Hello, hello!

Yes! It’s that time again! Riikka and I challenge each other each month to create something with a particular theme or thing in mind. This theme or thing can be anything and for this Inspired by Riikka and I agreed that the June/July 2014 issue of Scrap365 would be a brilliant source of inspiration!

As it happens, there’s a brand new issue coming out this Friday! So just to be clear… This is the new Aug/Sep issue:

But for this Inspired by we used this issue:

Riikka and I are both contributors for the magazine. I’ve been on the team right from the beginning. I love working for this magazine and I love reading it. There’s a great mix of styles in there and there is always something that blows my mind. Now you know I’m biased, but I think this is the best scrapbook magazine around and I’m proud to be a part of it!

My Inspired by project was a no-brainer: I’m in the middle of my summer break and although I had planned to finish ALL of my deadlines before the break… I did not. But I figured (before summer break started) that I needed something to document my summer break adventures. So… it had to be a summer break mini album.

I decided to use a Snap! album as a foundation. I’m not sure if I will keep everything in there for good, but I figured that I could always choose to bind the pages in another cover later on.

For the inner pages I cut about 15 sheets of mixed media paper to size and I thought that the Hello, hello Studio Calico scrapbook kit would provide me more than enough papers and embellishments to last me my 14 day break.

And then my summer break started…

And I played around with paint and had some fun scraplifting from the magazine…

But the summer break weather wasn’t that good…

And we ended up doing a lot of cleaning and purging…

And not doing anything particularly noteworthy…

And when we did, I didn’t have time to document…

So…

All I have to show for this Inspired by are a couple of foundation pages!

I had a lot of fun making them though! One of the things I’ve done in the past week is organize my craft supplies (again) and it was extremely satisfying to use some of those supplies in the process of creating the foundation pages.

Unfortunately I’m not allowed to publish photos of the magazine’s pages… If you have the June/July issue at hand, it might be fun to grab it and see where I got my ideas from!

I didn’t really think this through beforehand. I just started with the first article and I went on from there, skipping to fun background ideas first:

Inspired by: Inspiration Station – Doodling by Emma Trout

Zentangle and doodling is so on trend right now. And it’s so relaxing to do! I love the way Emma combined it with scrapbooking. Her pages look fab! My doodling still needs a bit of colour, but I’m a bit hesitant because I don’t want to ruin things!

Inspired by: On the Bright Side by Sanna Lippert

This was a step-by- tutorial. At first I thought my page looked terrible… But I just continued to follow Sanna’s directions and I had the best time creating these backgrounds. I was happy to use Nathalie Kalbach’s Stampendous stamps on these along with Distress Stains/Ink (hadn’t used them in ages!!!) and embossing powders!

Inspired by: Stash Savvy by Birgit Koopsen

Birgit makes brown paper look sophisticated… I dug out one of my self-carved stamps to create the background paper, just like Birgit did in the article!

Inspired by: Jazz it up with Gesso by Ali Parris

Just followed Ali’s directions and then left my pages to dry for a looong time… That’s why these are still quite bare.

Inspired by: Viewpoint by Kristin Tweedale

I’m a big fan of Kristin, not just because of her simple scrapbooking style, but also for her choice of subjects to document. So I just had to include her! I liked the idea with the alpha’s so much that I basically scraplifted her page.

And that’s all I have to show for now… I keep all pages in the Snap! binder until I figure out where all the photos and stories are going to go:

I plan on printing the photos next week and then finishing the mini album soon after. I have a serious habit of not finishing any vacation album if there isn’t a deadline attached, so wish me luck!

I’m beyond curious of what Riikka has created with the huge amount of inspiration that can be found in this issue of Scrap365 magazine… You can see for yourself on her blog!