Milestone Cards

Remember that rabbit with the pocket watch and the scant time? Yeah I have even less than he does it seems. 

Nearly 10:00pm and I only recently finished up my work day. It's that time of year! It's only like this for these 2 weeks every year, and even though I know its coming, there's still nothing that can prepare me for the outright exhaustion.

Which is why updates may be few and far between for these next few weeks. I have a few projects to share with you all. I have a bit of stockpile on blog posts. I'll get to them all eventually.

But for now, feast your eyes on these:

I channeled my inner Wilna to create these two milestone cards. The one above is for my parents 32nd Wedding Anniversary and the bottom is congratulations for MT's little sister who just got engaged.

I'm in love with this painted look and feel, something we learned all about in Wilna's Art Class Vol. 1 & Vol. 2! I used her Flourish and Love Words Cut files for these.

Ok, glad I made time to share. And now, I sleep.

cheers & besos,

Lovely

Gooooood morning! Or afternoon depending on where you are....or when you're reading this :) I'm up bright and early today. For no particular reason other than its Saturday and I don't want to waste a minute of it! That's kind of weird huh? Instead of taking the opportunity to sleep in, my body actually wakes itself up. But that means I'm more productive...or something.

Here's me being productive at 6am on Saturday. I didn't of course, just make this. But this page has been sitting in my draft folder for weeks and I'm finally taking time to share.

It's (obvs) another Mixed Media class creation. And all yellow!! For the layout, I followed along with another Simple Scrapper sketch from this month's Spark mag.

I even did some hand stitching. I wanted to make sure that you could tell this was a heart so I cut the shape out in vellum and stitched it to the page. I think it defines the shape a bit more.

And that's all she wrote first thing this Saturday morning. Now I get to figure out what to do with the rest of my day! Stay home and rest (I feel like I'm getting sick) or head out to the Highland Games taking place here in town? Decisions. Decisions!

cheers & besos,

U R 5

Hey there! I have something a wee bit different to share, a non-PL pocket page! Pssssttt....I loved it =) 

We celebrated Urijah's 5th birthday on Saturday. My parents and brother drove in from San Antonio to spend the day with our favorite little guy. Bless his heart, he was soooo sick! But he kept trying to have fun. 

I snapped a few dozen photos and whittled my scrapbook worthy selections down to these few. I thought the randomness of them all would be perfect in the pocket page format.

For these spreads, I used a whole amalgamation of Studio Calico Project Life cards and also some Silhouette cuts. The front side was a green and blue color scheme and the back side was black, yellow and red. I think the monochromatic color schemes are my favorite part!

To spice it up a bit, I used my gelatos to custom color this card the the big 5. I really liked the bright pop of color it added to the spread.

My journaling was printed on a shipping tag and tucked into this stripped paper bag. It matched the colors so perfectly! I also couldn't resist adding a skull and crossbones. This one was so cute!

I see your value pocket page. You made things quick and easy. You also forced my brain to think things through a bit differently. And that is always a good thing.

cheers & besos,

Feeling Blue

I don't know if its April or this year or my mindset or what! But lately I've really really been loving using blue on just about all of my pages.

Blue backgrounds, blue accents just blue everywhere! I'll be sharing several other blue filled layouts later this week. But for now I'll leave you with the announcement of the winner of the Art + Science of Scrapbooking class giveaway.

Congratulations Megan!

meganApril 15, 2014 at 8:01 AM

Oooh! I LOVE this concept! I'm definitely both, as a scientist and a scrapbooker, so it would be amazing to have a more objective class point out or at least make it more obvious which way I tend to lean when playing with paper. I think I usually start with a photo, but always keeping the story in mind. I mostly do PL these days, so it's more about mini-stories. Definitely intrigued by the class and would love to win a spot! Thanks for the opportunity!

_______

Megan, I'm going to try to find you girl. But if you see this before I do, please e-mail me at paperheart[dot]project[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll send you instructions for joining!

cheers & besos,

The Bean

Hey there! How you going? It's been a lovely lazy stay at home and do nothing but scrap kind of day. Exactly what I needed after the birthday party that was thrown at my house yesterday. It was only immediate family but still, lots of ruckus in my tiny little apartment.

Today, I needed to do some quiet scrapping. Just me, my paper and my pictures. Here's one of the pages I made.

I used (of course) a Simple Scrappers sketch and a ton of fun embellishments. At first, I wasn't so excited to use this sketch in particular. For some reason it didn't feel me. So I put it aside for a few days and just now got back to it. I gave up on another idea that just wasn't going to work for these photos in this configuration and I'm so much happier for having let it go!

