She

Hello Story has been one of my most favorite classes! I'm loving these story structures, and for the most part, I'm keeping up with the class. Here's a page made with last week's prompt. It's about the places I've been. 

It took awhile to build that list on the left hand side there, and it isn't even complete. I had to delete a few of the repeated places to make sure I had room for all of the cities. But I'm so glad I have at least a good start of a list all in one place!

I typed this up in PSE and printed it onto vellum before adding it to my page. I like that you can still see the cloud paper underneath it.

I was originally going to make an 8 1/2 x 11 page and so I printed the photo that wide. But then I grabbed this gorgeous paper and knew I wanted to show case as much of it as I could. So it stayed 12x12.

At the very beginning, I had this vision of a line of embellishments along one side. I dug into my stash of October Afternoon Travel Girl and Basic Grey Carte Postale embellishments to place along the line of the Freckled Fawn London Underground tape (eek, I love it a ton! but it looks like they don't have it anymore which is a total bummer)

I added my title directly to the photo using Photoshop Elements (font: Windsor Hand). It's this title that's part of the Hello Story prompt which is about 6 word stories.

I loved this totally random photo that I snapped while we were driving to Austin (note: I'm in the passenger side so definitely NOT driving!). I love the movement in the photo. I love the selfie that's not me smiling at my phone. I love the landscape. I love the reflections (I'm big on reflections!) It's a special photo that so perfectly conveys this title of adventure seeking.

This is part of a series of "She" layouts I've made. Here are two other layouts [She] [She]. They are some of my favorites. I think its the words. And really, most of them are about travel. It's my absolute favorite thing to do!

cheers & besos,

Big Heart

I love my lil mama. She's so cute and giggly! We had so much fun in Chicago and I'm happy I got to make this page. This is the first full layout I made from our trip photos. 

I had so much fun playing with my newest goodies. This is for the 2Peas CHA [Two People] [Six Layers] and [Seven New Products] Challenges. I combined a bunch of fun colors and some of those great Amy Tangerine rub ons. Love the colors in that great floral print by Pebbles.

I totally channeled my inner Lilith Eeckels for this one. It's varied and colorful. I started with the heart and just played.

cheers & besos,

TBT: Jane Austen

I'm going way back for this Throw Back Thursday post. Like 1880's way back. Think Jane Austen old. Are you with me? 

For this week's TBT, I decided to use older products from my stash. There's nothing terribly old, but still things that were released at least last year and even earlier. Stuff that was just sitting around and not getting used! That's part of the reason I decided to start this series. I have so much great stuff that just isn't getting used!

I didn't quite know where to start, since like I mentioned before, I have so much product. So I grabbed a stack of patterned paper to see what I liked and hadn't yet used. It was the American Crafts Classics line that first caught my eye. I adore that line. The designs are all based on literature. 

Everything else kind of spiraled from there. I ended up digging out every Jane Austen themed photo I had and all the products I've been collecting with her in mind. I even tapped into my collection of Austen DVDs and happily spent my weekend crafting away, while Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice played in the background.

The first page I made was a double page layout, inspired by one of the 4 Challenges. I used my Double Take Class prompts for the design. It's a layout featuring the kitchen at Chawton House aka Jane Austen's home and where her museum is situated.

From the Classic collection, I pulled the sheet of bonnets & top hats, along with the great yellow rose paper. I also grabbed the infamous Dear Lizzy rosette ribbon, some Jenni Bowlin vintage buttons and various  Thickers in my color scheme. I also have 2 Jane Austen paperbacks that I picked up from a second hand store for cheap. I have no qualms about ripping pages out of them and that's how I made the mat for the photos.

This next page is one of my favorites. It's of the exterior of Chawton House and there's a lot of old Prima & Making Memories product on it. I loved the brown, green, orange colors in the photo and so I reinforced them in the products I chose.

Also, I have to talk about the photo backer. Studio Calico sent my Washi Workshop tapes in a cute muslin bag. I saved the bag knowing I'd want to use it some way. I think this was the perfect project for it! It makes me think of the muslin shifts ladies of that time use to wear. I cut it down and ripped it up in order to get those lovely ragged edges.

I went hunting through my old Winchester photos, circa 2008 for these photos of Jane Austen's grave. She was buried in Winchester Cathedral, which Josh, Jon and I visited on one of our J3 trips.

The prompts from the Pretty Paper Party were where I took my inspiration from. I used an old Jenni Bowlin line that I'm sure, totally sure, was inspired by a love of all things Austen.

