Viva la Vida!

I worked on this layout over the past weekend at the chalet retreat. The pictures are from our trip this past March to Mexico, and I had already scrapped most of the book. There were just 2 more to do to finish the album but for some reason I put it off .

I wanted to use the colour red as a background and make it really vibrant. Papers are from Moon Doggie (ctmh)The layout is taken from Magic , also ctmh, and is called Backstage. I used a chipboard dimensional circle element to set off the circle. There are tiny adhesive twill fabric squares that I stamped , underneath the OLE letters on the right. Lots of brads and chipboard circles for texture. Best of all, I got ALL the journalling written into the album this weekend . Phew. I am very pleased with how it turned out!! Hope you like!

amor

This layout is about our dining romance at night in Mexico.

We enjoyed wonderful food in a gorgeous atmosphere!

I did a lot of marker blending with a watercolour brush on the chipboard title (amor).

Papers : Moon Doggie

Stamped Heart Image: Soul Mates Word Puzzle

brackets: irresistables chipboard

chipboard: Dimensional Elements Simple Alphabet

all materials are Close to My Heart

Majestic Blue / Bo Bunny 9 Square layout

Okay... I had fun on both of these... and let me know if I am overdoing the "squares" but as I explained to Beth, linear works for me. And being a paper addict, I could showcase some different textures here that blend in well with the ocean shots. The bleached wood with the surfboard just does it for me!

The photos again are from the Mayan Riviera , showing the beautiful coral beach. Our beach was almost overrun by coral. By saying almost, I hesitate to condemn it completely. Coral has its pluses and minuses... it is amazing to look at, and attracts gorgeous fish which are wonderful to view as you snorkel, but it is tricky to walk in on when it is close to the shore. Other than that, our resort was perfect in every way. I had more difficulty than Rick, but am having a total hip replacement August 16 that should eliminate my mobility issues the next time we take a resort vacation!

The first page is almost collage like, and was inspired by the Splendor layout by Close to my Heart. I am liking leaving some open white space too.

Materials:

Close to my Heart Majestic Blue papers

Bo Bunny chipboard and papers

Hero Arts paper flowers

Close to my Heart craft buttons and Journey Journalling Spots

Florabunda

Florabunda is a type of rose with many blooms... but to me, here, it means Floral Abundance.

Our resort was very well maintained and exquisitely landscaped.

I love the way palm fronds move , glisten in the light, and wave in the night. We had some spectacular giant ones in Mexico right outside our hotel room balcony . The colours were surreal: the bright orange and blue painted buildings were lit up at night to contrast with the pink and green foliage.

Beth joined me tonight and inspired this layout with a plan she had downloaded from the internet and printed off. Coloured resist Chipboard is from Close to My Heart . I also tried my new scallop punch that I bought at Lasting Impressions.

Majestic Quilted Beach Layout

I love the way this CTMH Majestic Blue paper kit looks with Beach photos. Really classic colours. I also added paper with sea creatures from BoBunny (Paradise) that just looks super. I bought the adhesive Chipboard stickers today to fill in those squares. I will repost when they are added, along with journalling.

I love quilting with paper squares like this!

My friend B... N...... is coming over tomorrow night, for a girls scrap evening! How wonderful!!

I will post results soon.

hot hot HOT

I always liked that song... it gets me in a party mood when I go away.

Rick and I both love the heat, and love to bronze in the sun.

Mexico is unfailing when it comes to hot sun in March.

We had a spectacular resort , the Gran Bahia Principe Tulum.

Our resort had 5 pools, of which we used 3 .

Our club diamond pool was smaller but nice and quiet (the way we like it)

These photos are from the main pool where they do the water aerobics and fun activities (noisy after a while).

You could put your loungers right into the pool on a ledge if you wanted to!

This 2 page layout was done with You Rock papers from Close to my Heart.

I just love the bright goldrush yellow paper against the bright blue and the deep navy of the outdoor denim. I used irresistables Lots of Dots adhesive alphabet for the title. I used part of a bracket page that I bought at Phebes store in Petrolia to journal on. Also, some crazy flowers that I think also came from Phebes store... with CTMH jumbo brads.

