The new flash

New flash

the camera's built in flash

I finally, after a month, scavenged around the house for four AA batteries - all mismatched of course - and decided to try out the new flash that cost as much, if not more, than my lovely new camera. Now many people say Oh you won't need that! But the difference is astonishing. No nasty intrusive shadow and light like natural daylight!

Scrapbook page layout - all about me

So, this is the first page I have completed for the current album of "me" which until yesterday was a vague, theoretical idea. On Saturday I had the great privilege of attending a professional development course for Year 12 English Teachers and it was GREAT. I love that the next day, I picked up the flyer and just scrapped it. I WANT TO DO THIS MORE!

Journalling reads: It was wonderful to get back to a SAETA function.It's been surprising to find I still have the passion. Alison Robertson gave a great overview of Year 12 (new SACE 2011) and I had the bonus of catching up with English buddies - Genevieve, Moira and Emma. A great morning.

I photocopied the flyer and glued it over some plain cardstock. Then I used bubble wrap and yellow acrylic paint for the background, Fancy Pants and butterfly stamp and Tim Holtz distress ink, and handwrote the journalling strips with white Signo gel pen. Easy pages are more FUN.

I'm having to rewrite my blog post - computer said "no" and crashed! I'm uploading some pics of my latest scrapbook pages from 2009, and a bit excited about a possible way forward for scrapping many photos. There are stories I want to tell while they're still fresh, so my approach is this: to start with one special photo for a single page layout (not my usual style, but oh so luxurious!). The layout below is inspired by a Kathie Link layout, mixed in with my fave technique: stamping!

Then... collaging a mass of photos on the other page, leaving no white space, and including journalling strips straight on to the photos.

I'm off now for a sunday excursion to the Paper Fair at the Wayville showgrounds (Adelaide) to see if my fave shop, Seriously Scrapbooking, might have some Glimmer Mists to try. Would love to start with a purple. What else of course?

New scrapbook pages to show

At last! I've finally been freed up to do some more scrapbook pages. I made the word stickers myself. Too easy: coloured paper scraps, word stamps, black Staz-on ink, Xyron sticker maker (Tasmin calls this the "missing X", from Sesame Street). LOVING bold colours, thanks to Cheryl Ametewee. Right now I'm interested in documented our stories from last year. I have only photos and memories, no notes to work with. It was a hard year, with Dad's passing, Ian's work troubles, step-children issues and so on. But we're here now, we got through the hard stuff, and we're all much happier and stronger for it. I can't believe I'm working and being a full-time stay-at-home Mum AND enjoying both. Six months ago I wouldn't have believed it.

Here's a teeny tiny confession: because it's now been two and a half years since Tas was born, I think I'm actually putting off scrapping hers and Angus's albums. I'm scared they won't be good enough. Silly I know. Hmmm...

365 project album started

I'm going to ink up the journal cards a bit more but otherwise the format will be the same every week. I'm modelling this on Becky Higgins' 365 Project Life album, but using page inserts to stick the photos down, in the traditional way!

Photo a day check in

Day 40 terrible twos

I've been faithfully taking a photo a day which you can check out on my Flickr site. I have almost finished my first month of the album - it's so quick and easy which I love. I feel much freer to scrapbook whatever takes my fancy now without worrying about missing the everyday stories. I'll post some pics soon.

Busy busy busy

On Saturday I went and got all the photos developed for my latest exciting thing: Project365. I even have an album ready to start making the pages. It's thursday and all I've found time to do is lay and stick half the photos and journalling tags down. Our week has been incredibly busy - especially with starting my new job on Wednesday and Ian's birthday today - and I really need an early night tonight. Last night we got up 6 times I think - 5 times for Tasmin and once for Angus. T claims to be scared of monsters all the time now but calms very quickly as soon as we go into her room. Too quickly. As Ian says, it might be time for some "tough love".

I start to become a cranky Mummy when there's no time for scrapbooking! It would be best for everyone if I could get back to my album...

Simple brag book

I hate to send naked photos to anyone now. So I needed to think of a way to send photos to my Auntie Hilda who visited us back in October. She's an amazing lady, 85 years old and still travelling. I used a pre-made brag book which was really just double-sided patterned paper stapled to make a book.

I loved the paper but next time I might make my own and just have the photo on one side and journalling on the other.

