Mini Album: Barcelona

If you've stopped by sometime over the last week, you will have likely read some references to a recent mini album or perhaps even seen some sneak peaks of said album.  Well, today is the big reveal!

I often feel that it's difficult to do mini books or albums justice with just photos alone so I have a video to share with you below - I hope you enjoy seeing it from beginning to end.

And if you'd like a closer look at the specific pages, here are photos of each page, plus the covers.  For the record, in retrospect I quite like how the front cover turned out and I sort of wished I'd left the back blank (but I did the back first as a test).  Anyway, I know my friend will like it either way.

Mini Album: Barcelona

Title page (above) and itinerary (below).

This first chapter includes all of the tours we went on: hop on/hop off bus tours, cable car up the mountain and the walking tour of the Gothic quarter.

The second chapter details the important sights we saw, including a number of Gaudi's impressive works - Sagrada Familia, Casa Batllo, La Pedrera.  Also the concert house and some (unknown) arch.

The third chapter is one of my favourites - food!  We enjoyed paella, churros, tapas, a lot of seafood, creme Catalana and sangria, just to name a few.

The fourth chapter is all about the other fun things we did; not necessarily the big sights but also worth a visit - flamenco dancing, Catalan historical museum, ICEBARcelona and L'Aquarium Barcelona.

The fifth and final chapter is called 'Real Life' and talks about the unfortunate (but some funny) incidents that befell my friend during the trip, our three country hop back home and a little good-bye tribute to Barcelona.  I also left several large blank pages and put in a page for writing in various snippets for my friend to fill in (she loves to write); as a way to further personalise her album.  The last page also includes an extra large pocket for her to put in memorabilia and any extra photos she decides to print off herself.

Back cover (above).

And that's it!  All in all, I spent about three days putting it all together and I'm looking forward to finally giving it to her this weekend.

 

Hope you enjoyed seeing my first ever mini album.

WIP Wednesday

Awesome news today - after three weeks, I finally have running water again!  Such a relief.  And it would appear that my bathroom is ready to begin tiling now (and is no longer Smurf blue, thank goodness).

So with the renovations progressing, I've been working on getting back into my crafting groove.  I'm working on starting a new project.  Remember these?

I found the local Panduro Hobby shops in town have started carrying the Simple Stories Snap! mini album collections so I scooped up the lot - binder, 6x6 paper pad, pockets, 3x4 journaling cards, extra binder inserts - the lot!

I don't want to give too much away, but here is a sneak of some of the photos that will be going into the project:

Bonus points to anyone who can correctly identify where my friend Alice and I were.  ;)  I'm just finishing uploading the photos right now and they should arrive on Friday so I'll be able to start putting everything together this weekend.

I've also been catching up on my Nice People, Nice Things embroidery - it was one of the few things I've still had access to during the renovation and that wasn't filthy and in need of cleaning before using.  I'll try to get some current photos of it in natural light for next week.

August Haul & Amsterdam Title Page

Well, I'm happy to say that the first week of classes is over and it's the weekend!  Time for a much-needed rest and a return to crafty goodness.  I have two things to share with you today - the first is a video of my August 2Peas box of goodies (AKA the 'haul' video) and the second is a layout using several of these new supplies - yeah!  So, let's get started, shall we?

My latest purchase has focused on two collections: The Pier by Crate Paper and Hello Again by Carta Bella with a mix of embellishments that will compliment both of these collections and easily be rolled into my existing stash.

Note: My apologies for some of the funky shadows - everything looked fine when I was setting up and of course during filming huge clouds rolled in and blocked out the natural light.  And a freight train chose to pass by half way through, too - the unpredictability of living on an active railway.

And now a new layout using some of these fun, new supplies.  This is a title page to go into my travel album for my Netherlands chapter.

Amsterdam

It features a photo enlargement from Keukenhof Gardens and I chose the large, rainbow chevron paper from The Pier to compliment and draw out the beautiful colours of the flowers in the photo.  I also used the Kensei chipboard Thickers for the title and layered them on top of my photo in some white space.

