September Studio J Blog Hop - These Are a Few of My Favourite Things

Welcome to our first Studio J Blog Hop. To learn more about Studio J Online Scrapbooking contact your local consultant. My customers (and Canadians without a consultant) can create and purchase from my website or by contacting me. 

We hope that you will take the time to leave comments on our posts, as we love to get feedback from our blog viewers. By leaving us comments, we get to hear what you like, and what you want to see.  Thank you… now on to our hop!

If you have just hopped onto my blog, you can start here as this is a circular hop.  If you came from Marianne of The Scrapbook Chick, then you are in the right place!

Close To My Heart recently launched it's new Annual Inspirations Idea Book, so several of my blog posts have referred to my favourite things. This often reminds me the song "My Favourite Things" from The Sound of Music.  I saw a local production as a child and I'm sure I've seen the movie over 30 times. 

As mentioned previously, I spent a year in Ireland with my husband and two children in 2008-2009. We took advantage of the cheap air fare and explored other parts of Europe during school breaks.  In May 2009, I planned a trip and tried to incorporate something for everyone. I really wanted to visit Salzburg and I just had to take my family on Fräulein Maria's Bicycle Tour.  It was a great tour and we were able to see a lot of the sights from the movie.  

Created in: Studio J
Kit: Lucky
Pattern: Glimpses 
Kit Mix: 5

I love watching the Love Your Layout videos From Close To My Heart.  When I saw one using the Lucky paper and My Stickese, I knew it would be perfect for my layout.  One great thing about creating in Studio J is that you can change the size of your stickese and you can also use multiples.  This is particularly great for my title, where I used them for "BICYCLE".  I also had the choice of colour for each letter.  I did make changes from the video to suit my pictures and theme.  

Your next stop on our Studio J blog hop is Heather's blog.  If you get lost along the way, you can head to Adeline's blog, as she has the complete blog list.

Thanks for hopping along with us.  We hope that you've learned some new things to try in Studio J.  If you're new to Studio J, I hope we've inspired you to try it out. 

Visiting Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany - Tips and Money Savers in Bavaria

I decided to focus most of this post on travel tips.  Information on creating this layout in Studio J can be found at the end.  During my trip planning, I had to navigate a lot of information in German.  Luckily since then, many websites are now in English and if not Google chrome will do an automatic translation.

School in Ireland ran until the end of June, but the kids had no school the 1st week of June.  We decided after much discussion to explore Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  This required flying out of Dublin to Salzburg, Austria and back through Basel, Switzerland.  This was booked on Ryanair, but after scheduling our whole trip, including non-refundable hotel in Salzburg, we were notified that Ryanair would not be flying to Salzburg.  I booked an Aer Lingus flight to Munich, Germany for the day before.

We decided that we would spend that night in Hohenschwangau, Germany and see the amazing Neuschwanstein castle.  Germany offers money saving regional day tickets which work on all regional train, bus and subway travel after 9am on weekdays, midnight on weekends/holidays.  The one for Bavaria was €28 for 2-5 people, the price now varies depending on how many are travelling.  This was great as the pass covered the S-bahn from the airport to the train station, the trains from Munich to Füssen and the bus from Füssen and the Hohenschwangau.  Even those travelling on expensive Eurail passes had to pay extra for the bus.  I also bought a pass for the following day as the Salzburg train station is part of the Bavaria train network.

We arrived in Hohenschwangau shortly before 2:30pm, grabbed a some quick bratwurst and beer and checked into our hotel.  Tours for the Neuschwanstein castle can fill up fast.  I had decided to purchase the 14 day palace pass  (included Neuschwanstein and many other places in Bavaria, but not Hohenschwangau) for €36 (currently €40).  This also allowed us to take the next tour.  We walked up the castle, though you can also go up by bus and horse drawn carriage.  I purchased the palace pass and we were put on the next English tour.  

The tour was great and it is the only way to see the castle.  Our guide was American.  After the tour, we walked to Marie's bridge (Marienbrücke) where you can take the best pictures.  Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, that side had scaffolding due to a multi-year renovation project.  We started to hear thunder and on our way down the hill, the skies opened up and we were drenched.  Near the bottom of the hill we found the Hotel Müller and decided to eat in their restaurant.     

The next morning we headed up to Hohenschwangau Castle.  We didn't take a tour; we just explored the courtyards and exterior.  We then took the bus to the Tegelbergbahn to ride the summer luge.  The Bavaria regional day ticket that we would be using to get to Salzburg, could also be used on this bus.  For the luge, we bought 6 adult tickets (€10.50) and 6 kids tickets (€9.50) so we had 3 rides each for a total of €20. Current prices and other information can be found here.  There was also a playground here with some free and coin operated rides as well as a canteen.  The luge was great fun. We were only there a little longer than an hour before taking the bus back. 

We grabbed a quick lunch, gathered our stuff from the hotel and took the bus to Füssen for our train. I had a bit of time at the station and managed to find a grocery store to pick up a few things for our trip.  During the half hour stop in the massive Munich Hbf train station, we picked up dinner to eat on the train to Salzburg. The train from Munich to Salzburg was direct but the whole train doesn’t go that far.  Everyone on our set of cars had to get up and move to the other half.  In Salzburg, we stayed at the Best Western Hotel Imlauer which was an easy walk from the train station.  

Created in: Studio J
Kit: Mischief
Pattern: Reflections: Front and Center—In the Middle/Sidebar—Main Frame™
Kit Mix: 1
Photos: 1 horizontal, 4 horizontal
Colours: Topiary, Cranberry, Grey Wool, Outdoor Denim, Buttercup, Colonial White
Technique:
• Creating your own argyle B&T paper
• Customizing kit by adding different colours
Notes: This layout was based instructions provided for a Close To My Heart Regional Celebration for consultants.  However, I made change to colours and photo orientation to suite my photos.  Buttercup and Grey Wool are not current colours, so if you choose my colours, you will have to substitute canary and slate.  The argyle pattern was created with a lot of journaling boxes and dashes.  Studio J now has an easy stitching option under embellishments.

Let me know if you have any travel or creative questions.

Exploring the Cliffs of Moher with Studio J

We spent a year living in Limerick, Ireland and during that time we saw a lot of sights.  We bought a used car and as soon as we were comfortable driving on the "wrong" side of the road, we went exploring.  The Cliffs of Moher are one of the most popular tourist destinations in Ireland.  They are located in the Burren region of County Clare.  I knew looking at our photos that a simple 4X6 would not do.  

One great thing about scrapbooking in Studio J is that it is easy to put really big pictures on a page.  My pages above are each 12"X12".  Close To My Heart has made easy to follow videos to help walk you through your first few layouts and I followed one of the Love Your Layout videos to make the above layout.  From Studio J you will need to enter the login information you use for my website, or create an account.  

Once you are in your account, click "Create a New Project".  You then name your project and upload your photos.  You can also upload your photos later.  Next select "Create a Custom Layout".  To see all kits available, select "all kits" from the pull down bar on the right hand side.  For my layout above I selected Splendor, the Pattern was Powerful Trio and I used Kit Mix 2.  The rest of the steps can be seen in this video:  

If you have any questions, be sure to post below, or contact me.