waaaay old SB layout share: wildflower hike

I have no idea what happened, but this post has been languishing for months in Draft status-- oops! That's embarrassing; I could have sworn I posted it... anyway, here it is, finally:



 

Way back in March, I went hiking to Picacho Peak State Park (to refresh your memory, the photos are here: Desert Spring Wildflowers) and took at least 200 photos of the scenery, hummingbirds, and wildflowers.

 

I had so many really beautiful photos that I remember, it was tough to whittle them down to only enough for a two-page layout, but I decided to choose just a few really nice 'long shots' and some individual flower close-ups to make my layout. Below is the entire layout:

 



 



Both pages of the 2-page spread. The left-hand page is a traditional
12x12 layout, and the right-hand page is a pocket page protector.

Right-hand page, close-up view.

I didn't do much embellishing at all on the pocket page, because I wanted the focus to be on the flower photos. Pretty subtle patterned papers, just a couple tabs / tags, and two small stamped phrases.



Upper left corner pocket

This pocket contains a layered background cut with my Silhouette cutter; it's a sunburst pattern, although you can't see to much of it here. After I cut it, I think I used it as a stencil for gold spray ink, and liked the way it looked so much afterwards that I ended up using the 'stencil' itself behind this photo.



The left-hand page, a more 'traditional' 12x12 layout

On the left-hand page, I decided to showcase three of the 'scenic landscape' shots I really like. I used the same patterned papers, did a bit of inking and stamped the title, and while it's tough to see in this photo, the papers underneath the photos have the same gold spray ink on as the pocket on the right-hand page.


a third 'companion' page

 

I also decided to add in the map of the park, showing the area of the park where I took my photos. It's a bit wrinkled, lol, but I did want to keep it! I simply slid it into an 8.5 x 11 page protector, added my parking pass, and a journaling tag.

 

Seeing these pictures again after a few months makes me want to go hiking!! But considering it's only just barely gotten down below 100F high temps during the day, I think I'll wait a bit, lol!!



Labor Day weekend crafting--

I did have a chance to do some scrapping over the Labor Day three day weekend; here's my latest scrapbook layout, using the walk in the woods photos from a couple posts ago. You can either just scroll through and admire the photos (click for larger) or you can read the text, where I explain a bit about my process of making the layout.

I had about half again as many photos printed, but I just couldn't get them arranged the way I wanted, so I had to make some editing decisions-- I took out the ones that were too similar, and a couple that just didn't make my cut from a photo design / color perspective. I decided to feature all the close-up photos on one page, and chose two of the 'regular' photos of the woods to use on the other page. I had originally cropped all of them in rectangles and squares with straight edges, but I ended up not liking how that looked so I got out my old-school circle cutter and my corner rounder. 

I think cutting the raspberry and thistle photos in a circle echoes the shape in the photo, and the rounded edges on the rest of the photos softens the lines and makes it a bit more relaxed or organic feeling. (hopefully? that's what I was going for, anyway, lol.)

Below is the left-hand page:

This page is based on a Scrapbook Generation 1-page sketch, with a few changes. The papers I chose are actually a mix of papers-- some from a Pink Paislee Christmas paper pad (the large polka dot, the green horizontal strip, and the blue zig-zag) and some other papers from my stash. I don't scrap Christmas or winter pages very often, but when I saw that paper pad in the store, I knew most of the patterns would be good for 'regular' pages, too!

The next photo is the right-hand page (sorry for the bit of glare from the upper left photo):

I extended the one-page design across the two-page spread by doing the 'opposite' background paper arrangement on the right-hand page. One other small detail- I decided to ink the edges of all the papers to get rid of the white edges and make them blend a bit more with the darker cardstock background. It was time consuming, but I think it was a good decision.

bottom right embellishment cluster: cork circle, enamel dots,
vellum phrase, decorative brad, pink sticker, and a stamped word.

Once I get all the background papers and photos attached, I start looking for embellishments for the pages. (this post shows a picture of the 12x12 Iris cases that hold all my embellishments- tags, brads, enamel dots, stickers, and all sorts of rhinestones, wood veneer shapes, etc.) Page embellishments are little bits and pieces that (hopefully) lead your eye through the layout and reinforce the shapes and colors on the page and in the photos.  

the title embellishment cluster: more cork, wood veneer
camera, gold brad, layered paper, vellum phrase, a bit of
pink, more enamel dots, and another stamped /cut-out word. 

left-hand embellishment cluster- the same combination of
items: brad, cork, enamel dots, stamped word, stripes, and blue, pink (in the brad), and gold,  which I used in each area. 

