Awesome, awesome, awesome.

My two sons went to Van's Warp Tour in San Diego this last summer.  David and I went down with, we spent a couple nights in a motel, David and I wandered Balboa Park, Old Town, etc. while they were at the concert.  We went to pick them up -- and this is who came out with Scott.  Yes, the Aquabats played.

Here's the sketch I used from 2 Broke Girls:

  

Mollie's Nipple

This is in Utah, outside Hurricane, where David went to High School.  One of the shots is from up closer to Cedar, the other is down closer to St. George.  I thought it was Molly's Nipple, but found out that the USGS frowns on apostrophes in place names, so officially it's "Mollies Nipple".  But locals (and others) still throw the apostrophe in (probably all those grammar teachers) so it is alternately known as Mollies Nipple, Mollie's Nipple or Molly's Nipple.  I couldn't leave the apostrophe out.

I used a sketch from 2 Broke Girls :

Yes, there's reflection in it, because it's dark out and I'm taking the picture on my kitchen floor with the overhead light on.  LOL

Three New Layouts from last summer -- Vegas and San Diego

We made a stop in Vegas on our way home.  Here's my layout of the iconic sign.  I'll probably add some handwritten journaling to the bottom right.

This was from a sketch from Paper Secrets:  Their twist is to use dots and stripes.  The stripes are obvious, I'm hoping they'll see the dots in the photo around the Vegas sign or consider the turquoise horizontal piece as blobby dots.  

I loved the sketch -- it looks so Halloweeny, but I like how it came worked for my summer "night lights" photos also.  I put together three pps from 2 manufacturers and 3 stacks  -- the striped is Colorbok, the labels and horizontal piece are K & Co.  Wasn't sure about mixing them (I have such a hard time mixing patterns -- especially the labels and stripes together was hard for me), but I like how it looks all together.  The cs pieces are just scraps. I tried coloring in the lettering on the title to look like neon more -- but it got muddy and you couldn't read it.  There's a lot of white space -- more than I'm used to and it's Really white!  But I think it's effective.   

The next is a 2-page spread about Ben's Dancing in the Luxor lobby.  

We were standing around, trying to decide what to do, and he just started dancing all over the open area.  As I say in my journaling, not the be-bop in place, but the arms and legs flailing, high-energy, all over the place dancing.  We were laughing.  Nobody else seemed to notice -- guess it's Vegas.  Then he threw a shoe and stopped.  I ran across a quote from Nietsche about dancing:  "Those that were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music."  Which led me to two more Nietsche quotes:  " We should consider lost any day in which we have not danced at least once." and "You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."  Beyond the quotes, I was inspired by Devra's challenge at Scrappin-Peeps to use a different palette than we usually use.  I love color -- and tend to use the deeper colors more often.  I started to use pastels on this, but it just wasn't working.  So I went with neutrals -- I use them even less than I use pastels.  Black, white, grey, brown.  The only color in this layout comes from the dancing.  Symbolic, eh?  I thought it was clever LOL.  And -- there was this cool sketch at Bird is the Word with the word -- Dance: 

I used it as inspiration for the left side.

Last, is a layout I did about the guy who stacks rocks down in Seaport Village in San Diego.  It is incredible to see.  Such a fun trip.  I used a sketch from Let's Scrap, but didn't get it done in time for the challenge.  I'm so slow these days.

Thanks for dropping by -- love to see your comments.

Challenging

Lush Life

This layout is from our trip to San Diego -- while the boys were at Warp Tour, David I went to Balboa Park.  These pictures are from the botanical building -- beautiful orchids and other flowers.  And the building with water garden in front is beautiful in itself.

I used the colors -- green, pink, and black -- from the monthly color challenge at Scrappin' Peeps.  I had chosen the background any way and then realized the pink mats would go well.  But the black really made the pics pop.  I was also inspired by the Random Challenge (Scrappin' Peeps again) to use photo collage in the style of leafrance.com.  Mine is not nearly as intricate as their collages, but has a bit of the stained glass feel with the black.  I originally had my photos placed differently, but the inspiration led me to their final positions.  I may go back and add some journaling or I may do it on the back.

Two from Seaport Village

It's been a while since I've posted.  I was about challenged out, so was off doing my own thing for a while.  But, I'm back gleaning inspiration from various challenges, like this one:

  This is actually last week's challenge at Scrappin' Peeps -- but I didn't get it down and photographed in time.  This is my version:

The background paper is DCWV.  And I didn't have to do much to it -- I added the tan shells paper (also DCWV), the turquoise swirly and vintage beach babe (G45), my photo and mats, and the journaling spot -- the borders and shells were already there.  This is from Seaport Village in San Diego -- where Scott got the captain's hat he's wearing.  Since then, whenever he wears it, SOMEone (and usually several) feel compelled to make comments about the hat.

For the companion page, I used this sketch:



This is September's sketch challenge from Scrappin' Peeps (the message board a bunch of old CKers started when CK closed theirs).

Here's my take on it:

I used the tan shell paper for background this time, added the G45 papers and some banners and colored shells I fussy cut from another sheet of the first page's background paper.  Journaling talks about how the boys and I have reach (sort of) a compromise.  They cooperate in my photos if I take theirs as well (including Scott with his finger up his nose and Ben in weird poses).  

Here's the two together:

A fun one -- ET Hwy

This was just fun -- photos from the Extraterrestrial Highway outside Area 51 in Nevada.  The cow was the most alien life form we saw -- the weather was incredible.  Saw rain and lightening -- clouds were impressive.  Stopped at the Little A Le Inn (see next layout :-)

Photo of the layout is awful.  It's from a Let's Scrap sketch.