AEI♥U Challenge (Card 4)

Here is my fourth card in Avery Elle's AEI♥U Challenge and this time I think I finally met the brief- to create a project that sums up your personal paper crafting style.  I started out with a white card base and added some bright yellow polka-dot patterned paper.  Then I stamped the Polaroid frame from "Picture It"- once on white and then again on some more yellow paper.  I cut the middle out of the yellow piece and adhered that to the middle.  I stamped an owl and added some googly eyes.  Then I stamped the "Comment: Like" and the "I forgot" from "Picture It" and finally the "Oh Snap" speech bubble from the same set in some dark red ink, cut it out and popped it up on some foam dots.  I decided to also add some red colouring to the owl with a  marker.

Now we're talking!  Clean and simple with nice bright colours- I think my stamping mojo is back :-)

AEI♥U Challenge (Card 3)

My third card in Avery Elle's AEI♥U Challenge features stamps from the "Fanfare" set.  I love the border stamp in this set because you can make a gorgeous background with it.  I've used this stamp many times before to make rainbows of bright colours on my cards.  This time I decided to tone it down and create a wedding card using Blushing Bride, Perfect Plum and Regal Rose inks and Perfect Plum, Sahara Sand and Whisper White cardstocks all from Stampin' Up.  A bit of twine and some pearls finishes off the card.  This is getting much closer to a card that best represents my usual style :-)

Getting happier, but not quite there yet...stay tuned for Card 4 :-)

AEI♥U Challenge (Card 2)

For my next card in Avery Elle's AEI♥U Challenge I decided to use some banners from "To the Point" and some patterned papers from Kaisercraft.  I simply layered two PP's on a white card base, stamped three banners in dark brown chalk ink on some more PP's before cutting them out, stamped my sentiment, punched some small holes and threaded my bakers twine through.  Easy peasy, and although I quite like the card, I still don't feel it best represents my usual style.

Back soon with Card 3......

AEI♥U Challenge (Card 1)

I love Avery Elle Stamps and I have seven sets of their awesome clear stamps.  They suit my mostly CAS style and my love for vibrant colour.  The AEI♥U challenge for the month is to create a project that sums up your personal paper crafting style.  Well I just said my style was CAS with vibrant colour but as I sat down to create some cards for this challenge, I actually had  trouble coming up with designs in my own style!  Call it festive brain-block I s'pose LOL!  

I love kraft so for my first card I started out with a kraft card base and stamped the "HELLO you are" label from the "Hello" set in Crumb Cake ink to make a background. This set has some cool words which I stamped in the labels. Then I took a banner stamp from the "To the Point" set and stamped that in Raspberry Ripple ink and a "Thanks" sentiment that I gratefully received with one of my orders in black ink.  Some machine stitching finished this card. 

I wasn't very happy with this card, so I will be back soon to share my next attempt.....

Project Life Week 50

Week 50! Wow, really?  School holidays are well under way for us and this week we had something on every day except Sunday.  On Saturday we went to a birthday party at Scitech and I will definitely keep them in mind for our future parties- it was great!  This week I pulled out some very old Kaisercraft scraps and matching stickers and the page came together very quickly.  For 2013, I think I will stick to much the same game-plan with days-of-the-week journalling cards and some typed strip journalling on the photos.  I have subscribed to the Studio Calico PL kit...HELLO! How could I not? Two of my favourite things in the world SC + PL = PERFECTION! So until I see what is in the first kit, I am not sure if or how I will change things.  One thing I do want to do is to type a lot more of my journalling so I might have to stock up on some more digital cards to type onto in Photoshop before printing.  Cathy Zielske has some terrific videos on her blog for using digital elements in hybrid scrapbooking.  Anyhoo, that's me just thinking "out loud"....
here's Week 50....

Thoughts and Tips on Project Life

I LOVE Project Life.  I wasn't sure I would even like it, much less love it.  I had doubts about whether I could keep up and whether I would ditch the whole thing a couple of months into it.  But I love it and I HAVE kept up to date.  

Why do I love it?  Well, I'm a scrapbooker who has always told the little stories of daily life.  Sure, I scrapbook the birthdays, all the kids' firsts, Christmas etc, but it's the everyday stories that are more important to me- the details of our lives that would otherwise be forgotten. Scrapbooking is more about the stories and less about the pretty papers and embellishments for me. This is why I was always going to love Project Life- it's a perfect fit for me.

As I near the end of my first full year of Project Life, I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts on Project Life and a handful of tips that have kept me on track in my weekly documentation of our daily lives. You might be thinking about starting it in 2013, you might have started it and not continued with it in 2012 for whatever reason, or you might be a non-scrapbooker who still wants to document your stories but doesn't know how.

First of all, if you are a newbie, check out Becky Higgins' explanation on her official site.  

Then, get your supplies.  If you are in Australia and you want to use a kit, go to Craft House and get all your gear.  I use the "A Design" page protectors all the way through my PL album, but there are lots of different styles to choose from.  

I don't use a kit- I use a mixture of bits and pieces from my overflowing stash of supplies and digital elements that I download and print.  Check out the many many Pinterest Project Life boards for inspiration and links to journalling cards and other downloadable stuff.  You can add to your kit, change it or design elements yourself digitally or with stamps as you go. Then you will need an album (or two).  I use a plain black Printblocks D-ring album and for 2012 I filled two of them.