Newborn card

So many women pregnant at the moment! Another Mum in our mums group is due next month. This little one will be baby number 4 in the past few months alone. I had great pleasure being asked to make the card - my first commission! The front features Jenni Bowlin tickets which are so vintage cute. I can't wait to use them in the baby albums.

I used calico on the card, which I sewed around, inked with pink ink, added the tickets with foam squares, stamped a green swirlie at the top, added ric rac and a Collections chipboard heart, and wrote the message with a brush pen.

Project 365 here I come

I've been enjoying the photos of others who do their own versions of Project 365, where you take a photo a day. I've been interested in this idea for a while now but couldn't quite think where to "fit it in" as I have so many scrap projects I want to do. Today I decided to do it anyway! and man is it FUN. I also received a lovely brand new camera, the Canon 500D, as an early birthday present. So even though I only started officially today I decided to go back to the 1st jan and pick a photo a day since then. You can check out my pics at Flickr.

Favourites scrapbooking layout

Well, it's 8 years next months since we met and became favourites. This has always been a fave pic of mine, and I was pleased to be able to create a colourful layout despite the dullish colours in the pic. Love the papers from Sassafras Lass, which are hard to get now, as I think it's an older line (thanks Camelot). I made the title on the computer, using Freeze! font, added a little Kelly Panacci stamp, and used watercolour pencils for the coloured strips.

Arty scrapbook layout

This page was inspired by Louise Nelson's style, but instead of Glimmermist (on my wish list) I tried Kaisercraft's aubergine acrylic paint and flicked like mad with a toothbrush over a mask (but from a magazine image). Lots of fun, more like this to come I reckon.

Recycled cardboard photo frame

I wanted to see if I could make a frame from an old recylced box - it already had a fold just like a book spine so it does make a good frame. I need a bit of practise covering with cardboard with paper though LOL! The air bubbles are hidden with patterned paper. It will be nice and light to post but forgot to keep it under the A4 size when I was making it. Funny how we forget the practicalities when we're in the creative zone!

New "Scrapbooking toolbox" books

I am constantly inspired by ideas for scrapbooking in magazines and online, but can only seem to retain small bits n pieces in my memory. So, I decided to create a toolbox of ideas, a "cheatsheet" if you will. I reached for one of my dearest friends, the Zutter bind-it-all. And went a bit crazy yesterday, making 3 books. I was only going to make 2, but then realised the second one would be way too thick for my 3/4" O-ring.

There's one book for my enormous list of project ideas - it has about 10 pages, each page with a heading:

12" albums

8" albums

Babies mini-projects

blog and digital art

DVD projects

art, literary, photo journals

off-the-page projects and gifts

Scanning

Sewing and fabrics

zutter binding projects

I just want to make sure I at least make a start on these these year, and finish a few if I can. The toolbox book is split into two parts, one with ideas for "journalling, layouts and titles". The other is everything else: collage, colours, embellishments, fabrics, paint and inking, paper piecing, photography. Love binding books!

stamped card

I have a huge collection of these lovely vintage brown cards so I can make quick and simple ones, my favourite style for cards. It's more of a challenge stamping on brown though.

One more scrapbooking layout

Right now I feel COMPELLED to do some pages with 2009 photos. There wasn't enough oportunities to complete current pages last year, as I was preoccupied with scrapping layouts about my lovely Dad.

Here's my latest page using - yes - the new square punch. I was inspired by a Cheryl Ametewee layout for this one.

christmas cards scrapbook page layout

I am so delighted with my christmas-card collage layout, another idea borrowed from Ali Edwards. After much thought, I decided to go out on a limb and buy a square punch. Like Ali and many other scrappers, the story is the most important thing to me about scrapbooking and sometimes you need more than one photo for that. And photos on a page take up lots of room...So I am happy to be able to recommend the EK Success 2" square punch.

After being warned about the dangers of using these type of punches (the cheaper and less reliable brands are almost impossible to use without standing on them!) I was nervous. But this one works really well on photos and cardstock, no problem. I was looking for the Marvy Uchida at Camelot but couldn't find it, so happily this one is just as good. Hooray!

My DH is very nervous now that he will come into the Tardis one day and find squares punched through all his stuff.

What can I see - the square punch is. VERY. addictive!

I also bought a Fiskars scallop punch and love the lacy effect.

Postcards from Paris shadow box

I had a bit of fun last Saturday at my local scrap shop, Seriously Scrapbooking, with Jane Tregenza's little shadow box made with the 'Postcards from Paris' range from Websters pages. I am keeping the bottom right hand corner free for a little photo, but can't decide yet what to put there. I'm thinking of a little girl - maybe me!

