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,

Gondola

Happy Friday yall! It couldn't come fast enough for me, even with the Monday holiday. 

I've been running myself ragged these last few....well this entire year actually. I feel like I haven't really had a minute to breathe! Which is why I'm sick. Of course. 

Itchy throat, wheezy cough, headache. Blah. It's been the story of my life these last few months.

So I'm taking a day to rest, nap, sleep. Oh and blog. But just this one quick post!

Sharing some Italy pages, made using Bright Idea prompts. This is a total departure from my usual style and I'm still not very sure I like it. But it's made, so I'll slip it into my scrapbook.

I used the Map challenge sketch for this double page spread and tried to keep it as simple as possible.

I journaled directly onto my photo, placed the title there and added just a bit of embellishment.

Then I used washi as a border for my print. I wanted to give it a bit more weight, so I added that fabulous red shipping tag behind to balance it out. The color is so perfect, no?! 

I also channeled my inner Matt Wilson for the "subtitle". We weren't exactly in Rome but still in Italy!

cheers & besos,

Enlarged Prints

Every once in awhile I place a Persnickety Prints order. Mainly, I have them print odd and enlarged sizes because most everything else can be done here at home with my handy little PictureMate.

This month, I printed an instagram shot at 8x8 and a few of my Italy shots at 5x10. And I just wanted to quickly share two pages I made using these lovely enlarged prints.

For Memorial Day this year, me and a group of friends headed down to the beach house for a weekend of relaxation and togetherness. I made sure to get a group shot of all their lovely faces (and of course Joey being silly) and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the instagram shot. Good to know that these can be blown up!!

I used the So Cal kit + Newport & Venice Beach add-ons and die cut some of my patterned paper scraps into those cute little tags (Papertrey Ink die cut).

Then, I added tape around the edges and letter stickers for the title & subtitle.

And finished it off with those awesome speech bubble stamps from the Venice Beach add on. Love that I got to highlight the majority of them. Having all these people in the photo helped with that!

Here's another layout I did with one of the 5x10 prints. It's a scraplift of this fabulous layout by naomiatkins, that I unearthed from the Studio Calico gallery.

Like Naomi, I played with sunbursts and doilies. But I also added some buttons & butterflies and that cute little pennant flag.

There was a bright patch of blue sky in the upper left hand corner that I covered up with a die cut tag and some letter stickers. The brilliant blue was clashing with the soft colors of the layout!

I even scraplifted Naomi's lovely title. So simple and sweet.

It's always fun working with enlarged prints. But the photo has to be really special for me to want to focus an entire page on just the one. Both of these qualify, the first because it showcases everyone who came out on Memorial Day. The second, because it's a great proof of visit shot with lost of context. Plus I look kind of cute :)

Do you scraplift enlarged photos? Would love to have you share in the comments, a favorite page if you do!

cheers & besos,

Ponte Vecchio

This page has to be my favorite of the bunch. Well my favorite of this latest batch. It's funny that both of my favorite Italy pages are of me and my Mama. 

(BTW, this layout is the other one and also one of the most favorite pages I've ever done.)

She's just so cute & lil! (If anyone gets that Parks & Rec reference high five!) I loved the colors in these photos and wanted to highlight all of the glorious tones and shades as well as make that blue pop!

cheers & besos,

Nose

Just a quick share today. I had fun with some oversize pennants, a couple of butterflies and a smattering of buttons. 

Would you believe I'm not even half way done with my Italy pics? Even after 7 pages! There was just too much to see & do! But I'm trudging through. I'm determined to finish Italy this month!!

cheers & besos

DUOMO Florence

I'm back with another double page layout to share! This time it's 8 1/2 x 11 size. And although I did base this off of a Double Take prompt, it's so far from the original, I'm not sure that it counts! :)

I used the Venice Beach add-on from this month's So Cal kit. I don't usually ignore the colors in my photos so much (that blue!) but I think it worked out okay in the end.

Journaling Reads:
"We spent a sunny day in Italy, walking the streets of Florence. The Duomo was by far the most impressive sight in the city. It's gorgeous red bricked dome against the blue Italian sky was everything you could imagine. We soaked up the sun and enjoyed the scenery."

I really loved working with the neutrals in this kit & adding the pops of orange and blue. And I absolutely adore those Heidi Swapp travel pennants! They're beyond gorgeous in real life. I didn't even mind the glitter!

cheers & besos,

Panda, Bella & Mario Andretti

This was a quick and easy page I put together, using a lovely sheet of Tim & Beck from the Studio Calico So Cal kit, some letter stickers & one stamped image.

