Merry Christmas!

Wow! It has been over 6 months since I last blogged.....I hang my head in shame! It has been a very busy year for us and not all of it good. So, one of my resolutions this year will be to keep my blog a little more active ;)

Until then, here is a card to share with you. I hope everyone has a great holiday!

The Hitchcock Twins

     I love these old pictures of my great grandmother Genevive Hitchcock and her sister Henrietta. I found them at my grandmother's when we were cleaning out her house and instantly claimed them as my own! They are very old prints and very thick, much thicker than a postcard would be. I love that they are engraved on the bottom with the Studio's information, including an address in Springfield, MA. I might have to look the address up to see what is currently there :)

     The title for this layout is pretty simple yet I couldn't just call it 'The Twins' since twins run on both sides of my family (a fact I LOVE to tell my husband about :) ) and there are more sets of twins in the family. So, I put the full family name so future generations will be able to tell which twins they are. I wish I knew more about these two girls but I only met my great grandmother once and she was already in a nursing home at the time with severe dementia. I was very young and don't remember much about the visit except handing her a potted plant to put on her windowsill

     I love these Glitz Papers that came in my monthly FOTM kit from The Scrap Room. At first I was a little hesitant to use the full sheet of patterned papers as my background but when I saw how well it went with these pictures I just had to do it! I love the gorgeous vintage quality of these papers and the butterflies were perfect for scrapping a layout about these two young girls. When I found the current challenge on the Glitz Blog to include clusters in a layout, I knew I was on the right path!

Materials Used: Glitz 'Laced With Grace' PP from The Scrap Room May FOTM kit, Bazzill CS, Pink Paislee metal butterfly charm and butterfly clear pop, Fiskars 2", 1.5" and 1.25" punches for rolled flowers, Thickers 'Sunrise' alphas in black, Cosmo Cricket tiny type alphas, Tim Holtz 'Styled Labels' die, Zig journaling pen in 05 black, Colorboc chalk ink in brown, copper brads.

 A close-up of my cluster of rolled flowers along with some punched scalloped flowers for them to sit on:

This is one of the original prints. It is quite thick and stands up on its own. At the bottom you can see the engraving from the photography studio. If anybody knows what these prints are called I would love to know. I am also trying to find a good picture frame for them if anybody has any ideas.

The best part about these pictures is the backside...which also shows more info about the studio but it also shows that my grandmother took the time to label the back, identifying who each girl was. The more I go through my grandmother's old photos the more I appreciate how much time she took to identify people and places. :)

Thanks for looking!

Brimfield Antique Show

     I love going to the Brimfield Antique Show and this year was fortunate enough to have a vacation day left to use so I could go. The forecast called for a little rain on Friday earlier in the week but it ended up being a gorgeous day to walk around Brimfield. My red face Friday night meant the sun was shining all day long!
    The best part about Brimfield is the unique items that you see there. Most of them out of my price range though! Here are a few neat things that we saw there.
     An old microscope in a box. Very neat to see since I work with them everyday at work! Ours are a little more modern though!

 A huge Steiff bear! I wish I had taken a picture of this thing with somebody standing next to it. This bear was huge! My in-laws and husband love Steiff bears so we had been looking for them when we saw this in a booth and had to know more about it!

 My husband is a coffee fanatic so these old cans were amusing!

 A gorgeous vintage quilt. Love it! Didn't dare ask the price though. I also couldn't believe they let it hang out in the sun like that all day :( Somebody put a lot of work into that one!

 Some antique stoves. I think that if we had a place for it & more room in the car (well, and the $$) this one would have come home with my husband!

 My husband loved these little creatures made out of upcycled metal parts. They were really interesting & the gentleman loved talking to my husband about them. He even gave him a business card and I think I see a birthday present for this year!

Another quilt... just gorgeous & in such great condition! Also, this one was protected from the sun too!

 A funny sign I couldn't resist taking a picture of

 Another funny sign that girls were taking pictures with. It was very comical to see a bunch of girls pose around it!

Well...those are the highlights from Brimfield last week. For me anyway. We had a great time with my in-laws and we did purchase some stuff...but that is for another post!

Using up a kit!

  This is the only kit from The Scrap Room that I managed to use up entirely from last month. I loved how well it went with some heritage photos I had found at my Grandma's house while cleaning. Definitely a paper line I would drool over at the store ;) The My Mind's Eye 'Gertie' line is gorgeous!

