Dragons, Monsters, and a Cookie Spider

Kate brought this home from school. She named it Licorice, and then ate it for her after-homework snack. (I was relieved that she did decide to eat it, rather than keeping it as a friend.  I could see her wanting to do that.)



We were over at the Tracys' recently to practice a song for a special musical number at church. Kate treats the Tracys' house as something like a toy library. This time she borrowed a little Fisher Price dragon that she calls Golden. When we got home, she told me she wanted to write some things about Golden (like she did with her starfish.) She had me draw a picture of Golden which she colored in, and then she wrote this:

by Kate and Mom
note (my mom that is)

We discovered that Golden eats presls [that's pretzels] and cheddar cheese cheese cheese.
Golden is a treasure finder.

(She did ask me how to spell a few words.)



And here's a little "Things I Like" book that Kate made at school.

Written and Illustrated by: Kate AKA Randall (that's Randall from Monsters Inc.)



I like dragins
I like bugs



I like my cornr (this is something about a spot in her classroom. Kate tells me that the bit above that says "Note, how long is this book")
I like giyint squids (I love her spelling. The squid is cute too.)



I like Spore (computer game)
I like zoos



I like me to

I love seeing what she comes up with.

sidewalk chalk layout

Challenge #3 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page about something our family likes to do, and design the layout to represent the activity (say, if you enjoy playing Monopoly together, you could make a page to look like the Monopoly board). I had a hard time picking something. What do we all like to do? LEGO? Reading? I suppose I could take pictures of everyone playing on the computer.

I decided to go with sidewalk chalk.  We have been doing that a lot lately. 



I thought doing the title in chalk would probably fit the requirement of the referential design. I wrote the titles on the sidewalk but then discovered that they were too big to fit in the frame (with my lack of wide angle lens), so I had to bring out a chair to stand on while I took the pictures.



I also made a border with my crayon line, which you can get here.

Grandpa Al (inspiration layout)

Challenge #2 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race. We were supposed to layer one paper on top of another, and then cut out shapes in the top layer so the bottom one showed through. Then add a picture about a family member who inspires you, with 25-50 words of journaling. I decided to do a page about Doug's dad, and got him to do the journaling. (Keeping it under the 50-word limit was tricky!)

Suede Lacing tie
frame from The Paper Drawer,
cantaloupe tracks from Potato Prints

Bottom paper by Megan Farrow (Flergs), top paper by me. Leaf by Anne deJong. Michelle Coleman's stamped alpha. Worn overlay from Something Blue Studios.

(Thanks for your help with this one, Doug!)

our family in...

Challenge #1 of The Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race was to create a layout with six facts about our family. That was the hard part for me--deciding on six things.  

See how I have my head tipped almost exactly the same way in both pictures?  I didn't do that on purpose.  You may also notice that Doug is wearing the same shirt.  That was deliberate.  I love that shirt.

frames: Paper Bag Frames and The Paper Drawer.
flower: The Paper Drawer
stamped dot: Potato Prints
white paper: Masks and Mats
other papers by Megan Farrow (Flergs), Michelle Coleman, and Loretta Labarca.

Could it be... Scrapping?

Seems like a looong time since I've done any scrapbooking.  A little designing, here and there, but I can't remember the last time I made a layout.

Season 6 of The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is starting at NDISB.  I did it a few years ago and had a blast, but haven't felt like I had time to join any of the seasons since then.  This time I thought, what the heck--I do have a lot of things going on, but hey, it'll be fun, and I'll get some scrapping done.  So I'm signed up for the race.  This time the lovely and talented CheleOh is my partner.  Our team name is "Chelena."  (Heh.)

The designers at NDISB have been putting together a prize kit. Bernadette (the coordinator) asked me if I might have one of my cool layered templates that I could contribute. As it happened, I did have one that I'd made a couple of years ago that was used in the store design, but I'd never done anything else with it. Since Theresa just recently did a site re-design, it seemed like a good time to put this template to some other use.



