Heart Eyes

The page is titled "heart eyes" and I have heart eyes whenever I look at it! It's one of my favorites from this year! 

The page itself is based off of a sketch from the July 2016 issue of [Simple Scrapper]'s Spark Magazine--No. 313 for fellow members.

I knew I wanted to scrapbook these photos. And I decided to pull out the [Heart Story Stamp] from Ali Edwards. But it was only when I really looked at that set that I noticed the "heart eyes" phrase.

Because I knew I was going to use that stamp, I decided to pull out all of the fun [emoji products] I've been collecting. They made for such a fun and playful page!

cheers & besos,

Water Dog

I finally finished the 2nd page I made using my [2016 NSD Kit]! I know, it's been nearly two whole months. But I'm not going be too hard on myself. It's done and I like it :)

The colors are my favorite part! I'm loving this combo: teal, orange, yellow, gray, brown, white! I lined all of the paper along the side to create a color block.

The title is a [cut file] from [The Cut Shoppe]. I love how versatile it is! I backed it with cardstock in the color scheme.

We were at the pool just last weekend and Dixie had a blast retrieving the ball all over again. Except this time she was twice as big!

cheers & besos,

SaveSaveSaveSave

3Muskateers

I know I declare this regularly, but I'm serious when I say this is my latest favorite page. Maybe even my most favorite page ever!

I had so much fun putting this together and I'm so glad I decided to film the process. Here's a process video of how it all came together =)

Products used: [Acrylic Sunglasses] [Marie Alphabet Stamps] [Jonah Alphabet Stamps] [May Kit] [Thankful Paper Collection] [Little Moments Paper Collection] [Little Moments Paper Stack] [Letters & Numbers--White] [Letters & Numbers--Light Gray] [Letters & Numbers--Teal] [Tim Holtz Distress Stain--Peacock Feather] [Color Theory Inkpad--Pink Lemonade] [Color Theory Inkpad--Inky Black]

Here's the original sketch which was a bit hard to see in the video:

And the original inspiration!

cheers & besos,

Don't Forget

It's the little things that we tend to forget. I think we can all agree on that. Life can change slowly or quickly. Sometimes you don't see it coming. Sometimes you plan for it to change. 

For me, it's always so odd to plan for a change. I find myself going back and forth, weighing options and also just deciding in a flash. Hoping and praying that I've made the right choice.

This page is all about documenting life on the precipce of a change. It's not a huge change, but it's one that's definitely going to change our everyday lives. We've decided to adopt a kitten! New pets always make life exciting. And current pets meeting new pets is going to make for an interesting experiment for sure. Here's hoping that it's changing our family for the better!

I used the new Elle's Studio [Documented] items for this page, which is about five things I don't want to forget about what life was like as a family of three--mama, papa and puppy. There are [Journaling Tags] and [Stamps] and also [Acrylic Words] but I didn't use those here.

My favorite detail and really the start of this whole page are the little "don't forget" tabs. I wanted them to be reminiscent of an old idea. In order to remember something, people would [tie a string around their finger]. You know, in the days long before we had phones to alert and remind us of everything. So I stamped [don't forget] on a strip of patterned paper and tied a string around it.

Here's to hoping that I've made the right decision for my family! Can't wait to share more about the little creature that will soon be coming to our home.

cheers & besos,

Play Outdoors

This was the 2nd page I made during the [InkieQuill] [ScrapStream]! I challenged myself a bit with this one. I have one box of embellishments that I rarely open up. It has all of my 3-dimensional and miscellaneous embellishments, lots of flowers but also things like the kite, leaves and oversize wood veneer. I decided that I wanted to try to use some stuff from that box on this page.

After working on a [page with a very clear direction], I was happy to just play around with some fun embellishments to figure out something that would work.

I started by trimming 1/4 in. strips of an old Studio Calico patterned paper and framing my photo with them. Then I dipped the photos edges in brown paint, something [Nicole Harper] use to do. Next, I decided to mat my photo with white cardstock, but didn't have the right size so I improvised with two scraps. They're intentionally jaunty.

When I printed this photo at 6x8, I envisioned writing my journaling directly on the photo in the grass. But I decided my title would look better there. I thought it needed something though, so I used some roller stamps and white and gold ink to stamp directly onto the photo. It's subtle, but you can see it much better IRL.

