Sapphire Beach - St Thomas

The first stop on our cruise was St Thomas.  As I mentioned in a previous post, we caught a taxi to Sapphire Beach to spend the day.  It was a great beach; Crowds were nonexistent!

ScrapMuch? has a great Sketch-y Friday Challenge going on.  The layout was perfect for all my landscape pictures.

St Kitts - Caribelle Batik

On the St Kitts tour, we stopped by Caribelle Batik.  This is a store / workshop for handmade batik fabric and goods. The quaint building is in the middle of beautiful landscaping.  They have batik demonstrations that show how the fabric is made.  A fun stop.  We took home a big fabric piece that we hung on the wall - you can see it in the layout - the sunset one.

My layout was inspired by Grand Diva's Sketch Challenge

St Kitts - Black Rocks

Loved the Black Rocks at St Kitts.  The contrast between the black rocks and the turquoise water was so beautiful!

I used the challenge at Stuck?! Sketches for the layout, but I rotated it so I could use my landscape pics!

Use your Stuff has a challenge to use Lace, Ribbon, or Twine (Challenge #210).  I used some Embroidery Floss on my tag.

St Kitts - Buildings full of history

On our tour of St Kitts, we saw so much history - at least buildings that were full of history.  This page shows some of the buildings we saw.  Two beautiful churches and one of the many sugar mill ruins around the island.

I used some kiwi lane templates to create some interest.

The layout was inspired by a Sketches in Thyme challenge layout (#189):

I couldn't bare to crop my pics down to 4x4 so I left them as they were:)

I also loved the challenge at Use Your Stuff.  The challenge was to use flowers!  I used my silhouette Cameo to create some layered flowers.

Finally, I found a color challenge at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge.  I had to use the color green in my layout.

St Kitts - Independence Square

On our tour of St Kitts, we drove by Independence Square.  Historically, this was the cultural and social center of St Kitts.  So much history here - much of it sad slave trade history.  I wish we could have just spent the day learning more about the history.  I would like to come back some day to spend that time learning.

 I was able to use two pattern challenges to complete this layout:

I lucked out this month on the pattern challenges. (Must be since this is a lucky month!) There were two challenges that required the chevron pattern!  Yay!

First, Rochelle was having a This or That challenge:  you choose polka dots OR chevron.

Second, Scrapbook Challenges had a chevron pattern challenge!

Brimstone Hill Fortress - St Kitts

We had the best tour of St Kitts.  It was an all day, all island private tour through Royston's Tours.  I highly recommend this tour! One of the stops was the Brimstone Hill Fortress.  Such a beautifully preserved site!

This fortress was first started in 1690 and worked on through out the next 100 years.  It was a British fort with the work done by slaves.  St Kitts has a lot of slave trade history.  I wish we had more time to look through the fort and learn more about the history.

I used two challenges on this layout: one sketch challenge and one inspiration challenge.

The sketch challenge is a double layout from Stick it Down.

The inspiration challenge is from Pixels and Paper Challenge Blog.  The challenge was to use a monochromatic color scheme on your layout.  I used brown as the color.

St Maarten - Great Bay Beach

On our cruise, we also visited St Maarten.  The plan was to go to the famous airport beach - Maho beach. This is the beach where airplanes land and take off right over the beach.  However that morning, everyone was tired so we decided to sleep in a little and make it an easier day.  Great Bay Beach is right by the cruise port - just a water taxi ride away.  That was our new destination.

The water was amazing!  So many pretty blues - deep blues:)  The beach was great and we had a good time hanging out there.  We also did some shopping at the near by stores.

If you ever go to St Maarten and land near Philipsburg, you HAVE to try the coconut smoothie kiosk. It is on the left as you are walking along the port.  I think just past the water taxis.  If you like coconut, that smoothie is to die for!  I mean REALLY!  It was incredible!  I want to go back just for that!

I used a color challenge from Scrap Much?

They had this beautiful color board and the challenge says use at least 4 of the colors.  I used the pink, yellow, jade and blue.  Fun colors!

The sketch layout came from a recipe card at The Scrap Room