Paper

Love Cards

| cristina

I made a page using some new printables by Ali Edwards.

The cards come in bold, fun colors and I picked some black and white papers in my stash to go along with them.

I love how this page turned out! I added some journaling inside the pocket too.

Hello Twenty Fifteen

| cristina

Yeah, I guess I am on a roll with pages welcoming the new year. 🙂 But when I saw these new brushes by Ali Edwards, I couldn’t resist!

I knew I wanted to use one of the brushes in a bold way. So I added a gradient color overlay, and printed it out on white card stock. Then I spent a loooong time stitching around it with four different thread colors. [why do I always underestimate how long it takes to hand stitch something?? LOL.. But it was totally worth it! ;)] I thought about adding some small photos + journaling + embellishments around the word art, but then I decided to make this a 2-page layout instead.

I just added some stamping, a journaling card and a photo on the second page, and scattered a few stars throughout.

I love how this turned out!

First hybrid/paper page of 2015: done! 🙂

Goodbye 2014

| cristina

As the year comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to look back at 2014. It has been a good crafty/memory keeping year for me.

I took close to 5,000 pictures on my dSLR and ~2,000 on my iPhone – indeed, I love my big camera!!
I made:

  • about 115 digital layouts,
  • 28 paper layouts,
  • ~36 cards,
  • 3 mini books (a fourth one – December Daily 2014 – is on its way),
  • a dozen tags,
  • and 42 weeks documented in my 2014 Project Life album (slowly but surely, I’m catching up on those remaining 10 weeks).

Here are just a few of my favorite pages from 2014..

 
  

I tried new things: die cutting, letterpressing. I attended my very first crop and met up with some online friends.

It has been a good year. And now, bring on 2015! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December Daily Update

| cristina
I want to give you an update on how my December Daily album is progressing. Last month I talked a bit about what my plans were for this year, and it’s time to check in and see how I am doing.
My plan for this year included: handmade album, with pages of different sizes; one story per day.
As fate has it, this December has turned out to be by far the busiest I have  ever had. I thought it would be hard to top last year’s craziness, but it has indeed happened. In the past two out of three days I have been at the office from 8 AM to 10:30 PM. And I see no end in sight, yet Christmas is less than a week away. Ugh! So while I am not up to date with my December Daily album, given that I have very little time to work on it, I have made a little progress and I have been taking photos regularly and keeping track of what story I want to tell each day. I hope to get a good chunk of it done just before Christmas, because I know my inspiration dips significantly once Christmas Day has passed. 
I haven’t bought any new Christmas supplies this year, but I have a sizeable stash to draw from and it is fun to finally use all these pretty bits that I had been hoarding.
Now it’s time to show you some pictures of my album so far. I haven’t worked on the cover yet – I will do it at the end since I need to see what size my album will have. But I plan to include this pretty gold star vellum paper at the front. of the album.
 
And here’s what all my pages stacked together look so far. I have days 1-7 done at this point.
 
I love having pages peeking out. I think it adds a lot of interest to the album!
 
For December 1st, my story was about the tea advent calendar we got this year.
 
For this spread, I included a 3×4 pocket as a page to hold some journaling.
 
I like to include stamping in my album because I love stamps so much!

And now.. I’d love to hear from you! Have you been documenting your December? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Thanksgiving

| cristina

Yeah, yeah, I know… only 9 days to Christmas (!!!).. but I just scrapped a Thanksgiving page this weekend so I want to share it with you. 🙂

This page started out with the awesome Story Bubbles Brushes by Ali Edwards, and it quickly came together thanks to the fun background paper.
It was so awesome to have both my parents with us on Thanksgiving! I am so glad I took this photo of us with my tripod.

December

| cristina

Ah, December… I love this month because of Christmas, but I hate hate hate all the bustle of the end of the year deadlines! This year is especially bad… I have started working on my December Daily in the evenings, but I have only about four days done so far.

So for now all I have to share is the layout I made for the December gallery at write.click.scrapbook.

I am really in love with this page!! Not your traditional Christmas colors, but so festive nonetheless. 🙂

Pumpkin Patch

| cristina

I have a hybrid/paper page to share today, made with a bunch of digital products by Ali Edwards. I love how by using the digital elements I can start my design in Photoshop, so all of the guesswork is taken out of the assembly part.