It needed a little cleanup. And then I had to make some instructions with screen shots, and while I was at it I made a layout with it.



Ta da! The race hasn't even started and I've already done a layout.  More to come!

(Update:  Since NDISB has closed, the template is available here.) 

The end of the race

Challenge #11 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to make a layout with wings in it. A lot of people did altered-art style creations where they put wings on their kids. I decided to just use my chickadee drawing.



(Credits here)

Challenge #12 was another "Intersection" (like the collaboration in #2). One partner provided the photos and journaling, and the other partner did the scrapping. The topic was "a major accomplishment." Since I lost my first partner I teamed up with Lukasmummy (Crystal) and sent her some of my Cupboard Under the Stairs pictures. Here's the layout she created:



I like the sparkles!

The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is known as ADSR for short. Doug tells me that this also stands for "Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release." Apparently it's a musical term. Who knew?

That's the end of this race! If you're a digi scrapper, and interested, I would definitely recommend getting in on the next race. It's a lot of fun, and there are cool prizes for each challenge.

Little Artist

Last week Kate saw me working with some paint and wanted to do it too, so I popped my painting shirt on her and let her have some fun. She went through a few sheets of paper and then started making finger-dots on the cardboard that I'd put underneath. She was having a great time and I just had to get some pictures. It's amazing how her eyes look just the same color as the shirt here. I think her eyes are a lot like Doug's--kind of blue-gray, but they change in the light.

Challenge #9 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to do a page in the "altered art" style. That's pretty broad, so I had a little trouble choosing a topic, but then I decided that one of these painting pictures would be perfect.



The watercolor splatters in the background are some that I was playing with a while back and then never really did anything with. (One ended up in my blog border.) They worked so well here that I decided to make a few more and put them up in the store.



(link)

Since my camera is kaput, I'm going to be looking for things I can do with the scanner for a while. Actually I'm lusting after a 40D now, and I think I can probably swing it, but I have to wait and see what Canon says about my camera first.

Cousin Squidge and Cousin Pudge

Challenge #7 of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was a real doozy. I think just about everybody, upon first reading the requirements, experienced something of a sinking feeling. It was a "number crunch" challenge with two parts. I chose to do the first part, "messy," using one paper, two ribbons, three buttons, four glitter doodles, five frames, six pictures, seven alphas, eight flowers, nine staples, and ten random elements, all from one designer. I used all my own stuff, and had to make a few things on the spot for this challenge. Fortunately we could use the same element more than once to make up the required number.



(full credits here)

This was really a challenge. Definitely not my usual style, but it was fun. (Doug was looking at it and said, "This is going to be really busy, isn't it?") The hardest thing was the title. I spent a bit too long on that. I made a paper bag flower that I was really pleased with (it matches the frames). It's going in the April mega kit.

The title requires some explanation. We invented the word "squidge" to describe what Kate would do when she was kind of fussy and squirmy. (Sometimes we call her Squidgeon, or Squidgit.) These pictures were taken three years ago, when we were visiting my family in Ohio. My sister Betsey has this cute little dog, Angie, who is her "baby," so she decided that Kate and Angie were cousins. Hence Cousin Squidge and Cousin Pudge. (Angie has gotten a bit snappish in her old age, so these may be the only pictures we ever get of the two of them together!)

I worked on this one for a few of days, got it done with about an hour to spare before the deadline, and then threw together a layout for challenge #8 in about twenty minutes. Fortunately this one was a lot easier!



A memorable vacation experience, one-word title, black and white photos, journaling incorporating song lyrics, and no travel-related embellishments. Easy, yes? It certainly could have been more elaborate, but it was nice to be able to go minimalist on this one.

So I successfully completed the challenges for the week, but, sadly, I lost my partner. Karin was having internet problems and didn't get hers done. I'm teaming up with somebody else who also lost her partner. I was thinking about just dropping out, since I've got a big project that I'm trying to get finished in the next week or so, but I guess I'll stick with it.

