Hi 5!

Look at that cute little face. Yes, he's scowling but it isn't for the reason that you think! He was sooo sick. Like terribly sick. And we didn't realize that until he was already at the house. We hung out for a bit, ate some cupcakes and then took him home, I promise!

But let me chat a minute about this page. It's the last page I made using the Island Paradise kit. I made this for the layering challenge Tessa posted over on the Scrapbook Circle blog. This page features a TON of layering, as you can see.

I also used those cute foxes from the Tiki Torch Add-on. Can you see his fox folding chair in the background there? It's Urijah sized and adorable.

I built up my layers under the photo and on top of the photo and used a formula of layers in three different spots. I love how chunky it ended up being.

I hope you have a lovely weekend! I'm so excited for this three day weekend =)

cheers & besos,

Scrapbook Circle Here & There

It's alive! Hiya friends! I wanted to share this month's Scrapbook Circle kit! It's called Here & There and believe me when I tell you, it's fabulous!! I've already made 5 projects and I still have a few more to make with all of this goodness. There's tons of gold and black and white elements to this kit. So right in my wheelhouse there :)

I also went for the This Place Add-on. Between the two, I had tons of paper and some really fabulous embellishments. 

Here's a few sneaks for you. 

The full projects will be available on the Scrapbook Circle site in just a few days. The Ideas tab is where you can find 'em.

This very seriously is a contender for one of my most favorite kits ever! Be sure to check it out and jump on it quickly. One of the add-ons is already sold out!

cheers & besos,

Hand Cut Letters

Hey hello! I have some more Scrapbook Circle pages to share. They're over on the blog. Along with a fun tutorial on creating hand cut letters. 

Don't you just love the fun and whimsy these add to the pages. See, turning 30 doesn't have to be so serious! Nor do baby curls it seems =)

I shared all the good stuff over there. Be sure to click over for the tutorial if you're interested!

cheers & besos,

Family Love

It seems a little unfair that I'm posting my latest project when I have half a dozen other layouts I should share. But whatever this is current and I want to get in on the Paperclipping Official/Unofficial Online Crop! Here's a page I made using a Simple Scrapper sketch from a few months ago. My favorite part is "family" on the photos.

cheers & besos,

Summertime Happiness

I have another Island Paradise page to share! This was a just for fun one using what I had leftover from the kit. 

The theme is "happy". These photos just warm my heart. It had been too long since I had seen these cousins. I was so excited to get to spend some time with them…and that Christian caught a fish! 

I used one of this month's cut files and a lot of the Elle's Studio journaling tags. I also hand cut some lil fishies to add to the page.

This might just be my only summer themed page I make this year. This summer has just been…well not summery. I thought I would have more time to relax and unwind. And while I did get to take some time off of work, I was still really just in recovery mode from all of the work and personal life goings on.

This fall will be just as hectic! But I'm so excited for it to start! And to continue to share projects with you all :)

cheers & besos,

PRT 218: Paper Chains

Erhmagawd! Coming off of a small PRT high you guys :) I just finished recording this week's Paperclipping Roundtable! I was so honored and excited to be asked. Here's the link to the recording if you want to go listen (please do!): http://www.paperclipping.com/prt218-paper-chains/

If you're visiting because you've heard the episode, hi! Welcome to my little alley off the internet. 

Here's my "official" scrapbook bio:

My name is Jamie Leija (said correctly by Noell as "Lay-ha"). I’m a native Texan who loves to travel and scrapbook. I’ve lived in London, Thailand and Spain and have been blessed to travel to so many more places. Traveling and scrapbooking go hand in hand for me. I love that one hobby supports the other and that scrapbooking lets me relive and share all of those fabulous memories. I've been scrapbooking (as we know it) for the past 17 years. My first job in high school was for a local scrapbook store. I loved working there! And it helped me learn to love sharing this hobby with others. In college, I worked at Hobby Lobby (can you see the theme here :) and then another local scrapbook store. I've been published in Northridge Publishing's Scrapbook Trends, CARDS and Create publications. When I’m not scrapbooking or on a plane, I’m spending time with my kitten (who I hope you couldn't hear on the recording!!), boyfriend or adorable nephew.

The topic of the episode was travel scrapbooking, something so clearly right up my alley :) But more specifically, design around travel pages. We talked about a few of my pages so I'm sharing them again here. Also, if you click on the photo it will link you back to the original blog post for the page.

