Granville Island

Granville Island is such a fabulous spot to visit. I loved watching the outdoor entertainers perform outside the Public Market. The Market is one of those places where you'll find whatever you can imagine and then some.

 

I'd travel there by Little Blue Ferry and enjoy a full day. Although I did this several times on my vacation I barely scratched the surface of everything the Island had to offer.

The inspiration for this page came from the August 15th sketch from Stuck?! designed by Laura Whitaker. You still have a few days to create your own design and be in the running to be a prize winner chosen by random draw.

 

I traded the circular elements for stars. the stars matched my nautical themed paper. Being an island what else what you use? A few lines of zigzag stitching to simulate waves and it was done. This Stuck?! sketch is definitely one I will be using again.

Have a great day and remember, always be on the lookout for an adventure.

How Time Flies

I just absolutely adore this new tradition of taking a picture of baby each month of its first year. Only when you see one month after another do you really understand the concept of How Time Flies.

These photos are months five, six, seven and eight of my great-nephew Sam's first year and the inspiration for this layout. What a difference just four months made. I swear he went from baby to little boy in that brief  period of time.

 

The sketch is this month's double page sketch from Stick It Down. Check out all the samples of layouts done with this sketch at Stick It Down. I'd be very surprised if you couldn't find some exciting inspiration for your own layout. Be sure to link up that layout by the end of the month. If your layout is chosen you will become the featured designer for the following month. Now that would be very exciting.

Being a little boy, it seemed like scribbles were perfect for the sketch's suggested circular elements/embellishments. Adding time pieces fit the theme.

 

I enjoyed playing with my Silhouette Cameo for this layout. I found a childlike font and added a clock to create my first title with combined words and picture.  Several offsets made the clock and title 'pop'. It turned out to be easy to do so I know I'll be using this technique more often.

 

 

I hope you drop in at Stick It Down and find you enjoy creating with this sketch as much as I have.

Bridges

Bridges is a restaurant built on a pier on Granville Island.

It was amazing to sit at the edge of the pier, eating a very delicious hamburger and enjoying a glass of BC wine. Quail's Gate is my absolute favourite.

From Bridges, and how I think it got its name, I could see both the Granville Street and Burrard Street Bridges. As a bonus, my vantage point was perfect for watching the Little Blue Ferries come in from English Bay. I was also treated to a view of many a sailboat. Wow. Do they make some of those boats big.

The sketch for this layout is from Scrapmuch? and was designed by Laura Whitaker. The mixture of rectangular and circular elements worked perfectly with the triangles on my background paper.

 

As I try to compete my 2012 vacation album before I take my 2015 vacation, I'm grateful that Scrapmuch? has a sketch every Friday to help feed me the inspiration I need.

 

It didn't take much by way of embellishments but the treasures I found in my mishmash of embellies were just the ticket.

 

For my next page I think I'll use the new sketch at Stuck?! Check it out.

 

Sylvester

If there was ever a bird with an attitude it's Sylvester, a Silver Pheasant native to China.

 

A long time resident of the Bloedel Conservatory in Vancouver, he walks freely throughout the myriad of pathways stopping foot traffic for the odd preening session or a nap. If he's in the path you have to back track to detour as his tail feathers are so long there's no way around him.

 

He's a pretty bird and he knows it. He will often stop a group when he sees a camera.

Poultry or not, he's a bit of a ham.

The inspiration for this layout came from the Lasting Memories challenge #254. The challenge is to use the provided sketch and add something with wings. Sylvester seemed a perfect winged specimen to use. Be sure to link up your sketch by the 28th of the month to be eligible for the draw prize.

Next week Lasting Memories continues its "Sky High" theme a challenge to create a page with a starburst or sunburst.

Whistler Blackcomb

My most beautiful view of the Rockies came when I saw the Whistler and Blackcomb mountains together. From my vantage point they looked incredible, their majesty silhouetted by a brilliant blue sky. Truly an awe inspiring sight.

 

I so enjoyed working with this August 7th sketch from Scrapmuch? designed by Laura Whitaker. There's a great double page layout at Scrapmuch? as well. Complete and link up any of their August sketches by the end of the month to be entered into a draw for a prize. It's always fun to win a treat.

 

I really liked this sketch.

I'm a little bit of a circleaholic so the circular element really appealed to me. The circles also mirrored the rounded peaks of the mountains.

 

 

 

I flipped the sketch on it's side and it worked perfectly for my panoramic sized photo.

 

 

This was the suggested layout. It looks so different than it did when I rotated it. I think I'll do the sketch again, this time in the suggested orientation. It's just struck me that maybe any number of sketches could be rotated to give a totally different look. Maybe each sketch is really a '2 for 1' deal.

