More From My Journal...

Yay! I'm making lots of progress with my Christmas journal!! Not many pages left to go now :)

Here are two more that have been finished. Apologies for the bad photos. We've had a terrible weather here today (winds up to hurricane strength and the weather changing every 10 minutes between sun, rain, hailstones and snow!!! Yep we have had all of those at least three times over EACH!!) so the light to take photos in have been virtually non existant. Still, let's hope you can view the photos at least reasonably well...

I'm binding the album at the end, after I have done all my pages, with my Bind-It-All machine so therefore I have left a little gap at one side of the pages (this is where the holes will be punched)...just in case you're thinking it looks a bit weird LOL!

The Return Of The Christmas Journal...

After being super busy with DT work the last few weeks, I can finally return to my Christmas journal. Those of you reading my blog regularly will probably have seen my post earlier in the week, when I set myself a goal to finish my journal completely this week (only had 7 pages/prompts to do) if at all possible...

So this morning I got everything out & made some plans. :) I'm doing a mixed format album, so I needed to work out which pages I wanted in what size, which pages should be envelopes etc. Printed photos and started my work. Here are the next two entries for my journal...

Firstly the entry for the 31st of December. Very easy. Just to journal about New Year's Eve. I used a photo of the table setting (those serviettes took some practicing!) and made the photo become the base of the page. On the other side I put my title, journaling and dated it.

The prompt for the 1st of January was to write about any New Year's resolutions you'd made. I don't make resolutions as such, but I still wrote a bit about things I'd like to improve etc. I made an envelope using my envelope-making board and let that become my page with journaling inside.

Before I go, can I please add a big ---> THANK YOU to both "Toni-Ann" and "pjsarefuzzy" for answering my desperate plea of help with my Photoshop Elements problem yesterday!! That's really appreciated. I'm off to try out both methods now - so thank you sooooo much!!! :)

Making Progress...

Learnt lots more of Photoshop Elements yesterday which was great. Today has just disappeared into nothing though. Well that's not exactly true as I spent all morning making a cute little canvas!! LOL! It's DT work but I can show it on Friday, so please come back then if you want to see it :)

However I DID pick Elements when I wanted to do some editing today - yay - first time! I only struggled with one thing. I'm sure it's really stupidly obvious to those who know LOL! I had two images opened. And I wanted to copy one and paste it onto the other. But no matter what I did, the "copy" command was greyed out (ie you couldn't use it)...not sure what was wrong. Maybe I was clicked onto the wrong tool or something? If you have any idea (it must be something really simple and obvious) please, please leave me a comment - thanks!!

And another DT layout done for Make The Moment Last just before Christmas. Again lots of Fancy Pants stuff - looooove Fancy Pants! Got my latest DT kit from MTML in the post this afternoon so I have new things to play with... :)

My Weekly Mission...

I have got two main things (apart from all the other normal stuff!) that I'd like to do this week:

1) Teach myself more of Photoshop Elements. By the end of the week I'd like to be at the point where I would actually pick Elements automatically when I want to edit a photo, rather than to go to my old program "because it feels familiar and I know it well". We'll see how far I get...

2) The other thing I'd like to do, in an ideal world, would be to finish off my Christmas journal. Those of you who have followed by progress on this will have noticed that I haven't posted any new pages from it for a little while. This kinda had to be put to the side while I had lots of different DT work to do. But I only have 7 days left to work on in my journal, so my goal is to have it done by the end of the week.
Again ---> we'll see...

Writing those goals down here will *hopefully* mean that I put in some extra effort to reach them :)

This is a layout which I did as part of my Design Team work for Make The Moment Last a little while back. Supplies: lots of Fancy pants papers, die-cuts, felt and rub-ons, plus some doodling, buttons and Maya Road ric rac.

Teaching Myself...

For the last few weeks I have slowly been teaching myself Photoshop Elements. I want to get to the point that: when I want to edit a photo, Elements will be the program I choose to use. I'm not there yet, but I can see I'm getting closer and closer.

