Simple Scrapper-January 2016

Hiya! I have an equally exciting but possibly less surprising announcement. 

I've signed up for another year on the Simple Scrapper creative team!

I love being a part of Simple Scrapper. Jennifer's resources and toolkits are just perfect for this nerdy planner girl who likes to take time to think through what I want to accomplish, plan it out and then do it! 

I love the sketches. I like the story starters. I adore Spark Magazine! Some of my favorite layouts have come from these resources and some of my best planning comes from events like Refresh, when I stop to take a minute to think about where my focus should be. 

Here are the January pages I submitted for the 25th issue of Spark! 

I had fun with this cheeky page about my "puppy daddy". Really it was just an excuse to scrapbook cute puppy photos. She was so tiny! I don't even remember her being that small and it was just a short time ago.

I used two different Studio Calico lines and Elle's Studio stamps for the page. I think the color combo is my favorite part of it!

The second page was all about my daily personal hygiene. Which the older I get, seems to become more involved! I took a photo of all of the products I use (or should use) on a daily basis. It's a lot!

The Simple Scrapper sketch I based the page off of called for circles of patterned paper. But I decided to use photos instead. I event staged my own little photo shoot to get the images. I also have more journaling tucked underneath the main photos.

These two ended up being some of my latest favorite pages! And this last one was definitely not something I would have documented, were it not for the Story Starters for the month.

I'm excited to spend another year on the Simple Scrapper team. Next week is the first Refresh of the year. Click over to read more about the fun (planner nerd fun) we'll be having!

cheers & besos,

Elle's Studio Design Team!!!

I'm so beyond excited to share this news with you. 

I've been asked to be part of the Elle's Studio 2016 design team!!! 

I feel so honored to be included with this group of seriously talented ladies. Do you recognize a few? There's Gina who I work with on the Scrapbook Circle creative team. And my old pal Jill who always has the sweetest things to say. There's my new IRL friend Meghann who doesn't live very far from me.

Here's the links to everyone's blogs, because you should definitely click over to learn more about them and to see what they've been up to lately.

Alissa Fast, Allie Stewart, Candi Billman, Daniela Dobson
Gina Lideros, Jamie Leija (that's me!), Jen Schow, Jill Sprott

Kay Rogers, Maggie Massey, Meghann Andrew, Melissa Mann

Michelle Wedertz, Nancy Damiano, Toni From

If you're new to this blog, hiya! I'm thrilled to meet you. Here's a bit more about me:

My name is Jamie Leija (said Lay-ha). I'm a native Texan who loves to travel and scrapbook. I've lived in London, Thailand and Spain and have been blessed to travel to so many more places. Traveling and scrapbooking go hand in hand for me. I love that one hobby supports the other and that scrapbooking lets me relive and share all of those fabulous memories.

I've been scrapbooking for the past 18 years. My first job in high school was for a local scrapbook store. I loved working there! And it helped me learn to love sharing this hobby with others. In college, I worked at Hobby Lobby and then another local scrapbook store. I've been published in Northridge Publishing's Scrapbook Trends, CARDS and Create publications. When I'm not scrapbooking or on a plane, I'm spending time with my puppy, boyfriend or adorable nephew.

You can also click on the About Me tab above to read 31 more facts and feelings.

If you're new to Elle's Studio let me tell you a bit more. Every month Elle (pronounced Ell-e) has a monthly kit available. It includes a ton of fun tags and journaling cards plus other die cuts. They sell for $9.99 on the 10th at 10:00am CST/8:00am PST, which is reveal day, and then they are $11.99 after that. There's no subscriptions, you buy what you want when you want. They're also gone when they're gone so be sure to grab something if you're interested!

In addition to the monthly kit there are other items available, a stamp set, digital die cuts, digital printables and also different embellishments--vellum hearts, acrylic stars. Those change every month which is fun.

I was so excited to play with this month's kit. Here are a few sneaks of the projects I made with it + the stamp set + digital cut files!

You'll definitely want to check the kit out when it's available! I'll be posting the full projects here on Sunday, January 10th so be sure to check back then.

Again y'all, I'm so excited to be a part of this team and working with the wonderful Elle. You should totally jump over to the other team's blogs to see more sneaks and then over to the Elle's Studio blog for sneaks of the January kit. It's going to be an awesome year and I'm excited to make some pages!

cheers & besos,

Top 10 of 2015

Wowza 2016, how quickly you came! I hope everyone had a lovely NYE and a restful New Year's Day. Matt and I had dinner at our "special" restaurant. The one we've been spending our New Year's Eves at for the past 3 years. The food, as always, was amazing. And we had company this year which was new and different. All and all a nice, comforting, easy entry into the new year.

But I wanted to take just a minute to look back at 2015 and to all of the scrapbook goodness that resulted. I wasn't very prolific this year. The number of layouts, cards, pocket pages were all down significantly from last year. But I'm totally ok with that. It was a rough year for many reasons. And I'm just happy to have had time to scrapbook and to create.

All in all, this year, I made:

77 Layouts, 5 Pocket pages, 24 Cards, 4 Mini books

I've pulled my top 10 layouts for the year and here they are in no particular order.

5 of these were made with kits--Scrapbook Circle and Ali Edwards.

5 of these were made with Simple Scrapper sketches. 1 with a Scrapbook Circle sketch.

3 of these are travel pages--New Orleans, Palm Springs and Prague are featured.

5 of these started on white backgrounds that were then dressed up.

5 of these are about people I love.

2 are all about me

3 of these I created without a sketch or any other reference point. Just me pushing paper and products around.

All of these feature some kind of wet media: stamping ink, mist, paint. Some just in tiny doses and others in larger more evident ways.

And once again my photos were all different shapes and sizes. Well really only three shapes but definitely a variety of sizes! Only one of these has a 4x6 photo on it and I ended up cropping it to 3x6.

This is always one of my favorite posts of the year. I love looking back and getting excited about these pages and their designs, all over again. You can also check out 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 if you're interested.

Here's to a happier 2016!

cheers & besos,