Trianon

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  We spent the weekend painting the living room and powder room in our house; we still have to paint the front entryway, around the stairs, and all the areas upstairs in the loft and hallway but that has to wait until we get a taller ladder, and we haven't done the accent wall yet, just the lighter blue.  This house is starting to reflect more of our personality and less of the awful greige that was everywhere : )  Still have quite a ways to go before everything gets painted but we're working on it.

Anyway, it's time for scrapbook pages and as I was just watching a video on the royal family of France, I chose this layout from when we visited Trianon, a smaller estate on the grounds of Versailles:

Yes we got rained on.  Trianon was a favorite of Marie Antoinette and is a beautiful little estate.

Today's color palette:  Petal Pink, Cajun Craze, Garden Green, and white.  I'm always surprised when I use Petal Pink on scrapbook pages since it is not one of my favorite colors, but sometimes it just seems to work with photos.

Have a great day, peeps!  The weather cooled off a lot from the weekend so I'm going to go make a cuppa.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet, Pretty Peony
Ink:  Petal Pink, Garden Green, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Petal Pink, Cajun Craze, Garden Green, Thick Basic White, Peony Garden DSP
Accessories:  None

Bury St. Edmunds

Scrappy Monday!  We took a quick trip to Colmar, France over the weekend and plan to return in a couple of weeks for their Christmas market.  But since Veterans Day was on Friday, now seems like a good time to share this layout from around Remembrance Sunday in England in 2011.

November 11 is Veterans Day in the US; it's Armistice Day in France, and Remembrance Day in the UK, and originally commemorated the armistice signed on November 11 at the end of World War I.  In 2011, my parents came out to visit mid-November, so there were still poppy decorations set up in Bury St. Edmunds when we took them up there.  That Peaceful Poppies paper and the Poppy Moments dies were perfect accents for this layout.

Today's color palette comes straight from the DSP:  Mossy Meadow, Old Olive, Calypso Coral, Poppy Parade, Basic Black, and Whisper White.

Got a busy week ahead.  Hope yours is off to a good start!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet Upper & Lower, Rough Edges Alphabet, Painted Poppies
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Old Olive, Calypso Coral, Mossy Meadow marker
Paper:  Mossy Meadow, Old Olive, Basic Black, Poppy Parade, Calypso Coral, Thick Basic White, Peaceful Poppies DSP
Accessories:  Poppy Moments dies

Cornwall

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I am still very impatiently awaiting the arrival of my latest SU! order so I can continue scrapping the series I'm working on right now.  I came up to a set of pictures and realized that I neeeeeeeeed Starry Sky for the page base and this box is taking its sweet time to get to me.

In the meantime, here's a layout I finished fairly recently.  I often try to post scrapbook pages that are more or less seasonal, but it looks like I've got a ton of draft posts for fall/Christmas pages and almost nothing for summertime.  Well, these pics were taken in April in England, and that's what I've got for today!

Pretty sure I never got these pictures up on my other blog when we took the trip in 2012.  Our British neighbors, Mark and Ness, would do trips about twice a year with a group of friends.  They had already booked this massive house in Cornwall when half their group had to back out, so they invited Lee and me to go with them.  We could only stay for 3 days but we made the most of it, driving to St. Micheal's Mount (obviously not the French one), eating lunch in Penzance (sadly there were no pirates), going to Land's End (westernmost point in England), and visiting an awesome open-air theater on the coast.  I love Cornwall, it's gorgeous.  And that blue color on the water?  I didn't edit the photos, that's what it looked like in real life!

Today's color palette:  Dapper Denim, Raspberry Ripple, Tip Top Taupe, Garden Green, and Whisper White.  I was feelin' the past In Colors on this layout.  Man, I wish I could get unlimited supplies in every color SU! has ever had when I want them...every once in a while I just *need* one of the super old random colors, even the super bright Yoyo Yellow or Only Orange.  Ah, well.  Occasionally I find cardstock or ink refills on eBay, I guess that will have to do.  Thank goodness I got a Concord Crush ink refill recently, I needed that for my most recent layout!

