Opera House

Officially done with scrapping Oslo photos! Here's the last page but it's not really about Oslo.

Ok ok, so the photos are from Oslo, in front of the Opera House, but the journaling is about missing these guys. "We took these photos in 2008. So as I scrapbook them in 2013, I love getting to see their sweet faces. I miss each of them so much. It was a fabulous part of my life, to be a part of their daily lives."

I thought this chevron was the perfect base for a page featuring that awesomely angled opera house. And the blues and grays were perfect for it as well. From pastels to primary, I guess I couldn't get enough of my straight color themes. But that's ok.

I sprinkled in some ribbons, washi tape, patterned papers, journaling cards and teeny bit of cardstock. And embellished with enamel dots, a chipboard star and some flair.

Since the background was so busy, I kept the design quite straight and even. Even thought I guessed at it, I pretty much split the page right down the middle.

And another country gets checked off my list. I'm thinking this summer, I'll start going back through some of the other countries I've "finished". Just for fun!

cheers & besos,

Playing with Pastels

Happy Monday yall! I hope you had a nice relaxing weekend. Myself? I packed up some stuff and went to scrap at Archiver's on Saturday. It was a so so experience. I was really hoping to socialize but the crop was so small and everyone else came in groups. So I tinkered away on my own.

I wasn't really motivated and lacked a bit of mojo. It's hard when you're use to scrapping on demand (i.e. my room is all set up to scrap whenever I feel like it and all of my tools are out and available at all times) to suddenly go, ok now you HAVE to scrap. But I powered through. Mainly because I was inspired by some of the new products I purchased on the day.

This was the last page I made at the crop. I went for it because I new the layout I wanted for the photos.

I love Melissa Stinson's tight & clean & photo and color driven style. If you look at her work, pretty much every layout is a sketch worthy page. For this layout specifically, I was inspired by her Snapshots from the Aquarium layout.

I placed my photos, journaling and patterned paper strips in the same way that Melissa did, but I roughed it up a bit by crinkling paper edges, dropping mist splatters and adding sketch lines.

Honestly, I don't know how the pastel color combo came to be, just that I picked up that sheet from the Atlantic collection and thought it went well with the yellow of the palace and blue of the sky. Then I shopped the aisles at Archivers and came back with some Amy Tangerine Yes, Please, an older Ready, Set, Go sheet, a Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm and a spool of ribbon.

I did just tiny bits of embellishing by adding some flair, a chipboard camera, a Thicker title, and when I got home, some white heat embossed words.

It's a little funny to have this guy trip forever immortalized with a pink page. But they'd be good sports about it I'm sure. And now, I'm just excited to have made a 12x12 double page! And to have all of Oslo scrapbooked now. I'll share the final page tomorrow. Until then...

cheers & besos,

Sketchbook 4| No. 6

Today I want to share a totally Jamie but not at all Jamie layout. It's for Shimelle's Mixing Styles challenge.

What's me about it? The color combo & how I use paper and embellishments that coordinate nay I say match the colors in the photo.

What's not me about it? The sweet & simple design. I used Sketch No. 6 for this page and followed it nearly to a T. No extra embellishing and really not much moving around of the sketch elements.

I so totally love this quirky color combo. The orangey pink of my dress goes great with the SC/Sassafras patterned paper. I used the teal of the pool for my journaling block and got to utilize that great washi as well. The floor boards from the deck were mimicked in the wood veneer frame. And I used yellow, the color of my straw, as an accent color.

Have I mentioned how great the City of Lights kit goes with my favorite instagram filter? It's the Walden filter by the way.

I just have to say, although not my usual style, I do love the calming effect of this page. Or maybe I'm just reminded of the wonderful relaxing time I had that weekend. Was it only a few weekends ago?!

cheers & besos,

Sketchbook 4| No. 5

Ok, so I'm back to sharing Sketchbook pages. This one was just fun to make. I love the design of Sketch No. 5.

I used the Sorbonne add-on & the City of Lights kit for this fun page. I loved all of the bright colors in the add-on and a little went a long way on this page.

They gray squares with white pen ink look like mini chalkboards to me. Which is totally what I was going for ;)

The journaling is scattered, the design is scattered, the sequins is scattered and the photos don't all match. But I still really love how this page turned out!

cheers & besos,

March Brunch

I woke up with a sore arm this morning. I think it's from lugging my scrapbook things around yesterday. But I scrapbooked!!

