Scrap process for PL

I thought I'd show you some photos of the process when I made my personal Project Life for April. I want to apologise for the bad quality of the pictures, took them with my phone.

I start by choosing papers I like. I prefer when they are light and quite neutral, here I put some ledger papers over darker cardstock. When I do this I have a sketch on where the different stories will go, but as you will see, they do not always end up where I first intended.

I had three photos for this page (I don't feel the need to have photos of all my stories, epcially since I love the look of the written word) and placed them where I wanted them.

Now I have started to put some more things down, the month pocket is almost done and I have chosen a journaling card for the dotted paper.

Here I have done the book pocket and after I was done I realised that there were two round red journaling stickers right next to each other and I didn't want that so I moved the books down, but then I had to move the dotted paper and I didn't want to just swich places for then I would end up with three pockets with red in a row... And the dotted paper pocket holds the journaling to the baking photo so I wanted to have them side by side. Sigh... Oh the trouble of designing! You should now too that I can't move around the papers any way I want since I have cut down the pocket page both at the top and at the bottom to fit my American Crafts modern album. The pocket is swedish standard A4 which is slightly taller than 11".

And here's the finished page. I really have to use my utter most self dicipline not to over embellish the pockets, since it is so much fun, but I like the end result much better if I contain myself. If there is too much going on in all the pockets it just looks messy, so I will have to save the great embellishing for my ordirnary layouts.

Talking about ordirary layouts I have to say that doing Project life has changed the way I do my other scrapbooking. I used to do a lot of "we did this"-layouts and they were often quite simple, but now those stories end up in my PL and that leaves me the oppertunaty to do more layouts about feelings and connections instead and this pages tend to be more embellished and that is FUN.

Hope you enjoyed seing my process. Bye!

(I) NSD: Journal in form of a letter

When I saw this challenge Shimelle I defenetly wasn't going to do this! I have never journaled in letter form and it felt really strange to me. But...I changed my mind and wrote a letter to my husband. I read this thing someone had written, that she loved wearing cardigans, but that she had realised her husband wasn't wild about it and it really hit home with me since I love cardigans too and wear them every day expect when it's really warm, which is not very often here... And I'm so grateful that my husband likes me just the way I am, I don't feel any pressure to be chic or anything.

My youngest daughter took this photo of me last Christmas and I had no idea what to use it for until now, it was so perfect for this.

I had to choose something to write the letter on and found this old Websters pages 6x6 paperpad with beautyful but hard to use papers and thought I would try to work one of them into this page. I had a couple of others I liked but as I had to cover up a corner of the paper by the photo I just had to use this one since the others forst me to put hte photo so that I would look out from the page. Not that this isn´t beautyful, I think it´s lovely.

I matted the photo with two different papers, coloured the raw chipboard "a" with an inkpad, used woodweneer letters for the title, some buttons (the blue flowers are buttons too, but I cut off the thing on the back) and pearls and the "me" stamp, that has "Monica" written all over her!!

Voilá, a layout about both me and my DH all at once!

(I) NSD: Scrapbook yourself

So I did some more things for International scrapbooking day, but never got them posted, but here is couple, in induvidual posts, since I had done most of the journling already...

I scrapbook a lot about myself so it was not very hard for me to go with this challenge from Shimelle. But instead of using a photo of myself I often use photos of things that means something special to me, and I did that here too.

I love purses... I very rarly go somewhere without my purse. My brother used to tease me about this when we were young and ask when I would put up my own shop... So at one point I took this photo and it has been lying around for a long time, so this was a perfect match for this challenge.

The photo wasn't very exiting with all these black and brown purses, so I was wondering how I was going to do this. I choose the cardstock for the backcrond and then the butterfly paper that went well with it's toned down colours but still brought in some colour. To divid it from the background I put a strip of black cardstock behind it. I chose this "old letter" tag to hold the title. I have had this piece of paper for ever and haven't had a clue what to use it for so I was really glad I finally found a place for it. And I think it looks nice.

