My 2012 Little Word: FOCUS

For the first time, I have my own One Little Word.
I am not doing Ali Edward's class (maybe next year), not am I going to scrap about it - except for this page, but I'll try to remind myself everyday that if I want to so somewhere I have to focus. And yes, that mean less time in google reader, pinterest, scrapbooking and photo forums... :-)

The journaling says it all:

"OLW. One Little Word. Choosing a word to go by for the year. I read about it in Ali Edwards’ blog a few years ago and thought the concept was interesting but I never had a word. Until some days into 2012 when the word I needed hit me: FOCUS. Focus in life. Focus in photography. Focus in the daily boring tasks. Focus on being a better person. Focus on getting things done. Dear me, don’t get sidetracked. FOCUS!"

60 seconds

That's how long it took for him to learn to ride a bike.

1st of January we took my son to the park with the new bike he got from Santa. My son never wanted to try, because he was afraid of falling, never let us remove the training wheels of his older bike. But Santa gave him a brand new bike - only slightly bigger than his old one - without them because he was sure my son was ready. And he was!

* cardstock: Bazzill

* patterned paper: My Mind's Eye

* rubb ons: Chatterbox

* letters stickers: American Crafts 

* font: Courier New

* tools: punch - Woodware (circle under the asterisk), tiny attacher.

* other: textured white paper, foam adhesive, scrappy glue

I love that paper, it is spotty and glittery!
I used one of my homemade kits.  It is great to use old stuff like the rubbons over the photo as well as my newer stuff.

I scrap slow and use little embellishments so two layouts after, the "kit" still looks intact. Yes, I am aware that at this rate, these two kits will last forever. Scary thought!

Bold cursive fonts

One of the reasons I wanted the Silhouette was to cut titles for my scrapbook pages. I compiled a selection of beautiful bold cursive fonts. Apparently cursive does not imply necessary joined up, but that's what I mean by cursive here.

December Summary

I mentioned that I had made two "kits" from my existing supplies. The second kit is inspired by this artwork by Michael Kosmicki:

Source: ffffound.com via Elisa on Pinterest

What I like about it is that it as a lot of impact. I tend to avoid pastel colours, but this shows how pastel blue can pack a punch.


This is something else which I like using the same colours:

Source: thedieline.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Noticed the justaposition of drawing and shapes? Plus cream over white?

So here's my kit:

It looks a lot brighter in the photo, but in real life the only strong colours comes from the SEI ticket sheet on the right hand side.

That's my first layout with kit 2:

*Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye - Lost and Found 2 (dots), Crate Paper - Portrait Collection (green), Studio Calico note (blue and white chain)

*Letter Stickers: Basic Grey - Micro Mono Alpha

*Gems: Kaiser Scrapbook

*other: snowflake die cut, velum, Advantus tiny attacher, foam adhesive

I am happy with this one, but probably only works because of the giant snowflake which I pinched from a Christmas card we got.

Clearing the backlog

This was half-finished for weeks, while i was trying to figure out what was missing.

* Digital Elements: Karla Dudley (paper, page protector), Shimelle Laine (November word art), Ali Edwards(quote)

* Mists: Studio Calico

* Pattterned Paper: October Afternoon (yellow), My Mind's Eye(blue)

* Rub-ons:

*Ticket stub: SEI

Finally I decided to add the embellishment of the moment: confetti! But the paper punch was upstair and I was too lazy to get it - I used a much bigger circle punch instead. Also added some faux stitching. The stitching is a old rub-on, love when I find uses for old stash!

The photos are in a digital page protector, when I saw this in Karla Dudley's blog I couldn't resist - I usually don't like digital elements which emulate real-life stuff, but this is very cool!

Trying to grow

Maybe I am not trying enough, maybe I am trying to make too many things but lately I hadn't made things that I LOVED. I made things that were OK, that were reasonably happy with but nothing that make my heart sing.

Then I read this in Kelly Purkey's blog:

"In May of this year something went off in my head. Or I should say, was lit under my booty.  I sat down at my desk and decided I was sick of making layouts just to get them done.  I wanted to push myself create work that would be something that I was really proud of.  Not intentionally make layouts that people would love, but make something that I was personally proud of for putting time and energy into.  Projects that I felt I was giving my best creative engery to. Do you know what I mean?"

That's it, making things that makes me proud. That's what I want to do this year. I am not claiming I have figured it out how  - or that I'll be proud of everything I'll do. But that's what I am aiming for.

I really want to do this using what I have at home instead buying more and more. I looked through copies of inspirational photos, crafts and colour schemes that I had saved (lately I've been using Pinterest for that) and I pulled two that I liked.

Based on them I went through my stash and made two kits.

Kit #1 is based on this photo of an old Crewcut catalog:

Brights against a background of neutrals (black & white). Which is something that always gets my attention. I added a bit of green to the mix, so that I could use it for my Christmas layouts - and I had kit #1.

And that kick started my resolution - I made this layout which made me proud for the first time in a while. It is very simple, no patterned paper, only a few bits from the kit itself. But it is a layout that I like now and I know I'll always like because it is simple and it has something that matters to me (the white paper is a copy of my daughter's letter to Santa - i added the buttons so it can be pulled from the "envelope").

* Cardstock: Bazzill

* Letter Stickers: American Crafts

* Twine: Studio Calico

* Font: Underwood Champion

* Other: Buttons

 And you, what you do want to do in creative terms in 2012?

October 2011

I seem to have gone through a scrapbooking dry phase, when I hardly scrapped and less still photo photos of my layouts. Hopefully I'll be more prolific this month, this is one I finished a while ago.

* Patterned Paper: Crate Paper

*Stamps/Mist: Studio Calico

*Ink: Stazon

The patterned paper was an old one which I thought it would be suitable for this layout, but it turned out to be a bit too "loud". I managed to subdue it a bit by misting it with white mist.