18 birthday cake

My brain is waiting for coffee to begin. It seems I have days where I can journal on end and then days where I seem to shut it off. All week, I've had entries floating around wanting to be told and today they are quiet. I'm waiting to hear from someone about a job. Well, two possible jobs. I shouldn't get too excited about it though. But, to have the ability to bring steady money in sounds so nice. Though being the recepient of a bottle of McCafe Cinnamon Cookie syrup (marked use by date was passed a few days ago so they had to waste the bottle) was a pleasant surprise. I hope they use it again next year as a flavor. I can see myself asking for it in a regular coffee when I go. Actually, I wish they would keep it all year, seeing as the peppermint mocha hasn't come back. 

Ok, a sip of coffee starts the brain. Neurons are firing and gearing to go. A good note ahead. I got more medicine when I mentioned that I was out and needed to reschedule my med appointment. They literally got me in after my counselor that day. Last minute cancellation. I told about the nightmares and they gave me a new medicine to add for bedtime. I'm still having them, but at least now I'm sleeping straight through the past two nights. The first night I woke up but was able to get back to sleep. I'm lucky in that my antidepressant works quickly in the way I need it to: stop the bad thoughts. The rest I can fight myself. In a way, scrapbooking is an art therapy for me. Doing the journal is making me look for good moments in the day and causing me to build on that. Doing my grandmother's album is letting me go over the memories and accept it happened and that I survived that year. It does bring up many bad memories, but I can see someone who was fighting and wasn't ready to give up.

I'm still figuring out lighting with doing the layouts. One of these days I should show a picture of the part of the room I am taking them in. The first of the two pictures is a better shot at the pastels I used for the background. The latter is a better overall shot. I am playing more with designing backgrounds and not just using patterned paper. Oh, I like the papers I have and have a few more layouts using them, but to have this in my options is quite enjoyable.

So, about the background of this layout and the issues I had doing this. I used three pastels for the background. I used a medium yellow, red, and dark green. The lines I drew are under the photo to get a halo effect. I also used those colors on the title, along with a blue, brown, orange, and black. Originally the title was white, which seemed too bright against that gold. This softened it and made it closer to the background image on the title card. With the background, I tried to blend the colors as they hit each other in the corners. I wanted to make sure that the predominant colors were on the background. All of this was done with a wad of toilet paper. Budget designing at its finest.

 I am having issues no matter what when it comes to gluing anything onto metallic paper. This time, I tried glue stick, double sided tape, and liquid glue. None held well. I may just have to admit that it can not be under another layer, just a top one. So limiting if so. Any advice?

For the rest of the layout, I used triangle scraps from other pieces that I made flags out of or were the edges that I cut from other layouts. The flowers were fussy cut by me while the girl had fussy cut the butterflies from a sheet from my Michael's paper pad. She needs to finish that sheet because I am running low on those and want to add them to another page. I also added a couple drops of black glitter paint among the triangles. The butterflies were propped up with foam from Dollar General. It held the photo to the paper that way. The donut paper was from Dollar Tree, while the other two were from paper pads from Michael's. I ended up running my old gold ink pad around the edges of the cardstock to give it a finished look. Sometimes, layouts look nice without, but this just seemed to need it.

Let's Get Sketchy

Once again, I'm submitting to the Let's Get Sketchy challenge. It's funny because this time I really was hesitant on doing it because I'm not confident in the finished design itself. If you notice, I didn't even tell why that picture was taken. Like I mentioned above, doing scrapbooking on these old photos are a bit like personal therapy. Maybe that is the real reason behind my unease on this one. The funny part is that I also have a bit of pride with this one that I hadn't in others. So, submitting it anyway. Sjoot away with whatever you will.