The paper did all of the work!

cheers & besos,

Pisa, Italy

Choosing photos continued...

Last week I walked through how I choose photos to print. This week, I wanted to share what actually made it on the page. Apologies in advance for the wonky colors!!

I took 10 photos in Pisa and only printed 6. Of those 6 only 5 made it onto the page. The photo with my favorite composition got left off, mainly because it was horizontally oriented. If I do a re-cap or summary page, I'll more than likely include it there. So I'm not bummed that it didn't make it onto the page. And later, if it really bothers me, I'll just go back and make another Pisa page :) Simple as that.

Used my new Studio Calico So Cal kit for these photos, the main kit only. (I really wished they'd photograph the B side of the papers as well, I had no idea we'd get some green!) The colors work so well with the images.  I'm happy with my choice to scrapbook Italy this month :) It's only been 4 years!! My Mama was like "Still?" after I told her I was scrapbooking Italy. Seriously woman, you have no idea...

This double page layout was inspired by the Double Take class Nic Howard & May Flaum just finished teaching at Big Picture Classes. I'll do a review of the class a bit later, once I've gone through the prompts a bit more.

Journaling Reads:

"We started our Italian adventure by flying into Pisa. It was the best introduction to Italy. As soon as we got off the plane there was no mistaking we were somewhere new. Italy transports you. Driving into the city, we got our first glimpse of the Tower over the orange & yellow buildings.

The Tower was huge and yup, just to confirm, it's definitely leaning. We decided not to brave the stairs but of course paused to take pictures. Thanks Mom & Pop, for bringing me on your anniversary trip! I had fun playing tour guide."

Get ready for more Italy pics! The fun has just started :)

cheers & besos,

Choosing Photos

The lovely Pegg left me a comment a few weeks back asking,

pegg has left a new comment on your post "Southern Gate":

Wondering if you just scrap highlights from your travels? How do you deal with all your other photos from your trip? I struggle with this! 

I wanted to share with yall a bit about how I go about choosing photos, especially photos from my travels.

For me, it just depends on the trip. Sometimes I have a lot of memories that I want to scrap and thus make more pages (China) or I might even make a mini book (Bali). Other times, just a photo or two from a trip will do (Belgium).

But I typically pick images that highlight the story the best, likely one or two focal photos and then incorporate some detail shots in after. There's no way I could scrap all of the photos from any given trip, and half of them are bad anyhow! :) 

And I never really sit down and say, "Right I'll work on all of these Cambodia photos until I'm done." I scrap what moves me. I've done quite a few pages for Istanbul, but still want to do more. There were so many things I wanted to capture from that trip.

So let me show you how I go about picking photos. I'll use my Italy pics as an example. My parents and I were there for 5 days in 2008 and over that time I took some 297 pictures. So a lot but not abundantly over the top. Of those 297 images, I pulled about 80 to scrapbook. In Pisa, for example I snapped 10 photos. Of those, I pulled 6 to actually scrap. But then we'll see how many actually make it into my scrapbook.

Here are my thoughts behind picking photos I printed.

Photo 01: Didn't make the cut. It's a random photo of the city that doesn't really show much. It could have been taken anywhere really.

Photo 02: Printed. This was my first glimpse of the Tower. I liked the context it showed and the relation of the Tower to the rest of the city.

Photo 03: Printed. The Tower in all it's glory. I had to include it!

Photo 04: Printed. My parents just looked too cute. Love that I captured proof of their visit!

Photo 05: Printed. Another proof of visit photo :) Me and my Papa. He's sitting or leaning on something because believe me, he's much taller than I am!

Photo 06: Didn't make the cut. I didn't print this one because 1) I don't like how I look really in it 2) I already have 2 "tourist" photos. 3 would have been too many.

Photo 07: Didn't make the cut. This is just one corner of the larger building that I know nothing about. It doesn't hold any significance for me so I left it out.

Photo 08: Didn't make the cut. Same as above. Couldn't tell you what this was & really it's nowhere near as interesting as the Leaning Tower!

Photo 09: Printed. I liked the different angle and being able to include the statue in the foreground.

Photo 10: Printed. I liked the composition of this photo & differing perspective it offers. It gives you much more context.

And that's it! Only 6 of the 10. I'll more than likely try to incorporate these into a double page layout and finally use some of those Double Take prompts! The photos will be printed in varying sizes depending on the ones I want to highlight the most.

