Beautiful

A lot of people wonder how I can possible cram 3, 4, sometimes even 5+ challenges into one layout.  I never actually understood why some challenge blogs frown upon it to be honest.  In my opinion while one challenge may bring a viewer to my blog, they are going to see the link to you as soon as they arrive!  Cross promotion at it's easiest.  I'm sure it'd be different if I just did a massive list at the end of my post of all the links, but I take the time to explain the challenge and how I incorporated it into my creation.  Scouring for several different types of challenges is something that has helped me give so much more depth to my layouts than I'd ever thought to see before.  I can find a color challenge to help me pull all of my papers together, then a sketch challenge to help me figure out how to place them, then sometimes I'll see a theme challenge that will lead me right to the perfect photos and if I'm lucky I'll even find a misc challenge that gives me the nerve to add extra layers of embellies I'd never thought to take the time to incorporate.  Of course, I refuse to sacrifice my vision, so if I get to working and find that a certain challenge isn't fitting right with where the rest have taken me...it gets the boot!

With this layout of my daughter a few weeks before she started preK, I was able to stop at 4 different challenges along the path to completed.  I started off at The Paper Variety.  They are celebrating their blogoversary (seriously pop over and jump aboard the train to fun-land this weekend!!).  That was what inspired me to go digging for this picture of my daughter.  The challenge was to scrap your favorite photo and while I won't play favorites between my kiddos...this one's strength is definitely in her photogenic smile!

I then searched around for just the perfect sketch to go with the papers I found that matched her little outfit so well.  The line is Basic Grey-Bittersweet.  Enter Stuck On U Sketches!!  I'm a sketch-a-holic and they've got some of the most beautiful ones around!

I knew I wanted to play along with this week's Frosted Designs challenge the second I saw it.  It is to use a stamp (the postage kind), an envelope and a ticket in one layout.  I immediately went to my Tim Holtz drawer (yes he has his own drawer at my house...wonder if I can convince to come for a stay LOL) and nabbed these fabulous tickets he sells and picked the one that says 'ADORE'.  The envelope can be found at the top of the photo matte...it's vellum.  For the stamp, I spent a while stuck.  Staring at my huge collection (read: hoard) of scrappy stuff and wondering how there isn't one stamp shaped embellie to be found.  Then my husband piped up (he's a pretty useful fella sometimes!) didn't that green bug thing come with something like that.  BRILLIANT!!!  When you buy your Cuttlebug (or at least back when I did) it came with a postage stamp die and a set of 4 stamp image embossing folders.  You'll find the one I picked nestled just on top of the envie.

My last stop on the challenge blog express was to Scrapbookers Anonymous.  They posted a chipboard challenge this month and so I went digging back into my Tim Holtz drawer and found this adorable key and keyhole set.  I painted them pink and glittered them up (like there was any doubt we'd be glittering?!?!) and added them to the layout.  Along with glimmer misted chipboard letters to spell 'beautiful'.

Part 2 of the challenge over at Scrapbookers Anonymous is to create a card from your scraps.  I created this from the basic grey papers I had leftover, but I won't mention any names for who it's for because I know she pops in my blog from time to time.  I'd been wanting to make her a card to say thanks for being awesome and these papers scream A-W-E-S-O-M-E to me!  :)  The birdie is from Create-a-Critter as is the Hello Cloud.  I cut it out and then used the reverse image (the part that's leftover after you take the part you usually want) and stuck it down then inked over it.  Once removed it was supposed to come off more as a thought bubble than a cloud...so there ya go :)