February 6×4: Mulled Wine in Prague

I finally had a chance to sit down with some paper and photos and make something this weekend, it was lovely!

I made this layout as part of February’s 6×4 challenge, this month we need to use two photos (here’s my January one-photo layout) – I couldn’t find two portrait-oriented photos that I liked so I picked two landscape photos and cropped them down instead, which works much better I think.

Decided not to go with any journalling on this one, I think the title says it all :)

As you may have read in one of my previous posts, I stumbled across an amazing paper shop in Prague and ended up buying a bunch of vintage Czech stamps, so I wanted to incorporate these into the layout somewhere. I’m pretty happy with the end result, I was skeptical about whether glittery thickers and vintage stamps would go together but I think they look OK…

And that’s it!

If you want to find out more about the challenge you can read about it over on Shimelle.com or Two Peas.

Have a wonderful week!

N x

January 6×4: Perfect Weekend

So this year I’ve decided to take a break from any daily scrapbooking classes – I’ve been doing a few a year for the last couple of years so I want to take some time off in 2011.

Then I saw this one-layout-per-month challenge that Shimelle Laine is running and when I saw they all use 6 x 4 photos (which 99% of the time is the size I print) I was definitely sold. One layout per month is definitely do-able for me and having not used sketches much in the past it’ll also be something new and challenging.

You can see the original sketch & find out all about the challenge at Two Peas

Journalling reads: “We had the most perfect weekend away in Amsterdam in November ’10. Spent the days wandering the canals & browsing the beautiul shops in the 9 district. When we got tired we found a gorgeous little bar & enjoyed a pint of dutch beer, cheese & olives. Heaven!”

The grey patterned paper that’s been cut with a scalloped punch came from a gorgeous sheet of paper that I bought at an awesome boutique in Amsterdam – one of my favourite paper shop finds so far & I’ll be blogging about in the coming week!

Let me know if you’re taking part in the 6×4 photo layout challenge too, I’d love to see what everyone else is doing!

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And in other news, I’m off home to New Zealand in LESS THAN A WEEK (can you tell I’m excited?) so this weekend I will be doing two of my favourite things: writing lists & packing. yay!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend too!

N x

Crafty Weekend

This weekend I took part in Shimelle’s online crop, which was my first time doing something like this. I didn’t get to complete as many of the layouts or take as many of the photos that I wanted to, as I had a full day photography workshop on Saturday (and had to work on Friday unfortunately!). However, Sunday was my designated scrapbooking time and I got a few layouts done that I’m very happy with so it was a success.

And here they are…

1. The First Sketch

The photo in this layout was taken during my recent trip to Greece. Taken in Thira, Santorini just before sunset while we sat out on a terrace drinking cocktails, it was such a dream come true!

Surprisingly, this is actually the first sketch I’ve ever done and it’s my favourite layout from the weekend. I’m loving the navy blue, pale pink and white ribbon combo – I think I’ll have to do a whole layout in these colours soon.

2. Scrapbooking with Quadrants

The photo in this layout was taken in the Souks in Marrakech during our holiday to Morocco last year. I don’t think any description I write would do this place justice, it’s like nowhere I’ve ever been before. So much colour, intricate patterns, a mix of scents and flavours and a crazy yet perfect clash of cultures. A truly beautiful and exciting place!

The Basic Grey Marrakech papers were an obvious choice and it was perfect for this challenge which was to use a quadrant of papers.

3. Second Sketch and A Little Pink

I’m not sure if this is in the ‘rules’ or not but I combined two challenges here. I interpreted the second sketch and used a fair amount of pink at the same time. Oh well!

A little about the photos: the one on the left was taken in Barcelona at Park Guell, the photo in the middle was taken in the local park near by old flat where I spent a lot of time in the first 18 months I moved to London, and lastly the photo on the right was taken in Greenwich Park during a snappy outing with Shimelle and a few other girls last Autumn.

I hadn’t scrapped in ages before this weekend so it was fun to get back into it and get inspired again.

N x

Diana in Morocco

Hope you’re having a great weekend so far! This week I want to post a layout I made using my first developed photos from my Diana+ camera that my fiance gave me for Christmas last year. I’d had my heart set on it for awhile so it was the perfect present.