The photo on this layout is a little crooked since it is just a stand-in pic. It is the original & I still need to make a copy of it :) That's me at my parent's house in front of a rock they have on their front lawn. Celebrating my first birthday! I can't believe how much everything in that picture has now changed!

 The adorable pink-tinted photo of my dad at 6 months. I just didn't have it in me to convert it to B&W, so these papers were perfect for it!

 My older brother at about 10 years old and me at 4 1/2 months. Hanging out on the couch at Mom's!

I get both the add-on embellishments and the add-on PP kits so I have a lot of coordinating stuff to work with. The only thing I have left, after making some flowers with the scraps, is the matching CS that came with the kit. Can't believe I didn't use that and instead opted for some PP backgrounds! These patterns were so gorgeous it was hard not to! I'm sure the CS will make some great cards someday!

Thanks for looking!

Waiting on the new kits!

I try to make at least one LO a month from each of the lines I get in my monthly kit sub from The Scrap Room. If I don't keep up with it (except for around Christmas) I start to wonder if I should keep getting the monthly kits. So I really try to make at least one LO from each line and sometimes I can completely use up an entire kit!  I figured I would start posting the LOs here on the blog so I can be held accountable :) Since the May kits should be arriving this week I thought I'd post a LO from each of the April kits. It was wonderful to work with and you can tell I've found some older pictures recently, too!

A LO of my parent's and I at my first birthday party. I love how BG can be easily turned into a vintage/heritage page! Love their papers!

Made Using the Basic Grey 'Hello Luscious' Line

 My dad at six months old! I love the pic, although they obviously used some pink tinting on it. I tried to color-correct it as much as I could but I didn't want to convert it to black and white. I love how wonderfully the MME paper matched it!

Made using the My Mind's Eye 'Gertie' Line (which I completely used up!!)

 The blue heron at work last summer...thinking he was hiding in a tree. It is quite a sight to see one of them land in a tree!

Made using the Cosmo Cricket 'Social Club' line

 A funny LO about how my little brother took over our lives when he came. Look how I've been shoved into the lower corner of the photo! I had my mom cracking up over this picture at a recent crop!

Made using the Studio Calico 'State Fair' line

 So....now I am all ready for this month's kit! I did manage to completely use up the MME kit and if my kit doesn't come today I might be able to post the pics later. Thanks for looking & happy scrapping!

Happy Mother's Day!

Just wanted to share a card I made for Mother's Day! I made this using scraps from the Webster's Pages 'Lullaby Lane' FOTM kit from June 2010 from The Scrap Room. Happy Mother's Day!

Spring Framed Art

Want to see a quick tutorial on how I made this framed art piece? Come join us over at The Scrap Room for our MOD Squad/Design Team "Spring Fling" going on right now! There will be many challenges, Make 'n Takes and games through tomorrow night. See you there!

More Snow!

I thought I'd share a recent LO I made at the Winter Crop the Scrap Room had a couple weekends ago that also showcases some snow pictures since we are getting more snow today! These pictures are from the first big storm we had in my area in January and it dumped about 20 inches on us in a little over 12 hours! It was a lot of snow and also the first time our kitten had seen snow, so I had to get some pictures. I love how well the layout went together with the Basic Grey Jovial line and I love the cute snowman with a cat on him. The perfect embellishment!

Materials Used: Basic Grey 'Jovial'  Dec. FOTM kit with add on PP kit from The Scrap Room, EK success border punch, Martha Stewart Snowflake punch, American Crafts Thickers alphas, Zig journaling pen in 005 & 08 Black, Storybook Cart. for Cricut (die-cut for title), January Pagemaps sketch.

 Hope everyone stays safe today on the roads here in the Northeast!

Heritage Scrapping

  This past year I really got into tracing my genealogy. I love finding out about my ancestors and where they came from. My mom has a cousin that has been doing genealogy work her entire life so I had a lot of information that I was able to get about my maternal side without doing a lot of work. What saddens me though is that not a lot of photos have come down through the generations and the stories have been forgotten about these people. Sure, we are able to trace where they lived but finding out what they did, why they did it and such has long been lost.

     A big part of why I scrap is to preserve these stories and memories so future generations will be able to enjoy them. So, last week I dug out some older photos that I had scanned in from my father's family and scrapped them. I made sure to write down the important details on the layout itself and I may include a note on the back to include more details. I was able to use up some older & newer kits from The Scrap Room while doing this and I loved finding paper that would match the story and also some embellishments from my stash. All I have to say is I love Tim Holtz stuff! :) These were all created while we were having our Winter Crop at the Scrap Room and my next post will include my projects to help get your creative mojo going!