I pulled these to scrap with my So Cal Studio Calico kit, which should be here next week! So excited to play with it and the 2 (count 'em) add-ons I ordered to go with! I think the kit will do wonders for my Italy pics, especially these overcast images. Can't wait to play and then to show and tell!

I'll ask the question of you all, because I know we all do things differently. How do you handle vacation/travel photos? Do you scrap them all? How do you pick and choose? I would love to hear!

Thanks Pegg for the great question. As always, I'm happy to answer anything yall throw my way. As well as I can of course :)

cheers & besos,

Summer Lovin'

This summer Ch{all}enge Masters is hosting a Summer Lovin' contest for a fun prize! A $25 gift certificate to the online store of your choice. Totally fabulous! Hate to say that the sign up for this event is closed but do be sure to check out all of the Weekly Challenges. Someone who participates in one of the challenges will win this month's equally awesome prize, a $30 gift certificate to your favorite online store! And the opportunity to be the July Monthly Master! I think that's pretty good incentive to participate in a challenge or two :) Check back tomorrow to see how I approached some of the challenges.

Best Day

This weeks challenge was to be brave and to cut up a photo in rectangles or squares. I remembered this sketch I'd found at Page Maps and thought it'd be perfect for a layout that needed a photo cut into squares! Figured this photo of Mama and I in Italy would cut up nicely, without chopping into our faces! I was very inspired by the colors of the photo, the yellow in my sweater, the blue in mama's shirt and that so bright green in the plant behind us.

As part of the prompt for this week, you'd get a bonus 40 points for using a mask on your layout. I have these favorite masks that I use over and over again, but the thing is, they aren't actually masks. Prima makes these great felt stems, that are beautiful in their own right, but just screamed mask to me the moment I saw them. I arranged them on my background paper and hit them with green, yellow and blue Maya Mist and outlined a few of the edges to give them dimension.

The title of this layout is actually from a song lyric of Taylor Swift's. I just got her album a few weeks ago and LOVE it! I think I know all the words now, I've listened to it so much. But this one in particular, for some reason, has been on repeat in my head. I'd already decided to use that photo of me and Mama when I realized that this song would be a great way to journal about us, this day and our propensity for giggling.

Journaling reads: "We were in Rome, touring the Papal Residence, soaking up the gorgeous Italian sun, and were just taking a break from all the walking we'd been doing. I have no idea why we were laughing. Who knows with the two of us! We're always giggling about something or other, which is why this is my favorite photo of the two of us. What a wonderful day to remember and what equally wonderful memories of so many seemingly small moments with my Mama."

"I love you for giving me your [Asian] eyes. For staying back and watching me shine. I didn't know if you knew. So I'm taking this chance to say...that I had the best day, with you, today."

Lifeline

Last week's prompt was to scrap about a tool you can't live without. I'm not the greatest with just scrapping random things, so I wanted to use something that was relatable to other areas of my life as well. My Mac laptop is definitely something I use for my scrapping, but was also a big part of my life while I was aboard. I call it and this page, my lifeline.

Journaling reads: "My roomate took this photo of me on my Mac, back in our very first flat in London. I'll say I was doing homework but Sarah and I both know that rarely happened in our room and only ever at the last minute. While I was abroad, that computer became a lifeline to home and the outside world. I emailed, chatted, Skyped, searched, planned, browsed, Facebooked and occasionally homeworked from that glorious machine. My baby? A (now vintage) 13 inch Macbook that I purchased myself when I was a senior undergrad. My first BIG purchase. It just wouldn't be right to create a scrapbook about life in London and not include something about my Mac!

Fun note: 3 of my 5 flatmates also owned a white 13 in. Macbook. They were always laying around the flat and you'd have to open all of them to find your own!

What can I say? I'm sentimental! But what scrapbooker isn't?! It's by far and away my most used tool for all things, scrappy and otherwise.

That Mac accent is about the most cutting edge as it gets in my scrapbooking. Can you guess how I did it? I painted it! Well, first I printed out the Mac logo and cut it out of a scrap sheet of paper and used it as a template. Then, I painted horizontal stripes in the colors of the rainbow. After, I inked the entire thing with Versamark and embossed over it with clear embossing powder. It gives it this great sheen. My one of a kind accent, that I'm so very proud of!

Disclaimer: please don't sue me Apple! I swear I haven't received any monetary compensation for this layout. But I am always looking for sponsors ;)

xxbesos

j.leija