Kissin' the Blarney Stone and Murphy's Law

Supposedly, if you kiss the Blarney Stone, you are given the gift of eloquence.  I might have eloquence, but I certainly don't have any sense of organization!!!

I started working on the Ireland scrapbook immediately after returning from our 2-week trip in May of 2007.  I had a lofty goal -- to finish this scrapbook in one year.  To make it easier, I limited myself to only one page for each place that we had visited regardless of the number of photos or miscellaneous cool stuff (like tickets, receipts or other souvenirs).

Blarney Castle was high on my list to visit.  I read lots about the history of kissing the Blarney Stone, and the gift of gab.  You've got to do this!  And, though it wasn't the nicest castle in Ireland and though there were huge, long lines stringing through the rooms to get to the top level to kiss the stone, we diligently waited and finally....kissing the Blarney Stone! 

For anyone who has not been there, you actually have to lay on your back and lean down over an opening to kiss the stone.  Of course, they take your picture and for 15 euro, it's yours to keep.  Awesome souvenir for a scrapbooker.

Time passes, we pack up all of our belongings, put them in storage, and move to another house.  Suddenly, it's 2009 and I CANNOT find the Blarney Stone photos.  Oh, well, surely they will show up before I get to that page.  Nope, they are nowhere to be seen.

Finally, last night, I scrapped the Blarney Castle (which had a really terrific garden, by the way) without my precious photos of Kissing the Blarney Stone.  I joked with my husband that as soon as I finished the page, Murphy's Law would kick in and I'd find the photos in a week or so.

To my surprise, I finished gluing the page and started sorting through my stuff for the next page in Ireland and voila!  the blarney stone photos!  Not even 5 minutes had passed!!  I don't think I like Murphy!

Here's the scrapbook page of Blarney Castle sans kissing the stone......

Little Gift Scrapbook

For my husband's parents, I also made a little book with the Cricut & Gypsy. This was almost entirely supplied from one of the awesome Club Scrap kits!


We didn't go trekking around looking for barns & wooden railroad trestles on the Olympic peninsula, so I only had a few photos to work with. Sequim had too many letters, and Washington most definitely has too many letters!!! So, Andy suggested I try "2009" -- I really like how the book turned out. Pity that they aren't UCLA fans since we've got the blue & yellow going!


Thanks for looking!

P.S. Andy really does own more than one shirt -- but we only packed one "cold weather" shirt with us!

Rest of Idaho Book

The rest of the Idaho book. I put in a back cover since it made the book look more finished and then decorated the back cover too.

Thanks for taking a look!

Idaho Book

I made this little book using my Cricut & Gypsy for my parents as a Christmas present. We went out to see them in Idaho in October and I took a bunch of pictures. I made them go searching for barns and old wooden railroad trestles to photograph. My mom sent me a card after we got home that said she forgot how much fun we were -- I guess she enjoyed searching for great old red barns to photograph!

My dad really likes the local history so I found info and put a paragraph onto the left-hand pages to go with the pictures on the right hand pages. My husband spent more time looking at this little scrapbook than most of my others because he was reading the stories, too. I hope they like it.

I only had 1/2" zutter bind-it-all spirals and the book was a bit thick for that -- I'm calling it a "coffee table" book since it won't shut flat and stands up really nicely!! LOL!!

Here's a few of the first pages.

Last Page of Quick Quotes Cruise Book

Oops! It looks like I posted the "last page" when it was really the next to last page of the Quick Quotes cruise book. Here's the "for real" last page -- it is of El Morro, the National Park site in San Juan, Puerto Rico which is older than most of the continental US. We went to this fort on Christmas Day and saw some really huge iguanas, on the order of 3 ft long. Since it was Christmas Day, we were able to capture photos without lots of people in them. The photos of the iguanas didn't turn out so great, thus I was FORCED to buy the exclusive Quickutz iguana die!! But he's awfully cute!

And isn't it cool that the guard towers are exactly the same as on the commemorative quarter issued this year? I also found a die cut of the tower in one of my National Park scrap packs!

Thanks for looking at my book.

Last Page of Quick Quotes Cruise Book

Here's the next to last page of the Quick Quotes cruise book. We stayed at this totally awesome resort high in the mountains of Puerto Rico. It was very, very remote. At night you could hear the little frogs (they say "cook-y, cook-y") but they are so small they are difficult to see (like the cross-section of a pencil eraser). We had gourmet meals, a guided hike into the rainforest, and relaxation. A cat adopted us and sat on our laps while we lounged in the hammock outside our lodge room. I don't think anyone could ask for a more relaxing place on earth!

We also drove to an ancient "ball park" which was framed, if you will, by stones with carvings. It was really muddy and when we left we had "high heels" as we used to say as kids! Puerto Rico is green and exotic -- we are lucky to have this territory so close to visit.

This is the first scrapbook page that Iused my Gypsy -- the M in Mountain Retreat is from Gypsy font and I sketched everything out to minimize paper consumption. What a fun tool!

(P.S. I'm a landscape photographer so I should learn how to photograph scrapbook pages soon.)

Quick Quotes Cruise Book - next installment

Okey-Doke! Here's the next installment of the QQ book from our Caribbean cruise last Christmas. This is St. Thomas, which is one of the beautiful US Virgin Islands. It had been a pirate hang-out and we saw a steel drum demonstration.

A very pretty island because you climbed straight up from the ocean and had spectacular panoramic views of the harbor with it's fantastically blue, blue water. We walked from one end of the island to the other where there was a private harbor. We took a gondola to the top of one of the "mountains" and took an organized tour of plantation-style homes, too.

Quick Quotes Cruise Book

Here's the next stop -- Saint Martin or Sint Maarten, depending on whether you were on the French or Dutch half of the island. We went on a zip line adventure tour here -- we had to walk on ropes and little bridges suspended from trees. It was really fun!

There was a family ahead of us on the zip line tour that had a college age kid who was a gymnast. The mom was afraid of heights and the dad was a little overweight and out of shape. We saw them later that night in the dining room of the cruise ship and shared a laugh with them because the dad was really worn out but the kids were totally fine!!

When I showed this book at Show and Tell, my scrapbook friends said they used to love magic mesh and forget to use it. I love it, too -- it adds dimension and is just fun!

All the paper is from Quick Quotes -- I bought an extra kit just to have enough paper for the whole book. Awesome beach colors with the blues & oranges, I think.

Another page from QQ Cruise Book

Okay, tonight I'm trying to remember to crop the photo. I really need to get Photoshop but it is so darn expensive!!

Here's the next page in the Quick Quotes book I made of our Caribbean cruise at Christmas last year. Last page was Aruba, this is of Curacao -- I even bought a special alphabet from Quickutz just so I'd have a squiggly "c" for this page!!

Quick Quotes Cruise Book

Here is the first set of pages from the Quick Quotes book -- gosh it was a fun book to make! I made most of the book while we were in Dallas earlier this year to see the King Tut exhibit.

Front of Quick Quotes Cruise Book

This is one of the really cool Quick Quotes kits from earlier this year. I made an easy book of our Christmas cruise to Puerto Rico & Caribbean islands last year. It was a perfect design for a trip like a cruise where you only spend a little time at each place.

Making the book was really fun, too. The front and back are canvas -- I used Stampin' Up ink instead of the QQ chalk ink so the inking turned out a little bolder than the examples from QQ.

Thanks for taking a look -- I'll post the rest of the pages later.