Eat Love Scrap!

My new sacred Scrapbook Space!

2009-12-24T00:54:00.000-06:00

As you all know I moved back to my home in Cuernavaca, México. I spent the most amazing months in Chicago with my awesome boyfriend, but it was time to come back.

As soon as I got here I started my newest proyect: my very own scrapbooking room...and the good news is that IT´S FINISHED! and the better news is that it was completely free!!

I searched everywhere around the house looking for things to use and let me tell you that the outcome was great.

Here is a before and after so you can understand my excitement.

Now I can concentrate on new scrapbooking projects and customized scraps for our clients.

Yes, Mena (my sister/partner) and I, we just opened our own Scrapbook Business in Mexico and we called it:

I´m very excited, I just hope I can keep up with my spanish blog, my english blog and the business!!

But if many women can do it, I´m pretty sure I can.

What do you think about the new room, you like it?

I´m back!

2009-12-24T00:52:00.000-06:00

Yes, indeed, after a nightmare of airport adventure...I´m HOME!

Cuernavaca is the place I come from, and after my lovely time in Chicago with my boyfriend, I return to my Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Chihuahua dog and friends after 6 months of absence.

It was a nightmare because I had the "clever" idea of bringing FIVE carry-ons with me during the flight, apart from my THREE over-weight suitcases. *Which by the way, I want to deeply thanks Stan, my patient and loving boyfriend, for being kind enough to pay $400-freaking-dollars of over-weight!! Can you imagine? I have some serious luggage issues...

Anyway, the luggage wasn´t a problem, because after the check-in I forgot about them. The problem was to go through TWO flights with my carry-ons.

Ok, seriously, there are no words to describe this, so here´s the pic to prove it:

I wasn´t smiling after 9 hours of suffering...

But I got home safe and very happy to be back to an awesome weather!!

Now, I´m very excited fot my new Scrapbook Room, which I planned weeks ago and I´m ready to put it together!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!

Tutorial Thanksgiving Day!

2009-11-26T11:48:00.011-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving scrapbookers!

Here is a new tutorial to make cute cards for the occasion, in 12 easy and fast steps.

I want to give thanks today for my health, my family, my boyfriend, my friends, the lucky I have been to travel this much the past 5 years, the fact that my grandparents are still with me and I can keep learning from them, for having an education, for my mac, for the internet, and for having creativity to express myself on scrapbooking! GIVE THANKS! never take anything for granted...

ENJOY!

This is the final result....isn´t it easy! Let me know if you have any questions and don´t forget to leave comments, I love to get feedback.

Tutorial Notebook Inner-Cover

2009-11-25T20:46:00.020-06:00

I´m back! I was gone for the weekend to NY and let me tell you that it is now my favorite city (with Madrid and Paris) in the world!

I´ll post some of my scrapbooks about the trip as soon as I finish them, but now I want to show you my new tutorial.

Since I have a lot of free time, instead of watching TV or surfing the net, I decided to read...and write all the thoughts that comes to me while reading. So I looked for an old journal and used it for that purpose. I also write quotes and notes on it, from the books that I read and find worthwhile to preserve for future occasions instead of reading it again.

There are so many good books out there, I just joined the amazon zone and I´m mesmerized by the amount of books there are and how many of them I want to read. I´m really into memoirs after finishing Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and can´t wait for her new one, Committed, released on January 2010.

Hope you enjoy the tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it!

Tutorial Accordion Album!

2009-11-16T15:56:00.018-06:00

Hello, anybody there?

I´ve been very busy improving my posting techniques so I can offer you a more friendly way to present the projects and I think I´m getting there.

I hope you have as much fun making this project as I did. My boyfriend was sooo happy when I gave him his present...I couldn´t believe that a guy could appreciate an 8 hour scrapbook! I thought he was going to be like -Thanks! Kiss-Bye... but no, he couldn´t stop looking at it and thanking me for it. It wasn´t a big deal, I loved making it too. Every moment I spent looking at the pictures, matching colors and papers, and remembering those precious moments together...was priceless!

We hung it on the wall of our room and looks beautiful. Not only the scrapbook, but the fact that every time we look at it, it reminds us of the things we did through this 6 months together.

This can be a nice project to follow the development of a baby through a whole year, or to see how kids grow over a year, don´t you think? Enjoy!

**Click on the pictures to see them bigger!

What I learned this week...

2009-11-11T23:49:00.000-06:00

1.- I learned that there is a blog by Jo-Lynne called Musings of a Housewife and loved it!

2.- I learned how to design a blog button on her tutorial and still don´t know how to get the code for it.

3.- I learned there are thousands of women out there blogging about scrapbooking, which made me feel either less special or part of a big community...I choose the second one.
I try to see the glass half full not half empty.

