This is my friend Jarried. He is a massage therapist, and he is studying to be a psychologist. He was the first friend I made when I moved out to California, and he is one of the very best friends I’ve ever had in my life. I could tell you so many stories…oh it makes me laugh and cry and feel all kinds of crazy things when I look back on our adventures together. I should write a book about them, but you’d never believe half the stories anyway.

The Journaling:

The journaling says “Call us crazy, but we LOVED living on the east side.”

To someone who’s never lived in Los Angeles, the journaling might not make sense. I’m sure I will fail miserably in this attempt to sum it up briefly, but here goes. Some people in LA have this thing about “Westside” vs. “Eastside”. There are people who are devoted “westsiders” who will say things like “I never venture east of ___________”, with “______________” being something along the lines of “the 405” or “La Brea.” or whatever.

We always thought that was pretty silly, since there is soooooooooo much interesting stuff to do and see all over Los Angeles- why restrict yourself to one tiny area of it? But to each his own!

At one point we lived in a fabulous loft in downtown LA. Loved it. We spent soooooo many days just wandering around downtown Los Angeles, seeing everything there was to see- and there was a lot to see, believe me! I took these photos of Jarried on one of those carefree days.

Materials and Supplies Used in this Scrapbook Layout:

• White Mini Graph Transparency: Hambly
• Brick Wall Hand-Screened Patterned Paper: Hambly
• “Live With Passion” Patterned Paper: Marah Johnson / Creative Imaginations
• Blue Patterned Paper: Alaska from the Dawson Collection by BasicGrey
• Background Paper: Dream Street Papers, “Antique Chic”
• Letter Stickers: Black & White Basics by Reminisce
• Winged Heart Brad: Lovestruck by Marah Johnson/ Tattoo Collection/ Creative Imaginations
• Brick Wall Paper was heavily inked with Versa Color White Ink by Tsukineko
• Edges inked with Dark Brown Colorbox Fluid Chalk by Clearsnap and Basic Black ink by Stampin’ Up!
• Marker: Black Sharpie

Thanks for dropping by!

There was a time when Mike and I used to go see bands pretty much every weekend. Mike was in a band at the time, and a lot of our friends are in bands too. We try to go out and support our friends’ bands as much as we can. There is nothing quite like seeing live music! It’s a bit harder for us now because we live in Santa Barbara and a lot of our musician friends are in LA, so we don’t get out to see them as much now as we used to. And I am completely kicking myself- hard– because I didn’t take all that many pictures at the time. ARGH! Note to self: take more pictures! Note to YOU too if you are reading this: take more pictures! And scrapbook them, or at least put them in albums. You probably take a lot of things about your life for granted now. There will come a time when your life will change, maybe even change drastically, and if you do not take pictures now you might regret it later.

So, yeah, for some reason we have pictures of us at this venue in Los Angeles called “The Garage” but we have no photos of the band at all. Go figure. Why did we not take a photo of the band? DUH! But, at least from my paper journal I was able to figure out where exactly we were and which band we saw that night. Cool. Gotta love having a journal! Gotta love having a scrapbook even more. Awhile back I wrote an article called “Why I think Scrapbooking is an Essential Hobby For Women”. I could go on at length about this topic- how much we forget over time and how important it is to keep track of your memories, especially the things you want to remember.

Materials and Supplies used in this scrapbook layout:

• Patterned Papers: Arcade “Word Play” paper by Cherry Arte, and zebra patterned paper by Reminisce
• Alphabet Stickers: White Alpha from the Black and White Basics collection by Reminisce
• Journaling Block= White Cardstock + Blue Rubber Stampede Dye Ink plus the Great Shapes Journaling Block Stamp by Inque Boutique.
• Ribbon: ??????
• Pen: Black Zig Calligraphy Marker

No, not In the Doghouse. It’s AT the Doghouse. Mike used to be in a band (he plays bass). The name of the Studio where the band rehearsed and recorded is called “The Doghouse”. At the time, I used to rent an apartment from one of Mike’s fellow band members, and the apartment was sorta up above the Doghouse, way high up the hill overlooking Ventura Blvd. You’d never know it was up there unless you had a reason to. People drive by it all day long and never even suspect that there is life up there. It’s so beautiful up there, we felt like we had our own wild overgrown secret garden. Anyway, it was the guys at the Doghouse that first introduced Mike and Me. 🙂 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 Mike's band practiced pretty often at the Doghouse, and then after they were finished playing, he used to come upstairs to say hi to me and hang out. Or once in awhile I would go down and watch them play. At the time I was in design school, plus working, and I was usually pretty busy with paintings and design work and research and work. Some nights I would answer the door and Mike would say "You have paint on your face!" and I would say "Yeah I just woke up on top of my painting, must have fallen asleep." Haha. Good times, happy happy happy memories. 🙂 Note: I scanned the layout before I wrote the journaling, because the journaling is kinda personal and not something I wanted to put on the internet. Just FYI. So, if it looks a little bare in the spots the journaling ought to be, that is why!

Materials and Supplies Used in this Scrapbook Layout:

• Blue Cardstock
• Patterned Paper: Garland Green paper From the Snowglobe Line by Reminisce
• Alphabet stickers: Reminisce From the Into the Woods / The Great Outdoors Collection
• Arrow Journaling Block: Ashville Die Cuts by Scenic Route
• Other journaling block: Designed and “Manufactured” by me. I block printed it by hand using a block of my own design. I already blogged about this process at my paper lace web site, in this post.
• “Just Hangin’ Out” sticker: Creative Imaginations / Karen Russell, Narratives Collection / Honeydew.
• Spin art paintings: Amy Solovay (me!) created using Jacquard Lumiere metallic paints (which you can’t really tell they are metallic in the photo, but oh well) plus Dr. Ph. Martin’s Radiant Concentrated Individual Watercolors, and another similar product called Luma Concentrated Watercolors which I cannot find anywhere any more (if you know where to get them please comment! Thanks!), and Winsor Newton gouache paints. I hand painted all the other little collage-y bits and pieces of paper too.
• Plus an assortment of chalks and inks, including Fiber Scraps EZ tintz Tea Stain Walnut Ink (on the journaling block.)

I am so excited about the latest web site I have been designing and creating. The web site is all about Clear Albums! Clear albums are one of the newest hot trends in scrapbooking, altered books, and art journals.

If you’re not already familiar with clear albums, here are some informational web pages on the Clearalbums.com web site that I have put together so far. (More are coming soon.)

• Introduction to clear albums
• General Instructions For How To Design a Clear album
• How To Make New Pages For Your Clear Albums
• Frequently Asked Questions About Clear Albums.

Some Manufacturers of Clear Albums:

• Clear Scraps
• Tinkering Ink: you have got to see their amazing, brand new for 2008, “Peek-a-boo” Albums which are chipboard and acrylic!
• Maya Road (Their albums are actually “Sheer” albums, not clear albums, and they also have a whole collection of beautiful sheer embellishments too.)
• Prima Marketing: LOVE their new “Build-A-Book” concept! Very creative!
• Pageframe Designs
• Rusty Pickle
• D. Reeves Design House
• Zutter also released brand new acrylic album covers for the Zutter Bind It All Machine!

I have been working on a few new mini books using clear albums that I will be revealing soon. Can’t wait to show them to you! Also, I am planning on organizing a design team for clearalbums.com too! So please stay tuned for details.

Thanks so much for dropping by! I really appreciate your interest in my blog and in my artwork. Hope you are having a fabulously interesting and creative Monday, and that your week is off to a good start!