Smash Dancing

I had lots of stickers left over from a layout I did using Basic Grey's Oxford line, so I used some here.  This page is about my mad writin' skillz I honed at UT. 

This is a fun (and traumatizing!) story about MJ, a little boy I used to babysit.  I filled in the prompts on the right side and added some fun stickers.



This last one is completely honest and raw.  It's about my journey to mental health.  I think this is my favorite Smash page so far. 

Smashy Smashy!

"Smashy smashy!" is what my sister always says before she cuddles someone...  Since arriving home from Texas 2 days ago, I've been missing my family.  But if you tell them I told you that, I will hunt you down and throw acid on your scrapbooks.

This Smashbook page is special to me because of the journaling.  It's all about learning to be happy by myself and being confident enough to go places alone.  It's very "real."  I sort of hate that word when it's used as a synonym for "genuine," but after this page, I can see the value in using it.  I think the photo I included reflects the feeling I was trying to communicate perfectly.

 This spread is all over the place.  It includes the first photo I took using the Instax camera I got on ebay for $50!  I discuss my love of my friend, Old Paul and my favorite Philly eateries.  My favorite part of this page is the koala sketch done by New Paul.  He included the caption, "Hi Leslie!!  My toots smell like eucalyptus!"  HA!  Koala + Fart Joke = Ridiculously Cool.  It's been proven by mathematicians at Princeton.  Lots of fun memorabillia on this one.  Speaking of memorabilia, I need to do a layout about the funny way my mother says "memrabeeeya" and other words. 

This one just tells the story of the strangest crops ever...  I stuck some packaging from the supplies I bought that day on the page with washi tape.  I also misted a bit just for kicks.

I had tons of memorabillia from my trip to Niagra Falls, so this page was a good place for all of it.  I used a Smash pocket for all of the post cards I picked up.  I used some Smash Pad pages for prompts, too.

Smash Bookin' up in here

Although I haven't been blogging lately, it seems I've been quite the productive scrapbooker these days!  In fact, I've been smashbooking like crazy.  I really like this form of memory keeping.  Unlike scrapbooking, I don't really worry about telling a complete story.  If I don't have pictures, it doesn't matter.  If my pages don't have proper balance or my elements aren't grounded, well, I don't really care.  It's fun. 

This first page is simply about all kinds of stuff I like.  You see a pic of Caroline, a koala a friend cut for me with her cricut, a sale tag from H&M, and all kind of other stuf.  Just for fun, I colored the little doodled bird and the "I like this" bubbles with prisma pencils.  I also used an Amy Tangerine clip.  I love her clips; they're perfect for smashing.  I like how I am able to include all sorts of scrapbooking supplies on my Smash layouts that I like but would not ordinarily put on a regular layout.  I would have a hard time using that vintage cherry card from October Afternoon on a page.  I also love the Smash Pads with their fun prompts and cute icons!

This one is all about my Ikea love.  Yep, Ikea makes cheap crap, but I love it!  You may be picking splinters of wood from your butt for weeks after your dining room chair collapses from underneath you, but at least your room looks cute!  I added pictures from their catalog, labels, and tags.  Besides my love of Ikea design, I also journaled about my love of their instituional, cafeteria-style food.  I don't know why I like their food so much.  I think it reminds me of the food I ate at school as a kid.  Seeing as I was a participant in government provided free lunch programs throughout my childhood, I am perhaps mentally transported to the days when I gorged myself on mashed potatoes that had been not-so-lovingly slopped onto a tray by a beast of a woman donning a hairnet.  

This one is just a page full of black and white stuff that I had fun sticking together.  I used stuff torn from design books and clipped from Studio Calico coupons.  My pages are always colorful, so this was an adventurous departure from my typical style.  I was inspired by the fun animal doodles gracing the page.

I had fun using all sorts of stickers and die-cuts that I would have a difficult time using on my scrapbook layouts here.  I added some labels and tags torn from Christmas gifts this year. I journaled about gift-giving in my family and documented my lists this year. I love how this looks like just random crap jumbled on a page. 

Smashbooks remind me of the first scrapbook I got when I was in the 6th grade.  I thoughtlessly plastered its pages with anything I fancied, saving every little note that was passed to me in class and every receipt from every punk rock band tee I bought during the "I'm a bad girl" phase of my life.  Kind of funny that as hard as I wanted to rebel, I still scrapbooked...  I laugh thinking about my 13 year-old self begging my mama to let me get piercings and dye my hair blue pasting the handmade valentines my grandma made me into a scrapbook.