For the title, I decided to use these [whimsical letters] I purchased from [Just Nick.] No better font to cut out the word "play" from! I layered up all of the embellishments I pulled from my embellishment box in the bottom right hand corner of the photo and added my few lines of journaling just below.

Of all the pages I made, I think this one is least like my usual style. But I still really really like it! Tomorrow I'll share the heart page, so check back for more details about it!

cheers & besos,

Dixon

Hiya folks! Coming to you live from a flooded Houston. Our household is safe and reasonably dry, we have to venture out with the dog from time to time.  The rain has stopped at the moment but they're predicting more over the next few days. Which is a bit scary as we desperately need the water to recede. It's currently 6pm and they're still rescuing people from flooded areas! Here's hoping for safety!

But on to the scrapbooking portion of today's blog post. This was the first page I made while watching InkieQuill's ScrapStream.  That oh-so-fun event I participated in this weekend!

I had a flash in my brain the other day, an idea for a layout. I saw a word repeated over and over again in different colors on the right side of the page and photos in a column on the left. So that's what I made!

I used the Museo Slab font for the title. In the Silhouette software I repeated "dixon" in five different sizes. I placed them on the canvas where I wanted them to be and then outlined the whole thing. This, I cut out of white cardstock.

I pulled five different patterned papers in some of the colors of that stripe on the left side (an old Crate Paper) and cut out the individual "dixon"s. I tried to mix up the patterns and used a grid, a chevron (of sorts), a floral, a triangle pattern and a polka dot. Everything came out of my scrap drawer!

For embellishing, I stuck with arrows and hearts. Arrows because the character on the Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon, who our Dixon was named after, uses a crossbow. I pulled wood veneer and puffy stickers and then I hand stitched a few arrows using gray crochet thread.

I like how the page come together. Though it isn't as good as the idea had in my head. Either way I'm happy to see it in real life! Tomorrow, I'm sharing the "Play Outdoors" layout. Stop by for that!

cheers & besos,

ScrapStream

I had so much freakin fun participating in Adele aka InkieQuill's ScrapStream No. 3! It was like cropping with a friend. I got up to my own scrapbook mischief and made five pages. I created with no rhyme or reason. Just went through some of my latest photos, printed them in sizes I thought would work (some didn't) and made pages without kits or parameters. Like I said, so much fun! 

If you're interested in watching the not live ScrapStream you can see it here [Part 1] [Part 2] I'm definitely planning to re-watch the parts I was asleep for.

I think I'll blog about one of these each day this week! So check back to find out more :)

cheers & besos,

Friends?

Our puppy is a social butterfly. This is a conundrum for me and for Matt because we aren't the most social people. She forces us into all kinds of random interactions. But I guess there's nothing wrong with that. Although the introvert in my screams "dangit puppy!" every time...

She loves people and she especially loves other dogs. She whines and cries if we don't let her play (read: jump) on other dogs we encounter on our walks. Cadie, my parents dog, doesn’t take too kindly to other dogs she can’t control. And Dixie is too young and naive to realize that Cadie doesn’t like her very much. Dixie’s pretty sure they’re best friends!

I knew I wanted to scrapbook this story and feature a lot of butterflies! I purchased this design from the Silhouette Online store and cut out three patterned paper butterflies. I liked the cut for its simple lines and the fact that the negatives would have been easy to back with different patterned papers. Although I didn’t go that route on this page.

Green was my challenge. I don’t scrapbook with green often enough! Don’t get me wrong, I like green. But given the option, it’s the easiest to drop from my repertoire. I chose a shade darker than my photos (with less yellow in it) to make these photos pop off of it. I also added a white cardstock mat to make sure the photos differentiated themselves. It helped balance Cadie’s white fur and is also why I decided to back the butterflies with white cardstock.

I love contrast. I try to use it as much as possible on every page. So the black thicker title, black label, black journaling, black heart stamping and black ink splatters helped add contrast to the white matted photos, Cadie’s white fur, the white backed butterflies, white threads and white outlined swirls.

The finishing touches were all about adding texture. I had some white thread cut offs in my sewing box that I added behind a few of the butterflies. I’ve seen this trend on a few other pages and think it’s such a simple way to add really great texture.

cheers & besos,

Battle for the Chair

This was one of the first pages I made with the new Elle's Studio Little Moments collection. Which is rapidly becoming my most favorite ever! It's so perfect for so many stories, big and small. 