Had a lovely afternoon yesterday, hanging out with a few scrappy friends & doing what we do best. Pushing paper around aimlessly whilst chatting. Or as in D's case, ink the edge of 100's of Italy die cuts the entire time! Small price to pay for getting married in Italy I suppose :)

But I wanted to share a few of my crop pages. I'm spreading them out over the week so be sure to check back later, k?!

I've taken heaps of everyday life instagram photos this year. So I printed a bunch and took those along with me to the crop.

For this page I wanted to play around with creating my own chevron pattern, using all of the gorgeous patterned papers from Studio Calico's City of Lights kit. The colors in this kit are great for my instagram photos. My fave filter Walden, so perfectly matches the soft colors & feel of this kit!

I wasn't so worried about my chevron "joints". They over lapped & didn't perfectly line up, so I covered them up with the lovely butterfly stickers that came in the kit. Then I printed my journaling out on vellum and added it to my page. I love the soft feel that gives off as well!

2012 is and already has been a great year. Can't wait to see what else this year has in store!

cheers & besos,

Mahiki

This is my bestie Kori. I've scrapped a photo or 2 of her so I'm sure you've seen her on this blog.

This was taken in a Hawaiian bar in London, Mahiki.

That is Kori, rocking a gorgeous black and yellow dress...which was the design inspiration for this group of photos.

Ta da!!

I used a Dear Lizzy laser cut paper to mimic Kori's gorgeous dress. It was pink on the one side and white(ish) on the backside so I flipped it over and misted it with my Sunflower Maya Mist.

Then I backed random parts of it with green patterned paper to break it up a bit.

After that I added some cutesy details, like the Basic Grey Yo-yos (I think that's what they're called), so KI ribbon and House of Three baker's twine to finish it off.

This was a wholly random night out in London, but I loved these pictures of my two favorite girls so much that I couldn't not scrap them.

I also had to share because I'm off to Hawaii this week! Leaving on Thursday and I'm so excited to lay on the beach, relax and more specifically, spend time with Monica =) another of my lovely London girls.

Catch ya later, dudes!!

xxbesos

Fancy Pants

Hi, hello, how are ya?! 200+ posts later, I'm still trying to get the hang of this whole blogging thing. So thank you for stopping by =)

Sharing another of my Archivers crop pages! I used a lot of American Crafts for this one, most notably some Amy Tangerine.

And I have to clarify, these would be the American pants and not the British ones!!

Scraped a photo of me and my co-workers, at my (favorite!!) boss' leaving drinks. Have to love how well European men dress. And I love that I got to play with pinks and navy again, on this page full of boys (see also Co-Conspirators :)

I had such a fun team to work with, at my internship in London. And I like I said before, Lalji was my absolute favorite boss. I can't even begin to describe the personality that is Lalji. You'd have to meet him to know! It was a sad sad day when he left DB, but I'm so glad I got to work for him for as long as I did.

xxbesos

Khao San Road

Another page from Bangkok! I'm well chuffed (quite proud) to have these 3 random Thailand pages scrapped! They weren't about trips or any specific event. They were just pages about what I was like when I lived there.

And that is how my scrapbooking has evolved lately.

"It's not easy being green." Know who said that? Kermit the frog is who. Love me my Kermie!

The Boardwalk kit had a lot of great green papers and I thought they contrasted nicely with the reds in my photo, so I just started playing with some left over strips.

Had to use my favorite neutral gray for the background and I think it made the green, cream and white pop even more!

I liked that the design is a bit busy and chaotic, but not so all over the place that it drives your eyes crazy. I wanted to mimic how packed in all of the signs and stalls were.

And ok, so maybe I added baker's twine, a Thicker or 2 that wasn't a part of the kit. But I think they were the final touches needed for this fairly flat page.

Which, btw is about the famous backpapers area of Thailand. If you ever make it that way, I'd recommend stopping by. Touristy yes, but none the less fun!

Happy Scrapping =)

xxbesos

Sitara Place/Monsoon

Sunshine Broadcast makes my heart go pitter patter. It is one of the most exquisite lines, in my opinion.

When I was throwing photos into that "to print for crop" file that I was talking about yesterday, I didn't even realize what I had stumbled upon. I was just hurriedly nabbing photos that caught my fancy, and for some reasons these monsoon photos did the trick. (Perhaps Hurricane Irene was on the brain.)

Then I hurriedly grabbed some products to take with me to the crop and my latest Studio Calico kit, Boardwalk. Lo and behold, there was the paper, the most perfect paper for these photos of the monsoon and my the view of my balcony from my flat in Bangkok.

