A scrap-a-thon

This week I've had the chance to get together two times with friends to scrapbook. I managed to finish 12 layouts and start on a couple more. Every time I get to be creative, it seems I have a favorite. This is my favorite for the week. The photo was taken on Thanksgiving weekend and is so good of all three of them. The 'I love you' in the lower right corner of the photo was an add-on when I had it developed at Scrapbook Pictures. I love how the photos come out when I send them off to SP for developing.

The sketch for the layout came from Pencillines. So many of my layouts are from sketches on that website.

It feels so good to be able to get back to playing with paper and photos and all the goodies I've been hoarding. I'll save the other layouts for another post.

Photo Grid

A couple weeks ago Cathy Zielski had a tutorial on Ali Edward's blog with instructions on how to create a photo grid in Photoshop Elements. I really wanted to try it out and finally made the time today. I already had the layout idea when I first saw the tutorial. Sara had taken many photos of Greg and Eliana on Father's Day. Several of them were really good and a couple showed how goofy Greg can be. I couldn't wait to get them printed and into a layout. Here is the finished result.

I don't know why the photo edges are blurred. I didn't do that intentionally. In fact, I would rather have them crisp, but don't have any idea how to do that. But I do like how the layout turned out. I used products from this month's Cocoa Daisy kit.

Welcome Eliana Pamela Stiles

Welcome, little one. She is so very precious. She arrived by C-Section May 7, 2009 at 3:41pm. She weighed in at 8 pounds and 8 ounces, and was 21 inches long. In this photo she is less than one hour old. The hair looks curly, but once the meconium and vernix was washed out, her hair is straight.
The Stiles couple has now become a family of three and they couldn't be happier. Greg is already super dad and can change a messy diaper in record time. Sara is slowly recuperating from the C-section and large blood loss. She loves snuggling with Eli and is already speaking to her in Spanish. She and Eli will be released from the hospital on the 11th, so I am going back up tomorrow to stay with them for another week, so they can get settled into a good routine. I am so blessed to be able to be a part of this special time in their family and see my first grandchild at the very beginning of her life.