Yesterday was National Scrapbooking Day and although I’ve been involved at Scrapbook.com for over 2 years now, this was the first time I actually got to participate in their NSD challenges. As part of my Mothers Day present, Scott took care of the kids and the meals for the whole day. I took a break in the morning to go to the park with them, but other than that, I scrapped all day long… but I did have breaks when I finished challenges early.
SB.com offered over $15,000 of prizes this year, and were giving 13 or more prize packs for each challenge so I was hoping to win one of their $135 prize packs, but I did not win any of the challenges 🙁 But I did have a lot of fun and scrapped a lot of things fairly quickly. I had no idea how fun it could be scrapping all by yourself, but it really does make it more fun when you have a challenge and a deadline, and if you finish early, you can chat a bit on the forums. It was really interesting to see how everyone else interpreted the challenges and what they came up with. SB.com gave us a list of things to have on hand including the types of pictures we’d need.
The first challenge was a warm-up. We had an hour to make a themed card (Mothers’ Day, Graduation, etc). I made a Mothers Day card using some new die cuts, although I don’t actually like how it turned out. If it wasn’t timed I would have taken off the square and replaced it with a sideways oval and probably inked the edges… but I was running out of time, so I had to leave it.
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| NSD @ SB.com: Snail Mail Challenge |
I used this Mindscapes stamp because my mom loves humming birds. The midscapes images are larger images that have smaller detailed images within them. This humming bird has several small butterflies within it, if you look closely. I used Fly a Kite scraps, a square Nestability, my new book pages die (the brown pieces).
The Sharpest in the Shed challenge was to make a layout showcasing your favourite scrapbooking tool. It had to include a picture and 3-5 sentences about why you like the tool, and we had 2 hours to complete it. Here’s what I came up with:
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| NSD @ SB.com: Sharpest in the Shed Challenge |
For this 12X12 layout I busted out some old Anna Griffith papers (the Darcey Collection) and my EK success circle cutter (which I LOVE- it is the easiest thing to use ever!). I Glimmer Misted the white background cardstock with blue and red splotches and lined all the pieces with various widths of black marker. I changed my mind about the orientation of the journalling block (made with another of my new book pages die set… the blue journalling spot is actually in the photo and cut with the machine in the photo), but it was too late to make another one, so I just placed it with the writing sideways. 2 different sets of Thickers were used (vera and rootbeer float). I LOVE the vinyl Thickers… they’re just way too cool! I put a bit more journalling just stapled to the top corner on some note paper.
The third challenge was a journalling challenge called A Handwritten Note, and you had to make a layout using at least one photo and 5-10 sentences. We had 2 hours to complete it. Here’s what I came up with:
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| NSD @ SB.com: A Handwritten Note Challenge |
I love layering journalling spots, and I had a bunch of left-over spots from a variety of companies, so I decided to mix and match myself a layout using only journalling spots as embellishments (at the last minute I added the punched butterfly). I was listening to the Blend as I scrapped all day and the song Hey Soul Sister was playing when I started this layout, so of course it had to be named after the song. I ran out of s’s in the Thickers package (more vinyl, this time in white with the Sprinkles font), so I did the “z” replacement, which is a handy way to use up leftover letterz. Some of the writing came out very messy because I put together the layout and then did the journalling so I could know how to spread the sentences out across the journalling spots, but that made it a lot harder to write neatly, because many of the spots are pop-dotted. Journalling spots are Jillbean Soup, American Crafts, and Jenni Bowlin. I used my white signo uni-ball gel pen to doodle around the edges. Butterfly is punched from the Martha Stewart “punch all over the page” punch and then embellished with liquid pearls.
The fourth challenge was called “Get Out” and was a multi-photo challenge. We had 2 hours to scrap any layout with 3-5 pics, about either travel or just getting outside. I had these monkey bar photos as part of a larger photo collage, so I cut apart these 5 and went to town:
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| NSD @ SB.com: Get Out Challenge |
This one came together in such a fun way, it was probably my favourite part of the day! I had these papers from the Mod-Retro pack from DCWV (I scored it at Winners for shamefully cheap awhile ago). It had this cool paper with the shiny purple edges, and a large floral design with an embossed “The Most Beautiful Things” sentiment in the bottom left corner. I wanted to use the saying, but not the paper, although I did like the border. So I took my handy circle cutter (again!) and cut out the saying into a circle and inked the edges so it became an embellishment. Then I took the paper I wanted to use for the background paper (the cream, orange and blue floral) and cut it down by .5 inches on 2 sides and distressed all sides. Then I used what was left of the “beautiful things” paper to mat that paper. This allowed me to use both the saying and the shiny purple border from the beautiful things paper but still use the cream, orange and blue floral paper as the main background paper. Then I had some trouble placing the pictures so you could see the saying, so I ended up covering the word “most”, leaving me with “the beautiful things.” I wasn’t sure how this would work with my layout, until I thought of adding “are outside”… I of course had the phrase “get out” floating around in my head because it was the name of the challenge, so I decided to call my layout “Get Out! The beautiful things are outside” Referring of course to both nature, and my beautiful daughter. I added a few pieces of paper from the Mod-Retro paper pack and some orange-ish red and purple buttons, which I sewed right onto the layout. I added some Kioshi Bloomers (by Basic Grey) and it was done.
The fifth challenge was called “He Loves Me” and was a two-part challenge. First, you had to make a handmade flower of any kind… lol! I’ve made over 100 handmade flowers over the past 2 months, so I was well practiced for this one! I had some fabric circles already cut so I quickly put together a Glitzy Bloom. The second part was to make a layout using your flower, and we had 2.25 hours. This is what I made:
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| NSD @ SB.com: He Loves Me Handmade Flower Challenge |
I quickly printed up some photos from our Glitzy Chix photo shoot in March. I knew I wanted it to be red and purple because of the flower, so I picked a plain grey background. I spritzed it with Raven Glimmer Mist (it’s black with purple glimmer), added some ribbon, a note, and a few punched butterflies with perfect pearls on their bodies. I was done in about 40 minutes, including picture printing and making the flower!
Because of the time difference, I was able to do the all-day challenge after the kids were in bed (it was due midnight PST). It involved sorting at least 100 photos. I took advantage of the opportunity to sort some old photos I had half in albums, half in piles. I threw away a lot of them, and sorted what I wanted to keep chronologically and grouped them according to dates. Now what used to take up most of a shelf on a bookcase in my basement now fits in the front half of a JetMax drawer (I will be moving them to a photo box next time I go to the dollar store, because I won’t be scrapping these photos, so I don;t need them in my room- I just happened to have an empty drawer):
The week-long challenge is to do a mini-album all about me, so I will be doing that this week and posting it later in the week.
Wow long post! It was apparently a productive day!
My photos are not as well done this time because of the time constraints of the challenges.