4.- I learned that starting a blog is easy, being committed to it is the tough part. Specially when your tongue mother is spanish and you chose to blog in english! But there´s nothing a dictionary can´t solve ;)

5.- I learned that I can research on the internet for 10 hours straight and keep learning and learning and learning... IT´S OVERWHELMING all the information out there...and it´s only about one subject! Wow!

6.- I learned about patience. I can´t expect to have the best blog about scrapbooking if I´m new at this. And I can´t expect to have 1000´s of followers just weeks after starting it.

7.- I learned that there are a lot of teachers everywhere, willing to share their wisdom. And I´m a humble student desperate for new knowledge!

The Miracle of Life!

2009-11-11T14:11:00.063-06:00

My friend Anita is having a baby girls this week, so I decided to make her a Scrapbook-two-page-set for Sophia´s room.

I like to work on projects like this because they motivate me to make them as beautiful and sweet as possible. This will be hang on the walls of that nursery room and every time mommy goes in there, she´s going to look at it, si it has to project happiness and sweetness and family union.

So this time I did a little something to the pictures in Photoshop first to make them smaller. I opened a new page and made it 6 x 4. Then I pasted 2 pictures in the 6 x 4 page and saved it as a .jpg

And also edit them on picnik.com to make them look all PINK with the effects of that web that is amazing. It has a lot of options to edit your pictures before you print them, so they can fit perfect in your scrapping creative ideas. And it´s FREE!

I chose two pages with the same pattern to be my background and cut the spaces to place the main pictures.

For that I used my Cricut and the Lyrical Letters Cartridge and cut a frame of 5" for each pictures.

Then I pasted the pics on the back of the page facing front...like this:

The heart frame was made separate and then pasted, as well as the thin frame on the top. To see if it fits perfect, first I tried it with a template. It turned out to be 5" too.

The next step is to place the rest of the elements that will make your page look more decorated. For this I chose a picture of a flower that I previously edited and print. I cutted it myself (my Cricut couldn´t help tere, LOL) and place it on the blank space with other elements.

Now I want to have the newborn´s name on it so I choose a nice font on the Lyrical Letters Cartridge and cut it out.

Most of the times when I already have all my elements on the page, I play around with them, like pieces of a puzzle and most of the times end up changing my first template idea....you just have to flow and be open to new options.

At last, I finish it with some ribbon to give it the final touch.

...but wait.

It´s not over. Remeber I said it was a double project?

Well, the other page has the same background and the same frame for the main picture but this time I cut it right in the middle of the page.

Now I arrange the pics for this page and spread them until I find a good way to place them. I make some paper frames for each picture and paste them.

Last but not least I cut another flower exactly the same as the previous one and place it on the blank space. If you put them together you will see that they do look like a set and they will make a beautiful decoration for Sophia´s New Room. Enjoy!

Sweet Memory!

2009-11-11T13:33:00.001-06:00

This has been a very creative week. The relationship with my new friend, the Cricut, is growing fast but strong, after some experimentation I came up with this new scrapbook page and I´m happy to share it with you!

For this page I used:

Doodletype Cartridge for the I love you.

Minimonograms Cartridge for the circle letters.

A Word Party Cartridge for the lilac flowers.

Lyrical Letters Cartridge for the thin pink flowers.

Simply Sweet Cartridge for the butterfly.

Center Point on the Cricut to cut the picture in a circle.

Be kind to a stranger!

2009-11-08T21:20:00.000-06:00

Robyn, The Pink Stamper posted about a little boy that asked for his last christmas (unfortunately has terminal cancer) to receive as many letters from around the world as possible.

I saw a video from the news showing the hundreds if not thousands of letters that he has received from Hong Kong to England and all around the world.

This is the card I made specially for him, Noah Biorkman, hoping he has the Best Christmas ever and that each letter he receives fills him with love, positive energy and health!

Seasons Project!

2009-11-07T14:36:00.018-06:00

For the past four months of living in Chicago I have had a looooot of free time -being jobless and all, but I have used my time wisely.

My dad told me once that "if you never want to get bored, always bring a book with you". Reading has been a great way to feel like I´m doing something productive instead of feeling like a bum watching TV all day long. A friend recommended a great book I have been reading and following that has brought me a lot of joy and results in my life and I want to share it with you:

Who will cry when you die?

by Robin Sharma

Another thing that has become a great way to fill my day but yet feeling it was productive, is a word we all know called "research". Of course I have always googled stuff, but I´m talking about real research. The kind of research that you spend long hours on a subject: reading about it, watching videos about it, checking out reviews about it, until a few hours later, when you feel good about yourself and about learning one more thing out of the thousands of possibilities out there. In a way you are homeschooling yourself with nothing more than a computer and internet connection.
;) Thanks for teaching me that honey!

But my favorite and most beloved way to spend my time on is scrapbooking, obviously. And even more now that I have my new favorite best friend, my Cricut Expression.

