Elle's Studio Spring Sale

It's happening! Head over to Elle's Studio to shop the spring [sale]! There are grab bags and individual items on mega discount.

While I was at it, I thought I'd share a page I made using this month's Elle's Studio [sketch]. As I'm a huge fan of circles, I totally loved this sketch! I rotated the elements 90 degrees and so much fun layering my photos, acrylic words and stamped pieces.

I completely loved the "We are living our Adventure" journaling tag from the [April kit]. But couldn't make the 3x4 size work. So I just cut out the sentiment placed it along the bottom of my photo. Totally made it work!

I used the [Travelouge stamps] and the [Go, See, Do acrylic words] to embellish this page.

And I used the arrows from the [puffy stickers] pack to help guide your eye around the page. Hands down, puffy stickers have to be my favorite type of embellishment!

cheers & besos,

Love List

I decided it was time to scrapbook my love list. What's a love list? A list of people I love the most! So basically, my immediate family. I did something similar in 2014 and am happy to repeat this again in 2016, especially since my family has changed a bit since then (lost a cat, gained a dog).

I loved this sheet of hearts from Crate Paper's Hello Love collection. I loved the high contrast and the imperfect hearts. I knew it'd be perfect for this list of my loves.

I made the page whimsical by cutting out my photos using a circle punch. And to keep with the high contrast, I printed them in black and white.

The rest of the embellishing was very minimal. The paper really did most of the work for me. And I have to add that these American Crafts gold dipped Thickers are some of my most favorite ever!

cheers & besos,

U R the Best Cards

I made a crop of new cards with the February Elle's Studio kit and stamp + some paper scraps and my circle punch. "The Best" sentiment inspired me to create some "blue ribbons". It's a bit more dimensional than my usual card, I used a circle punch to create a window and stamped through it and onto the inside of the card. You can read more about them on the Elle's Studio blog!

cheers & besos,

Happy Place

I booked a trip yesterday. It's for work but it's also to my favorite place in the world, London! I'm so excited to be back. It's been over a year since I've been and I feel it calling to me. 

Because it's such an important part of my identity, I have no problem calling it my happy place. I have so my fantastic memories from this place.

I was very influenced by Fancy Pant's Happy Place line. It's how I came up with the idea to make this page in the first place. There's a ton in this month's Scrapbook Circle kit!

I think it's as equally important to document the places we love, as it is the people and the things. And I'm so excited to be heading back there in a few weeks. Until then, miss you London!

cheers & besos,

Simple Scrapper-January 2016

Hiya! I have an equally exciting but possibly less surprising announcement. 

I've signed up for another year on the Simple Scrapper creative team!

I love being a part of Simple Scrapper. Jennifer's resources and toolkits are just perfect for this nerdy planner girl who likes to take time to think through what I want to accomplish, plan it out and then do it! 

I love the sketches. I like the story starters. I adore Spark Magazine! Some of my favorite layouts have come from these resources and some of my best planning comes from events like Refresh, when I stop to take a minute to think about where my focus should be. 

Here are the January pages I submitted for the 25th issue of Spark! 

I had fun with this cheeky page about my "puppy daddy". Really it was just an excuse to scrapbook cute puppy photos. She was so tiny! I don't even remember her being that small and it was just a short time ago.

I used two different Studio Calico lines and Elle's Studio stamps for the page. I think the color combo is my favorite part of it!

The second page was all about my daily personal hygiene. Which the older I get, seems to become more involved! I took a photo of all of the products I use (or should use) on a daily basis. It's a lot!

The Simple Scrapper sketch I based the page off of called for circles of patterned paper. But I decided to use photos instead. I event staged my own little photo shoot to get the images. I also have more journaling tucked underneath the main photos.

These two ended up being some of my latest favorite pages! And this last one was definitely not something I would have documented, were it not for the Story Starters for the month.

I'm excited to spend another year on the Simple Scrapper team. Next week is the first Refresh of the year. Click over to read more about the fun (planner nerd fun) we'll be having!

cheers & besos,

Dreams vs Reality + RAK

Fresh off my post about Simple Scrapper's owner Jennifer Wilson, I thought I'd share my latest Simple Scrapper layout. It ended up being on the cover of this month's Spark Magazine!! You have no idea how excited that made me.

I've been published in a few different magazines. But getting the opportunity to share my work in Spark Magazine every month is such an honor. And on top of that, being on the cover! Let me telling you, I'm living some scrapbooking dreams y'all.

There may not be as many "traditional" scrapbook magazines out there, but if you join as a Simple Scrapper Premium Member you get a digital one chalk full of inspiration every month. And that's just one part of what it means to be part of Simple Scrapper. Y'all know I'm the biggest advocate for this community and it's no secret why. It's just that good. There's also an awesome new class coming up soon. You'll want to read to the end of this post find out more. **Hint: Giveaway info below**

Now on to the page, I used a Story Starter from February 2013 as well as a sketch from this month. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know how much I love circles! And this sketch called for a bunch 'o circles.

The layout is all about the hopes and dreams I had at twenty vs. my reality at thirty. I also share my hopes for forty. It was such fun journaling! I loved the little bullet points and making the lists.

I like making these big picture type pages. I like pulling together a grouping of unrelated photos, to illustrate the story. I also had fun printing a few of these photos in black and white and others in color.

I used tons of Studio Calico stuff on this page -- a lot of the embellishments came from the very beautiful Walden Add-on Baker Bridge. The background paper is from their Color Theory paper pack. I bought two packs because I thought they were such awesome neutral backgrounds.