Choosing embellishments and deciding how to arrange them is a slow process for me, but it's also kind of fun-- looking through my Iris boxes to see what jumps out at me that could be used on the page, and deciding how to arrange the small items to emphasize colors in the photos and on the page. I decided to use pink in the embellishments so the raspberry photo wouldn't look so out-of-place, since otherwise it's the only pink on the page.

Embellishment clusters sort of 'lead' your eye across the layout, too, so I laid them out in a 'visual triangle' arrangement-- since we read from left to right, your eye goes from the lower left up to the title, then across to the right-hand page to the pink in the raspberry photo and down to the lower right-hand corner. (again, that's what I was going for, anyway!) And, even though it took a lot of effort and arranging on my part, the result I was trying for was a loose, collage-style layered look. (I just need to be a bit more decisive to make the process go quicker.)

Oh-- and after all that was on the page?? That was when I decided to add all the gold splatters with Heidi Swapp colorshine spray. I had to cover up the photos and embellishment clusters so I wouldn't get gold splatters all over everything. This is definitely a design decision better done at the beginning, for sure!! 

And now, a switch from scrapbooking to card-making-- which I don't do all that often any more. I made four altogether, but can only show you one right now, since the other ones are on their way to people who I know read my blog, lol!

it's five layers total, not counting the card base (which is not
nearly so bright in real life... my phone camera didn't capture
the color correctly, and I couldn't edit it back to the true color.)

I pulled some tags, die-cuts, and other things from my stash, and started layering things together just to see what worked. 

The butterfly is stapled to the pink tag, and everything else is glued / tucked underneath on the round journaling tag. The glitter on the butterfly wings was supposed to just be polka dots, but-- me and glitter glue? not a good mix-- so after a bit of a glitter glue accident, I had to cover up the evidence by outlining the entire thing. 

I have a slight obsession with tiny alphabet stamps (I only own 5 or 6 sets of them so far, lol!) so I used one of them to stamp the 'hello' on the blue banner. 

I hope the recipient likes it! 

I have a 12-hour SB store crop coming up in October, and at the end of September I'm going to the Scrapbook Expo in Mesa-- I haven't attended one of those in years. I'm taking two classes, as well as attending a 16-hour crop, so I'd better get busy editing and printing photos, and designing layouts! :D

Calvinball- "birthday bourbon"

A two-page layout based on a sketch from a Scrapbook Generations sketchbook (really cool sketch books that give photo sizes, background paper dimensions, and suggestions for how to personalize and adapt the sketches to your needs.)

This layout is Tom's birthday a couple years ago, when we went to a Phoenix restaurant that served a brand of bourbon he had wanted to try for years that we first heard about in a television show we watch that's set in Kentucky. It's quite a highly-sought-after and very limited release bourbon (called Pappy Van Winkle), and I found out quite by accident that this particular restaurant / bar actually had all three vintages of it (aged for 15-yrs, 20-yrs, and 23-yrs). So, this was his birthday celebration, trying all three varieties. And eating some wonderful food, too...

I actually saved the napkin from the winning variety, and included it on the left-hand scrapbook page.  This layout also includes two banners made from patterned paper and crafting floss. 

Memories of a good time, even if the food photos aren't the greatest. I guess that just means we'll have to go back sometime to get some better shots, lol!

my other 12-hour crop pages

Here's photos of the other pages I worked on during the 12-hour crop on Saturday; I didn't think I had that many photos, till I started selecting them-- I'll try not to write so much to hopefully keep the post a bit shorter! 

Here's my Christmas 2013 collage page- we didn't put up any Christmas decorations to speak of, partly because of Zola (kittens + trees + glass ornaments = a disaster in the making!), and partly because there was so little time between Christmas and Thanksgiving. I did get out a couple small decorations, so this page is going to be titled 'a small Christmas.' (the crocheted tree reminds me of crocheted decorations my Grandma made, and the lighted ceramic tree is from Tom's Great-Aunt Marie, if I remember correctly.) The rest of the page is a mosaic composed of various pieces cut from the Christmas cards we received. (I always wonder what to do with the cards once Christmas is over, and this was a good way to keep them by saving 'parts' of them.) I did keep a couple cards whole; they'll get put into a regular 8.5x11 sleeve in the album next to this page.

a detail shot- hexagons are 'trendy' right now, so I thought it would be fun to use my hexagon punches to cut bits out of the card fronts. These particular ones are vellum (punched from part of my sister Judy's handmade card), and are attached using metal brads.

