Good Times in Tulum

At the entrance of the Tulum ruins, there is all kinds of touristy shopping.  We had a good time looking around.  Pryce is taking a little rest in this picture.

When I saw sketch 491 at Scrapbook Challenges, I was super excited.  I thought it would go perfectly with my colorful picture.

This sketch also gave me a chance to use up some of my paper for my paper challenge!  I used 5 sheets of paper and several scraps!

Henna Tattoos in Cancun and a first for me

One night at our resort in Cancun, there was a henna tattoo artist set up in the commons area for Mexico night.  Cara was excited to get one so we took some pictures during the process.

When I saw the challenge going on at Stick it Down, I knew I wanted to use the double page sketch.  I LOVED the banners running everywhere.  I thought since it was Mexico night at the resort, using some Mexican fiesta banners would be perfect!

I rotated the 2nd page of the sketch to fit my pictures better, but other wise, I followed the sketch pretty closely.

I wanted to show a closeup of the banners I used.  Two things:  First, this was my first ever stitching layout!  I have seen so many layouts with stitching on them, but I have always been too lazy to pull my sewing machine out.  However, for these banners, I was struggling with how to attach the photos and banners to a string to hold the whole thing together.  I decided to use some zig zag stitching as the string.  The sewing was SO EASY!  I will definitely do it again.  Second thing: I made the fiesta banners with my silhouette cameo.  They were a great idea, but ended up taking FOREVER!  I cut them out of vinyl and then had to pick the tiny pieces of vinyl out of the design.  I love how they turned out, but I'm not sure I would do them again.

Picture This! Challenge Blog - Grand Re-opening

I am always looking for blogs that host challenges!  Picture This is starting up August 1st.  I can't wait to see what their first challenge will be!

Right now, they are hosting a giveaway to help promote their site.  Check it out!

Enjoy the View: Tulum Ruins

More Tulum Ruins! These ruins are close to the ocean so there are some beautiful views.

Here is my double page layout, with iguanas and more ruins!

Let's Scrap has a great double page sketch challenge this month.  I love the viewfinder!

I have individual pictures of the pages below. I used my silhouette cameo to cut out the view finders, the titles, and the mayan picture. I loved using left over photograph peaces to fill in the viewfinder.  Looks so cute!

I also am entering this in the July Mood Board challenge at Scrapbook challenges. The theme of that challenge is vacation. I used the orange, yellow, dark blue, and turquoise colors from the mood board

This layout ate up 5 sheets of paper for my paper challenge! I am going through paper way faster than I thought! Once I get to 100 sheets, I am going to reward myself with MORE paper!

Tulum Ruins in Mexico

The ruins near Tulum really are impressive. They are situated right by the ocean.  Beautiful views!

Another great challenge at Scrapbook Challenges uses the grid system -  challenge 485. I used multiple pictures in place of the big one. I think it turned out nice.

The Paper Girls Challenge Blog is having vacation theme challenge.  My layout fits perfectly for a vacation theme!

Mayan Ruins in Tulum

I love challenges at scrapbookchallenges.com right now. So many of them are a block style, which is right up my alley.  I am a simple scrapbooker - the layers of embellishments that are so beautiful just aren't natural to me.  I can sometimes pull those off with scraplifts, but never on my own.  You will probably be seeing several of the scrapbook challenge sketches on my blog!

First one up is their sketch #488. I loved the strips of paper off to the side.  It gave me a chance to use some of the cute papers I bought for my Mexico scrapbook.  I would like to try some stitches on this layout - I have never done them before, but I think they would add a lot to the layout.  

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Tulum Ruins: Mayan Clipart

This is a simple page I made to compliment a challenge layout I did. You can check out my previous blog post to see details about the other layout.

I have tons of pictures from our visit to the Tulum ruins so I will have quite a few layouts that have four or more pictures on it.  This is a very typical four picture layout.  It is easy to add a smaller 5th picture in the center or to use an accent there.

Here I used a neat Mayan image I created using the Maya Allstars font (it's free!).  I used my Silhouette Cameo and some black vinyl to create the image.  This is actually the negative space left over from the image (the inversion).  I will try and use both pieces to get more out of my vinyl.  There are several letters in the font that will work great on my layouts.  You will see them several times in the future!

Here are both layouts together:

As far as my paper challenge goes, I ended up using five sheets of paper for this double layout.  While I was making that cute sun, I used a whole sheet of yellow paper making different kinds of suns and symbols.  Those die cuts will show up in future layouts.