MiniBullyMom's Musings

My niece is growing up so fast. Last year was her first formal dance. My sister went all out making sure it was a night to remember. She had her hair and makeup done professionally.

The minute I saw Scrappin Mommy's Autumn Splendor kit I knew it would be the perfect for showcasing this photo. You can pick it up at Divine Digital for only $2.50 right now. Angela did a great job creating this kit, it was her first time participating in Divine Digital's "PROject COLOUR". There is a unique flexibility with the kit which can appeal to those who prefer a bit of elegance yet those who enjoy a country feel to their layouts would find this a great addition to their digital stash.

Well....I'm not a "Twilight Zone" (the show/movie) fan but I am a fan of the "Twilight" series of books and the "Twilight Zone" kit designed by Christine Mortimer of DIGI_licious Designs. She also designed the wonderful little "button/typewriter key" looking alpha to coordinate with it.


Christine took inspiration from the colors used on the book covers. She gave it a soft, grungy feel with delicate elements that lend a vintage feel to the kit. I enjoyed playing with the papers and came up with the following layout without much thinking. It's not "DONE" quite yet, there is something it needs but I'm not quite sure what it is. Sometimes I sit on a layout and it' hits me later as to what needs changed. Once I figure it out I'll post the revised version here too.


What grabbed my attention to the kit first was the colors...although I will have to admit being partial to black, red and white anyways.

She did create the most awesome halloween quickpage from her "Bewitched & Spellbound" Kit that she is giving away as a freebie!
CLICK HERE for the BLOG LINK to her FREEBIE

Well we have done a ton of work in the backyard this summer. We decided to hold Christina's graduation party at home. The first photo is of the garage where a huge Pampass Grass plant used to be. Mike hated it from about the second year we had it. I loved it but realized after 10 years that it had performed it's original function and was tired of it's leaves getting mowed over. So we decided to rip it out. That turned out to be a major project in itself. It took a chain saw, electric hedger, axe, pick axe and shovel to get it out of there. The plant reached all the way over to the tiki torch on the right and about a foot past the tiki torch on the left. You can actually see a patch of dirt between the torches where the plant actually covered/laid over the lawn. We ended up planting four short pyramidalis trees along the old fence to hide the neighbor's garage. I finally gathered together my three beach logs and tied them into a piling (this was a project I wanted to get done last year) and hung the buoys we found at the beach also to create my beach scene. I have glass floats resting on a "stump" of wood we found another time in the flower bed that is the just out of the photo on the right hand side.

The toilet "arrangement" is the newest thing I did to drive my hubby crazy. We ripped it out of the bathroom this past winter because it was leaking. You just can't toss them in the garbage here but they will take them at the dump. Well it was the original toilet to the house and the only reason we took it out was because we couldn't retrofit the "guts" of it inside the tank. So I decided to plant it. I placed it in a hidden corner of the yard and filled it with "Impatients" of all things. Every guy who sees it just shakes their head but the women think it was a neat idea. One of my friends even fessed up that she was thinking about doing the same thing with one they had. Two weeks later we went to her house and lo and behold she had done it. Our husbands think we are both weird.


This is the last section of the backyard that we need to finish up. We have been storing campfire wood under the tarp and after we finish reroofing/painting the garage Mike will probably build a covered storage bin for it. We have debated making an arbor or gazebo to cover this deck but resisted so far since we have a covered patio attached to the little garage closer to the house -yes we have two garages in our backyard. I'm leaning towards an arbor of some sort because that would allow sun through but I'm just not quite convinced I really want to do that. We need to pressure wash, stain and fix the lattice work that runs along the sidewalk. The only reason we really don't sit out on that patio is that everyone across the street can see that deck because they are on a hill and it faces their front yards. The other patio provides lots of shade and has electrical outlets. I'm actually sitting at the bar on the covered patio as I blog. The next priority is getting this big garage roof shored up, reroofed and replace all the wiring in it. We are hoping to shore it up in September and immediately get it roofed before the "rainy season" hits in full force. Luckily we can roof half at a time and be okay. We bought the shingles off Craigslist and have then stacked in the small garage, the plywood and 2x4's are in the big one and now I'm hunting down tar paper and deals on flashing. Next summer we should be able to repaint the big garage to match the house, put a peaked roof on the little garage, rewire it and complete turning it into an oversized shed.


Now to get back to digiscrapping. My daughter is a huge Tim Burton fan and when I saw this new kit created by "Digital Reality" it reminded me of the photos I've seen of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in the new Alice in Wonderland movie Tim Burton is filming. You can check out the entire kit at Divine Digital. There is an absolutely awesome string of paper lanterns in the kit.

Okay...clusters of photos are easy for me. Yet there is a clustering technique that I'm finding very challenging even after several tries. I really admire those layouts that have a cluster of flowers, leaves, ephemra, ribbon and such but I'm having a hard time with mastering it. I'm pretty sure it's a style that you can't just take a class called "The Principles of Clustering Elements" at your favorite digiscrapping site. But it seems to be one of those techniques that just come with practice or study of layouts where someone used it and it caught your eye. I've posted simple credits but due to the volume of designers and items used I'm not including actual links. I've attempted it a couple of times. Once was basically a premade cluster from that I added a couple of elements to.

My second attempt was an ADSR 4 Challenge where we had to scraplift a layout that inspired us. I found a layout that had clustering and didn't copy it per se but used it as a guideline. So even though I created the cluster by myself I used another layout as a guide. Here is the link to the original layout . Here is my version:

On Sunday I created one where I used a background paper that had a "cluster" as part of it already. I "enlarged" the cluster and "expanded upon it" so to speak. Although I used a ton of elements in making it I really don't consider it an original quite yet because the background paper was my inspiration and guide.