Castle Gazing

ETA: I picked the winner! Or rather random.org chose commentor No. 4. That's you Marina! Forwarding along the code now. Cheers!

I have 3 things to share today: a confession, a layout, a small giveaway.

Confession: I totally caved on my Product Free Summer challenge. I couldn't pass up the 20% off at Two Peas a few weeks back! I just couldn't. But I'm back on a spending freeze. Especially after the $1000 I just had to spend fixing my car (eeeek!!)

Layout: This page features a ton of that new product I ordered, lots from Basic Grey's new(er) Mint Julep line. I only got three things for this line: the 6x6 paper pad, the badges and the title sticker sheet. I feel like they'll get you pretty far. I like to get at least a few things from each line so that they'll coordinate with each other.

I picked this line for these photos because of all the blue in the Edinburgh photo. I loved the blue in that floral print. I also definitely wanted to use it for that "So very charming" sticker.

I made this as part of the Two Peas CHA [Four Nature Elements] Challenge. There's flowers, butterflies, birds and stars on this page.

It's also for the [Five Senses] Challenge. This page is all about the castle gazing I've been doing over the years. I hadn't realized it until this year, but every place I've visited in Europe the last few years, has included visits to local castles and palaces.

Week 1 of Hello Story was the starting point for this layout. It's a loose timeline and a series. I used those great Chic Tags for each, to include the date, the city and country and the castle.

I also added small white letter stickers to each photo, to include the place and date.

The rest is just fun details. Love those clear mint Heidi Swapp letters. Like love! The color and the texture are fabulous. Also love that they coordinated with the Mint Julep line so well.

And I had to throw in some gold for good measure. Everything these days, needs a dusting of gold. Glad I picked up the gold star paper clips as well.

So I made my confession and shared the layout. Now on to the giveaway.

Giveaway: This apparently is the summer of the classes. First Camp Scrap, then Hello Story and I also signed up for Toolbox at Studio Calico. They were running a promo and I get to give a friend the class for free. That's where all my bloggy friends come in. I thought I'd share the class with one of yall.

Just leave me a comment below, to share which of the 4 parts you're most interested in learning more about: digital elements, mixed media, stitching or mist. [ETA: Please leave an e-mail address if you don't have one linked in your profile!!]

For me, I'm sooo looking forward to Shana's digital tutorial. Her work has been so inspiring to me lately!

I'm only leaving this open until Tuesday, 30 July at 11:59pm EST. I'll announce and e-mail the winner as soon as I can on Wednesday, 31 July. Class starts Thursday, 1 August which is why this is such a short one. I want you to be able to be part of the whole class.

Off to Los Angeles tomorrow for work. It's my first visit and I'm so excited! I'll be updating as and when I can. Catch up with yall later!

cheers & besos,

LBD: May Layouts 12x12

I've got some May Little Black Dress kit pages for yall! This month's kit is so fab I can't even talk about it. Let's just say if you enjoy Maggie Holmes' products, you'll love the Miss Maggie kit!

Here are the 12x12 layouts I made with it!

I did a quick recap of my 2012 travels. Was so blessed to visit so many great places, add a few more countries to my list AND to see my bestie Sarah!

The colors in the kit really evoked the idea of sunset and sun rays. Basically, the kit felt "sunny" to me! So both of these pages are sun inspired. It was most definitely because of that lovely ombre ribbon. Get me some more of that stuff stat!!

This last page is a memorial layout of my sunshine, Miss Maddie. It's a tribute page to her, as we lost our little angel two years ago. Still miss her a ton!

I loved this kit to bits but sadly just didn't have enough time to devote to it. But believe you me, I'm not done with it yet!

cheers & besos,

LBD: Fairytale

[Sigh] I just adored the dreamy quality to this fabulous sheet of Crate Paper that came in this month's Little Black Dress Kit. It has such a lovely ethereal feel to it. I initially wasn't sure how I wanted to use it so I set it aside and let it marinate in my brain. Then the one day I was sick (and didn't fall asleep until 7am!) I started to day (again it was night time & I couldn't fall asleep!!!) dream about what my fairytale wedding would be. I've talked about it with my besties before, but thought this paper would make the perfect background for a page about my dream/fairytale wedding.

