Elle's Studio Spring Sale

It's happening! Head over to Elle's Studio to shop the spring [sale]! There are grab bags and individual items on mega discount.

While I was at it, I thought I'd share a page I made using this month's Elle's Studio [sketch]. As I'm a huge fan of circles, I totally loved this sketch! I rotated the elements 90 degrees and so much fun layering my photos, acrylic words and stamped pieces.

I completely loved the "We are living our Adventure" journaling tag from the [April kit]. But couldn't make the 3x4 size work. So I just cut out the sentiment placed it along the bottom of my photo. Totally made it work!

I used the [Travelouge stamps] and the [Go, See, Do acrylic words] to embellish this page.

And I used the arrows from the [puffy stickers] pack to help guide your eye around the page. Hands down, puffy stickers have to be my favorite type of embellishment!

cheers & besos,

Summer Camp Challenge

I kind of can't remember the last time I was this excited to share a page! I spent a quiet Friday evening putting this together. 

Jennifer posted a fun challenge called Summer Camp in the Simple Scrapper Facebook Group. It was a re-run of a fun challenge/event the community did in 2013, before I joined. So this whole exercise was new to me. I had so much fun playing along!

Without giving anything about the challenge away, here's the direction I was given for my page:

Story Direction-Event or Trip
Page Background-White or cream cardstock
Paper Selection-No patterned paper
Journaling Style-Long column
Design Foundation-Asymmetrical clusters
Embellishing Rule-Mixed title work

I wasn't at all worried about not being able to use any patterned paper. And it definitely helped that my background was white cardstock. Because then I was able to create my own background with the help of mists and stencils and stamps!

It also meant that my photos and the colors I worked with really popped of the page!

Event or Trip was my assigned subject. I did one better and combined the two. The page is about an international music and dance festival we just happened to wander into when I visited Prague.

What better to scrapbook this adventure with, than my Ali Edwards "Go" Story Stamp & Kit. I loved all of the orange in it so I played that up as much as I could. I pulled out two journaling cards, just one of the chipboard pieces, the acetate geotag, plastic "go" and of course, the Story Stamps.

I used just about every last one of the stamp phrases and paired it with my Hero Arts Ombre Butter to Orange ink pad. It's subtle but I kept the ombre going when I stamped down in a long column on the left of my page. I sprinkled my journaling in with all of the stamping.

The embellishing included a lot of geotags and the stamped "awesome memory". I also mixed two sets of alphas and my own handwriting to create the title. The "go" could be considered part of the title, but really I see it more as embellishing.

I love playing along with challenges. The more restricted, the more I end up loving the pages. At least that's how it seems. This page is definitely evidence of that for me. I love love love how it turned out!

To my fellow Simple Scrappers, Jennifer posted the Summer Camp Challenge in the Facebook group on June 29 if you're looking for it.

If you're not a Simple Scrapper member, there's more info on it here.

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,

Stash Bash V.4

I think I might be most excited about this page! I finished it up last night. 

Last week, I thought up this idea for a round up/title page using the always inspiring viewfinder. I have this older Two Peas digital frames cut file and knew the "You are Here" one would be perfect for it.

I printed 9 tiny photos and added them to the frames. I filled in the others with scraps of patterned paper and stuff from my SO-NEW-I-CAN'T-WAIT-TO-USE-IT drawer. This is also part of the Simple Scrapper mini-Stash Bash we're doing this week in our Facebook group.

Travel products are my absolute favorite. I used the new Amy Tangerine Tag Sticker Roll and some of the fabulous Studio Calico geotags.

cheers & besos,

2013 Travels

Hiya! I want to share my latest page with you. It's my first for the month of February. After a full week of traveling at the beginning of this month, I was ready to be back home at my scrap desk.

This is something I whipped up late Sunday night on a whim. I was wanting to get crafty but wasn't really in the mood to get to the Valentines card I needed to make. So instead I flipped through my latest edition of Spark magazine (its part of the Simple Scrappers membership) for inspiration. There was an absolutely fabulous travel page that really caught my eye, so I decided to make my own version of it.

There are some similarities between mine page and the original one: the circle photos, die cuts in the middle of the page, bits of paper along the top and bottom, the "I am here" and geotag stamps. But that's about it. I more or less lifted the concept.

For the past few years I've been making a wrap up page of my travels for the year [2012 HERE] [2011 HERE] [2008 HERE] and it just so happened that all of my travels in 2013 were here in the US and also in the UK. I liked the tie in so I made a page featuring just those two countries and a blue/red/pink/gray color scheme.

I started out with a blank sheet of white cardstock and did some stamping and scribbling with a pencil. I also dropped some gray mist splatters to help fill out the page a bit more.

I layered patterned paper and die cuts together and added dimensions by roughing up the edges of the paper before gluing them down.

There are lots of bits and pieces, lots of embellishing on this page: baker's twine, brads, punched shapes, heat embossed geotags and some paper labels.

I punched all of the photos with a circle punch and adhered them down with foam squares to give them more dimension. And then added bits of patterned paper to the top and bottom of the page to finish it off.

