Castle Gazing

ETA: I picked the winner! Or rather random.org chose commentor No. 4. That's you Marina! Forwarding along the code now. Cheers!

I have 3 things to share today: a confession, a layout, a small giveaway.

Confession: I totally caved on my Product Free Summer challenge. I couldn't pass up the 20% off at Two Peas a few weeks back! I just couldn't. But I'm back on a spending freeze. Especially after the $1000 I just had to spend fixing my car (eeeek!!)

Layout: This page features a ton of that new product I ordered, lots from Basic Grey's new(er) Mint Julep line. I only got three things for this line: the 6x6 paper pad, the badges and the title sticker sheet. I feel like they'll get you pretty far. I like to get at least a few things from each line so that they'll coordinate with each other.

I picked this line for these photos because of all the blue in the Edinburgh photo. I loved the blue in that floral print. I also definitely wanted to use it for that "So very charming" sticker.

I made this as part of the Two Peas CHA [Four Nature Elements] Challenge. There's flowers, butterflies, birds and stars on this page.

It's also for the [Five Senses] Challenge. This page is all about the castle gazing I've been doing over the years. I hadn't realized it until this year, but every place I've visited in Europe the last few years, has included visits to local castles and palaces.

Week 1 of Hello Story was the starting point for this layout. It's a loose timeline and a series. I used those great Chic Tags for each, to include the date, the city and country and the castle.

I also added small white letter stickers to each photo, to include the place and date.

The rest is just fun details. Love those clear mint Heidi Swapp letters. Like love! The color and the texture are fabulous. Also love that they coordinated with the Mint Julep line so well.

And I had to throw in some gold for good measure. Everything these days, needs a dusting of gold. Glad I picked up the gold star paper clips as well.

So I made my confession and shared the layout. Now on to the giveaway.

Giveaway: This apparently is the summer of the classes. First Camp Scrap, then Hello Story and I also signed up for Toolbox at Studio Calico. They were running a promo and I get to give a friend the class for free. That's where all my bloggy friends come in. I thought I'd share the class with one of yall.

Just leave me a comment below, to share which of the 4 parts you're most interested in learning more about: digital elements, mixed media, stitching or mist. [ETA: Please leave an e-mail address if you don't have one linked in your profile!!]

For me, I'm sooo looking forward to Shana's digital tutorial. Her work has been so inspiring to me lately!

I'm only leaving this open until Tuesday, 30 July at 11:59pm EST. I'll announce and e-mail the winner as soon as I can on Wednesday, 31 July. Class starts Thursday, 1 August which is why this is such a short one. I want you to be able to be part of the whole class.

Off to Los Angeles tomorrow for work. It's my first visit and I'm so excited! I'll be updating as and when I can. Catch up with yall later!

cheers & besos,

Big Heart

I love my lil mama. She's so cute and giggly! We had so much fun in Chicago and I'm happy I got to make this page. This is the first full layout I made from our trip photos. 

I had so much fun playing with my newest goodies. This is for the 2Peas CHA [Two People] [Six Layers] and [Seven New Products] Challenges. I combined a bunch of fun colors and some of those great Amy Tangerine rub ons. Love the colors in that great floral print by Pebbles.

I totally channeled my inner Lilith Eeckels for this one. It's varied and colorful. I started with the heart and just played.

cheers & besos,

Macclesfield

I scrapped! For the first time in what feels like forever but has really only been about a week. It's the first layout I've done in a while, that I sat down and finished all in one go. Life with this wee lil one has been busy, as you may have seen.

This is her first page! It goes into my family album along with all the other pet pages I make.

I used inspiration from Ali's Hello Story class as the basis for the page. Plus a whole slew of Two Peas CHA Challenges: [One Color] My fave, yellow! With mixes of gold and the white + black + brown neutral that was allowed [Eight Straight Lines] This was an accident. I didn't think about it applying until the end, but once I did, I noticed I was only missing 1 line. I added the stitched black thread at the bottom. [Nine Older Products] This is all from at least the last CHA release and includes a whole variety of washi tapes, some rub-ons, that cute Pebbles tag and some of the darker wood veneer.

I added a lot of twine/thread to this layout since I've never met a kitty that doesn't love some string! Plenty of hearts because we've only had her for a week but she's already loved.
And all the yellow/gold I could manage since it's my fave.

