Basic Grey Weekly Challenge-May 18, 2012

This weeks challenge from Basic Grey was to create a multi-photo layout.  I used to do multi-photo layouts a lot when I started scrapbooking in an attempt to fit as many photos as I could on one page. As I progressed I switched to doing mostly one photo to highlight and keep it simpler.  However I recently got a great photo printer so I can photoshop and size down photos to make them smaller.  I have found that this makes a world of a difference when it comes to multi photo layouts.  When I was printing my photos at CVS and all my photos were 4x6 (or cropped from that) and it was very difficult to have more than 1-2 photos in a layout and have it look good.  Now with this printer I have the ease of manipulating my photos into any size, best Christmas gift ever, thanks Mom & Dad!

Here is my layout for the challenge.  My little niece is just learning to talk and one of her words is "bubbles."  There's a bubble machine on their back porch that churns out hundreds of bubbles at a time and she loves to chase them.

Bubbles!-Basic Grey Olivia

Basic Grey NSD Challenge-Sketch

The second Basic Grey National Scrapbook Day challenge I decided to take part in (going to try to do all of them, we'll see how that works out) was the sketch one. The sketch was created by Valerie Salmon of Got Sketch who I am a big fan of.  This page is of my Dad's birthday using the Life of the Party collection.

My version:

The sketch:

Basic Grey Challenge-Vintage

May 5 with National Scrapbooking Day.  It was also Cinco de Mayo so my priority was obviously drinking Corona while laying by a pool.  Basic Grey put up a TON of challenges on their blog and thankfully gave people through May 11 to complete them.  One of my favorite challenges was to use a vintage collection in a layout. Basic Grey has long been my favorite brand and the first scrapbooking paper I bought was from them.  Since then I have purchased almost every collection they come out with. Needless to say I have a large cabinet full of older Basic Grey product. I decided to use Urban Prairie for this challenge and a series of photos of my niece.  She took my iPhone when I wasn't looking and took a bunch of pictures of herself making funny faces.

Basic Grey Weekly Challenge

Once in a rare while I have time to actually notice and take part in a brand's challenge.  As is obvious on this blog I am a Basic Grey junkie and managed to get this one done before their cut off date of tomorrow. Their challenge this week was to use a punch/punches as a background in a layout.  I went with an arrow punch, I tried to incorporate a swirl one too but it just ended up looking messy.  I used the Green at Heart collection and I sewed through some of the strips of arrows.  I've been really into embossing lately too and finally got to use this incredibly bright American Crafts Zing powder.  The photo is from a trip to Maui we took last year.

Wailua Valley Overlook-Basic Grey Green at Heart

Embossing, punches and stitching