Life Runs Away From You

Well I should probably start by saying that it's not that I haven't had time to do blog posts, it's just I've been so caught up in actually living my life, that I didn't think it was really that important to continue documenting my scrapbook pages. In case you're actually here because you like seeing what I create you can go to my TwoPeas profile (which is HERE), because a lovely group of girls there makes sure I don't slack off in uploading my pages. I actually may be creating more than ever, because I have a book for a friend to do, as well as a 29 page challenge list for the Young Scrappers group. SO I've been busy creating.

This summer, I worked two jobs, camp and waitressing, went to Orlando and Las Vegas, hung out with friends, went to the bar at the most once, and learned how beach volleyball requires a different level of fitness then court.

I tasted raspberry M&Ms for the first time and brought home my own bag.

I acted silly with my brother.

I got to see my two best friend again for extended periods of time. 

And I think it may have been the best summer ever.

But now it's back to school, back to homework, and back to spending time finding silly pictures on my profs slides like this bird from Psych:

I'm taking a pretty serious line-up of courses this year (Anatomy, Psychology, Philosophy of Ethics, Zoology (Vertebrates) and Botany), but the good thing is, I'm actually excited to learn about this stuff. I find myself going to home and actually studying, or feeling a little stressed when people are trying to get me to waste time. I'm looking forward to this year, I'm looking forward to the rest of my degree and I'm definitely looking forward to how it's all going to turn out. 

Hopefully I'll be back again soon, that is, if life doesn't run away from me again...

How I Scrap

So, continuing on with my 5 Ws and 1H of Scrapbooking, I'll show you how I put a page together. 

I always print out my pictures first, I find they help me get a page started. Then I grab paper that fits in the colour scheme I've chosen, including a neutral looking 12x12 page for the background, and a couple of scraps in neutral colours as well. For this layout, I decided to do some blue, yellow and orange as my colours as I was focusing on spending time in the sun with my cousins. 

Here, I've started piecing together my basic layout plan. I've cropped my pictures to the size I want and have places them approximately how I want them on the layout. I normally start with the pictures just laying directly on the background paper and then I start adding sheep of paper underneath (but not cutting them yet). Here I've also pulled out some embellishments I made a while ago but never used. The colour scheme seems to work with them, so I'll try to incorporate them in my layout. 

I've started creating a mat background for my pictures, I chose the golden yellow paper to be the main background and I die cut the word sunshine in the bottom corner. I added strips of yellow, orange and white paper to the top of the yellow to add some interest and also mask a square that was previously cut out of the paper. I also found these little orange zig-zag borders that I added to look like triangles. 

I punched out some heart confetti from paper scraps and stitched a vellum heart over them to keep them down without glue. 

Added the photos and some visual interest to the top corner to balance out the layout. (I also really wanted to add some of the orange gingham onto the layout). A blue heart was also cut out and stitched into place. All I have to do now is glue down the paper rosette and add a couple more details. 

The finished product, with a couple more strips of paper in the top left corner, a cute flower paper clip, an added sentiment over the sunshine diecut and the glued down rosette.

Hopefully now I'll get around to cleaning my desk so I can do the "Where I scrap" post next!

WIWW 3

1: A Golden Retriever Puppy. This one is an ongoing want, pretty much for the last 16 years of my life. The first word I ever said was the name of my neighbours golden retriever, and my first sentence was "Tika sit." I'm pretty sure this means that I NEED a dog, but my parents just don't believe me. However, my mom did promise that as my University graduation present, they would buy me any dog I want, so I'm pretty much set in 6 years or so :)

2: A new small purse. Whenever you go out partying with the girls, you never want to take a big purse with you. I already own one small one, but it's mint green and limits some of the things I can wear with it. If I could get a nice brown one, like this one from American Eagle, it would definitely give me more choices. 

3:The Little Bo Peep 6x6 pad from Crate paper: I love the pinks, yellows greens and florals in this pad, and I really love how the flowers are smaller prints so they're more useable. Also, the smaller pads are really useable and I always love flipping through a smaller pad of paper that's got matching colours. 

                                  

4: Certain papers from the Indie Chic line from My Minds Eye. I love the bohemian style of this line, the geometric floral prints, the colours, and the how everything matches. I just love how there are 3 or 4 collections of this one to choose from!

5: A trip to Venice. Ever since I read "The Book Thief" as a child, I've wanted to go to Venice. The book portrayed it as a magical place, and I love the idea of the canals. It's on my "next place to go" list, maybe I should make it official sometime by doing a page like Amy Tan did.

6: This lace scarf: Luckily I've already started making one of these for myself, instead of grey, it's plum coloured. There was a fabric shop that was closing out, so everything was 60% off. So the scarf maybe cost me $15 to make rather than $50

When I Scrap

I was thinking of doing the "Where I Scrap" post today, but the idea of taking pictures of my messy desk is a little scary. So today, we'll go for the when I scrap post.