Also, it was fun to do a double page 8 1/2 x 11 spread.

Then I made a page about seeing her house in Winchester, the last one she lived in before she died. It has a plaque and everything!

I dug out some October Afternoon Farmhouse for this page and stuck with a yellow, blue and cream color combo. It helped that the house was painted yellow! I also really love that chair paper. So happy I got to use it on 2 different pages.

My final page of the weekend was of the walk to get to Jane's home at Chawton House. I walked from the train station to the house, about 2 miles each way, and am so happy I did. I would have missed so many little details if I hadn't otherwise.

And what better collection to use for a walk through the English Countryside, than the Studio Calico Countryside collection. I still have so much of it. That pink flower was the first time I even dug into the pack! At least one now lives in my scrapbook. Thanks TBT for making me think about my older products!

I hoped you enjoyed seeing my fruits of labor, after a weekend with Jane. 

Also, wanted to share links to the two other Austen themed pages I've previously made: Started with a Chair and The Darcy Fanclub.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for all things Austen! Are you??

cheers & besos,

Started with a Chair

Why hello sweet blogging friends!

Come in. Take a seat. Stay awhile :)

Funny I should mention "taking a seat" as today I'm sharing one very special chair.

Last March I had a Sunday to kill while I was in London. On a whim I booked a train ticket to Alton, to visit Chawton Cottage one of Jane Austen's homes. It's now a finally preserved museum, who's primary exhibits are the rooms themselves.

Tucked into one corner of what I would call the dining room is Jane's desk and chair. It's reputed that this is where she wrote little known titles such as Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Emma.

You know, those sweet little tales :)

With role models such as Lizzy Bennett and Emma Woodhouse, I didn't let some silly little "No photographs please" sign stop me from capturing Mecca for the Jane Austenite.

I quickly uncapped my camera, aimed and prayed the photo would turn out nice. I only had the one shot!

With some careful cropping and editing, I think I managed to do this quiet little corner of the world some justice.

It's been nearly a year since I've visited Alton and Chawton Cottage and thus the same amount of time to scrapbook this photo. I think I've been waiting all of this time for the right design to come along, something worthy of it's significance.

And finally it did.

In the form of a Jill Sprott layout no less.

Now, dear blogger, you see me write a lot about my adoration for Kelly Purkey's work, but not many of you may know that Jill Sprott is just and dear and very near to my heart.

Her work never ceases to inspire and amaze me. And while I don't often straight scraplift from her work, I none the less admire and adore just about every page she's ever created.

This Fly layout was no exception. Suddenly, I had my inspiration!

I used a plethora of October Afternoon Farmhouse goodies, some Studio Calico and Amy Tangerine Stamps, Maya Road doilies, a gorgeous sheet of Sassafras (may they rest in peace) patterned paper. But, most precious of all, my "Jane Austen This Book Belongs to..." stamp that I picked up from the Cottage gift shop.

{Sigh} Oh Jane. How I simply adore thee.

cheers & besos,

P.S. My next order from Papertrey Ink will absolutely include the Simply Jane stamp, die cut and patterned paper set. Check them out if you'd like to make Jane Austen inspired layouts too!

Project 12: Lists & Recap

Complete.

In the can.

All done!

That would be my Project 12 for 2011.

I made this wrap up page, to document some of my lists for the year.

[[And because my OCD would not let me have only 1 divided page protector layout in the book (February/March), I needed to have more for variety!]]

I listed my travels across the world this year, only 3 countries but plenty of cities (13).

Also, the far away friends (12) I managed to spend time with.

Photos of both my and Matt's families and a timeline of Urijah shots.

Then finally, the list of books I read this year (31 total). I'm happy I finally got use all of those great Studio Calico stamps!

I'm happy to have a complete scrapbook for 2011. As well as some smaller bits and pieces of life captured.

If anyone is considering doing Project 365, Project 52 or Project 12, I completely 100% would recommend you do it. Yes, it will get tedious. But the payoff is so worth any and all trouble.

And just like that (but perhaps not so nonchalantly) it's done!

cheers & besos,

So Lucky Inspiration

Aloha! I'm just back from Hawaii and already missing the sun and the wind, the water and the calm quiet life we had up on the North Shore.

It was utterly sublime.

I'll miss the crazies I was staying with, most of all.

But I'm back to the sharp reality that is everyday life.

And back to blogging =)

Last week, (geez was it really only last week?!) I found this gorgeous layout in the Studio Calico gallery. It was created by the lovely Glenys whom I left a comment something to the effect of "I'm going to scrap lift this ASAP!"