I really like how this page turned out. I also like that it's nearly all stash stuff that's really old! The only new things I used were the airplane punch and the tiny Heidi Swapp stamps. All of the patterned paper was from my scrap drawer and I finally used those blueprints stamps! Plus I get to mark something off the old to do list. Sounds like a win-win-win to me =)

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,

Geotag Canvas

Hey yall! Back this afternoon sharing my latest piece of altered art. It's a mixed media canvas that I've wanted to do for sooooo long now. And thanks to May's mini class in Camp Scrap, I was able to get it done. 

I've had this idea for at least a year now. And I'm so happy that I finally got around to doing it. Plus! I used this crap old canvas I had started to paint on in 2009!!! It's just been dragged from one apartment to the next in its ugly half painted state. Upcycling at it's best =)

I dug into my postcard collection for this piece. I've collected them from all over the world and wanted to get them up in my apartment in some way. And so, this geotag canvas was born.

I went to Kinko's and photocopied and lightened all of my postcards. I also reduced the size to 80%. When I got home, I decopauged them to the canvas using Perfect Paper Adhesive. It was my first stab at this kind of thing, so some of the pages bubbled, some of the corners didn't stick. But I was ok with that. I wanted it to look handmade.

Using wrapping paper (because who gets actual newspapers anymore?!) I made a template of the geotag and traced it over the postcards. After that, it took a somewhat steady hand to outline it in black and then paint the rest of the canvas. It's far from perfect but I absolutely love how it turned out!

Here are a few close ups:

I hung it on the wall that's directly in front of my bedroom door. You can see it as you walk from the living room to the kitchen. I've loved catching glimpses of it as I walk around the apartment.

And, as you can see. I really like black canvases with white designs! Over my bed is an older piece I did of the London skyline. I also have a huge canvas over my living room couch. 

cheers & besos,

NYC in November

I scrapped! I scrapped! I spent my entire Saturday holed up in my room, gloriously cutting paper and pasting photos. This was the first chance I've had to just play. Not make a present or card. Just having fun working on my own stuff. 

I'm watching the Golden Globes so this is gonna be brief but I wanted to share a few pages of my November in NYC. Well really it was a weekend ;) but a long one! 

I also made a play at some of the 2Ps CHA challenges. This was for the 5 photo challenge and I was directly inspired by Glitter Girl's post this week. I used my Studio Calico Block Party kit, my last kit for the year (which I purchased in 2012 mind you!). 

This page also works for a few of the Studio Calico Challenges, like Use Multiples of the Same Embellishment, More than 3 Patterned Papers, and create a 2 Page Layout. 

This next page is for 2Peas Challenge No. 6. I used 6 wood veneer banner pieces to finish off the page. It's also good for the Use Multiples of the Same Embellishment, More than 3 Patterned Papers, and Dress Up your Veneer Studio Calico challenges.

It's been awhile since I've made a page totally from my stash. I went to my paper bin, picked what I thought worked best, grabbed a set of Thickers and some embellishments and just played! Look for more pages like this, I'm scrapping my stash!

And that's all folks. Thanks for dropping by. I'll update later this week with more CHA challenge projects.

Back to Golden Globes watching I go.  Yay Lena!! Amy & Tina F, my girl crushes on you have just got bigger.

cheers & besos,

Travel Tips: Trips with Boys

'ello loves! Today I'm blogging my monthly travel tip/scrapbook page. 

Lately, I've been trying to think of common themes for my photos. And somewhere along the way, I started thinking about all of the trips I've taken with just the boys. All of China, 5 days in Prague & Budapest, a weekend in Norway, plus our J3 day trips. My experiences traveling are always colored by the people I'm with, and believe me these boys have some color.

But guys are super different to travel with than girls. I wrote in my journaling:

"I’ve been a lot of places with a lot of people & I have to say, my trips with the boys have been some of my favorites. In general, dudes are more “go with the flow” & low key, a LOT less drama. But they have their moments. A few things to remember about traveling with boys: they will prefer outdoorsy adventures, they sometimes walk around with their shirts off, hanging out in a pub is a perfectly acceptable way to spend a day in a foreign city & sometimes they get into random wrestling matches. It’s all in good fun & I recognize how lucky I am to have such a great group of guy friends. What can I say? I’m a bro at heart."

It also has to be said that I've never felt safer when I travel than when I'm with the guys. There was a hairy moment in Budapest, one of the few moments I've experienced of that kind, that had me so thankful to be with a group of boys.

I'll also never forget that one hard sleeper train we took in China. Where the only minutes of sleep I got were on James' shoulder.

I will forever cherish the crazy video Jon and Kevin made me, as they left the girls they were with to bring back the camera I thought I'd lost. I don't think they were very happy with me. But they left them all the same just to make sure I wasn't upset about my not-really-at-all-lost camera. Which they then ironically used to verbally berate me....

I guess this is less travel tips and more a gush fest on my part, for these wonderful boys that I love.

Oh, and last thing about traveling with boys. They're always hungry!!

cheers & besos,