London Anniversary

Does your journaling ever hamper your design? Let’s say you make a page, you love the look and then you have to figure out where to put the journaling. And everything you come up with just doesn’t look right?? OR, you make a page, know you’re journaling is going to go just here, then you start writing and the words pour out of you and suddenly that spot is no longer adequate to hold all of your thoughts? This doesn’t happen to me too often. I think the weakest point of my scrapbook game is my journaling. But when either of these scenarios happen, I have a trick I turn to time and again.

I write as much or as little journaling as I want. Typically typing it out and printing on plain cardstock. Then I make a pocket for it on the back of my page. It’s super quick and simple! Here’s an older page that I used this technique on: Hello There

For this page, I had a lot to say about my 10 year anniversary with the city of London. Enough to fill an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet. But there was no way it was going to look pretty anywhere on my nearly completed page. Which is why I opted to add a tab to the top of the sheet and make a pocket on the back of my page!

The layout is based off a sketch from the Simple Scrapper membership (Sketch No. 293 for all of my SS ladies!) I loved all of the March 2016 sketches so much! I made two pages using them, this and the Adult Today layout I shared at the beginning of the month.

I loved that the sketch called for blocks of patterned paper, my favorite scrapbook supply! These are three sheets from way deep in my stash: 7 Gypsies (top), October Afternoon (middle) and Basic Grey (bottom).

I could have put this design on a white sheet of cardstock and would have been totally happy. But I thought I’d switch it up and instead used this bluish gray. After all, London is typically pretty gray. I think it makes the photos and the paper pop more.

Red was my accent color. But I used it sparingly. It was at the top of that 3x4 journaling card (by Ali Edwards) so I matted it behind my photo. Then I stamped a red bus and added two triangle enamel shapes.

Aside from the overall design and the photos and the story, I think my most favorite part of this page is the tiny timeline I included as the “journaling”. It’s such a great way to show a relationship over time!

cheers & besos,

Happy Place

I booked a trip yesterday. It's for work but it's also to my favorite place in the world, London! I'm so excited to be back. It's been over a year since I've been and I feel it calling to me. 

Because it's such an important part of my identity, I have no problem calling it my happy place. I have so my fantastic memories from this place.

I was very influenced by Fancy Pant's Happy Place line. It's how I came up with the idea to make this page in the first place. There's a ton in this month's Scrapbook Circle kit!

I think it's as equally important to document the places we love, as it is the people and the things. And I'm so excited to be heading back there in a few weeks. Until then, miss you London!

cheers & besos,

Places you'll Go

The theme of the fall was travel. And travel I did! I made this page in October using an awesome The Cut Shoppe digital cut file. 

I also pulled out some of the great travel products I buy and then rarely use! (Talked about that on the Paperclipping Roundtable a few months back) It seems they come out when I'm telling stories that are more big picture.

I punched some paper airplanes and tried to sew in a circle. I also printed my journaling out on a transparency.

I pulled one photo from each of the cities I visited in those 5 weeks. Anaheim, Palm Springs, DC, London, Glasgow, St. Andrew's, Aberdeen & Edinburgh. And I printed them as tiny instagrams all in a row.

Looking back at this page I'm  thinking "how cute, you thought you'd done a lot of traveling". And since then (and because I took forever to finish then share this page) I've been to Baton Rouge, Ohio, San Antonio, London, Hull & Basel, Switzerland.

I told you travel was the theme of the fall! I'll have to make Part 2 page for the rest of the cities. Next up I'll be in New Orleans for a day and San Antonio for Christmas. After that I'm done with traveling for a bit! Well…at least until the end of January.

cheers & besos,

London Design Museum

Hiya! I hope everyone here in the USA had the loveliest of Thanksgiving. And everyone outside of the  USA had an equally lovely Thursday. MT and I drove over to San Antonio for a feast put on by my mama. But we're already back in Houston. AND I'm already about to get on a plane tonight.

It's the EU for me this week! I'll be in London for a night then to a small city on the East coast of the UK for training. But after that I'm bound for Basel, Switzerland! I'm planning to visit a Christmas market, hit up some museums, catch up with an old friend. I'm so excited--just have to get through the work part first.