The design was just a spontaneous thing. Going with less is more, at the moment,

and trying to journal in more detail.

Apologies: the third pic is turned sideways but I couldnt correct it. the other 2 pics loaded correctly with the same settings!

Adios Dominican

Awe.... It kind of makes me tear up just to see the 3 of us saying goodbye at the end of our trip... it may be a while before the 3 of us can splurge and do this again... I sure hope not! Chloe is off to college in the fall. I hope my kids remember this trip with fond memories !

I used a buttercup cardstock circle to envelope the photo with the clear overlay . I wanted a yellow sunset ... at the end of our book. I knew I would add some swirls . The adios tag was a last minute thought... backing it with circles from Emporium is brilliant because by cutting around the circles I got a scallop frame. I added some off white cardstock backing to show the details on the top of the overlay because Peggy told me they were lost on the yellow. Mind you , Peggy just had a cataract operation when she saw the plan for this layout ... lol that just occurred to me.

other ctmh elements: Moon Doggie tropical blue hibiscus print, cocoa diecut circles, oxford colour ready alphabet, journey journalling spots, chocolate rub ons (family, together, happy, smile)

The final Dominican posts....

Oh I am so pleased with how my last 3 pages turned out... I am going back through the entire album at this point to add, tweak, rewrite some of the journalling, but the Dominican 09 album is finished. (March.... July... 5 months?) You know what, I am not in a race to finish "events". My goal is to choose a special event to scrap... not every photo I take this year is going to be scrapped by any means. This trip, Coltons 16 birthday are done. Chloe's pre prom party and birthday are next. Some travel this summer and my 50th birthday will be included for sure this year , and as always, Christmas. No stress... just fun, planning, saving new ideas to try... I still like scrapping very much.

I used buttercup, cocoa, and Moon Doggie papers for the basis of these 2 pages. I used the large cocoa diecut frame to trace and create the smaller buttercup frame on the second page so that the border motif would tie together on both pages. Orange was my "pop out" colour, because of Connor's shirt. I think orange and blue are a neat combo. I found the Basic Grey pattern chipboard "matched" extremely well with CTMH papers. I am also loving those library card tags for handwritten journalling.

The photos show 11 of us friends and family at Golden Village Playa Dorada Dominican Republic . The resort is geared towards kids and families, and we enjoyed the wave pool and water slide as well as the ocean , snacks and drinks at the pool , together.

WE R Family

I love this photo so I enlarged it to be the focal point of an entire page.

Meeting my brother , his wife and daughter, on the last day of our Dominican trip was the most fun of all! All of us had huge smiles .

I used a die cut frame by Close to my Heart , to encircle the photo; the little postcard is Ctmh Journey Journalling Spots; ctmh colour ready alphabets in oxford; Emporium papers, and my Basic Grey designer rub ons and chipboard stickers which were selected specifically to complement the colours and designs in Emporium.

Four pages to go in my Dominican Album!

11 photos from Playa Dorada

We had a great day with my brother and his family and friends at a nearby resort near the end of our stay in Puerto Plata. The most amazing conch man was showing us how to remove a live conch from its shell. Chloe could not get enough of it. She ended up buying a beautiful large richly hued shell from him .

This layout is an 11 photo spread of eleven people ! I had difficulty eliminating photos since there were so many of us involved and the shots my brother took were great.

I used Emporium and Crystal Blue Cardstock and kept it simple. Sizing many of the photos down to four inches helped. I think that for the next event I scrap, I will print more 3 by 5s . 4x6 seems so huge when you are doing a bunch!

There is no title as of yet... maybe 11 of US . or 11 is grand on the sand. Hmmm.

I will think further.

I have the rest of the book "laid out" loosely so it is going to go quickly.

HOT reservations... finally with Moon Doggie.