Since I'm taking the SC Stitched class, I thought I'd add some fun colorful stitching to the page. I hand drew a bean and cut it out of vellum before I stitched down the shape and spelled out the title.

Then it was just a matter of making a line of circular embellishments down the side of the photos. That's the part that made it me!

It was really fun to just go to my travel drawer--and yes, I have one of those--pull out a ton of embellishment packs and some ink and just go to town.

Balance is always the number one design element in these kinds of things. I think I made it work out.

With that I'll leave you to your Sunday evenings. I'm off to watch some Game of Thrones and Madmen!

cheers & besos,

NYE 2008

Hi friends, I hope you are having a lovely week. Mine has been absolutely crazy. Work is at an all time high as we prep for a huge event we're having the second week of May. But I don't mind. I prefer this to slow dragging days.

Work is busy but I'm still managing to scrap on the weekends. My precious precious weekends! And I'm also back to paper based pages...with bits of wet media thrown in for good measure. 

I call this my ode to circles. There's a lot on here! The paper, the pictures the embellishments. I went for it! Mainly because it reminded me of champagne bubbles. Perfect since this is a page about NYE! The whole design is based off of one of this month's Simple Scrapper sketches.

I water colored around a few of the circles and colored with the silver Neocolor. Then I hand stitched "fireworks" and embellished with star sequins. Then I blinged it out even more with glitter Thickers and circles punched from AC glitter paper.

I did something a little bit different with the journaling. Since all of these photos were taken right next to the Baker Street tube station, I made it a tad more literary and a mite more factual.

This was a fun page to scrap since it was just cute photos of me and my friends. We weren't "doing" anything and so the design makes it more lively! Fab sketch Jen & Co. Yet another reason why I love me some Simple Scrapper.

cheers & besos,

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,

Art + Science of Scrapbooking Review

Y'all know I'm the biggest fan of classes. I'm bordering on being a class-aholic. Technique, challenge, sketches. You name it I've signed up and taken it. So you can imagine how excited I was to hear that one of my favorite classes was coming back around!!!

It's the Art + Science of Scrapbooking at Big Picture Classes. Seriously, one of the most creative concepts I've come across in a long time. Play with any products, use any of those photos you've been wanting to tackle just consider your approach in 2 distinct ways.

Here's what BPC has to say about the class:

Art + Science of Scrapbooking, 16 brain-boosting challenges to strengthen your creative process taught by Stacy Julian and Jennifer Wilson, starts May 15, 2014!

Class Description:

Are you a right-brained person who embraces possibility and spontaneity, thrives on imagination, relies on feelings, and thinks in symbols and images? Are you a left-brained person who practices strategy and order, finds comfort in facts, relies on logic, and thinks in words and language?

The answer to both questions is "yes!" In The Art + Science of Scrapbooking, a mind-bending workshop from Stacy Julian and Jennifer Wilson, you'll learn to harness the creative power of both sides of your brain.

In four illuminating weeks, right-brainer Stacy Julian and left-brainer Jennifer Wilson will help you embrace your natural cognitive strengths. But they'll also challenge themselves, each other, and YOU to find a new sense of balance and power as you explore the other side of your brain.

And also a lil video if you're a more visual person:

But here's what I have to say about the class:
I wonder how these two brilliant ladies thought of the concept because its so very inventive and really just darn creative!

Every week we went through two concepts (challenges). These included: Ideation, Process, Photos, Journaling, Color, Design, Product, Embellishing.

Each of the challenges has two videos. In the first, Stacy the right brained lovely and Jennifer the left brained genius issue each other challenges based on these concepts. Jennifer issues Stacy a left brained challenge and vice versa.

Then the next video is a response to the challenge. They share their page and talk a little bit about how easy or hard it was for them to complete the page. Which to me was the most interesting part!

Sometimes I easily identified with one or the other side of things. Sometimes I had done both approaches before. Sometimes neither felt like what I would do. But this was the whole point of the class! To try something different. I enjoy stepping out of my comfort zone from time to time and this was the perfect way to do that. A bit of a controlled experiment.

The class as a whole is awesome for new to intermediate scrapbookers who maybe haven't spent much time figuring out their own approach. If you fall into this category, the class is a great way to clearly understand how two people with very distinct approaches tackle these specific concepts and to see if you might like to approach it the same way.

