This week I got to help Lily Bee kick off their big fourth birthday bash with a layout that introduced their week-long blog focus on celebrations. There's a ton of inspiration (not to mention prizes!) over there this week!

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

While the design team was told we could scrap about any sort of celebration, I decided to stick with the birthday theme and scrapped some photos from Darren's big birthday dinner out last November. And while birthday layouts usually call for bright colors and lots of festive accents, the toned-down colors of Lily Bee's Autumn Spice (mixed with just a hint of Persnickety) were just perfect for D's fall birthday. He's a low-key sort of guy, anyway. 

I used lots of die cuts on this page to help break up the straight lines of the paper boxes. The "Celebrate" title was cut using my Silhouette, but the rest of the cuts are from various dies by Papertrey Ink. I especially love their star border!

And, yes, I do have some photos from this day with the birthday boy actually in them- they'll get scrapped on another layout. For this page I wanted to focus just on all that yummy Greek food!

pretty little studio february sketch layout

It seems fitting that the last post of my design team term with Pretty Little Studio is with one of Keri Babbitt's fantastic sketches. I loved working with this girl way back in my Sweet Peach Crop Shop days, and it was so much fun being on a team with her again.

 

Keri's sketches always inspire me to think outside the box, and with this one I made just a few changes to make it my own. I started by flipping the sketch on its side, and then I added an extra layer of embellishment down the left side of the page, moving the photos a bit more toward the center.

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

I seem to be reaching for kraft bags quite a bit during my scrapping lately- I love the texture and dimension they add, plus they make awesome photo mats. I also tucked a few punched star shapes into the bag's opening, then sprinkled a few more punches and veneer stars diagonally across the page to connect the photos to the title.

Just looking at these photos has me wanting to run again! It's starting to warm up enough outside now for my cold-o-phobic self to start running through the neighborhood soon, and 5K season will be here before I know it!

layout | poppy & sophie {pretty little studio} {video}

There's a little bit of My Mind's Eye in the background, a chunk of some gorgeous Dear Lizzy vellum in the middle, and lots of lovelies from Pretty Little Studio front and center on today's layout! (Not to mention some quite old letter stickers from Pink Paislee and KI Memories to help out with using up the stash!)

Supplies:

InLinkz.com

I filmed a video of this one, too, for my last tutorial post over on the Pretty Little Studio blog. And I edited out most of the part where I cut around the flowers- it was a tiny bit boring to watch!


I started this page off knowing that I wanted to use more of those little hand-cut pink flower clusters that made an appearance on my cherry blossom layout earlier this month, and as I was flipping through my other Pretty Little Studio papers I came across a sweet violet print that I thought would be rather lovely with them. Luckily I had lots of photos from Mother's Day last year, when we took Mom a bunch a hydrangea blooms from our garden that were also in shades of pink and purple. Those plus miss Sophie's bright pink dress were a perfect match!

I certainly haven't filmed as many scrapbooking videos as I've wanted to lately. During January and February I traveled a lot for work, and while I can almost always take along a scrapping project to work on, my camera and lighting setup for filming aren't quite so portable! I'm back home for a while now, though (I hope!), and I'm looking forward to making more of these little videos soon!

project life 2012 | week {pretty little studio}

This week's Project Life layout is one of those catch-up weeks from my 2012 album. I pulled out these fall-ish photos from Halloween week because I had some fall items from Pretty Little Studio to use, but in reality there's a lot more documented here than just fall activities!

I'm not completely unhappy with this week's layout, but there are some things about it that just aren't working for me. As a side note, I loved Monica McNeill's post a couple of weeks ago about how you're never going to love every week's layout in a big project like this- bless her for saying it! 

So, what's not working for me? The biggest issue is that it's just too busy. I tried to cram a lot of photos and a lot of paper patterns and different sizes of journaling cards in, and now that I look at it I'm pretty sure I could have done just one or the other and been okay, but the combination of both is just too much. Part of that stems from the fact that I was using just Pretty Little Studio items since this was one of my projects for them this month, and Pretty Little Studio doesn't have many papers with smaller or more toned-down patterns. This is a big reason I really love multi-manufacturer pages more than single manufacturer DT work- I do love Pretty Little Studio designs, but I'm really a mix it up girl and would have put some more subtle patterns from another company with these, given the option.

The second issue? Too many journaling cards! I really am liking the cleaner look lately of just one or a few blocks completely filled with text, and photos in the rest of the spots (like my Project Life layout for Lawn Fawn or the one I did for my Two Peas Project Life class last week). One of the reasons that I had so many journaling cards was the number of photos I tried to put on the page, which meant lots of small photos combined with tiny bits of journaling. Really, I should have just put a small insert with this layout to let everything else have some breathing room.

Oh, well, live and learn! I'm not stressing about it and will simply file this away with the other 51 layouts (or layouts in waiting) in my 2012 Project Life albums. One or two blips in the context of the entire year-long project won't hurt anything at all!

geek girl | february 24, 2013 {the doctor who edition}

We're just over a month out from the next set of new Doctor Who episodes (and the big 50th anniversary bash!), and I for one and totally intrigued by this new companion and excited to see where the writers go with her story. In celebration of that, today's Geek Girl roundup is all about everyone's favorite Time Lord!

 

From the top left:

• Cupcakes Take the Cake featured a lovely set of TARDIS cupcakes...with just a hint of River Song thrown in for good measure!
• You really can make calls from the big blue police box now with this TARDIS phone.
• Geek Alerts reports that a new set of Doctor Who socks is showing up in Hot Topic stores.
• New Zealand gets all the cool currency! First Star Wars, then The Hobbit, and now a Doctor Who version, too!
• This gorgeous Doctor Who perpetual calendar starts shipping in March and is available for preorder now.
• That's it, I officially have to learn to crochet now that I've seen this collection of dolls featuring all 11 Doctors and the TARDIS.
• Ordering for this lovely 50th Anniversary Doctor Who poster should be opening up any day now.
• Speaking of posters, I also love these amazing fan-made images!
• It's not technically Doctor Who news, but I thought I'd throw in that David Tennant, the 10th Doctor, will be returning to the Shakespearean stage to play in Richard II this fall. He was brilliant in Hamlet, and I hope that they bring this one to home video, as well!

And tooday's video is a fun mashup of Back to the Future and Doctor Who, with K-9 as the hoverboard!


MTFBWY!