A Quick Card

Today, I thought that I would share a card that I made for a graduation last month.

I used a similar layout to graduation cars I have made in the past, but used some soft blue patterned papers from DCWV, as well as a paper doily, some aqua colored rhinestones and some card stock embossed butterflies. I used Bahama Breeze blue Memento dew drop ink for the sentiment and cut out the sentiment with the Label One Spellbinders die set with my Cuttlebug. 

I usually don't buy small packs of embellishments like butterflies, but Joann's was having a clearance sale and the package was only like 70 cents. I have already used up the package between the scrapbooking project I was working on for my mom and various cards that I needed last month! The paper I have had for a little over a year and I got the pad from my cousin. The doily is from a pack I got at a local dollar store about 3 years ago. I actually just used up my last doily on the scrapbooking project so I will have to stop at Dollar Tree and see if they have any in stock to re-supply my stash.

But back to the card. I really love how this card turned out. It is so soft and feminine, which I think matched the recipient perfectly. :)

My Sketchbook

Oh wow, I almost started typing "Happy Monday" when I realized that it was, in fact, Tuesday. This is probably because we got up at 4:30 yesterday morning to return home to VA after visiting MI for my  brother-in-law's wedding. I passed out on the plane and then again for about two hours when we finally got home, so all in all, yesterday was a bit of a blur!

Anyhow, I thought I would share with you how I capture ideas for all things creative, whether it be card layouts, scrapbook layouts, changes I want to make on the blog or things I want to do about the house. I bought a sketchbook from the Bargain aisle at Barnes & Noble and decorated it with some Dear Lizzy thickers and washi tape. In the sketchbook, I keep sketches ;) as well as printouts of scrapbook layouts that I printed out from the computer.

I don't really have any organization to the book; I kinda just doodle or tape ideas as they come or as I find them. (which is weird, as I am incredibly organized usually, but in this case, I found I could be more creative if I wasn't worried about making sure that I had everything sectioned out and organized in a system.) Now, an artist I am not, but I don't really worry about that. I just put the ideas down on paper, and even though the pictures are not perfect, I know what I meant when I drew it, so it works for me.

So, are there any ways that you keep your creative ideas? I'd love to hear about it!

More Layouts to Share

Hello All, I hope that you are all enjoying better weather than we have been having the last two days. Rain, rain, rain! Anyhoo, I just thought that I would post some more layouts for the scrapbook project I have been working on. I am finally seeing the end of the tunnel. Only one more vacation to scrapbook, pictures of our church family growing up, and a few miscellaneous pictures that slipped through the cracks when I originally organized all of the photos at the beginning of this project.

How About a Break...

A break from scrapbooking pictures, I mean.  I just thought I would share a card I whipped up to say thank you to someone dear for lending me something so that I didn't have to purchase it myself. I actually still need to send it out, bad me!

For this card I used Georgia Pacific white card stock as the base, and some basic brown card stock to mat the patterned papers from My Mind's Eye. The image is one from a stamp pack that came with a magazine that I colored in using my Spectrum Noir markers.(the name of the magazine and the stamp pack are escaping me at the moment). I used my Spellbinders scallop dies in my Cuttlebug to cut out the image and a mat for the image and used Queen & Co gold pearls for embellishment, as well as some ribbon scraps that originally came from a pack of wash cloths I bought at TJMaxx. 

Oh, and for those of you that follow from my old blog, Roja in Virginia, I want to shut that blog down completely, so if you could follow me here at Joyful Dawn Creations, that would be much appreciated!

Hope that you are all having a wonderful weekend!

Vacation Layouts

Well, I just thought I would share a few more scrapbook layouts today. These are vacation layouts that I worked on several weeks ago. I still have a few more vacation trips to work on, but I would say that I am about 2/3 done with the vacation pictures.

For these layouts I used cardstock and patterned paper from Cosmo Cricket, DCWV, Tim Holtz and papers from the Target dollar aisle. I used some vellum sentiments from an 8x8 travel themed paper set, some orange American Crafts Lullaby Thickers and Cosmo Cricket MIni Alphas for the titles. The embellishments are from the dollar aisle at target as well as Making Memories.

Family Pictures

Hello All, last night I worked on several layouts of pictures of our extended family (grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, etc).... I used more muted colors, staying with browns and a pale aqua palette for the most part because several of the pictures are quite old, with the pictures of my grandparents going back as far as 1955. I also used some paper doilies I bought at a dollar store a couple of years ago, as well as some embossed cardstock butterflies with gemstones for the butterfly bodies, as well as some Recollections adhesive lace and some aqua alphabet stickers from Cloud 9 Design that I got on clearance from Joann Fabric's last week (Although I cannot find a link to the ones I bought anywhere online).