Feeling Great {FD Sketch Along Tuesday Challenge}

Here is my layout for the Frosted Designs Sketch Along Tuesday Challenge.  This was a lot harder than it needed to be to complete!!!  I want to start by saying I had a baby late in life 5 years ago, then got sued by my HOA for running a licensed daycare in my home (which they considered a "retail business"), my dad died and then we moved out of that awful neighborhood.  Losing my dad was tough.  My mom died when I was 20 of non-hodgkins lymphoma.  My dad died of b-cell lymphoma.  I am seriously freaked out about lymphoma!!!  Next month is my 4 year anniversary of being an orphan.

  Needless to say, the past 6 years have taken a toll on my body.  I spent last year working on lowering my cholesterol (which I did) and then got through the holidays without any depression meds!!!

 I was finally ready to shed the extra weight I have been carrying around!!  I have been following the MediFast Diet since January 14th.  As of yesterday (June 14th) I have lost 63lbs!  I am within 10 lbs of my goal.  The most surprising thing has not been how I look, but how I FEEL.  I have energy, I feel great and happy!!  It is also fun shopping for clothes NOT in the plus size section!!

I have been thinking of how I want to scrapbook this life changing event for me and this sketch (along with the sponsor) just clicked!!

Here is the sketch.

I immediately thought about adding denim from my old jeans to this layout as the border across both pages!

I put some shapes on my Gypsy from Embellished Edges and Plantin Schoolbook.  My Gypsy gave me an error message when I tried to cut the images from EE.  Told me the Gypsy has received a security breach and will shut down ~ and it did.  I had to dig out the actual cartridge, change my measurements a bit and cut them out OLD SCHOOL on my cricut.  I was getting crabby at this point!!

I did not really do a tutorial for this layout as I was fighting with technology!!

The red square on the left page and the black scalloped square on the right page were both cut at 7".  I cut the bottom 1 1/2" off the black square and adhered them on both sides of the denim border so it looks like a rectangle.  The smaller red squares were cut at 2 3/4".

From my Gypsy, I cut the oval from Plantin Schoolbook at 5.75w x 7.78h.  I welded and cut my title from Songbird at 1.31"

I added a little journaling spot with key words about how I am feeling.

These are some of Debbie's crocheted flowers (our sponsor this week) LOVE THESE!!!  I just stuck a gem in the center of them.

Here are some snaps from a pair of my bigger jeans.

The crocheted lace is also from Debbie.  I wanted to soften up the denim a bit.  The 63 represents lbs lost, and 5 represents the months it took to do so.  I also used my Tim Holtz die cut and my Cuttlebut to cut out some denim flowers.

This is the picture I am putting on my layout as my After shot.  My helper took this of me this morning at the zoo.  Of course, my printer did not cooperate!!!  I want to crop out some of the tree anyway...

My Before shot (conveniently no close ups for you) was taken last October at CKC in Kansas City.  Thanks for listening to my entire story ~ I usually have more photos than words in my post!!!  If you get a chance, hop on over to Frosted Designs and enter a sketch!!