I channeled my inner Wilna for this romantic page. I didn't actually lift any of her pages. But really just thought about her style and how she might have approached this page. Its probably an amalgamation of a lot of her pages really.

I started by playing around with my photos in RadLab. I wanted them to have a faded dream like quality to them, similar to the background paper. The colors went perfectly with the paper IMO! They're images from a trip I took to Sintra in Portugal. This tiny city was one of the most amazing places I've ever visited. They are literally storybook castles on top of mountains!!


Sintra really is a place out of a fairytale. If ever you're in that part of the world. I 150% recommend you should visit =) But anyway back to the page.

I started by adding drops of Heidi Swapp color shine in Primrose and Tropicana Teal. Then I went to town with my punches and used that fabulous pink ombre from Dear Lizzy to get a crop of different colored butterflies. I also used it for my title. Thanks again trusty Silhouette!

I fussy cut a few flowers out of a sheet of patterned paper and then also punched a few birds and hearts out of different cardstock to fill in the gaps.  There's a great birthday patterned paper in the kit with music notes and a song that says "It's your special day we want to celebrate". Too perfect for a wedding inspired page, no?! I cut it like a banner and used it to back my title.

Non-kit supplies used: Heidi Swapp Color Shine, pink cardstock, bird punch, heart punch, butterfly punches, Silhouette Cameo.

cheers & besos,

LBD: April Layouts 12x12

Finally!! I get to share my Little Black Dress Kit layouts! It feels like I've been waiting for weeks. But I think it might have something to do with that fact that I was so excited to share these projects with you all =)

Last month's kit focused on neutrals. This month's was all about rainbows! And I totally embraced the rainbow with all of my pages this month.

Introducing, my Don't Worry Be Happy kit 12x 12 pages:

I used patterned paper backgrounds for all of these pages. There's just so much in the kit! You can't help but want to play with it. Also in this month's kit was some great Freckled Fawn wood veneer and some fun paper flags.

And this month's LBD is a new LBD for me. It's my Silhouette! Lately I've been turning to my Cameo for just about every page I've been making. All of the titles here were created using my machine. I love how custom they are!

There's so much I want to say about each of these pages, that I think I'll do a separate blog post for each. They'll be up on the blog throughout today.

And I'll be sharing the rest of my projects throughout the week.

[Sigh] I loved getting crafty with this kit. So far, it's been my favorite! Check out how the other design team members worked their magic with this kit:

Valerie O'Neal
Stephanie Bryan
Alyssa McGrew
Brittany McLead

cheers & besos,

Sketchbook 4| No. 10

I interrupt my orderly and sequential posting to bring you this Sketchbook layout. That would be Sketch No.10. Ack, my OCD is going crazy at posting these out of order! But I wanted to get it up in time to upload it to the 2Peas gallery to get another Glitter Girl badge. I'm devious that way... and a collector of shiny things, be they virtual or otherwise.

But anyways, back to my post. Pretend this is in order!

Here's my take on Sketchbook 4's No. 10 sketch. Love that I got to feature all of those lovely instagrams. 

It's a travel page, my favorite of course! But it's not overtly travel which I like. It's also fairly simple. I used Chap paper  & a badge (LOVE), some Studio Calico travel stamps, a wood veneer airplane (which btw, I wish the whole abroad pack had been planes and nothing more!) and some letter stickers.

[PHOTO]

I definitely picked the better route this go around, i.e. holiday first, business trip second. Priorities! And at least I wasn't sick, as the UK is want to leave me. I didn't want a repeat of Istanbul, which I still managed to make the most of, but was no where near 100%.

[PHOTO]

Oh Lisbon, I can scarcely believe I was drinking in your sunny goodness only mere months ago. I want to go back!

cheers & besos,

Rua Augusta Arch

Happy Good Friday to you all. I hope that work has let you have a holiday. Mine did! And I could not be more happy about it. I needed this break.

The sun is shining, MT & I are going to opening day of the Astros season tonight and tomorrow I get to see my parents!

In an effort to share my sunny mood, I wanted to blog a sunshiney page.

When I think of Portugal, I can see blue skies & sun and red terra-cotta roofs and yellow buildings. So this photo, of the Rua Augusta Arch, is nearly the most perfect representation of all of those things. Since it was so grand, I wanted it to be an enlarged photo on this page so it's printed at 6x12 inches.