Being a university student makes it difficult to balance study time and fun time, but when I also throw work and volleyball into the mix it makes it even more difficult. Usually whenever I can grab anything more than 5 minutes I'll sit down and continue working on a page I've got on the go. Usually this means I have 2 or 3 pages on the go at once, because sometimes I get tired of always thinking of the same page for days at a time. This also means that sometimes a page won't get finished for a REALLY long time (meaning a month or two).

Whenever I have a moment free from homework, or labs or all of my other activities, I like to plan pages or just come up with ideas. I have a notepad that's filled with page sketches and inspiring pictures.

I don't always use the sketches I make, but just taking time to think of new ideas usually ends up with a good starting point for a page.

What I Scrap (with)

Loni, one of my Young Scrappers friends, and my honorary scrapper "mom" just started her own scrap-blog (Loni's blog). She decided to start it off with posts about who, when, where, why and how she scraps. I absolutely loved the idea and I think I'll borrow it from her (though I would recommend checking hers out, she's a much better writer than I am, and if you have kids, you'll definitely be able to relate).

So as today is the second day, I am on to "What" I Scrap (With).


I own very little in the way of embellishments. Maybe a couple of chipboard pieces, three rolls of washi tape and some die cut pieces. Other than that, I make my own embellishments out of patterned paper. To say I'm addicted to patterned paper would be an understatement. When I post the where I scrap sections, I'll have a picture of my paper shelves and then you'll be able to see how much paper I have (I'm pretty sure I have more than 2000 sheets). Whenever I walk into Michaels, I automatically go towards the paper sections and usually I don't leave without something. I'll be the first to admit that I have a problem, but I definitely know my mother agrees with me. I mostly buy pads of paper, because it's cheaper and because all the papers coordinate with one another. 


My two absolute favorite packs of paper are both from K & Company:

The Poppyseed collection, I love the teal, green, purple and black. And poppies are some of my favorite flowers (even though these aren't red).

The Edamame collection, has tonnes of woodgrain patterns and neutrals. Some of my favourites for backgrounds. I definitely reach for this one first when planning a page.

Thickers are my new favorite thing. For titles I used to do a lot of stamping or hand cutting paper, but I never really liked the results. So when I got my first pack of thickers in a page pack I was hooked. Since the I've bought 2 of the packs of 10 from Winners and another couple of packs that I liked at Michaels. I love how many shape options there are, and how many colours and finishes there are to choose from. Unless I cut a title out of paper, I always use Thickers.

Some of my new favorite things to work with on my pages are paint, specifically Acrylic and Watercolour. I find acrylic easier to work with mostly because I have no formal training in watercolour and can never achieve the look I want unless it's a splatter.

My silhouette is definitely one of my main tools other than my straight edge paper cutter. It has exponentially simplified my life. Now, I can make 10 invitations in less than an hour, or a page that takes half the time it used to. If you've been thinking of buying one for a while, but haven't decided whether it's worth it, I went through the same thing and I believe I definitely made the right choice for me. 

Tomorrow, it'll be all about where I scrap, so I better go clean my desk!

4 W's and 1 H

Loni, one of my Young Scrappers friends, and my honorary scrapper "mom" just started her own scrap-blog (Loni's Blog). She decided to start it off with posts about who, when, where, why and how she scraps. I absolutely loved the idea and I think I'll borrow it from her (though I would recommend checking hers out, she's a much better writer than I am, and if you have kids, you'll definitely be able to relate).

So today, I'll start off with "Who" I scrap.

As I'm still way too young to have kids, I have a smaller amount of people I can regularly scrap. Most of my scrapbook pages are of me and my two best friends, or my family. Unfortunately, my brother is convinced that he's not photogenic and hates having pictures taken of him. So I get a lot of these pictures:

(someday I'll have to make a Layout of these faces alone) 

Luckily, sometimes he actually smiles normally and I can make a nice family page like this:

It's a lot easier to make a page of my best friends, since they're always up for going on a photo excursion. They may be silly, and we may take WAY too many pictures, but they always give me a ton of pictures to work with and a ton of stories to share. We've known each other for a little more than 13 years and will most likely be the old ladies who have wheelchair races down the hall way of our seniors home. 

This last year has kind of been a tough one for us, we've had to face challenges we've never had to deal with before. None of us go to the same school anymore (I'm at one University, Rachel is at the other and Krystyne will going to school starting this fall), and we all work, so we have to schedule our time together. Sometimes, I'm lucky if I see them once a week. 

The rest of my pictures are family pictures, or pictures of me. Luckily we go on family vacations, so I get a lot of pictures that can be used for lots of pages. 

