First Look: Peru!

So my card making has been on the slow side lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been creating! I have lately been returning to my scrapbook roots and working on my honeymoon scrapbook of our trip to Peru. I've had the pictures printed since about October (all 200+ of them). While we have shown some of our family and friends some of the pictures through iPhoto, I feel showing them through this book will be 10x better, for we'll have our little memorabilia and the stories to go along with it.

Not many trips get big 12x12 books to call their own, but 2 weeks in Peru warrants it. This book will join our big 2 week book about Europe.

With this book I'm also trying out a lot of new layout techniques. I have always been one that likes to cram lots of photos on a page, so finding sketches for layouts that do the same has been great. But, I'm also trying a few layouts that don't cover the entire page. I'm enjoying it! It is very cool to see something different on each page. (I love my old style too, but I'm glad to see my scrapbooking styles evolve.)

So with that, enough chit chat and here are a few of my favorites from the first few days worth of the book:

Here's the cover layout. I got the Peru die cut from a scrapbooking expo. My DH was the one that inspired the Peru map to be there. He loves to include maps and I agree that they make sense to show people that view the book where we are.

Second page with our flight plan to get to Peru. Again, the maps compliments of my DH. Oh, and he influenced the TACA plane on the page too. I love that he likes to help with my layouts!

My first clustered layout. I love how the American Crafts elements helped make this page what it is. I love Thickers! This page is about Lima and the Kitty Tree we found on the main square in Miraflores.

Another page about Lima, specifically our lunch. We took a lot of photos of our food and it has been fun to remember what we ate there. Sometimes the food was pretty normal, but sometimes it was an adventure. Another clustering layout where I let the paper be my embellishment.

I love two page spreads, although not many have made it in the book yet. I'm also finding my stamp collection is quite helpful in creating titles in any color that I want, although if you know me, I am the queen of alphabets and have an entire collection! I like this layout because it's a mixture of postcards and our photos. (TIP: The postcards help document where we couldn't take photos of directly, but yet I could still scrap them!)

This layout goes a little more to my usual layout style (haphazard? is that what it's called?). A lot of elements on this page but it is the introduction to our next city, Cusco. I love doing filmstrips on layouts and this one is filled from a postcard with many pictures of Cusco, for it fit the openings very easily. DH came up with the polaroid-style picture of us in our hats. I think it's a great way to get in a photo that probably wouldn't have directly fit in a layout otherwise. (Notice again the plane, this time with LAN.)

This is my latest layout. It captures about day 5 on our honeymoon. We were with our guide heading to the start of our trek, but stopped for a visit our first site of Inca ruins. A simple layout but one that I think came together perfectly! I really like the Basic Grey wavy paper I got the middle element from. I then proceeded to mat the photos in corresponding colors. I even found a title from matching stickers by K& Company!

Well, if you've made it through all that, thank you! I hope you like this diversion to some of my scrapbook layouts. I'll try to put another batch up when I get some more done. :)

Thanks for looking!