Mixed Media: Mostly Ladylike

Pink & purple party over here!! I went for it. Girl-ed it up as much as I could. I don't often do that. No idea why I don't. But I'm thinking I need to do it more often because this was just fun.

This, of course, is another page I made from the Studio Calico Mixed Media class. You can see the Neocolors in action here on the sides, they're the brightest pink you can see.

I'm so glad I opened up the Crate Paper Vellum die cut pack because this "Most Ladylike" one was perfect for this page. I amended it to say "Mostly Ladylike" but I loved that it had a blue ribbon feel to it. Very appropriate for a picture from the rodeo, no?

I added in bits of stitching here and there just to add some dimension to an otherwise fairly flat page.

With just a few lines of journaling and a date stamp, the page was complete.

cheers & besos,

Stash Bash Fin

Hiya! Sitting on the couch, finally watching the 3rd Season of GIRLS and balancing a kitten on my lap along with the computer. It's a gorgeously sunny day here in Houston and the BF is off at the rodeo. That's what's going on in a nutshell. And now I'm sharing the last page I made for the Simple Scrapper Stash Bash.

This was based off of one of Jennifer's fabulous Jump Starts video. I used the Studio Calico Office Hours PL kit for the page, as well as the printables and some of the awesome die cuts from this month [Brit Cut, Tea Cuts]. They were too perfect for a London themed page and also why I wanted to scrapbook these pictures.

I loved playing along in the Stash Bash. Have to confess, I didn't put even a millimeter of a dent in my crazy out of control stash, but I'm planning to.

Here's just a quick recap of the layouts I made this weekend as part of the event. I can't wait for the full one in September!

cheers & besos,

London to LA

As I type, I'm working on an the first assignment from Simple Scrapper Start Fresh class. I'm very excited about it! 

So let me share this page with you, using some other great Simple Scrapper content. This is based off of one of this month's sketches.

Products: Printshop Mini Flair, Fables Storytime patterned paper, Oh Snap Snippets patterned paper, Moon & Back Printshop patterned paper, Printshop Accent stickers

I used a whole mess of Studio Calico products to make this page about me and my friend Keely. You know my OLW for this year? Open. Yeah, that word is pretty much a direct result of this new friend.

It's weird to think about, but it's been awhile since I've made a new friend.

I have my college friends, my grad school friends, my Houston friends. Everyone's kind of formed into groups. 

Keely's part of my work friends group. She was an intern a few summers ago who came back to take on a new role we had open in the office. We weren't very close back then. But from pretty much the second she walked in the door this time around, we instantly bonded. I don't know what it says about me, but her 23 year old humor is pretty much the same as mine. We laugh and giggle a lot. Much to the chagrin of my fellow colleagues I'm sure. But she makes work fun and I definitely appreciate that.

It all goes back to the open thing. I wasn't expecting it, but I'm always open to making new friends. And because of that, I did!

[PHOTO]

We travel a lot for work. All of us do, even us junior employees. Keely and I ended up on three trips together this year, to LA, London and DC. So I had these great photos of us in front of St. Paul's in London and the other is us in the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica. I also had this photo of a club card we got at a happy hour we went to together.

I knew I wanted to use these photos together, as different as they are. And the sketch from this month's Simple Scrapper mag was perfect for it, with just a few amendments.  I decided to tilt the photos on an angle a bit. The sketch also called for a doily at the top left hand corner but instead, I decided to fold the paper back to show the awesome B side of the yellow grid. That was a happy accident really. It wasn't until nearly the end that I realized the aqua on the back was really similar to the aqua on the front. The benefits of working with papers from the same manufacturer! 

I love how the aqua looks with the yellow and just a few pops of gold and green. The paper tucked in the corner was some I knew I wanted to incorporate but didn't quite know how. And once I figured out that I wanted to fold the corner, I knew it could work there.

I like this mix of paper. Some modern. Some traditional. Some quirky. Kind of like me and mah friend.

[PHOTO]

The paper did most of the heavy lifting, so I really didn't do much to embellish this page. I machine stitched the flap down and around a few corners at the bottom. Other than that, it only took a few sentiment stickers, some tape and a badge or two to complete.

Oh! And I almost forgot the best part (and completely forgot to photograph it) but the middle photo flips up to show a few more photos from that same night at happy hour. They were screenshots of the crazy text messages we were sending afterwards. Probably for the best that they're tucked away ;)

And here I am, at the end of this post and finished with Assignment #1 for Start Fresh! I'm excited to think about what I want to accomplish this year-scrapbooking wise. And happy to dive in!

cheers & besos,

Pacific Ocean

I was in Los Angeles for work last week. It was a lot of time spent in a meeting room, but the parts outside of work were lovely. On Tuesday night we grabbed a cab out to Santa Monica. We walked out to the water and put our feet in the ocean. It was divine!

I made this page using the digital template from the Toolbox class. Shanna made a really great tutorial that I learned a few new tricks from. All of the papers are from the class but I only used of them in its original color. The rest I altered to fit the colors in the photo.

The design was almost entirely created in Photoshop Elements. Since the page was so flat, it needed some dimension. I added some enamel dots and punched anchors.

I also added brads and some baker's twine to help with the mini gap between the digital elements I added.

Finally, splashed some gold mist and hand wrote labels on vellum.

Oh, and I love that I got to use my anchor swag!! Gold ink plus the roller stamp from Glitz and my lil SC anchor punch. So excited!

I'm having so much fun with my digital learning this summer. Between Toolbox and Hello Story, I'm learning tons!

cheers & besos,