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,

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,

Color Theory

I'm loving the new Studio Calico Color Theory paper pack. They make for the perfect neutral background with just a teeny bit of visual interest. I've already made 3 pages with them, including the Work Trip one I shared last week.

Here are two more:

First up is an Ireland page. I had a few votes and Ireland got more than one, so Ireland photos I will do! I used a wheat colored background and lots of green and yellow to help draw out the highlights from this photo. This was a total stash buster too! I went for a mix of really old stuff and some brand new. Love it when that happens!

This second page is one of the few food based pages I have in my scrapbook. I'm soooo not a foodie, but I will literally fly thousands of miles for this plate of goodness. Yuuum...chicken katsu curry. I drool.

This whole layering paper thing, it's sooo not my strength! I love the way this looks on other people's pages but for some odd reason, it's so hard for me to do. I literally took an hour to come up with just that. And then, only in the last few minutes did I figure out how I could incorporate that 3x4 striped card.

I've also gotta mention that both of these are based off of Simple Scrapper sketches. Lately, they're my number one starting point! What's got your inspired to scrapbook lately?

cheers & besos,

Kit Flow: Seeking Inspiration

My May SC kit arrived! All shiny and new in it's lovely kraft pizza box. So I thought I'd share one of my processes for making layouts with these lovely things.

As you can imagine each kit has it's own theme & color scheme. 35mm was all blue, green, cream and brown. There's a bit of red and yellow in there, but just small pieces. There were some hexagons & one of the new flip books Heidi Swapp released this season. It's a nice kit with good bones, but not one of my absolute favorites. Which is what makes using it a fun challenge!

When my kits arrive I label them and put them in these jumbo hefty bags. It's the best way I've found to keep everything together and to be able to quickly see which kit is which.

It shouldn't be a secret by now that color is the driving force behind my pages. I'm an absolute color fiend. I start by searching for photos from my ever increasing catalogue with colors that will work with the kit. 

For this one I reached far back into my coffers and dug out some travel photos from 2008. There were a few places that I thought would work well with these products.

Like possibly Cambodia...

Or maybe Berlin...

I might even dig into some Ireland photos.

Notice the theme? All of the photos have a heavy blue/green influence. Funnily enough I'm even wearing the same t-shirt in a few.

Once I had some photos pulled, I went hunting around for inspiration. It's not something I usually do, but like I mentioned before this kit isn't one of my favorites, so I needed an extra push to form some ideas.

Celine's layouts were most inspiring for me. So I made sketches of a few and picked photos that I thought would work. Here are the layouts I drew some inspiration from: India 2012-My Top 5, First time in India, and Love Life & Life will Love you Back.

I ordered some enlarged prints via Persnickety Prints and am waiting for them to arrive. In the meantime, I made a few pages with regular and tiny prints that I'll be sharing throughout the week.

I also finished up all of my Sketchbook 4 layouts. Here I am mapping out where the photos will go. Those are my silly crude images of each the photos. Doing this helps me figure out the sizes I need to print them at and how I need to cut them down. My Epson PictureMate makes printing these tiny guys a breeze (link is to the newest model).

That's one way I approach using all of these kits I have piled around. Be sure to keep checking back to see how the pages turned out!

Also, this wasn't my usual blog post but I hope it's something you find useful. Please let me know if you're interested in reading more about this type of thing. I'm always interested in sharing "best practice". And if you buy kits, I'd also love to know how you approach using yours!

cheers & besos,

Besos for Blarney

Happy Friday Lads! I'm soo happy that the weekend is here and that I can get in some uninterrupted scrap time. But despite my busy work schedule, I have been scrappily productive this week. Sharing my latest Europe pages today :)

I was going through and organizing my albums the other day, rearranging layouts, switching out albums; the whole nine yards. And it was during this process that I realized how few layouts I have from Europe! That was an entire year of my life and I only had a handful of layouts to show for. Right then and there, tackeling that massive pile of photos was added on to my summer goals.

The main reason that I've done so little pages is that there truly are over 10,000 photos of my year and a half abroad. If that doesn't seem daunting, I don't know what does! Its hard for me to even wrap my head around all the memories, mishaps, and quiet moments that are photographed. And even more mind boggling to consider where to begin documenting a project of that scale. So I've decided that I'm just going to approach it with a whittle down attitude. Even 1 layout is better than nothing, and even if it doesn't convey the entire story that I'd like to share. I'll get to them all eventually, I'm bound and determined to. I've even written it down!

The sad fact of the matter is, I've already begun to forget. I've been very fortunate to have experienced so much in my short life time. So much so, I have a confession to make: I'd already forgotten that I'd kissed the famous Blarney Stone! And I feel very bad about that! In only the few days of having my layout up at 2Ps, someone has already commented on how it's her dream to be able to kiss the Blarney Stone. It makes me seem unworthy in a way, to have had the opportunity to do something so fun, only to forget it so quickly.

I promise, I'm going to try to do better. And that's yet another reason that scrapbooking is so great. It helps me remember all of these moments from my life, that I know I would honestly have forgotten otherwise. I'll never ever forget kissing the Blarney Stone EVER again!

So here's the little bugger that's been causing me so much grief!

Kissing the Blarney Stone

I mixed a bit of Studio Calico in with some Making Memories embellishments. LOVE that green flower paper from SC's Anthology line. I even bought a second piece bc the backside of it is equally as good! This 2 page layout however, was completed with only 1 sheet of that patterned paper. The gorgeous diagonal strip is on the B side and I cut it up to make it feature like tape. A while ago, I bought the ENTIRE Passport line from Making Memories and had not used a single bit until this layout. I've got to pull that stuff out more, the colors are too fabulous!

Oh and I have to point out the new cool product I played with on this layout. That gorgeous green trim atop the second page is a Fabrip, also from Studio Calico. Those things are AWESOME!! I will definitely be purchasing more :)

Also something new and exciting that I'm doing, creating multi size layouts for a single album. And pushing it a step further by not even creating a two page layout in the same size. The first page is 12x12 but the second is 8x8. I like the variety I'm getting and how I'm able to do different things with different sizes.

So yeah, lots of new and different. A few new resolutions, and a whole lot of scrapping! I'm loving the schedule I've worked out for myself and happy that even though I'm working, I can still make time to scrap! Thanks ladies, have a fabulous weekend!! Oh, and don't forget to stop back by Sunday for my first Hybrid Challenge for Ch{all}enge Masters! Cheers!

xxbesos

j.leija