Hawaii Travel Journal Part 3

Just Another Day in Paradise:

This was our 30th Anniversary trip, so I should post a picture of us. This was taken by the whale watching crew as we boarded the boat.

 

 

And, here's the third installment of my travel journal:

And here's a much blurrier copy of that photo on a journal page. The background is done with Dyan Reavely Dylusions paints from Ranger. I still need to doodle with some black and white pens.

More paints on the left and a B&T pocket page on the right. Again, you can tell I reattached the left painted page from the washi tape going down the middle of the pages.

 

B&T paper on the left and more Dylusions on the right. (We cruised around the island in a convertible--Fun times!) This is pic of us is with our selfie stick, which we struggled with, to put it lightly. The map on the left is from our guidebook.

 

These two pages were fully covered with Dylusions black paint, and then I journaled with white pen. "Beach Vacation" is an old sticker I had in my stash. 

I made this journaling page by using the Dylusions acrylic block with the curved edge as a guide. This page houses a pullout that shows a dragon from the Chinese New Year celebration, which was during our stay.

This page, which needs a lot more doodling, has Dylusions inks in the background. (Eddie would go" refers to The Eddie big wave surf competition.)

The pocket on the right holds two tags, on which I journaled little notes from the trip. The ties of the tags stick out of the edge of the journal, which I like.

More photos, memorabilia, and our hotel key. The right side background is Dylusions paints and a little Dylusions fish stamp. I'll detail the leaves more soon with white ink.

 

More Dylusions paints and stencils for these backgrounds. I absolutely love the one on the left.

The left side is a clean-up page, or accidental page as Dyan Reavely would call it. It just means it was a page you used up excess paint on when you were done with another planned page. Sometimes they turn out the best. And sometimes they look like garbage. But, as Wendy Vecchi says, "Every home has a trash can."  The right side houses another pull out that I covered mostly with a photo.

The right side of this page is just ink that seeped over from the other side. I really like how it frames the page, so I'm not sure if I'm going to add anything more to the page or not.

Sunset colors on these pages. (The left side is what seeped on to the page before this.) I'll do some journaling about not seeing the blue flash at sunset although looking for it almost every night.

 

That's it for this post: one more to go.--Thanks for following along! 



Hawaii Travel Journal Pt. 2

More Hawaii Memories

It snowed in Iowa last night--snowed! And today is the first day of spring. I'm missing this beach outside our Hawaii hotel.

 

Back to my journal:

Climbing the Diamond Head crater got several pages dedicated to it, because I was pretty proud of myself for not having a heart attack doing it. :)  The page above has a pocket on the left, and the black page tucks in underneath it. The right side background was done with Dyan Reavely Dylusions paints from Ranger.

More Diamond head memorabilia and photos. I glued the pamphlet in so I can open it to read about the climb. The left has a Dylusions paint background, and the right side is B&T paper.

These pages are B&T papers.

 

Here we are on the balcony of our room with the beach and Pacific Ocean behind us. The left side is done with Dylusions spray inks, and the palm trees are B&T paper.

I made a pocket on the left with B&T paper and cut out a little fringe for the edge. I tucked in a black tag to frame a night photo. the right side houses another pullout page.

These pages were done with watercolors. I'm going to doodle more around the edges at least. The notes are washi tape. I used my vintage typewriter to type up the song lyrics on the right side. I used my typewriter for a lot of the little lines of sayings and lyrics throughout the book.

Both these pages are B&T paper. It looks like the photo and journaling are attached with just washi tape, but I also glued them in so they stick tight.

 

 



Hawaii Travel Journal - Part 1

Missing Hawaii!

At the beginning of the year (the 3rd of January actually) I posted that I was going to Hawaii and shared some pre-trip pictures of my travel journal that I had prepped for vacation. The trip was in early February, and my tan is almost gone, but I'm finally ready to share my (almost) complete travel journal in the next few posts.

First though, I really miss this:

[sigh]

 

 On to my journal.  It got even CHUNKIER. For some reason, I love the sloppiness of how fat it is and all the bits and pieces that stick out. I bought the travel stickers on the cover in Hawaii and used Mod Podge to seal it. I'll probably add some doodling to the cover when I feel like it. The overall look I was going for was a vintage look, and I think it works.

The journal itself is the small Dyan Reaveley art journal from Ranger.

 

I used Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions Vibrant Turquoise paint from Ranger for the cover. I'll try to point out brand names for products I used throughout when I can remember, but I used a lot of odds and ends, so it won't be an all encompassing list.

Look how fat it is with the stretch cord open!

 

Here are some of the first pages.  After the first few pages, I really didn't worry about going in order of the trip. I just journaled to match my backgrounds or mood. I'm not blogging all of the pages, just ones with special details, ideas I want to share, or personal favorites.

 

These pages were about the journey there. I used paints (right page) B&T paper (left page), travel Post-its (the suitcases and airplanes), and my plane ticket to Oahu. I cut the plane ticket in half, and then glued it separately to each page so it wouldn't rumple in the middle when the book opened and closed. I journaled around the edges of the pages and ticket.

 

 Pockets!

I took pictures of Iowa that morning (snowy and cold!) and one of the view from our hotel in Iowa (beach and sun!) and put them on these tags as a before and after. I made the pockets with  B&T papers. The backgrounds were done with Dylusions paints and stencils. I did a little doodling on the corners, but I'll probably add more. I used a preprinted whole-year calendar on the left and highlighted the dates of our trip.

 

 Another pocket!

This time I glued two pages of the journal together to form the pocket along the side of the page. I used a piece of a journal page I had removed from the journal as the insert. The tab is half a circle punch with a square paperclip--one of the messy things I love that sticks out of the journal when closed. The pink page was painted again with Dylusions paints, and I believe I used Dylusions sprays for the insert--possibly a page I cleaned my stencil on.