This year, my grandpa had his 80th birthday, so I got to hang out with all my favorite cousins. We all get together around every 2 years, so it's not like i get to see all of them that often. Luckily we're all really close in age, and have always liked to hang out with one another, so every time we get together we have a ton of fun. 

Well hopefully this describes who I scrap pretty well, but I'll be back tomorrow with when I scrap!

"I Want" Wendsdays

So, as some of you may now, I'm a list person. I LOVE making lists. They help me keep everything straight as to what I want, what i need to do, and who needs something from me. So I've decided that I'll start and "I Want" list on my blog every Wednesday. It can be things I want to buy, things I want to do, or places I want to visit. SO here's to the first "I Want" Wednesday!

1: The Amy Tangerine Sketchbook line. This line is just so beautiful and I want it desperately. I've finally found a store in my city that stocks it so crossing my fingers that I get the papers I want! I can see myself using up this line too quickly, maybe I should buy doubles of everything?

2: The Dear Lizzy Neapolitan line. Lizzy has the same penchant for florals and ombre that I do. There are some stand out papers that I just can't wait to get my hands on. Luckily, the same store sells the dear lizzy collection, so I'll just have to pick up both while I'm there.

3: Amy Hellers Through the Kaleidoscope Class from Two Peas. I love Amys style and the way she puts colours together on her pages. That seems to be one of my biggest problems in scrapbooking, so this class would be perfect. Hopefully I can still sign up!  

4: Washi Tape, but only specific ones. I love the look of washi tape, but I don't think I would use it enough to justify buying a whole bunch of them. But I do have some favorites out there that I really want to get my hands on. Mostly because they use my favorite colour scheme of blue and pink. I really need to get myself out of this rut. Maybe I really should take Amy's class.

5: One of these Ombre necklaces. These are so beautiful and expensive I could cry. I need to learn how to make my own. It couldn't be too hard, right? Gosh I sure hope not because these beauties will haunt my dreams till I get one.  

6: A Teal Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. We're redoing our kitchen, so in my mind, now is the absolute PERFECT time to get one. Now all I have to do is convince my parents that it's a good idea... 

The first I Want Wednesday is really made up of things I want to buy, next week though there will definitely be places and experiences included in the list. I promise :)

Real Life Pins

The other day, I looked over to the side of my desk and realized how truly disgusting my pinboard looked. It was full of out dated papers (from like, kindergarten), stupid little magazine clippings of cartoon characters and a whole lot of old lists. So I decided to re-organize and make myself an inspiration board instead. I went on my pinterest and looked through all of the pins, putting my favourites  into a word document. I printed off 3 pages worth and cut them out individually. Then I pinned them up individually and managed to pack all of them in!

Unfortunately I ran out of push pins, so I had to start using sewing pins. I actually kind of like how they turned out, especially since I could match the colour better to the picture I was pinning. 

I'm really excited about this pincoard now. I feel like every time I get stuck on something I'm working on, I can just look over and be inspired.

New Header

As you may be able to see... I have a new header for my blog! I liked the old one, but thought it didn't really reflect how my style has changed in the past while, and I thought the old name was a little childish sounding. This is the old one:

And here is the new one!

Oh man, I LOVE this one. Like I'm so proud of myself I could probably scream. It's just absolutely perfect and TOTALLY looks how I hoped it would. The most difficult part was figuring out what to write on it other than my name. I put something slightly lame, but it's the most obvious way to describe my blog. I have a new obsession with watercolour paint and sketched flowers. I'm horrible at painting with watercolours, but I can paint a background and draw something on it no problem.

I've decided that i'll be a little more faithful to my blog. Rather than just half-heartedly posting things, just to get my pictures up there, I'll actually put some solid effort into what I'm saying. With that said, I need to start incorporating the *joke* part of my title into my blog. SO for the first one (dedicated to my brothers dislike of the band One Direction)....

Those faces are perfect.

My God.

Family Reunion

Still busy catching up with all of the pages I've made, so here are two more! The first one is a picture from grad of me and my friend Marta. Marta's last name is Ukrainian for wolf, so that is where the title came from. Most of the inspiration came from Pinterest again, using multiple pictures.

The background of stitched diamonds was originally going to cover the whole page, but I think it would have looked too busy then, so I just stuck with a couple.

The title is a doodle inspired by one I saw on pinterest. I just took the idea, redrew it and substituted my own words

The second page was just completed recently, and has parts of a project I decided not to finish a while back because of the amount of effort it would involve. The 3 flowers were made by first painting on watercolour papers with a mixture of purple, pink and yellow watercolours, then drawing and shading flowers in black ink.

I love the watercolours in the heart included in the title. I think that may be my secret favorite part.

The page is connected to a combination of a phrase my cousin used and one my grandpa inspired. My cousin was amazed at how much older we had all gotten, and my grandpa is the biggest joker around and always teases us about being foolish children