Our Great London Adventure

Made this 2 pager for the Mercy Tiara 27 Day challenge for May - scrapbook with at least 3 photos, 1 being 4"x6".  

This was inspired by this single page made by Mandy Reedyk from Mandy Reedyk Happy Scrappin.  I fell in love with the cityscape silhouettes she cut from grey cardstock and vellum using a Mama Elephant die and wanted to replicate that look with my most favorite skyline of all, the London skyline.  In comes the helpful hubby, who is so much better at Photoshop and spacial things than I am.  He spent a couple hours on the weekend laying out different London iconic architecture in a pattern of layered silhouettes which I then traced and cut on my Silhouette Cameo.  Total LOVE.

I also used an Ali Edwards digital brush, Follow Your Heart, to trace and cut the word adventure and Studio AE journal card which I rounded corners. Other supplies include Stylist Thickers (which I colored darker with Stazon in Stone Grey) London Memories Air Mail Arrows paper by Scrapbook Customs, enamel heart from Amy Tangerine, and Colección London stamps by lora bailora.

Those intricate silhouettes cut so well and I love them so much, I'm doing a similar layout with them cut in various vellums for some night pictures from our trip.  Stay tuned!

Rain Gear

Over at Shimelle.com this week's challenge is to use this sketch.  My only experience with sketches was owning the Becky Higgins sketch books, and frankly I never could figure out how to use them.  I didn't find it a good starting point at all.  So I've never really used a sketch for making a layout.  But I decided to play along and here is my entry:

Papers: Saffron Yellow Pepper Soup 6x6 pad jillibean soup; Embossed cardstock Recollections; Cloud transparency Bella Blvd
Embellishments: Mistables (clouds) Studio Calico; raindrop brads (unknown); Ombre tag Pinkfresh Studios

I'd never really built up individual embellishments before. I quite liked working on this.  I think I will give sketches another go.

Liquid Bliss

This month's challenge on MercyTiara's Youtube channel is called 27-Day Challenge for March: Hoard-Not Your Pretties! As the name suggests, the challenge is to use pretty things we've been harding or haven't yet figured out how to use. Here is my entry:

When I watched the challenge video, my first thought is how much I really covet this month's prize.  Lots of goodies, and unlike last month's where I could take it or leave it, I loved everything Tracy Banks was offering.  She is so generous!  My second thought was wood veneer.  I have a whole drawer full of it, and I do use it, but usually only 2 or 3 on a layout.  I've been looking for an excuse to use a bunch at once.  And coffee themed ones had yet to be touched because I hadn't had a good layout idea.


This layout initially was going to be messier (I'd had visions of coffee rings and splatters on a mixed media background) but evolved into a clean white background. I was rather proud of my restraint considering I like splatters and don't like plain white backgrounds. But then the idea of a crisp menu at a high-end cafe sprung to mind. I spent all day working on it: meticulously lining things up, glueing the 15 pieces of veneers, getting the journaling written neatly after 4 practices, erasing the practice journaling and lines, blowing every speck of eraser lint off... I was so happy with the results.

And then, at 2 am just as I was stamping the date, the unthinkable happened. I didn't notice as I accidentally laid it on the black stamp pad.  The ink bled through to the front on the top left corner.  I wanted to cry. :'(

Instead, I posted on The Scrap Gal's FB page, having only recently become a member, and received a ton of sympathy and ideas on how to fix it.   I ended up brushing white gesso over the stain and am very pleased with the results.  At a casual glance, it's perfect.  Hubby and Foxlets could only tell there had been an issue at all after I held it up at an angle and pointed out the spot.  It really is only apparent if the light bounces off just so.  

I'm going to call this a win.  Now I just hope my luck holds and I win the challenge!

