Awards Dinner

A new month means a new edition of Simple Scrapper’s Spark Magazine! And with it, monthly sketches + the design teams take on those sketches and 12 story starters + the design team’s take on those story starters. It’s a really great beginning of the month boost to get all of your creativity synapses firing!

I’m part of the design team, but believe me, this doesn’t diminish my excitement about Spark’s monthly release even a bit. I love looking through and see what everyone else came up with and reading Jennifer’s always helpful opening article. This month’s is about shopping and oh man, even though I’ve been doing this thing called scrapbooking for so long, I still learned something new. 

Here’s a page I put together featuring one of this month’s sketches. It’s actually a really simple page once you break it down. But since the event itself is formal, I dressed it up by doing two things:

1) I used black cardstock as the base. I think this might be the least used color in terms of layout backgrounds. It definitely changes the feel of the page. Since this event happens at night and is considered black tie, I thought it would be the perfect backdrop for these photos. The colors just pop off of it!

2) I added metallics. I kind of went crazy with them! Using my Silhouette, I cut out the stars from the black cardstock and backed them with this great silver glitter paper. I also dropped some Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Silver. Lastly, I used some funky shiny sequins left over from a Studio Calico kit, as accents.

Stars were a big part of this design, mainly because they feature in the room decor. You can kind of see them in the ’14 photo, behind my colleague’s head. Seeing them every year always makes me excited, so I wanted to replicate that by using stars on the background, in the patterned paper and with the embellishments.

This page, along with a recent favorite layout, are featured in the April edition of Spark Magazine. Head over to Simple Scrapper for more info. I’m super pumped because tomorrow is the beginning of one of our quarterly events, Refresh. I’m ready to sit down, figure out my plan for the next 3 months, organize, recharge and get crafty.

cheers & besos,

Battle for the Chair

This was one of the first pages I made with the new Elle's Studio Little Moments collection. Which is rapidly becoming my most favorite ever! It's so perfect for so many stories, big and small. 

The page captures a truly tiny moment, one where my nephew and my puppy are doing battle for their favorite chair in our apartment. It's a tiny silly story that makes me smile :)

You can read more about how the page came together over on the Elle's Studio blog!

Journaling Reads:

I don't know what it is about this chair but beasts and children alike seem to love it. Mac claimed it when she first came to live with us. It's in taters thanks to her claws. Urijah loves to hang out on it whenever he comes to visit. There are orange cheeto stains that can attest to that. And Dixie has now taken a liking to it. I don't know if it is because it's close to the window or just comfy, but there was a puppy nephew battle for chair supremacy when Urijah was last over. Dixie was even more interested in it than she usually is! She'd sneak over to sniff Urijah, then she'd place her paws on a corner until finally making the leap up to try to edge him out. He fell out of it once or twice as they were both struggling to gain control. I'm not sure who won in the end but it was funny to watch them duke it out. February 13, 2016

cheers & besos,

Superpower

It's Elle's Studio release day! And this kit + the new Little Moments collection are available for purchase. I was very excited about both! I love love loved all of the stars in the kit + the acrylic stars for sale this month. 

The colors made me think of my new favorite t-shirt. It's a bookshelf in the shape of Texas, my home state! Those colors plus the stars made me think I should scrapbook this idea that's been on my list for FOREVER!! I scrapbooked about my other superpower years ago, so it was time for my to scrapbook about this one.

Reading is my number one escape from reality. I can become totally engrossed in whatever I'm reading. The world around me disappears and I'm there right along with the characters or the author.

I think this has a lot to do with being an introvert. We spend a lot of time in our own heads. I can easily become lost there and not realize that I haven't spoken for hours or actually verbally contributed to the conversation at hand. I think there's another scrapbook page in there somewhere....Although I've made something similar before (seen here).

One of my latest favorite things has to be these amazing alpha stamps. This is like the perfect font! Classic and simple, you kind of can't go wrong. Be prepared to see these on everything I do for awhile now.

Do you have a superpower? I'm sure you do! Best scrapbook it girl. I'd love to see (and hear if you'd like to comment) about your superpowers!!

And if you're interested in scrapbooking your superpower with the Elle's Studio kit, it's available for $9.99 until midnight PST! After that, it's $11.99 until they're gone.

Also, be sure to swing by the site to see the Little Moments collection. Everything is available so you'll get first pick of this fun line. There's a special bundle price for a limited time, so if you want everything snag one of those while you can!

cheers & besos,

Disneyland

I have a quick share for you today, it's the only Disney page I've ever made! I used a Simple Scrapper sketch as a start pointing and an older Studio Calico add-on. I'm still on the fence about how I want to approach these photos, whether a mini book or multiple pages might be the best format. But at least, for now, I have something documented!

cheers & besos,

Ms. Pacman Challenge

My friend Jill revived the Ms. Pacman challenge on her blog last month. I thought it sounded awesome so I decided to jump in. I'm really into orange this month! And I'm loving it mixed with the cooler grays, teals and blues. Here's the kit I put together.

And the contents….