Yesterday was beautiful beach weather here in the Grove so I went down to the lake and lay on the sand for the first time this year, watching teenagers playing football in the water. So relaxing. I walked in up to my waist to a little sandbar just to cool off . The crisp smell of the lake brought memories back. Today its a muggy day here, a bit overcast, so scrapbooking won out over being outdoors!

Dining out in the Dominican was a nightly event which we all looked forward to together.

We would dress up and enjoy a wonderful meal someplace different every night!

When I started this layout I definitely had the floral paper from Moon Doggie in mind. But when I put the photos up against the surfboard paper, I liked it very much. I also used a plain wooden boards and found the reverse side was a subdued red, so I alternated two pieces from a 4 x 12 strip.
I coloured the word HOT in the title in Citrus leaf , Topiary and Tulip markers to pop it out.

I used ctmh Moon Doggie papers , ctmh Bold Colour Ready Alphabets, Basic Grey chipboard, and ctmh Journey Journalling Spots.

I am really happy with this layout. It took me about an hour from start to finish.

Under Water

The title for this layout came to me after I made up the subtitles: seascapes and rainstorm.

Thus, Underwater Seascapes and Underwater Rainstorm. (in the latter it felt like we were under a lot of water) I used colours to reflect the greens and grey blues of the ocean. The Dominican coastline was really interesting, in that many villages were built on jagged cliffs. And the houses were just a level up from shacks so seeing them appear on the rugged rocks was astounding.

Normally I love snorkelling but this day was a cool one, and I was worried about my daughter being seasick the entire time. The kids took pictures of the fish with an underwater camera but they were not as bright without sunlight in the water.

In the Rain layout, I wanted to convey with photos the amount and force of the rainfall we were subjected to. You can see the big raindrops bouncing off the flooded sidewalks in the picture that shows people jogging along with towels over their heads.

And yes , we weathered it.

I copied the shape of the dark grey chipboard label on the Rain page by tracing around it and cutting it out of regular cardstock. It is kind of a Persian shape. Or would you say Arabic. I am a great believer in tying elements together over a two page layout, and also over an entire "theme" album. Certain things can be consistent, without being repetitive (boring) : the font for titles, for example, or certain colours. This album is certainly blue and green, with a mix between so far 2 CTMH paper packs, Emporium and Caprice. Moon Doggie is yet to come

Parasailing and a Hot Tip for measuring colour

Just a fun layout that i built this past Friday night. I have always wanted to try those diagonal lines across adjacent photos. diagonal = action

Hot Pink was chosen as the accent colour in a limited quantity, to highlight my daughters bathing suit and plastic sunglasses.
tip: I use a triad of colour in my layouts that complements or contrasts with the subject of the pictures. Here, in this case, I was looking at the water and at the parachute colours and choosing different hues of blue until I get a good look. I think of my most important colour as a gallon, second most important as a quart and accent colour as a pint . This way I can accent with brights on top of neutrals without looking gaudy.

I added Clear Heidi Swapp daisies and pink CTMH rhinestone flowers to complement the tiny flowers on the background paper. The title is with colour ready adhesive alphabets . They come in white and you colour them with your markers, peel and attach. For consistency I am using the "bold" font throughout the album.

*****Prayers go to Tori Stafford ... all of Ontario weeps for you. *****

kiss your children and hold them tight

beachin it

well, i got down to the studio and forged ahead with 2 more dominican pages tonight so i am ready to share the results . getting the right colours and choosing the right photos took some time.

no stamping!! just our papers.... a tiny bit of vellum from my stash, and our wonderful stickease! i could easily use a half dozen sheets to finish my travel album ... LOL i used my caprice brown stripe papers with the emporium blue pattern since the blues all blended nicely and i think it gives the layout an eclectic look rather than "matchy-matchy"

Puerto Plata Mangroves

First layout completed. This Emporium paper was used as a full sheet without any layout design, since I simply have so many photos of the beautiful trees lining the beach at Playa Dorada. Mangrove trees are the first woody ecosystem when a low lying coastal area is approached from the ocean .I really like the preprinted floral chipboard I purchased in London so I am including it in the picture for you to see.