From smiles to lobsters??

On Monday I mentioned that I had had quite a lot of time on my hands last week which I used for some serious kit bashing.

My June Counterfeit Kit Challenge, All A Flutter has proved easy to use and surprisingly versatile.I love it!

So making the most of my time and looking around for inspiration, I turned once again to the calendar to see what thoughts it could generate. Have you tried this yet? I added the fun widget to my blog there on the right if you want to have a look. There are literally dozens and dozens of ideas on there just waiting to be discovered. from quirky days to celebrate to famous birthdays - a bit of lateral thinking and it's amazing what you can come up with. Why not give it a try!

Anyway, coming back to the main point of this long and somewhat rambling post, the thing is that on June 15th I saw that it was not only "Smile Power Day" but also "National Lobster Day". Surely a gift for someone thinking out of the box a bit!

First off, I thought of Cameron's beautiful smile, which is featured in so many of the older photos I have of him that I'm trying to use up. And this layout shows how great this kit is - what looked at first glance to be a really summery, feminine kit was so easy to use for this boy layout. OK, so I included a flower but with the less feminine colours, I thought I could get away with it! I added in the grey letters to the kit and found a little corner for three brads. A simple message to Cam to remind him that his smile is very powerful and I'm satisfied with the result.

Next up was "Lobster Day". It immediately reminded me of our wonderful holiday some years ago in Nova Scotia and all the lobster we ate. Every. Single. Day. 

Here in Europe, lobster is something rather extravagant, terribly expensive and only to be eaten in the finest restaurants on very special occasions. 

But over there in NS? Just your average everyday snack. It was funny to go into a small diner-style cafe and have a lobster burger for less than a Big Mac would cost you over here! Funny but wonderful.

I made a huge album for this holiday when we first came back, and in the early days of my scrapping, so it was nice to revisit this time and make a new layout with my new style and focussing on just this tiny aspect of our trip.

For this layout, I grabbed a piece of cardstock, added in the letters from Crate Paper's Emma's Shoppe and used a whole load of brads - so many in fact that I fished out more and more from my little pot so that I could add a few here and there - but everything else was in the kit. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't put the kit together myself!

So, that makes 4 layouts and 33 brads in total, although my brad bowl is still overflowing. Mmmm... anyone got any ideas for how to use them all up?

Calendar Inspiration

In my last blog post, I talked about a fun new widget I'd installed on my blog listing special days and famous birthdays. I also talked about a class I did in the past over at BPC based on the great book, The Scrapbooker's Almanac, which takes inspiration from the calendar - special days, birthdays, anniversaries. That got me thinking...

Well, never one to underachieve, I've been at it again!

Thursday last week (14th April) listed "International Moment of Laughter Day" and "Look Up At The Sky Day".

Both of these just screamed, "Lisa pages! Scrap me!"

So I did.

My Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit (still without name, shame), has proved so successful this month and is almost all used up. But not before it helped me with these two layouts.

They were both completed almost exclusively with the kit - I added in a few more brads I think (ever mindful of my objectives from the beginning of the month).

"Look Up At The Sky Day" was perfect for a handful of sky photos which is one of my favourite subjects. I am fascinated by the clouds, the incredible colours, the play of the sun behind the clouds or even buildings. I have dozens and dozens of photos of sky. This couldn't have been more perfect. I even just lifted the day's name directly for my title.

Layouts like this make me happy.

I made a couple of ribbon flowers but would like to ask anyone who has made these how I can avoid getting glue EVERYWHERE! I ended up placing these pearls on the flowers just to cover up the globs of glue that I couldn't get off. Up close, it's not a pretty sight. 

Has anyone got any advice for me?

And then came "International Moment of Laughter Day". Created just to capture gorgeous, sweet, kiddie photos. When I looked through my current crop (all around two years old now!), I had a whole pile of niece and nephew giggles to choose from. But these of the Diva of the family made the final cut as I couldn't imagine how else I would use these super cute shots of the little monster, other than a more abstract topic like this.

Not so sure about the cluster here but I wanted something a bit whimsical not to mention some brads. Simple journalling using the day's name as the basis and finished. 

This layout makes me happy.

Have you noticed a theme here?

Scrapbooking makes me happy. 

Isn't that great?