I matted the photo and the title card with dark grey cardstock to make them stand out a bit. The next issue was getting the journaling in, but I found a salution for that too. This really isn't my typical layout colourvise, I usually use brighter colours, but I like this one too.

International scrapbooking day: Scraplift yourself

Today scrapbooking is celebrated all over the world! Horray! Lucky for us non-US folks, some have already started the celebration so we can jump right in and start getting inspired and challenged.

I have already made my first layout, after a challenge from Shimelle about scraplifting yourself. You can find the post about this challenge here I chose one of my favorite layout from my personal album to scraplift. This was it.

Home again-layout

The elements I ended up lifting was the vertical paperstrip to the left, the big mat under the photo, the horizontal paperstrip up to the right and the placements of the embellishments. The new page looks likt this.

Every day-layout

Instead of the horizontal paper under the photo I now chose a vertical strip to the right and I put my journaling spot at the bottom left instead of the upper right since I had to move my title more to the right for it not to disapear into the bold paperstrip with the numbers and I also moved the upper embellishment away from the title since it looked better up there where it covered both the background paper and the two patterned papers.

This was really fun. I'm not much of a challenge person, but if the challenges is within my normal way of scrapbooking I like it.

This challenge really is the same Studio Calico has on it's blog .... so I will enter both with this layout, I just happened to not see the one at Studio Calico until after I already made the page.

Hopefully I will be able to squize in a little bit more scraptime today alongside driving Elias to a party, shopping, washing clothes and watching the world snooker championships on TV!

Project life: Monica march

I have had my personal PL done for more than a week, I just haven´t gotten around to take any photos of it before.

This month I used a buisness card holder, but I had to trim it down at the top and the bottom, since it was to tall for my 8 1/2"x11" AC album. I really took an effort to not overdo it, not too much colour and things, and yet I think that it just became too much when I put it all together. But it´s ok. What I can take with me is to only use really light backgrounds.

Every week I write a post in swedish about how far spring has come. We´re some swedish gardenblogger who do this ever week, to help each other keep the spirits up!
It´s 30 yrs since I became a mother!
And the last Twilight saga movie came out on DVD. It´s good but I didn´t mourn the end like I did when the Harry Potter series ended.

The Host FINALLY came to the cinemas and I. HAD. THE. FLU!! How sad was that?! I still haven´t seen it thanks to my coughing...

My subscription of Creating Keepsakes ended and I decided not to renew it. It really isn´t that good anymore and since I got my iphone I have all the best inspiration with me all the time. So when my cellphone company let me choose between upgrading to an iphone5 or get a tablet computer, it was just perfect, now I don´t even have to sacrifice the size!

My youngest daughter is really inspired by my PL and wants to do her own, that is so much fun!! This is really addictive! I have a lot of thoughts on the matter, but they will have to wait.

Have a wonderful day and enjoy springtime!

Project life: Monica

I have so much fun doing my personal project life, but looking back I can't help but wondering why I always end up using so much colour when all the pages I most like is the ones with much light and neutral colours. Is it just out of habbit or what?!

Here's my page for February.

I started with the two photos, one of a sunny day, taking the photo with the sun hidden behind a tree and the other one taken an early morning with no extra light, showing that the light really was coming back, since it was no longer completly dark when I got up at 6am. Both of the photos had very little colour with blue as the only colour besides black and white and I wanted to emphesise the blue and found this old Daisy day paper that matched perfectly. I could have used white for the other pockets but wanted a little more colour... So I ended up with these brown papers from an old 6x6 paperpad from K&Co which match so well. I have a lot of the (also very old) tags that I used for the bottom right pocket, in different styles, and thought about using them everywhere and it looked nice, but was kind of too unified, if you know what I mean.

So I had to think a little bit more and look deeper in my stash and I'm quite pleased with the result. I brought in a splash of green here and there which brought the layout to life, I think. I have to point out the fact that it is different kinds of greens, which is a big thing for me, I have a tendencee to be too riged, I need to losen up a bit and I'm working on that!

