Parents, if you want wonderful pictures of your children, never teach them to say "cheese"! Please learn from my mistake or you will have thousands of photos just like mine - squinted eyes, scrunched up noses, clenched teeth, and an image that just screams "say cheez!!!". Join me while I search for that one perfect shot that doesn't conjure up images of dairy products. Oh, and unless you like that *messy* look, you'll probably want to clean their faces before you snap away. I never seem to remember myself.

An imporant sidenote is to make sure you document your life! Recording the little details of the who, what, where, when, & why makes for wonderful stories and captures your life for years to come. Because if you are like me, you'll forget it all 5 minutes later!

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

August Scrapping Challenges at The Lilypad

I love doing challenges! They help motivate and inspire me, especially when the mojo isn't flowing very well. Each month, The Lilypad has 7 awesome scrapping challenges (and if you complete them you earn coupons on a future purchase - icing on the cake!). These challenges give prompts on journaling, products, layouts, a freebie template, and most importantly fuel the fire to scrap more and document those photos and life's memories.

This month, in addition to the monthly challenges, The Lilypad is having a We Are Storytellers event! This event includes a month long celebration with a new freebie kit each day! But each part is free for one day only so you need to be sure to check the site daily to receive it - and they are fantastic designs! In addition to the scrapping goodies, The Lilypad is also sharing ideas and tips on how to document the stories of your life - the photos, the memories, the words that we want to remember years from now. And like any good event, there are lots of challenges to motivate you to get scrapping!

Here are a few of the challenge layouts I have created so far this month at The Lilypad.

For the Monthly BYOC challenge using 3 different designer's products - Forever Joy's Dandelion Days, Stolen Moments Design's A Bit of Earth and Amy Martin Designs' Helper Grids v.2 (I already shared this but here it is again):

 photo byoc4gardenweb.jpg

The Monthly Template Challenge - using Just Jaimee's Summer's End titles, Allison Pennington's It's a Breeze Embellishments, Sabrina Dupre's Today and Everyday Papers and Amy Martin's August Freebie Template

 photo goodlifeweb.jpg

The We Are Storytellers has a couple of challenges each week for the next month.
For the first week, challenge 1 you are to use a series of photos to tell a story. Here is my take using bits and pieces from the We Are Storytellers Collection of freebie downloads.

 photo jonahcastweb.jpg

Week 1, Challenge 2 is to use macro or detail photos to tell the story. My layout using One Little Bird's How Much Collection and Valorie Wibben's Little Pockets No.3:

 photo thebeginningweb.jpg

Hop on over to The Lilypad to check out the challenges and join in the scrappy inspiration!

Sunday, August 3, 2014

New Goodies at Pixels & Comany!

It is company stash time at Pixels & Company and Anita Designs has some fantastic new releases this month. They are called How Much and work perfectly with boy and girl photos to share the sentiment of how much you love/cherish/adore that special person in your life. Since they are part of the august company stash, they are on sale...30% off...so be sure to pick them up!

Here is my layout using Anita's How Much papers and elements.

 photo morethanwordweb.jpg

Have a great week!

Friday, August 1, 2014

It is August (gasp!) which means BYOC at The LilyPad!

The LilyPad has so many new offerings this month with a color palette that is perfect for late summer photos! There are so many great new products available and they are on sale this weekend only - and the more you buy, the more you save...gotta love that!

Here are my layouts with some of the new products:

This is with Kaye Winiecki's These Are the Days elements and Pink Reptile Designs Ta-Dah Papers
 photo thesearethedaysweb.jpg

With Sahlin Studio's Flashback elements, papers & journal cards and Amy Martin's Outliners (alpha)
 photo campergirlweb.jpg

With One Little Bird's One for the Album elements and papers
 photo gathermemoriesweb.jpg

Finally, with Amy Martin's Helper Grids2, Stolen Moments Design A Bit of Earth, Forever Joy's Dandelion Days and Amy Wolff's Shabby Shtuff: Flowers
 photo byoc4gardenweb.jpg

There are still so many photos that I have that will go perfectly with this collection! All I need is more time in the day... :)

Be sure to stop by The LilyPad and pick up some new supplies for your digi stash...and be sure to do the August Challenges for a coupon for September!

Happy Scrapping!