A Discussion of Hardcore-ness Related to the Classics and Scrapbooking

I have spent the afternoon being a bit pleased with myself because of this fact: one of my homework assignments was to read the first half of the Aeneid, and I did so while drinking Virgil's Cream Soda (purchased at the local Meijer). Classics major hardcore. As a result, I will be examining all of the last week's layouts on a scale of how hardcore they are.

First up: Diana's Dante Cupcakes. 10/10, because they contain pictures of red velvet (i.e., hellfire) cupcakes with little fondant sinners, some of whom are encased in Twizzlers flames. And references to Roman art, Fantasia, Lion King, Rome, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

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Spaceship Earth. 3/10 - Sticking to one mini kit is not particularly hard, nor is this a particularly original photo location.

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Fantasyland Expansion. 4/10. Shots taken from Dumbo and I worked in princesses, which up the scrapping coolness but take away from my personal street cred (at least in most of my current social circles).

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Naples 6/10. Naples as a city is kind of lame (at least the 45 minute version with an unhappy tour guide is). But it is also kind of sketch, upping the danger level. This was also a speed scrap page, so I am quite pleased with the results.

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Roman Forum. 9/10. Monochrome is pretty bad-ass. As is the Aeneid, and including Latin quotes for a picture of the Forum makes it totally awesome. This is one of my favorite layouts, ever. It also perfectly evokes my style, I think. Done for a Word Up: Font Edition Challenge.

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Harry Potter Album End Cover Page. 10/10. Speaking of totally awesome, A Very Potter Musical reference is always appropriate. This page is a little bit older than a week, but I finally got around to posting it. It also uses my current favorite kit.

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Happy 2,763rd Birthday Rome. Another 10/10. A page detailing the eleven and a half hours we spent in Pompeii on the day of the founding of Rome. Made with a Britt kit I got on sale this weekend. And entered in a contest with a pretty sweet prize of a two-month spot on Britt's creative team (we'll see how that went tomorrow - my fingers are crossed an odd number of times). Abbey Road reference. I think this is the coolest page I have ever made, and I'm seriously contemplating getting like five copies printed, including one for my wall and one for my door. That's not too creepy, right?

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Whatevs. Coming up in the next week: starting a new part time tutoring gig, taking the GRE, the start of my last football season as an undergrad, and making Perry the Platypus cupcakes. I know which one I'm most looking forward to, and it's not the football.

Last Week's Layouts

My brain is about to implode rather violently due to move in stresses, and I haven't even moved in yet! I've finally seen all (well, just about all, with any luck - I have a rug and two chairs in hall storage) my dorm junk together, and it fills the back of my mother's van. Yikes. At least if my room looks like an episode of Hoarders, I won't have a roommate silently resenting me for it.  I have been scrapping, despite the fact we basically have been driving for two and a half days, visiting family, and being on the errand-running end of a freshman move-in. I also did my Halloween page, but since we went to a nightclub that night, well, that's just one for the photobook.

For the 8/16 Tuesday Template Challenge (actually scrapped last week, but not posted till Tuesday)

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A half-done page that happened to easily fit this Friday's Roadmap to Scrap

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For a Mousescrappers Challenge:

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I do want to get another page or so done tonight, although goodness knows I should probably sleep instead. Photobook coupons are just so tempting! I have 9 pages left of my 2010 book, and a coupon expiring Wednesday. Can she do it? Yes she can! Probs. If, you know, a new semester and move-in and seeing friends I haven't seen since 2010 don't interfere.

One Love Templates and Journaling Paints

With moving my baby sister in (*sob* - I'm old now), I missed posting about Crossbone Cuts' newest releases. There were two new releases yesterday - Journaling Paints and Splats and One Love Templates V.1. The journaling splats are quite useful. And, although I don't have a lot of single-picture layouts to do anymore, the templates are quite handy for the few I do have (and more pictures could probably be easily added.

Here are a couple of layouts I did with the templates and journaling splats.

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One with just the templates:

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T-Minus One Day Until Road Trip

Tomorrow we head north for school! We'll be on the road somewhere between 16 and 22 hours, so we have to space it out over 2 days.  I'm so excited - I've been away from school close to nine months, and I've really missed it.  Some more layouts, although I've had a tricky time concentrating this week on getting things done.