Past family treasures

Each year in the bushfire season I worry about the family photo albums. Even used to have an idea I would grab several albums and put them in the car, before evacuating! But since having two babies, plus the cat to consider, it's obvious this would never do.

So. This year I decided to do something. Following our crazy heatwave in Adelaide this past week, of temperatures over 40degrees C, I decided it was time to enact the master plan, and commence scanning photos from albums. This will be a massive task when you consider all the pre-digital photo days. There's a fair few photos in this category, not all in albums either. My sister looks after several albums and photo bundles from our Darwin childhood days, so I will gradually scan in photos from her collection, then mine. We're doing regular back ups to the hard drive at the moment, too, so at least we can grab that if and when the time comes. I hope it never does.

I love the chance to look at these photos, some of which I don't even remember seeing before. I am gonna have so much fun scrapping them, but I have to remember, this is the babies' year, and I really want to get their baby albums done first. Mine can wait, although it might be fun to start on a few during the year. Plus I love the idea of combining my old photos with ones of the babies to compare how similar we look! I love seeing this in the work of other scrappers.

me with Dad

me with Mum

me with Dad (on the flower power sheets he remembered)

me in yellow bonnet

me with Dad

me with Grandma, bless her

the hybrid album and my first (paper) sewing project

I am terribly excited. Here it is...the hybrid album! (slip-in-pocket album meets scrapbooking album).

Let me explain. It's a regular slip-in pocket photo album, but combined with some scrapbooking. I just looked at the pockets as individual scrapbook pages. Here's why...

I realised that with up to 200 or more photos for this project, and with dozens of other scrapbooking projects waiting for attention, I would have to prioritise. I mean, Tasmin is approaching 3 and I haven't done any layouts for her album yet, or Angus. But I digress.

I wanted to make an album for my sister as a Christmas present and knew I would only have a few nights to complete it. So this was my approach...

Night 1: first, I recorded the time and date each photo was taken - they were all from the last 12 months, but the time and date really helped to write the story.

Night 2: with a pencil and notebook, I worked out how to fit 170 or so photos into the album that would fit 200, so there would be spaces here and there. I kept the photos in singles, pairs, or groups of three or four. So each page contains at least one photo.

Night 3: I created little title blocks, an idea borrowed from an Ali Edwards mini-project(click here to see a similar project), to fill in many of the gaps. I used the same colour and style for almost all of these.

Night 4: Where there were single vertical photos on pages, I gently removed the plastic page protectors with a plastic ruler, and rubber stamped flourishes for embellishment directly on to the white paper background, keeping it simple and sticking to the same stamps. Where there were vertical photos to slip in a pocket, I trimmed them to fit, and sewed a small piece of patterned paper and ribbon to fill the gap. That was fun! I also stamped or wrote directly on some of the photos.

Night 5: I used the lines in the middle of the album to do the journalling. I also included a date stamp, to show the progression of time, as I wanted the story of the year told chronologically.

Amazing. One whole beautiful album completed in just five nights. That is my new record.

P.S. just for the record... the hybrid album term was coined by DH, so credit where credit is due. And second, by 'nights' I mean until well after midnight...

2010 wordle

A word for 2010

I've taken inspiration from Ali Edwards again and tried hard these last few days to think of a word for 2010. Her word for this year is STORY and last year it was NURTURE. I needed a word that would cover all my main concerns for the new year, not just my addictive need for scrapbooking . I cheated a bit and looked at the long list of words that Ali's readers had come up with for 2009. I talked with DH and he decided it would be a good idea for him to find a word for himself. So the word he decided on is RENEWAL. My word is TREASURE.

I like this word - look at these definitions -
1. Accumulated or stored wealth in the form of money, jewels, or other valuables
2. Valuable or precious possessions of any kind
2. One considered especially precious or valuable
v. treasured, treasuring, treasure
1. to keep or regard as precious; value highly.
2. To accumulate and store away, as for future use

Treasure applies to the completed albums, books, pages or cards I make...
Treasure is how I want to view (time with) my children...
Treasure is the goal I have set for next year, to reach my goal weight...

There are lots of other things I want to achieve but these will be my top 3 priotities this year.
If I could choose one other word it would definitely be SLOW. As in slow down. I put a post-it note in my study this year which says Go Slow! Don't rush around like a maniac. That little note made a bit difference.

Christmas 2009