Chalk It Up Blog Hop

Howdy everyone, Happy End of July! I can't believe that this month is gone already but I'm really excited to particitpate in the August Damask Diva's Bolg Hop!

If you came from Scrappin Madge's awesome blog, you are in the right place.  If you have jumped here and just discovered our blog hop, feel free to check the list at Damask Diva's blog to find the complete list of blog hop participants.”

This months hop is very exciting because we are using the Chalk It Up paper pack from the new CTMH Annual Inspiration Book that will be live tomorrow. There is so much to see in this catalog that I can hardly stand it, and of course I want to play with it all.

So for my project I have been working on a small mini album for my  cousins oldest who just turned 12 last week. I spent a lot of time with them when she was a wee one and I used to take pictures of her all the time. Then, when I moved I started stealing photos from her mom's facebook account so I could throw this together. 

For this I used the CTMH My Creations Hip Pic Album. This is so, so so cute and easy peasy to work with.

Ta Da!!!

Along with the Hip Pics Album I also used the CTMH Artbooking Cricut cartridge and Cricut Design Space to cut some additional goodies using the Chalk It Up paper pack. Little Miss is a big fan of blues and greens so I tried to maximize the usage of the beautiful blue color in the pack, but I LOVE the doodle art on this paper. For the cover I cut a pennant frame at 4 1/4" by 5 1/2" and slapped it down over her photo, added some Teal Shimmer Trim and then thought "I need to ad more."

So I added the little pennant cut out, some additional pennants and I cut out the phrase "Sassy" also on the Artbooking cart, and glittered it up before adding it.

I felt that I shouldn't really cut down the photo I used for the inside cover so I decided to mat it with the blue/teal chalk bubble paper and I used the beach ball overlay on pg 39 as it really also reminded me of bubbles. Then I used Chalk It Up for matting rest of the pages  as well.

If you'd like to see what the rest of the little album looks like check back this weekend, I'm in the process of editing my first video. Yay!
“The next blog hop participant on the list Jessica Wilson. Hope you have a great time on our hop and checking out all the creations using Chalk It Up. If you get lost, just hop on over to  the Damask Diva's Blog for the full list.”

Chores

Hope everyone has been having a great Saturday so far. I've been doing all kinds of chores. I started my morning doing an in depth cleaning of my living room and must have removed a half a ton of  dust, dirt and of course cat fuzz. Thus, the downside of living in a construction zone with a woolly mammoth of a husband, and 3 cats. I do not contribute in any way to the mess.   I couldn't even type that with a straight face.

My craft room is next *cough* really *cough* I swear!!!

I'm also doing a major update to my blog so if you stop in and see it a mess, I'm hoping to have the majority of my changes completed by Sunday evening.

Another "chore" on my list today was uploading my photos to my PC from our trip to the coast back in May. I know I want to scrap them but I came home and just put my camera case away and have been using my phone to take pictures.  

I took nearly 200 photos with my Canon DSLR and these are just a few of my favorites.

If you are wondering about the "things" sticking up out of the sea of green in the bottom right photo above. Those are Elk antlers and the sea of green are ferns. The big male elk were laying down in this field and that was all you could see of them were their antlers. It was pretty funny.

The trip turned out to be really nice with very little rain, clouds or fog while we were there. This is not usually the case from past experience on the North Coast. Part of our day two of the trip included a visit to Prehistoric Gardens north of Gold Beach, Oregon.  

That big ole brontosaurus was one of the inhabitants that we got to visit. This is a great place for a little bit of a walk and shade on those warmer days. The guy in both of the collages is my woolly mammoth. Doesn't he look good in red?

Well back to my blog updates. Keep checking in and tell me what you think.

July CTMH Blog Hop - Skylark Part Two

All right I'm back. I had some technical difficulties that took me forever to get worked out. Went to get ink for the printer and realized that I was having network issues with the printer. That took me for EVER to get sorted out, or so it seemed. Which of course meant that I could not print photos for layouts. I'm seriously thinking about having Walgreen's or Costco do them in the future.

Then things were looking like they were going well but they were not. I ended up having to take the computer in to have a problem with my memory cleared up. That took forever and just got it back this evening!

That said, finally here's the finished scrapbook layout that I did using the  CTMH Skylark WOTG. I decided that I needed to add a couple more pictures and then add some cute dragonflies from the stamp set using Lagoon Ink, along with the Live in the Moment Stamp. I changed from the Slate in because I felt like there wasn't enough contrast.

These beautiful people are my sister in law Rene and her family. I didn't get to make it over to the Humboldt Coast with them but heck they had so many great pictures I had a hard time choosing which ones I wanted to use.

Because I was having such a good time working on the first layout I decided that would do a second page. I have to admit I'm not really big on "scrapping." I love making cards and the challenge of 3D paper projects but working the the Close to My Heart Workshops on the Go kits make it super easy. I'm actually looking forward to my next layout. Tell me what'cha think, I'm dying to hear from you guys!!!