Charleston Mini

MT and I visited Charleston last October for his birthday. We were only there for a few days but in that time we ate some good food, did a bit of sightseeing and then I got food poisoning and wanted to die. It was bad! Clearly I survived, but it definitely was a speed bump to what was shaping up to be a very nice trip!

I used the Elle's Studio [Travelogue] mid-release products for this micro-mini. There were a lot of photos so I ended up putting together a slide show for your viewing pleasure. To read more about it, head over to the [Elle's Studio blog]!

cheers & besos,

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,

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,

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,

Adult Today

This month's edition of Spark Magazine (part of the Simple Scrapper membership) is out! I have two layouts in the sketches section. I love love loved the sketches this month! This first layout is about my first big purchase, a new to me car.

I started with a cream background and knew I wanted to use some bright and cheerful patterned paper. And then I simplified things for myself by only using paper from one mini paper pad (Pink Paislee Atlas), so all of the colors coordinated perfectly.

My Silhouette Cameo did most of the heavy lifting for this page. I used a font called Avenir which has become my go to for everything lately. It must have come standard on my Mac because I know I didn't pay $358 for it!!!

I tried to use as many car things as I could...which only consisted of two wood veneers and a stamp. Because how often is there a need for a car on your page?!

I stitched around each of the squares to give them a bit more texture. Ignore the wonkiness, I'm not the best seamstress. But I like the effect!

One of many things that make me happy about this page, is that I used "adult" as a verb. I feel like that's such a thing in pop culture right now and I'm glad I was able to capture in a small way.

cheers & besos,

Wedding Mini

Last September, Matt and I were in Ohio for his little sister's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and a fun time! The whole family knows I'm the resident scrapbooker so I was teased about what I might do with all of the photos I was taking.

For Christmas, I put together a very quick and simple mini book for the couple. I had a ton of photos, but I opted to make the whole thing just about the two of them. It came together really quickly with the help of the Best Day Ever Class Kit from Big Picture Classes.

cheers & besos,

Christmas Markets

December means its Christmas market time in Europe! They are seriously some of the most magical places to wander and explore. Last year, I visited the one in Basel, Switzerland. 

I instagrammed the heck out of it! So when I was making the layout, I decided to keep my photos square. The design is based of a Simple Scrapper sketch (No. 258 for the members).

I love when a group of products so perfectly matches photos. For me, the Good Cheer kit from Scrapbook Circle + two shades of blue cardstock, just so perfectly encapsulated the vibe of the market.

I blogged about this over on the Scrapbook Circle blog last month. If you want to check it out there and take a look at the kit, click here.

This is honestly one of my most favorite Christmas pages ever! I just love how it all came together =)

cheers & besos,