These are pictures of my granddaughter, before and after getting her hair cut. The second picture does not have a smile. So sad. But just so you know, I did wait to create this layout AFTER her hair had grown out. I used the I AM collect by Simple Stories. Such a great collection for us gals, young and old. The pair of scissors is from an Amy Tan die, I ordered it for this layout, and the many others that I wanted a scissor die cut for, but it is bigger than I anticipated. I will, however, use it again I am sure.

I just love layouts with big, long titles! And this one was fun to make. The kids were all acting silly at Vacation Bible School and all had such funny faces in this picture. It is a small church and only about 40 kids go altogether to the summer fun, but they do indeed have fun. And they learn a lot while doing it. The picture was taken on a cell phone, and just a little blurry, but perfect none the less, because it captured a moment in time, when kids got to be kids.

I found the larger picture of my granddaughter and thought, well, it is blurry, but it is all I have to remember the moment, so I will scrap it anyway. Needless to say, after I had finished the layout I found the other smaller, and clearer picture. I had to find a way to add it to the layout. I tore up embellishments and added it to the lower corner of the larger picture. Then my layout looked off balanced, so I had to do more. I add the other little box with the 'this totally rocks' and still needed more. So my title, instead of just being "Face Painting", which I thought was kind of plain anyway, became "Face Painting - a pigment of your imagination". So all in all, I am happy with how my layout turned out, and that I was able to include both pictures.

With this layout I wanted to create a background of words with a tone on tone look. This is my grandson at a very small creek. Being from the big city, he was really enthralled with all the nature he could find. He does not, however, like our bumpy roads (there are some gravel in the area). I love how the layout turned out, I used the black to really make the picture and some of the word pop.

Quite the sleepy little artist - but neither her nor her sister could stay in bed knowing they had some crafting that they could be doing. Although sleepy, she did succeed and come up with a cute little design on her cup. And no, she did not ask how to spell "Christmas".

As soon as the girls got up on this Saturday morning, they wanted to craft. I had bought these cups, and they had so much fun creating with them. I had just as much fun making layouts of them creating with them. They are neither one morning people, but Charlee is usually the earlier riser. And they were both proud of their finished cups.

I thought I would try my hand again at using watercolor on the background with this layout. The paints that I used had a pearl tint to them, and were pastels. The last time I used watercolors I spilled the cup holding the water on the layout, but this time I did much better. (I did keep the layout last time though, and went with it!). I used scraps behind my photo and ephemera from a kit. I was determined to use some of that ephemera, because I had it so long. The kit used is from March 2015, Clique kit. I ended up making 9  layouts with it, and I loved that I was able to kill the kit except for a handful of the ephemera.

I bought a sand play center for the grandkids and they loved it! I did not show them how to build anything, mainly because I wanted to see what they would create. My granddaughter was so proud when she realized that she could actually make a "mountain" with it. I had to capture the moment. This paper already had the water coloring on it, and it was such pretty pastels - I just had to use it for this layout. The title is "Building Sandcastles" because when I saw her mountain, I automatically said I thought it was a sandcastle, and that put the idea into her head, so that is what she ended up turning her mountain into. But a few more mountains can look like a castle with a creative eye.

Grid layouts are so much fun, there is not much to do as far as thinking about the design - the only thing you have to think about is which grid style you want to do, and start from there! The pictures that I used are of my grandson at a Chinese restaurant. He got his fortune, and it said "You look pretty". Of course, he was teased about that. But he was a good sport, and got pictures anyway. I went through the cut apart's in this kit and found things with "pretty", although they were not actually saying he was pretty. "Yes, you are pretty perfect, and smile pretty". It was a fun layout to create, and because it was a grid layout, it came together pretty quickly.

I don't know why I love photos of kids from the back but I do - maybe it is because that is my view so often? These are my two granddaughters riding bikes at their great-grandmother's house in her driveway. They always turned around long before the end of it though (because it is very long). But I always think about them going further. When I saw this sheet of paper I wanted to use the inner circle like a destination point, and I thought of this picture. I layers some gold craft paper and used gold rub-ons. Then, of course, I had to keep with the gold theme and add gold thickers to finish the title. This is very minimal for me on a layout, because I do love embellishments, but I really wanted the background paper to show.