Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Heading South...

... to the scrapbook room- Yay!

My Nana has headed back home to Dunedin, the Big boys are off at camp, the girl and the little boy are asleep and I am off to create with new stuff. Hopefully I will have something to show for it tomorrow!

In the meantime if you live in or around Auckland Scrapbookers Delight is closing down and it's 50% off everything till May 10th (but I wouldn't wait that long if I was you) I went today and scored some good bargains and am hoping to go again on Saturday, sans Baby, so I can have a better look.

Here I come...

Monday, March 30, 2009

5 Reasons to Love....

Donna Downey's 'Designing Layout's'

  1. Donna's cool style- her pages are simple but stylish.
  2. Great tips under each LO - one of my fabes; "Large embellishments work best in a limited colour range" You have to see the funky embellishments she made on the page in question to appreciate it... but it's a great stand alone tip.
  3. Easy format... this book is super simple to use. The contents lists the number of photos of each LO- very handy.
  4. Little photos... I like using little photos on my LO's and 'DL' has lots of options to do this
  5. Nothing bigger than 6x4- yay!
I am going to make the plan's in the book into layered templates in Photoshop and use the photo blocks as clipping masks so I can just drop in my photos and drag them into the right crop. Then I'll drag the smaller pictures onto 6x4 canvas' for printing. And then I can use them for digital scrapbooking as well... sweet as!

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Documenting Our Family: Preschool folders

My kids were super lucky to have great preschool education from Preschool in Nowra, to Montessori to Kindy. Each place produced it's own folder of evidence of what the kids were learning generally in a clear folder. I have simply kept those as is stashed away in a blanket box. There's no need to re-invent the wheel sometimes.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Another Sneak Peek

So I've done LOTS of organising and LOTS of purchasing (I am now the proud new owner of a Zutter bind-it-all and Donna Downey's book Designing Layouts). Sorted and printed a STACK of photos. BUT I haven't actually put glue or scissors to paper so here's a sneak peek of the journalling for a coming project....

Once upon a summertime
The people of the castle knew
That with summer days so long and sweet,
There would soon be lots to do.

As the days grew warmer
And the sun began to come out
Out of the castle they ventured
To play and race about.

When the sun's rays hit the garden
Summers magic grew there too
From buttery yellow sunflowers
to tasty food for me and you.

Speaking of food, summers promise
Is that you can eat outdoors
BBQ's and creamy french toast,
Delicious ice cream. Please some more-

And we all know December
In these balmy southern heights
Brings us fun and festivity
Christmas in summer and all it's delights.

And when the term is over
For the summer holidays
It's to the water that we turn
To wile away hot days.

What better way to spend your time
from start to summers end
To run and swim and laugh
and play and spend it with a friend.

And when autumn creeps upon us
And the days are looking glumer
I'll share these pictures with my family
So we can remember- We love Summer!


Friday, March 27, 2009

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Monday, March 23, 2009

Documenting Our Family: Mini Photo Albums

Mini Photo albums are great! Really good for;
  • Putting photos of Family in for Toddlers and up to manhandle.
  • Putting the photos the kids took on that school trip to the zoo... good for memories, not winning any photography awards.
  • Using for mini albums- either print directly onto photos, pre 'decorate' with photoshop. Or just use one side for journalling and the other side for the photos.
  • Using to illustrate a happening- we have a set of cool Monarch Butterfly life stages taken by my grandpa in a mini photo album that the kids love.
  • They are also really good for photos- you know the ones you aren't going to scrapbook!

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Friday, March 20, 2009

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Documenting Our Family: Book of Stuff

Kids like to collect stuff and they have no respect for simplifying and no concept of 'keep it tidy'. That's why we created 'books of stuff'!

Lego instructions, Zoo and Kelly Tarltons newsletters, pages from the 365 page Star Wars Calendar, cards from cereal boxs and other associated crap that has no value at all and never will... not even emotionally.

Although this little Parasaurolophus is pretty cute and the fact that Kieran could spell it before he sterted school and I still can't is outstanding!


Monday, March 16, 2009

Magic Happens When You Read Together

7 sheets of alphabets, no s, and a serious need to 'buy a few vowels' but still lots of letters so it seemed like a waste to chuck them away. So this is what I did....

  1. First up I built a complete alphabet on one sheet and decided which other sheets I could save for a later day.
  2. I put my title letters lightly in place.
  3. I proceeded to surround them with the remaining alphabets using the most common of my leftovers first. I covered one full half of the sheet.
  4. I lifted my title and put it aside for safe keeping.
  5. I used the negative section from one of the empty sheets of stickers as a mask/stencil on the right hand side of the page.
  6. I covered it all in paint.
  7. I used 2 coats on the right hand side and about 4-5 on the left because some of the colours were quite bright and really showed through.
The texture is yummy!


Once the paint dried I added my title letters back placed my photo with foam tape to make it pop out from the background. And then used some black letters to make a funky frame on the right.

Letters; Doodlebug (If you find them then grab me some as well because they have been great!). Glitter letters: Making Memories, Cardstock: Bazzill and paint from The Warehouse!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Airmail- Digital

I brought the Digi files 2 today and as I am not a regular purchaser of digital scrapbooking stuff I thought I better make use of my purchase asap. I set aside these photos to scrap digitally a while ago because I really wanted to use them all and didn't want to go through the pain of cropping and resizing them to get printed. That said I didn't have a template so I sort of had to make my own and that was a whole different sort of pain! I still have huge volumes to learn about digi scrapping especially drop shadows... my frame already had one so I really should have made everything else match it but didn't.... anyway the stuff is all Misty Cato's High Flying kit except the frame which is Dahlia Co Designs.






