so here it is! almost without noticing. summer has gone and it begins to look like autumn, although the weather here is still quite warm and the trees keep their green leaves concientiously.
i realize i´ve been a bad, very bad blogger these past three months, but...well, i´ve done things.
i´ve made two summer albums, one of them is kind of a mix between a journal and an art journal with some touches of a scrapbook and the other one is more graphic and simple, inspired by this from molly irving and this one from ali edwards
both are still in progress and i need to add some touches here and there and most of the journaling.
i´ve also made some minialbums to give as presents (but i don´t have pictures to show you...)


so, back to autumn again: i´ve been looking forward for this and now i´m prepared and very excited to start the new class with ali edwards "yesterday and today"
i´ve been devoting a lot of my spare time to hiking and walking and because i have less time for scrapping, lately i tend to simplify my projects and make a lot of them digi or hybrid (although PAPER will always be my great love!) and i think that ali´s class is going to help me with this process very much .

ah! and i´ve prepared a "mini" to fill out during my favorite season "on the go" as i did with the summer one

brown and purple seem to be nice colors for this autumn!
have a nice weekend!

hello summer!

neither yellow has ever been my favorite color nor summer my favorite season, but this time i want to celebrate both making a journal to capture bits and pieces for the next three months

and talking about yellow, everything seems to be yellow around me lately, and although actually i´ve always thougth of yellow as a color for sad sentiments, recently i´ve found something brigth and energizing in it as well

...this blooming Hypericum perforatum (St. Johnswort) is saying hello to summer

...i´ve been reading this book again, after more than 15 years that i read it for the first time, and if yellow really means sadness, this book is the saddest i´ve ever read not only in the story but in the language it is written...it´s a beautiful book anyway. just a couple weekends ago i were in the village were the action took place in the book and it´s so perfectly described i could feel the story as if i´ve lived it!

...and i´ve been hiking again this weekend. besides the big amount of yellow flowers here and there, crops and plants are starting to turn yellowish everywhere so... yellow again!

finally i made this digi layout (although i´m not used to) with a neruda´s sonet that i found some days ago, with a free digital kit from 2Peas in a Bucket, more little touches of yellow

definetly my heart is looking like yellow, but i´m not sure which of the two sides is predominating...

happiness is...

lying on the grass after a long walk

under the shadow of an old romanesque hermitage tower

in a hot day

feeling the breeze on your face

not thinking of anything else

it is said that place had a kind of magic...

note to self:
btw, never ever underestimate the power of your mobile phone photocamera, sometimes it works better than your dSLR (and there is always photoshop that can fix the rest!)

supplies: patterned paper CosmoCricket, rub-ons LilyBee, felt butterflies Heidi Swapp, stickers October Afternoon

yesterday, a friend sent me an email with the story of two birds that really touched my heart and i´ve made this page in my art journal inspired in that story

this post by ali edwards about colors and color combos has also inspired me, and i´ve used pinks and browns and mauves from the photo above i took last week.

i´ve recently found that no-so-perfect photos can become cool enough just by using a bit of photoshop

adding texture layers or using photoshop actions allows you to bring some "magic" to your more or less ordinary pictures

and, although paper and glue and pen is what i love {most of all}, some "hybrid" touches are quick and easy and very useful when you don´t have too much time or you can´t take with you all your supplies everywhere

some stories don´t really need much more to be told and sometimes you don´t know exactly what to tell or simply you can´t ;)

flying over the mountains

lately you´ll find me here here
or here
rather than playing with scraps on my messy desk.

it´s not that i don´t like scrapbooking anymore, it´s just that time is limited (sadly) and i haven´t got enough of it to do everything i want. and i´ve learnt that you have to take advantage of circumstances and opportunities when they arise.
i need some fresh air and i´m fit enough to do this kind of things so i´m giving it a try! and really, it makes me happy.

but it seems that next weekend is going to be a "stay-at-home" one, so probably i´ll be able to make some projects with all the photos i´ve been gathering and all that papers and stuff piled on the self. i miss it, too.

walking again

patterned paper: pink paislee, sassafrass, love elsie; letter stickers: american crafts. tfl!

one of my latest favorite ways of spending my free time: walking and hiking. it has always been something that i´ve loved but there was a long time that i didn´t practice it, and now that i´ve done again... i´m happy, and i can´t stop.

that means i have less time for scrapbooking and crafting, but i try not to forget it because i love it, too.

this is the simplest first page for my "wishes" album

digital frame: kitschy digitals; letter stickers: american crafts. tfl!

and this is one of those wishes

cardstock: bazzill basics; paterned papers: 7gypsies, sistv; letter stickers: american crafts, making memories. tfl!

and of course, i wish this would be a great weekend for everybody!!

change?

my second card for emily´s project 52Q-2: am I afraid of change?


"no" is the answer, although it depends of what kind of change it was obviously, in general not only i´m not afraid of change but i actually need it from time to time. changing allows you to grow and experiment new things and sometimes even to rediscover something you had forgotten. and as scientifics say it contributes to keep your brain cells active and alive. live itself is continually changing. there are just a few very few things that i wish they could remain unaltered forever. so yes, i happily embrace change!

i wonder...