Also another reason for this (though I would have been swapping to Elements anyway) is the photo editing course that I'm taking by Adrienne Looman which starts on the 5th of February. I'm sooo excited about this and can't wait for it to start!! :) But before then, I want to be as familiar with Photoshop Elements that I can be. So I'm trying hard! LOL!

I had this photo which I took of my mum in the summer. Only she was standing in the shadow and the background was in bright sunlight. A big failure of a photo. When I downloaded it onto my computer in the summer, my first thought was to delete it. Too bad to keep. To bad to print. But I stopped myself in the last second. Thinking: "Maybe some day I can find/learn a way to edit this into something better". So I kept it.

Today I got that photo out and tried to edit it with what I had learnt in Elements so far. I can't even remember what functions I used. And I'm sure that I probably didn't pick the best ways to edit the photo either. But I was really pleased with what I achieved. And I feel that if I can do this now (feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing with the program yet)...then there's a good chance I can improve it even more when I feel a bit more confident using the program :)

New On-line Step-By-Step Class...

Please head over to A Trip Down Memory Lane to see my latest step-by-step on-line class. And why not take a little browse through their products while you're there too ;)

Happy Day...

Yaaaaaay!! I have been dying to tell you this for about a week now...and I can finally say:

I feel so honoured and excited to be picked by Kate Hadfield as being part of her hybrid (=mixing digital and traditional stash/scrapping) Creative Team!! :))) I've been running around with a big smile on my face all week and almost had to slap my hands not to post on here too early LOL! I totally love her work, her doodles are amazing and I can't wait to have lots of fun playing with them.

These are some cards which I made using Kate's Princess Tea Party doodles (aren't those cupcakes just too cute?!) mixed with some paper, cardstock, Doodlebug Paper Frills and jewels.

Oh and before I go...going back to the subject of yesterday and Elsie's new book. I e-mailed her the other day and today there's lots of news on her blog about her new "book" (recipe card box). Apparently it's out in May. A long wait - but I'm sure it will be great!! Love the look of it! :))

A Long Wait...

Looks like those of us who are waiting for Elsie's new book (=box) are in for a bit of a wait... New estimated release date is April :( I got this info from two sources - inc someone who phoned KI Memories for me - so I'm pretty sure it's right (special thanks to Sharyn for also leaving this info in the comments yesterday!)

I have been working on some secret guest DT work this week. My kit (which came from the US) got very delayed in the post and I had one week to do 6 (!) DT layouts in. So I have been very busy the last few days. I set myself a goal of 2 layouts a day and finished all 6 DT layouts in 3 days. That felt good LOL!

Time to do some food shopping so I'm leaving you with another layout (not part of my current DT work):

Supplies: papers, die-cuts & rub-ons are by Fancy Pants, alphabet stickers are by American Crafts (I think) plus some staples and doodling.

About the book...

Mmm got some nice stash from the US yesterday afternoon...
I just L-O-V-E Thickers!! :)

Thanks for all the comments yesterday. Several of you were wondering where I had ordered the Doodle book from. Unfortunately it seems like I got the last copy. But it's not all bad news. I have found that the publisher themselves have it for sale on their website. So check out Bluegrass Publishing. Hope that helps :)

Kikitsak - you asked when Elsie's book is out. Sorry I don't know. The original date was "November 2007". Then, I heard from another source, they said "December/January"...but that is starting to look doubtful too now considering there isn't much of January left :( I hope it's very soon though! :))

Books...

Mmm...there are two scrapping book which I have been waiting for to be released for a good half year now...or actually quite a bit longer than that. Yesterday I was so happy because I could finally order one of them from the US:

"The Doodle Formula" by Adrienne Looman. Have been waiting for this ever since she started mentioning it on her blog. Okay so I had to get it from the US and it might take a week, or more likely, a little longer for it to turn up. But I don't mind. Finally it's mine!! :)

The second book I keep waiting for is the new one by Elsie Flannigan. Or I should say "box" really, as it's been labelled as a "recipe idea box". No idea when this will be released though as it must have got severely delayed. It was due for release in November according to KI Memories. So who knows when we'll see this. Sooooon I hope :)

Busy, busy...

