Away Days

It's been two weeks since I've been on here. 

Two weeks since I've got crafty at my desk. 

One week of crazy hectic traveling.

...and it's not going to stop!

This was where I was last week for work.

Bouncing around from city to city and event to event. And only at the very end, did I get to do anything for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the travel, not so much all of the meetings. But I like my job and am grateful it takes me to some really fabulous places. It just makes me so tired!

Lately its been keeping me from doing the fun stuff, like playing with paper and getting inky. And believe me, I'm just dying to sit down and scrap! I have some pages circulating around in this head of mine that I'm determined will see the light of day.

I hope you stick it out with me. I appreciate all of you who come visit my corner of the interweb!

cheers & besos,

Monochromatic Birthday

My birthday was last Friday! Oh my birthday...that whole day went by in a blur. I planned a fun party for my friends and asked if everyone could wear wigs! I thought it'd be fun to celebrate the last birthday of my 20's with something fun and crazy.

We took some great group photos of us in our crazy fun colored wigs. Obviously, I really wanted them to stand out. So I took on Jennifer's left-brained Color Challenge from Art + Science and only worked with neutrals. 

It was soooo hard! All I wanted to do was add in neon pink! But I refrained. And I think, the page came out the better for it. Instead, I used a lot of black and white elements plus gold and a touch of gray.

Us in those wigs definitely became the focal point!

Lately, I'm absolutely loving digital elements. And Two Peas is giving us some completely fabulous options! And of course, since black and white has become such a big part of my scrapbooking, I'm loving all of the October releases!

For this page, I incorporated some fabi printables and a freebie die cut from a few months back. (Snag it now!! They're available again for just a short while)

My Cameo cut the freebie die cut perfectly and I used it as a mask with some Heidi Swapp Gold Lame Color Shine (my favorite!). It didn't mask very well in certain parts, so I drew around the shapes using my black pen--on the white parts--and my white pen for the darker parts at the bottom.

I also finally got to use my new Pebbles Alphabet Stamp.

Oh, and about the background paper, I created this background of black and white photo strips in PSE and printed it out on white orange peel cardstock. All the photos were edited using Rad Lab. Heck all of my photos are edited using Rad Lab!

I had fun making this page. I had fun this night! Be prepared to see this photo and others like it over and over again. It was just so fun =)

cheers & besos,

4 in 4

Hiya! I wanted to share this double page layout I made. It was for a guest design team assignment that fell through, which made me a little bummed. But only for a minute. Because I realized, I still got a great scrapbook page out of it!

My challenge was to make a page about 1) boys and 2) birthdays. And since Urijah is my favorite lil boy, I decided to make a page about his birthday. But I've scrapped his whole 2nd, 3rd and 4th birthdays. I've been meaning to get to that 1st birthday mini book....but knowing how much time I had, I knew I couldn't attempt it.

I was chatting with my Mama the other day, and she asked if I thought we should have a pirate party for Urijah's next birthday. She was at Target and they had a fun pirate pinata on discount that she wanted to snag. I said, yes lets! Since both of us love skulls and cross bones and Urijah likes pirates. 

That convo totally inspired me to create a page about all of the different parties we've had for Urijah over the years. His first birthday was cowboys, his second featured Sid the Science kid, his 3rd was super hero themed and his fourth was fiesta! 

Using a prompt from Art + Science, I decided to make an enlarged photo collage of a black and white photo of him each year + a color photo of his cake.

I went for photos I hadn't scrapped or weren't as prominently featured on their respective pages. The smaller moments and less perfect shots. I thought they'd be perfect cropped down into 2x6in slivers.

And then I went super geometrical by cutting down 4 coordinating patterned papers in the same width as the photos. I think it makes the design look very tight and clean. Which I love! And is kind of perfect for the left brained challenge (from Art + Science) I'd been working with.

I loved the awesome bright colors in this fab Elle's Studio pattern and I finally got these silver and red Thickers I've been hoarding onto the page. They're perfect for this birthday page, that is one part superhero =)

Oh, and I used my date stamp to mark the years of his birthdays that this page covered. (Does that sentence make sense??)

The only remaining embellishing was the chipboard stars, number stickers and the vellum birthday die cut I cut with my Silhouette.

It's a very simple page with lots of clean lines. But I made sure to festive it up with bright patterns and colors. I absolutely love the result!

cheers & besos,