 

Homeward Bound

The piles of photos from my Vancouver 2012 vacation are getting shorter by the day. There may be light at the end of the tunnel after all. :)

I decided to jump to what would be the last page in the album. This last page was to mirror the first in the album so it would also feature the outline of the province I was travelling to, its provincial coat of arms, and my airport and aeroplane souvenirs.  I changed the outline and button to Ontario, sent the plane flying west and the departure airport photo to Vancouver. It just all came together for me.

 

I played along with two challenges with this layout.

The sketch was the August 3rd sketch from The Memory Nest. It fit the horizontal stretch of my items to a 'T'. The Memory Nest has several challenges a month. They are released on Mondays. I only recently discovered this site but will definitely be back to play again.

 

 

The other challenge was #253,  "Sky High", the week one August challenge from Lasting Memories. Each week they will have a challenge based on the "Sky High" theme so check back. This week it was to be something that signified "Sky High". I thought my aeroplane flight would be just the ticket (pun intended).

When I put the first and last pages together I was very happy with the 'start' and 'end' of my albums.


Off to Vancouver

Back to Ontario

 

 

Gastown

I love going to places that have an interesting history and are just that little bit different. Gastown is that kind of place.

Gastown was Vancouver's first downtown core and is named after "Gassy" Jack Deighton, a Yorkshire seaman, steamboat captain and barkeep who arrived in 1867 to open the area's first saloon.

Gastown's most famous (though nowhere near oldest) landmark is the steam-powered clock on the corner of Cambie and Water Street. It was built in 1977 to cover a steam grate, part of Vancouver's distributed steam-heating system, as a way to harness the steam and to prevent street people from sleeping on the spot in cold weather.

I found a seat on patio of the Lamplighter Pub across the street. I thought it idyllic to be sitting in the sun enjoying great food and a beverage, and listening to the steam clock play the Westminster Chimes every quarter hour.

 

The inspiration for this layout came from the August 1st Stuck?! sketch designed by Laura Whitaker. I wanted to feature the steam clock picture and, as I am prone to do, tell a little about the subject I'm scrapping. This sketch did all that for me so all I pretty much did was follow right along with it.

  

 

I decided to use a solid circle. I knew the idea of the stitching would add to the layout so used gold jean thread, which is a thick thread that shows up well on paper, and outlined the circle. Unfortunately this thick thread only comes in gold and denim blue. It's great to work with and not only is more prominent but adds texture to the layout.

The journaling and title was fun to do. It took a few drafts before I found the right line breaks to accomplish the slanted look. I loved the suggestion of breaking up the journaling with use of the title.

Steveston Village...cont'd

I still can't narrow down my pictures so Steveston Village had to have another page in addition to the double layout I shared yesterday.

There was such a variety of boats at the docks. I was most fascinated by the pilot boat Pacific Navigator and the myriad of sail boats with masts that seemed so incredibly tall. As it turns out, boat watching can be a lot of fun.

 

The sketch is the August  Stick It Down single page sketch and was designed by fellow Stick It Down design team member Purvi. I flipped the sketch on it's side to accommodate 2 horizontal 4 x 6 photos.

 

 There are also double page and card layouts posted on the site this month. Whatever your fancy there's a sketch for it. Be sure to link up your design. The link is active until the end of August.

 

Well I think it's time to move onto another facet of my vacation. The vacation only lasted a week but the creation of the albums will end up taking almost a year :) 

 

Steveston Village

I'm still plugging away at my Vancouver 2012 album. Actually, I stand corrected. That should be albums as it looks like by the time I'm done there will be three. I think I need to really work on narrowing down the pictures I want to scrap.

Steveston Village was such a lovely place. It's Fisherman's Wharf came complete with the requisite fish mongers, traditional and exotic sea foods and seals anxious for the leavings. Something I'd never seen before was a vendor selling sushi right from the ocean.

The Village is also the place from which two major whale watching businesses operate so you can imagine the hustle and bustle. It was really great to sit on the pier on a sunny afternoon with an ice cream cone and people watch.

I had the perfect paper for my Steveston Village layout and was just waiting for the right sketch. That sketch landed in my lap yesterday morning from Scrapmuch? Its first sketch of the month is always a double layout and this one was just what I was looking for. Designed by Laura Whitaker it featured my horizontal pictures perfectly.

I just love the Bo Bunny Boardwalk series of papers. I've never before used so many papers of a collection in one layout. I just couldn't resist any of them.

For embellishments I stayed with the nautical theme using twine to mimic rope and, of course, the traditional anchor and ships wheel.

My favourite paper of the Boardwalk collection is the one you see here used for the corners of the layout. It has so many tones in it and yet one doesn't overpower another.