 Again, this layout was inspired by a scrapbook layout I came across on the internet and had pinned for safe-keeping. Mine turned out quite a bit different, but I love that I'm actually using some of them to make things from instead of just pinning more and more! (click here to see the inspiration layout, if you're interested.) 

This next layout was alot of fun to make, and turned out pretty much how I envisioned it would- do you know that feeling, when you know your project is working just like you wanted? I don't have that feeling very often when I craft (sometimes my projects seem to have a mind of their own and take a turn I don't expect), but I had that feeling when I made this one! 

the letters for this page were cut using my Cameo- the font is one I downloaded from the internet, called Airstream. (and yes, I can spell: I just need to cut another exclamation point,
because I lost the 'dot' that went with this one- lol!)

It's a fun, light-hearted subject, but one I knew I wanted to make a layout for. Tom and I both love authentic Chicago-style hot dogs, so when we heard they were building a Portillo's here in the Valley (finally!), we knew we had to go. The decor, the food, and the service were all top-notch, just like we remember from 'back home' in Illinois. I tried to capture that 'vintage diner' feeling of the place with the page layout (which is based on another Scrapbook Generation sketch). The journaling will go in the open space under the photo on the right-hand page, probably typed on a tag or on strips of white cardstock.

Somewhere along the way, I found a piece of scrapbook paper that I knew would be perfect for this layout; the paper design was all diner-style signs, which I cut out and put in that vertical area of embellishments. And the 'hot dog' is the Portillo's logo, which I cut from one of the paper bags our lunch came in! (They will ship their food all over the country, in case you're interested- lol!) 

The (somewhat obvious) page title is letters I cut with my Silhouette Cameo-
the font is one I purchased from their online store, called LD Brown Nose.
It's nice and casual, and I think I'll get a lot of use out of it. 

This layout is one I'm glad I finally got to work on- we did this hike back in early April, 2007!! I'm not a hiker at all (my idea of hiking is strolling through the preserve looking at birds, after all), so this is the first and only actual 'hike' I've been on since we've lived here. It was beautiful and impressive scenery, though, so I am glad we did it. (Only Tom managed the last bit to the very top; I wimped out right at the very end where you had to pull yourself up by cables using pretty much just your arm strength.) Oh, and I also got bitten by that cute squirrel you see, there, too- I need to add another page to this layout to explain that, and to add in the rest of the pictures I chose to include. (I also need to add some embellishments to this layout- with just paper, it looks a bit 'flat' to me, especially looking at it in a photograph.)

This shows the rest of the pictures I still want to include, along with scraps of the papers I used and a piece of coordinating cardstock. It's stored in a bag with the rest of the layout for now, till everything is finished. (I want to keep it all together so I don't accidentally use the patterned paper for some other project!)

And here's an example of a page kit I put together for some photos I didn't get to work on Saturday- but the papers and extras are all together in a gigantic zipper bag, so when I do have the time (and the inspiration) it will be a bit easier to get started. The photos are from a day I when visited the Arizona state Capitol in downtown Phoenix. I never got to visit the Illinois state capitol building when I lived there (Springfield isn't exactly next door to the Chicago suburbs, and I just never got around to traveling down there), so I really wanted to visit the Capitol here since we live so close. (It was pretty neat; I'll show some of the actual photos from the trip in a separate post.) 

Since it's the state capitol building (I'm not sure: are you supposed to capitalize 'Capitol' when you write it?), I chose some red, white, and blue papers, along with some more 'Western-type' papers like the denim patterned paper that I think is a photograph of real denim fabric, with actual sewing on the paper. Not sure which of these I'll use when I make the layouts, but they're all together, so they're easier to get to and part of the decision making is done already. 

One more photograph, that probably only another scrapbooker would 'get' my fascination with, lol! The dome of the Arizona Capitol building is covered in copper, and since copper- and mining in general- is an important part of Arizona state history, I included these two specialty papers in my page kit. It was tough to get a good picture of them, but both of these papers are metallic sheen to them, and the one has a brushed-metal feel to the actual texture of the paper. I don't know how I'll use them exactly, but I definitely will try to get at least one of them in there somehow! 

(apparently I don't know how NOT to be wordy... thanks for reading, if you made it this far- lol!)

12-hour crop (okay, slightly less)

So, yesterday I went to a 12-hour crop at the Scrapbook Barn in Gilbert, from 10 am to 10 pm. For once, I put together page-kits ahead of time- a collection of photos and papers that I wanted to use / thought might work well with the photos, and tossed in a few embellishments. Some people do much more 'kitting' than that, down to designing the layout, including letter stickers, pre-cutting papers, borders, etc. but I can't do that much of it ahead of time. 