Cheers, y'all.  I'm going to do some work planning for some upcoming trips...and then I'll have MORE pictures to scrap!  Never-ending cycle : )

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet Upper & Lower
Ink:  Garden Green, Dapper Denim marker
Paper:  Dapper Denim, Raspberry Ripple, Tip Top Taupe, Thick Basic White, Raspberry Ripple DSP, Artistry Blooms DSP
Accessories:  None

Holyrood Palace & Abbey

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  Wow, did we have a humdinger of a storm come through in the wee hours of this morning.  I was afraid that Ryan would start crying with all the thunder and wind, but he either slept through it or didn't get scared, so yay!  I was still up early this morning and got in a workout and a bit of cross stitching before anyone else got up.  Oh!  I also did some work on photo organization yesterday so woo on that!

For today's scrapbook offering, I have two more layouts from Edinburgh.  I think these are the last two layouts for that 2012 trip.

See the original pictures here.  I broke out some textured Pale Plum for my page bases, I love it.  I don't have a lot of that Enchante' DSP so I'm trying to make the most of it.  When I do pages from castles or abbeys or whatnot, it's usually a lot of gray in the pictures, so I can play around with all kinds of colors because gray is a neutral and goes with everything.  Except brown.  I don't like gray and brown together.

For example, see the floral pattern on the right page?  It looks like it would be one solid block under the pictures, right?  Nope.  I only had a little bit of it left so I cut creatively so it would show where I want it, but it's scraps under the pictures.  I also used a full sheet of that striped pattern between the two layouts.  Not like I don't have an enormous patterned paper collection.

Today's color palette is straight out of the DSP:  Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, Sage Shadow, and Very Vanilla.  All of the colors are retired except the Vanilla.  I wouldn't put the two greens together on my own, but they do seem to work here in combination with the purples.

Hope you have a great week, y'all.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet Upper & Lower, Rough Edges Alphabet, Carte Postale, Angelic
Ink:  Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, Pale Plum, Basic Gray Marker
Paper:  Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, Thick Very Vanilla, Enchante' DSP
Accessories:  None

St. Giles Cathedral

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I had a productive weekend; I'm up to 6 pages for this year so far and I've got another layout on my table already halfway done.  Working on those 2020 goals!

Today's layout is another one from a 2012 trip to Scotland with my hubs, my parents, and Bennet & Missy.

See the original pictures here.  I reallyreallyreally wish we could buy single color packs of 12x12 cardstock because I neeeeeed more Shaded Spruce!  And Balmy Blue.  I would use both of those for a LOT of layouts if I had an unlimited supply.  I keep running out of Mango Melody too.  Anyway, this is yet another example of a page with Missy on it where the primary colors are Baylor green and gold.  Apparently I can't help myself.

Today's color palette:  Shaded Spruce, Crushed Curry, Ballet Blue (long retired but I still love it), Early Espresso (not black, I promise), and Whisper White.

I'm ready to start this week off right--going to HIIT class at the Y this morning.  How's your morning looking?  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet Upper & Lower, Rough Type, Timeless Textures, Bella's Bloom
Ink:  Early Espresso, Ballet Blue
Paper:  Shaded Spruce, Early Espresso, Ballet Blue, Crushed Curry, Thick Whisper White, Country Lane DSP
Accessories:  Circle punches

Kronborg Castle

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  How about we start our week with a Danish castle!

I shared my Copenhagen layout a while back, so here's the other layout from Denmark.  Hubs and I took a train from Copenhagen to Elsinore (Helsingor) to visit Kronborg Castle, which is identified with the castle in Hamlet (though curiously the castle in the play is named after the town near Kronborg Castle, and not the castle itself).

I used Island Indigo for the page base, and that is one of the retiring core colors that I will really miss.  I used it for scrapbook pages more than cards, maybe partially because I do so many color challenges for cards but I always choose my own colors for scrapbook pages.  I love that floral pattern from the Whole Lot of Lovely DSP pack...doesn't necessarily go with the castle theme, so let's pretend those are the flowers that Ophelia was playing with in Hamlet :)

Here is today's color palette:  Island Indigo, Tangerine Tango (also retiring), Cajun Craze, Basic Black, and Very Vanilla.

Hope your week is off to a great start.  Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet, Rough Edges Alphabet
Ink:  Basic Black
Paper:  Island Indigo, Cajun Craze, Basic Black, Very Vanilla, Whole Lot of Lovely & Painted Autumn DSPs
Accessories:  None

Copenhagen

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  I've got a LOT of scrapbook layouts waiting to be shared which means I've gotten a lot of pages done :) So how about one I finished up just last week?

