut my palm trees. The hamburger is an embossable from We R Memory Keepers, I paper pieced the cup and the fries. The word yum is done using foam letters from Adorn it. The little life tile at the top is a paper clip piece from Heidi Grace. 

See? There are fun pages to make even with pictures as simple as eating a hamburger!!!

Gettin Dirty!

We took the kids four wheeling with my Aunt and Uncle and had a blast. Now anyone that knows me knows how much I hate dirt! I have always liked my kids to look and smell clean! So I nearly had a stroke when they got back from their long ride on the four wheelers and Parker actually had dirt braces he was so filthy! I think it took 3 baths to get them clean, but it sure made for a fun scrapbooking page!!

I love We R Memory Keepers!!! They have the cutest paper! This paper is from their comstock collection, along with the matching ribbon. The orange brackets,  the tag with the word "happy" and chipboard letters used for the word "DIRT" are also part of that same collection.
I made tags to go behind the title out of chipboard and covered them with paper. I used my walnut distressing ink to dirty up the edges of my tags, paper, and brackets.
The "playin in the mud" sticker and the "dign drt" license plate are made by Karen Foster designs.
Unfortunately I don't remember where I got the outdoor tag or the stinky dirty boys fabric sticker.

The poem on the page is something I wrote. I love to write poems, but it is super hard for me to think of them, I usually come up with them when I take showers!!! The best ideas are born in the shower!