Here's what drew me in:

• It's travel themed, 'nuff said!
• I loved the photo strips and how she successfully incorporated a lot of photos onto one page
• It had a yellow background, my favorite color =)
• The products: I have the October Afternoon map paper in my stash already, as well as some of the Amy Tangerine.
• And finally, as cheesy as it sounds, it "spoke" to me. The idea of having all of my travels from 2008 in one place appealed to me. And since this layout was so successful at doing that, I figured I'd give it a shot.

And I did! Mine isn't identical to hers, I didn't have the exact same products. But I had close enough to achieve the same effect I think.

Where Glenys had an 8x8 size of the map paper, I had a 12x12. So it became my base.

I arranged my photos into strips same as her, but decided to back them on a cardstock base. I used a yellow dotted swiss, to mimic the yellow background in my inspiration page. I also titled the strips a bit to make it more fun.

And where Glenys had a circular element on the left side of her photos, I shifted mine and added it on top of my photos.

I loved Glenys banner so I mimicked it using some My Mind's Eye label stickers. Some of these had words and phrases on them already, so I cut a strip of white cardstock to cover this up, and added all of the countries I visited in 2008. [16!!]

I also wanted to give them some dimension so I added a pop dot underneath just one side of each so they'd permanently lift off the page.

The last of the details were the camera embellishment, an Amy Tangerine die cut pop dotted off the page and a sticker.

It's so true, "some journeys cannot be put into words".

I love this page and how it captures a year of my life at a truly fantastic point in my journey. I feel so blessed to have been able to see all of those places and experience a day or more in each of those countries.

And I'm so happy that I discovered Glenys' page and that she helped me to do it! See, scraplifting is a wonderful thing! You can learn a lot of "cutting with another crafter's scissors" so to speak.

From this page, I will take away:

• Threading twine through buttons as an anchor for a banner
• Photo strips, photo strips, photo strips!

Mahalo for stopping by! And a special thank you to Glenys for letting me share her page and giving me the inspiration to make mine in the first place =)

xxbesos

To the Moon!

And thus we reach the end of the "crop series". I'm still so proud that I got so many pages done. I'll definitely be heading back to Archivers, scrap crap in tow, next time I have a project to work on or pages to get done!

And this is also the last layout to share from Urijah's One Year Old album. Yay! I'll be back in a few days to post the whole kit and caboodle. But I wanted to chat about this layout first.

It's a picture of Urijah getting rocked to sleep by his papa. It's a terrible photo. It's blurry and grainy and Urijah's eyes are red.

But I didn't care.

It told a story,

and that's all that matters!

I loved this October Afternoon line and was originally not interested in buying it, but as I was walking around the store I saw the metal button that said "to the moon!" and new exactly what my title would be and exactly how I'd scrap this.

So I only purchased the patterned paper, the metal buttons and the letter stickers from the line.

Just look at my baby brother being a daddy. He makes me so proud!

Love them both to pieces!

xxbesos

Sketchbook Days 11 & 12

And here we have more Istanbul pages, 2 more crop layouts, and featuring Days 11 & 12 layouts from Sketchbook 3!

Ta da!

While I was in Istanbul, I got to visit Topkapi Palace, the former home of some Sultan or other and to his Harem of ladies. These are the photos I took inside the Harem.

The entry way was stunning, with its vaulted bleached ceilings and gorgeous tile work. And foor this layout, I really wanted to highlight the tiles and the light. So I tried to re-enforce this with the light cardstock background and my patterned paper choices.

I love that the October Afternoon paper I used (turquoise with the blue design) already had a bit of an aged look to it. I think it goes perfectly with the pictures.

Then I just sprinkled in some details, fun Studio Calico printed cardstock letters, an October Afternoon chipboard shape, some ribbon and a button or two.

I have to confess that I refuse to be tied down to any specific size page. These photos, which together equal 1 4x6 print just had to be done in 8 1/2 x 11 format. So that's what I did.

This one is all about the beauty and grandeaur of palace decor and this fountain was the epitome of that for me. It was just gorgeous!

And like the journaling says, as a plumber's daughter I couldn't not take a photo!

I really loved the product in this one, and that I got to use one of those great House of Three "chalkboard" stickers. The shape was too perfect for these photos!

Thus, we come to the end of Sketchbook 3's pages. More on that later this afternoon. And now I only have 1 more crop layout to share. Be sure to stop back soon for the conclusion of the "crop series"

xxbesos