I love when someone gives me an idea and that idea sparks my creativity.  This LO combines 2 challenges.  The first is from Scrap Our Stash.  Use Red, White and Blue as your LO colors. The other is Club CK Issue Challenge to have a 'hidden something' on the LO.

I come from a family of HUGE baseball fans.  I have many, many baseball pictures to someday turn into scrapbook pages.  This one was from the RedSox/Cubs game at Wrigley Field in 2005.  Both teams are red, blue and white.  Perfect.  Busy patterned paper?  Hidden journaling. Done!  I have plenty of Cubs embellishments, but none of the Red Sox, so I printed the flags from the internet, cut them out and made the banner.  The journal tag is a large baseball sticker.  I left the cellophane backing on, cut around it and wrote on it instead. I used a smaller baseball sticker as the pull tab.  I added red and blue brads to help move the eyes around the page.  Overall, I'm really happy how this turned out.  Thanks for the ideas!

A few new things

Not very much time to scrap over the last few days.  I spent so much time helping Evan while he was working on his Book of Snickers, that I didn't get anything of my own finished.  That's ok.  It was time well spent and worth every moment.

I did manage to get these 2 LOs completed.  Both use sketches, and both were inspired by the BPC classes I am taking.  MotherLOAD and Design Challenges.

MotherLOAD week 4 assignment- Use PP and items you've been "saving" for the perfect time to use them.  Design Challenge #7-Use bold PP on a multi photo LO.

This first one uses Sketchy Thursdays 7/21 sketch. I love the sketch and thought it would be easy for me to use.  Boy was I wrong.  It took me a long time to finish it.  I was having a hard time trying to make it work.  I thought about starting over, but I've never done that before and wasn't going to start now.  I decided to walk away for a while.  I came back to it, added the paper strips and title and left it at that.  I like it more than I thought would.  A great challenge for me!

This next one uses the 7/21 sketch from Sassy Li'l Sketches.  Another awesome sketch.  Had an easier time with this one, but I wasn't sure about using so many bold PP.  I thought maybe it was too busy.  I decided to run with it.  It's a fun and playful LO.  I'm happy with the results.

Under the Gun-Sketchy Thursdays Entry

There are so many other things I should have been doing...But I did this instead.

Sketchy Thursdays entry for 7/20

The cut the watermelon out of the paper plates I bought for his birthday party.

Outside of My 12x12 Box

I have so many ideas swirling around my head.  It's like little voices telling me what to scrap next!  I'm taking two Big Picture Classes right now, both of which are keeping me busy and challenged.  The first is The MotherLOAD, taught by Lain Ehman.  So far it's a small homework assignment each week, (like cleaning your scrap desk) one photo a week (Yikes! A self portrait!), and one LO a week, but she's gearing us up for the LOAD in September.

This is the LO from Week 1.  "Why do you scrap"?

My inspiration came from The Book of Me challenge on Club CK

This is a LO I did for "How do you scrap" in week 2

 The second class is Design Challenges, taught by Elizabeth Dillow.  Talk about thinking outside my box! I've now created a LO using a photo as my canvas.

And created my first LO without a photo! The challenge was to use symbols as inspiration.  

This was pretty funny.  I thought I'd ask my older son how many symbols he knew.  He knew more than I thought!  Some of his responses are clever.  So now I have his handwriting and his responses saved.

Sometimes, challenges can be stressful.  It can be hard trying to come up with new ideas and new ways to think about scrapping. For some reason, these have been just the opposite.  These challenges have really let my creativity take over.  I like it when that happens.

Technique Tuesday

This is not really a technique, but a fun and easy theme album idea.  I had taken a class at Archiver's that got me started, then I expanded the theme to work for me.  Every year for their birthdays, I have professional pictures taken of my boys.  Every year they have school pictures taken.  Every year, there is a first day of school.  Why not put all these pictures in the same place?

First, I keep it simple.  The only supplies I use are CS, 2PP a border strip, stickers letters or chipboard letters, and the occasional embellishment. That's it.  Every layout is a 2 page layout.  Same supplies on both pages.  One page has one PP 1 1/2" wide, the other has 2 PP.  The bottom one is 2" wide, the top one is 1 1/2" wide.  I don't even line them up to match.

Some years I have more first day of school pictures that require a 2 page layout.  Some years there are only enough for one page. I've still been able to arrange the pages, so they line up by year.

I begin with the birthday picture because it come first for us.  I try to pull colors from the shirt as best as I can.  I always mat the picture so it stands out more.  The PP is 1 1/2" wide.

It's companion page is the fist day of school because it comes next.  I only had a few pictures, so it was only one page, and worked nicely with the birthday picture.  Notice the addition of the second PP which is 2"wide.

and the addition of a quote sticker

Here is the 2 page spread. 

Next is the school picture layout.  I use both the picture and the class picture.  This is the original design from the class at Archiver's.  In both this layout and the previous layout, I changed the orientation of the left page from horizontal to vertical.

Here is a close up of the journal tag and the right page

Lastly, here is a layout of both pages horizontal.   I had more pictures of the first day of school this year, so it became a 2 page spread.

 another quote sticker added to the bottom, and 2 PP on the left side page.

I like having this album.  It's easy to keep up.  It's current and shows their changes and growth.  I usually work on it right after I receive the school pictures, then I put it away until the next year.    My older son likes to keep the class picture in his room until the new one arrives, so I leave a place for it in the album.

I hope I've given you an idea to use.  If not for school pictures, for something else.