In case you haven’t heard about this adorable camera by now, it’s a recreation of (and homage to) the popular 1960’s Diana camera. It takes 120mm film and has the very technical aperture settings of sunny, partly cloudy and cloudy (represented by cute sun and cloud pictures). The photos they produce have been described as “dreamy, color-drenched, sometimes-blurry, and often-mindblowing” and above all unpredictable.

But that’s the beauty of it.

You never really know how they’re going to turn out and the best part is waiting to open up your packet of developed photos and seeing what you got. As much as I love my digital camera, there is something awesome about having to wait and see :p

This is the first layout I’ve done with photos from this camera, and the pics were taken during our trip to Morocco at Christmas time…

Supplies:

Bazzill Basics cardstock

Basic Grey Marrakech Vanilla Chai paper

American Crafts Shoe Box Thickers (I love this colour and I chose it because it’s similar to the aqua colour of the camera)

Making Memories Tiny Alphas

Scrapping With My Favourite Papers

I’ve had a lovely weekend so far – warm weather, sleeping in and a day of scrapbooking. Bliss!

I wanted to share with you a couple of layouts  – one I did yesterday and one from a few weeks ago. They both use papers from American Crafts that I’ve kept aside in a stack for ages. I’ve been too hesitant to use such pretty papers and waiting for something special to use them for because I just love them! I realise that’s absolutely ridiculous – it’s like buying an amazing car and keeping it parked in the garage! Am I alone here??

So a couple of weeks ago I decided to approach my scrapbooking with the papers first, photo second strategy (usually I decide which photos to scrap and then choose the papers accordingly) and funnily both layouts are photos from our holiday in Spain last summer.

Mucho bueno!

Mi Amor

Supplies:

Cardstock: Bazzill Basics

Papers: American Crafts Letterbox Papers in See You, Adieu and Greetings

Letters: American Crafts Poolside Vinyl Thickers

Journalling sprouts by Jillibean Soup

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Barcelona

Supplies:

Cardstock: Papermania

Papers: American Crafts Letterbox Papers in See You (I used the lemon coloured reverse side), Sir and Adieu (I used the seafoam coloured reverse side)

Letters: American Crafts Lullabye Foam Thickers in Charcoal

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I’m wondering, do you pick papers or photos first when you scrapbook?

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Nx

Dublin

Last year when I found out Fleetwood Mac were touring America I knew I had to make it to one of the shows. Luckily we were able to make it to NYC for a long weekend and we went to their show at Madison Square Garden – it was amazing and a dream come true. So when I found out later in the year that they were extending their tour to Europe I really really wanted to go again.

My fiance and I frequently had the conversation where I told him I had to go again and that maybe I should just put the tickets on my credit card. Sensibly, he kept telling me that I should just appreciate the amazing time we had at the concert in NYC instead of spending money I didn’t have to go again.

Annoyingly, I knew he was right.

Come October the Thursday before my birthday and we were hanging out in our room before bed, when he says “I’m going to give you your birthday present early” and hands me a standard white envelope. I open it and find e-tickets for return flights to Dublin for the weekend – amazing!

And then he handed my a second white envelope – and I was completely at a loss as to what could be in it. I tentatively opened it to find two tickets to Fleetwood Mac in Dublin for the Saturday night! Well you can imagine my excitement then – there was jumping up and down… and screaming.

Turns out as soon as he found out they were touring Europe around the time of my birthday he had planned it. I love that the whole surprise was covered up by him making me see sense about using my credit card and by me learning to appreciate incredible memories instead of trying to recreate them at any cost.

So after all that, here is a layout using some photos taken while touring the Guinness brewery in Dublin. Matt is a big fan of Guinness and it was great to have a pint right at the source, yum!

Journalling is on the other side of the bingo card

I love these fabric letters!

Hope you enjoyed the little story behind my layout.

Nx

Postcards From Me

I hope everyone’s having a good weekend so far!

I wanted to share with you a mini-album I finished just the other day. The idea for it came about because I usually end up buying at least a couple of postcards most places I visit and don’t end up sending them all (oops). So I had quite a few left over and thought they would make perfect pages for an album with pretty pictures on one side and space for writing on the reverse – ideal!

