"Roughing It" for LOAD Mini Summer Lovin' and Stuck?! Sketches

Well, I think this is it for my first LOAD (LayOut A Day, for those unfamiliar with the term). Unfortunately, I was not able to do a page for all seven days/prompts, but I did manage to do four, and for me, that is something of a record!

I looooove how this one turned out, not gonna lie! I used up some newer supplies, including some papers from the Pink Paislee "C'est La Vie" 6x6 pad, which normally I don't think I would have thought of using with camping/fishing photos. I mean, look at all that mint green, pink and yellow! Does that scream "outdoors" to you?  But, with black and white photos, you can kind of do whatever you want as far as background colours, right?

I used this great sketch from Stuck?! Sketches and flipped it 90 degrees:

I used the packaging technique with some Cracked Pistachio Distress Spray over some gesso, and that gave me a nice minty green watercolour effect for my background.  Then it was just a matter of figuring out which paper scraps to layer and cut up in behind the photos. 

These photos are from when we were first married, 17 years ago. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe how young we look!!! The prompt for LOAD day 5 was "Lovin' the great outdoors", and if I'm being honest, I don't really love the great outdoors. But Jason does, and he's dragged me out enough that it was easy to find outdoorsy photos. Before you know it, a layout is born!

Here's a close up of the journaling: 

And because this was such a long story, here's the other piece of journaling on the other side:

And one final close up of the die cut title and accent pieces:

I made this layout while listening to and watching the last ever Tragically Hip concert, which was broadcast to all of Canada on Saturday night. For all you non-Canucks out there, Gord Downie, the lead singer of the Tragically Hip, is dying of brain cancer. Their music is very well known here, and the concert was very emotional. Even our Prime Minister was in attendance! Jason and I had the concert streaming on Ailis's little tablet, and the bluetooth going through our stereo, and we had a great time rocking out, just the two of us. Kids probably thought we were a bit weird, but whatever! 

Anyway, that's it from me for today. Maybe now that I've completed four summer layouts in a week, I'll be motivated to continue my streak! Stay tuned to find out!  

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"Sand Sun Fun" for LOAD Mini Summer Lovin'

Hey everyone, I have some good news! I won a spot in Scrap Happy's "LOAD Mini Summer Lovin'" event this week from Alison at Alison Day Designs! How cool is that? This is the first time I've tried a LOAD, or LayOut A Day, so even though this is the fifth day, I'm still getting into the swing of things. The layout above is the third I've finished, though, so that's pretty speedy progress for me!

I used this fabulous sketch from Let's Get Sketchy for inspiration: 

First I scraped on a layer of gesso over the middle of the white card stock. Then I applied some Salty Ocean Distress Ink using the packaging technique to create that beautiful watercolour effect. The die cut is part of a freebie from Scrapbook Nerd:

The circle was fun to do. First I traced one of those Creative Memories cutting circles with a pencil. Then I took the nozzle out of a bottle of black Dylusions spray, and just drew freehand around the circle a few times, making that messy, scratchy look. I love how that turned out!

And here's a close-up of the journaling, basically telling the story of how I thought Jason was nuts to want to take the kids swimming in the river. I didn't think it was safe, but at that time of year, the water was pretty shallow - an adult could probably walk across to the other side without going in over their chest, and the current was not very strong. Still, they were the only kids with life jackets there - I guess maybe I'm a little paranoid, but better safe than sorry, I say! 

And another closeup of some of the papers, cork arrows and gems (CTMH):

I took these photos outside on my deck in natural morning light, but I don't know, the background paper looks awfully blue! It's white, I swear!

Thanks for looking, and hope you have a great weekend, whether it's summer where you are or not!

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