Copenhagen was the last stop on our Baltic cruise; we got a hotel room so we could spend a full day there before we went back home (check out all the pictures here).  For this one, I used Mindy Backes' favorite color combination of Tranquil Tide, Lemon Lime Twist, and Calypso Coral.  Are you squinting to see where I used Lemon Lime Twist and thinking I made some mistake?  It's there...the patterned paper strip that goes across both pages used to be a Tranquil Tide pattern on Whisper White, but I sponged it with LLT.  I wanted to tone down the white a little so it wouldn't compete with the journaling block, and that did the trick!

I stamped my title directly on another piece of patterned paper in the Delightful Daisy pack.  I liked the watercolor feel of the patterns and thought they went well with the Little Mermaid statue in the photos.

So there's my color palette, as I mentioned:  Tranquil Tide, Lemon Lime Twist, Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, and Whisper White.  I had fun with these colors together so thanks to Mindy for the combination!

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet, Hello Lovely
Ink:  Night of Navy, Calypso Coral, Lemon Lime Twist
Paper:  Tranquil Tide, Night of Navy, Whisper White, Delightful Daisy DSP
Accessories:  None

Stirling Castle

Hey y'all, how's it going?  I think I got a bit more sleep last night than usual (still not enough, but better), and Ryan went back to sleep after we got up at 4:00 this morning so I got more sleep after that too.  He's still asleep right now which is why I have time to blog :)

Speaking of time, I've actually used quite a bit of time since Ryan was born to work on scrapbook pages.  Like, I'm surprised how much I've gotten done--I've made SEVENTY scrapbook pages this year!  I work when he's sleeping during the day, or I take him downstairs with me and have him on a blanket on the floor next to me if he's happy to hang out for a bit.

But today's layout I made before he was born (I still need to take pictures of a bunch of layouts I've made in the last week or two).

So here's Stirling Castle, which we visited with Lee's parents, sister, and her family a few years ago.  Somehow I forgot to take my handy-dandy trip notebook with me *and* I never blogged these photos, so to be honest I don't really remember this particular castle.  We went to a lot of castles.  My journaling is basically what I looked up about the castle on Wikipedia :)  But I still like this layout!  I love the contrast between the light yellowy green and the dark purple (yes, friends, the dark color on here is Elegant Eggplant even if it looks weird and not-purple on your computer screen).  Haha, I'm wearing that same shirt right now as in that picture on the bottom right.

Title and journaling all in one convenient place.  Crowns are always a good accent for castle pages, right?

Today's color palette:  Certainly Celery, Elegant Eggplant, Basic Gray, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White.  The two gray colors are mostly in the photos.

With luck I'll get to finish my breakfast tea before Ryan wakes up again.  And if I'm really lucky, I'll finish another layout this afternoon!  I really am scrapping with vim and vigor.

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet, Rough Edges Alphabet, Artistic Etchings
Ink:  Elegant Eggplant, Smoky Slate, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Certainly Celery, Elegant Eggplant, Whisper White, Elegant Eggplant DSP
Accessories:  None

Friday Flashback: The Free & the Brave

Happy Friday, folks!  And if you're a government employee, happy three-day weekend.  Today's Flashback stamp set is The Free & the Brave, which might seem an odd choice for November but today is Veterans Day so it makes sense.

The main image and the words are from today's stamp set, paired with Sanded on the background and I noticed as I set this up that I seem to ALWAYS use Sanded with this stamp set.

See?  This eagle is my favorite stamp in the set.

Here's a scrapbook layout that was posted not all that long ago with my favorite eagle.

And when the set first came out, I used that eagle for swaps.  With Sanded.

So for today's new projects, I've got some scrapbook pages:

The pics are from November 2005, my first visit to DC.  Unfortunately this was before I started my other blog, so I'm left with what I can remember from the trip...and I've slept since then :p I might have just written on the journaling what I could tell from the photos (okay I totally did that).

The words again, I like it.

There's the second layout since I couldn't fit all the pics on one spread.  You can't tell from the photos, but the stars are lightly stamped with Sanded in Smoky Slate and then sponged a bit on the edges to kind of grunge them up a bit to match everything else.  I used Gorgeous Grunge on the Smoky Slate textured cardstock borders because it seemed to jive really well with the grays in the photos.

There's the regal eagle again, stamped tone-on-tone with Cherry Cobbler.

Today's super patriotic color combination includes Cherry Cobbler, Night of Navy, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White.  And because it's Veterans Day, please please pretty please express your thanks to any veterans you know.  They work so hard to protect our freedom.

