Author Archives: Jennifer

I just finished up my last entry into the six-week long digital scrapbooking contest, Scrap It to Win It, over at Scraps-N-Pieces. I had a lot of fun with the contest and learned some new things along the way.

Week 1 – Roll With It – Your challenge blueprint is to use circle elements in your layout this week. I want to see at least 7 circles on your pages. Circle shaped papers, buttons, brads, text paths, anything that is circular, with one major exception – FLOWERS DO NOT COUNT AS CIRCLES. Flowers are sometimes fairly circular and sometimes not so just to make things clear I’m not going to allow flowers to be counted as circular elements this time. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have flowers on your page – just that they won’t count toward your 7 circles. Also, papers with circles on them don’t count either. If you want your paper to count as one of your circles, you must cut it out into a circular shape.

Digikit: Karen Diamond Designs – Proud 2 Be an American Kit and Mixed Papers; stitching from Queen Wild Scraps – Fabulous Fall
Mask: Indigo Designs
Fonts: Desyrel

Week 2 – Breakfast Scramble/Scrambled Template – The pieces of the provided template are scattered about in random fashion. Your challenge is to arrange the pieces of the template however you’d like and create a beautiful layout. You can flip them, rotate them, move them around, resize them, swap out a flower for a star, etc., but you must use all the layers, 27 to be exact: two pictures, a title, sub title and journaling, 7 papers (can be duplicated), 2 ribbons or ric rac, a scatter, 2 flourishes and 10 elements.

Digikit: Scraps N Pieces – Where Dreams Come True; scatter from Amy’s Designs – American Spirit; swirls from CraftArtist Indie Chic
Wordart: Word Art World – Swap 21 (Play Hard)
Fonts: Undercurrent BTN

Journaling reads: “Jessica loves to prepare meals of leaves and acorns in her playhouse in the backyard. Today, she alternated between watching Daddy work on the pump in the garden pond and playing in her house.”

Week 3 – Loner – Create a monochromatic layout. I shared this layout here.

Week 4 – Stack Attack – Your challenge blueprint this week is…Cluster, Cluster, Cluster. You must use all of the items listed in a layout.

• 3 of one flower (sizes can vary)
• 3 of another flower (sizes can vary)
• 1 different flower
• 2 of another flower (sizes can vary)
• 9 FLOWERS total
• 9 leaves
• 2 Frames
• 1 Photo mask or Scatter
• 4 paper strips all out of different papers
• 9 Swirly, Curly elements
• 3 tags
• 3 ribbons all different
• 3 twigs/branches
• 9 unique elements
• 3 stitching elements all different
• 1 Title using a kit Alpha
• background paper
• However many photos you want.

Digikit: Wendy Tunison Designs – Two Hearts, Two Hearts Add-on; Queen Wild Scraps – Family Ties
Fonts: Brush Script

Week 5 – Double Trouble – Design a two page layout (or double page spread). Add at least three paragraphs of journaling. Include at least 3 sentences in each paragraph.

Digikit: Scraps N Pieces – Step Right Up!
Fonts: Catherine’s College Days (journal); Candy Round BTN (title)

Journaling reads:

“St. Ann’s Catholic Church has hosted a fair every September for sixty-three years now. I have fond memories of attending the fair on Saturday and playing the games, especially the cakewalk. And whenever my grandparents were visiting fair weekend, we always spent time in the school gym playing bingo. We would always get wrist bands for the carnival rides Thursday night, since opening night was the cheapest.

When James’ mother scheduled her knee replacement surgery for September, I knew I wanted to schedule our visit to come help out so that we would be in Midland for fair weekend. So after breakfast Saturday morning, we met up with my parents at the fair. This was Jessica’s first fair experience ever.

Instead of a wrist band, Papa bought a handful of carnival ride tickets, because we weren’t sure how Jessica would react to the rides. She ended up going on the carousel twice and the Ferris wheel once. Nanny took Jessica on the carousel. The first time, Jessica did NOT want to sit on the zebra, so Nanny just held her as the ride spun around. The second time, Nanny made her sit on the giraffe. At first, Jessica was upset, but by the time it ended, she was smiling and having fun. James and I took her up in the Ferris wheel. She enjoyed smiling and waving at Nanny and Papa who watched us from the ground. At the top, she seemed pretty excited about the view.”

Week 6 – Junk in the Trunk – Use pieces from 3 different kits and you must use equal pieces from each kit. So your items will need to be in multiples of 3. For example, if you use 3 papers, you will need to use 1 paper from each kit, if you use 6 papers, you must use 2 papers from each kit, etc. You cannot use 5 papers or 7 papers or any amount of papers that is not a multiple of 3 because then you wouldn’t be able to divide it evenly. Same with your elements, you must use an equal number of elements from each of the 3 kits but you don’t have to divide that by element type. So, if you have 18 total elements on your page, you should have used 6 elements from each kit, but you don’t for instance have to use 1 button from each kit, it is just total elements divided by 3. If you decide to use an alpha, you must use all 3 kit alphas or else no alphas at all. You don’t have to divide the letters up between the 3 alphas, but you do have to use 3 alphas or no alphas. You may not recolor your 3 kits to match each other. You may not use Bits N Pieces kits or designer collab kits that were designed to go together unless you count them as just 1 kit. You may not use templates.

My title for this layout was inspired by the song “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.”

Digikit: Wendy Tunison Designs – Tickle the Earth; Amy’s Designs – Beautiful Life; and Connie Prince – Backyard BBQ
Fonts: Another Typewriter (Janette & date); Monterey BT (title); Freehand575 BT (subtitle)

Friday, they’ll post the winners for week 6 and the overall winner of the contest. Maybe I’ll win week 6.I seriously doubt I’ll be the overall winner as I was never one of the weekly winners, but I had a lot of fun and learned some stuff along the way.