52Q is the challenge that emily falconbridge proposes for this year, 52 questions to be answered in a kind of "art journal style", every week she will post one question for making a little "piece of art" (tag, card, art journal page...) answering it and i hope this is a little something i´ll be able to accomplish throughout the year so...let´s try!

thus for the first question this is my answer:

i´ve used a regular index card, some paint and stickles, stamps, letter stickers, small paper scraps and a butterfly punch. the question is in the front page (as emily suggested) and the answer is in the back. there are still some blank spaces that could be filled up as they come to my mind...

besides i´ve made a cover with 2 painted pieces of cardboard canvas and some letter stickers, binded with 2 rings, where i´ll be including more cards every week.

a year in review

cardstock: Bazzill; frame: Kitschy Digitals; stickers: Fontwerks; letter stickers: American Crafts, Doodlebug, Making Memories; fabric paper: Love Elsie; others: fabric, embroidery TFL!

this is the latest layout i´ve made just a few days ago but as it´s usual in this time of the year, i´ve been reviewing the projects i´ve made during 2008, and i´ve selected some of my most favorites...

i began the year joining a class with Emily Falconbridge at Big Picture where i learnt a lot about paint and this journal was one of the projects we made

with these two layouts i win some challenges, at scrapjacked.com in may and at inspired by amelie in june respectively

these ones made the catwalk at SIStv in february and in september

i made these for different challenges at One Little Word and The Dares
and i cherish these others for one reason or another...


during the last three months crafting and scrapbooking has not been one of my priorities, but i hope that the new year will bring me lots of inspiration and a bit of time to make all those projects and dreams be real

HAPPY AND CREATIVE NEW YEAR FOR ALL OF YOU!!!!!!!!!

december daily album

lately some other issues in my life have pushed scrapbooking and crafting into the background, but you know, the less time you have to do these things the more you want to do them. so with one thing and another i´ve been making what i considered a funny and effortless stuff: ali edwards´s project "december daily album"

i have to say that i hate to prepare christmas months before december but this time i´ve made an exception and i love how it has turned out. since i liked the album that ali used and how the white covers looked like i decided to make something similar by myself, so i painted a heavy cardboard canvas (that i bought in an art store) with white and cream acrylic paint. my plan is to bind it with the bind-it-all when i finish the project, but maybe i add some photos as pages themselves or some more pages at the end for including more days, so i prefer to bind it with those large cream rings for the moment. i´ve gathered a bunch of papers (some christmas-themed and others not), including some hand-made papers and enveloppes and transparencies, that i already had (and as i don´t have much inspiration these days i´ve scraplifted a lot of pages). and here is the result, here are just a few pages of the album (you can see more here):




now i can´t wait to start in december...

if you want to read more...

...previous entries (2007-2008) are HERE

creative skills: handwriting

In her last AEzine (#23) Ali Edwards writes about creative skills and concepts and sharing it. What a great idea! She´s right, the Internet allow us to share information (not only with people nearby but with all over the world!) and to learn and to grow and thus maybe help others to grow too. I have to be so much grateful for it and for all that I´ve learned lately... I would like to return it in some way but I consider that I´m still only learning. I´ve been scrapbooking just for 7-8 months so I think it´s not time enough to develop any speciality. I can say more, I´ve been trying and testing everything (scrapbooking related) that I found NEW for me, that means EVERYTHING. Sometimes stamping and embossing, sometimes using chipboard elements or rub-ons, sometimes stitching and other times trying different sizes for my layouts or making minibooks. That is everything but nothing, I haven´t got experience enough! But I´ve been thinking (as Ali recommends) and yes, there is something I´ve been doing for almost my whole life: handwriting. I love handwriting and hand journaling and using it in almost all my projects (as well as I love to see other people´s handwritting). I think "I am good with handwriting". When I have to make a journaling block I usually write the text previously on a piece of paper just to calculate if it will fit more or less in my free space. As I don´t matter if it will be perfect (handwritting is inherently imperfect) I don´t worry about writing lines in order to get it straight (in fact I´m afraid I´m too much confident of my handwriting...).

But there is a kind of handwriting that I really really love. I call it "the art journal handwriting", I have no idea if it has a real name (if someone knows, please, i would love to know it...).

OK, it´s nothing new but this is the way I do it:

1. You can begin drawing a circle or other shape with a template, or you can do it directly onto the page (or card or journal or whatever it be)


2. Then I draw wavy lines randomly


3. I write between each two lines taking care of filling up all the space between them. Sometimes I also make some little drawings, like those flowers over the "i".


4. Eventually I take my watercolor pencils and colored the shape. For blending the colors I like to use a baby wipe (never imagined how many uses they have!) and a cotton stick. This time I´ve used a waterproof ink pen but is usually better to do this step first.
   
5. I have done this example in my sketch book, but you could then cut it, ink the edges and make a nice tag for a layout or you could do it directly on it. Or instead of coloring you can write on a cardstock or plain patterned paper.

I think that the main advantage of this kind of handwriting is that no matter how is yours it always looks nice.

I know it´s no big deal but I hope that sharing this at least encourage you to try it if never did it before.