I wanted to keep the embellishments somewhat simple so as not to detract from the photo but I just couldn't resist clustering in some slide frames.  I backed each of them with coloured paper and layered up stickers, flair and a cork arrow.  I also used a few more of my Amy Tan Yes, Please vellum stickers - the tree was just too perfect for this LO and I loved how perfectly the 'delightful' sticker fit into the frame and paired it with a 'memories' phrase sticker, which leads nicely into the title further along the page.

And that's it - just keeping it simple today.  I feel like I've been out of my scrapping routine for some time now am feeling a little rusty so this was a nice warm up to get back into the groove.  Expect more soon.

Keukenhof Snapshots

So last week I was following CHA-S quite closely through manufacturer blogs and 2Peas but I didn't have much inspiration for anything new to scrap, even though I wanting to get in on some of the 2Peas CHA challenge action.  Thankfully, my friend Anya came down to visit for the weekend and we enjoyed some crop time together and that really helped to inspire me into working on a new page, with the bonus of being able to catch up with a good friend I've not seen much in the last year - thanks, Anya!

So I decided to finally start scrapping some of my Amsterdam holiday photos from 2011.  I spent an entire day at Keukenhof gardens and have probably close to 100 flower/garden photos and let's face it, it's pretty darn difficult to not find beautiful flowers inspiring (or at least, for me).  So here's my finished page:

Keukenhof Snapshots

I started by pulling out my absolute favourite flower photos, looking for a selection of different types, shapes and colours.  That narrowed things down to 24 photos, which I thought was fairly impressive on its own.  Later I paired this down further to 12 photos.

I decided that using Polaroid-style frames would be the best way of featuring so many photos on a page so I got to work hand-cutting scraps of white cardstock.  Since I wanted the photos to remain the focus point, I chose to use a tone-on-tone design.  I used a black fine-liner pen to doodle around the frames and then found a distressed patterned paper sheet that also had a doodled frame around it for the background - perfect!

My original thought was to use a grid layout, perhaps titled and with the photos staggered to give it some movement and energy on the page.  Then I decided it would be cute to have the photos hanging from little washing lines instead and found some natural fibre twine that would fit well with the nature-theme and tone-on-tone design.  I also used some natural wooden mini clothes pegs to highlight my favourite photo of the bunch and I also clipped one onto my journaling card.  The rest of the photos I attached to the line using washi tapes.

I'm always very good when I go on holiday about keeping memorabilia but I'm less good about organising and storing it once I get home.  I had all of my Amsterdam bits and bobs in a plastic bag (and knew where to find it - bonus!) but I often get so into making a travel layout that I forget to check the bag and pull out material to plan into the page until too far into the design process.  But not this time - I got into that bag and pulled out my e-ticket, Keukenhof business card and train ticket to the gardens and decided I would work them and the journaling card into the design using a glassine bag, which would also help to cover up a motif on the background paper that didn't fit the page and I layered all of that under the last photo.

Again, because I wanted to keep the photos as the focus, I used basic black Thickers and letter stickers for my title and I stamped in a grey that wouldn't be over-powering on the page.  I also kept my embellishments minimal (although Anya teased me that she would have stopped *ages* ago - ha!).  I was also quite pleased with myself that I managed to work in the magenta coloured vellum stickers from the Yes, Please sticker sheet - I love how virtually any colour will work with most flowers.

I cleaned up quite well on the challenge prompts with just this one layout (totally impressed myself):

• Stash Busters - use scraps (white cardstock for frames)
• 2Peas - Glitter Girl (focus on photos)
• 2Peas - Scrap Your Stash (use frames)
• CHA 3 Pieces of Memorabilia (tickets x2, business card)
• CHA 4 Elements of Nature (flowers, birds, butterflies, ladybird)
• CHA 5 Senses (journaled about sight and scent)
• CHA 10 photos (used 12)

Weekend crop results - Anya with her finished page and my nearly-finished page:

Such fun!  I'm very much looking forward to when she moves back closer, hopefully in the next few months, and we can do these things more often.