Augustus is absolutely my favorite, and the Prima Porta is one of the coolest statues in existence.  I basically just typed up my notes for journaling on this page.

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There are a few more spring break type pages that are basically business as usual, and not really worth posting and dealing with right now.

Last Week's Layouts

So I made myself hold off posting until all the speed scraps from ScrapMatters's birthday celebration were done. It's been a busy last week - I only have one more week before we drive up to school, which will severely cut down on my amount of free time.

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I went through another one of those phases where I thought I could finish an album before a coupon expired - rather silly, considering how long I was holding on to it before I realized that I haven't finished my 2010 album (the one in which I decided I could do Project 365 and the LYM Weekly Challenges? Yeah, right - I barely made it through March, although I do theoretically have over 50 pages documenting the rest of the year).

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There is a "mate" to this next page, but as it's a VBS layout, I can't share pictures of other people's kids like. It is adorable, though.

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For journaling, this page uses the blog entry I made documenting my hell-ish trip home.

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Now, for some speed scrap pages. Journaling on this next one: When we got back from Campania, Pina had a surprise waiting for us on the table. A giant Easter egg! Dora had already told us about the Italian tradition of huge eggs (Fabio had gotten her one several feet high when they were dating), so Margaret Kristin and I decided to buy own own little Easter eggs at Despar. I found a Disney princess one, Margaret had Tom and Jerry, and Kristin had Barbie. My prize was an inflatable princess crown, which was pretty sweet. Later that afternoon the whole Centro gathered for the cracking of the egg. Alison tore into it, and pretty soon we were all divying up huge chunks of rather thick chocolate to take back to our rooms for lunch. 

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Journaling on the steak page: Journaling: For lunch, we found went down a little side street near the Duomo and found a cute little restaurant called Dante and Beatrice’s. Since Diana had just read the Inferno, we had to go in. She had liked the Roman beef salad I’d had a few days earlier, so she tried to order it here. Unfortunately, her Italian was not up to par so the waiter thought she wanted steak and a salad. Oops! They brought her a steak the size of her head and still on the bone! Once she got over the disappointment, she did enjoy the steak, although she could hardly put a dent in all that meat.

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A Roadmap to Scrap page (I needed a "break" from speed scrapping).

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And back to the speed scrapping: 

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That's it for now. I'm sure I'll have many more pages done in the next week. Right now I have 54 Disney pages left and around 60 Italy pages left. We'll see how much gets done before school starts.

New Action and Shadow Styles from Crossbone Cuts

This week Crossbone Cuts released two new helpful scrapbooking tools, Shadow Like Tanya and Tanya's Save for Web Actions.  The shadows go both up and down and are much bolder than the ones I normally use, but I really like the effect.  The save for web action is pretty sweet, too. I'd never run an action before, but it was a breeze to use. It stops after the boost and sharpen but before resizing, in case you want to stop and save for printing. If not, then it zooms straight into resizing. I had no idea actions were that fun to watch :)
 

Here's a page I made using both the styles and the action:

Crossbone Cuts - Shadow Like Tanya, My Kind of Christmas, My Kind of Christmas Add On, Tanya's Save for Web Action; GG Digital Designs - Berry Merry

August Mix-a-Kit

With August comes another set of the ScrapMatters Mix-a-Kit, and Tanya has a new collection with four new pieces to go with this month's color scheme.  I really liked the soft colors in here - they were so easy to play around with and are so perfect for a school layout.

Here's a page I made using all four pieces. I really loved the blue papers and elements. The picture is from when we still lived in Florida. During my senior year of high school, my sister and I scanned in a ton of our favorite pictures of ourselves spanning from birth to present day for a school project, so I have all these old photos on my hard drive. They've been super useful when I don't feel like scrapping Italy or Disney, but still want to work on something. I think I'll probably end up printing all these "random" pages, along with a few of the Digi Dare type pages, into some sort of All About Me album, which I can them adjust and rearrange and add to as often as I see fit.

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Elements

Patterns

Dots and Solids

Grades