The April kit is up!

The April kit is up for sale at Studio Calico! I really enjoyed working with this kit and it was so great to be working with product that just released at winter CHA. There was SEI Dill Blossom, awesome patterns and great texture, the new Life is Beautiful line from Sassafras (not Sassafras Lass anymore... they dropped the Lass!), some fun new papers and chipboard from Scenic Route... and of course little bits of the Spring Fling line from Pink Paislee. Yum. Mee...

This one is my favorite from this month. I like how Nicole has been trimming her photos funny. Payton's birthday is on Sunday and I've been wondering if she looks anything like Morgan at the same age, so I decided to create a layout comparing how Morgan has changed over the years. Each of these 4 photos was taken on her birthday. It's really interesting how much she's changed and yet still looks the same. This layout is a treasure to me.

This photo was taken on Easter the other day. My kids aren't the biggest fans of having their photos taken, and while Payton says cheeeeeese she never really looks at me. For this photo, I was encouraging her to play and spin around at the window and I just sat there with the camera and caught her here and there as she played. I have a couple of other shots with really pretty smiles, but I just took them so I need to treasure them a bit before I decide how I want to scrap them.

For this one, I dove into that super cute Sassafras paper and trimmed out the deer. It had to be trimmed out! I had previously trimmed out the tree for a Pink Paislee layout I had created for CHA, so I didn't want to do that with this layout. Instead I trimmed out the right side of the tree and then layered it off the edge I trimmed off the left side of the Pink Paislee paper. Make any sense? And then I put Bambi amongst the branches.

I called this layout lambchop because of the spring feel of the paper and the photo. When I was pregnant with Payton I often referred to her as my little lambchop for some reason, and I still do so I wanted to document it.

This month's kit came with "Just the Edge" decorative strips from Bazzill. You get 20 strips in each package, so I decided to save a couple of them to use as templates. I traced on of them on the backside of the SEI paper for the scallop at the bottom of this layout. I then added some of the epoxy stickers from SEI and the jewels from Kaiser Scrapbooking. There are 100 jewels in that little circle package. In different sizes! Cool.

I took these photos of Steve and Morgan during our first spring at this house. At the time we were on maternity leave from having Payton, so Steve was letting his hair grow out. He did this when we were on maternity leave for Morgan too. Both times he took about a month off from work which was great.

My poor boy does NOT grow much facial hair, so it took him a month to get any kind of beard growing. And his beard grows in red. I am SO glad they don't allow facial hair at the fire station. Me no likey. But he had fun with it.

This reminds me.... in 1997 during fire season he was working for a wildland fire crew and headed out to the hills. He was gone for several weeks and came home unshaved. The funny thing was he was 20 years old... and he had this bushy red neck beard, but only a couple of sparce hairs on his face. From his chin down his neck was this big, burly, disgusting mass of red hair. It was so icky. But he thought it was so cool he raced down to Bank of America and got a Visa card because they did photo id so they took his picture and put it on there. THEN he shaved it off. Boys.

I stamped the floral Imaginisce stamp on the kraft cardstock, trimmed it out, and layered it amongst the clouds that I trimmed out of the Sassafras paper. Then I put a couple of SEI epoxy stickers on it to bring out some of the detail.

To help create a visual triangle and add to the design I just hand stitched a tiny bit on this layout. *GASP* I know. You know how I like the hand stitching.

You know how I have the baby fever so I've been scrapping the baby photos, but more importantly, I've decided I'd like to be more current in my work because I am starting to forget the stories if I haven't already written them down.

These pictures were taken when my dad came from out of state to meet Payton. She was a little over a month old in these pics. So cute!

I hand stitched around the perimeter of this layout. For fun I took the deco-edged Sassafras paper and penciled a line along the right edge and then hand stitched the pattern.

I also created fun flowers with the American Crafts chipboard frames and the brads, epoxy stickers, and buttons. Love these! I also used my deco scissors and a couple of circle punches.

Lastly are a couple of cards I made. Cards really help with my mojo. Plus they allow you to play around with the leftover bits that are too small to really do anything.

Have a great weekend! I have some REALLY cute birthday projects to show you on Sunday. I am almost finished and need to get photos of them with the birthday girl on Sunday before I show you. But they are cute. And she is 2. Hold me.