Fall is in the Air!

Don't ya just love this time of year? There is a chill in the air, pumpkins on porches, fall carnivals, the leaves are changing colors...I could go on and on. I almost forgot...caramel apples? They are sweet, plump, and juicy all at the same time. Speaking of plump and sweet...the November kit has debuted! It's full of Cosmo Cricket's Nutmeg...yummy, American Crafts cardstock and jeweled brads...my mouth is watering, Basic Grey Indian Summer, Making Memories Vintage Findings embellies, and a Maya Road pumpkin mini-album!!! I am full just thinking about it! Well, if you haven't been over to the website here is the kit live and in color!

Isn't it just delish? And ladies it is even more scrumptious when you get to touch it! If you think you are in need of a taste of Fall, you can get your kit HERE.

Oh! I almost forgot...the gallery will be up TONIGHT at 10:00 P.M. EST...we can not wait to share our creations!

Can I Get a Woot Woot?

Hello Mosh Poshers. Happy Monday. It's Jenny checking in with this week's installment of Manic Monday. The day when we share ideas on how to fit scrapping into our busy lives. Today I'm going to combine a little ad inspiration with a shortcut. Easy as pie...

So, I'm so not the greenest person around. But, I got this mailer from Gymboree and I just knew I had to do something with it. At first, I was going to use it for inspiration for a card for this month's gallery. The next thing I knew I was altering it into a little journal for my kids to add in some of their favorite moments from our trip to Hunt Club Farm earlier this month. It totally took on a mind of it's own and I just couldn't finish it fast enough. I can't wait to let my kiddos loose on it and get those memories recorded before they're gone.

The mailer was super cute as is. It had 9 punched out circles backed by tiny square pictures. And opened up as a cool tri-fold card.

I replaced the tiny Gymboree pictures with squares/rectangles of patterned paper and square/rectangular pictures of my own. I love how quick this was to put together with some scraps from my November kit and some leftover wallet-size prints.

I also covered up the rest of the Gymboree ad space. I included title areas and areas to journal. I even pulled out this cute Heidi Swapp stamp from an older Mosh Posh kit.

Super simple little journal/miniBook, BUT it took me no time to put together and my kiddos will love getting to journal it for me. Alright, that's all I have for today. See you Friday...

October Sketch

So, have you gobbled up your entire October kit yet? If not, our monthly sketch should help you! Like I've said before, sketches are great tools for speeding up our scrapping and getting us out of creative slumps.



Our October sketch was made by Estee and features 3 photos, a vertical page title, lots of room for journaling, and 3 balanced embellishments. It's a great sketch to follow or use as a starting point for a more complicated page. See how Jenny, Frances and I used it to inspire our layouts below:

Scrap Doldrum No. 1: Piles of Photos!!!

Can you believe it's Monday already? Can you believe October is almost halfway over? Christmas decorations are in the department stores! Time just passes so quickly... and the photos keep piling up. :) How can we ever get caught up with our scrapbooking?

Let me ask you a personal question. How many pages have you completed this month? And one more question: how many photos have you taken this month? Please share your answers in the comments. Want to know my answers? I've completed 8 pages this month and I've taken approximately 100 photos. YIKES! At that rate I'll never catch up!

So, you're probably wondering where I'm going with this...

Something that will make your scrapping go SO much quicker. Something that will help you catch up. A magical solution that will erase your scrap-stresses and instantly make you a success and all the envy of your scrapping buddies who bring a 5" stack of photos with them to crops:



Don't scrap every photo.
In fact, if you're like me, you should scrap about 5-10% of the photos you take.


GASP! "But, Brook," you say, "that is scrapblasphemy! How could I ever decide which photos should be scrapped and which should be... scrapped!?"

Well, let me give you a tip and an example. TIP: Include photos which play a part in telling the STORY without turning it into a NOVEL. Think short stories or snippets of moments. EXAMPLE: Instead of doing an entire Christmas album every year, why not pick the photos you love the most... the ones with strong memories (journaling) attached to them and do, say, 4 pages? Then, if you still want to honor the other 300 photos you took, arrange them in a good ol' fashioned photo album.

You will accomplish your scrapping in record time if you edit your choices. And, if you're finding scrapbooking has become a chore or a drag, using this method may even bring your passion for the craft back. :)

Here are two pages with the October kit where I edited my choices. I had SO many photos of these two occasions... each one had something endearing about it. The page "excellent" is of my Grandma with my two kids. I took 40 pictures of her with them. Each photo was adorable in it's own way. There were 10 that were keepers. From the 10 I chose the 3 that were the best. I could have done 4 pages of these photos. But I did one. The page "dad lessons" uses two photos from our afternoon at the beach house. Again, there were dozens of photos of my husband with my son. I chose two.





So, for those of you getting dragged down by the sheer number of photos you have I hope this Manic Monday post has empowered you just scrapbook the photos you love the most! Go to your next crop with an edited pile of photos and enjoy yourself again!

Happy Monday!

Back to the Daily Grind!

