Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
- In: 2010 | Single Pages | Travel
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My overseas holiday in 2010 included lots of places and lots of stories, so when I put together the scrapbook I felt like I needed dividers to break it up. This is the divider to start the Edinburgh section (the first place I ventured).
I created all the layouts for Edinburgh and was left with some postcards that hadn’t fitted anywhere. This was the perfect way to use them as they are ‘big picture’ postcards with views of the city. The layouts were focused on smaller stories, so it’s no wonder these didn’t fit in.
It was an excellent opportunity to use one of my favourite sheets of paper. One of those papers I’ve been hoarding because I love it, but have absolutely no idea how to use it. I added a chipboard title that I coloured with ink. It’s coated with Dimensional Magic to get that shiny effect and make it stand out from the background. Add some rub-ons, cloud stickers and a doily from my stash and its complete.
Overview 2014
Posted on: January 4, 2015
- In: 2014 | Family | Food | Photography | Travel
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It’s time again to finish the year in photos. Here’s a snapshot of my favourite photos and the ones that sum up what my year’s been about. This is a long post, but lots of photos and nothing too onerous to get bogged down in.
The photos I have used are wonderful in my eyes, but there are a lot of other photos with friends and family that should have made it into this post to really sum up my year. But as I don’t use people’s photos on the blog, unless they give their permission, they haven’t been included here. But there are a few of me sprinkled in there so it doesn’t look like my year is all about plants and food!
This first group of shots is from a week in January when I visited Taronga Zoo, the NSW Art Gallery and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. I really loved being a tourist in my own city.
A huge part of my year was being a full-time student again for my Masters course. I did a great variety of coursework and spent a lot of time on campus.
My schedule was really unpredictable and I was often working late at the library. I ate out a lot, and as I love my food I definitely needed to include some food shots in this post. Looking over the final collection of photos, I was really surprised that there weren’t more food photos.
Throughout the year I took short breaks from working, studying and caring for my plants to do some macro nature photography. First this was just with my iPhone, but later in the year I acquired an OlloClip, so that became my new favourite photography tool (used with my iPhone). I just love it so much, so convenient and such a cheap set of lenses.
In October I spent 6 nights in Hawaii on the way to Las Vegas for my brother’s wedding. Even though I completed three assignments while in America it was still relaxing and I had a blast at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and shopping at the outlet malls in Vegas and at my brother’s wedding.
One of the iPhone photography features I use a lot when I travel is the panorama setting. It really lets me capture the feeling of a place and lets me remember there was more than just one viewfinder’s worth of stuff to see. These are my favourite panoramas from my America trip (from top to bottom: the view of the Vegas lights from the wedding venue; the shopping and restaurant area in the Hilton Hawaiian Village; the palm trees along the Waikiki beachfront; and the lobby of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas).
The second half of the year was when I really narrowed down what the focus of my Masters project is going to be. I’m looking at the extrafloral nectar (nectar outside the flowers) of Australian native wild cotton plants. I’ve been growing the plants in the campus greenhouses for about 6 months and these are some of the photos I’ve captured over that time. I still find it fascinating that there is so much nectar just dripping out of the leaves that ants can drink it and I can collect it to analyse.
And to wrap up the year, Christmas photos from my time visiting friends in the Blue Mountains. Lots of laughs and so many beautiful Christmas decorations over our time together on Christmas and Boxing Day.
Happy new year! Wishing you lots of love and laughter in 2015.
European Adventure – title page
Posted on: November 24, 2013
- In: 2010 | Single Pages | Travel
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I combined three sets of products I just couldn’t work out how to use in this travel album title page – wood veneer geotags, chipboard country names and a beautiful scrapbook paper of a European map.
In the end I realised I was over-complicating the situation – I love all three components of the layout and I let them speak for themselves with very minimal embellishing.
The chipboard country names are from Scrap Fx and I picked them up at my local scrapbook shop in Sydney, Australia – I bought them without a specific use in mind just after my holiday and I felt like it would be a waste not to use them. I’ve already used the names of the cities we visited on the title pages for the city-specific sections so I had to come up with another use.
The geotags came in a pack of Studio Calico alphabet wood veneers – I was excited cause I’d seen them used to such good effect by Amy Tan and others. But when it came down to it I just couldn’t make them work on my layouts. And then this perfect opportunity came about to highlight the actual places I went in Europe…
I always had the title page in mind for this European map paper, but the colours and fancy border didn’t seem to encourage writing directly on it, it seemed to need something quite strong to stand out. The only way I could work some smaller writing in was to attach a journalling card from the Project Life Clementine Edition and make some short notes on that.
Now that I’ve combined all three of these ‘homeless’ elements it seem like they wouldn’t have worked any other way 🙂
Southbank Royale
Posted on: August 25, 2013
- In: 2013 | Photography | Travel
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For my recent trip to Melbourne I was looking to stay in a motel or apartment chain, but K persuaded me to look into a holiday rental. We wanted to stay close to the CBD, but not right in the middle of the city. The main thing we wanted to see in Melbourne was the Monet’s Gardens exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, so Southbank was the perfect fit for us.
We found Southbank Royale on Stayz and the description suited us perfectly. We like a bit of luxury and we didn’t want to share a room so two bedrooms with a bathroom each suited us to a tee. It’s located on the top floor of a secure building so the view from the balcony was amazing.
The kitchen was fully equipped which meant that K and I could cook up roast lamb and veggies that we picked up from the South Melbourne Markets (within walking distance). And for picking up those bits and pieces or a bottle of wine there’s and IGA and Chemist Warehouse just across the road.
From this Southbank location it was a three minute walk to tram stop 18 on St Kilda Road and we also walked to the Yarra riverbank, the National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square, the Botanic Gardens and South Melbourne Markets.
I went to sleep to that… and woke up to this 🙂
St Germain (and glitter)
Posted on: August 22, 2013
- In: 2010 | Scrapbooking | Single Pages | Travel
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I loved creating this page. The background paper screamed France at me, so I’ve been saving it for a Paris layout. I’m glad I did, the colours work really well with these St Germain photos.
Once I laid down all the photos it seemed a bit dark, so I added a little glitter to brighten it up. I’m not normally a fan of glitter, but I recently came across Martha Stewart glitter tubes. The glitter comes in a range of colours and the best thing about it is the fine texture. I think I’m converted!
