Christmas in June

I'm finishing up this weekend's Smash*Holics Challenges today.  The last challenge for the weekend was "Christmas".  I'd recently found some old pictures of myself as a toddler and one just happened to have a Christmas tree in the photo.  I look to be around 18 months old or so.  I had pictures of my grandson, Sy, and my daughter, Caitlin, at the holidays, so I gathered them all up and smashed them in my book.  Tom put in a call to his folks and asked for a holiday picture for me to use in the book.  And, when Christmas 2012 rolls around, I'll snag a picture of my granddaughter, Charleen and put her sweet little picture on this page.

It was a pretty simple page to do....  everything was made on my Cricut machine.  (Yes, I'm pro-Cricut because it's what I happily have to work with at the moment.)   I love how the Santa face came out as paper piecing.  The ornaments were from a holiday cartridge.    The photos are inside the ornaments which open up.

Merry Christmas in June....

Lucking Out with New Challenges...

This past weekend there were three new challenges.   The first was to Smash something 'handmade'.  The second was to Smash a photo.  The third was a bit harder and was supposed to include all three Smashable items, which were something handmade, washi tape and a tag.  Luckily for me, when I finished my page, I'd done all three challenges at one time.  

The handmade item is a card by Sue B.  I love her cards and especially loved the colors in this card, so I used it because I wanted to keep it nice.  I figured it would be safe in my Smash book.  The photo is a recent picture of my daughter and grandchildren in a nifty little metal frame.  My friend, Lori W. sent me the really cool tag maker! It's from Making Memories!  Thanks, Lori!   There's green washi tape at the top and bottom of the page.

The card has been turned into a little book of sorts.  It's got three pages...one for Cait, one for Sy and one for baby Charleen.  Each page has a list of qualities that I love in each of them.

I absolutely adore how this page turned out!  LOVE IT!  I love the colors, the layout and how it all just kind of blended together to make a lovely, sentimental page.

What do you think?  Comments, thoughts or suggestions are welcome!  Thanks for reading!

Happy Smashing!

All the cool kids.....

It seems that all the cool kids in the Smashing World are blogging about their wonderful Smashy creations and finds, so I decided, I'd be a cool kid, and start a blog, too!

This is my first entry ... so please be kind.

I'm pretty new into smashing and like the freedom and creativity it allows. I've joined the very active Smash*holics group on Facebook. There's lots of creative people that are willing to answer questions, provide advice and showcase their work. It's a pretty great place for the most part. I highly recommend joining, if you haven't already.

My idea for this particular Smash Journal is to organize the pages so that eventually, I will have a journal and/or pictorial representation of myself and family to give to my Grandchildren, Syrus and Charleen, upon my death, which hopefully won't be for a long time. I wanted them to have something from me that gives them idea of the person I am, my likes, dislikes and of my thoughts. The grandkids live so far away and I have very limited opportunities to see them and to teach them about the family legacy. I hope that a cute journal type book will help me accomplish my goal.

Over the past weekend, I participated in two of three Smashing challenges sponsored by the group...
I tried to do challenge number three, but just couldn't get the creative juices flowing. It became a really frustrating time, so I gave up and will try again later.

Challenge #1: Use any or all of the following items: Fabric, ribbon, lace or twine in your layout.

Challenge #2: Use any or all of the following items in your layout: Stickers, Washi Tape, Flowers or a stamped image.