But for me, being beyond even the intermediate stage, it was still so fun to take. I find that the longer I'm at this hobby the more the conceptual classes appeal to me. Less of this is how you do it (although I'm learning a lot from all of these mixed media classes I've been taking lately!!) and more of, here's a fun (and different) challenge or way of doing things.

Basically, I'm saying this class is fabulous for everyone, both new and seasoned scrapbookers :)

AND can I just add, you'll probably never regret taking a class from either of these fabulous ladies. Trust me when I say this, they're fantastic!

Have a look at the layouts I made:

7 pages! A few that are double paged and two of my most favorite layouts from the year =)

At the time I didn't have the chance to complete all the challenges. But I will definitely be going back through them. Looking at my pages all together points out that I took on more of Jennifer's left brained challenges and just one of Stacy's right brained. Maybe on this next run I'll focus more on the right!

Because.....I will be joining this class again

AND 

I'm lucky enough to be able to give away a seat to one of you!!

Leave a comment below, before Sunday, 20 April at 11:59 CST, for a chance to win a seat in the class. I'd love to hear how you start your pages, with a photo or a story?

If anything I've said or the video pointed out or you heard about the class has you interested, I totally recommend you to jump into this class. It's going to be fun!

Let me know if you have any questions about the class. I'm happy to answer anything or put you in touch with someone who can :)

cheers & besos,

P.S. In case you were wondering. I'm equally right brained and left brained. Best of both worlds!

Mixed Media: Weekend

I have been hemming and hawing over here trying to decide if I should share this layout, or a bunch of layouts, or a giveaway that's coming up. But no, I just need to not think too much and post!!

Ok. Here goes.

How was your weekend? Mine was lovely. I spent a happy Saturday in a mixed media frenzy. I cranked out three pages using gesso, modeling paste, mists, neocolors, gelatos, stamps and stencils. I was only planning to make the one page but was so inspired to keep playing. Celine's video from her Mixed Media class are what got me started. To note: you can still sign up!

Here's the first page I made in a blue and green color scheme. It was my first stab at the whole thing. And I thought while I was at it, I'd try a new approach. I just went to town on the paper and didn't think about my end game. I don't often create a background page before deciding on photo placement and size. But since this was my first attempt, I gave myself permission to just play and see and how it went.

I ended up really loving the process! I discovered new fun techniques (like playing with Neocolors) and really just lost myself in the play. So much so that when I went to create a "normal" page after this, I just couldn't get it going!

Since I had enjoyed the artistic play so much, I knew I couldn't stop. Creating pages like this is a bit more labor intensive. So I knew that if I had the desire to do it, I'd better keep at it while the iron was hot!

The background paper is the real star of this show, so I kept the embellishing to a minimum. These are so soooo old rub-ons from Making Memories. I'm thinking Heidi Swapp must have worked for them back then. It looks like her handwriting, no?

A smattering of patterned paper and a Two Peas flair + tape, an enamel shape and some stamping around the photo are what did the trick.

...and I made it through there relatively unscathed. I have no idea why the hemming and hawing over the what and the when was taking up so much space in my brain! I have to remember to just let go and dive in sometimes.

With that said, I'll be sharing the other pages I concocted through out the week and I have a fabulous giveaway coming at you as well! Check back for that.

Ok back to real life. Off to shower before Game of Thrones starts!

cheers & besos,

The Burren

I love sketches and challenges and scrapbook recipes. But sometimes, I love just sitting at my desk and playing. That's exactly what I did with this page. I went looking through my Ireland photos to see what I wanted to work on and these immediately stood out. They weren't the most beautiful photos (I mean its Ireland for goodness sake!) but at soon as I saw them, I was flooded with memories. 

I knew when I sat at my desk that I wanted to do some stamping and these diamond stamps were my weapon of choice. Can you see what I was going for here? I wanted the diamonds to mimic the rocky cliffs. I used a variety of gray inks and some gray and silver embossing powder to achieve the look.

I really liked the monochromatic look and feel. It makes the blue in the photo really pop! For embellishing, it was just a few blue pieces here and there. I also doodled some diamonds with my pencil.

I hid my journaling behind the photos on a tag I made out of patterned paper. It's full of all the stories that happened in the 10 minute time frame when these pictures were taken. I also added an extra photo in the back. If you read the journaling you'll figure out why it's hidden.

It was so therapeutic to just sit at my desk to play. Add bits here and there and remember this day, this moment, this time with my friend. 

cheers & besos,