I played around with sunny page elements from Amy Tangerine's first line. I also layered some great architectural and colorful patterned paper strips, along with washi tape.

I misted using a mask to get that sunny orange design & journaled on vellum, my new favorite thing!

I can't believe I was in Portugal just 2 months ago. I already want to go back!

From on sunny weekend to another, I'm so happy to be off of work and am off to enjoy this day! I hope all of you do as well :)

cheers & besos,

Portugal Pages

Oh my goodness, I'm exhausted.

Like spent!

Mentally checked out for the night.

I've been crafting up a storm today.

Throwing this together, then that; painting, journaling, cutting, stamping, embossing.

But I had so much fun! I love it when my mojo is good and flowing. I cranked out 5 pages in an afternoon! That's 9 this week!

And I'm still not done. But I just had to jump on to share some of my latest pages.

I put in my Portugal photo order via Persnickety Prints on Wednesday. To my complete surprise and utter delight, the order arrived today! Holy wow that was fast!

I also tore into the latest Studio Calico kit, Daydream Believer. I'm loving the colors in this one, and while they didn't work for all of the blue photos I came back with (seriously, the sky there is much bluer than here at home :) they did work for some.

See I water colored! My inspiration was this gem made by Lola. I saw it in the gallery the other day and knew I had to try my hand at water coloring. But the things is, I saw this layout last week and hadn't looked back at it since. So the details were hazy. It was fun to look back just now to see how similar & not similar they are :)

I've been wanting to incorporate enlarged photos into my scrapbooking for awhile, and these photos from Portugal were the perfect opportunity.

This my friends, is a page of a real life enchanted castle...it's even on top of a hill! Just like in the fairy tales. If you are planning to visit Lisbon ever, you HAVE to go to Sintra. Like have to, you have no other option. It's only a 40 minute train ride away and I even did it in 3/4 of a day and still managed to get back in time for my flight back to London.

So you're going right?! Good.

I think the photo pretty much speaks for itself, but those gorgeous butterflies from the Kit were the perfect addition.

I took a stab at heat embossing the Thickers but the little buggers kept being blown away by the heat gun and every time I tried to pick them up I'd lose some embossing powder. Good thing I was going for a more rustic look, I think it goes well with the castle facade.

And lastly, a page about the Cable Cars. Did you know Lisbon is full of hills? Just look at that incline. My gluts got the best work out by only walking around the city. Thankfully the cable cars are there to get you up and down some of them. The best part? They're yellow!!

I love the Sassafras frame paper. They were the perfect funky little accents to line along the bottom of this photo.

And ok, I ended up using some non-kit product but it's still Studio Calico and the perfect addition to this urban page. I love the map design on the triangle scraps!

I can't remember the last time I've felt this creative. But I'm savoring every minute of it.

cheers & besos,

Housekeeping

I have a winner for you all today!

This winner gets their choice of a Kelly Purkey Sketchbook/Sketchpad pdf class as well as a small prize pack of goodies I brought back from London & Lisbon.

There's some great graphic postcards, little notebooks, a few clothespins (or pegs as the Brits call them) and a cute stamp that I picked up here at home.

Without further adieu, the winner of the RAK is....

Congrats Cheryl!! E-mailing you now =)

A couple of other things I wanted to share with yall:

Scrapbook Challenges has a Paper to Digi challenge going on this month. I discovered it when I got back from my trip the other day. The ladies are using my layouts as inspiration for their digital designs. I was so flattered to have been picked as inspiration and so excited to see their pages! Be sure to check it out and to play along if you're a digital scrapper :)

Also, stumbled across the freebies section at Persnickety Prints. They have some great digital templates, tons of free papers and even some elements. I'd check them out if you were looking for a template to put multiple instagram shots on a single canvas.

Through the 22nd, they have a sale on their 8x8 photos. Each is $.79 instead of their usual $.99 (check out their blog for more details). If you were to put 9 instagram shots on 1 8x8 page, the photos would work out to $.08 a print! You'd have to do a bit of cutting, but I'm all for that kind of deal. They also have 2 12x12 templates.

Just wanted to share my sweet find!

cheers & besos,