Christmas Layouts

According to Matt

Well Christmas may have come and gone, but at least the photos remain! The best part ;) for a scrapbooker at least! These are my initial Christmas creations.

According to Matt was inspired by the into page of a magazine. All of the journaling was 100% written by my uber-amazing boyfriend. Simply because I asked! (I believe "I have an assignment for you" were my exact words...) His words really touched me and make this page one of my most special layouts!

xmas n sa

As part of Matt's box in a box present, I typed out little "I love you's" to wrap around the lemons in the biggest box. He lovingly allowed me to keep them, knowing they'd be put to good use. Thus, they are the feature of this page. Along with these awesome Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses brads! I also really love the American Crafts snowflake paper. Something I discovered this holiday season? Robin's Egg Blue is a perfectly acceptable and amenable Christmas color!

Riverwalk Christmas Lights

These photos are by far and away my favorites from our first Christmas. It was a shared first time, to visit the River Walk in Downtown San Antonio, on Christmas day. It was quiet and chilly but a wonderful way to end our Christmas. Love the non-traditional bright colors featured in this seasons Cosmo Cricket line. Their products and my photos made for a match made in scrappers heaven.

Family of Trees

This was a scraplift of fellow pea's Family Tree layout. I played around with it a bit more and made the trees into my cousins! Well, I really just called them trees. Jessica is my oldest and tallest cousin (Seriously, she's taller than all of our boy cousins as well!) who just happened to marry a tall man. Subsequently, their 5 kids have all ended up as mini lurches and crazy amazons! Her 15 year old daughter is already 2 inches taller than me! I love the perspective and the graphic nature of my inspiration's LO. Glad to have achieved something similar.

xxbesos

j.leija

Blog Hop

Ma & Pa

In continuing with the age old tradition of resoluting to try new things, I'm participating in a blog hop hosted by Scrapbook Challenges. What exactly is a blog hop you might ask? Well...I'm working out the details as I go but basically there's a starting point (in this case Pamela's blog) and from there, you can hop around to visit all of the other participants' blogs.

Check out my fellow hop on-ers if you get the chance!

I created the above layout using the below sketch :) As featured on Pamela's blog! I initially wasn't so happy with it, but the longer I played around with it the kinks started working themselves out. I'm in love with Making Memories' Mistletoe line and will be so sad when my stock pile runs out. Alas, at least it will be forever immortalized in my prized scrapbooks...

Happy hopping everybody!

xxbesos

j.leija

2010 OLW: Grow

Grow

The ever amazing Ali Edward's has been using the concept of "One Little Word" for the past several years. The premise: one word that you focus on throughout the year. Ali's word this year is story. My word for 2010 is "grow".

I created this layout as a bit of scrapping art and plan to include it in my Year 25 album. It's my first hybrid layouts of sorts, but I'm probably cheating by call it that. Well it was my first time to play with a digi kit!

Using Carina Gardner's amazing "I Remember When..." Genealogy Kit, I simply printed that gorgeous tree on kraft cardstock and then hand drew the roots. I then hand-stitched them using multiple colors of DMC floss. I printed an additional tree, cut out the leafy part and used it as mask for my mists. I sprayed both Red and Orange on the tree to get a multi color effect. I finished it off with some American Crafts Thickers, Basic Grey's Indian Summer patterned paper and a few Martha Stewart butterflies.

It was hard to focus on just word to contemplate for an entire year. Yet it was easier to look back and consider previous OLW's in my life. In 2008 it was "explore" and in 2009 my word was undoubtedly "family". But that was discovered in hindsight.

Now, as 2010 has commenced, its time for me to take the reins, so to speak, and become more in charge of my life and my scrapping. It's also time for me to emerge from the protective shelter of school and parents and officially grow up. Groan! {pun intended...}

I hope that you will be with me as I chronicle this journey. I'm going to try my best to eek out every ounce of life, that 2010 has to offer. And to scrap it along the way. I hope you do the same!

xxbesos

j.leija