Sunday, July 29, 2012

Inspired by...

I am constantly inspired by my friends (crafty & otherwise). I spent a day last week catching up with my friend Deb. We chatted & ate and did nothing crafty (unless you count shopping in a craft shop), but we talked scrapbooking & cards and she got me all inspired just listening to her talk about what she was scrapping - thanks Deb.

And I got to thinking about my next project (now that the high school albums are underway) and one thing I have been putting off forever is my European photo's. It was a loooooong time ago (25 years) and I was there for 18mths (can you imagine the number of photo's!) I have over the years made layouts to teach as classes that use some of them, but generally they remain in old magnetic (gasp horror) albums. I at least had the good sense to type up blurbs about them & include on each page.

So realistically I will NOT be scrapping them as beautiful layouts (other that those mentioned above) and will attempt to put them in a "proper" album along the lines of Becky Higgins Project Life in pocket pages. So maybe my layout for August will be one of those....wait & see.

Card a day 210

Day 210

Monday, July 23, 2012

She Art

You know how I have been bemoaning the loss of my mojo, well I think it might be on it's way back. I have been re-mojovated (I love making up new words).

On Friday I got to spend some time with some lovely crafty friends, who are always inspiring in so many ways. One of my friends: Jenny (is a very talented artist, cardmaker & scrapbooker and has been published in many magazines over the years) showed us some of her latest works of art and even though I check them out on her blog, you get to see so much more detail in person. One of the items was a She Art canvas and I was so inspired that later that night I signed up for the course with Christy Tomlinson and devoured the online classes over the weekend.

My boss gave me the day off today and as all my chores had been done on the weekend in anticiaption of working today, I sat down & played. One of the advantages of doing craft for so long is that I had all the items needed and could just get busy and create. I got so carried away that I forgot to use some of the class techniques, but I am quite happy with the end result. I can't wait for my next day off to try another one.

I made this one for my younger daughter...I hope she likes it

Card a day 204

Day 204

Saturday, July 21, 2012

School Layouts

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been working on the girl's high school albums, so thought I would share the who, what, when, where & why (well not all of it) of the process.

Way back when I first started scrapping in 2000, one of the first classes I took was for the front of a school album. It was a double page layout that featured a photo a year, so you got a sense of the changes in one hit. It consisted of 8 columns: one for meaningful words and 7 others, one for each year of primary school (K-yr6). I have seen variations of this done by other teachers over the years, each of them different, but with the same general concept.

Primary school albums for the girls were easy as I took a photo of them on their first day each year and this photo went on the front layout. Their class photo had it's own page and the facing page was a pocket page to hold their reports. Any other events that took place at school had it's own layout.

But high school presented challenges, not only did we have 2 A4 pages of class photos (each child's individual shot), but also the large portrait of my own children and I also wanted to include their reports. This why they sat until recently when I had a light bulb moment and acted upon it. Each year now consists of a single plastic sleeve and a hinged sleeve, so when you open at a year you see the portrait and the reports and the class photos are hidden. I will share these later, but for now here are the primary (well one of the two pages) and high school layouts for the front of the albums.


Primary (page1)

High School

Card a day 202

Day 202

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Card a day 200

Wow! Can you believe I made it to 200.... this card is for all the people who have been kind enough to leave comments and support my humble little blog.... Thank you

Day 200

Sunday, July 8, 2012

June & July Layouts

Still keeping up with my scrapbooking, one month at a time. Got so busy during June I forgot to post it, so here is June & July together.

June Layout

July layout

I also have been working on the girl's high school photos as I just kept piling them up not quite knowing what I wanted to do with them. After a tidy up of old albums, I realised that I could continue with the same basic approach that I did with their primary school albums.

I will post about these another day, but for now a sense of calm has descended as I know that is one more thing checked off the" to do" list.

Card a day 189

Day 189