Finding Peace (and scrapbooking it!)

Our summer has been very hectic (this is probably true for everyone). We have been visiting, vacationing, hosting, hiking, healing, cleaning, creating, cooking. One of the current challenge words at Bird is the Word is peace and last week that word really resonated with me. I took some time out of the busy summer activities (and the not quite frenzied fall preparations) to create a layout about this timely word.I used last week's sketch from Let's Get Sketchy:

and created this layout about my own sense of peace.

The process of creating and focusing on peace brought me a surprising sense of peace. I concentrated on my peaceful and calm colors - blue and brown - featured in the Pemberley paper pack from CTMH.

As I worked, I considered the design, but I also considered where I find peace.

At the end of the process, I felt more peaceful than I had in quite a few weeks. Additionally, I had reminded myself that I need to actively seek peace or I won't find it. I had also recollected some of the ways I can seek and practice peace.

These challenges and this layout were just the break I needed!

Inspired by National Scrapbooking Day

My son's birthday always falls right around National Scrapbooking Day, so I usually end up spending the day taking photos, not creating with them. This year, after the festivities for his birthday, I checked out many of the challenges that were going on. Although I didn't complete my layout in time to submit to any of those, I did get it put together and the story told which is what it is about for me.

This layout started out inspired by a challenge at Big Picture Classes to create a funky frame.

It was also inspired by Courtney Walsh who is hosting a series of prompts about scrapbooking your faith. This week's prompt is: Create a page or project to serve as a word of encouragement for yourself or someone you love. I felt that my sweet husband could use some encouragement. I loved the way I could emphasize my hubby - the audience of my journaling - in these family photos using the frame.

I used the Dotty for You paper - CTMH's special for this month in honor of National Scrapbooking Day. The embellishment clusters are labels and tags cut from a piece of patterned paper. It was a fun (and easy) way to add two clusters. When my layout was almost complete, I learned that fussy cutting is ScrapFit's weekend warm up challenge right now!

What about you? Did you create anything on National Scrapbooking Day? About the day? Inspired by the day?

Be Still

I'm currently taking a class over at Big Picture Classes called Scrapbooking Your Faith. This is something that I've had the desire to do for a long time, but it seemed an intimidating prospect. I didn't know what to include, how detailed to be, where to begin. This class has given me an excellent starting point.

The teacher, Courtney Walsh, had us begin by choosing a Life Verse (at least for right now) and creating a layout surrounding it. For me this was the perfect first step into creating a faith book. It forced me to focus on what matters right now and took away some of the pressure I had been putting on myself about this album. This is my life verse:

The design is based on the layout Courtney did for the class, but I did change it up a bit so that it fit my style. The papers are a cobbled together assortment including: CTMH Victory, CTMH Passages (retired) and SEI Moravia (quite old). 

I stamped the verse using CTMH's A Typeset. Just got this alphabet, but I am loving it!

I used buttons and scraps of the patterned papers for my embellishments. I'm really having fun with little flags and scraps cut to look like ribbons lately.

Although we are into the third week of the class, this is the only project I have completed. I hope to get some more work time soon to try out some of Courtney's other fun ideas.

What are you working on?