Hi there Mosh Posh fans! It's Monday, Manic Monday to be exact. If you are like me, right about now you are preparing dinner, doing homework, or bathing someone...sound familiar? Well, in our hectic lives it can sometimes be hard to fit in our most precious hobby. So tonight, amongst all of my craziness, I am going to let you in on one of my favorite secrets...the grid layout! I must say that at first I kinda thought that the grid was not my cup of tea. I believed it was too boxy and symmetrical for my taste. But after designing for Mosh Posh in June, I realized that when you are in a pinch, it can be a girl's best friend. See, I am a very slow scrapper, it truly has nothing to do with my IQ, I just love the details. I received my glorious June kit and got right to work. Details, details, details were everywhere...I was having the best time. But in the last days of marathon scrapping, I began to worry if I would make the deadline with ALL of my layouts complete. My BFF suggested, "Why not do a grid layout?" Seriously, that was all it took. Now, when I am in a rut...I scrapbook a grid layout. When I am in a pinch for time...I scrapbook a grid layout. When I am low on supplies...I scrapbook a grid layout!

Here is a look back to June when I scrapbooked a traditional grid layout.

"Got Class?"

I created the grid by cutting 2 X 2 squares of the beautiful Jenny Bowlin patterned paper, inked the sides, and added a touch of hand-stitching to make myself feel better about the details...remember? What really surprised me the most, was that the layout was not at all boxy and symmetrical. Yes, it is cleaner than my usual creations, but fun to boot. Here is a look at a different take on the grid layout...using the September kit.

"The Best of Friends"

That's the BFF that gave me the good advice. Learn to like her, were like peanut butter and jelly...we are always stuck together. This time, I actually choose to do this layout...a grid layout with circles, rather than squares. I believe it was the perfect way to accent the precious Lily Bee paper.

So, there ya go. I think ALL of the Mosh Posh girls did a variation of a grid layout. You can check them out HERE. So girls if you are pressed for time, in a rut, or have just never gave it a try...now is your chance. Let me see what cha got!

Git R Done

Well Hello there Mosh Poshers and Happy Monday. It's Jenny checking in with this week's installment of Manic Monday where the design team shares the ways we fit scrapping into our over-booked, hectic busy lives. I know we each have a story of how we got here. How we got started on this scrapbooking journey. I know for me, it all started in a teeny tiny scrapbook/teacher store in the middle of nowhere in MS after the birth of my first child. At the time I could store ALL of my supplies and tools in a "pizza box".

Fast forward 8 years and my scrapping is an honest-to-goodness obsession that has its own room plus space in two other closets. (Shh about that last part-that's downright embarassing). Add to that five kids and a deployed husband, making the little time I have to scrap stretch is hard! But, it must be done. Over the years I've developed a system. The most critical part of that system is really quite simple. I NEVER work on one thing at a time. I always work on 4-7 pages at a time. That way if I get "stuck" on one page, I can move onto others. Fix a title here, add an embellie here, or write out the journaling on a few when the mood strikes. Here is one of my work stations with 4 layouts in varying stages of completeness...


And a close-up of one done except for the journaling.

This process of mine really helps me make the most of my time between runny noses and laundry. Here's a sneak peek of Tiffany's rak. It'll be in the mail tomorrow. Stay tuned for more fun raks in the near future. Happy Monday!

A Little Ad Inspiration...

When I am completely drained creatively and in need of ideas, I flip through magazines that I have laying around the house. I also Google "Vintage Ads" to see what I can come up with. That is how I came up with this cool ad. I like the simplicity and how the text runs along the bottom. Such a clean, simple look. You will be able to see how I used this ad inspiration when the Design Team reveals our September Gallery tomorrow!

I would love to see how you would use this ad for inspiration for a layout or card!

Sketch = Stress Relief

Hey! It's Brook here! Happy Labor Day to you all. :)

Well, thankfully, today many of us have some time off to relax at home and spend time with family and friends. But typically, Mondays are hectic because we have to get back to our normal routines... driving the kids to school, heading to work, grocery shopping... you know, the daily chaos kicks in again. :) Mondays on the Mosh Posh blog are all about fitting scrapbooking into our busy lives. The other DT gals and I will share some of the ways we get our scrapping done in less time, with less stress. We'll call them "Manic Mondays".

My life has certainly been crazy the past week! I went on vacation to a beach house with my family for a week and when we returned our whole downstairs was flooded! Yikes! So, now we are living at my parents house. It's crazy, to say the least! :) Now more than ever I'm looking for shortcuts in my scrapping. Even when life gets hectic I still need my hobby, I just have to make it work in my day-to-day.

One way I like to cut down on time and stress is to use a sketch. Sketches keep me focused and give me a starting point (which cuts down on time a whole bunch). Sometimes if I start from scratch, without a sketch, I can waste an hour or more just moving my elements around on a page aimlessly. LOL. With a sketch I can choose the pictures I need and the placement is already figured out for me. I can also flip the sketch horizontally or vertically to make it my own. For me, using a sketch is one of the ways I get my scrapping done quicker.

The Mosh Posh DT drafts up a sketch every month to share with you. This month it was my turn! Typically when I post the sketch I'll have some actual examples to share with you of how I used it... but we are all still working on our creations with the September kit right now. So keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks for our layouts and cards using this sketch as inspiration:



This sketch makes use of 2 photos, a 4x6 and a 2x3. It is also great for using up random scraps of patterned paper you might have left behind from other layouts. So, use your scraps! Not having to do any cutting or searching for papers will make your scrapping even less manic and take less time. :) And that's always a good thing when you're busy or trying to catch up.

Have a fun holiday! Tomorrow is Tuesday, so look forward to some great tips.

Later! :)


PS: If you use this sketch, please link to it in the comments so we can all enjoy it!