Today has been a busy day. Got lots of Design Team work to do this month!! Apart from the usual stuff and my monthly on-line class, I have also been lucky to be asked to be a guest DT member for two different Design Teams for February. So I have about an extra 10 (!) or so DT layouts to do compared to a normal month. A little bit stressful but mainly lots and lots of fun :)

Will tell you about the guest DT work as soon as I'm allowed! Promise :) Also I have some other cool news regarding designing which I'm *very* excited about but that will also have to wait a little longer before I can post about it. Will do it as soon as I can though :)

In the meantime, another DT layout here done for Make The Moment Last. Supplies: It's basically a Fancy Pants party of products (papers, transparency, rub-ons, felt and die-cuts) plus some buttons, embroidery thread and black Slick Writer pen.

Yum, yum...

Guess what? My December Scrap-Room kit turned up late yesterday!! And no it's not as late as you think: "December?!?" LOL! It was held until the start of January because I had requested it. In a way you could think that Christmas paper is a bit "last year" in January. But for scrapping I think it really works. After all, it's in January that you normally get all your Christmas photos developed.

I have to say I really loved this kit!! :)) The only one of the four parts that I'm not so keen on is the Basic Grey. Funny that about a year ago I would have gone mad over Basic Grey. Now I kinda have to admit I either find them too dark and depressing or too washed out and bland. Weird how your taste can change so much! Oh and I think the calendar stamps will come in very useful :)

Phew...

After about 6 1/2 hours work yesterday I now have a new harddrive, I have installed almost every single one of my programs and most of my files, documents and photos have been moved over. So I'm happy :) Thought it would take a bit longer than that as you normally seem to find some unexpected problem along the way. But everything went just fine :)

This is a layout I did a while back as part of my DT work for Make The Moment Last. The kit was all Fancy Pants stash - and since I love working with FP papers, I had lots of fun!! I was also in the middle of taking a doodling class as I made this layout, so I used some of what I had learnt to make the title using Sakura Souffle pens

Backing up...

When did you last back up your photos? Have a little think. Could it be a good time to take a few minutes and do it *NOW* perhaps? I'm only saying this because I know how horrible it is to lose photos and it's so easy to forget to back them up regularly. Tomorrow might be too late.

The reason I'm saying this is because I'm sitting here backing up everything I have on my computer...photos, documents and everything else. My harddrive still has some faults on it since the computer crash I had before Christmas, so we will replace it later today and then I have the fun and joy (not!) of installing everything on it again over the weekend which will take ages. But as long as everything goes to plan, I should be able to update my blog some time tomorrow as usual. :)

Before I'm going back to backing up even more files, I'm just going to post another layout for you here:

Supplies: Scenic Route papers, arrows and journaling block plus some Autumn Leaves stamps, buttons etc.

"Christmas" class...

Please feel free to use these instructions to make your own layout. You are free to link to this page from any forum etc if you wish. Please do NOT copy this information and/or photos to use for your own classes/forums/webpages without permission.

Supplies needed:
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – Season Stripe
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – The Wishing Tree
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – Covered In Snow
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – Glitter Ribbons
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – Crimson Swirl
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – Merry & Bright
Rhonna Farrer/Autumn Leaves paper – Glitter Swirl
White ric rac
White Signo pen
Prism Black cardstock
Autumn Leaves “Sentiments Circles” stampset
Black StazOn

Also needed:
Glue (I use Herma removable)
Scissors
Staples
Small piece of white cardstock
A few clear jewels (optional)
Narrow green ribbon (optional)
Charcoal Chalk Inkpad (optional)
Woodware 2 inch circle punch (optional)
Woodware 3 inch square punch (optional)

Start by cutting your black cardstock to size. I scrap in true A4 size, so I cut mine to 29,7x21 centimetres (cm). Please feel free to adapt to another layout size if you prefer. This class is very easy to adapt to other sizes, just use more (or fewer) squares & circles for the main design.

I’m using two Woodware punches to make this easier. But the punches are not necessary. If you don’t have the punches mentioned in the supply list you can just cut your cicles with a diameter (the distance across, from side to side) of 5 cm and your squares should be approx 5,5 x 5,5 cm.