Both pages are in my handwriting, but throughout I tried to use different styles of writing to make it more interesting and sometimes even hard to read.

More Dylusions paints and Dyan Reaveley's color blocking technique here. The whale came from B&T paper, and the rest was from our whale watching cruise brochure. I used both black and white pens to doodle on the pages.

 

This page is all about Duke's--a classic on Waikiki beach. Under the pieces from another brochure, is B&T paper. The right side was done with Dylusions inks. I have a lot of mini pictures in this journal, which I think lend to the junky, vintage feel. I took these with my Fugi Insta Camera, shown in this photo. Isn't it cute?

 

These Pearl Harbor pages were done with Dylusions paints. I cut the pictures out of my guide book. The leaves are Dylusions stencils, and I doodled over them with white ink. I made the pages outside the journal (like a lot of pages in this book you'll notice), and then I reattached them with glue and washi tape. Dyan Reaveley taught this technique at a class I attended.

Another Dylusions paint background. The black piece was on B&T paper, and I added "North Shore." This page will definitely get some more doodling on it.

The left side is painted with watercolors, and the flip flops are B&T paper.

The left side I painted with watercolor, and the right was a clean-up page with Dylusions paints using a baby wipe. Again, I cut the pictures (from my guidebook) in half before gluing them in, and you can see the bits of washi tape I used to re-insert pages that were taken out of the book to paint.

 

That's it for this post--More soon!

 

March Madness in Iowa!

March Madness is alive and well in Iowa. For the first time ever, Des Moines is hosting six games of the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament, and THREE Iowa teams not only made it into the tournament--University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa--but ALL three teams advanced to the second round. Iowa and UNI even pulled their wins off with buzzer beating shots!

We're heading to a second-round Iowa State watch party today, so I had to check out Pinterest to find a basketball themed treat. Here's what I found and made:

This was neither my design nor recipe.  The original post was from Dorothy at her Crazy for Crust blog. Follow the link for the recipe posted in

April 2013 and circulating all over Pinterest. Her photograph is cuter too, and without the smudges on the plate! I bought both chocolate graham cookies and pretzels for dippers. I thought the chocolate would be a good peanut butter/chocolate combo, but the pretzels work much better. The dip is just so sweet you need the salty pretzel to calm it down a bit.

New Orleans Saints Layout

It's Super Bowl Sunday!

I'm not at the Super Bowl today--I'm somewhere much better in my opinion. But we did go to an NFL game while we were in New Orleans for Halloween, so in keeping with a football theme for the day, here's my layout from that game:

 

The game (New York Giants vs. New Orleans Saints in the Super Dome) was the third highest total points in NFL history, which made for a great time: lots of touchdown celebrations. My husband said both teams' defensive coordinators should be fired, but I didn't care. I like offense!  The Saints won 52-49 with a last second field goal, which was super-exciting. The fans were chanting "Who Dat!" long after the game. (If you don't get it, don't worry--it's a New Orleans thing.)

 

My layout was simple. I used black & gold (Saints colors) and white.  I had some large black tags sitting around, so I incorporated them into the layout. Here's the left side:

 

These pictures are during the pregame. We had great end zone seats!  I also used fleur de lis punches here and there to bring more of a New Orleans flair to the pages.  Here's the right page:

 

Most of my materials were CTMH, but I think they're all retired. I'll be sad when I've finally used up all the black striped B&T paper--it's been a favorite.  The top right photo is the winning field goal. The bottom pics show Drew Brees, the Saints quarterback, and Eli Manning, Giants quarterback and New Orleans native.  On top of a great game, we got to see two former Super Bowl winners.  Neither made it to today's game, although I'm sure Eli is watching his brother Peyton.

 

I used my "new" vintage typewriter for the journaling. I love that typewriter!

 

For the title, I used a CTMH alphabet stamp, punched out the letters, and affixed them with dimensional adhesive. This layout is pretty flat, aside from the title and the ties on the tags.

 

Thanks for looking, and I hope your team wins today!  I'll be watching beachside.

 



Parrotheads in New Orleans

Parrotheads on the Road Again:

Twelve best friends plus Halloween in New Orleans equals fun plus lots of shenanigans!   The picture on this layout was from during the day while we were all behaving somewhat.  We always try to get at least one group photo. This one is from the river levy looking back toward Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral--a standard NOLA photo op spot. 

 

I used CTMH's Nevermore paper pack after creating the background with Dylusions black paint and brick stamp. I used lots of scribbling and doodling. The lettering is all handwritten/drawn.  The three fleur de lis are punches. 

In the background you can also see in three spots where I used a date stamp repeatedly and not particularly neatly:

It makes the background have more depth, plus adds the month and year of the trip. 

Vintage Valentine

This is probably my favorite valentine I made this year:

 

The "Valentine Joys" card is actually an antique valentine that opens itself. Inside is the signature from the original sender. I forgot to take a picture of the little card open!-oops, and it's already in Colfax at the Spring City Vintage shop. The B&T rose paper is from CTMH's "La Vie En Rose" collection. All the distress and background inking is Tim Holtz's Distress Ink from Ranger (Vintage Photo). "Happy Valentine's Day!" was typed by me on my manual typewriter--love that thing! The paper flowers are from Recollections and the centers are CTMH embellishments.

 

I'm Sweet on You.

Perfect for your sweetheart for Valentine's Day:

 

 

Although not my normal style, I really like how this Valentine turned out. The background papers are CTMH's "Sangria." The stamps are all CTMH's "Sweet as Sugar." The button is from Dear Lizzy & American Crafts, and I added the baker's twice and an old CTMH charm that says "sweet." The charm is turned away in the photo, of course!