Walking...

Oooops bad me - no update yesterday. It was such nice weather (more like May weather rather than February weather) that we got in the car, went for a drive and a nice long walk. Blue sky, sun and 15 (!!) degrees!! It nearly felt like summer LOL!

And some more scrapping. Supplies: Bazzill cardstock, Basic Grey papers, Rhonna Farrer rub-on, Scrap-Room journaling stamp and Autumn Leaves barcode stamp...plus lots of buttons, staples etc.

I'm about two days behind on my photography editing class now. Not what I wanted. So I need to try and make some time for that today or tomorrow....

A Little Book Review...

So it's finally turned up - my copy of "The Doodle Formula" by Adrienne Looman. Yaaaay!!
And I thought, why not do a little book review... :)

POSITIVES:

* I love the shiny cover. I know it sounds silly, but I really love how glossy it feels!!

* It's written in a very easy to understand way. No hard words, no difficult terms. It's like she's there in front of you telling you everything.

* Love the overall layout of the book, the doodled headlines, the doodles along the edges of the pages etc.

* There are some seriously yummy layouts inside for inspiration!!

NEGATIVES:
...I can only think of two

* I was seriously disappointed in how short it was. A magazine has more pages than that. I'm sure I'm probably more disappointed just because I had NO idea that it was going to be so short. You know, if I'd know, I would have been aware of it when I bought it and expected it to be short. This way I was really shocked how short it was. Only 32 pages. I would have liked to see 132 pages because I love the format of it and what is there already.

* If you're a TOTAL beginner at doodling - you have NO idea where to start, you don't even think you can doodle a border - if that's you (you know who you are), I'm not sure it's quite for you (yet). Not as your first book. I would recommend you buy "Doodling For Papercrafters" by Maelynn Chueng as your first book. And once you have get past the "I can't doodle"-block, then go and order yourself a copy of Adrienne's book :)

*** end of review ***

Sue Bone - you asked about the binding of my Christmas journal. It's made using the Bind-It-All machine and I used the 1 1/4 brown wires.

Happy Friday everyone!! :)))

It's Finished...

At one point I wasn't sure I would say this, but -----> My Christmas journal is finally finished!!! It should have taken about 5 weeks to do and it took me 2 months (because of being away for over 2 weeks). But it's done and I'm soooo happy I didn't give up :)

For those of you who are wondering - yes you *can* see all the pages/envelopes inside. Every single page is photographed and on this blog, if you go back in the archives for January and December :)

*** Edited to add: Mrs-Chloe, you asked about the "glittery writing" on the last few pages of my Christmas journal. It's shimmer alphabet stickers by Making Memories.

Loving The Photography Editing Class (Photo Heavy Post)...

Today I have got lots of photo to show you! :) First we have a hybrid card which I made this morning:

It's made using some of Kate Hadfield's amazing doodles. The birds are from the Love Birds set and the hearts and flowers are (amazingly! LOL!) from the Hearts & Flowers set. Loved working with these as the colours just make me smile :)

And talking about loving things... I totally love the photography editing course I am taking by Adrienne Looman!!! I have learnt some cool editing techniques and it's only the 3rd lesson so far. And yes I'm fully aware of that I have taken some of them to the extreme - but hey, there's nothing wrong with playing :)

BEFORE:

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The Last Page...

Been spending all morning sorting out photos to send off for printing. Amazing how long it takes to pick photos, edit and upload them. Like hours!! Thought I'd never finish. LOL! And that was only 36 photos...after that I gave up. Have to get some more done another time - can't spend *all* day doing it.

I'm sitting here dying for my doodling book to turn up in the post. Something else ordered from the US, on the same day, turned up LAST Wednesday. I'm starting to wonder whether our postman has taken up scrapping...and doodling in particular... ;)

Right, at one point I wasn't sure I would ever type this, but here is the very LAST page in my Christmas journal:

With being away for over 2 weeks of the class, I got seriously behind. I knew this from the start of course, so I was prepared. But it's still hard to get in the right mood to continue with something that is so far behind. So I'm pretty proud that I didn't take the easy path of giving up, but put my head down and worked and worked until it was done. I'm so happy! :) Will have to take some photos of the finished album now...!