Live Life in Color

Here's the page I created for challenge 1 of the Online Scrapbooking Weekend at Shimelle.com  This challenge was to use one or more of the ideas from previous challenges (that I'd missed out on): selfies; hearts; mixing old with new; monochromatic; maps or globes.  I managed to tick off the boxes for ALL of those! :D

Monochromatic was the hardest thing for me, not something I've ever done before and at first I had no idea what I could do with that.  But I remembered that I had selfies of different hair colors and thought how perfect would it be to do the opposite effect of a black/white photo matching any color scheme - instead have color in the photo be THE focus.  Of course I couldn't resist making the word "Color" in the title in color!  I'd never die-cut watercolor paper on my Silhouette Cameo before, and forgot to double cut, so it was a bit of a pain to detach and I had to go over it with more color... but in the end I made it work.  The "Journey" metal tag is the old (like so old I don't even know who made it or what year, maybe around 2007 ish?) while everything else is actually really new.  Just my luck to have a map print in grey!  And this layout is about a journey, both metaphorical and real, so I didn't just throw that in to round out the challenge.  I didn't have white heart-shaped enamel dots (on my list!) so I used Tim Holtz enamel accents on some wood veneers.  The die-cut hexagon mat came from Ashely Horton's Old Favorites with a New Twist class at Big Picture Classes.

This is a layout that is so outside the box for me (literally, since I went with hexis!), something I would never have come up with on my own if it weren't for the challenge and the BPC class.  And I'm totally smitten by it. 

February 2016 Challenge: Use old collection kit

In response to Mercy Tiara's challenge to use an old collection kit, I dug through my stash a bit because I didn't used to buy whole collections or kits until more recently.  Usually pick and choose papers and embellishments as they catch my attention.  I found the Country Boutique by Fancy Pants collection kit from 2012 that is a paper pack with two die cut sheets and an alpha.  It's nothing like the style I usually use, Shabby Chic and washed out whereas I like bright colors, but I was drawn to it because of the peeling paint/wood papers.  I couldn't figure out at first what pictures to go with it, most of the layouts using it I could find are wedding photos and all mine are already taken care of.

This is the first one I landed upon, of my older daughter when she was 9 months old.  I didn't have a story at first, I just love this photo of her.  Finally the Van Morrison song "Brown Eyed Girl" popped in my head while I looked at the photo and I found a poem that fit perfectly how I felt.  I managed to use several papers and made a dent in the die cuts that came with it.  The alphas were black and didn't fit the look, so I found some dark brown ones.  The embellishments weren't from the kit, but everything on this page (except for the wooden circle at the bottom) is at least 3-4 years old.

my brown eyed girl
Dec 18 2003 (scrapped Feb 2016)
Country Boutique collection kit by Fancy Pants 2012 - papers, die cut banners & heart ticket
My Mind's Eye Follow Your Heart embellishments - smaller banner die cuts, buttons
Alphas - Jillibean Soup; wood circle - Dear Lizzy; flowers - Prima; metal clip - Basic Grey

I have 2 more pictures I'm going to try to scrap with this kit. 

Can't believe this is still around...

Dusting off this site so I can post scrapbook pages I make for challenges.  Because I feel the need to connect with Scrapbookers and I think the challenges may help me use up my gazillion papers and embellishment collection.  *crossing fingers*

Hello 2012!!!

I'm excited to start a new year.  I'm approaching the "resolutions", or actually life changes, I'd like to make in a very positive, planned way.  And to help me out I'm taking two "scrapbooking" classes at Big Picture Classes: Ali Edwards' One Little Word (I'm a big fan of her and her style, have been reading her blog for years, and wanted to do this class last year) and  Lisa Day's Journey to Happiness: What Matter's Most.

One Little Word  is a yearlong class, with monthly prompts to help us keep our word at the forefront of our lives, to help us work out the issues through journaling and some fun play with photos/embellishments.  At the end I'll have a small album, but more importantly I'll have support and incentive to work on my issues.  The word I've chosen (or actually it chose me) is: focus.   Because that's really the root of my problem.  I can set any goal/expectation/change I'd like to make, but I easily loose focus.  I get distracted/overwhelmed/discouraged too easily, and then easily slide into the old way of doing things, choose the easy way rather than the rewarding way.

So, welcome 2012, the year of focus!