Yesterday’s page went surprisingly easily considering how long this ridiculous cold is hanging around. Maybe that’s because it was a color prompt based on the main colors of Madeline: blue, white, and yellow.

After a quick thumb through the photos on hand, and pulling out one of my favorite scraps from the scrap bin I came up with this:

The blue zigzag is the reverse of the arrow paper. The colors and the patterns help illustrate the energy and excitement of the day. A few enamel dots to act as slingshot stones, and the page was finished.

Some days really are easier than others.

Only two more days of LOAD. I am both happy and sad to be coming to the end. Sad, because I love creating things every day, and sharing pages with friends, and I always miss everyone when LOAD is over. Happy because I have been sick, and that’s draining all the energy and creativity out of me. If it weren’t so close to the end of the month, I would not be finishing LOAD. But since it’s only a few more days, I’ll stick it out.

After all, why let a little thing like a cold keep you from creating?

Yesterday’s prompt took its inspiration from pop-up books.

While I love a good pop-up book, I thought a bit of texture would be easier to add to a page than a pop-up.

Thumbing thru the most recent batch of printed photos brought up two pics of my boys building castles at the beach. How about a bit of glitter to mimic the look of the beach?

I have way too much glitter on hand, considering how much I am not a fan of it. However, pair it with a good dimensional adhesive, and it becomes not so horrible. This has a thin layer of dimensional adhesive spread along the bottom, followed by a LOT of glitter, and then a thick layer of dimensional adhesive to keep the glitter from escaping.

Of course there are stray bits of glitter everywhere, but a few times around the room with a damp cloth should solve most of that problem.

Come to think of it, maybe it would have been easier to create a pop-up.

What are your favorite ways to use glitter? I seriously need to use more of what I have on hand. It’s taking up valuable real estate in my scrap room!

Yesterday’s prompt was about family favorites — which books have we shared as a family? There are quite a few we’ve shared, but the one that was the most recent is the Harry Potter series.

I started reading the series when I worked in a book store. I shared them with my then boyfriend, and then after we married and had kids, we shared them with our boys as they got old enough. My husband did most of the reading aloud, because well, he’s just better at it than I am, but I’m always up for a discussion involving Harry.

So of course, yesterday’s page was all about Harry.

You may notice that the papers and embellishments are all Halloween themed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do many pages about Halloween, so finding other uses for what I have on hand just makes me happy. I even managed to finish up an embellishment pack with this page! Woo hoo!

This is a big reason why I recommend going easy on the heavily themed papers and embellishments. While they are lovely and fun, you don’t need a lot of them to tell your stories, so they frequently end up just taking up space in your stash. By choosing supplies that have multiple uses, you can make your stash much more versatile.

You’ve seen me use Halloween and Christmas themed papers for multiple pages this month. What are some ways you would suggest using your themed stash?

The kids’ winter vacation put a serious cramp in my daily blogging. Yep. That’s what I’m blaming. 😉

Layout a Day continued however, with a new emphasis on kraft paper apparently.

The prompt for Wednesday involved using a large photo. I didn’t have any enlargements handy, but I did have this bit of memorabilia left from Halloween. The packaging was so fun, it practically demanded a scrapbook page of its own.

Thursday for me, was all about reflecting on the relationship my youngest has with his cousins. (As well as the purple and brown colors for the day’s prompt.) The visit with my sister and her very demanding and aggressively affectionate three-year-old left my kid very glad he doesn’t have any younger siblings. He does however, play really well with my brother’s daughter, who has been a lot of fun for him, once she was no longer a teeny tiny baby. I’m sure he’ll like his younger cousins more once they’re bigger too. He’s just definitely not a baby person.

The prompt for Friday was the title from a Judy Moody book. That was an easy one to do. Also, if you notice, Thursday’s and Friday’s pages use the layer cake style to create a background for the photo. While the designs are very similar, the paper variety gives them each a different appearance.

Saturday’s page is vaguely related to the day’s prompt. It started with the idea of describing myself. I’ve been a writer for forever — I still have the first story I wrote on my own in second grade somewhere. Which reminded me of the story my son wrote last year for school. He did a great job putting it together, and he’s got tons of ideas for characters. He wants to create a video game rather than a book like I did, hence all the gears on the page.

Yesterday’s prompt was about reading habits — how did our childhood reading habits affect our adulthood reading habits? While I had lots of ideas for how I could work that into something about myself, I didn’t have any relevant photos handy. I did, however, have this photo of my son reading that really worked with the idea of the prompt, so went with it. And yes, it is another layer cake page. I’ve been trying to use more scraps from my scrap bin, and this is a great way to use them up.

So that brings us up to today. Time to go listen to the prompt and get something made.

Let’s see if I can keep up with the daily posts now the kids are back in school!