Saturday, March 14, 2009

Love you more


Inspired by an article in the February issue of Creating Keepsakes I made this canvas for my crew... it is a very simple process!
  1. Mask off the area for the frame.
  2. Choose your letters and embellishments. (I'm trying to use up some of my letters at the moment)
  3. Do a rough LO on the canvas to make sure it will all fit. (I like to take a photo of this so I can remember where everything was.
  4. Choose a frame colour to coordinate with your text and embellishments.
  5. I painted 3 coats of Making Memories Cranberry.
  6. Ink and tidy any edges on the letters between coats
  7. Replace your embellishments on the canvas and adhere as desired. (I used foam tape for Love and More, Tombow green for the 'you' and glue dots for the embellishments. USE a ruler because if you have to sit looking at this thing on your wall then crooked lines will drive you nuts.

Love letters; Mustard Moon, You; KI memories alphabet soup, More: Basic Grey UL, Bling; Kaiser, Paint and embellishments; Making memories.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Something for Kieley

Kieley wants a skin for her school Mac to help distinguish it from the others in the school so I have been messing around with a few designs in photoshop. The brushes are by Designfruit, Pixels and Ice Cream, and Jenny McGee.




365 Week 10




Thursday, March 12, 2009

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Monday, March 9, 2009

Documenting Our Family: Book of Days


Some days are interesting and a little special... but not as much so as a birthday or moving country and those are the sort of days we had a book of days for...


The days when you got a postcard from a Dad away on deployment.



There was practically nothing spent on these- $2 bucks for the book and some double sided tape. They were just a place to remember and totally designed to be pawed by the kids.


These days most of these things would eventually get scrapbooked (except the postcard- that'd go in out postcard collection mini album) especially things as major as the end of the Air Combat Wing (Boo hoo! Curse you Helen!)- In fact I may have to locate those photos and go back and scrap it properly.

I still think these have their place especially for the likes of Will who can't be trusted to look at a regular 12x12 album on his own, but like all kids enjoys looking at stuff that is about him.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Friday, March 6, 2009

365 Week 9

I changed it up a bit for Autumn, might change the fonts next week as well, variety is the spice of life after all...




Thursday, March 5, 2009

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Documenting Our Family: First Scrapbooks

Before I even knew there was a 'scrapbooking industry' I made scrapbooks. They were acid or lignin free- and I don't care (I still don't care). And they didn't have posh paper and embellishments but they did what is at the core of scrapbooking the most valuable thing- they put words and pictures together to tell stories and capture memories!


Merenia's first scrapbook with her Birth announcements, email and snail mail.


The newspaper from the day she was born.


All the cards we got with the wrapping paper used as a background.

A Christmas card (I send the kids one each year generally homemade lately)
And the story about how we moved back to New Zealand after our posting to Nowra.

One of Kieran's later scrapbooks. (That's his 5th birthday invite).


First day at school. (You can see the 'posh' 'real' scrapbooking stuff is starting to sneak at this point.... stuff I now wouldn't touch unless someone paid me to! It's all part of the learning curve.


And a story about some socks. Which is worth reading....



Bits and pieces from birthday pressies.


A letter to the tooth fairy when the first tooth was completely lost... we think he swallowed it.


More from Merenia's... she attended the Sydney Olympic torch relay when she was just a few weeks (or maybe days) old.

Oooooohh!! Look some even more 'flash' stuff... I remember thinking how expensive it was and how I'd not buy 'too much' or get into buying stuff in a 'big way'... whaaaaaa hahahahahahaha!

This one is about Kieran's Class' assembly at the full school assembly when he was a Year one- they did the story of Tane Mahuta, Kieran was a kea.

Scrapbooking like this is a very good option for the budget concious and the relaxed scrapper- someone that wants to document their family life without becoming 'A Scrapbooker'... simply a story teller. No, it's not archivally safe, no it won't last forever but I am willing to bet it will last quite a lot longer than you think and I believe it will last as long as those who will enjoy what's inside those pages. the 'scrapbooks' I used atre just those $2.50 get them from paper plus or warehouse stationery types that the kids use for school I covered them in wrapping paper and cool bags from the zoo shop and I used what was on hand and most free or cheap until those later stages when NZ Scrapbook opened up down the road and the beginning of my current universe loomed up on the road!

The thing that you notice most about these early scrapbooks is that they are about events- birthdays, big days at school and things that were happening that were out of the ordinary. This is all fine, but these days I have a more balanced approach between this and looking at the everyday stuff and the little things and also the reflective stuff like just thinking about what sort of a person each of the kids is at this point in their lives and what we love and what drives us nuts. I still do the event stuff... but it's a lot more balanced because life isn't all birthdays, assemblies and school productions. It's also reading stories everyday and doing the school run and supermarket shopping and petrol prices, and it's frustration and joy and heartbreak and hope and personality quirks and grumpy days... and that stuff should be in there too... it's what says; we lived, we are, and in our case: We are Stockleys!