Rice Cooker and Spin-A-Lift

More from The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race! Challenge #5 was to scrap an interview with an inanimate object, so I decided to do our rice cooker, Lucky. We got Lucky in Korea almost twelve years ago, and he's still going strong!



(You can click on the picture to see it bigger.) 보시다시피 means "as you can see." Heh.

Challenge #6 was over at Sweet Shoppe Designs, where they do something called Spin-A-Lift. This is where you take somebody else's layout and rotate or flip it, and then use that composition to create a new layout. For this challenge one team member had to pick a layout from the other team member's gallery to rotate and scraplift, but also reverse the original subject matter. I used this layout of Karin's:



This is her daughter swimming. So I rotated the design clockwise and made a page about Kate not swimming.



(credits here)

Kate keeps looking at this photo and talking about going to the swimming pool. Maybe she doesn't remember how much she hated it. I guess we'll try again this summer.

Pussy Willows and a Tantrum

There are a couple of big pussy willow trees behind our complex. I wanted to get some pictures before they blew, but when Kate and I went outside with the camera, most of them looked like this:



There were some branches that still had the soft fuzzy catkins.



Kate was having a good time with a teasel and a stick, and even wanted to sit down in the grass and take pictures. Her nose was running and I only had a teeny piece of tissue in my coat pocket, which quickly came to the end of its usefulness, so I suggested to Kate that we go back inside briefly to get some more tissue.

Well, you would have thought I'd just told her we were going to wash her hair, feed her brussel sprouts, and beat her repeatedly. She ran away from me screaming, "No! No! I want to stay outside! Aaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!" Kate has a very piercing scream that we get to hear frequently. I ran after her and scooped her up, and carried her back to our apartment, where we got Doug to bring us some tissue at the back door.

Challenge #4 of the Amazing Digi-Scrapping Race was to do a layout with "spill it" journaling, and I decided this incident would be the perfect topic, especially since I had a cute picture of Kate taken just before she went nuts. (Challenge #3 ended up being optional, and I didn't do it, since it was an all-about-me layout and I already have one of those.)



(credits here.) This was my first attempt at the "tucking stuff in around the edges" technique that's so popular in digi-scrapping. I don't know if I've quite got the hang of it.

I've been working on a set of paper bag frames that have been a lot of fun (and considerably less time-consuming than a lot of the stuff I do). They should be done some time this week, hopefully.

Collaboration

The second challenge in the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race was to create a layout with our partner. I was trying to come up with something that Karin and I could both scrap about, and thought that Ernie, our site ogre, would be a great subject.

I put together this basic idea and sent it to Karin:



Karin added a background and some other cool stuff and sent it back, and then I tweaked it just a little more and we called it done. Here's our final product:



This was a fun challenge!

The Amazing Digi Scrapping Race

Season three of the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race is on! I didn't participate in the first two seasons, but sort of watched from the sidelines, so I thought this time I'd join in the fun! I have teamed up with Karin (in Australia) who is also a designer at NDISB (Karin M Designs). Teams go around to different sites and participate in challenges and win cool prizes, and hopefully have lots of fun in the process. I've been spending way more time designing than actually scrapping, so I figured this would be a good way to exercise those scrapping muscles.

Challenge #1 was to create a layout with this sketch, featuring our "favorite person or animal to scrap about," using our favorite color, and using a favorite element three times. Here's my layout:



I don't really have a favorite color. I like color. I find myself mostly drawn to greens, browns, golds, and dark reds. And I also have a lot of pink in my world these days. I struggled with the background for this a bit, but it works.

That white line frame was a last-minute addition. I was finishing this up last night, and looking at it and thinking, "That needs something else." So I took a crayon and drew a line and scanned it. If anyone wants the line you can grab it here (right-click and "save as").

When I was looking for a partner, I mentioned that I might be rather flaky. Karin said she'd flake with me. So we came up with the name "The Discombobulatorium" for our team. Karin made us a team blog and this cool blinkie:



For the next challenge we get to create a layout together. That should be interesting!