*** Edited to add: Ally, you asked what the giraffe stamp was that I used in a layout a few posts below. It's in a pack from Autumn Leaves called "Mindy's Zoo" (lots of cute animal stamps!!) and the code is AL2780. Hope you can find them - good luck :)

A Few More...

Phew! What a day! It's been soooo busy, had soooo much to do and I feel really stressed, so this is a very late blog post for me. On the positive side, I got lots of Design Team work done, which is always a good thing. I feel like I need 48-hour-days this week though LOL!

Anyway, before I get side-tracked ---> onto what I was going to show you. More pages from my Christmas journal. Only one more to go and the finished journal to show you after this. I still need to find some good daylight to take photos of that first though.

The prompt for the 4th of January was to write down what you want to remember for next year. I made an envelope with my envelope-making-board and put a list of things inside (listing things like: start making Christmas cards early, buy spare bulbs for the tree etc LOL!)

...and the 5th was to journal about the end of Christmas & putting the decorations away for another year etc.

A quick one...

This will be a quick update as I'm just about to start cooking our food for tonight. But of course I promised yesterday to show the rest of the work I did as part of my guest position on the Scrap-Room DT, so here I am LOL!

You can see the kit I have used for the following layouts in the post I made below this one, or at the Scrap-Room homepage. Thanks for stopping by my blog today :)

Exciting news + 2 "thanks"...

Before I get to my exciting news, I want to make sure I say "thank you" to two people...

1) Thanks to Adrienne Looman for leaving me a comment yesterday! I'm taking her photography editing class this month and she'd seen me going on about "can't wait for it to start on the 5th"....only it started on the 1st!! LOL! Not sure how I got it so wrong. So thanks for noticing and taking the time to let me know :)

2) Thanks to Jennie Skaggs for the tips about Photoshop Elements - very appreciated and I will definitely check that out :)

Now onto my news which I have been dying to tell you since way before Christmas... I'm a guest DT member for Scrap-Room this month!!! I couldn't believe it when Tammy (the owner) e-mailed me in early December and asked if I wanted to be their first *ever* venture into using "internationals" as part of their DT!! Wow what an honour! Okay so I'm "only" guest DT'ing for a month - but still, I felt so honoured and excited to be picked :) These are some of the layouts I made with the DT kit (come back for the rest tomorrow if you have a spare minute):

And these are the yummies that I got to work with:

(main kit)

(embellishment add-on)

(stamp add-on)

Scrap-Room is like a 4-in-1 kit. I really love it!! I used to subscribe to another kit where you got like 10-12 sheets from one and the same collection. Often you were fed up of the papers before you had used them all. This way you get papers (approx 3 in each) from FOUR different manufacturers each month. It's great!! So what are you waiting for? Go and get it!! LOL! No seriously, I'm of course not going to *tell* you to sign up for a kit, that is of course totally up to you. However if you do, please mention that you saw it on my blog - thanks sooo much!! :)

Cuties...

Remember I said the other day that I had been working on this little mini canvas for Kate Hadfield and that I could show you on Friday? Well it's Friday (like you hadn't noticed already LOL!) I have had lots of fun playing with her new doodles. The birds are just soooo cute :) So here we go:

The canvas itself is a little mini canvas which I have had for ages. It's only 10x10 cm (4x4 inches)!! So really tiny and cute. Supplies: Plaid acrylic paints plus Love Birds doodles by Kate. Because of the size of my canvas I had to make the birds and speech bubbles a lot smaller than the original size. I think I have cut out my smallest detail ever LOL! See the little white dot just to the left of the tip of my scissors? LOL! Still, it was worth it!

But of course I wouldn't resist the birds, so I had to do something else too...

The card is made using some Love Elsie fabric paper, the borders are hand drawn by myself and the doodles are by Kate from the following kits: Love Birds, Hearts & Flowers and Wordy Bits (Love).

As I typed those last sentences, it's gone seriously dark here and a snowstorm has started!!

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!