I am so excited/thrilled/ecstatic to announce that I have been chosen to design for Life.Paper.Scrapbook! I absolutely love this blog and magazine. I've been a follower for awhile now and am constantly inspired by all the talent they feature!

"Life. Paper. Scrapbook is an Australian quarterly, online publication that is dedicated to showcasing designers from all around the world to inspire each other, explore current trends and techniques and most importantly to celebrate our love of scrapbooking and paper crafts. This is a place to share our style, designs and creations with like minded crafters from around the world."
Check out their online magazine too! I loved the first two issues so much and can't wait for the third. I'm so excited for this opportunity and I appreciate you joining me in this journey!

PS: To celebrate, I decided at 10 pm one night this week that a blog redesign was in order. My wonderful husband helped me until well past our bedtimes. What do you think?

Find Your Wings and Fly is a gorgeous line by Rhonna Farrer for My Mind's Eye. It was a mid-release and didn't get much buzz. I still haven't seen very many pages using these collections, especially when you compare it to other mid-releases such as Crate Paper's The Pier (which is everywhere). I was lucky enough to win this collection from a contest through Scrapbook Generation. The set I received is Sky's the Limit. How gorgeous are these colors?

Photo Credit

Photo Credit

Today I want to give you a look at my scrap area. It is messy and imperfect, but it is mine and I love it! Michael and I are blessed to rent a nice house with a detached garage. Our landlord converted the garage into his "man cave", so it is carpeted and heated. The cupboards and drawers came with it, and provide plenty of storage. That was a huge reason why we chose this house. Scrapbooking is a necessity for my existence, and it takes up a lot of space! There is also room for Michael's computer stuff. We enjoy spending time doing our separate hobbies together! My work space is a tool bench that was already in the garage. I cover it with vinyl tablecloths so I can make lots of messes, and then change them out every so often.

Here we go! PS: I'm sorry for the cell phone quality pictures.

Welcome to my post of the Christmas in July Blog Hop! Thank you to Ruth for putting this all together.

Teddy and I are so happy you are here!

Today I have two pages to share with you. Before this blog hop, I had no interest in scrapbooking anything Christmas related. I returned to scrapbooking a little over a year ago after a several year hiatus. When I picked it up again, I realized that my style had completely changed. I no longer do journaling or anything theme related. Instead, I scrapbook based on my feelings and emotions. At this point in time, it is more of an artistic outlet for me than a way of keeping memories. I do Project Life to keep track of all the day to day stuff. Anyways, all of that to say that this was quite the challenge for me. I started with a page that didn't use any Christmas papers or colors.

Our First Christmas Card

I love that triangle paper from Studio Calico's Atlantic! I was also thrilled to use a Making Memories sheer frame that I've been holding on to for SEVEN YEARS. That's a lot of years when you're 24! Here is a closer look at it:

Happiness is...

I loved that patterned paper so much, that I decided to use it as my background. I used an x-acto knife to cut out the centers of random circles, and then backed them with gold glitter POW! paper by American Crafts. I bent the edges I cut out and placed a punched heart in the middle with foam dots. To accent the picture a little more, I very sloppily cut out some trees from an old sheet of Making Memories patterned paper. I sure miss that company!

On June 27th, 2013, I got to cross an item off my bucket list. Two of my pages were published in Life.Paper.Scrapbook. magazine! This was very exciting for me because I love Life.Paper.Scrapbook., and I have always wanted to be published! If you haven't seen this beautiful issue already, click the link below. You'll find my layouts on pages 65 and 69, though I encourage you to check out the whole thing.

Life.Paper.Scrapbook. Issue 2

• Marry the man of my dreams.
• Travel to Europe (Paris is my biggest dream of all time, but I would also love to see Rome, London, and everything else in Europe).
• Become a stay-at-home Mom.
• Graduate from college.
• Run in a 5k.
• Go to Disneyland again without kids.
• Be a member of a scrapbooking design team.
• Have and/or adopt children.
• Be free of student loans and therefore have no debt.
• Own our dream house.
• Own a car with locks and lights you can turn on with a button, as well as with working AC.
• Read every single book on my ever growing book shelf (just the ones that are mine--Michael has lots and lots of psychology, philosophy, and history books that I want nothing to do with).
• Have my scrapbook page(s) published.

There you have it! Come back tomorrow for the Christmas in July blog hop!

One of my favorite ways to title a page is with song lyrics. Because sometimes One Direction can say it better than I can. I love spelling out song lyrics with Thickers, letter stickers, die cut words, or the negative of a die cut. One of the fun things about using song lyrics as that you can often end up with a longer title than usual. It's a fun way to mix things up! Here are some pages I've done using song lyrics. Have you done any pages using song lyrics as the inspiration for your title? I'd love to see them if you have! If not, I challenge you to incorporate a song into your next page!

Without further adieu...