Gotta love the everyday!!

As some of you know, I had the unbelievable privilege this past weekend of going away to a scrapbooking retreat house in the mountains with 4 other ladies - a Mother's Day gift from my AWESOME hubby!!!  I actually hadn't done any scrapbooking in a VERY long time, up until my recent weekend of fabric scrapbooking workshops with Donna Downey - so I had been wondering what I was going to work on - but after those workshops, I knew precisely what I'd be working on!  Since today's Mixed Media Monday's challenge is "Embellish It," I'm also linking up to them for my album, because there is TONS of embellishing going on throughout this album!!!  

This blog post is VERY picture-heavy, so I'll do my best to keep my comments to a minimum.  Just know that all but one front and back are canvas - I only did one paper front and back (can you spot it??).  There are LOTS of embellishments throughout - including acrylic and watercolor paints, fabric, ribbon, buttons, patterned paper, book text, stamped images, heat embossed images,wire, flowers, beads, staples, eyelets, glossy accents, embroidered canvas tags and tabs, modeling paste, and even some corrugated cardboard recycled from the coffee cup cuff (what ARE those called?) that was around my coffee cup at breakfast on the way up to the retreat!

I do have to comment on this first page - we were told to paint "landscape" colors - and almost everyone in the class painted a blue sky and green grass.  I wanted a purple sky and have no idea why I painted an orange ground - I just thought the colors were pretty together.  Anyway, when I went to put the layout together, I was just thrilled with how the tag colors and the flowers and beads all coordinated so well with my colors.  And I love the wire smoke.  Tee hee.

I used Glossy Accents on my cut-strip ladder to make it look glossy to go with the shiny red playground ladder in the picture.

This page is one of my favorites, and was also one of the hardest to photograph.  The acrylic paint on the modeling compound has quite a shine to it, so the flash on the camera glares terribly, but getting a good picture without the flash, inside, was rather difficult.  But I love the colors, I love the swirl of the modeling compound...and I also LOVE the other technique I used on this page - gel medium to transfer a photocopied picture.  I didn't know if it would work on gesso'd canvas (I had only tried it on paper before), but I was pretty happy with how it came out.  For those who don't know, Mackenzie was born with a cleft lip and palate (and we almost lost her during delivery, and she was only 2 lbs, 15 oz at birth) - so her smiles are extra special...her smiles ARE proof of everyday miracles.  

These next couple photos I took just to try to give you an idea of the texture and layers on this page - there are LOTS of them!  I love the amount of embellishing and texture going on here!

This is another of my favorite pages.  Turquoise is one of my favorite colors, and I just love everything about this page...the stamps, the flowers, the book text, the quote, the "journey" tag, the black and white photo.  Love.

But this one.  This one, I think, is my absolute favorite.  When we did the base of this page in the workshop, it was a technique teaching us how to embed book text using gel medium, and then painting over it.  Then we used the "trust your heart" stamp, and watercolored that - Donna Downey actually watercolored MINE, using it as an example - my friend Deanna got a great photo of her doing so.   Anyway, I still wasn't sure what picture I was going to put on this page, and this weekend I was rifling through my giant stack of photos from the last 5 years or so...when I came across this one.  It's a picture that is precious to me, both because breastfeeding is an issue near and dear to my heart (and one I'm passionate about), and because I really don't have many (if any other) pictures of me nursing any of my children.  I don't even know who snapped this shot of me nursing my 6-week old firstborn - probably my husband, back in the ages when he used to take pictures of me!  LOL  Now it's all about the kiddos!  Anyway, I just thought there couldn't be a more perfect picture to go with the "trust your heart" stamp than a nursing mama - because you absolutely have to trust your heart when you are a new, breastfeeding mama, and half the moms in the Western world are telling you how much "easier" it would be to just give the baby a bottle of formula!!  And then the perfect quote - "Love comes from a place so deep it defies language."  So true, especially the love between a mama and her 6-week old baby!!

And finally, the last page.  Such a happy one...the colors, the look on my son's face...even the unexpected burst of red in the third button.  I used a Tim Holtz Alterations Edges die (Sizzix) to die cut the coffee cuff and layer it under the canvas tag and photo.  I love the look!!

And finally, I love the overall theme of the album - to embrace the everyday moments of our lives!!