Yukon, here we come!

At last, I am finally getting a bit excited about our trip out to the Yukon which starts on Monday!

For those who do not know the details, we will fly direct to Whitehorse and then follow the road round Yukon, into Alaska for a day, then back into Yukon and might even take the road north to the Arctic Circle 66° - so exciting! We are hoping for good bear viewing (but not up close) and good weather without too many mosquitoes but I am just most looking forward to being back in Canada and seeing this part of the world that we have been so interested to see for so long.

As I just managed to finalise my mega album for last year's Canada trip, I thought I would try to be a bit ahead of the game and produce a mini-album to take along with me so that I can complete some of the journaling while I am there, making notes about destinations each day, highlights, main events etc. I have also left space for a 6" x 4" photo each day and that might remain blank until I get back, or I could fill it with postcards (although I am not so sure that there will be many available) or I am considering buying, and taking with me, a mini-photo printer so that I could print them out there and then each day. I think that could be really fun. We would have to use photos from my cameras as Ralph only shoots in RAW whereas I want RAW and a JPG. That way, I could just put the card in each evening and chose the best photo of the day. It could become a good routine and the album would be completed before I even got home which is the best thing of all! Of course, a mega album will follow, but I got so frustrated that we had nothing to show people from Nova Scotia as we just had too many photos and I was too slow to scrap the highlights!

I made the album super simple: 6x6 cardstock with BasicGrey Infuse papers to decorate. A double page for each day with a small pocket which already has a small journaling sheet ready to be completed opposite an area for the aforementioned photo. There is an area for an introduction and reflection as well as some raised pockets at the back for larger ephemera that needs to be kept. I can expand the album when I get back if necessary with extra pages or inserts which makes it really flexible. I have also included two full journaling pages for whatever comes into my mind at the time. The journal starts on Monday which is when we will travel down to Frankfurt airport for early check-in before staying at the airport hotel which is a really nice start to the holiday, and ends on our travel back day, the morning of which, I am hoping to find time to check out the two scrapbook shops I tracked down in Whitehorse! Life is SO good. I used Infuse fibres on the book rings which are just gorgeous and I used almost the whole pack!

I can't wait to start filling it. What do you think?

Details of the Canada album

For those of you who would rather not wade through all those photos in the complete album, here are a few of my favourite pages;

Canada

Just a quick post to say that I have uploaded the final (enormous!) Canada album that I have been working on for the last 4 months. I will post a few choice pages maybe tomorrow but the whole album can be found on the right hand side for those who are willing and able to wade through at least 100 photos of my album - I have to admit to being pretty proud of it.

CC always welcome as ever

More Chatterbox

I just love Chatterbox papers so much and think the ranges are so gorgeous - all split into different "rooms" with a different feel to each one. But I have noticed that there are a lot of lovely muted colours included with a great range of blues and greens (sage and olive tones) mixed in with soft lemon or sunshine. This is just my colour palette!

So I was happy to join the latest challenge once again on the Chatterblog to use either Loft, Guest room or Greenhouse. They are not so easy to track down here in Germany so I was really pleased to find 10 papers from the Guest room range and double delighted to note that they were mostly those muted olives and blues that I am addicted to right now! Just cannot get enough of them...

so here is the final result with a wavy design that was inspired by a Shimelle layout featured in a recent magazine. Not much journaling but just a few notes about how much work Ralph had put into the company Sommerfest and how successful it was. You can see how relieved Ralph looks - this was about 2 hours into the party when it was clear that all was running as planned or even better. I was so happy for him...

Stuff!

So here is my Chatterbox prize sent by one of their storytellers, Melanie, for joining her blog challenge. I was totally chuffed to see the alphas and the great blues and greens in the Chateau range of papers! All wrapped up in a ribbon with a personal note card - how sweet is that?

Not much else new on our side. Making the most of the nice weather whenever it hits to take the Lotus out and enjoy the wind in our hair!

My Favourite Things class

Yes, I know, I know - I am totally addicted to classes! I just cannot get enough of them and sign up for far too many. But it is just so much fun to try out different styles and items and of course, the product!

I am WAY behind in my "My Favourite Things" class which is using the Creative Imaginations Narratives range but have finally caught up on the first week! Creative Imaginations has a Bare Elements range which we used for this frame. I messed up a bit with the overlay, but adapted the instructions a bit and am quite pleased with the result!

Heidi Challenge for August

I have been very bad at blogging recently. It is now two weeks since my last post and then this post is to be the same as the last one! But this time, I have managed to complete my Heidi challenge within the week it was set - almost the first time this has happened!

The challenge was to take a photo that makes us smile whenever we see it and blow it up as big as possible. Heidi printed it directly onto 12x12 cardstock and she also featured a layout with the photo printed onto patterned paper. Then the embellishments were to go down one side with a large title along the bottom and making use of a happy colour.

So I tried printed out my favourite Ralph photo (from Nova Scotia last year which has now been featured several times - must find another favourite!) on both textured cardstock in desaturated colour and also a lightly printed paper in black and white. The cardstock version won as the pattern did not come through very well. So I trimmed the cardstock down to cover the photo on the PP so that the scalloped edge would show round the border and therefore blue became my happy colour which was ok because pink would not really have gone with photos of Ralph and green is just a bit predictable at the moment! I used strips of mini photos - all from the Nova Scotia holiday (the strips were featured on the other featured layout which looked so good) of my beloved as my embellishment rather than the journalling spots that Heidi used which brought some more colour to a somewhat paler layout than normal. I used ghost letters edged in blue paint along with some blue strips of paper and a couple of the Creative Imagination stickers which helps to decorate it up a bit and brings some more blue into the whole thing.

It might not be as bright and sunny as Heidi's example as well as many of the featured layouts in the gallery, but it is somewhat more me.

It was good to use blue for a change and it made me realise that I also like this tone. The mini photos of Ralph were such good fun and made me realise that I took so many of him while we were on holiday last year (- maybe I will use some of these for my Shimelle class). I carried on with this theme to the calendar pages with many more of these index prints and some of the strips of blue paper.

I have optimistically entered our Canada holiday onto the calendar and am just keeping my fingers crossed! I am prepared for Ralph to cancel it but if we DO go, then I suppose we will have the best time!