Today...

...I'm having a break from the "Design Your Life" class. The reason? Tomorrow is the first Friday of the month (obviously!) which means it's BYOC time at the Lilypad again. And therefore (being part of their CT) I'm very busy today downloading lots of pretty kits and tagging them in ACDSee. I hope to have that all done, unzipped and sorted by lunchtime...ish. :)

And then I must find some time in the afternoon to work with the new kits, ready for the big release tomorrow. I can't say too much as it's all secret so far, but if you like pretty spring colours you won't be disappointed ;)

See you tomorrow :)

More Progress...

Yay I'm making lots of progress on catching up on the "Design Your Life" class. I have also extended my "free pass", to access the classroom, by another week so I can hopefully get it all done. If you have a class that you have taken and you're behind on it, I can really recommend making an effort to set a little time aside for it and gather some determination to get it done. It's such a great feeling of accomplishment. :)

Jana - thanks for the comment you left. Of course I don't mind at all if you want to take "my idea" of printing all the class materials and making it into a book. :) And yes, getting access to the class again is very simple. Just e-mail BPS and tell them which class it is, give your username and full name and they should have it activated very quickly for you. Mine took less than 24 hours. They give you a 7-day access pass but you can ask to have it extended at the end if you need to (which is what I did yesterday).

This is a really cool layout design (I could imagine doing this concept over and over again in a mini book or similar) for "week 10". Cathy gave us this cool template that she'd made for printing out and basing your page on. It was fun, fun, fun to do from the beginning to the end :) And I love pages where you get to use up your scraps of cardstock and patterned papers - such a good feeling :)

Cute Little Card...

I'm going to try and spend as much as I can today catching up even more on the "Design Your Life" class. I felt like I made good progress at the end of last week, once I got started, so I really don't want to let go of the motivation and excitement about the class. Therefore I'm off to get some scrapping done. Wanna join me? :)

Leaving you with a little cute looking "Happy Birthday" card which I made last week:

[Supplies: Land And Sea - Eva Kipler (SSD)]

Yay - More Done...

When I first saw this layout (well Cathy's version of it) in the handout for "week 10" I felt it was a really nice layout but seemed like a lot of hard work measuring and getting everything right. So it put me off a little...

...but I tried to fool myself by breaking it down into little steps. "Just convert the photos to B&W, size them and print them"...and then it was "just measure and cut the little strips" etc etc. It really worked and I totally enjoyed making this double layout. And I even went with Cathy's example of a title that jumped the gutter - yay :)

The layout features my sister and her daughter. And as usual I have managed to not get a 100% straight photo - so apologies for that. It is totally straight in reality :)

Here We Go...

I'm making more progress on catching up with the old Cathy Zielske class. Yay! :) And I gave myself a kick and got the camera out to finally take a photo of the first layout, that I made on Thursday, from "week 10"...

(warning: bad photo - sorry!)

This photo does not do the layout justice at all. Nothing looks straight and no details can be seen. Like the title is not plain white but instead super glittery/shimmery Thickers chipboard letters. And the photo is just bad in general. The light was really bad but the last thing I wanted to do was to use the flash and get huge reflections in the photos. So I'm afraid it's a very poor and grainy photo take on a very dark and rainy day.

The Right Decision...

I'm so glad that I decided to try and make the time for the "Design Your Life" class once again. Right now it feels like totally the right decision. Even if I'm wondering how I will get the time LOL! And it's kinda comforting to know that I'm not the only one out there who has not finished the class yet. So thanks for the comments that were left for me :)

I managed to establish for sure that it was indeed 3 of the 12 weeks that I'd not done. Week 10-12. I got the slide show (a whole 48 minutes of Cathy Zielske inspiration!) watched and even a layout done later in the afternoon. Week 10 consists of 2 single layouts and 1 double.

I have been a bit lazy and not taken a photo of the layout yet, but as I was going through my saved files for my class I found a few layouts from the class which I'd never uploaded to my blog and this is one of them. General summer photos from Sweden of my family. The layout is very simple in style...almost "too simple" for me and I really didn't like what I'd made at first. Adding the dotted stamped borders at the top and bottom helped a bit though.

Have a great weekend everyone :) I'll be back tomorrow...

Going Back...

In September (or was it August?) last year I signed up to Cathy Zielske's "Design Your Life" BPS class on the first day it went live to register. Already then I was aware of that I would not be able to do the last 3 weeks "on time" due to having no access to my stash. Then it was the Christmas journal to catch up on in January/February etc etc.

Today I'm going back to the class...

I still have like a million things on my "to do" list so I'm not sure how far I get or when I will get those last 3 weeks finished but I'm going to try my best as the class is far too good not to finish.

I requested a 7 day access pass to the class from BPS yesterday and it had been activated when I checked my mail this morning. So now I'm off to re-watch the slide show for "week 10" and hopefully get started on a layout this afternoon. Please wish me luck in getting some of this done during my 7 day access window. Who knows, maybe you are actually doing the same too? Please do leave me a comment if you too took the class but still have a bit to do :) It would encourage me knowing I'm not the only one.

New Class...

For those of you following (or indeed, are new :)) my on-line classes, the March class has now gone live.

I designed this class as a way of using up lots of photos. Maybe photos with no real connection to a certain occasion. Maybe leftover photos of the same person from other layouts ...or similar ...you get the idea. To punch them into squares and use them together is a really great way of getting those photos into your albums :)

As usual the class is FREE, so please head over to ATDML and take a look if you have a little time to spare. Thank you :)

As always, I picked some gorgeous stash from Mel & Jill at A Trip Down Memory Lane. I loved working with these cute owl & bird papers and the Zoo stamp set from Maya Road is just so perfect for baby photos :)

A Little "Just Because" Card...

First of all, thanks so much for all the replies to the melon question. Some great tips there, I really appreciate it :) We have a Cantaloupe in the fridge at the moment so I will try the tricks out on that one. :)

This morning I have been making cards. As part of my work for the Sweet Shoppe Creative Team. This cute border kit caught my eye a few days back and since Fee Jardine was one of my "assigned designers" for this month, it was perfect :)

The card idea came to me straight away when I saw how Fee had decided to display the borders in her kit preview picture. It's a technically pretty easy card to make but it does take some time with some slightly fiddly measuring and working everything out to the right size plus some detailed cutting etc.

[Supplies: Shorties - Fee Jardine (SSD)]

The paper strips are attached to the card using foam pads to make them 3D and the "hi" is some foam Thickers alphabet stickers.

On a much, much sadder note... My aunt's burial is taking place today... :(

Some Easter cards...

And before you ask, no I'm not religious but there's nothing wrong with liking the cuteness of Easter...eggs, bunnies and chicks...and nothing wrong with sending a greeting to family and friends :)

How cute are there kits by Heather Roselli at Sweet Shoppe Designs?

They were just begging me to be played with (told you I can't resist anything cute!) and seemed perfect to make some Easter cards with...

[Supplies: Fuzzy Bunny by Heather Roselli, Fuzzy Duck by Heather Roselli, Paper Clips - Easter Egg Templates by Libby Weifenbach (all SSD)]

...apart from the digital supplies, I also used foam pads for a 3D effect, some jewels, a Swedish "Happy Easter" stamp and some wiggly eyes for the bunny :)