FINALLY the First Grade Scrapping Begins

When my position was eliminated a week and a half a go I found myself with a lot more time on my hands and I decided to get busy. I have a long list of household chores and projects but they are CHORES and I needed Therapy, Comfort, and Play more than work those first few hours. So I scrapped three pages that first evening. Amazing for someone who generally only gets to scrap at the monthly crop.

My son is heading to the second grade and I am finally scrapping the first grade. I don't have a lot of photos in general and fewer pertaining to school. I am generally too busy doing things with my son to be photographing him, the camera would distance me from the activities – making me an observer instead of a participant. I like to participate. This is a problem when it comes time to scrap. SO...

I scrap the other stuff. I saw a woman at a crop putting together a page of the complimentary notes the teacher had sent home about her kid. I figured I could do the same, as well as some of his projects that were really meaningful or spoke to who he was in the first grade. These were really easy pages (a blessing given my emotional state when I put them together).


The paper on the first two pages was from the Target dollar bin last fall. Grand plans and all that but I am finally putting them to good use. The first is when he was Student of the Week. I'm sure they make their selections for this randomly because it can't be based on his behavior for THAT week. Fairly straight forward page, an 8.5"x11" award, a couple of words from the retired SU! So Very set and badda bing a page is done.

The second is for his College Bound paper. These projects were on the school walls for the first parent/teacher conference and I was struck by his statement.

For the journalling circle, I measured the largest Nestability circle die I have and created a circle in InDesign that size. I wrapped the text within the circle and around a rectangle that took the place of his paper. I added a dotted line to match the ones on the background paper. I chose SU! More Mustard because I thought it was closest to the yellow on the background paper. There was space at the top and bottom of the text and I knew I wanted to stamp a small something there and use SU! Real Red - my son's favorite color. I needed to have the printer spit out text in that same color.

Life Made Easier
Enter the wonderful Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) file I created from the PDF of the new SU! colors. With this handy dandy color palette I have all the SU! colors at my fingertips and can print anything out of Adobe PhotoShop, InDesign or Illustrator I can dream up in a color that will match my papers. I LOVE IT! I can even share this file and use it on another machine running the aforementioned Adobe products or Photoshop Elements.
I found a good description of how the files work and how to load them here.
If you're working with Photoshop Elements look here.
If you're interested in getting/using the ASE file I created go here to download it.

The last page is my favorite of the three. It is the letter home telling me that my son was accepted to the gifted program for next year, all they needed was my permission. This page uses SU! textured Brilliant Blue 12x12 card stock, another of my son's favorite colors, for the base and bits and pieces from The Boyfriend line by Cosmo Cricket. I LOVE their style. The images are great and wonderfully retro - you know that this was designed by someone with some life experience. Someone who has used a number 2 pencil to fill in an oval or two -- all the boy's major tests are done on a computer. I got the paper at the newly reopened Memories & Beyond in Downers Grove, IL. If you know the area you know this is a ways away from Hoffman Estates but it is SO worth the drive. I created the Permission Granted piece in Illustrator. I was really wishing I had a Silhouette or other machine that would cut designs from your computer because this was not easy to cut, I was planning on having it half on and half off the letter so I need to cut it close. It worked better fully on the letter but I had worked so hard to cut it that I was NOT going to go and print it again.

My favorite bit about this page are the snaps I used to fill the ovals. It's such a throw back to my youth. I don't have a Crop-A-Dile II Big Bite™ punch so I couldn't get into the ovals that well, a bit of poor planning on my part, so I was using the old hammer and hole punch method for those further from the edge. It was noisy and tiring and not as effective at going through 2 layers of card stock as I wanted it to be. You can see where I just decided it was too too much. But I still think it adds something to the overall page.

Well it's past my bed time and tomorrow is another day of working to find work, cleaning the house, and making you something.

Happy crafting,
Katie