July and August 2012

Project 12 (monthly summary layout) is the thing I have been doing longest, but this year I am way behind. I enjoy it and don't want to stop doing it because, it gives a summary of what we've been up to in 12 pages per year. And second, makes me work hard to come up with multiphoto layouts.

July 2012

 I am not sure if I ever told this, but I work most of my layout in the computer. Then I make then in paper. This one was no exception. In this case I printed most directly on a 12x12 photo paper - the wood grain and photos. Then I put the strips of yellow neon papers and the Silhouette cut white paper strip. I had a beautiful digital paper between the photos, but it was light and didn't stand out so I aded some real papers between the photos. "Vintage" Basic Grey :-)

August 2012

I wanted to make a layout based on triangle shapes. Love the colourful paper - ILS is a Polish company which is making fabulous papers.

Pink Card

A while ago, I made two "kits" using scraps of papers. I used the first one quickly but only now attacked the second kit, which has mostly pink/green with a touch of cream and black:

This was inspired by a layout by Wilna Furstenberg in the Pop Of the Page class I am taking.

The layout is lovely but the page was looking a bit boring until I added the butterflies which I punched from tracing paper. Still not a patch on the original but much better.

Have a good weekend!

Summer Album

What makes me very happy about this album is that I worked while it was happening and finished at the beginning of September.

I wish I was always organised like that, it is much more fun when the events are fresh in my mind.

At the beginning of the summer I asked the children to list a few things they wanted to do. While probably they would'nt be able to do everything, at least we could try to do a few of the things they wanted - I also said to keep it realistic. Still, they wanted a pet and my daughter wanted to spend €50 in Claire's.  I said no to the first one and told my daughter that unless she had a plan on how to earn that amount of money, it wasn't going to happen! :-)

 The mini album recorded a few of the things we wanted to do, plus a few unplanned things. I wanted to make my children aware of how lucky they are, and also how many things we did in the two months of summer holidays.

I started off with a landscape format sketch pad, which I first trimmed, then disassembled. I used the Silhouette to cut the cover, and some extra pages in patterned paper.

Here are some of the pages.

Cover:

I was initially concerned I wouldn't have enough things to fill the pages - I had planned a double page per event. As it turned out, I had to down because the album was getting too bulky.

 Ice cream is a must:

So are summer camps:

1st of August was our 10 year anniversary of my daughter's adoption day:

We visited tayto park:

 Holiday in Westport (Co Mayo) and Cascais (Portugal). Here's Portugal's page:

By then, the pages were getting too bulk, so I put 4 events in a double page. Notice the bottom  left photos. I put the kids to clean the house. They did complain, but not too much ;-)

And the last page. Getting ready to go back to school. My son wanted Moshi Monsters name tags for his books. And there we still things I wanted to record which I stuck to the inside of the back cover page.

And we also went to the cinema.

I brought my son to see The Lorax while my husband watched Spiderman with my daughter. Later I brought both of the for the Dog Day Diary of a Wimpy Kit. The bottom film was supposed to be The Amazing Spiderman, but by mistake i put The Dark Knight Rise, which was a film I went with my husband to watch...

My name is Heaven... (sharing a Silhouette file)

as in full of good intentions. One of the said intentions was to share a die-cut every couple of weeks or so.

That was two months ago. Finally I have my first share, a few summer words. I know summer is over but scrapbookers are always catching up as opposed to cardmakers who are always making ahead, so it might be of use to someone.

Here are some words in .studio format, for cutting with the Silhouette, download it here. It is my first upload in Media Fire, let me know if it doesn't work.

I used some of the words in my summer mini, which I'll post in the weekend. Here is one of the pages,where I used "travel".

Red

Last week I decided to take  monochromatic colours. Tuesday I choose red.

Gold and Teal

I love this combination!

Seven

I try to make a layout for each birthday of my children. My son's birthday was back in June - I finally made it!

(removed for publication; to be published in March 2013

apologies for the inconvenience)

A layered card

I am doing a class in Studio Calico, Pop Off The Page, and it is all about layering.  That's something I am really bad at, so I signed for the course straight away.

It is great to make something a bit different from my normal style, but at the same it I struggle with chance, so I took a easy option and started with a card instead of a scrapbook page:

One page of my Summer mini album

At the beginning of the summer holidays, I asked my children to list the things they wanted to do. I told them that not everything would be accomplished (get a cat? no! spend €50 in Claire's? no!) but at least it would be something to aim for.

Last year we made the list, but I never made the mini album I meant to, this year I decided that I would work in the album and have it ready by the end of the school holidays.

School starts tomorrow, and I only have a couple of pages to finish, so i am quite proud of it. Hopefully I'll have it ready by tomorrow so we can look it together and see how much fun we had in the last two months.

I'll share the cover and some pages later this week - today I only have one page, our trip to Cascais, Portugal. The left page was inspired by a layout by supertoni, for a scraplift challenge in Studio Calico's forum.

Here's supertoni's original layout:

Thanks for the inspiration, Toni!

10 @ 10

In general I like big photos and designs that cover the whole page, however I also love seeing layouts like Allison Waken's and Anna-Maria Wolniak's, where small photos are enhanced by layered papers, painting, stamping and aparent random elements which are all combined together beautifully.

Inspired by them, I tried something a little bit different from my usual style.

I stamped, inked, used bits of post-it notes, washi tape and tracing papers.

I made a list of ten items and asked my daughtr to choose the favourite of each (movie, food, song, friend, etc).