Supplies, scrapbook pages:
Stamps:  The Free & the Brave, Sanded, Larger Than Life Alphabet, Gorgeous Grunge
Ink:  Night of Navy, Cherry Cobbler, Smoky Slate, Basic Gray marker
Paper:  Night of Navy, Cherry Cobbler, Smoky Slate textured, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  retired star punch

Our House (England)

Scrappy Monday, y'all!  How was your weekend?  We went to see Star Trek Beyond yesterday (I wanna go see it again already!) and other than that it was pretty quiet.  This afternoon we take Little Man in to get his leg brace, looking forward to that.

So on to this week's scrapbook layout!

Since hubs and I move around a lot, I try to take pictures of each house we live in--about six months ago I was scrapping some photos from North Carolina and I kept looking in the backgrounds of the pictures and thinking oh hey, we had a Harry Potter calendar! or I forgot we used to have that picture hanging in the dining room.  Hubs and I will have our 13th anniversary this October, and in that time we've lived in seven different houses.  So this is our England house, which was my favorite of all.  Oh, see the little Big Ben sticker next to the stairs on the right-hand page?  That was one of my address labels--I always try to include one of those on the scrapbook pages too.

I think I go in cycles with alphabet stamps for my scrapbook pages, and lately it's been all about the Letterpress Alphabet.  I have another layout sitting on my craft table right now, and the title on that one is done with Letterpress too.

Today's color palette:  Island Indigo, River Rock, Primrose Petals, Early Espresso, and Whisper White.  I chose Island Indigo because we painted a wall that color in the living room after we moved in this house; the Primrose was kinda taken from the curtains that were hanging up in the room that became my England craft room, and River Rock seemed to go with those two colors together.

I'm excited to get back to work in my craft room today.  It's so nice having a clean table that's dog hair-free!  And since I cleaned the table, I also finished updating my personal stamp catalog and rearranged my stamps, putting all the newly retired ones in with the older ones and making sure all my alphabets and current stamps are up front.  I have two five-foot-tall cabinets for stamps and I'm thinking I need to upgrade to some 6-foot-tall bookshelves because I'm double-stacked.  Guess I know what I should ask Santa for this Christmas!

Cheers, y'all!

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  Spencerian Alphabet, Letterpress Alphabet, Circle Circus
Ink:  Island Indigo, Early Espresso
Paper:  Island Indigo, River Rock, Primrose Petals, Thick Whisper White
Accessories:  Oval & scalloped oval punches

Normandy

Today is Memorial Day, a day not for barbecues but to remember those men and women who died in the service of their country.  And today's scrapbook layout is particularly appropriate today.

While on a trip to France in 2013, we took a train from Paris out to Normandy and did a tour where we visited the D-Day beaches, a few towns and battlefields, and the American cemetery (see my original blog post about it here).  We happened to do the tour on July 4th, and when we arrived at the cemetery a small group of people was handing out roses and the names of soldiers.  All of the soldiers to whom we paid our respects don't have graves though; they're all known casualties of the D-Day invasions but their remains have never been recovered, so we left the roses at the wall inscribed with their names.  Even today, scientists are using DNA to identify remains, so there are some brass rosettes on the wall that indicate that that particular soldier has been found.

I kept the layout very simple but I just had to use this eagle stamp from The Free & the Brave.  I have a Post-It Note mask of the eagle's head, so I used it to watercolor around with Smoky Slate ink on a scrap of paper:

Then after it dried, I used the Stamp-a-Ma-Jig to stamp the eagle on top of it with Dapper Denim ink so the eagle is white but the background is gray, but after I stamped it the Smoky Slate looked so pale you can't really tell the difference anyway :p  I used just a teeny bit of So Saffron ink for the eagle's eye and beak.

It was just my great good fortune that my title fit *exactly* on the journaling panel.

Today's color palette is Dapper Denim, Smoky Slate, and Whisper White, with a smidgen on So Saffron and Basic Gray ink for the journaling.  I thought about adding some red, but I figured there was enough red in the photos, and otherwise I liked the blue/gray combination.  And I like that the Perfectly Artistic DSP kind of mimics the pattern you'd see on marble.

Have a good day, folks.

