An update & Project Life

Hey & welcome to 2012 fellow scrapbookers!

Christmas was super busy for me and of course all my plans for doing anything blog went out the window! Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year break.

So the redesign will be coming soon AND we’re on the lookout for a few more contributors but I’ll be posting the details of that later this week.

Many scrapbookers are currently discussing their Project Life albums and I’ve done a post on my personal blog about Project Life and hosting a get together. I’d love to hear if you’d be interested.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Yes it’s that time of year again. In less than 2 weeks most of us will be celebrating with family and friends. Today I thought I’d share some of the Christmassy finds for scrapbookers around the net.

But first, a quick site update. The site will be taking a little break over the Christmas period and coming back new & refreshed for 2012! I’m doing lots of planning and I’m hoping to bring you some great new bits and pieces in the New Year. At the moment though, it’s still a work in progress so I can’t share.

Now onto the Christmas goodies.

There are so many classes and projects around at this time of year – Journal Your Christmas (I’ll be sharing my album from 2010 later this week) and Ali Edwards December Daily are two that are most often mentioned.

As for supplies, don’t get me started. There are so many gorgeous kits around this year for both paper and digital scrappers. Like ….

Memory Works – Simple Stories 25 Days of Christmas collection	Kaisercraft – December 25th	Ranger Ink – Tim Holtz Distress Ink Limited Edition
It’s Christmas! (digi) by Forever Joy Designs	Candy Cane Kisses (digi) by Melissa Bennett	Be Merry papers (digi) by Dianne Rigdon

Googling Christmas Scrapbook brings up heaps of ideas and then there is always Pinterest

Stepping outside your comfort zone

It can be both inspiring and nerve-wracking to step outside your comfort zone.  I recently went to a scrapping retreat and one of the challenges was to do a layout in ‘vintage’ style.  Now, that’s not really my thing and I had NO idea where to start.  But a bit of chat with fellow scrappers and the purchase of a kit (yah for kits!) and I think I made something that is both ‘vintage’ but still retains my own simple/graphic style.  Kit from http://tatteredinspirations.blogspot.com/

Winter is nearly over!

I always find it hard to get motivated to do anything when it’s cold.  I’m supposed to be writing a book, and have a massive case of writers block!  However, we did manage to get away for a week during school holidays to get a bit of warm weather and reset the motivation!  It didn’t really work, since it was quite cold, but I have done a layout about it.  And hopefully it gives everyone some motivation to try using a non-square piece of paper as a background

Piggy tales!

This is one of my favorite layouts because it shows two of my favorite animals: guinea pigs and miniature pot-bellied pigs! The mix of bright colors with a darker green makes this layout just feel like summer.

Materials used:

Paper — American Crafts

Stickers – SEI

Flowers — Prima Marketing

Button — American Crafts

Brads — Queen and Co.

CHA Summer 2011

It’s that time of year again. CHA (Craft & Hobby Association) Summer show (gee that feels weird typing that considering it’s winter here). For those that don’t know, CHA is when scrapbook manufacturers release their new products for the next couple of months. The sneak peaks are starting to appear online already.

Here’s a few of my favourites so far

Tada Creative Studios
Basic Grey
Tim Holtz
Webster’s Pages
Hambly
Kaisercraft
Pink Paislee

What are your favourites so far?

Exciting things

are coming soon. I haven’t been scrapping much (hence no posts from me recently) BUT I’ve been working on a few very exciting things behind the scenes. I can’t share what they are as yet but I promise it will be soon.

Everyone loves babies

And what better way to cheer up a miserable winter day than some baby photos all scrapped up into a little album.  These pictures are of my new nephew.

Sketches for inspiration

I am a big fan of using sketches when planning my scrapbook pages. A page sketch is great because I don’t have to worry about the placement of my photos; I can just concentrate on making the sketch my own with my own variations.

One of the best sketch sites that I have found is a wonderful site called Sketch Support. At Sketch Support, there are numerous sketches (with detailed measurements) for one-page and two-page layouts as well as cards. My favorite thing is that there are sketches for just about any number of photos so if I need a layout for 6 pictures, I can easily find it here.

So head on over to Sketch Support and get inspired!

Summer fun

I know that in Australia it is winter right now, but here in the States, it is the good old summertime! To me, nothing says summer like flip-flops and water. I made this layout using a picture I took while on a cruise to the Caribbean.

Materials used:

Paper — My Mind’s Eye, Fancy Pants Designs

Embellishments — “Lovin’ Life” cardstock title by My Mind’s Eye, vellum words by Die Cuts with a View, ribbon by American Crafts

Ink — ColorSnap Colorbox Fluid Chalk Ink in “Chestnut Roan” and “Charcoal”