You know how you always have this picture in your head of how you want it to be and you hardly ever manage to make it that way? Well, besides from that, I'm quite pleased, but next time I will make it lighter, I promise!

A new toy and Project life: Monica

Last week I was going through the mall doors minding my own buissnes when a salesman from a phone company approched me asking what company I used and as I looked at their stand I saw that is was the company we use for our cellphones, so I told him. Then he asked me how long I had been a customer there and said he might have something for me since I had  been with them for more than a year. So he checked, and gave me the choice beween upgrading my iphone 4 to a 5 or get a tablet computer. Not bad. I chose the latter. I'm not a big fan of sitting by a computer and since getting my iphone I kind of only sits there to work with my photos and write my blogpost.

So now I'm sitting here in my comphy chair with this amazing thing in my lap writing and I'm one happy gal. I believe and hope that this will help me get more blogpost done.

I have another new thing to tell you too. I was pondering my project life and realised I really wanted to make that for myself too. Unlike many other scrapbookers I have never had any problems scrapping myself (quite the oppasite, actually!), so I guess this was unavoidable!!

Like with my family project life, I will be doing this monthly and I have done January and are working on Febuary. And it is so much fun!!

Here's my page for January. I posted a photo of it on instagram (my name there is emia23) but I have jazzed it up a bit since then.

 
The screenshot from new years eve is my introduction of the year, I didn't care about doing a separate page for that since welcoming the new year is a part of January. The lovely background photo of the sunflower on my sceen, and the photo of the Christmas tree kind of set the tone for the page. I had to make something that bound those photos together, since they have absolutly nothing in common exept for some green. So green and a touch of yellow and red made the trick, I think.

All these pages holds a veriaty of both new and realy old things and I like that. By the way, if anyone wonders, the tree holds the fact that as happy I am about welcoming Christmas in December, as happy I am about saying goodbye to it in January!

I don't know if this is a memory thing or not, but I have much more things written down for Febuary than January and even more for this month. Not that it's sure that everything I write down will absolutly surely make it's way to the actual page in the end.

Here 's a sneak from February.

 February´s page was quite a journey at the beginning, but I´ll share that when it´s all done.

Tomorrow it´s  time for a new post about signs of spring, though it´s still winter... Sigh.

Have a nice Saturday night!

Project life February

Since I made only one page of PL for January, I kind of only had one left for February and I had hardly taken any photos, so that is what happend. This is so much fun and I really want to do more each month, so I have to get better at taking photos and documenting what happens so I don´t forget. Anyway, here is my page for Febuary.

Birthdays, a happy girl, a friendly card and cut outs from an envelop and a note, is some of the things this month. I was really pleased with how the sum up page ended up with the circle stamp with the stamped numbers inside. Here´s a few close ups.

To have room for everything I paired the month with some writing, I like that look. This was about my own and my mother-in-law´s birthdays, that are only three days apart. Here I used one of the home made cards I showed in an earlier post.

My happy girl. She had waited for this activity forever and finally the day was here, on my birthady actually.

About me deciding that this was the time for me to go on a diet and start taking daily walks to help it along and get a little fit. Used my very old footprint punch to make the footprints.

Can´t wait ´till next time!

By the way, if someone wonders about yesterday´s post, it is a swedish photo challenge to follow spring slowly winning over winter in our country. A lot of swedish bloggers is doing this every Sunday from now on.

Have a happy week, all!

All me

I have an album where I put all my personal layouts. The one I have had for the two last years looks like this.

It holds a number of pages, but last year I made just ONE page for this album. I knew it wasn´t much, but that surprised me. The last days, though, I have made two new ones. They´re both kind of Christmas related.