Getting to travel for work is fun! and exciting! and down right exhausting. and sometimes a bit boring and tedious. Also your time isn't your own, which too me is the biggest negative. I'd say the pro's definitely outweigh the con's but want to paint an accurate picture about the whole experience.

For me personally, traveling for work means getting to go back to the UK a few times a year. This year, I'll have visited 4 times! Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, St. Andrew's and London have been on the itinerary this year. With several repeats up to Scotland, but most importantly to my beloved London.

I made this layout using a Simple Scrapper sketch and an older story starter. My journaling is about traveling to the same place over and over again. The photos are of a Paul Smith exhibition at the Design Museum in London. But the journaling is about London.

Instead of journaling only about the exhibition and it's awesomeness, I wrote about getting to explore even more of my beloved city, getting to discover more little nocks and crannies. And maybe, just maybe falling more in love with it more than I have before.

I love that I got this story out of these photos. If I hadn't have had the Simple Scrapper story starter, it would most definitely have been just about the exhibition. I love that those things get me to look at my photos in a different way. I love the challenge of pairing a sketch AND a story. I'm not usually challenged to do both. But it worked!

Journaling Reads:

It’s no secret I love London. Living there forever changed me and set me on a course different from one I ever imagined. I practically live, breath and sleep London. Especially when you consider the fact that I work for the British. This year I’ve visited London 3 times and I’ve been able to get back a few times every year since 2011. It means that I get to maintain my love affair with that city, getting to know it even better the more I return. It also means I get to explore more of its nooks and crannies. Discover new awesome places and see some truly great things. Over the summer I wandered farther down the Southbank than I ever had and got to tour the London Design Museum. The feature was a Paul Smith retrospective that I loved. The bright bold colors, the quirky twists. Oh it was divine! My two favorites were the stripped mini cooper and a button wall 2 stories high!  I may visit this city often, but there’s no way I could ever get my full. It’s just to rich and vibrant, much like the colorful designer who’s work I got to admire on this sunny day in London.

Well, lots to do today before I get on the plane. But I'm so excited to get there. This trip I only have half a day in London. It isn't a lot but it's enough to get my fix :)

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,

Work Trip

Happy Saturday every body! Man, I have just not been on top of this whole blogging thing. I've had this layout done for over a week now but just haven't sat down to blog about it.

Oh well, I'm doing it now!

It's a layout =) Huzzah! Y'all know I've been missing working on those. So a couple of Sunday's ago, I churned out 3 pages. I used another Simple Scrapper sketch for inspiration. AND, I got more mileage out of this UK die cut file from my Bright Ideas (old Studio Calico class) files.

I'm a very lucky girl, in that my work sends me to places like the UK for business. This trip in particular was a whirlwind wheels up, bag always packed kind of week. I rarely slept in the hotel two nights in a row. I tried to instagram at least a photo or two in every city I was. 

For the page, I used a fabulous natural background paper from the new Studio Calico Color Theory paper pack (I bought 2!) I also added some contrast using a black and white striped paper for my die cut.

2 layouts shared, 1 more to go! I'll be back in a few to share that with you. In the meantime, I'm taking it easy this weekend. Putting away the old to do list and just planning to do what I want to do and now what I have (or should) do.

Here's to just living the life!

cheers & besos,

2013 Travels

Hiya! I want to share my latest page with you. It's my first for the month of February. After a full week of traveling at the beginning of this month, I was ready to be back home at my scrap desk.

This is something I whipped up late Sunday night on a whim. I was wanting to get crafty but wasn't really in the mood to get to the Valentines card I needed to make. So instead I flipped through my latest edition of Spark magazine (its part of the Simple Scrappers membership) for inspiration. There was an absolutely fabulous travel page that really caught my eye, so I decided to make my own version of it.

There are some similarities between mine page and the original one: the circle photos, die cuts in the middle of the page, bits of paper along the top and bottom, the "I am here" and geotag stamps. But that's about it. I more or less lifted the concept.