Also pick your photos. I printed mine in black & white and used 4 photos. It’s easy to adapt if you want to use more photos than that (or fewer for that matter). If you print TWO photos to a 15x10 cm (6x4) sheet of photo paper, it works great to punch your squares from.

This is the concept we will be working with:

Use your square punch to cut out your photos. Also pick parts of the patterned papers by Rhonna that you like and punch a total of 5 squares and 2 circles.

Edge the papers with black chalk ink if you like. The glue in place as the photo shows below. The empty space is for the title.

Punch yourself a square of the scrap piece of white cardstock. Then pick a suitable stamp from the Autumn Leaves stamp set (I chose “Totally Special”) and stamp onto one of the patterned papers of your choice (I used “Merry & Bright). Turn your circle punch up-side-down and centre your stamp – punch out your title.

Glue your title circle onto the white square of cardstock and put in place on the layout. Now you can also add any journaling etc that you might want to have onto any of the patterned paper pieces. I wanted no journaling on my page but I have added a tiny “2005” to the bottom left square on my layout.

Take your white Signo pen and draw two lines on the left and right side of your layout. Do this by hand. The whole point is that it should not look perfect and I even made my lines almost touch each other in a few places, on purpose.

Optional: accent a few of the patterned paper pieces with ribbons or jewels.



And you’re done!


I hope you enjoyed my class! Wishing you lots of fun creating your own version!

A Year In Review (part 2)...

Another page from my Christmas journal (for the 30th of December). This is very much the same concept as the page I did for the 29th of December. If you check back to my post on Monday (14th Jan), you can see how I decided that I wanted to do a picture collage for the year of 2007 but I needed two days worth of space for it.

The page is done exactly the same as the previous one. I have used some fabric paper by Love Elsie to connect to pieces of cardstock, which at the same time acts as a spine (the page folds in half).

Oh...

...I had totally forgotten about today's blog entry until about a minute ago!! I have been working on some secret DT work and I have a tendency to get very absorbed by what I do. Suddenly I look up and I notice a few hours have just "disappeared" on the clock. Or when I scrap and play music, I get so absorbed by the scrapping that I "forget" to listen to the music...it suddenly goes quiet (this I notice) and I realise the whole album is finished even though I feel like I only heard the very first song! LOL!

Somewhere in this scrapping frenzy, I do remember that my Scrap-Room kit arrived early this afternoon though :) I got my January kit (the current one)...which is a bit weird as I'm still waiting for my December kit (which was held for me until Jan) and some other bits...both which were posted about a week earlier. Hoping they will be here tomorrow :)

In the meantime, pics of kit, embellishment add-on (love the Techno Pop stars/flowers!!) and stamp add-on...

A Year In Review (part 1)

Ooooh it's been a busy day today!! I've been working all day (and before that too!) on my January class for Mel & Jill at A Trip Down Memory Lane. I have just finished off writing the supply list and all the instructions. It will go live on the 21st. In the meantime you can see my December class here if you like. :)

And there's still progress being made on my Christmas journal. The prompt for the 30th of Dec was "A Year In Review". I quickly decided that I wanted to make a collage of small photos representing the past year. Because my album is only so big, one page would not be enough. So in the end I decided to not to the official prompt for the 29th, but instead do "A Year In Review" for both the 29th and 30th. Here's my first page.

It folds in half at the middle point, where I have used some Love Elsie fabric paper to keep the two pieces together.

I've heard that some lucky people have started to get their Scrap-Room kits in the UK now. So I'm really hoping mine will turn up soon. It will be double-luck for me as I'm also getting my December kit (which was held for me due to being in Sweden over Christmas & New Year).

*fingers crossed they turn up soon* :)

Two More Pages...

As promised yesterday, I'm back with two more pages for my Christmas journal. I didn't follow the prompt for the 27th of December. I had something else I wanted to journal about to remember it. But that's okay too. No-one says you have to follow the prompts if they don't suit you. :)

I used some old KI Memories Christmas papers for this page. I decided to make it a bit fun by using a pre-printed tag and fastened it so it was sticking up above the top of the page. (As you might remember, I'm doing a mixed size journal so it's nice to have odd shaped/sized pages).

