Fun Times

This layout was for another round of layout tag.  I was second in line so I worked off my friend, Merry's, layout.  I decided to do some pictures from Nana and Papa's visit earlier this year.  I added in the banner instead of a flourish since it worked better with my pics.  And I'm still loving my digi mist masks!

Supplies:  "Crazy Good" digi kit from Melissa Bennett and Eva Kipler
Banner template from Dani Mogstad
Scalloped circle from Julie Billingsley
Mist Mask from Gennifer Bursett

Simple Page

As you know, I've been doing some work on our Road Trip album.  We take lots of pictures, I mean A LOT!  But having those moments captured allow us to remember the small details about our trips.  But sometimes, those pictures aren't the best quality or there are just so many of them that doing fancy pages for all the photos just isn't feasible.  These photos that we have on our drive from Frutillar to Valdivia aren't great - in fact, all of them were taken on the go and so the angles aren't perfect and some of them are a bit blurry.  But I still wanted to include them in our album, for the memories since that's what scrapbooking is for me.  I have this template from Cathy Zielske that worked perfectly for them.

The only thing I added was the dotted border around the pictures, also from Cathy Z.  The papers are freebies from Katie Pertiet, over at Designer Digitals community challenges.

I love doing more creative things with my photos as scrapbooking is my only creative outlet and I love the feeling I get from a cute page I've done.  However, I don't think that all pages need to be creative, in my sense of them.  Sometimes, just a focus on the photos with the story and none of the fluff is perfect.  My monthly collages are the perfect example of this.  I love doing them - we see our lives that month in pictures with some of the details recorded.  And even better is that they're fast to do.  So, that sense of accomplishment is wonderful.

I've come to realize that a mix of creative and simple is what I want for my scrapbooks.  I don't expect to love every page and that's fine.  If you're trying to keep up or make up some ground with your photos as well as using scrapbooking as your creative outlet, I don't know if it's possible to love every page.  I'm such a slow scrapbooker, especially with paper, that I'd be spending even more time than I do on each layout trying to get it so I love it.  As long as I don't hate it, it's good.  And my latest realization is that I can love those simple pages too, just as much as the ones where I add lots of embellies, borders and all the fun stuff.

Peek-a-Boo!

I did this layout quite a while ago for a session of May layout tag at Skrap 'n Chat. You're given a sketch or a layout to scraplift and it gets passed along.  I was the first on the list this time and it was a sketch with just one photo so I decided to choose one of my favourites.  I haven't done any of K's pictures in the year after she turned one so I thought I'd go back and choose one from there.

As you know, this isn't really my style, with so much white space.  However, I love the colours and the little splash of digi paint that I used.  :)

I used a little bit from a whole bunch of digi supplies on this layout:

Background Paper:  Katie Pertiet's "Joulunaika Solids"

Patterned Paper and Purple Button:  Julie Billingsley's "Bumbleblooms"

Blue Paper and Blue Paint:  Julie Billingsley's "Leaps and Bounds"
Pink Scallop and Pink Jewel Flower:  Kristin Cronin Barrow's "Scoop It Up"
Pin:  Jessica Sprague "Now We're Rockin'" digi class
White Button and Ribbon:  Heather Roselli's "Busy Little Boys"
Purple Felt Heart:  Pattie Knox's "Have a Heart"
K:  Mindy Terasawa's "Howdy Cowboy"

More Chilote Churches

I'm a big fan of sketches - just love them.  My favourite inspirations are Sketch Support and Page Maps.  There are so many sketch sites out there so there are many to choose from.  Though I'm not usually a fan of their sketches as they are too artsy for my style, Sketchy Thursdays has a great sketch that totally suits me.  Here's their sketch:

It's clean and linear with minimal "fluff" - so me!  lol

Lately, I've been working behind the scenes on our Road Trip album.  What I mean by that is I'm trying a new system to help my layouts not look the same.  While I was doing the part in Argentina, I felt like the pages were all starting to look the same.  So, rather than create each layout, one at a time, I decided to  sort the pictures I wanted to use by category.  I'm working on the Chiloe section now so I subdivided the pics into these categories:  agriculture, Penguin Cove, cabins, churches, sunset, etc.  Then I either found sketches or designed the pages based on how many pictures there were and the orientation of the pictures.  It's very systematic and quite assembly-line like but honestly, I'm liking it so much more.  It helps me to have more variety in the design of the layouts.

So, with that said, this layout is of some of the churches we went to see in Chiloe.  This first page is pretty much an exact replica of the sketch.  

And then, of course, I had to stretch it out to a second page and came up with this:

I used Julie Billingsley's "Find Your Wings" digi kit for the layout.  I also used one of Misty Cato's sanded overlays for the little paper strips, a scalloped mat from Miss Mint, a border strip from Splendid Finns and Jessica Sprague's straight stitch brush.

Churches of Chiloe

This is the first of many layouts that are for our Road Trip album from last year.  I was going great guns with it for a while and then I stopped.  I just needed a break from the travel pictures.  As much as I love scrapping them, I've figured out that I need variety in my scrapping themes to stay motivated.  So after several months of being stalled, I've picked it up again.

In Chiloe, many of the churches are built completely of wood - not just made of wood but completely fitted together with wood plugs instead of nails.  Sixteen of the 150 wooden churches in Chiloe have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.  If tourists travel to Chiloe, they will often stop at the churches to see the impressive architecture.  Even though this was our second time to Chiloe, we still wanted to stop and see the churches.  It's so neat to see that these churches are still standing, after 250+ years after being built.  Amazing.

Beauty of the Blue Mountains

When we visited a coffee estate not too far from Kingston, we not only loved the tour we got but the estate itself was so beautiful.  When we got there, the dew was still on the flowers and that gave the flowers such an alive feeling - they were screaming to be photographed!  :D  We loved the gorgeous landscaping at the estate and the variety of the flowers.

So, when I saw this template over at Sweet Shoppe Designs by Janet Phillips I knew it would be the perfect design to showcase our photos.  Simple, let the photos be the focus yet allowing for some journalling.

The digi kit I used was "Le Jardin" from Misty Cato.  I actually had done the layout using another kit but I wasn't too happy with the colours and patterns so I tried this kit out.  I love the dark brown background with the other natural colours to accent the page and the photos.  The scalloped border is the one I use all.the.time - from Julie Billingsley.  It's my go-to scallop border.  The dashed border is the one I just picked up by Cathy Zielske - I can tell I'll be using those borders often too.  I love the look of them!

Cool Dude

The May sketch challenge at Skrap 'n Chat was this sketch:

I thought this sketch was perfect for a little boy page so I found this picture of A, one of my favourites, in his new digs from Asher and Liesl:

I used Katie Pertiet's "Little Tot" digi kit, which is so fun!  The border punches are from Julie Billingsley - I've gotten so much use out of those border punches.  I recoloured the paper for the journalling spot since none of the solids worked for it and I still wanted some texture.  I finally figured out how to do that, with some help from Amanda :).  Awesome!