I did want to bring back one part of my "old" blogging habits, though- the CHA Summer 2015 Sneak Peeks!
I know, I know, it's called Paper Arts+ during the summer now, but out of habit I still call it CHA. :) I'm not quite caught up with finding them all yet, and some companies have gone to monthly or quarterly collections that blur the lines between CHA releases. Some collections listed may already be shipping, but they're all the most recent from each company. Also, I've been really out of the loop over the last year as far as releases go, since most of my focus has been digital- please forgive me if I'm a little rusty getting started!
I've been doing mostly digi scrapping since the beginning of the year, mostly because my craft table was always taken over by Star and Bee and I had no space for paper! We've done some rearranging in the house, though, to make things better (honestly, we should probably just get a bigger house, but this one is paid off and I just don't want a mortgage payment right now), and recently my craft table went from a pile-o-stuff to usable again! I still have to keep the photography setup in place for business use, but I definitely have space to play now.
You'd think that the first thing I'd do after getting the scrap room cleaned up would be to make a layout, but somehow I fell straight into stamping. I blame Jennifer McGuire and her awesome video on the Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers. I never really took to using Copics (a friend of mine joked that it was because they actually require work), but I fell hard for these brush pens the very first time I used one. My only regret is that I bought the 36 pack and not a larger size (I would recommend at least the 48 pack for better color variety). They are so easy to use and get great results, which is perfect for someone like me with zero real artistic ability. Suddenly I'm rediscovering all of my outline stamps, especially the ones from my Lawn Fawn days, and also buying a few new ones like this adorable giraffe from the WPlus9 Party Animal set.
My scrapbooking has been a little sparse in the past year, but I've really been wanting to get back to it and have been working on getting my layout process down to a timeframe of about 30 minutes so that it's easier to work a page in here and there. A big part of that change was switching over to 8.5x11 for the majority of my pages. That's not to say that I won't bust out a 12x12 now and again (especially with a sketch from Scrapbook Generation), as well, but I really do love how quickly these little rectangular pages come together.
Here's a recent digital layout using supplies from the July BYOC at The Lilypad (you can find a full list of credits for it in my layout gallery over there):
I'm finding myself floating between digital pages, cards, and I even have supplies and the start of a couple of paper layouts on my table right now, too! I'll be sharing a mix of all of those things here as I have time, so hopefully you'll come along with me on this new, more relaxed, more balanced season of my crafting.
It's so lovely to be talking to you all again! Have an awesome day!