Some exciting changes at HMITM plus Challenge #136 - Georgia

We are happy to announce that because we have increased the numbers on our team (see the announcment of our new design team members below this post), How Much Is Too Much? is returning to weekly challenges! Check in every Monday morning for a fresh, new, FUN challenge!

We'd also like to announce a new feature, which we are calling How Awesome Is Too Awesome? aka The Weekly Wow! Each week, the team will vote on our favorite layout shared by the players, and it will be posted on our blog and will go into a special gallery we are starting (see the tab above)--a hall of fame, of sorts.

One last announcement: Starting next month, we will be featuring guest designers. We hope you will play often--you might just be asked to join us as a future guest designer!

Now...on to this week's challenge!

Hi Everyone! It's Georgia here, I'm so excited to be doing my first challenge, I hope you all play along :-)

I share my name with the 4th of the 50 US states and so I used that as the inspiration for the challenge:

Create a layout using:

4 word title

5 (or more) colors

0 flowers - and that includes your patterned paper!!

I set this challenge so you would think it would be easy for me to do lol, the no flowers and 5 colors were easy but I struggled in coming up with a four word title. These photos of my son Archie are a few months old now, there is no particular story behind them, just the absolute joy of a 3 year old boy coming down a huge slide! I had planned on calling it simply "slide" but finally I found these large word rub-ons from the Lily Bee Hello Sunshine range and they matched perfectly.

Kat: You know I never realised how many of my layouts (most of which are of Clay!) have flowers on them!! Not usually pretty, frilly ones, lol, but funky little flower buttons or plastic things, I even went to pop one on here and had to stop myself. As for the 4 words, most of my titles have more than 4 words in them so I had to limit this too, and 5 colors....ummmm, yeah, hope that was a minimum of G!! Don't count black/white/grey and I think I'm all good, lol.

Debbi T: I had a lot of fun with this challenge too! I was pretty literal with the challenge, and I counted the neutral cream as one of my five colors. The hardest part for me was figuring out a title with exactly four words. I've been using a lot of flowers on my pages lately, so it was fun to try to figure out other ways to embellish my page. I had this old photo of my brother-in-law and nephew sitting on my desk, wanting to scrap my own childhood memories of playing airplane, and this was the perfect opportunity to use the fun airplane paper from a recent Studio Calico kit. I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but I added Glossy Accents to the airplane window to make it look like glass. I was getting ready to cut the letters from the Jenni Bowlin Bingo Alpha Tiles, when I noticed how cute the outline of the card was, so I used a paper trimmer to cut out the inside and used the outside as a frame on my layout. I used some of the fun tear strips from Cosmo Cricket papers to point the way to my journaling hidden on the back, which reads:

When we were little, we used to pretend we were airplanes too. Mom or Gram would lie on their backs on the floor, and we'd climb aboard their legs, wrap our little arms around their shins, and get ready for lift off. They'd sway their legs and make us go up and down and they'd make airplane sounds and we'd giggle and giggle and beg them to keep us flying when we came in for a landing.

Janet M.: This was a fun challenge to start off with and it was a challenge because you don't stop and realize how many patterned papers have flowers on them. I'm working on an album for my husband of moments at our lodge so this layout is my second one going into it. I love the colors and pp in here without any flowers. My journaling reads:

Some things are just timeless and if we see them in color you can pretty much tell when the picture was taken. Take away the color and try and figure out the year. It's a perfect combination boys, water, a rock and a hot summer day. As long as that combination is present it will always be a time that creates memories and it won't matter if it's 1924, 1954 or 2004 it's a winning combination for every generation.

Amanda: I loved this challenge! With two girls, I'm always using flowers so this was a fun change. I had trouble trying not to even use floral paper! I used the newest Echo Park "A Walk in the Park" line on this.

Anna-Karin: This was a fun challenge! I struggled at first to come up with a four word title and kept thinking of either three words or five words. Like everyone else, I realised how often I use flowers. I felt like doing a grungy layout and to play around with my new Tim Holtz stuff. Three of the hearts were die cut from grungeboard and three were die cut from a paper covered with aluminium tape. The hearts were embossed in different folders. The grungeboard hearts were sprayed with homemade glimmer mist and the metallic hearts were painted and then sanded. While re-organising some of my stash the other day I found this old script tissue paper by 7 Gypsies. I used multi-medium to attach it to a piece of canvas and then I stamped on top of it with different texture stamps. There are close up photos in my Two Peas gallery post. The journaling reads:

'It really feels like you are on top of the world at Blyde River Canyon. It is one of our favourite places. The view is magnificent and the water has the most beautiful colour. The canyon is one of the largest in the world (24 km long and an average of 800 m deep). I love the story behind the name of the river. In 1844 Voortrekker leader Hendrik Potgieter left with some of the men on a trek to Lourenço Marques (Maputu). The rest of the group waited at an unnamed river. After having waited for months, they gave up on the safe return of the explorers and called the river ‘Treur’ (sorrow). They went on, but shortly thereafter Pot-gieter and his men met up with them at another river close by, which was then called ‘Blyde’ (joy). This place does indeed make me feel joyful.’

Debbie F: Since I have four boys, my layouts are usually flower free, LOL. The tough parts of this challenge were the four word title and the color requirements. It took a little thinking, but I pulled it off! My LSS asked me to create a page with these new Reminisce papers and stickers, I figured this challenge was a great way to get started. My eldest boy is really into a wide variety of music these days. So I decided to make a "banner" out of the music note stickers and list some of his favorite playlist artists. I made all the papers good and grungy with some black chalk ink. Plus, I finally used some of the Die Cuts with a View chip alphas I've had in my stash for a LONG time! Thanks for a great challenge, Georgia!




Michelle: Easy not to use flowers....I am most happy about this layout because I finally used some of the Love Elsie I had been hoarding! And mixed it up with some American Crafts rubons!

Francine:

With a boy to scrap now, not using flowers is now the norm for me! I enjoyed this challenge, especially coming up with the 4 word title, which hit me as soon as I saw these photos of Kieran.

Journaling: Whatever the day, whatever the weather. Kieran 2010

and don't forget to share your creations on the 2 peas thread here!