(1) Eight scraps of patterned paper: My Mind's Eye x2, Basic Grey, Jillibean Soup, American Crafts, Studio Calico x3; four pieces of specialty/other paper: gold heart vellum, white chevron vellum, gold foil, kraft corrugated
(2) Trim: Gray & teal seam binding, gray baker's twine, orange lace trim
(3) Sticker sheet (with missing sticker): Teresea Collins
(4) A pre-2013 alphabet: Crate Paper from 2011
(5) Opened product: Studio Calico wood veneer words
(6) Unopened product: Making Memories Embellishments
(7) One roll of tape: Studio Calico
(8) One item or package of product from a company that no longer makes scrappy products: Jenni Bowlin Studio gold feather rub-ons
(9) Six journaling and/or PL cards: from the Sunshine & Jade core kits, plus one from Studio Calico
(10) Unlimited cardstock, adhesive, and "technique-type product"
(11) A wild card item: CD Muckosky for Studio Calico stamps
(12) A nearby item: Studio Calico postage stamp book. I also added a package of cork shapes I found.

I've already made two pages with this little kit! The first was a just for fun page of Dixie and her crazy Yoda ears (which we love!) I had an idea with the title that just didn't pan out. So I recycled the letters outlining them in black pen and then adding in a gray highlighter just for fun. I'm totally doing this again!

I'll share the second page tomorrow. I used this kit for my first Stash Bash assignment. So fun to work with!

cheers & besos,

U R 5

Hey there! I have something a wee bit different to share, a non-PL pocket page! Pssssttt....I loved it =) 

We celebrated Urijah's 5th birthday on Saturday. My parents and brother drove in from San Antonio to spend the day with our favorite little guy. Bless his heart, he was soooo sick! But he kept trying to have fun. 

I snapped a few dozen photos and whittled my scrapbook worthy selections down to these few. I thought the randomness of them all would be perfect in the pocket page format.

For these spreads, I used a whole amalgamation of Studio Calico Project Life cards and also some Silhouette cuts. The front side was a green and blue color scheme and the back side was black, yellow and red. I think the monochromatic color schemes are my favorite part!

To spice it up a bit, I used my gelatos to custom color this card the the big 5. I really liked the bright pop of color it added to the spread.

My journaling was printed on a shipping tag and tucked into this stripped paper bag. It matched the colors so perfectly! I also couldn't resist adding a skull and crossbones. This one was so cute!

I see your value pocket page. You made things quick and easy. You also forced my brain to think things through a bit differently. And that is always a good thing.

cheers & besos,

Enriquez Thanksgiving

Heyo! Happy Saturday y'all =) I've had the most productive day already and I'm keeping it going. Just have a quick share of a Thanksgiving page. I really love that I got to use some colder tones with these photos as opposed to the warmer oranges and browns. This is based off a sketch from Simple Scrappers. It meant I got to use all of these great sequins and enamel shapes!

cheers & besos,

Love Again

Morning y'all! Happy Monday =) I hope everyone had the best of weekends. I know I did. It was relaxing and quiet. Exactly what I needed.

I started out on Saturday by making a decision. I wasn't going to worry about checking things off my to do list. I wasn't going to sit down to force myself to finish my February project life. I was just going to go with the flow and not feel guilty.

Oh man, was it awesome! I also went totally old school with my scrapbooking. Old school in the sense that, I didn't try to scrap something from my list. Instead, I browsed through my photos and picked a few I felt like scrapbooking. Then I just did!

Here's the first page I did. Just for fun! I started with a Simple Scrappers sketch from this month's Spark mag and a prompt from last month's Spark mag. And then I just went for it. I happily used some scraps from my SC Antiquary scrapbook kit and from there took the cue and went for the ice cream embellishing. 

I kind of really like that my page is about one thing and my embellishing is about another thing. The theme of everything is love but in two totally different ways. I'll liken it to a song being about one thing and the music video having a different concept. Weird analogy I know! But just popped into my head for some reason.

There's a lot of embellishing on this page. But I'm not bothered. I like the mix of ink and enamel dots, ice cream stamps and stars.

So happy to have made more layouts. And really, just a little too happy to not be doing pocket pages. I always love them when they're done. But for me, they just take a whole lot of time! Which is why, for the month of March I'm taking a break.

I know I'll get back to this project in the next month or so. But for now, I just need some time away from pocket pages.

So expect more layouts from me this month. With 3 done this past weekend, I think I'm off to a great start!

cheers & besos,

December Project Life

Here it is in all its glory, my complete December album. I didn't do this daily, instead I printed photos in batches and powered through with embellishing once we got back from Ohio. It was a lot of work but I love that its done.

I shot a (not so quick) video of myself flipping through the pages and talking about the design and other things. And if you're just interested in the photos, those are below. It's really photo heavy so I'll warn you in advance.

 

New products used: Blue Note Project Life Kit, Let your Heart be Light Cut, Lawn Fawn badges, Life Love Paper Printables, Knock Knock Roller Stamp, Webster's Pages/Allison Kreft 6x6 Paper Pad

cheers & besos,