That felt good. I might just scrap another one =)

cheers & besos,

Timeline Video

Remember yesterday how I mentioned I was happy? Well this video will show you the reason why. It's all about overcoming obstacles when you scrapbook ;) Even small lovable furry ones!!

Introducing Mac (aka Macclesfield)!! 

I'm so smitten but sooo tired. She's not letting me get much sleep these days. But she makes me happy and that's so ok.

Do your pets love to get involved in you scrapbooking? 

cheers & besos,

China Timeline

Hey yall! Halfway through the week and it feels like it has been a long one. My social life has been super busy lately so also not getting a whole lot of rest. But I'm happy. So happy =) 

I'll share more about that later, but this morning I wanted to blog my first Hello Story layout. 

You only have until tonight to register for this class, so get on it! I'm like 99.9999% sure you won't be disappointed. Because Ali isn't a legend for nothing. She's the best! So inspiring, simply amazing.

Here's my first page, a double page layout that's pretty much a direct copy of one of Ali's class layouts. If there's anyone I have no qualms about directly copying, its Ali. Her clean and simple style is amazing and she adds just the right touches of design and texture. Ahh! I could gush on Ali all day, but back to my page.

It's pages 2-3 for my China/Thailand album. (See the cover page, another lift, here) It's an overview of where I went the two weeks I visited. And yes, I do recognize that Hong Kong is it's own separate entity. It was just easier for me to include it no this one page. So hope I don't offend anyone!

I used geotags & compasses in fitting with the travel theme and tons of my fave travel stamps; sets from Kelly Purkey, October Afternoon, Mama Elephant.

The rest is just the details. Love these plastic letters from Crate Paper's The Pier collection!

I mixed stamps and brads as my primary embellishments. The Simple Stories Urban Traveler set is absolutely fabulous!

I hand wrote all of my journaling and included some stamping in there as well.

The majority of the stamping was done with the Brilliance gold ink pad. LOVE!

And I added a really subtle background design to the white cardstock. I stamped in gray on a scratch sheet of paper and then used the inked October Afternoon stamp again for a very soft look. You can barely see the "See the world" sentiment but it's there!

I have a process video for this layout coming. And no worries, it's a very different kind of process video. All about overcoming obstacles when you scrapbook, not necessarily showing you how I made the page. Because believe me, you want to see Ali do it, not me! So sign up, won't ya?

Yall have a lovely day!!

cheers & besos,

Camp Scrap Review

Evening everybody! I hope you all had as awesome a weekend as I was fortunate to have. Like I mentioned, I was off in Austin celebrating my bestie. We had sooooo much fun! Added a ton of awesomeness to our memory bank. And a hoard of a new photos to my scrapbook pile! Unfortunately, back to the real world tomorrow....

It's not all bad. In the morning I get new content from an awesome class! I'm in the midst of Hello Story with Ali Edwards. Sooo good guys. So seriously good. Consider it if you haven't already, will ya?!  

Until then, I wanted to post a quick review on another Big Picture Classes workshop, Camp Scrap with May Flaum. 

Those are all the projects I completed during Camp Scrap (see them all using this link):
6 Layouts
4 Cards
1 Daybook
1 Mixed Media Piece

For a 4 week class, I think I did pretty well! Especially considering I really didn't have a lot of time to do any of this in.

So here are my quick thoughts on Camp Scrap:

• The class had tons of prompts and daily e-mails. (Initially I thought I'd get overwhelmed, but May was great about focusing on only one thing at a time, so I never felt inundated.)
• There were lots of mini classes with a variety of topics. 
• It was a fun positive atmosphere. 

Maybe I should back up a second to talk about my motivation for taking this workshop. Of course, I wanted to learn but mainly I wanted to participate in a community, pick up a few tricks or techniques, and really just use some stash! I managed all of those things and got to tick off a few items on my list of summer goals =)

Most helpful was the all of the mixed media content May provided, which was fairly new to me. I also learned to appreciate the full suite of Tim Holtz distress products. I'm in love!! But back to the class....

