Peruvian Hairless Dog

Yet another Peru page done! There's still a little pile of pictures on my desk, but it is going down. :)

Thought I would just have some fun with this page. The picture is from our Cusco city tour. We went to an alpaca textile factory as part of the tour. With so much wool around, it was strange to see a dog with no hair. He was one of those Peruvian Hairless dogs. He had his own alpaca sweater even!

To keep with the fun of the picture, I went with bright colors. I thought these Thickers in this fun font worked perfectly too. The sketch is one from Creative Scrappers #97. I had a little fun with my white gel pen too and doodled a bit. :)

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Patterned (Colorbok), Solids (Martha Stewart, Stash)
Embellishments - Flowers (Prima), Brads (Recollections), Alphabets (American Crafts - Thickers), White Gel Pen (Sakura), Corner Punch (EKSuccess)
Sketch - Creative Scrappers #97

First Sewing Project!

Here's my first attempt at putting stitching in my scrapbook layouts! It was quite fun! I tried my hand at the zig-zag stitch on my new little machine. I did do the cheat where pieces were already glued down and then did the sewing. I'm not that talented to actually adhere it with the stitching.

This page is about one of our tours of Cusco. At one point we had a great vantage point to see a good portion of the city in its valley amongst the mountains. What a view, eh?

This layout also follows the sketch over at Creative Scrappers exclusive for their challenge with Scrapbook Nook. It's been a fun month over at there as they celebrate their birthday month throughout April. Not too many days left to get in the action, so be sure to hop over there for some great scrapbook inspiration!

One element I like about this layout is the chipboard braces. I decided to do the little trick that I had done back on this page with some more chipboard. This time I did the same paper as my background paper for some tone on tone action. This goes along with the altered embellishment challenge over at Creative Prompts.

I think I'll see some more sewing in my future for my scrapbook layouts. :) What a great early birthday present! My DH is the best!

TIP: To get an uppercase letter out of a set of Thickers that are all lowercase, consider using the numbers. Here I used the zero for my capital letter!

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Patterned (Blue - Pressed Petals, Green - American Crafts A La Carte), Solid (Martha Stewart)
Embellishments - Chipboard (Stash), Border Punch (Fiskers), Distressing, Alphabets (American Crafts - Thickers), Ribbon (Target)
Sketch - Creative Scrappers

Farewell Peoria

I suppose it is only fitting that I decided to do this page about Peoria this week. This past weekend DH and I headed to Peoria for a wedding for two good friends. Here's a picture from the event.

It was the first time I had been back there since the week of the photo in this layout. I thought this photo went well for a layout based on Sketch #96 at Creative Scrappers and served as a nice break from some of the Peru layouts. I'm working hard to catch up all of 2009 yet!

Here's the sketch:






Here's my take:

I haven't done many layouts that are not jam-packed with photos, but sketches are a great way to have me step out of my comfort zone. Also, they offer a great way to have me scrap some of those events that I might not have done due to only one or two photos of note. I carried through the Mexican restaurant theme we were at by using some fun patterned paper from American Crafts. The rub-ons are also from American Crafts, which satisfies the challenge over at Practical Scrappers (a new scrapbook challenge blog I recently found).

DETAILS:
Paper - Solid (Martha Stewart), Patterned (American Crafts - A La Carte)
Embellishments - 1" Circle Punch (EKSuccess), Corner Punch (EKSuccess), Circle Cutter (Fiskers), Circle Journaling Stamp (Autumn Leaves), Ink (Excelsior Green), Alphabet Rub-Ons (American Crafts - Eddie)
Sketch - Sketch #96 at Creative Scrappers

(And remember there's blog candy for my 100th post! Check out this post for more details!)

Sketch #95 @ Creative Scrappers

I'm being pretty productive today. This is actually my second layout today (the other will be revealed at a later date...oh, the suspense!). Continuing with MachuPicchu layouts, I used the Sketch #95 over at Creative Scrappers for this one.





I really like this photo of DH and I. We were exploring around the ruins on our own and while we had plenty of the scenery and separate pictures of us doing various things, we thought one of us together was needed. We have gotten pretty good at those extend-your-arm-to-take-a-couple-shot photos over the four years of our relationship. It almost becomes a necessity or else we would always have to bug complete strangers all of the time. And being that we know most of our photos go in scrapbooks, we take a few just to make sure we get the shot. So, throughout all of that, we've had lots of practice at this particular shot. I think this one is one of our better ones. The lighting is just great on its own too. :)

I decided to make one of the rectangles in the sketch our tickets from MachuPicchu. The tickets have a lot of character with the paper feed borders and our official stamps to get into the ruins. DH knows to save anything and everything...it has a great chance of being in a scrapbook!

DETAILS:

Paper - Patterned (American Crafts - A La Carte, DCWV - Citrus Stack), Solid (Recollections)

Embellishments - Border Punch (Fiskers), Vacation Fun and Compass (DeJa Views)

Sketch - Sketch #95 at Creative Scrappers

(And remember....blog candy is being given away on this blog! See this post for details!)

MachuPicchu!

I've finally made it to our part of the trip where we visited MachuPicchu. This part came after our three day hike and one evening in Aguas Calientes. I have quite a pile of good pictures from our adventures exploring these famous ruins. The view was terrific! One thing I will recommend to anyone taking such a trip like this to Peru though, definitely do the trek! That was our highlight even over MachuPicchu, if you can believe it. The pictures are the best here, but the place is so touristy! We personally liked the laid back and slowness of the rest of our trip. But, probably just personal preference and you have to say that you've been to MachuPicchu if you're already in Peru.

So here's my first two pages about MachuPichhu. I went with more of the artistic and general viewpoint pictures we took first. I love that llama one! The next pages will have more of our exploring (and Hupert! you don't want to miss Hupert!). I used sketches #93 and #94 over at Creative Scrappers for this two-page spread. I first did the 1-photo layout, but saw that #93 would be a perfect compliment. Do you agree?

I enjoyed working with some papers from My Mind's Eye for these two pages. Just enough glitter and glitz but not to overpower my photos. I'm a very photo-oriented scrapbooker. I feel my photos should stick out more than anything else on the page, so that's why you don't see a ton of embellishments. Not to say that I don't have them, but I am finding that paper (patterned and solid) is more of my go-to for embellishing my layouts more than anything.

Thanks for stopping by!

DETAILS:
Paper - Patterned (My Mind's Eye - Organics), Solids (Martha Stewart, Wausau, DCWV)
Embellishments - Thickers (American Crafts), Circles (Fiskers Circle Cutter, EKSuccess 1" Punch)
Sketches - 1-photo (Creative Scrappers Sketch #94), 3-photo (Creative Scrappers Sketch #93)