Each reverse side has a luggage tag made out of a photo from that holiday, a stamped journalling card with some notes and highlights of the trip and some little piece of memorabilia (I have boxes and boxes of this stuff from holidays that I never end up using!)

It was such a fun little project, and looking back over old photos and recalling the little things about each holiday was a nice way to remember it all. And, since the postcards have been bound with rings between chipboard covers I can easily keep adding to the album when I buy postcards on my next trips. Yay!

Early next week I’m going to post about an amazing photo treasure hunt that I took part in today – it was so much fun! If you live in London I would highly recommend it and you don’t have to have a snazzy camera or be an excellent photographer – after seeing the winning shots it was all about creativity in the end.

Until then, have a great weekend! I am off to a wedding show for some inspiration (and free cake hopefully).

N x

In Vino Veritas

This translates to: "in wine there is the truth"

Now that it’s cooling down here in London town, it’s nice to revisit warmer times.

My last significant holiday was a road trip in Spain this summer. Surprisingly, I still have heaps and heaps of photos to scrap from this holiday (so you haven’t seen the end of it yet!) and these set of pics are ones that definitely take me back to the exact time and place they were taken…

This town we stayed in is pretty much in the middle of nowhere in quite a desert-y part of Northern Spain. But, it was half-way back to Barcelona from where we were coming from and the town had several wineries so it seemed that as well as being a convenient place to stop for a night it would have something interesting (and by interesting I mean delicious) to see (and by see I mean taste).

So, one winery tour later (and a free bottle of wine which I thought was very generous!), armed with a recommendation of a good local joint for dinner from our winery guide, we (quite merrily) made our way there. Managed to navigate our way to La Cantina and order several basic, but very tasty Spanish dishes. And they were delicious…

Journalling reads: "A simple Spanish meal at a local restaurant in Carinena: olives, cheese, chorizo, prosciutto, salami and catalan bread. Divine!"

I guess the truth is, there’s something great about experiencing a place by taking a local person up on their advice and going to the unglamorous spot where the menu isn’t translated into English for us. Perfecto.

N x

A birthday challenge

So, it was my birthday recently and I was lucky enough to receive some very lovely presents.

I was especially pleased as my lovely presents were wrapped in lots of lovely things – think wrapping paper printed with mini cakes, red and white polka dot paper, ribbons and something that looked liked a miniature hot pink feather boa. Very interesting.

So I got thinking, and set myself a challenge to scrap some pictures from my birthday but using the wrapping papers and other lovely bits and pieces that had come attached to presents.

The result? It came out very differently to most of the pages that I make and I struggled a bit with the whole red and pink thing. I’ve seen it done very successfully before on other people’s layouts, so I knew it wasn’t impossible, which is why I used two papers from the Basic Grey Junebug collection to try and tie it together.

This ribbon was wrapped around some flowers and it's stuck to a cardstock pull-out tag which has a birthday message from my sister attached.

To highlight my greediness at having two cakes that day (!), I punched out a picture of a cake that was printed on one of the wrapping papers and glued the feather boa thingy underneath.

All in all it was really satisfying to step out of my comfort zone, and setting an interesting task certainly makes it easier to do this. I’m sure scrapping with birthday bits & pieces is nothing new – has anyone else tried anything similar? And did you have any particularly interesting materials you re-purposed?

N x

Spanish caravan

This photo really takes me back to our summer holiday in Spain this year. It’s taken near the very small town of Bierge in the Aragon region. The reason I love this photo so much is because we had quite a rough morning leaving the last town we stayed at (lets just say it cost us 100 Euro to get out of there) and we were very keen to get to our next destination and forget all about it.

So we arrived in Bierge, hoping for the best (we didn’t know much about it beforehand) and were totally blown away. Just a small town out in the country with rolling hills, olive groves, vineyards and friendly locals who didn’t speak any English (luckily the Chief can speak a little). Luckily, we had an hour to stroll across the fields to see the shrine of the town’s patron saint and take some photos before heading back to the house for dinner during sunset.

Needless to say I wish I was back there right now…seems a lifetime ago now that it’s dark at 5pm and i’m wearing the winter coat again!

N x