National Scrapbooking Day = lots of hard work

Saturday was National Scrapbooking Day, which somehow translated into "weekend" for me. Wow! Did I do a lot?! I've decided that after this weekend I'm doing a little reset on the whole project challenge. I'm pretty certain that I've done about 50 projects and have cheated a couple of times on the thing anyway, but we're pretty much equal so it's whatever.

To start the weekend off I did the Scrapbooksteals.com online crop challenges.

Challenge 1/Turquoise 1 by guest sketcher Misty Buck

on the hunt

I used BasicGrey papers for this - an older kit called Origins. I bought it on clearance right after falling in love with their Oliver collection. This is the first time I used it and think I may have fallen in love with BG all over again! The buttons were stash, but some are covered with stickers from the kit. Thickers are Amy Tangerine. Mini Alphas are Jenni Bowlin.

Challenge 2: Turn back time. Pics had to be from before the individual was 25 or younger.

Start them young

This is almost all Amy Tangerine Sketchbook, including the fussy cut flowers. There's one piece of misted paper from me testing out the mists when they came in (I did say that I cheated on the challenge, right?!). The mini alphas are Jenni Bowlin. The Thickers are also Amy Tangerine. Notable for this page - the pink card in back swirls out to show more journaling. This pic was taken at my grandma's just after Papa died, the grown-ups were making arrangements and I was busily using one of my Christmas presents. Context is interesting for the future but isn't the point of the page so I wanted it hidden.

Challenge 3: Sassy Spring. Needed to have spring colors and a flower.

I think you're camera perfect

This one is all Echo Park This & That. I love this collection. It very much complements the colors I put on the boys. It was a fun challenge to work with - incorporating a flower (these are from Prima) into the page, especially with such masculine papers, but I felt that the flower just spoke spring and not girlie. 

Challenge 4: Stitching. The inspiration piece was a quilt block and the final project had to have some sort of stitching on it. 

Ties that bind

I literally cut up my oldest scraps into 2x2 in squares and stitched them (and the picture) together with my machine (a first using that for me!). Then, remembering some older quilts I've seen in this fashion I "joined" corners with purple string or with brads (stash). The journaling tag's brown border was scrap lefttover from this week's MCM and I think it's Fancy Pants. The inside is more misting practice. Mini alphas are Jenni Bowlin. Thickers are American Crafts.

Then I moved on to a couple that Echo Park had.

NSD Challenge 3: scrap lift from the design team. I lifted the idea of the quilt on a card from Kandis Smith's project.

remember 2012

This & That makes another appearance here in everything except the machine stitching and those mini alphas (Jenni Bowlin). Having already sewn something together this weekend I thought that her card design would be a good opportunity to practice my stitching abilities!

NSD Challenge 4: follow the sketch

my boy

More This & That here. Flowers are Prima Sprites, some have EP brads and others have stickers at their center.

Then some more one from BasicGrey. ETA: I had originally only done one challenge, but Scientist took the boys for a walk so I decided to squeeze out a couple more before bedtime!

Follow the sketch.

cheese

I combined two for this one: stitch on the page (I'm getting pretty good at that!) and use mixed fonts.

passionately driven

Again, more Origins. The stitching here is really subtle, and it needed to be with all the paper mixing I did! It's a border around the two smaller pics. Then the mixed fonts - the word "passionately" is from the Origins stickers and "driven" are foam Thickers. 

The regular Paper Girls Challenge Blog Challenge (#7) was to make an Artist Trading Card (aka ATC), taking inspiration from their blog hop.

springtime themed ATC

I'd never done an ATC before so this was a little weird for me. Apparently they get traded around by crafters, almost like baseball cards. Now to find a card swap I can join so I can get more practice with these guys! Everything from this card was from my scrap folder, but I'm fairly certain that the card itself was Fancy Pants Design.