For the past few years I've been making a wrap up page of my travels for the year [2012 HERE] [2011 HERE] [2008 HERE] and it just so happened that all of my travels in 2013 were here in the US and also in the UK. I liked the tie in so I made a page featuring just those two countries and a blue/red/pink/gray color scheme.

I started out with a blank sheet of white cardstock and did some stamping and scribbling with a pencil. I also dropped some gray mist splatters to help fill out the page a bit more.

I layered patterned paper and die cuts together and added dimensions by roughing up the edges of the paper before gluing them down.

There are lots of bits and pieces, lots of embellishing on this page: baker's twine, brads, punched shapes, heat embossed geotags and some paper labels.

I punched all of the photos with a circle punch and adhered them down with foam squares to give them more dimension. And then added bits of patterned paper to the top and bottom of the page to finish it off.

I really like how this page turned out. I also like that it's nearly all stash stuff that's really old! The only new things I used were the airplane punch and the tiny Heidi Swapp stamps. All of the patterned paper was from my scrap drawer and I finally used those blueprints stamps! Plus I get to mark something off the old to do list. Sounds like a win-win-win to me =)

cheers & besos,

Away Days

It's been two weeks since I've been on here. 

Two weeks since I've got crafty at my desk. 

One week of crazy hectic traveling.

...and it's not going to stop!

This was where I was last week for work.

Bouncing around from city to city and event to event. And only at the very end, did I get to do anything for me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the travel, not so much all of the meetings. But I like my job and am grateful it takes me to some really fabulous places. It just makes me so tired!

Lately its been keeping me from doing the fun stuff, like playing with paper and getting inky. And believe me, I'm just dying to sit down and scrap! I have some pages circulating around in this head of mine that I'm determined will see the light of day.

I hope you stick it out with me. I appreciate all of you who come visit my corner of the interweb!

cheers & besos,

Saturday in Edinburgh

Come back mojo, come back! 

I think I'm too tired to function properly right now. I haven't really had a chance to just relax this month. More than a day to just sit around, do nothing, read, nap. I think once I do that, it'll come back to me.

But I've been trying! I mad a quick simple page using a few of the Bright Ideas prompts. I love these things by the way. I just wish I had time & energy to play some more!

A few weeks back, I spent a lovely Saturday wandering around Edinburgh, Scotland. I loved walking the ancient streets and spent most of my day exploring.

This was my second visit to Scotland and it definitely went better than my first. For starters I didn't slip in a business meeting in front of a brand new contact. Nor was I too ill to get on a train. This time I got to see more than the inside of my hotel!

Which btw, if you're ever visiting Edinburgh and are looking for a good place to stay, I'd totally recommend Grassmarket Hotel. It's centrally located and very modern and cool. I enjoyed it. It's also steps around the corner from an awesome little coffee/sandwich/juice place, Hula. Which, I've just learned, was voted the best cafe in Edinburgh this year!

Once you've slept in a bed for a sleepy head (Grassmarket Hotel tag line), had a bevie at Hula and now fancy a walk. The Castle is right behind you, not even 6 minutes away on foot. 

As far as castles go, this one is more of a fortress. Not at all romantic and still a working military facility. But it was a nice thing to go and see and I'm glad I did it. 

Hands down, best value for money, is a City of the Dead nighttime ghost tour. Seriously, so creepy! They take you down into the underground tunnels, where the poorest of Edinburgh's poor lived up until the 1900's. They also take you in a graveyard, directly into one of the tombs! I was dully freaked out. 

But not only do they tell you about the history of the city and also creepy stories about how people died and such. What really makes it scary is when they share all of the encounters people taking the tour have had! 

Not even kidding, if you make it to Edinburgh, I completely recommend you take the tour. So worth it, so fun!

For this page, I used a really old sheet of House of Three (I think Pink Paislee) patterned paper for the background. Love the gray polka on white.

The Bright Ideas class came with some fun Silhouette cuts so I cut out a map of Scotland and used it as a mask. It didn't look complete until I outlined it with a thicker black pen.

Then to finish the page, I stamped with a few Kelly Purkey stamps, dropped some mist splatters and hand wrote my journaling. Viola!

