How are you doing with the challenge?

It's the 8th. T-minus 12 days until the deadline! How are you doing? Have you gone through photos yet? Have you printed them or ordered them for printing?

Tina is in Alaska so has spent a lot of time inside with bad outdoor lighting, lol, and yet managed to create a fabulous layout showcase her month of hibernating. I love her journaling lines, and is that a hand cut title? I also love that she chose the white BG chipboard alphas. It almost hides the title, which is totally appropriate for the subject of the layout.

I also have a layout to share with you today from the fabulous Nic Samuels.

Nic had a busy month as well and didn't think she had any photos to share, but you always have stories to share.

I recently saw a discussion about digital photos and how improving our photo skills and cropping tight and taking out the busy backgrounds is causing us to lose our history a little bit. After thinking about it, I realized how right that is. Whenever I sit with family to look at photo albums from my early childhood, on top of talking about the subject of the photos, we are always discussing "that 70's couch" or "I forgot we lived in that house when this happened" and things like that. We lose a bit of the nostalgia with the modern focus on better quality photos. So I was happy to see Nic document something like a new car for her hubby to drive to work. Years from now she may wonder when they got it or have a story to tell, and documenting it, as silly as it seems, will help fill in the blanks. That's what scrapbooking really is about.

Just last week Steve and his parent's were telling me a story about when he broke his ankle when he was 8, which led them to talking about the "screaming yellow zonker", this car they drove for a short while when the kids were young. It was one of those cars where the kids asked to be let out a block from school so the other kids wouldn't laugh, lol. But they don't have any photos of it so I will never know how bad it looked. lol. No. His mom isn't a scrapbooker! A shame, that is. hahaha.

Anyway, I'm glad to see Nic, who didn't think she had anything to share, with a layout with a lot to share.

I'm so proud of myself. I too have MY layout to share! And it's the 8th, not the 19th at 11pm! :)
I mentioned this on my blog, but I wanted to utilize my Jenni Bowlin calendar cards that were in one of the add-ons for December's Center Stage kit ever since I first saw them. I wasn't sure how I wanted to do my layout, but am so happy with how it turned out. I even used some leftover bits from that kit in my design.

I'm going to use this design for all 12 layouts I'm going to do this year. I may use 5 photos every month, but I haven't decided yet. It might depend on what we do this year. But this simple design worked really well and there wasn't any pressure in making things fit, so I think I'm going to carry it forward.


When I first thought of doing this challenge, I thought I might make a 12 layout album summarizing my year. I think I have changed direction, though. As part of organizing 2009, I think I am going to use these layouts to organize my scrapbooks. I scrapbook out of order anyway, and this will make it easier to put my layouts in the correct place when I am scrapbooking something in the future. When I'm ready to do Morgan's 5th birthday layout, I'll only need to flip to this page to know that I am in the January '09 photos, and then I'll know where to put it in my books.

On the actual calendar card, I used a Hero Arts circle stamp to stamp the dates of my photos. Two of my photos were taken on the same day, so I only stamped four times. I thought that was a fun extra detail to these layouts.

I need to purchase some more journaling labels from Scenic Route, but I think I am all set for February! And because I have an easy design already in place, who knows, maybe I'll be finished by the 7th next month! lol

I'm so excited to see all the enthusiasm for this challenge, and hope many of you will play along! Be sure to link your layouts to this thread to be entered into the drawing, and link your layouts to this thread on my blog for a second chance to win. I'm going to be doing this challenge all year long and hope to have a lot of fun prizes to give away for those who play along, so I hope you will!

Before I go I wanted to share one last project I did with the Footnotes add-on, the prize for linking your layout to the Studio Calico blog. I saw these canvases turned into magnet boards and I immediately wanted to make one for Morgan. As you know, she's a little artist, but she has this thing for scotch tape and has been posting her work all over the house. I decided to make her a little canvas for her room, which is a pretty decorative decor item, but also gives her a place to display her work, as well as other little photos and mementos she would like to hang up. Perhaps then I'll have tape when it comes time to wrap a gift, because it seems like I am always OUT. lol



I used some fabulous Claudine Hellmuth paint and "green"washed my canvas, and then I trimmed some paper for sky and grass and tied some ribbon. The paint works really well and doesn't flake off or anything. If you need some Claudine Hellmuth paint, be sure to check out the paint supply section of the store here.

After that I simply mounted the Cosmo Cricket die cut stickers to their coordinating blackboard, and adhered a magnet to the back.

If I hadn't already used the little girl on one of my layouts from the Bibliography kit, I would have put a magnet on her too. She's just so darn cute and looks just like Morgan!

I have big plans for more magnet canvases, and they shall be seen in more places in my home. I think they are such a great idea!

Now get to work! I want to see what you've been doing in January, even if it was nothing at all!

Davinie