- I'm a general science student going into my third year of University. Majoring in Biology (organismal: animals and plants) and minoring in Philosophy.
- I love scrapbooking.
- I'm addicted to paper collecting and paper piecing, so each sheet of paper goes a long way.
- I play volleyball. I'm 6'2 and hate running, so it was the natural choice.
- My favorite color is grey, but I love to pair it with super bright colors. I also love bright colors on white. However, I don't like the color red, (I am fine with burgundy and oxblood and pink)
- I can play 3 instruments: piano, french horn and alto saxophone. Those are ordered according to how much I like them.
- I love reading. I never got to the point where I would read and walk at the same time, but I would always have a book in my bag.

WIWW 4

Time for another one!  

I kind of absolutely love this sweater, it's even in cashmere! It looks so cozy and so absolutely perfect to study in. But with a price tag of $686.00 it just isn't ever going to happen. Someone teach me to knit or something? (Sweater)

I found this little gem of a set of washi tape on Etsy a while back and I think it's just so cute! 

 I really like teapots, and the color blue, and circles and color on a white background. So this teapot (from Crate&Barrel) is right up my alley! However, I seem to have expensive taste, $260 for a teapot is... crazy?

Wine ice cream (from here), looks like a must try! When I go out with friends, I'll take a glass of wine over a "vodka slime" any day. Keeping things classy. But this would also be the absolute perfect ice cream for break up days... (my fingers are crossed that it is never needed and this ice cream will only be used for anniversary days instead)

My boyfriend likes to tease me about my Fossil purse collection (I have 3), but his mom and I like to bond over our love of Fossil/Coach purses. So since I need a new wallet anyway, why not just bug him a little more and get my next wallet from Fossil?

Oh the weather outside....

I've had a crazy two weeks with assignments and midterms and things just aren't slowing down. However, I got to the point where I really needed a break from school work, so I sat down for 5 hours straight and made this page happen. 

We just had a huge, and I mean HUGE dump of snow, causing highways to shut down, hospitals to go on code Orange (expecting major fatalities) and snow so high I can't see out of my window. So all I really want is to be able to sit on a beach again. 

Instagram Updates

So I thought I would condense a few recent pictures into one post and get a whole bunch of things out of the way all at once. Seeing as University is coming up into crunch time, I wont have any free space to schedule blog posts. I wish I could have enough time to write a WHOLE bunch of them and put them in a queue just like I can in tumblr... but NO TIME! So it looks like there will be no posting again for a long time after this one.

First up! The creative-type endeavors.

I've kind of been in a pink-coral creative zone lately, I just LOVE that color. But, moving on, clockwise order! 

Top Left: I made some AMAZING cookies over my reading week. The recipes keep piling up on my pinterest board and I finally decided to try one. These are the Orange Creamsicle cookies (found here ) and I highly HIGHLY recommend them. 

Top Right: I just went to this scrapbook store in my area that i recently found out about to pick up a bunch of new CHA goodies. This is a new page in progress (it's actually pretty much completed now, I just haven't updated the picture) The photos I used won't be on the page when I upload it in its entirety because they're from a modelling shoot I did for a swimsuit company. And uploading that would just be weird.

Bottom Right: At the restaurant I work at, we always have puppy and kitten notepads to write our orders on. The girls and I have taken to modifying the kittens and making them more distinguished. 

Bottom Left: It was just my mom's birthday! Happy birthday mom!

I'm taking an invertebrate zoology course this semester, even though I think most invertebrates are creepy and I definitely prefer vertebrates. But there are always some cool ones to look at. These pictures are from the day that my lab was looking at the Molluscs (these are the Gastropods or snails/slugs shells)

Top Left: I think this may be my favorite shell ever. You can't really see from the picture, but the shell is completely covered in what we call nacre (the pearlescent covering you see on the insides of some shells) with kind of a frosty covering over-top. (it looks kind of like this picture which is the same species, Bathybembix argenteonitens)

Top Right: (Family Architectonicidae, species unknown)

Bottom Right: (Nucella lamellosa)

Bottom Left: (Siratus alabaster)

More random invertebrate lab pictures, but this time from the live tank!

Left: Mussel shell (another example of the nacre, shiny layer)

Top Right: A nice little snail trying to escape after the snail race!

Bottom Right: a really lazy starfish.

Hopefully I'll actually have more cool things to post sometime, but that's all for now!

No Excuses.

I think I've come to terms with the fact that I'm just a terrible blogger. I never feel like my life in interesting enough to have anything to share. It's already tough for me to come up with journaling and ideas for new scrapbook pages to then come up with more new topics to blog about. So I thought to get back into blogging a bit, I would post some of my favorite scrapbook layouts from the past 6 months and kind of expand on what they're about or my favorite parts of them.

So this LO was my first experience using spray ink, it was way messier than I expected (I dont have spray bottles so I used a toothbrush to spray the paint). I cut out a stencil using my silhouette cameo (by far the best scrapbook purchase I have ever made), held it down and started to spray the yellow, then orange, pink and green last. 

Even though this isn't my favorite LO I've ever made, it's got the first picture my BF and I have gotten of just us. We've been together for over a year so that's pretty bad, but we're long distance so we don't get a chance to see each other often.

This was my first attempt at a whole patterned background made by myself. This LO changed my scrapbook style into what it is now, lots of geometric patterns, different coloured papers and lots of time.

I just really like how soft this page is, and how I finally mustered up the courage to use some of my favorite paper and still love the end result.

I love ombre and pink with green, so I of course love this. 

My most recent page, this took me forever and my fingers still hurt from all the hand stitching but I love how it adds to the page. I was really unsure with what I wanted to do with the left side of the page so i just started throwing things down and I kind of like how it all turned out.

My first "scraplift" (from one of Wilna's pages.) I adore Wilna's style and I'm so happy with how this page turned out.

This page was an entry for a Guest Designer spot at MME, still haven't gotten the results back but I'm hoping!

My absolute favorite page I've ever made. 

Well that's all for now! Maybe I'll make a list of the CHA products I really want for next time?

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!