Two Peas Farewell

Seems so wrong to see this here. How can it be that Two Peas will soon no longer be? It's truly the end of an era. I've been around since the day they first opened 15 years ago. I had a weird fascination with these stickers of bald little babies (Bryce & Madeline, anyone?) and Two Peas was the only place that carried them.

Years later, it was Two Peas that pulled me out of a creative funk. It was something to look forward to, escape to, aspire to. Becoming a Garden Girl was one of the most out-of-the-blue things that has ever happened to me. It wasn't a design team you could apply or and we jokingly compared it to the mafia - you don't find them, they find you. I've learned so much about design, technology, video and teaching over the years. Two Peas pushed me creatively, fed my story-loving soul. I will always be grateful for the opportunities that came from being a Garden Girl and most of all for allowing me to share my story and ideas with kindred spirits.

Nothing good or bad stays the same. Today it was the good.

Scraptastic Kit Love

Back in February I was asked to be part of the design team over at Scraptastic Kit Club. It was good timing since I had been thinking about the premise of kit clubs and how much simpler it would be to create with one box of supplies instead of digging through every item I own to put something together.

In March, I chose the It's My Life kit and Add-On. I loved every single included in this kit and especially the colors. One of my favorite part of putting layouts together is playing with color. I created this quick grid layout by cutting up one of the patterned papers. It gave me a place to layer bits and pieces, journal and add photos.

Sewing the grid with aqua thread gives the white background a pop of color. Alternating flat and dimensional pieces adds texture to the layout.

Filing in blank spaces with stamped text adds a handmade touch to pre-printed papers. 

I think the best part of Scraptastic is that you can choose between two kits every month. That way you get to decided what works best for your style and photos. That combined with great customer service and the fact that you can quit at any time without a fee, make joining risk free.

Below are the sneaks for the April kits. On the left is Worth Remembering, and on the right is Let Me Go.

This month I chose the kit on the left, Worth Remembering which is surprising because I usually stay away from pink and flowery elements. But I have these great photos of my niece and I've wanted to include more of her stories in my scrapbooks. It's this type of flexibility to chose a kit, that makes Scraptastic top notch! To find out more about signing up for a monthly subscription you can go to their site here.

Memory Keeping Mondays

A new year and some great changes over in the Garden at twopeasinabucket.com! They have just announced a list of all brand-new weekly classes for 2012 and best of all - they are all FREE!  Class is in session every Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the week. You can check them out here.

I'm happy to announce that I'll be one of the Garden Girls teaching the Memory Keeping Mondays series. My first video will be up on Monday, January 16th and I'm equally nervous and excited to share it with you. I enjoyed the step-by-step process of showing exactly how/why I design pages the way I do, but it is not an easy task. Once you film a segment, you can't change your mind and for me that is so hard! That aside, it was worth the effort and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I had making it.

In the meantime I've got this layout that just went up at twopeasinabucket.com to share. I got the idea for this page from my travel journal. While on a cruise last year, I jotted a list of things that Nico had done for the first time on this vacation. They varied from swimming with the dolphins, to vocabulary words and even new foods that he tried. It's amazing how much children learn and absorb when they travel. And at 5, Nico is constantly questioning and learning about everything around him.  We are always trying to drive the point home with him to value experiences over material things. It something that we value as a family and we hope to pass that on to Nico. I included this on the sticker at the very top of the layout to remind him.

I started with the big camera sticker + filmstrip (October Afternoon) and built the rest of the page around it. The idea for the huge envelope came from wanting to stick to a "memorabilia" and "list" type theme. I added a long title (love those) and some flair pins from American Crafts to decorate the page.


The list part of the layout includes all of the journaling. I didn't have matching stamps or stickers for this space so I decided to just use my computer and try to match the color and font as closely as I could. I like how it adds a pop of color to the graph paper. 

For a complete list of products use, click here.

My two favorite finishing touches are the honeycomb paper (with some hexagons cut out) and the Tim Holtz filmstrip coming out of the camera. I think they reinforce the theme and add that little special 'something.' 

Coming up...a layout and Doodlebug's brand new Sweet Cakes line. Here's a peek...

Back to Life

It's over. All the holidays are done now. I'm going to miss it - the tree, the presents, having all of the family over. Yet somehow it's always nice to go back to the routine. I've been scrapping and blogging a lot less and I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

I was just putting all of my Christmas layouts away and I realized that I hadn't shared them here. First up is a sketch layout I did for the Bella Blvd blog this weekend. These pictures are from one of my attempts at a Christmas card picture years ago. No easy feat with a wiggly, 15 month old who wanted nothing more than to eat the stuffed animal in his pocket. This was back when Nico was (almost) bald and had just 4 little teeth. And as much as I love having a 6 year-old, sometimes I miss those baby days.

The sketch called for four photos and lots of borders - just my kind of page!  I added the huge circles across the top to break up all of the solid red. By using the larger "presents" patterned paper for the circles on top of the smaller gingham pattern, it give the design a magnifying glass effect. The title was embellished with a few jewels from Doodlebug and a line of text.

I made a bunch of these little gift card bags for all of the teacher, coaches, and friend gifts we gave out this year. I cut the bags and snowflakes out with the Silhouette Cameo and embellished them with Doodlebug paper and stickers. The mini clothespins are from Maya Road. Nico and I sat down one night and cranked out 8 of these in an hour!

This is a layout that I made for the twopeasinabucket.com gallery. I deleted the large photo of the layout, but you can still view it in my gallery here. It's about Nico and his love of all Christmas carols. What he doesn't understand is that we are not a musical/singing type of family. And somehow we ended up with this boy who is constantly singing. I remember taking these photos years ago and when I saw that October Afternoon record, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it!

And now I'm off to find a great pocket page to put all of these photo Christmas cards away! It's the very last thing I need to put away this holiday season. I hope you had yourself a Merry Little Christmas (or any other holiday you may celebrate)!

SUPPLY LIST (Click on the photo for availability):

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October Afternoon Boarding Pass and A WINNER!

And the winner of the 2Peas Garden Girl Blog Hop is.....

Elizabeth said...

Beautiful layout as always! Am definitely going to use a garland for my December Daily! For me Christmas and Thanksgiving are a tie! I couldn't pick just one LOVE them both!

November 1, 2011 9:33 AM

Congrats Elizabeth! Just send me your email address and I'll get your $20 gift certificate code right to you. Thanks everyone for playing along!

And now on to a page I posted on 2 Peas yesterday...

I love family vacations. Showing Nico different parts of the world, relaxing, exploring and just spending time together in different places - these are some of my favorite memories.  I keep a travel journal and fill it with stories about our adventures. And some day I'll get every single one of those stories down in our scrapbooks. For now, I like to do highlight pages that cover an entire trip in a 2-page spread.

This layout is copyright twopeasinabucket.com

October Afternoon's Boarding Pass was perfect for the generic travel theme I was looking for. Even though these stories are from our recent cruise, I wanted to keep the focus on the photos and travel diary theme instead of the "nautical" theme - that page will probably come later.

 

I thought this camera and polaroid would make a great focal point and a place to ground my title.

Lots of journaling with some of Nico's firsts (dolphin swim, playing in a real fort, learning how to shoot a 

cannon, learning to snorkel, exploring Old San Juan) - lots of random things that he experienced. I want to remember those things and with this layout I can!

SUPPLY LIST: (click on the photo for details) 

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