A Fond Farewell to Paula

We are so sad to say goodbye to our friend Paula who has been such an inspiration here for so many years. We know she will continue inspiring us with her creations at Designer Digitals, Core'dinations, Jillibean Soup, and The Scrap Review, and we wish her continued success in all her scrappy endavors.

Paula, we'll miss your sweet smiling face whenever we log on to HMITM. We hope you won't forget us and that you will visit us and play every once in a while. xoxo

Challenge #135 - Party like it's 1999 {June 21 - July 4}

Are you singing now? I am.

Nothing like a little Prince song to get you going on a Monday morning.

Challenge #135:

Create a layout with:

1 word title

9 squares

9 brads

9 pieces of pattern paper

Michelle: I am so embarrassed...this is my challenge and I messed up the 1 word title. LOL. Pretend that Family Guy is all one word.....ok? :) I had fun layering the squares. And the brads were super easy. Pattern papers and sticker by Bella Blvd (Man of the House line).

Debbi: Yeah, I have the song in my head now, too! I had a lot of fun with this challenge. I used a Studio Calico kit for my page (plus a few odds and ends from my stash). I counted the background papers in my 9 squares since my layout is square. For some reason, I had a little trouble deciding where to put the last two brads, but after pondering and pondering, I added them to the little square above the picture. I've added my hidden journaling below my layout, in case anyone wants to know what's in the pocket.

Hidden journaling reads: Every year when we go to the reading conference, something memorable happens that we always laugh about the next year. This year, there were two defining moments: 1) The Garage Barbecue: Martha has connections and she managed to get us invited to a dinner hosted by a publisher. We're not sure what we were expecting, but one thing for sure was that we didn't expect to have our barbecue dinner in a garage! 2) The Key Fiasco: Our hotel room keys didn't work and the front desk guy didn't believe us and kept giving us more keys that didn't work. After three or four trips back and forth, we made them come and try out the faulty keys.

Elizabeth: Another fun challenge. I chose to use the squares as my embellishment feature on this one and used the brads to dress up the butterflies and flower.

Joy: I love a good grid design! I went with the obvious. I love this old photo of my 3rd child when she was a baby!

Challenge #134 - six of one, half a dozen of the other

Can you believe it's June already? The 6th month of the year! And that brings me to this next challenge - six of one, half a dozen of the other: use 6 patterned papers and 6 stickers on your layout.

Here's what the team members did:
Paula: I went clean and simple. I've had these photos sitting on my desk for quite some time but never could figure out what to do with them. I picked up this heart punch and was done pretty quickly after that! I counted the thickers as stickers and added a couple more down at the bottom.


Elizabeth: Fun challenge, once again. This one came together quickly for me, which is always a good thing. I used several pp's as the background paper and covered the dotted paper with a printed transparency (kinda hard to see). I used more pp to accent the pictures with a red border and also punched a few snowflakes out of patterned paper. It was fun to look through my word stickers for this layout, I used to use them ALL the time, but got out of the habit. Here's my layout...

Michelle: I finally scrapped these photos from this past December of our day trip to Memphis. Yes. I used 6 pattern papers; there is one piece of pattern paper hiding behind the chipboard circle tag. And it felt so great to finally use that Heidi Swapp chipboard tag I have had in my stash for a long time.

Debbi T: One of my many crazy photos of my husband. This is going into my book of silly photos. I had just finished another layout using this old Studio Calico kit from over two years ago that I'd been hoarding, and as I was preparing to put the papers away, I realized they were perfect for the picture. The clock and gear accents were perfect to go with this funny quote I found.