Happy Mother's Day!

The first thing I have to do is wish all the mothers out there a very Happy Mother's Day - especially my own! May you all have a lovely day and be showered with lots of love.

On my Mother's Day weekend, I got to go cropping. I took my 5 year-old with me for a few hours (she painted 2 canvases and did a collage on a third). Once I brought her home for her nap and returned, I got down to business ;)

I started out with this layout. The pictures may seem familiar because one of them was on another recent one I posted (the fairy princess page), but these are the pictures of my youngest and I had a slightly different spin on the look. Erica's page was light and airy because she tends to be my more dainty girl, while Alexis is not a girl you would use the word "dainty" for - lol. So, here is my page "Lady (?) Alexis":

All the papers are from the line Daydream by First Edition Papers (a pad I picked up a few years ago). I wanted the soft colors of the dresses to be picked up, but needed a bit of dark to ground it all and make it fit the personality of my youngest. I was having a hard time figuring out how to split the 5 pictures over 2 pages, so to keep it feeling balance, I split the middle picture between the girls (really easy to do since they had a slight gap between them). I then fussy cut some flowers from one of the patterned papers in the line and backed them with the darker patterned paper to allow them to stand out against the soft colors. Thickers for the title finished it off and a bit of journaling in the corner. I love these pictures because they really show what Alexis is like. A strong character? You don't know the half of it - lol.

I then decided to pull out some selfies I did with Erica. She came up to me one day and just asked if we could take some pictures while making funny faces. I was more than happy to oblige because the giggles that came out of it made my cheeks hurt! She comes by her silliness honestly:

So, it has been a while since I dove into some of my My Mind's Eye line The Sweetest Thing (tangerine). I wanted something fun and bold because these pictures are pure goofiness. I kept within the same colors so that the bold patterns did not compete with each other or detract from the pictures. I used my Cricut to cut the letters for the title, using the Storybook font. I also used some of the embellishments in the kit for some dimension (I even put some Stickles in the button holes for some subtle sparkle):

I used Thickers to make an arrow to point out the choice of "silly", since that was the ones I wanted to highlight:

Then I managed to get a third layout done. I took Erica to her first "Mom & Me" crop back in January at Scrapbook Centrale. I used the Glam Gal papers from DCWV and some black cardstock to make the papers pop. Some magenta colored Thickers for the title and it was done in no time at all (it literally came together within 20-30 minutes):

I also started a birthday card for a colleague, but it is not finished (I need one more item before I post it). I then decided I wanted to make something decorative for a shelf or mantel. I have seen lots of posts of banners and things with the seasons, so I decided to make something for spring and summer:

These will be the flip side of each other. I will also look for some papers to use to do this for autumn and winter (all 6-letter words). I think it will be nice to use these throughout the year as decorations. I plan to use chipboard or cardboard behind the letters to give them a stiffer back. Then I will probably make an accordion with them either using ribbon or hoops. Once I finish them, I will post them.

Not bad for about 5 hours worth of time, eh? I am pleased with how productive I was yesterday :)