Monthly Archives: June 2013
The Road to Wedded Bliss
I have a couple of friends getting married in the near future and I thought that they would get a kick out of this:
2008: Mission San Juan Capistrano
2008: Mission San Juan Capistrano
While on our family day trip to San Juan Capistrano we visited the San Juan Capistrano Mission. This is probably the must see venue if you are visiting San Juan Capistrano. I created three spreads detailing this location. On this first spread I put pictures from the entrance to the Mission as it tells the story of where we are. I also added the tickets (which share the date of the excursion) and a medallion that I purchased in the museum store.
I chose to use a hand made paper for the background on the left hand page which helps to emphasize the historic nature of the Mission. I used this same paper to border the pictures and tickets on the right hand page. I also used some of this same paper to create a border along the right hand side of the page to help tie the two pages together. The cut out around the medallion I created using my Cricut machine.
2008: Mission San Juan Capistrano 2
I tried a new technique with this page. As I was cutting out the Fleur-de-lis that is on the left hand page I realized that I really like the way the it looked when I took it off the cutting mat. So the thin Fleur-de-lis that is on the left hand page created the Fleur-de-lis that is on the right hand page. I just mounted gold paper behind the brown paper on the right hand side and then carefully affixed the inside part back on top of the gold paper. It is more difficult to see this in the picture, but it creates a cool 3D effect on both pages.
Notice that the background paper from each side is also used as the border paper on the opposite side. I also used opposing papers to create borders on the right and left hand side to help tie the pages together.
2008: Mission San Juan Capistrano 3
For this last spread I created the color scheme around the color of the Koi and the candles. Notice that the background paper shimmers like the scales of the fish, and all of the borders to the pictures are red. I used my Crop-A-Dile Big Bite Punch to put holes and grommets in the left hand page so that I could add the crucifix necklace that we purchased at the Museum store. I used my Cricut machine to cut the flowers on the right hand page. I then used a gold marker to trace around the edges of the flowers to help add depth to them.
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- Montanez Adobe : San Juan Capistrano (claudiaojeda87.wordpress.com)
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2008: San Juan Capistrano
2008: San Juan Capistrano
San Juan Capistrano has something for everyone. 
I was interested in historic sites, antiques and small eating establishments – my son was more interested in the farm animals. This spread combines the two things that we liked.
On the left is a postcard and a picture from “The Tea House on Los Rios” where we had a wonderful peaceful light lunch. I cut the leaves out with my Cricut machine using the same colors that I used for the background and the picture border. In this photograph it almost looks printed on the page – but it creates a 3D effect on the page.
The right hand side has pictures from our time at a petting zoo. I bordered the pictures with a straw photo paper that I had in one of my paper packs. People are sometimes afraid to use photo paper for borders, but I felt like this really helped the farm theme to stand out on this page. Notice that the background paper on this page is the same as the border and leaves on the left hand page.
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2008: Train ride to San Juan Capistrano
2008: Train ride to San Juan Capistrano
Another trip that we took with the Families Club with the YMCA was an Amtrak Train trip from San Diego to San Juan Capistrano. This spread chronicles the train station, the train, and the beginning of our day trip. The train station had a clock that showed the time and date and I used pictures of this with my son to help chronicle the timing of this event. I usually use ticket stubs to help establish this, but the tickets that day were unreserved/unrestricted tickets and therefore did not have a date on them.
I used my Cricut machine to cut the title to the trip in video reverse on a tag so that it looked like a luggage tag. I also included the train schedule so that we would be reminded of all of the stations that we stopped at on our trip.
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2007: Our First Christmas
2007: Our First Christmas
This is the front spread to our First Christmas pages. The other pages are pages that I am not going to show on this blog (Sorry, but they are kind of personal, and I am not really excited about how they turned out).
What I wanted to highlight on this page was the snow flakes and the Title on the left hand page. I was trying to decide what to do with our Christmas cards from our first Christmas together – and I decided to cut the snow flakes and the Title out of them using my Cricut machine. This actually took quite a bit of work to coordinate all of the cards so that the letters came out correctly – but it was a fun way to use the cards and to not just throw them away.
The right hand page is a picture of my Aunt’s Christmas tree, where we spent our first Christmas together. My parents flew out to California, and met my son for the first time, which was exciting for all of us.
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2007: Christmas – Coronado and our First Tree
2007: Christmas – Coronado and our First Tree
I know that it is in the middle of the summer, but this is where I am in going through my scrapbooks! So – we are nearly at half-Christmas so I think that this is perfectly acceptable to blog about now :).
