Goodbye Moorea...

Goodbye Moorea, and goodbye flash on the camera! After few different shots of us sitting on that coach, the gorilla pod lost its balance and grip on the opposite chair that the gorilla pod was gripping, the camera fell backward dropped onto the marble floor. The flash broke instantly. :(

I kept the page simple. I asked Tommy to participate in this layout as well. I decided to use a beige color cardstock as my background.

I decided to use 1 photo only for my layout. Because the hotel lobby was very opened, bright and green, I decided to stick with a theme in this layout with similar color to the picture. I found a pattern green & white paper. I decided to use it to cut the font from my Silhouette Digital Cutter. After cutting it out and removing the letters from the carrier sheet, I noticed that the fonts was too light if I decided to adhere them onto the cardstock. I decided to cut another set of the letters with brown cardstock to make the other pattern stand out on the page.

I decided to create use my digital cutter to cut out the photo corners. I used a different green pattern paper to cut out the corners. To keep it uniformed, I also cut out another set of photo corners to put behind the pattern paper.

I adhered the picture over the photo corner.




I asked Tommy to write about his Moorea experience. He kept his journal short, partially because he forgot most about his trip, other than how excited he was, looking forward to Bora Bora that day!






As for me, I also wrote a journal. I managed to squeeze so much in with so little space provided for myself. I retained a lot of detailed information in my mind (I called them... unnecessary information!) I usually write small, but I think I wrote even smaller in this.

I decided to cut 2 pieces of green cardstock to adhere behind the 2 journals. I had some small blue flowers and decided to use them. I added rhinestones the flowers to give a little bling to my page.

That's it for Moorea! Follow my travel blog on my travel experience!

Dining... with a View

"Dining with a View, " this title really said it all! It was our second day in Moorea and decided to hung out at the hotel property. We had a breakfast & dinner meal plan with the hotel. Since we went to the Tiki Village Theatre the night before, we asked the front desk if we could exchange one dinner for a lunch instead. They agreed. Well, that's how we ended up dining at the hotel's bar, overlooking the view with a glass of delicious pina colada and our 3 course meal.

In this layout, I decided to use two different color cardstock.

I hated the small fonts so much, I ended up cutting huge huge fonts to make sure I could use the runner tape easily!

For the left side of the layout, I decided to use pattern paper to cut the fonts and flourish out. It added color to the page. I love the color of the pattern paper!

The right side of the layout was a bit weak, to be honest. The page looked very plain, even with 3 strips of pattern paper running down the layout. There's something about the layout that didn't seem to go together. Till today, I find this page to be my least favorite!


I wrote a small journal along with the foods that we ordered on the right side of the layout. For a lunch, that was a really big lunch! On the left side, I wrote out the name of the restaurant we ate at and the date we dined. I used pattern paper behind both tags to add more colors.

If I were to go back and redo this layout, I would complete redo the entire layout! I would totally add a photo mats behind the 2 pictures on the left side. I probably would use green or blue cardstock for the photo mats. For the right side, I probably would redo the entire page. I would change it to the beige cardstock to match the one on the left side. I would probably keep the theme of blue and green to keep the page more "uniformed" looking. I probably would make the pictures turn a bit to give the page more of a "fun" look.

What I love about this page, I loved the pattern paper that I used to cut the letters and the flourish out! The two tone colors added a pop to the page.

Next time, another layout of the food we ate at another restaurant at the resort.

Wine Tasting @ Santa Ynez Valley

Santa Ynez was my first wine tasting trip with Tommy. Believe it or not, after this trip, we fell in love of doing wine tasting tours and had to go to Napa Valley a month after. After we left Ojai, we drove up to Santa Ynez Valley for wine tasting. We watched the movie, "Sideways," and we picked two wineries off their list to visit.

This was a simple layout. I used only one sheet of cardstock as the background. I chose brown as the background because of the pictures in the background. Not only that, we went to visit in September, the beginning of Fall season. I wanted to use "earthy" tones for my layout.

I cut out fonts from my Silhouette cutter. Some of the fonts were smaller and they were difficult to put on the page because I didn't have the right tools to adhere them. When it comes to scrapbooking, I don't like to use glue unless it is absolutely necessary. I use runner tapes to tape everything down on the page. Not until I was 1/3 way into working on my first travel album, I decided to pick up the Xyron X to make my life easier.

For the smaller fonts, I had to pick out tiny stripes off the runner tapes and add the tapes to the font one by one by hand. I had to carefully place the tapes on each letter and had to make sure the tapes were not showing on the edges of each font.

The problem about this page was the printout of the wine map. I tri-folded the map, added a ribbon to wrap around the map, and taped the back of map to the layout. If the page doesn't have a protector cover, this would work. However, all my albums have protector covers for each sheet. I will have to cut a hole on the protector cover so I can access the map. When I have time, I will put try to figure out what to do.

As for embellishment, I decided to use rub-on to keep the page simple. The great thing about rub-ons is how simple it is to transfer designs to the project. All I need is a popsicle stick and continue to rub the design off the sheet. If done correctly, the entire design gets transferred to the project!

If I were to fix this layout, I would add frames to the pictures and round the corners with the corner punch. I would probably shrink the map to keep the entire map flat on the layout without the need to fold and write out the places we went on a tag.

Happy Monday!

What Will Happen to Pookie?

I decided to create a mini album within the layout. It was my first time putting something like this together. It was much more difficult than I thought because I didn't know how much space I needed to put the brads on the side to flip like a book. I didn't know how to align the brads. Look closely, and you can see that first 3 brads are spaced out closer than the 4th brad. It was a big challenge on its own. Nonetheless, it was a fun layout to do.

I decided to use foam letters to put the title together. I was tired from cutting letters with my own hand. I decided to use chalk and stencil to color in the paw. On top of each paw, I used a white pen to write out "Pookie."

From time to time, Tommy would pass out on my coach while watching TV. I normally get bored from watching TV by myself (maybe that's why I stopped watching TV nowadays) and his snoring sometimes overpower the volume of my TV, I would find ways to wake him up. I love to pick on my dog once in a while while he was sleeping. I decided to pick him up and dropped him on top of Tommy to see what those two would do. The result? Well, let's just say I was glad that I had my camera with me at that time to capture a really funny moment!


I did a mini album to chronograph the interaction of the two. I also wrote a small journal for each of the picture. I decided to use the same color of the album with the background to keep the page from looking too busy. The pictures were 4x6, I had to create the photo mats which I had never done before. It was difficult because I didn't know how big the mats needed to be. Aside from that, I had to leave extra space on the side to put the brads in. The last picture was taped down onto the layout.

I used a small single hole puncher to punch out the hole as the brad was quite tiny. The entire brad would go right through if I used a regular size hole puncher. I believed the hole was a bit small for the brad to pass through, so I punched another hole right next to the original one to make the hole bigger. Unfortunately, this was where I messed up. I didn't use a ruler to plan out where to punch a hole. By the time the paper were pierced, it was too late to fix the mistake. Always use a ruler to measure everything!

If I were to do a similar page in the future, I would need to align the brads evenly with a ruler. I will have to make sure that I don't poke the brads through the background page as well. I would need to score the edges to keep the edges nice and sharp to have the clean folded edges like the birthday cards bought from the store.

Until next time... Have fun scrapping! :)