Credits:

I created the background using a combination of digital stamps, and printed it out on American Crafts 8.5″x11″ card stock. Then I added my photos, a couple pieces of paper cut to fit one of the diamonds in the background, and some embellishments.
I couldn’t resist painting that word bubble to make it look like a pumpkin! 🙂 I love how this page turned out.

Letterpress and Scrapbooking

| cristina

Hello! I am sharing here the post I made yesterday for the write.click.scrapbook blog on letterpress. I just started letter pressing last week, and I am in love! A while back I showed you how to create a faux letterpress look using embossing folders, but today I want to show you how to do real letter pressing.
Here is what you will need:

  • Die cutting machine. I have a Big Shot.
  • Letterpress platform. I have seen people who say they can letterpress just by adding some cardstock shims and the regular cutting pads, but I didn’t want to have to guess every time so I bought the platform – and I have no regrets! Especially since letterpress paper is pretty expensive and I don’t want to waste it on trials.
  • Letterpress paper. The type of paper you use is critical to get a deep impression and get the most out of your letterpressing. I know some crafters have great results with watercolor paper, but that has not been the case with the watercolor paper I had on hand, so letterpress paper it is for me.
  • Letterpress plates. There are many designs available, I’m sure you’ll have fun picking your favorites!
  • Ink. To be honest, I have not tried letterpress ink just yet. I’ve heard horror stories about how hard it is to clean up, so I started going the easy way, and I have just used ink pads for now. 🙂 The examples on this page use distress ink pads (I love the bright colors). I also love doing blind impressions (no ink) as I think adding the ink detracts a bit from the deep impression. More recently, I tried pigment inks and also letterpress inks – the cleanup isn’t really that bad as long as you use the convenient wipes that come in the letterpress kit, and the coverage is the best!
With the idea of putting a page together, I made two letterpressed cards using plates from Studio Calico.
For the card on the left I used the picked raspberry color, and I added spiced marmalade for the card on the right to get an ombre effect.
I used the Poet Society kits by Studio Calico for my page. Using the letterpressed cards, it was very easy to build a design using my photo and some strips of patterned paper. I added some stamping with grey ink to tie to the background paper, and completed the page with some gold splatters and sewing.
Here are a couple detail shots.
I hope this has inspired you to give lettepress a try – I love how easy it is to put together a page starting from a couple of letterpressed cards. Share your creations in the comments! I’d love to hear your tips too, as I am just starting out myself.

Scrappy Blog Tour

| cristina

I was nominated by Jennifer Larson to be part of a scrap blog tour. Thank you so much Jenny!

1. What am I working on right now?
I am working on getting as many pages out of the Studio Calico Poet Society kits as I can. I have a tendency to hoard rather than use, and I am challenging myself to make the most out of this kit before  it’s time to go shopping again. 🙂 Here’s what I’ve made so far with it.

2. How long does it take me to create a project?
Digital page – 30-45 minutes, or less (from when I download the kit to when I’ve uploaded my completed page online).
Paper page – ~2 hours.
Project Life spread – several hours. Printing photos seems to take forever! I do it over multiple days/evenings.

3. What are my favorite things to create with at the moment?
Die cutting machine and Letterpress

Screenprinting has been super fun lately too.

4. How does my writing/creating process work?
I usually start either from a new product I want to use, or a photo I want to scrap. I get easily distracted, so I don’t like to spend hours on end on a project. 🙂

5. How do I become inspired and stay inspired?
It’s usually from the photographs I take. I get excited and want to scrap them right away. 🙂 I love my DSLR camera – I have a Canon 6D and I love it. Along with my 28 mm, 50 mm, 24-105 mm zoom and 55-300 mm zoom lenses.

6. What is my signature style?
I would say my projects tend to be on the simple side, not over-embellished, but I definitely love COLOR and STAMPING.

I nominate Lisa Truesdell, Nirupama Kumar and Celine Navarro. To my knowledge these ladies have not been on the blog tour before so I hope they’ll take part in it now!
ETA: Here’s Celine’s post!