Supplies, all SU!
Stamps:  The Free & the Brave, Spencerian Alphabet (retired)
Ink:  Dapper Denim, Smoky Slate, So Saffron, Basic Gray
Paper:  Dapper Denim, Smoky Slate, Thick Whisper White, Perfectly Artistic DSP
Accessories:  Stamp-a-Ma-Jig

Friday Flashback: Letterpress Alphabet

Happy Friday!  Have you enjoyed Spring Break Scrap Week?  I'm finishing out the week with a Friday Flashback for Letterpress Alphabet, and you know how much I love my alphabet stamps :)  So let's take a whirl through the archives, shall we?

Also features Spencerian Alphabet

Geez, sorry about the terrible picture quality on this one.  Well, the original photos are fine, it's my picture of the layout that isn't good at all.  It was shortly after this that I figured out where to take pictures of layouts in our house in Alabama.

Also features Spencerian Alphabet

But not before I got both of these not-so-great ones.  Glare!

Ahh, here we go.  Much better photo of the layout.  And also the only time hubs and I have been to Turkey.

Also features Stars & Swirls, Amazing to Zany, Star Studded wheel

How about a card using the Letterpress Alphabet?  I'm still rather proud of this one, wait 'til you see it opened up:

It took a while to make with all the Stamp-a-ma-jigging but I still love it.  And it's Baylor Colors :D

Also features Spencerian Alphabet...again, and Noteworthy and Mosaic Madness

Here's a layout from California with some lovely bright colors.

And here's another one from Europe.

Also features Snow Flurries

I think I made this card when I was trying to come up with ideas using Snow Flurries.  I loved those little stamps but it was a challenge to make them the focal point of a card.

Also features Cold Play, Merry, Swirling Stars wheel

Oh man, this was from way back when Stampin' Up! had the spectrum ink pads!  I kinda miss those...

Also features Rough Type, Toxic Treats, Elementary Elegance, Carry On

Okay, there's the last England layout for today (though I do love it!) and now we're ready for this week's new creation!  Let's journey to St. Petersburg...

Oh dang, I got a glare on the photo in the bottom left corner.  It was really rainy and overcast when I took the picture of the layout and that makes a difference.  Anyway, this was the last place we visited in Russia before our cruise ship left, you can see the original photos here.  With no glare.

The cathedral is located on the Fortress of Peter and Paul, but it was the only thing we visited on the fortress so that's why I put "cathedral" rather than "fortress" on my page title.

Today's color palette:  Mint Macaron, Not Quite Navy, Hello Honey, and Whisper White.  And that's it for me today, hope you had a lovely week and are looking forward to a great weekend.  Cheers!

Supplies, all SU!, last layout:
Stamps:  Letterpress Alphabet, Rough Edges Alphabet
Ink:  Not Quite Navy, Hello Honey
Paper:  Mint Macaron, Not Quite Navy, Hello Honey, Thick Whisper White, Not Quite Navy DSP
Accessories: nothin' but a Stamp-a-ma-jig

2015 Scrapbook Showcase, Part 2

Welcome back to the second half of the 2015 scrapbook showcase.  Know what I just noticed?  All of the layouts from the first half of the showcase had warm, bright colors for the page bases.  And all of the layouts for today are on the cooler end of the spectrum.  Just how it happened to turn out, so let's take a look!

July's pick is this layout from a Scottish castle which supposedly belonged to my ancestors a zillion years ago.  I'm glad I have a large stockpile of Baja Breeze cardstock to use in my scrapbooks, it is one of my favorite colors ever.

My pick for August is the first of my terracotta warriors layouts; this was my very favorite thing that we got to see in China.

In September, I was hard at work on baby books so September's pick is the first layout I did for my friend Jen's twin boy books.  I like how bold the orange and green are on the black page base.  Well, it's hard not to love everything with Cucumber Crush on it.

October's pick is this Parisian layout, for which I made my own fleur de lis patterned paper.  I probably have patterned paper somewhere in my stash that's already printed with fleur de lis, but I like how my homemade version turned out.  And also those stair pictures.

November's pick is this layout from our somewhat abortive Mount Fuji climb; that picture of the four of us in that cubby under the stairs is one of my very favorites and I need to put a framed one up in our house somewhere.

And to finish off the 2015 scrapbook showcase, December's pick is this layout from the church near the house where we lived in England.  I think that's my favorite place that we've lived, and that house is my favorite one that we've lived in too.

Okay, kids.  That was a very Scrappy Monday :)  Tune in tomorrow for...something.  I don't know what yet but I hope it's fabulous!