The page captures a truly tiny moment, one where my nephew and my puppy are doing battle for their favorite chair in our apartment. It's a tiny silly story that makes me smile :)

You can read more about how the page came together over on the Elle's Studio blog!

Journaling Reads:

I don't know what it is about this chair but beasts and children alike seem to love it. Mac claimed it when she first came to live with us. It's in taters thanks to her claws. Urijah loves to hang out on it whenever he comes to visit. There are orange cheeto stains that can attest to that. And Dixie has now taken a liking to it. I don't know if it is because it's close to the window or just comfy, but there was a puppy nephew battle for chair supremacy when Urijah was last over. Dixie was even more interested in it than she usually is! She'd sneak over to sniff Urijah, then she'd place her paws on a corner until finally making the leap up to try to edge him out. He fell out of it once or twice as they were both struggling to gain control. I'm not sure who won in the end but it was funny to watch them duke it out. February 13, 2016

cheers & besos,

Uber Puppy

The other day, I was inspired to tell the story of how we came home with Dixie. She just happens to be an Uber puppy. Uber was running a puppy promo: request a puppy driver and they'll show up with puppies! Leah (my boss) thought it would be fun so she spent most of the 3 hour window trying to get them to come. There was a lot of demand and finally she confirmed one of the last visits!

Our office is notoriously pet friendly and everyone was so excited for them to show up. We got 3 tiny visitors who were so cute and a little tired. I sent Matt a photo of one of the dogs and was so surprised to hear he thought one was cute and would consider adopting her. I left the decision with him. In the end, we came home with the sister of the puppy I met. But man do they look similar!

For whatever reason I decided to scrap this 9x12 size in a pocket page. I think I went in this direction because of the number of photos I wanted to include. (I'm thinking I should assess this 9x12 album. Right now it has 3 really random stories in it from 2 different years...)

I had a ton of journaling for this. It's her gotcha story after all! I filled 3-3x4 journaling cards front and back so decided to tape them together into a flip book. The top one is sticking out over the plastic page protector.

And the decorated card is made up of stuff from my scrap drawer and way deep in my stash. This rainbow paper was in a Studio Calico kit from 2010 I think. The heart is old Freckled Fawn and the "Heart You" is from an Ali Edwards Story Stamp.

I used my favorite white ink to stamp directly of my favorite photo of Dixie. Just look at her sweet smiling face!

cheers & besos,

Inspiration Inventoried: Dear Dixie

So I had an idea for a new video series. I'm calling it Inspiration Inventoried. It's not a process video. It's me chatting about a finished page, going through the story, the design, the products. Basically a blog post but in video form. You get to see my mug as I wanted the chance to introduce myself. 

I'm not the most eloquent speaker but I think I'll get the hang of it. I didn't realize until recently that I really just love to talk about scrapbooking! I'm hoping to do these once or twice a month so let me know what you think.

cheers & besos,

We Three

I feel hopeful. 2015 ended up being such a bad year for us for many different reasons. So I can only hope that 2016 is better! So far so good and I'm hopeful that will continue. 

I wrote about this feeling on my latest Simple Scrapper page. It's part of February's issue of Spark Magazine and is based off one of the sketches from this month's release. (No. 288 for all of my fellow Simple Scrappers).

I haven't used kraft as a base in a minute, so this was a fun change of pace. I loved adding in all of these layers and bits and pieces pulled from my stash. It's been so long since I've scrapbooked just from my stash! So I decided to make that one of my goals this year. At least a quarter of my pages need to be put together from anything but a kits. Don't get me wrong, I love my kits! But they mean I neglect the other 90% of the stuff that I have. And I love all of that stuff so much too!

I think that's why I love the details on this page so much. This tiny house, that wood veneer heart, the cheers stamp, they're all to do with the photo and the journaling and the day. Sometimes those things line up with whatever kit I'm working with. But often they don't. Making a commitment to my stash means that I get to create these awesome customized pages. I don't need to do it for every layout. But it should definitely be a bigger part of my process than it currently is.

Also, I can't underscore how awesome the Simple Scrapper sketches are! They just keep getting better and better. And they're making it harder to decide between every month. I already can't wait to show you the page I make with next month's sketch. It's gonna be good!

cheers & besos,