It was so surreal to go from listening to the Podcasts to actually participating in one. I had this weird moment in the beginning listening to Izzy go over some housekeeping stuff. I literally had to remind myself, Izzy is talking to you this time! =) 

I'll leave it at that for now. I hope you'll go and listen to the episode for more on these pages! Just want to send a huge shout out to Noell & Izzy for the awesome things they do for our industry. And for the huge honor and privilege of being part of the legacy :) And also to my new friend Wendy Morris who was a newb with me on today's episode.

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,

Crossroads

I'm back into the swing of scrapbooking! But not back into the art of blogging it seems. I have so many projects to share with you all too. For now, I'll share this layout. It's up on the Scrapbook Circle blog today. I got to play with the Circle Round up challenge this month and of course the lovely Island Paradise kit and Tiki Torch Add on. You can read more about this page over on the blog!

Here's wishing you a fabulous beginning to the week!

cheers & besos,

Scrapbook Circle Blog Hop

**Giveaway is over but comments still open**

Welcome to our Scrapbook Circle Blog Hop! I'm so excited to be part of this year's Scrapbook Circle  creative team! This weekend we're hopping and hoping to introduce you to the new team as well as to the fabulous August kit.

If you've participated in a blog hop before then you should know the drill. If you just left Rebecca's blog, you're in the right place. If not, I hope you'll join us for the entire hop by starting at the Scrapbook Circle blog, here.

Let me start by saying hi! If you're new to my blog, my name is Jamie Leija (said Lay-ha). I’m a native Texan who loves to travel and scrapbook. I’ve lived in London, Thailand and Spain and have been blessed to travel to so many more places. Traveling and scrapbooking go hand in hand for me. I love that one hobby supports the other and that scrapbooking lets me relive and share all of those fabulous memories. I've been scrapbooking (as we know it) for the past 17 years. My first job in high school was for a local scrapbook store. I loved working there! And it helped me learn to love sharing this hobby with others. In college, I worked at Hobby Lobby (can you see the theme here :) and then another local scrapbook store. I've been published in Northridge Publishing's Scrapbook Trends, CARDS and Create publications. When I’m not scrapbooking or on a plane, I’m spending time with my kitten, boyfriend or adorable nephew.

If you're not new to my blog, welcome back! I'm on a design team now guys =)

Now that we've got the introductions in order, let me show you this month's kit! It's called Island Paradise. I had a blast cutting it apart and putting the pieces back together on all of my pages. As you can see, teal was the dominate color. It made its way onto just about all of my pages (ha! with the exception of today's page…). I loved all of the bold (like the Crayola Market set!) color combos that you can make.

Did I mention you could win one of five August kits by commenting as you hop from blog to blog??!! Oh yes you can! Keep reading for more info.

I also procured the Tiki Torch add-on. Those little foxes were just too cute!! And I of course HAD TO HAVE the wood veneer sequins. They combine two of my favorite scrapbook embellishments! Nice one Chic Tags :)

This month, a few of us on the creative team, collaborated with Page Maps for this blog hop. Here's the fabulous sketch Becky sent over for me to play with. Have to love a good circle sketch, right?!

And here's the page I came up with! I loved that blunt-end piece so much, I decided to make all of mine  straight edged like that. Aaaand I wanted to shrink it down just a smudge. 

I really liked the idea of writing my journaling in the "missing" piece but the background paper I chose was a bit too busy for that. Instead, I pulled the journaling out and integrated some fun bits and baubles in between the lines. I think the colors might be my favorite thing about this page (and the kit too!). 

I edited my photo using RadLab to create a funkier color scheme. I'm sharing them here since I printed them so tiny before. ALSO, I should add that that's not me! On the right, in the blue, that's my bestie Tara. We've been told plenty of times that we look like sisters. We aren't but I guess we look similar. Except I'm about 3 inches taller than her! Glad we got that cleared up :)

And now on to the [next] fun bit. A new blog to hop to and a chance to win a kit! Please leave a comment on this blog and all of the other's that you hop to, for a chance to win. The hop ends Monday, August 4th at 9:00 p.m. Pacific and the winner will be announced on the Scrapbook Circle blog shortly after.

Thank you so much for hopping along AND for stopping by! It's been lovely to have you and I hope you'll come back soon. I'll be sharing the rest of my pages throughout the month so be on the look out for them as well.

Next up is the lovely Jenni! Hop over to her blog to see more fun projects using this month's Island Paradise kit!

**Giveaway is over but comments still open**

cheers & besos,