Not only are there clouds, but in the buildings in the photo are the peaches and the yellows and even the teals! It's the colors that did me in.

This was the view from the balcony attached to my apartment. I lived in a complex call Sitara Place in the Ratchadaphisek (shortened to Ratchada) part of Bangkok. Good old Sitara place...

As you can see the details in the paper and the coordinating embellishments included in the kit, made for a happy resting place for my photo.

The companion page was all about watching the monsoon roll in from the comfort of my balcony. It was a daily occurrence for that first month or so.

The page has lots of white space with little details, more from Sunshine Broadcast and a little from Basic Grey.

And the journaling was done a la Maggie Holmes =)

And there we have a memory captured. It's a small memory,but one that enhanced my experience in Bkk. I'm happy it's scrapped :)

Thank you so much for checking in. Happy Scrapping!

xxbesos

Converge

Hello lovelies! I have to share what an absolute blast I had yesterday, cropping with 2 sweet girls from the Studio Calico message board.

Actually, I met Meghan at CKC Houston, while we were taking all of the SC classes with KP :) We'd chatted about meeting up for a crop via the SC message board and that's how we snagged Lindsay to jump on our 3 women crop bandwagon =)

So we met up at Archivers and had a nice time scrapping and yappin'.

I got 6 pages done!! Well, how I get them done (i.e. no journaling or nearly complete but waiting for something I know I have at home).

I wasn't as prepared for this crop as I was for my last. I didn't plan my pages or print photos to size or anything. In fact, I didn't even show up with the photos I had intended to crop!

I put a huge 150+ photo order in with Scrapbook Pictures, but didn't get it in time (it was waiting for me when I got home from the crop of course...) so yesterday morning, I was literally just throwing a random hodge podge of photos into a file so that I could get them printed at Wal-mart.

But guess what? I'm soooo soooo sooooooo happy I didn't get those pictures. Instead, I was able to help tackle some of the littler memories from London and Thailand, that I wasn't going to get to anytime soon.

And that, my friends, makes me very happy.

Those two places have so many memories, so many quiet times, so many big moments. And sometimes it just gets so overwhelming to tackle all of that. So as I'm chipping away, photo by photo, memory by memory, I'm happy to add more to my London album and my Thailand album, which in the tally are so far behind all of these smaller trips and place I've had the good fortune to visit.

I still have a long way to go but I'm getting there. And even though I have 1000s of photos yet to scrapbook, there's 10 less that I can now call complete!!!

Whoa, that was long winded =)

And now on to a page....

I am so stoked to have some Amy Tangerine products in my grubby little hands. It's an absolutely fabulous line! The colors are awesome, the details superb and the theme..come on, yall know it's right up my alley :)

This page is not at all about traveling in the US as the background paper suggests, and is all about the journey it took for all seven us, each from a different state, ended up 1000s of miles away from home, but all together in a little bar, on a night out in Phuket, Thailand.

For me, that's just plain cool.

It wasn't at all where I intended to go with this photo, but seeing the lovely papers and looking at all us people, I couldn't pass up the chance to make a page on how, at this particular stage in our life, we all converged on this programme called Mountbatten and ended up a big part of each other's lives for that bit of time.

I just love how perfect Amy's products were for this page. I even did some stitching a la Ms. Tangerine =)

Thank you to everyone who made it through that post! And now sneak peaks for more pages to be shared in the coming week =)

Happy Scrapping!!

xxbesos

Dover Pages Complete!

The Dover section of my England Mini is now complete.

Light applause all around =)

No but seriously, I'm so happy to have this album at least started.

I haven't counted and really don't want to know, how many photos from my year in London, that have yet to be scrapbooked. (I'm guessing around 3-4,000...)

I'll get to them when I can get to them.

But believe me when I say, I sure am happy when I do!

This album is from Making Memories and I thought it was perfect for my random trampings about England. And below are all of the pages I made from just one of several day trips that we made. It's going to be a nice chunky album!

(Click to enlarge photos)

These last are a few of the newest pages.
I took this one and only photo of the reputed white cliffs of Dover. I have no idea where I read that page, but for some reason it stuck with me.

I wanted to play with texture on this page, so I used my border punches and several sheets and shades of white cardstock.

This last page, I played with fun citrus-y colors and some Studio Calico stickers. That green polka dot might be one of my most favorite papers, it's just such a great shade of green!

And just like that, it's done! Well, at least the portion from Dover is, and I'm very happy about that.

xxbesos