Challenge #178 - Just Relax (Aug 15 - Aug 28)

Anna-Karin here with this week’s HMITM challenge. I had a look for funny holidays, and 15 August is ‘Relaxation Day’, which is a fun theme for challenge. We all need to relax now and then and summer time is a particularly great time for relaxation. This week’s challenge is also to take a relaxed approach to scrapbooking and using some of your scraps.

The challenge is to do a layout:

- About something that you find relaxing.
- Close your eyes and dig into your stash of scrap patterned papers and randomly pick out at 6 or more pieces of papers and use those on your layout. No peeking!
- Do the same thing and pick 10 or more random buttons, ribbons or pearls.
- Use 3 bits and pieces lying around on your desk (not patterned papers). If you have a clean desk, use 3 left-overs from your last project.
- 1 recycled item

Have lots of fun! I am looking forward to seeing what you create!

We are delighted to have another beautiful layout from our August guest designer, Tracee Provis.

Tracee: About something that you find relaxing - Writing notes & planning layouts in my notepad

Close your eyes and dig into your stash of scrap patterned papers and randomly pick out at 6 or more pieces of paper and use those on your layout. No peeking! - This proved a tad more difficult to not cheat! so I waited until Fi & Debbi were online and I labelled random scraps with numbers 1 - 25 and got the girls to pick a number for me, to show there was no cheating I took a pic to prove I didnt just swap numbers lol All this was done under their watchful eyes on webcam! Let me tell you they didn't pick the pieces I wanted lol but on 3 of the scraps I used the backside and all in all my random was pretty co-coordinating!

Do the same thing and pick 10 or more random buttons, ribbons or pearls - I dont have anything organised(bad I know) so I just picked 10 random things that were in my "bits" box on the window sill it contains anything from die cuts to buttons to fabric scraps. I dipped my hand into my ribbon bag and pulled out a couple of things too!

Use 3 bits and pieces lying around on your desk (not patterned papers). If you have a clean desk, use 3 left-overs from your last project. - Lucky I do have a very messy desk so I tucked my hand under the top layer and picked lol

1 recycled item - I accidentally picked 2 so I rolled with that

This is what I finally ended up with:

Here's our DT inspirational layouts:

Anna-Karin: I often find that using my scraps speeds up my scrapbooking quite a bit since I spend less time choosing products to use. This layout is about taking walks in nature as one of my favourite forms of relaxation. My scrap papers are sorted according to colour in a file folder, so I closed my eyes and randomly pulled out 7 papers from different folders. I used 10 random buttons from one of my ziplock bags of buttons. I have a box of little leftover bits and pieces at my desk and try to use things from it as often as possible. For this layout, I pulled out the stamped bird, the metallic heart and the arrow (which was painted and stamped). The recycled item comes from a clothing tag (both the vellum strip and the printed ribbon). The title is a negative chipboard piece which has been in my leftover box for a long time, it was painted to fit better with this layout.

Elizabeth: Well, I do have to admit that blindly pulling out paper from my scrap pile is hardly a relaxing way to start my layout process, but my saving grace was the fact that so many papers are double sided, so I was able to make the combination of papers fit :P The embellishments I used from my last project were the felt flowers, and the recycled item is the circle outline stickers near the bottom of the layout. I used the outside of a sticker that I cut from the backing. And of course, going to the beach with five kids is always relaxing, right?!?!? It was a fantastic time together.

Janet M- This was a great challenge and quite interesting , since my scrapbook room is in a state of everything and anything is not were it should be with it getting moved. I reached into a pile of assorted papers and found some that were right on the top. I did the same thing with the embellishments from a basket of assorted items. The recycled item on here is a bookmark I pulled out of the desk. This is a picture of my two favorite men my brother and husband after a nice day when he had been visiting and we were just having a good time.

Fi - Relaxation for me is to have some time with my husband and one of our favourite days is the Melbourne Cup Race day. Its the race that stops the nation, its so great to see all the awesome fashions and lets not forget the hats.... Its really not about the horses at all.

I well and truly dug through my scraps for this one, with the help of Debbi and Tracee via video skype, their was definitely no cheating going on...lol Hop on over to my blog and check out the process we went through.

Debbi T: This would've been a very stressful challenge for me because I have this need to be in control, LOL, but I kept telling myself, "It's okay...it's for Relaxation Day." Plus, I was selecting my elements and scrapping with Tracee and Fi via Skype, and that made it more fun. I randomly chose an odd selection of stuff and I kept having printer issues with my photo, so I wasn't entirely happy with the way my page turned out, but I just said "Go with the flow, Debbi; it's Relaxation Day." I had a lot of fun trying to make the best of what I randomly chose. I also used a Creative Scrappers sketch. Thanks for the fun challenge, Anna-Karin!

To play, and have a shot at being chosen for our How Awesome Is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and creating as a HMITM Guest Designer, just share your layout through Mr. Linky below!

We can't wait to see what you create!