My Christmas very much happened inside of me this time and I write about it here and tells that these two items really was the two I really cared about this Christmas, as it goes to decorations. The red star I had in my window in my room and the advent candlestick holder I was lucky enough to find, after having put it away so well that I couldn´t find it the Christmas before this one...

The heart and the tree is chipboard that I inked. The paper is an old one from Daisy Day, I´m quite sure...and the red cardstock I cut with my big scalloped scissors.

This tin box I got from Sarah and her family for Christmas, isn´t it very suiteble for me?!!
The page really is about how good Sarah is on finding me presents. It´s titled She knows me, because she really knows me, and also remembers things I´ve said long ago.

Since Sarah is a sewing person these two cards was so very appropriate for this layout. I love red but not pink, but the qoute about quilts was so very perfect so I just had to use it. But to tone down the pink (and the other card is red, not pink) I put the red polkadot on top of the photo and found this border (that really is a cutting from a 12x12 paper from Webster´s pages) to get some green in (green is always a good choice!!). Then I chose the thickers and the stickers to enforce the border. I was really pleased with it.

These two layouts really is very much me; red, green, off white and brown, I just love them!

Year in review 2012 and a laugh

So now it´s done again, the Year in review pages, that is. I can understand why I´m so old, the years sure fly by!! Not that I´m actually so very old, but you know, you just don´t feel that old. I turned 53 on Saturday and yesterday someone jokingly said, that I turned 29. Well having a daughter that will turn 30 in some weeks, that just isn´t very likely! But if you go by the feeling, ok so then I´m 29. I love life, even if it´s hard sometimes, but my philosophy is that if you try to look at the bright side everything looks better.

Anyway here´s the pages.

Not much happened that wasn´t related to family, so that´s pretty much all there is.

Another layout I did the other day.

Me and Ilse and Elias were playing Monopoly one day and Elias was laughing really heartedly when things went wrong for me and later when things started to go really bad for himself he said: "I shouldn´t have laughed at Mom..."! I thought that was really fun, the boy has learned about the law of reaping... So I made a layout about it.

Then yesterday he wanted to play again and this time I didn´t have a chance and I told him that I probobly reaped the seeds from my sowing, as I had fun on his behalf making this layout... So I added a new labelsticker telling THAT story. If you can laugh at others, you have to be able to laugh at yourself too.

The sun is shining so wonderful today, I might even take a walk! Have a great week.

Project life: Title page and January

I have a lot of these divided page protectors that hold six 4x6 photos, so I will do my Project life with them this year. I really like Becky Higgin´s Style A pockets but that will have to wait. Using this six pocket pps makes for a little different style, kind of more freedom and that is nice too.

Since last year didn´t turn out to be all that I had thought it would be and things we did didn´t really match what I had put on the title page for 2012 I decided to just go with our family, you really can´t be sure what will happen during a year, can you?

So here´s the title page:

This is mostly about just the five of us who lives in this house, but since I had this photo of me and the children, including Josef and Adam, from Christmas I decided to use that and then put a seperate photo of Arnold (and the sticker with the paper reading man was perfect!) and also include one photo each of Sarah and Linda with their babies (those photos will have to represent their families, it´s impossible to include them all here!!)

I used three journaling cards from Simple Stories and the one with the house was perfect for holding "home" and our home is very important to us, not the house itself but the "home thing", being together, the love aso. I found a use for one of the typewriting ladies from October Afternoon´s 9 to 5 line, which, of course, represents me doing this documentation. The other card has "our family" and all those names that means family: mom, dad, sister...to uncle and grandchild.

January:

Two pockets on Elinor and her dresses. She went to a youth conference on the 2nd and she had made one dress herself, for the ball, which is amazing since she doesn´t sew! It turned out great, you can do very nice things from a sheet and a curtain... Finally I found a great place for the old "sew cute" die cut, since she is such a cute girl.

The dress for the fancy-dress dance was made by her sister Sarah who was delighted to having an excuse for making such a dress again. You can read her own blogpost about the making of it here, if you like. It is of course Bo Peep from Toystory. And Elinor won the price for the best costume. No surprise there!!