Ok loves, it might be 8:00pm but I'm beat. Off to bed I go!

cheers & besos,

Tapas for a Tener

I love my friends. Can you tell? I miss them even more. I think that's why I've been scrapping them so much lately.

James is in Wisconsin.

Zahra's in the bay area near San Francisco.

Becky is in NYC.

Chris is living in Boston now.

And Sarah, sweet Sarah, is in Japan.

Can you feel my pain?!

This was just a nice night out at a tapas place in London. I absolutely adore this photo of James & Sarah. It's just so them.

I also adore these Project Life stamps KP did for Studio Calico. I'm so sorry to taunt you with them as they're limited edition. But get ready because I know I'll be using them a ton!

I just had fun clustering and layering and playing with some Story Hour goodness.

Thanks for stopping by yall!

cheers & besos,

England *Mini

I have some Mind the Gap goodness to share with you today!!

But first, I have to gush about the awesomeness of crops! There's just something about being away from all of my stuff, away from all distractions, at a table with limited supplies (and usually limited space) that just gets works for my brain!

On Sunday, my friend Susie invited me to her friend's for a Scrap & Yap Brunch. This group of ladies gets together every so often to scrap and chat and brunch. It was such a nice time. Even going into it not know anyone (which I seem to be doing a lot lately), didn't diminish my capacity for good quality scrapping fun!

While I was there, I got 7 pages fairly well done. A few needed some minimal products from home, some needed titles and they all needed journaling. But in just a few short hours, I had 7 more pages to add to a mini album I hadn't even started! What's not to love (and gush) about that?!

I'd purchased this mini album kit by Making Memories at least a year ago, with the intention of using it as an England album.

I think it works perfectly, and all I had to do to the window was add some Thickers.

I also created this as a title page, using my Mind the Gap kit.

I had to keep on theme!!

And this was my first picture page. I did something a little subtle here and tried to match the patterned papers, with the colors in the photo i.e. green patterned paper next to the grass, cream next to the stone wall, blue next to the sky, etc.

I also dug into my stash of Studio Calico letter stamped and used my favorite charcoal chalk ink for the title and the date.

More pages to come! 5 more to be exact :) Oh, and don't forget to check back to tomorrow for the winner of the Mister Huey's (which btw, I used the oh-so-fabulous white to splatter around on the patterned paper).

Cheers, bye!

xxbesos

Wrinkle in Time

Today,

I present to you.

A scrapbook page.

Ta da!

I know, I can hardly believe it either! I'm so happy to be back in the scrapbooking saddle. I've missed my messy little corner, my hole that I love to crawl down into.

I knew coming back could prove a bit difficult, so I used Shimelle's 4x6 Photo Love prompt for this layout about London.

The title of the page actually came from the patterned paper. I'm in love with American Crafts' The Classics line (of which the red/pink paper comes from), it's name for the book The Lion. Another sheet in the line is named after a Wrinkle in Time. Which is what I was thinking of when I took these photos of Big Ben.

I have so many photos of Big Ben across the years. But it's always the same. Just like London is always the same. It's a wonderful place that I can pick back up like I've never left it off. It falls into that timeless, wrinkle in time category. London, the eternal city :)

Now, I have a confession to make...

I've spent too much money on scrapbook supplies lately. =/

There! I said it.

But now that that's off my chest, I can officially say that I've used some of my nice new products! I literally just laid it all on my bed and picked and chose what I wanted to use. And I went for what I thought went well together. It's not my usual color scheme but I'm really really digging it.

I also went for a lot of symbolism. I crumpled up the paper to achieve a wrinkled look and then sprayed and flicked gold and iridescent Maya Mist on it. Love how the metallics look on the dark cardstock. I also used 3 different types of clocks: a metal one, a gold heat embossed one and a printed die cut.

So very happy with my first scrapbook creation in a month! I tip my hat to the lovely Shimelle, who also just got back from a trip. Be sure to check out her blog, it's one of the few that I actually read all the words!

Also, don't forget to comment on the last post for a chance to win a lovely piece of Wall Art!

Cheers,