Baby Shower

More 34th Street funness to share today. This was surprisingly a quick page made easier with the help of my Silhouette machine.

I cut a bunch of ellipses, because I don't know how to do circles yet :P (I really need to read more about this thing!) And then I backed some of them with photos or paper and embellished just a few.

These photos are from Susie's baby shower. She had quite a few but I went to just the one. I loved this shot of Susie and Kim. They are truly BFFs. Their friendship is going on 20 years and it's still so strong!

And here's hulking me (seriously I need taller friends!) next to tiny Susie.

Thanks for dropping by! Be sure to check back tomorrow for a big announcement and a chance to win some goodies!

cheers & besos,

Hi/Bye 2012

Happy New Year everybody! 

I hope you all had fantastic nights. MT & I had a super quiet night in, as both of us weren't feeling great. I'm still in recovery mode, but hopefully back into the swing of things by tomorrow. And also slowly but surely, back into the swing of blogging as well!

This week on the blog I want to share:

the last few 2012 pages,

a RAK,

& my plans for 2013!

Today I'll start with sharing this wrap up page for 2012. I used my Studio Calico 34th Street kit (finally!). 

2012 was a fairly quiet year for me personally. I saw my friends hit a lot of big milestones but didn't have much going on myself. Which was absolutely okay with me. Had to love that the stamp in this month's kit echoed those sentiments =)

Journaling Reads:

2012 was a good normal: work, home, travel. I got to visit new places and see old friends. Mama & Papa celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. Papa turned 50. Kim & Eric got engaged. Baby Lauren was born. Urijah turned 3 & Cadie joined the family. In December, Matt & I moved apartments  It was a big year for some of my favorite people but a quiet one for me. And that's absolutely okay. I'm happy to celebrate with my family & friends. 2013 will be a bigger year for me. I can feel it.

This entire page literally resulted from that "hi" binder clip. And then the fact that the photo was from January and I was scrapping it in December. That's how "hi" and "bye" 2012 came about.

As far as design, I ended up using a lot of arrows in this page. I love how they're all pointed one way, while the triangles in the background paper are pointing another. I feel like it emphasizes the "hi" and "bye".  Looking back, thinking forward. All that fun symbolism and stuff.

Also loved that one of the little brads says house & home. It's perfect since MT & I said bye to our old apartment and then hi to the new one!

Which btw, speaking of the apartment, I'm about 95% done setting up and organizing my new scrap area. I'll be sharing that with you all too!

So be sure to check back this week for more 34th Street pages, my scrappy plans for the year and of course, don't forget the RAK!

cheers & besos,

Happy Accidents

Raise your hand if you ever added something to a scrapbook page and immediately regretted it? Or felt that by adding just the one little element, it suddenly through the entire page off balance?

Oh man, do I do this all the time. 

Like for this page, the top red fishbone arrow that I stamped was driving me absolutely nuts. But I mean I stamped it, so it wasn't like I could just move it around on the page.

That's the point when it becomes a personal challenge. And when my creativity kicks in and my brian starts churning out "get out of jail" options.

What I came up with ended up adding a lot of texture to the page albeit very subtle texture. 

I punched scallop and pinked circles out of the blue cardstock to cover it up and also to add that texture I was talking about. Now, I didn't have another piece of that cardstock, so I had to get creative and cut out a big square from behind where I matted the patterned paper.

See, the back isn't pretty:

But it's fixed! In my eyes at least. 

Want to know another secret about this page? I used blue cardstock for the base as another of my fixes. My original idea for the background was to just use the patterned paper. But I ended up cutting it down to 7 1/2 x 11 by mistake. My fix was to turn on its side, trim and adhere to the cardstock base. Problem solved!

The page went in a totally different direction than what I had originally thought. But that's ok. I like how it turned out in the end. 

Happy accidents & minor mishaps, although seemingly mistakes, push your creativity. That can't make them all bad!

cheers & besos,

My Friend James

I've been digging into my China pics lately. Just scrapping a few here in there with no particular rhyme or reason.

These had me inspired the other day.

Mainly because in just a little over a month, I get to go visit this guy and several other of my old London roomies!!

I could not be more excited :)

So in honor of my upcoming trip, I thought I'd scrap these photos.

This is so quintessentially James. He's clever & quiet, well spoken, the smartest person I know. And above all else, fun!

And able to have a good time.

And make us all laugh.

And deliver perfectly a funny photo.

As to the page, I stamped a Studio Calico background stamp and embossed with white powder. Then just dug into my brad collection for brown, blue and orange brads. I thought the colors would go well with these photos, pulling the blues from his clothes and the orange from the background in the one (btw, check out the clearly confused Chinese guy in the background ^).

I also used a stamp set from Kelly Panacci (go buy it, seriously!) to embellish and a few bits of AC Amy Tangerine tape!

Again, I can't stress how excited I am to see him and my sweets Becky and Tom! It's D.C. or bust for me, come November 18 =)

xxbesos