     I had an older picture of my father with his brother and father and I really wanted to scrap that along with some pictures of my uncle and father. My grandfather passed away when my father was young and we don't have too many pictures of them together so this one is special. This is the layout at the top of the post. I think I did it justice with an older kit from The Scrap Room, My Mind's Eye's 'Little Boy Blue' kit with some added embellishments from other kits and a 7 Gypsies velvet flower that was perfect for this picture. Then I scrapped a couple of pictures of my father and his brother when they were little on a one page layout. My uncle passed away when I was in high school and I know this relationship was special to my father so I wanted to capture a page about the relationship and not so much about each individual picture. I used a current kit from The Scrap Room, Fancy Pants' 'So Happy Together' line, along with some Hero Arts flowers and embellishments from some older kits that I had.

This last layout is one of my grandma and I when I was little. I had to convert the picture to black & white because it was a weird orange/brown color that was not too pretty.I hand stamped the heart borders on the top and bottom with a Heidi Grace stamp and cut the hearts using my cricut. This is also a current kit from The Scrap Room, Cosmo Cricket's 'Circa 1934' line. The tag has some hidden journaling and with all of these heritage layouts I also included some stitching (love using my sewing machine on layouts) and American Craft's Thickers alphas...another favorite!

     Hope this inspires you to scrap some older pictures and preserve those memories (and pictures!) for future genealogy buffs like me!

Some More Christmas Layouts....

My mom and I spent this past Monday scrapping together at her house. There is something about being away from home and all of the usual things that can distract you from scrapping to really motivate you to get some work done! While there I finished up these three layouts with some of the Dec. kit from The Scrap Room's FOTM kit. Then, I got sick all week and never got a chance to take pics of them....until now! After sleeping most of this weekend I am feeling a little bit better.

Before & After
A layout about my husband and his infamous overeating at Christmastime! Or, rather any time at that! He talks about his mother's Prime Rib it seems like every day in December until the day arrives when he can eat it....and eat it all he does! Look at the size of that thing! I'm surprised he can move afterward, but that is exactly what he does....he moves to a chair to take a nap :)

Materials Used: Basic Grey 'Jovial' FOTM kit with add on embellishment and PP kits, 'Jovial' embellishments bought separately, Doodlebug alpha stickers, Colorbox Chalk ink in Creamy Brown, Zig Journalig Pen in 05 Black

Holiday Fun
A layout about my little brother and how much fun my nieces have with him when we all get together. He is like a kid-fun magnet and they are drawn to him! Sometimes it gets a little rowdy, but I think he has a problem where he can't say no to these two cuties!

Materials Used: Crate Paper 'Snow Day' FOTM kit with add-on PP and embellishment kits, Inkadinkadoo white gel pen, Doodlebug alpha stickers, Zig Journaling pen in 05 Black, Colorbox Chalk ink in creamy brown.

 Present Time
Opening presents on Christmas is just more fun with little kids around! Watching these two tear into gifts really gets you in the mood for Christmas! This layout will go in their album which I plan on giving them when they are older. 

Materials Used: Jillibean Soup 'Christmas Soup' FOTM kit with add-on PP kit, Jillibean Soup Alpha Stickers, Zig journaling pen in 01 & 05 Black, Colorbox Chalk Ink in Creamy Brown, Martha Stewart Border Punch. 

There are many more Christmas layouts to come...including a 2-page spread for Christmas day/night at each parent's house and of course.....my nieces with their Star Wars helmets on that we got them!! Those are some funny pics! Thanks for stopping by!

Make A Wish

Wow! I have not had as much time to scrapbook these past few weekends! My nieces spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday in MA with my family so it was a fun and busy weekend. We had sleepover duty Friday night and it was a blast! The girls were great and we all had a good time with them. Then my husband and I did some family visiting on Saturday and my Mom's birthday was yesterday. Good thing I took today off of work to relax and have a girls day with my Mom (an extension of her birthday). She chose to have a scrap session at her house so I can't complain! :)

Here is a card I made quickly yesterday for my Mom's birthday. The only creative thing I did all weekend! I was lucky I still had some Teresa Collins 'Celebrate' paper scraps from a  kit at The Scrap Room. These papers are gorgeous and I love how easy it was to whip up a birthday card!

Well, have to pack some scrap supplies for our impromptu scrap session! Hope to have some more pages to post later! Hope everyone had another great holiday weekend!