I´m not a fan of pink but I just had to have it here, since Elinor loves it and both the dresses was pink...

Other stories are about Adam buying us a new TV! Now that´s a loving son!! And about Elias making his first cooked dinner ever. And some other curch stuff too.

I love doing this! Hope you like it too.

Take some photos, mom!

You know how it is, the mother is "always" behind the camera, so Linda asked me to take some photos of her and her children. It turned out to be some great mother-child photos as well as some really nice real life photos.

Take some photos, mom. Here´s some behind-the-scen photos. I made the last layout first and then made this and the next one and these where both made to fit the last one. I made them on the same theme so you can see that they belong together. The colour of the background paper, the letter stickers and the embellishments all help to do just that.

Such riches. Linda is rich having such wonderful children and we are rich for having them all. Lovely photos of her and her children. I had a lot of different photos to choose from but I lked these ones that showes the love they share.

And finally the one I made first. When I took these photos (and I really got some "real" ones first) an airplan flew by and Gabriel heared it and finally all of them (expect Noah, who couldn´t care less!) looked for it!! I knew while I was taking these photos that I would want to do a page like this.

Chee...airplan!
So the question was, how would I fit in this photos in a sequel that showed off the actual happening? The ideal would be having them after each other from left to right but then I would need two pages and I really didn´t want that, I already had so many pages. And the green background was kind of destacting so I croped them, something that I hardly ever do this days. I moved them around and realised that having them move in a circle was the best thing, but I had to make people see that that was what was happening so I made this big circle arrow.

When I was finally done I was really pleased with it. This is what is so amazing with scrapbooking, you get to be creative and make something that pleases you, and has a bigger meaning too at the same time. Sitting there making this stuff gives me a great amount of energy.

Happy scrapping, folkes!

Playground

Linda and I took her children and went to town one day. Took the children to this amazing playground with so much fun. Then I took the big ones to McDonalds while Linda browsed the local scrapbooking store with Noah. After that we went to visit my in-laws. A full day that left us quite worn out!!

Here I managed to fit in many photos and still get some design in, that´s kind of my signature. Since we have such a big family there is always many photos to fit in.

Another day I took the children to another playground in our nearer, smaller town. It was a wonderful fall day too, so I just called it A wonderful day.

I thought this paper was just right for this day since we had this amzingly blue sky, so I started with what was actually the last photos, of the children lying on the big swing, just enjoying the lovely weather and being pushed.

I made two smaller pages too. One about Gabriel always wanting to do what his uncle is doing...

...and the other about Elvina and how you can´t keep up with the bigger ones when you are only three and needs help here and there.

I wanted to hold on to the amazing blue so I put these pages on a clear blue paper (it is actually the same blue paper even if it doesn´t relly show on the pictures). The one about the boys I just went with the outdoor theme, but made the one about Elvina realy girlish with pink and other girly stuff.

One last show off of my Big project and then I will show you the start of my Project life.
Enjoy your life!

A lot of childrens pages

More from my Big project.

Gabriel turned five while they where here and Linda took him outside to take some photos and he´s sitting there so nicely holding up his five fingers...but who´s that in the window?! Little sister is making funny faces and this photo shoot took a turn. Isn´t that wonderful when that happens?

I really liked how this page turned out. When you have so many 6x4 photos that you want to include you have to get crafty with them to fit in the important stuff without the photos filling the whole pages. Here I cut down three photos to fit at the bottom of the page. And the three tags was great for the title and turned in to nice embellishments at the same time.

Play. When Linda comes here with her children Elias gets some younger kids to play with, which he isn´t used too. At first, some years ago, he couldn´t deal with that so well, but now he´s learned to handle it quite well and can enjoy the company. Some would call us a typical LDS family with an uncle just three years older than his oldest nephew... That´s when we don´t count Lindas stepchildren who are both older than Elias!!

