Cheers

I love meeting scrapbookers I know online, in real life! Last year I got to meet the Jennifer S. Wilson and at a different time, I met up with Alexa Gill. 

Alexa was visiting from the UK, so we met up for Mexican food at this awesome tequila place here in Houston (El Big Bad for anyone interested). We snapped a photo together so of course I had to scrap it! [See the page I made about meeting Jennifer here]

This patterned paper from Amy Tangerine's Better Together line was so perfect for a friend page and a meet up page. I let it do most of the work and added in just a few embellishments and my title and journaling.

Anyone else interested in a meet up? Because I love to talk scrapbooking! I hadn't realized it until then, but I don't have anyone else to talk to about the industry. At least anyone who would know what I'm talking about. E-mail me if you're from around here or if you're planning to visit!

cheers & besos,

Creative Blog Tour

Hey hey! My fellow Scrapbook Circle design team member, Valerie Huang tagged me into a creative blog tour.  So I get to answer some questions and introduce you to a few of my scrapbooking friends =)

The questions first:

What am I working on?

Planning….a few travel pages. They're more big picture travel pages, using photos from multiple trips. I'm very excited about them.

Scrapping…a page about what my family looks like in 2014.

Playing…with the Studio Calico Bright Ideas prompts

Blogging…tons of lately made pages! I'm going to town with all of my Simple Scrappers sketches.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I'm a color fiend!! I love to work with color. I consider it one of my special talents, pairing odd combinations, mixing patterns, highlighting & emphasizing photos with the colors I use on my page. My pages tend to be nothing if not colorful.

I'm also big into scale and graphic appeal. I love geometric shapes. I love high contrast and incorporate a lot of black and white elements into my pages.

Why do I write/create what I do?

I love the creative process. I love mixing colors and patterns, playing with scale and dimension. I love being creative and getting my hands dirty. 

I also love memory keeping. I love looking back at my photos and reliving all of those memories, thinking about the people that are in them that I might not see as much anymore. Laughing about silly experiences or just appreciated the truly blessed life that I have.

How does your writing/creating process work?

It's like a brain map. It starts at the center, picture "paper project" there. And then there are branches going out in a ton of different directions. Sometimes I start with a photo. Sometimes I start with products. Sometimes I start with a story. A million different starting points all leading back to the center, a project.

I'm inspired by everything, wherever I am, whatever I'm talking about, whatever I'm seeing or doing. Memories are constantly triggered. Or fabulous design ideas are thrown right in front of me! 

Scrapbooking and memory keeping are fully ingrained in my life. I live and breath it and feel most at peace at my desk, happily cutting up paper and putting it back together again. 

Now to introduce you to some friends!

Meet Jen Ritchie

My name is Jen Ritchie and I love documenting my adventurous life so I never forget the fun I have had. I am a Canadian living in Hong Kong. I have lived in Asia a total of 10 years now, 7 here in Hong Kong and the rest in China. I moved over here when my parents did, I thought I would just explore for 6 months but I fell in love with living over here and decided to go to university in Beijing to study Mandarin Chinese. I got married 3 years ago to an Aussie and we have a rescued mongrel pup... no kids yet... but maybe soon! I make sure there is never a dull moment in my life.. and therefore have endless stories to document for my albums. I started scrapbooking in 2006 and immediately became obsessed. I began working for the one and only scrapbooking shop here in Hong Kong at the time, until last year when I made a step into another adventure by becoming a co-owner of my own online shop meilipaperie.com. I love everything about the scrapbooking industry and my fav time of the year is January when I get to fly to LA to attend CHA which I have done for the past 3 years now. I hope you'll stop by to visit my blog and my shop, too!

Blog: http://jenritchie.com

Shop: meilipaperie.com

Meet Rachel Hawkins

Rachel is 29, wife to Ryan, mother to Millie (2), and cat-mom to Eureka (3). Rachel enjoys scrapbooking, creating mixed media canvases, and cooking. She is also on a never ending journey of organizing and re-organizing her supplies!

Blog: happyscrappyappy.blogspot.com

cheers & besos,

Sketch 209

I'm loving this week's Scrapbook Challenges sketch. I knew it'd be perfect for this idea that I had for scrapping this photo of Leigh and her husband. We exchanged pics again for a swap over at Pink Ninjas. No prompt other than to swap with a bestie :)

Went hunting through my stash for some background paper and came across this gorgeous sheet of Basic Grey. It's from an older line. I loved the touches of golden orange, thought it highlighted their hair really well.

Then I went rooting around from some gold accents and came across these way older products from EK Success and 7 Gypsies. The key around J's neck is what inspired that little golden key. And for some reason, a buckle seemed necessary for this layout.

Also, the grand idea I had...to add "individual" photos of the two of them. I like taking one photo and duplicating it, but with a twist. For this layout, I cropped (as best I could) one or the other out of the photo. It's how I got three photos out of one.

So stop by Scrapbook Challenges when/if you get the chance! We'd love to chat with you, have you participate in a challenge or two, or just leave some love. Happy Scrapping yall!

xxbesos

j.leija