Holy Cheap Crap, Batman! Studio G stuff at Wal-Mart

Let me begin by saying that I love Wal-Mart.  And I love it in a completely unironic way.  Everyone I know would rather have potato chip crumbs sprinkled in their eyes than step foot in one either because they take issue with Wal-Mart's business practices or because they just don't like cheap crap.  I, on the other hand, love the fact that I can stop in a Wal-Mart and pick up a brand new pair of jeans for $9.97, which is exactly what I did yesterday.  I also love the sterile feeling and florescent lighting in Wal-marts.  I like the antiseptic, institutional ambiance.  It's like they know that I'm there for the cheap crap, so they don't have to try fanangle me by playing good music or covering their walls with mosaics made of sea kelp and dog hair.  By doing so, I feel like they respect my intelligence.  So all the cool kids can have their over-priced Anthropologies or their high-end department stores.

That being said, I have NEVER found anything in the crafting sections of Wal-Mart worth spending my pennies on until yesterday.  I mean, my Philadelphia Wal-Mart's scrapbooking section typically consists of Sticko branded foiled beach stickers and gluesticks.  So it turns out that they are now selling Studio G stuff.  You may know Studio G from AC Moore and Michael's.  They're the people who make those (sometimes) cute $1 acrylic stamp sets and blocks and glitter glue, along with an occasional ink pad.  Walmart was selling 2 lines of their stuff.  First, they had a florally, multi-purpose sort of line that I wasn't that crazy about.  It wasn't bad, it just looked a bit old-fashioned and cheap to me, but I'm a supply snob.  Then they had an adorable Halloween line!  Here's what I got:

And all of this stuff was just 97 cents each, even the paper pack.  And I think those little characters are really cute!  Did you see the trick or treat chipboard banner?  Very trendy!  They also had tons of those acrylic stamps you can get at AC Moore, inks, bling, stickers, chipboard letters, and little punches.  Has anyone else seen this stuff in their Wal-Mart?  I wonder if any other lines will be coming out.

My Smash Book is off to a SMASHING start

Wow, that title is so cheesy it's almost funny.  ALMOST. 

I know the picture is kind of crummy.  I had to take it around 7:30 tonight so I could make the deadline for the Smash Book challenge at Your Scrapbook Stash.  I'm grateful for the challenge because it motivated me to start.  I put this together pretty fast.  I tried not to "think" too much.  Something tells me my Smash Book will have more journaling than my layouts, and I didn't think that was possible!

So I added a train ticket from when I was riding home from scrapbooking with Stephanie, and I really wanted to start an entry, but I was kind of paralyzed by fear.  Which was stupid.  I also added a picture, some stickers, alphas, and a journaling block.  And ALOT of journling.

My pirate's booty

This dude was made for the June contest at Page Maps and the challenges at Candy Shoppe Designs and The Scrappiest.  If you look closely (and I urge you to do so because this took me a long-ass time to do), you will see that I fussy-cut flowers from Cosmo Cricket paper and layered them using pop-dots to make a fun, little, dimensional embellishment.  I also fussy-cut the waves and added stickles to make it look like that white foamy stuff on the tops of waves.  You know what I mean?  I think it happens when a wave "crests?"  I don't know.  I apologize for my lack of nautical knowledge.  My years as a drunken sailor, laughing it up with my friends Peg Leg and Black Beard, are long gone.  Although the damage from the scurvy remains.  As does my big booty.

Another Lucky Girls layout and yet another page about food

Here a layout I made using only supplies from the kit from Lucky Girl Crafts, other than the mini alphas.  It's sort of a mean layout, but sometimes mean things are funny!  I used a Pencil Lines sketch. 

Kathy, my dry-witted scrapbooking pal, commented the other day that I make a butt-load of food layouts.  Well, to my credit, this layout isn't about food.  It's about a restaurant.  Yeah... I make alot of restaurant layouts, too.  I used a Scrappiest sketch.  I made a fun little border around my title block by attaching strips  of folded patterned paper.  The title was inspired by the book, "Room with a View" for the book challenge at Candy Shoppe Designs.