Just a simple page about some of the playing that goes on when they are here. I like how the red paper strips, that I rounded the corners on, hold the whole grind together so nicely. The sticker with the kids on the merry-go-round was just perfect since there is two boys and a girl.

All these lovely photos of the children playing in and around the playtree I made into a layout about the tree itself, how it´s the only really great climbing tree and the only one to hang the swing in. You can find more than one story in a photo. Here I used some really old stickers and they were just perfect for this page.

Hide and seek. These great pictures that Linda took of the children I just wanted to be seen in all their glory and not get them lost in a lot of embellishments. A page couldn´t get any simplier, I think.

I had more photos from this game so I put them on a seperate page...

...and called it Play with me, Auntie, since Elinor and Ilse played with the children.

And the last one.

Another simple page showing off the sleeping little darlings. I called it They are cute when they are sleeping... Because they ARE and also because we are kind of old and not so used to having smaller childrens noise around any more...even if we love them dearly.

More to show you next time. Have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.

The BIG project

Here is the beginning of my big project of documenting the weeks that Linda and the children spent here in September. It´s increadible that two weeks can hold so many stories... But of course all of these layouts is not only about these weeks. Since we see each other so seldon because of the distance it really is more about them in general, but now I happened to have photos from when I actually was THERE too.

Welcome my so very much beloved children!! I was SOO happy when I picked them up at the airport. I hadn´t seen them in a almost a year and little Noah was born in the summer. The title says "Nothing bad that doesn´t bring something good", since they where able to come here because of the leake they had in the kitchen which made the insurance company pay for their flight here since it wasn´t good for such small children to live in the bad air.

The fact that they stayed here so long made for a much more casual way of spending time together than if they would have only stayed for some days and that was so nice. I loved taking care of little Noah, we can never have too many babies in our family!!

I made one page each about the grandchildren. This is Gabriel, he´s mommy´s boy, not only in that he loves his mom, he´s quite like her too.

Sweet Elvina. She´s such a girly girl, much to her mothers delight... She loves pink. I was making a dessert and she stood beside me and watched and when she looked at it and saw the colour she said: "Grandma, it´s pink!" and I just knew I had to put just that on a page!!

Oh, my darling little Noah... He´s the cutest little thing. I so much loved to lock myself in in my room with him and just enjoy having a baby in my arms and while sitting there, all the old feelings of how much I have enjoyed all my children as babies came back too me. I am such a blessed woman having had eight precious little ones of my own and now being able to enjoy my grandchildren. And Noah is such a special, sweet little spirit. I´m so grateful that I got this oppertunaty to have this time with him when he was so little.

Well, folks, that´s it for today! Have a great week!

Project life?

I have really enjoyed doing Document: 2012 and will definatly be doing it this year too, but the question is will I be doing more of it than just one page per month? I think I will, at least some of the months, when I feel like it and really, this is of course a veriaty of Project life, so why not call it just that?! So I will.

So welcome to my Project life 2013!!

But first the last three months of Document: 2012.

This month held a lot of conferences at church, General conference for the whole world wide church, ward conference for our congregation and stake conference for the church in our region.

The fall break started really bad for Elias with a visit at the doctor´s, I will not tell you his mistake that took us there...

Arnold turned 52 and I and the girls went shopping at the big cheep department store in Ullared.

The first day of November which also was in the springbreak we went to see Sarah and her family. They moved earlier in the fall, for Tobias to be able to go to school and learn to be an Air Traffic Control Operator. It was so good to see them and see how they live now. And most of this month´s documentation was about this and what was going on at church which also was quite a lot.

There wasn´t much going on that wasn´t connected to Christmas in December and since I had waited so much for December to arrive, that´s what I documented. It turned out to be two pages since it was impossible to fit it all in on one page, even if I did make a Christmas album I still wanted it here too.

So that´s the end of 2012, as Docomented: 2012 is concerned and also the end of Documented:
So Hello 2013 and Project life!