Also the tag would be sticking up on the back (of course!) so I had to come up with an idea how to incorporate it on the page for the 28th too. I did that by using a KI Memories square and a sticker by 7Gypsies. I think the prompt for the 28th is pretty self explanatory when you see my title "Things I Look Forward To Each December" :)

Back to my journal...

It's time to go back to my Christmas journal... I still have quite a few pages left to do based on the notes I kept over Christmas and there's no way I want to give up on it. Yet I know if I don't work on it now, it's easy for it to become a project which is never finished - and that's not going to happen.

This is a very quick page done for the 26th of December. Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, KI Memories papers, American Crafts chipboard star plus some jewels etc.

Tomorrow I hope to be back and show you two more pages...

Hope you all are having a great Saturday :)

Thanks...

After my post about "Cards" magazine yesterday, can I please say a big THANK YOU to those of you who replied. Really, I appreciate that so much! And the biggest THANK YOU to Margaret for the special subscription link and extra-money-off-code :) Guess who subscribed to 12 issues of "Cards" with 6 free issues of "Scrapbook Trends" yesterday evening? :))

Today I'm feeling very creative. I sat down to do some DT work yesterday and it just didn't work at all. I kept moving papers and photos and just feeling generally unhappy about it. No inspiration. Nothing worked. But today is a totally different day. Today things work and I'm having lots of fun scrapping and doing DT work :) Strange how a day can make so much difference really...

Not a layout that I did today, but a little while ago:

Supplies: Scenic Route papers, Bazzill cardstock, Heidi Swapp chipboard letters, Doodlebug Paper Frills, Autumn Leaves and October Afternoon stamps.

Cards...

I have just discovered a new magazine which I love ----> "Cards"!!! :))) It's super, fantastic, yummy...and without all the millions of adverts that magazines like Creating Keepsakes, Paper Crafts etc are filled with. What a nice change! And not only that, but it's filled with yummy cards that just makes you want to start scraplifting there and then. :)

Though it does come at a price (a high price!) so I'm just considering whether I can justify the cost of subscribing or not...LOL! We'll see...

Off to work some more on my Christmas journal and then hopefully get started on some guest DT work I'm doing...

Wednesday scrapping...

Thought it was time to show you a "real layout" for a change (still got lots of pages left to do in my Christmas journal and they will all be showed here as I progress with my project - promise!)...

Supplies: at the moment I just can't remember who makes the patterned paper (sorry!), the chipboard letters are by Heidi Swapp, the little tab is by SEI (I think?) and journaling stamp by October Afternoon. Photo is of my little niece born in July.

Going out to do some shopping (or at least looking around in some shops LOL!) this afternoon, so I'm going to sit down with my notes, made over Christmas, and hopefully get some more work done on my journal before that...

Wishing you a happy scrappy day! :)

Oh Dear...

You know what? I don't feel like scrapping today! I know, bad isn't it? LOL! But I have decided not to stress about it (which I normally would). I'm sure it's just a one-day-thing. So instead of feeling "bad" about it, I'm just going to accept it and enjoy doing something else instead. Like trying to tidy a bit on my desk and maybe update the music on my iPod a bit...

But fear not (LOL!) I still have a page from my Christmas journal to show you that I finished yesterday afternoon. It's the page for the 25th of December. Since the 25th isn't a "special" day in our family (Christmas is celebrated on the 24th) this is a day when it normally doesn't happen too much. And this year it was even more so as the weather was totally horrible...rainy and dark and we really didn't see any daylight all day (imagine the most darkest day you can think of). So it was spent being cosy inside...reading books, playing games & watching films.

Supplies: KI Memories papers, 7 Gypsies & Scenic Route stickers and Scrapworks shimmer chipboard tree. If you think the page looks a bit bare on the left side, it's only because my book is not bound yet (I'm hoping to use my Bind-It-All and the biggest wires - if they turn out big enough) so the holes/wires would go there.