I didn't finish getting ready till the last minute (what else is new, right?), so I was a bit late getting there- had to buy soda and snacks, of course! I took the page kits, my tool box, a few stamps, and whatever other papers and 'stuff' I could grab at the last minute. So, while I had the papers and photos I wanted, I didn't have some of my other essentials, like my ATG tape gun (!!), scratch paper, or a ruler- lol!! I couldn't work without my tape gun (I was seriously contemplating calling Tom so he could meet me halfway to drop it off-- lol!), so right when I got there, I had to run out to buy an adhesive roller. I figured I might as well get lunch out of the way while I was out, too, so I didn't actually start scrapping till, maybe, noonish?? But, I did get some pages (mostly) done while I was there, had a great time, and already signed up for next month's 12-hour crop (when I will hopefully be a bit better prepared- but don't count on it!). 

I didn't get any layouts totally 'done' (most still need journaling, and some still need titles) but I made a good amount of progress. Enough rambling; on to the photos, right?? 

This is the first layout I worked on, and like usual, it took me quite a while to 'get into' the scrapping process. The photos on the pages aren't the greatest, but I really wanted to include them in my album, since having 'real, live' wild horses around was such a cool thing to me when I first saw them (and still is). The journaling will be based on a news story I found that talks about the history of the horses living on the reservation. And it still needs a title, which I'm going to cut with my Cameo. The layout was based mostly on a Scrapbook Generation sketch from the travel sketches book. 

(as an aside, the red patterned paper is a sort of 'bandanna' print paper; I remember buying it years ago when we drove through Santa Fe on the way back to IL and WI on vacation- crazy that I remember that, right? I'm glad I finally found the perfect layout for it!)

         

     

These photos show a bit of my working process- I try out different photo arrangements from the sketches on plain white cardstock, decide which arrangement I like best, and take a picture of it so I don't forget how I wanted them. (This method works great for me, since my memory for this kind of stuff is horrible.)

a close-up of the embellishment cluster on the right-hand page-
I'll put something similar on the left-hand page, probably up near the title. 

This layout was based on one by Lisa Dickinson that I pinned ages ago-
you can see the inspiration layout on her blog, here. 

I've wanted to make this page for quite a while-- it's just a couple pictures I took last fall when we were on a short walk around the neighborhood, but I had a particular reason why I wanted to scrap them. During this walk, a car followed us around the block, pulled up to the curb, and the people inside got out and asked if they could pet our dogs. (To which we said, 'sure!' because they love getting attention!) The woman said they used to have a Sheltie years ago that they really loved, and seeing our dogs brought back good memories of their dog. We love our dogs, of course, but it makes me feel good to know that they could bring back good memories to someone else, so I wanted to document that. (that story will go on the library card.) 

A close up of the upper-left embellishment cluster: a bit of stamping, and a couple small pieces of patterned paper. The heart was popped up with foam tape. (I still need to add the date the photos were taken).  

A closer look at the heart cut-out card. I cut this card with my Cameo to be the same size as the photos (I used the small cut-out hearts on the corner embellishments), and backed it with a piece of patterned paper. To give depth and emphasize the cut-out areas, I added tiny (I mean, tiny!!) bits of foam tape between the card stock and patterned paper so it would cast a bit of shadow. (doing that was a pain, but worth it, I think.)

The letters stickers are foam Thickers, which are raised / dimensional.
I just love this font; it's beautiful! (they have a bit of glitter on, too.)

This was the fastest page I made all day, maybe my fastest page ever. I mean, really, really fast: it only took me about 15 minutes to come up with this layout and put it together! These were the first pictures I took of Zola, when I saw her in the pet store for the first time: I went in at lunchtime on a Friday and happened to see her, took the pictures, and went back to work and immediately e-mailed them to Tom-- 'hey, what do you think about getting another kitten?' Then I went back after work to see her again, and we both went the next day to see her again, ultimately deciding to bring her home! (I mean, really: who could resist that cute pink nose and the gray splotch on top of her head?!? lol!) The journaling will go in the empty 'quadrant' on the pink ledger paper, with a bit of writing on the heart tag at the top. Oh, and I just remembered- I do have a wood veneer heart that I painted white; it will go in the lower right-hand corner, to bring a touch of white to the other side of the page.

I have a couple more layouts mostly done, which I'll post separately. I hope you all had a good (scrappy, and otherwise!) weekend, and thanks for checking out my scrapbook pages!