This spread chronicles the beginning of our first Christmas together. On the left hand side is ice skating at the Hotel Del in Coronado, CA. I love these pictures because of the palm trees and the ocean in the background. As usual we arrived half an hour before the skating rink opened, so we were the first people on the ice which lasted about 15 minutes, before it packed out and was difficult to skate. I particularly enjoy the picture of my son following the little girl in the red skating dress. The snow flakes and the title on this page were cut with my Cricut machine. I purchased the the line drawing art of the Hotel Del on Ebay.com
The story that ties these two pages together is that I bought a Coronado Christmas ornament in the gift shop at the Hotel Del, and that ornament immediately went on to our new Christmas tree, which you can see on the right hand side. Up until this point I had never decorated a Christmas tree for myself as I was always spending Christmas at another family members home. So, because I had a new young boy in the home I knew that I had to do it up right. And therefore I spent about $1500 getting a perfect artificial tree (I am allergic to live ones) with all the trimmings, complete with a train set running around the bottom. The background page was a pre-printed page that I really liked and didn’t do too much else to the spread.
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2007: Birch Aquarium
2007: Birch Aquarium
One of the advantages of living in San Diego is that everyone wants to come and visit :)! So, I felt the need to buy season passes to all of the local attractions to save money while giving friends and family the local sights tour. One of our favorite places is the Birch Aquarium at Scripps.
This spread is another example of mixing photographs from various trips to the same location. If you look carefully at the pictures you will notice that my son has different outfits on in some of the pictures.
I used a pre-printed background page set and then added some of my own elements. The blue round “air bubbles” were cut with my Cricut machine and I added the fish sticker on one of the “bubbles”. I purchased the iron on patch at the Aquarium store. I often will buy patches to put in scrapbooks, since they are usually pretty cool, and we don’t really iron on patches on to any clothes that we have.
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2007: Pirate’s Dinner Adventure
2007: Pirate’s Dinner Adventure
As part of our Thanksgiving 2007 trip to Los Angeles we went to the Pirate’s Dinner Adventure with our good friends Tira and David. Tira was a friend of Brandon’s when he was thinking about adoption and really encouraged him to move forward in the process. Tira is a professional photographer and later took pictures of our adoption day. View Tira’s website –> tirajphotography.com.
This first spread includes a flag and a pirate hat from our adventure. I didn’t want to glue the flag down, and it would not stick with sticky tabs, so I used my Crop-a-dile Big Bite Punch to insert eyelets/grommets into the corners to hold it on to the page. If you look carefully you will be able to see the green eyelets that I used. In order to show as much of the flag as possible I used a fine point pair of scissors to carefully cut around our outlines in the photos. I also had some wonderful stickers and embellishments to put on this page. If you remember the Medieval Times page – my son was posing with his sword – apparently he wanted to keep the theme here and was using a flag to attack our friend David – in a friendly way of course!
2007: Pirate’s Dinner Adventure 2
This second spread showcases that my son was called up on stage to be part of the show – he loved that! Since it was Thanksgiving time they were having a Christmas theme – and he got to be a toy soldier – complete with a wooden gun – I don’t know how they pried that out of his fingers when it was over!
The pirate outfit in the left corner is from a Jolee’s Sticker collection – and is one of my all time favorites. (Of course – I like pirates too!).
The pirate ship on the right hand side is actually a full page print on transparent plastic. I used my Crop-A-Dile Big Bite Punch again to hold it to the maroon background page using eyelets/grommets. I placed this plastic sheet on top of the photographs and title – which is why you see a little glare from the light when I took the picture of this spread.
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2007: Thanksgiving
2007: Thanksgiving
This page chronicles our first Thanksgiving Day together. We went out to eat because it is so much easier on everyone and we all get to eat what we enjoy eating! Then we spent the rest of the day relaxing at my Aunt’s house and playing with the new Hogwarts Express train that I purchased to go around our Christmas Tree. My son decided that he wanted to wrestle and horse around and my aunt got some great pictures of us playing together.
On this spread I used the tan and the olive backgrounds, and then used a second piece of each card stock to create the title, photo borders, and embellishments on the opposite color. The Title and the embellishments were cut using my Cricut machine, and I used a corner cutter on the photo borders.
I also used a foam brush to dab gold and copper paint on the photo borders to help them stand out a little bit more than the rest of the page. The border across the bottom is a piece of ribbon. I used fray edge at the end of the ribbons to get it from fraying. It is a type of glue that holds the threads together.
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2007: Medieval Times
2007: Medieval Times 1
Another Adventure we had at Thanksgiving time in Los Angeles was going to Medieval Times with my Aunt and Great Aunt. I created two double spreads for this adventure mostly because I found the wonderful background paper on the left above that perfectly fit the event. I designed the whole let of pages of of this color scheme. On the top of the right hand page you see some ephemera from the trip that announces that we went to Medieval Times. If you look carefully at the pictures you will see where it came from in one of them. This just goes to show that almost anything you collect on a trip can somehow make it into the scrapbook.
2007: Medieval Times 2
All of the letters and designs on this page where cut using my Cricut machine except for the Knight in the bottom left corner. I purchased him at a local scrapbook store. I bordered the photographs in black to match the theme of the page. I used a corner cutter that created spaces to hold the photographs so that they would not need to be affixed to the page.
Did you notice that I made the mistake of buying my son a wooden sword? In every picture he is attacking someone with it!
See the scrapbook from our trip to Medieval Times Schaumberg.
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