What I liked:

• Loved that content was released on Thursdays. Perfect intro to the weekend!
• Loved the anything goes with regard to projects 
• The variety of the content was great and very diverse
• May herself is so enthusiastic. She makes you excited to participate 

What I wished was different:

• Content more evenly dispersed as opposed to a huge influx of "bonus" material all at the end
• Make and take handouts! Could have used a few of these, especially for the more detailed ones
• Maybe a variety of styles? I appreciate May's particular aesthetic, but would have liked to see other approaches. I think guest contributors would have been fun!
• Super picky and not anything to do with May's class specifically, but I wish the thumbnails on the BPC site were bigger! It's hard to see the images easily.

All in all, I really enjoyed the class. I did pick up some tricks. I did use up some stash. I did have fun! I'd probably take this class again, if it had new content. It' was a great way to start a season of summer crafting that's for sure. It helped kick off my summer scrapbooking and still has me excited to play!

Did anyone else take it? What were your thoughts? I'd love to hear and to see any projects you might have made! I always enjoy seeing different takes on the same prompts!

cheers & besos,

Neon Birthday Card

What is with this week? Not one, but two of my best ladies have birthdays this week! Nana's birthday is the 9th and Tara, my bestie, was born on the 13th. 

So today we're in Austin to celebrate. I'm scheduling this beforehand, so I have no idea what we're up to. But I'm sure we're having fun. And by now, she'll have seen The Note mini I made for her. I'm sure we laughed and giggled and smiled as we went through it. 

Here's the birthday card I made to go with her gift:

It's bright! Just like the book. I created this custom "print" by taking some of our silliness and repeating it over and over again. I printed it on vellum and it's the cover page for the mini book, but it's a bit hard to see. So I printed it out on white cardstock to make her card.

I used a lot of the same things I used in the mini book to create the card and decided I like to do things just on the edges of paper. So two strips of washi on both the cover and inside pages worked the best.

I stamped birthday on the chipboard speech bubble and added those great transparent letter stickers over top for the sentiment.

Lastly, I misted with those awesome neon mists from SC. First time using them and I have to say, they're pretty awesome.

Now just to write in the card and wrap up the presents! Can't wait to have a weekend of play in Austin!!

cheers & besos,

The Note Mini

Is it Friday yet?! I'm sooo ready for the weekend. This has been my first full week back in the office in a few weeks, so this weekend is particularly warranted. I'm excited because we're driving over to Austin for it! It's my bestie's birthday and we're going to celebrate that and her new job and spend it as a last hurrrah of sorts, because she's getting ready to move.

So lots going on & I'm stoked!

I should wait until Saturday to post this, but I was just so excited I couldn't wait! Since it is her birthday, I had to make her a gift. I think being my best friend, puts her in the top spot as recipient of Jamie projects. She's had a lot of homemade gifts over the years. [See those here and here and here and here and here. See I wasn't kidding!]  But I think this year's gift is my favorite.

I made her a mini book! It's of all of our inside jokes and silly ramblings. Way back in college, we thought we were sooo cute, or cool, or something crazy like that. So we started a Note on Facebook and kept a running record of all of our inside jokes that year. And beyond really. We still comment on it from time to time. It makes me smile and laugh and giggle and outright snort with laughter at times. I love it so much! 

Since you never know if Facebook is going to update and get rid of the whole thing, I thought it best to make a mini book of some of the stuff in there. This whole project is at least 6 months in the making. I had the idea and bought the stuff for it ages and ages ago. But then never sat down to actually do it. Thanks to Celine's Mini Book class, I made it happen!!

I love it so much. Not only for posterity reasons but also because it's pretty. I'm so proud of it. And the fact that I actually did it. I tried some new things, used nearly an entire row of washi, and reminisced the whole way. Oh, and I'm so beyond happy that I made one for myself! They are very nearly identical, so I'm only showing you hers. But I knew I'd want one for myself and I'm sooooo happy I made sure to do it.

So enough with words. Here are the photos. And I'm warning you THERE'S A  LOT OF PHOTOS!! Tons of little details. But the formula is pretty basic: pretty paper on one side, 6x6 black and white photo stitched on the other side, vellum with quotes in between. Speech bubbles were my main design element and that first pattern you see is from Amy Tangerine's Ready Set Go line and it inspired the color choices. 

cheers & besos,