I´m just getting to know it, that´s how a friendship starts, right? You start very gentle, trying not to be too forward but with a lot of interest on what that person, in this case bug, has to share with you...and you with it.

That´s exactly how this is going, I´m trying to be very gentle with it for I don´t want to brake it, I treasure it so much. Here is 3/4´s of my first project with getting to know my bug. The last one I´m missing I will be posting it later, when winter gets here.

For the title I used the Lyrical Letters Cartridge. Capital Alphabet with shift on. For the pics I cut them with center point and used the Layers with shift on the Merry Christmas button, in the Joys of the Season Cartridge. Pasted the thin ribbons, the thick one and the artificial flowers with my favorite Staples glue tape.

This entire scrapbook was made with the Life is a Beach Cartridge. I wanted to make it look fresh and alive, so the tip is not to paste all the elements flat...like you can see with the waves and the octopus.

For the Autumn one I used the Ashlyn´s Alphabet Cartridge. The title is all in capital letters with shift. The decorations under and on top were with Flourish/shift button. The daydream word is from Life is a Beach Cartridge, on 8 with Title Words. The orange background is on Square Card, also on 8. The leaves are real. I got them on early fall and put them between books so I could use them later. Cute, isn´t it?

Where I´m from we never have changing seasons. It´s a place near Mexico city called Cuernavaca, and it has an average temperature between 70º´s and 90º´s all year long! I have never experienced winter yet, therefore I don´t have any pictures of it...but I´m looking forward to taking lots of them when snow comes!

Christmas came early this year!

2009-11-05T13:14:00.002-06:00

OMG! I am soooo happy to share this with you.
I have breaking news.

I had been bugging my boyfriend with getting a Cricut machine since I got here, but the fact that I don´t have a job was a problem. The other day I went on Craigslist and found an amazing deal on 12 cartridges for $200, isn´t that wonderful? It was a sign from destiny, because just the month before I had a tiny cash-job that payed exactly $200! So I had to have them, eventhough I don´t have the machine...yet!

We had to drive a whole hour to meet with the guy, but when I had them with me it was all worth. We came back home and was so excited to finally have my own cartridges, although it would be quite complicated to use them with out the bug, until.....
Next morning I woke up and went downstairs to talk to him, when I opened the office´s door...there it was:

MY VERY OWN CRICUT EXPRESSION BRAND NEW!!!!

I could not believe it, it was so surreal. I started to cry -I´m very emotional- and jump like a little girl and then I hugged him and yelled and cry some more. Finally I went to grab it and at that point I was so excited that I just wanted to open it right away in a desperate way, like children on Christmas Eve with Santa´s presents.

I´m telling you, I have been dreaming about this since I found out about Cricut 5 years ago. Finally, thanks to my awesome boyfriend I get to have it!

Now lets see what this baby can do...

Crazy impulse, great outcome!.

2009-11-04T12:42:00.004-06:00

Probably you are asking, what uncertainty?
Well, it´s a long story but I´ll try to make it short.

It all began three years ago. Me and my sister, Mena, went to a cruise for New Year.

I met a guy, we talked and spent the last three days of it hanging out on the Caribbean. He was great, very smart, great conversation, very cute and we had a lot in common...except for the fact that we lived in different countries.

So that was it, all we exchanged was a sweet kiss and an e-mail address, which eventually turned into a Facebook friend´s request.

We wrote to each other sporadically, if not rarely. We knew that, no matter how great our Titanic adventure had been, it was not our moment. We were both in college, still living at home, and a long-distance relationship between a Catholic 23-year-old Mexican girl and a Jewish 25-year-old Russian-American was not the plan we had in mind.

So years went by, until one morning of a February 3rd, Facebook reminded me that it was his B-Day. I was going through a mid-twenties crisis and had a new attitude about making new friends and going out of the box with new ideas and challenges so I wrote on his wall:

Hey! It´s a long time I haven´t heard from you!! Happy B-day!!! Hope everything´s great with your life......when are you going to visit me at Mexico?? hahaha Hope to hear from you soon!! XOXOXO

To my surprise I had an answer to the message just 2 days later. And I think he was going through the same crisis because his answer just took me aback:

Hey girl, Spring Break works for you?

And that was it. Next thing I know is that I have to talk to my mom and let her know that we were going to have a visitor on vacation, a guy I just met for three days on a cruise 3 years ago!

As crazy as it sounds I have to tell you that was the best vacation ever! And in a matter of a week we knew that we wanted to be together...now things were different.

I had just graduated from college and he had his business running, we were both single and young enough to do crazy things like falling in love in a week and considering having a long distance relationship.

Next thing I know it is May and he invites me to Chicago, his hometown, to spend my B-Day there and also, to meet the parents!

My two weeks there where amazing! I had found my soulmate, my partner and my best friend. So it wasn´t hard to say yes when he asked me to move in with him.

