One of my fave LO's

On Practical Scrapper's message board, there is a Question of the Day thread asking to share/show your favorite scrapbooking page that you've done that shows a little bit of your style and tell us why it's your favorite. Sounds like a good excuse to post one of my favorite layouts that I have ever done.

Here it is:



I used the menu/mask from the photos as a template for the paper-pieced parrot on the left page. The title "my keets" is short for "parakeets" which is what the children of Parrot Heads are called, is just letters that I drew and cut by hand (this LO was done BmC... Before my Cricut). The beak is yellow card stock that I chalked to give it dimension. On the right edge near the tip of the beak, I wrote lift here... this will reveal my hidden journaling. Because the layout is about a trip to Orlando's Margaritaville, the story is written using Jimmy Buffett song titles (ALL GREEN CAPS) and is shaped like the beak! Here is the journaling:

Hoping to BRING BACK THE
MAGIC, the kids and I decided to
TAKE ANOTHER ROAD to go
Christmas shopping. CHANGES IN
LATITUDES CHANGES IN ATTITUDES
was something this family certainly
needed. A HOLIDAY in Orlando would
surely make us feel like BAREFOOT
CHILDREN IN THE RAIN. In my quest
to be INCOMMUNICADO, I left a
message on my answering machine:
“BABY’S GONE SHOPPIN’. Leave a
message after the beep.”

We spent a SUNNY AFTERNOON having
a blast SPENDING MONEY (remember I
USED TO HAVE MONEY ONE TIME).
After an entire day of LIVIN’ IT UP we
realized we were hungry, so we headed
to MARGARITAVILLE for a
CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE. We
knew that COME MONDAY it would
be back to our CARNIVAL WORLD,
which made us WONDER WHY
WE EVER GO HOME. I know
it’s CLICHÉ but don’t we all
want to live HAPPILY EVER
AFTER (NOW AND THEN)?

Although it’s really a
SEMI-TRUE STORY I’ll
end with THAT’S MY
STORY & I’M
STICKIN’ WITH
IT!

On the right page, I used the Margaritaville logo behind my kids as inspiration for the sunset / palm trees paper-piecing. Again, lots of chalk was used for the sun. The title letters for "Margaritaville" was copied from my late husband's favorite t-shirt - a margarita spilling out forming the letters. I outlined each letter with a black glaze pen, added white glaze pen highlights and cut around the entire word. There are spots that I found too intricate to cut out, so I colored them in with black marker, but you really have to look closely to see it.

Hope you like it and thanks for stopping by!

Happy crafting,
Barb