Set aside a time in your weekly schedule for Project Life and stick to it.  For example, I choose and edit my photos Sunday afternoon or evening and save them on a USB stick.  After I drop-off Master 6 at school on Monday morning, I go straight to Big W for printing.  Since I usually get there at around 8.30am, it takes about 10-15 minutes for them to be ready.  Then during Master 2's nap I complete my spread for the week. DONE!  This is part of our weekly routine as important as any of our other activities and because I treat it as a "standing appointment" it gets done.....every week....without fail.

I know many Project Lifer's who print at home, and that's good too.  I think if you add up the money spent on paper/ink etc vs cost of doing it at a lab/time out of your day, it works out about even.  I have a colour laser printer and it just doesn't print photos well at all.  I would love a dedicated photo printer but can't justify it when my system works fine for me.

You need to keep some kind of journal through the week.  It might be your day-planner or just a notebook. I use my Filofax diary to make little notes and check my own Facebook posts for the week for anything else of interest.  You can get apps for your phone that prompt you to make some notes- Dayone is a popular iPhone app and I'm sure there are similar apps available for Android.

If you get organised NOW and get started on January 1 2013, you can do this.  I have loved what I've done in 2012 and will be going again in 2013.......who's going to join me?

Project Life Week 49

Week 49 already?!  How did that happen?  It was a week filled with end-of-year activities at school and it whizzed by in a bit of a blur.....

Since the week was filled with Christmas festivities, I used papers from an old Basic Grey Christmas line to break up the photos and journalling cards :-)

Boys Live Here

I am so pleased to share another scrapbooking layout with you- I just don't get to scrap as much as I would like to!  I was itching to use my Silhouette Cameo to make a page title and some elements and I love this photo capturing a little piece of what living with little boys looks like.

I used papers and a button from Studio Calico's Take Note Collection, a stamp set from American Crafts, some washi tape, some Thickers and a simple office clip.  But the really fun part was being able to take any font on my computer and cut letters with my Silhouette.  I cut letters and arrows from both patterned paper and from vellum- so much fun!

I just love being able to cut fonts with my Silhouette....should stop me buying so many Thickers.....hmmmmm nope, probably not LOL!

CASE Study Challenge #120

Here is the inspiration card made by Windy Robinson over at the CASE Study Challenge blog this week. 

I was immediately drawn to the colours and florals in the patterned paper and in the centre.  I decided to do some watercolouring with distress inks and put my flowers off to the side making room for my sentiment to sit in the centre of the die-cut doily.  Here is what I came up with.....

This was my first time playing at Case Study Challenge, and I'll be sure to play along again :-)

Just Add Ink #147

This week at Just Add Ink the theme is "Just Add Balloons", and I immediately thought of the "Up, Up and Away" set from Stampin' Up.  It's a pretty straightforward card with Red, Blue, Black and White, a bit of patterned paper, some embossing, and of course, some stamping.  

After having some dramas with my workspace lamp and getting replacement bulbs for it, I bought one of these Naturalight Hobby Lamps from Officeworks this morning and it's amazing.  I thought the lamp I had was pretty good, but this baby lights up my work space so beautifully.

If you are a crafter you will appreciate how important great lighting is, and I am so glad I decided to invest in a new lamp!

I Got A New Toy!

A little while ago Studio Calico were offering an an awesome deal on this magnificent device.....

                         
...yes, I bought a Silhouette Cameo and although I haven't had a lot of time to play, I LOVE IT!  I have the original Cricut and it wasn't getting a lot of use(ok, none) because I found it too restrictive.  I will admit to purchasing an $80 cartridge just so I could cut scalloped circles and even then, I couldn't cut the sizes I really wanted to.  Having a 6" x 12" cutting mat was frustrating and not being able to manipulate the cut files was excruciatingly annoying.  I first saw the Silhouette machines about two years ago and knew straight away that I would eventually have one.  

I found the machine and software really easy to set up and I was buying images from the online shop directly from the software within minutes.  And the best part?  There was a Sale on so all my images were half price! But really, at around 99 cents for most images, they are cheap-as-chips anyway :-)

My first play session resulted in these.....

That large owl is actually a large gift card that opens- cool huh?  I love that I could cut all the individual pieces from scraps because you know exactly whereabouts on the cutting mat the image will be cut. I'm also very impressed with how the machine manages really intricate cuts. I'm so excited to have my new toy and I will share some more projects when I get more time to play :-)

Project Life Week 48

Things have been a bit quiet here on the blog, but that usually means it's crazy-busy in real life doesn't it?!  Master 6 finishes school for the year tomorrow so it's been a mad rush to get the last of the Christmas shopping done, as many orders completed as possible and just generally get organised for the end-of-year activities and parties that are happening.  Today was a scorcher in Perth and Master 2 and I headed to Craft Group this morning.  After we had our usual crafting session we had our Christmas Party.  Then it was a dash to Master 6's school for the Christmas Carols concert which had been rescheduled twice due to the threat of storms. 

Week 48 was our second week of Hubs break at home and he kept himself busy doing some much-needed work outside and in the garden.  Master 2 loves being outside and was very happy to be Daddy's Little Helper.  Master 6 had a friend stay for a sleepover for the first time and I'm pleased to say it went smoothly, but after a late night and early morning, by Sunday afternoon they'd had enough of each other!

This week I used some older American Crafts papers from my stash and no embellishments other than my usual punched border accents.  I like to keep it pretty simple with PL- the everyday stories are what matters most to me for this type of scrapbooking.