I went back to Mexico, pack my hole room and a month later he was there to pick me up and meet my father.

We went to Acapulco to have a get-to-know-each-other trip, with my dad and his wife. I was very nervous but when things are meant to happen, they just happen perfect!

Saying goodbye to my family was the hardest thing to do. I don´t have to mention that we are a very close and loving family, you can see that in all my scrapbooks . So the last night at home I just couldn´t sleep, I spent all night long crying and couln´t stop thinking of all the what if´s possible.

He was a sweetheart -as always- trying to cheer me up and passing me the Kleenex.

Just like that, four months after that Facebook message we were living together. Maybe it doesn´t sound that crazy, but if you put together the time we were actually together it´s only 31 days (3 days in the cruise, 1 week in Spring Break, 2 weeks in Chicago and 1 week in Acapulco).

People told me I was crazy to just take all my things and go live with a stranger; others warned me about hundreds of things that could happen to me in this dangerous world; and other thought it was a very romantic story.

There were a lot of opinions but here I am, 4 months later -still alive- living in Chicago and very much in love with a wonderful man. What will come next? I don´t know yet. But for now, I will appreciate every day I have with him and the rest will come later.

It sounds like a beautiful fairy-tale, but not everything is joy and happiness...

The uncertainty began the moment I got here, although, that is another story...

Welcome!

2009-11-02T12:09:00.008-06:00

I have never written a blog before. Actually, I never intended to have one (specially not in a foreign language) when I learned about them in my New Media class in college. But remember..never say never...

It all started the day I went to the movies to see Julie & Julia, the great and funny movie with Meryl Streep (one of my favorite actresses) as the talented Julia Child and the promising Amy Adams, playing Julie Powell (and my Inspiration Girl #1).

I have to tell you a little bit about me for you to understand my point here. One of my biggest passions (apart from Scrapbook) are MOVIES. And I know there are people who can say the same, but the way movies make me feel is something I consider very special. To say the least, I have to go to the movies at least once a week or I start to feel like there´s something missing. Also, I´m known to be a very emotional and sensitive girl, and to say that I cry in every movie I see is not an exaggeration. But I just have some special connection with them: if it´s a drama, I feel the pain of the characters; if it´s a thriller, I bite my nails or break my partners hand; if it´s a comedy, I enjoy it and feel part of it like one of the characters myself. I´m telling you, every time I watch a movie I have a special moment in my life that makes me wonder of things, gives me ideas, put me in a reflective mood or even inspire me.

Exactly like Julie Powell did that night. As soon as the movie was over, I turned to my boyfriend and spilled out:

I´m going to start my own blog!

First thing in the morning I started to research all the blogs I could, but started to feel overwhelmed with the amount of blogs out there. So I had to be more specific with my research, I had to pick a theme.

I thought of blogging about movies, but let´s face it: Yes, I have a major in Film, Media and Communication but who wants to read about MY opinion in movies (although, I will be giving my opinion here about the ones I get to watch, I can´t help it...everything in my life I relate with movies!)

My next thought was to write about my personal life and the adventures I´m living in it. Right, who wants to read about my personal life either! Yes, I have a few interesting and crazy stories, but they will be told along the way.

So that left me with the one passion I´m very proud of and wouldn´t mind to share: SCRAPBOOK!

I had no idea this was such a trend! There were hundreds if not thousands of scrapbook blogs out there.

So I start to loose hope on anyone noticing there´s a new Scrapbook blog out there...until I got to my Inspiration Girls #2 and #3.

Robyn and Leah were my teachers along the way. I started reading their blogs (the first blogs I follow ever!) and was impressed that they have been doing these for 3-4 years! And look at all those followers they each have.

http://www.mypinkstamper.com/ (Robyn)
http://lifeaslou.blogsome.com/ (Leah)

Wow! I want to have that too. These girls are so authentic, so real, so passionate about blogging and scrap-booking. I had to learn more about them, and follow their example.

I really admire these girls, I have no idea how they do it. Leah is a wife and a mother of 3 and Robyn is a wife and a mother of 5! and they can still write e-mails back! (I can prove it, hahaha). Thank You Girls! For being my inspiration!

First lesson: every time I think I can´t write today, I´ll just think about them...because if THEY can (with houses, children, loundry, husbands), I can.

My Inspiration Girl #4 is Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of my new favorite book Eat, Pray, Love. One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia.

Please, if you haven´t read it, do it now! I think every woman should do so. For me it was inspirational, reflective, useful, wise and taught me so many things about life and myself.

This book was my inspiration for my blog´s name Eat, Love, SCRAP!

I too, am a woman in search for everything around the world (you´ll learn more about this in other posts ;) So thank you Liz, for opening my eyes and inspiring me through this time of uncertainty in my life.