I also had so much fun just putting this page together! It was the first time I had my new scrapbook space up and running and I was testing out how well I'd organized. I think I've finally figured out something that works for me! I'll be sharing my completed space later this month.

I can't tell you (clearly I can and do, quite often too!) how much I love being part of Simple Scrapper.  Creative team or not, I've always be inspired by the content and the community--and really, it just keeps getting better.

In March, Jennifer is putting on a brand new workshop called The Finishing Project. It's purpose is to help us tackle an unfinished project in just 4 weeks and also, to make a plan to tackle the rest. Having been a student of Jennifer's in the past, I'll bet that it's going to be amazing! You can read more about the class here.

Jennifer has generously allowed me to give away one spot in the class! 

For the chance to win, simply leave a comment below: I'd love to hear how many unfinished projects you have (Please also leave contact information so I can reach you if you win). The giveaway closes 11:59pm CST Wednesday, February 25th. I will randomly choose one winner and make the announcement on my blog Thursday, February 26th.  Best of luck!

cheers & besos,

Please note I am an affiliate of Simple Scrapper/Create More Media. All opinions, words and photos are my own.

Felipa & Enoch

Grandparents have the best names. Or at least mine do! I love how different they are, how they aren't current or trendy. On my mom's side, her dad is Enoch and her mama is Felipa, neither traditional and both interesting. I wanted to make sure to document them on this page. 

I also just really wanted to document these photos! Like I mentioned in the journaling, this may be the only photo I have with both of them.

Another non-traditional thing about my grandparents? They got divorced in the 70's when my mom was still a little girl. Way back before all of the crazy divorce statistics ramped up. Absolutely no bragging on that fact, just some sharing. And some context as to why this is such an epic photo of the 3 of us.

I also thinks its funny how tiny they are and how huge I look next to them. I'm wearing heels here. But even without them I'm still taller than my wee grandpa. (I get my height from my Dad's side of the family)

Diana blogged about the page design, which is a lift from a Scrapbook Circle subber. You can read more about it on the Scrapbook Circle blog.

cheers & besos,

Summertime Happiness

I have another Island Paradise page to share! This was a just for fun one using what I had leftover from the kit. 

The theme is "happy". These photos just warm my heart. It had been too long since I had seen these cousins. I was so excited to get to spend some time with them…and that Christian caught a fish! 

I used one of this month's cut files and a lot of the Elle's Studio journaling tags. I also hand cut some lil fishies to add to the page.

This might just be my only summer themed page I make this year. This summer has just been…well not summery. I thought I would have more time to relax and unwind. And while I did get to take some time off of work, I was still really just in recovery mode from all of the work and personal life goings on.

This fall will be just as hectic! But I'm so excited for it to start! And to continue to share projects with you all :)

cheers & besos,

Dorm Life

It would seem I'm into double page layouts using 4x6 photos lately! This is the third one I've made in the last few weeks =) 

This particular page is for the Art + Science right brained ideation challenge. I had to go through patterned paper to see what reminded me of a place or a space.

For me, that yellow polka dot reminded me of the bulletin board I painted for my dorm room. And then I found that teal floral and it pulled a lot of the colors together. I love the mix of patterns I got to use!

I designed these four little 2x3 cards in Silhouette using just fonts and icons. They're to represent the canvases I painted for this room and hung above my bed. Can you see them in the first horizontal photo above?

I also added tape around the edges. That's to remind you of the bulletin board I painted and the jumping off point for the page.

I made sure to capitalize on the negatives from the journaling spots and included them around the page.

I'm so excited to have these photos scrapbooked. They brought back some good memories from college. I made a page of my freshman dorm back when I was in college. I will have to take it out and snap some photos so you can see the difference!

Until then, Happy Monday! For me, it's a 2 day week =)

cheers & besos,

NSD 2014

I'm excited I got to do some scrapping today, on this, oh so hallowed of days. This is the one weekend a year when I'm usually working. In fact, I should have gone into the office today. But I decided I would just do it tomorrow. I'm exhausted so apologies for the brevity of this post, but I wanted to share my pages somewhere!

All of these pages feature Simple Scrapper sketches. The first two are from the exact same sketch. I love doing that when I know I have something good. It doesn't bother me, especially since these pages will be going into different albums. I also machine stitched on all of them. I set up the machine this afternoon and just left it out. I wish I could leave it out permanently but that's not the case.

And with that, I fall in bed and go to sleep! Hope everyone had a fabulous NSD!

cheers & besos,

NYE 2008

Hi friends, I hope you are having a lovely week. Mine has been absolutely crazy. Work is at an all time high as we prep for a huge event we're having the second week of May. But I don't mind. I prefer this to slow dragging days.

Work is busy but I'm still managing to scrap on the weekends. My precious precious weekends! And I'm also back to paper based pages...with bits of wet media thrown in for good measure. 

I call this my ode to circles. There's a lot on here! The paper, the pictures the embellishments. I went for it! Mainly because it reminded me of champagne bubbles. Perfect since this is a page about NYE! The whole design is based off of one of this month's Simple Scrapper sketches.

I water colored around a few of the circles and colored with the silver Neocolor. Then I hand stitched "fireworks" and embellished with star sequins. Then I blinged it out even more with glitter Thickers and circles punched from AC glitter paper.

I did something a little bit different with the journaling. Since all of these photos were taken right next to the Baker Street tube station, I made it a tad more literary and a mite more factual.

This was a fun page to scrap since it was just cute photos of me and my friends. We weren't "doing" anything and so the design makes it more lively! Fab sketch Jen & Co. Yet another reason why I love me some Simple Scrapper.

cheers & besos,