sea creatures and make up (nice mix?)

Hello Friday scrappers - How are you all today? I had a LOVELY day scrapping (and eating) yesterday with Di, Jo, and the two Robyns who are new scrap converts. We had a lovely relaxing scrap, but didn't get TOO many pages done, (just a few) because we had to keep stopping for coffee, snacks, lunch, and sweet treats, and of course we talked non stop, and one can hardly talk and scrap at the same time. Well you can if you are gifted at multi-tasking, and I certainly am not!! If I'm thinking about where to put a letter sticker, I accidentally totally ignore the person who is talking to me and they practically have to yell at me, to get me to pay any attention to them.

So, I only got three layouts done but we had such a lovely day. Can't wait til we do it again. We decided scrapping is so therapeutic and relaxing. It's a feel-good hobby, that I'm sure puts endorphins (happy hormones) running through your system. Oh, endorphins are released when exercising, not scrapping.... well maybe there are scrap-type endorphins too...

These layouts today are not what I did yesterday, but they are new as I did them over the past week or so.

Many of you who have been with me for a while will know that I love to scrap children's artwork. And I am willing to give up a sheet of my precious 8.5 x 11 white bazzill cardstock to allow them to draw for for me. Lucy has been into drawing 'sea creatures' for about a year now, and she drew this for me about 6 months ago, just after she had turned 5. I think all the funny little details that kids include are are so cute. I love the turtle swimming towards the surface and that little crab on the sea bed is so sweet. Just love 5 yr old art. You can see is has taken me a while to actually getting around to scrapping.

The next layout was another for my youngest, Lucy, and it is about how she always loves a good makeover. Of course we don't encourage make up, but on the rare occasion that I let them do the whole makeover thing, they all have fun. Lucy actually does a pretty good job of it, but then it's into the bath. I love the concentration on her face as she looks in the little mirror. Made use of the new butterfly punch and I made the scallop edge on the American Crafts printed paper with my corner rounder.

Promise I will have a sketch challenge for next Monday or Tuesday!

Promise I will try to keep my promise.

Notice I added "try to" instead just saying "I will".

Really, I will.......try!

double layout about ears!

Well I did it. Why I waited (wasted) 35 years I have no idea. Last Friday I got my ears pierced. I let my eldest get her ears pierced on her birthday, and I decided I would join her. I didn't scream faint or die, and neither did she. I took these photos straight after, and look, we aren't traumatised messes! My photos were printed and story recorded within a few days, while the memory is fresh and while I was still 'in the moment' in my head. Here is the photo that I took of us in the mirror at the salon, though you can't see our new earrings,

and below is double page layout about the event. Thanks to Jo, whose comment from my last post inspired my title. So loved scrapping it so quick. It really is far more inspiring doing it right then and there, rather than waiting for months to get around to it.
Of course you can't scrap everything just after it happens (just ask my Christmas photos from last year), but it sure does help with some of those key events that you require journaling from a fresh mind.

The main photo here was 6 x 8 and the others were cropped down 4x6's. PP is old American crafts. That scallop punch is from Stampin' Up. Feel free to double click on the image if you want to read the full story.

See you very soon!

Time for a new sketch challenge?

New layouts and my girl is 10 today.

I did a couple of quick pages this week, and I would love to do some more, if only I could find the time! Amaris' birthday is today and her little party is tonight (remember butterfly invitations) so I must rush off and make a cake and do a few things. After 10 years of begging we are letting her get her ears pierced today (lots of excited screaming this morning!) and I am considering getting mine done as well - no I don't have mine pierced cause I am a big chicken! I might well pike out - that's my disclaimer if nothing ends up happening to my ears.

So here's a little layout that I did about her. I did it before she turned 10, so I could title it '@9'.

And here's a layout I also did this week that won my "quickest layout of the week" award.
Hand writing really is super super quick - and it was really nice to use up some pp that I LOVE , that I hardly ever get around to using.

I liked the idea of the same colour-on-colour letter stickers on the paper, but I think the colour might be TOO similar. Oh well, I like the subtlety of it I guess. Anyway, can't be bothered to change it, and happy to be using my blue felt American Crafts stickers!

Off to make a birthday cake. The older the kids get, the simpler they want everything, so it is pretty low key, as requested by birthday girl. No more amazing princess castle cakes (secretly doing happy dance!)

It seems there's a lot of party stuff happening on my blog at the moment - that's what happens when you have kids 6 weeks apart (and a few years, of course). I have a friend who lives in LA who had a daughter on 8th October, and then 4 years later, had her second daughter, ALSO on the 8th October! argh! What a nightmare. And what are the chances?? One in 365 I guess. I also had a friend who had her child on Christmas day. Eek. What were they thinking 9 months previously back in March that year?? Maybe they weren't thinking, and that was the problem.

More insanity and madness, but this time it's late!

Well after 37 consecutive Friday posts, I officially missed one.

My excuse is that it is school holidays therefore I have no idea what day it is anyway.

And my second excuse is that this week we pulled all the gyprock (dry wall) off Lucy and Amelia's bedroom wall, insulated the wall with some really psychotic heavy duty insulation, and on Friday morning the gyprocker man, came and replaced the wall and plastered it. Then Marc and I proceeded to paint all the walls in the room (he rolled, I edged) with three coats of new paint - for some unknown reason, it needed the three coats. We got the girls to go to my parents in the afternoon and we began the task of painting and making over their room for them. After twice edging the whole darn thing I was asking who's idea this painting thing was anyway? Mine. Of course. So Saturday morning, Marc disassembled their bunk beds and new beds arrived. We built what seemed like loads of IKEA furniture (without any swearing, even!), I made up the new beds with new doona covers and then at 2:30pm they arrived home and screamed at their new room.

At which point I realised that Friday had indeed been and gone, and I had indeed totally forgotten about my blog. So there's the story. Photos of the new room makeover to come soon.

So I will continue my run of complete and utter madness and insanity and show you yet another 3 pages that use the same photos. Is this terribly terribly boring for you? I really don't do this all the time, you know, it just seems like it over recent months. Same pics, different layouts, one for each child album. At least they are in 3 different formats, one vertical, one horizontal and one 12 x 12. Please let me know if this is all too boring. I would truly and totally understand. And never put you through it again.

total simplicity

Here's another super super super simple layout that I put together a few weeks ago. It is about my daughter's first real best friend - one that she made for herself at preschool. The girls get on fabulously and ones first real friend from the outside world really should be scrapped, shouldn't it?

I asked Lucy what she liked about her friend and included her answer as part of my journaling.

Incidentally, this little girls mother, Vicki, found out from a mutual acquaintance that I am a scrapper and wanted to see what the heck that actually means. So after throwing an album in her direction for a few days, Vicki is now a full blown scrapbooker, and whats more, has even turned two of HER friends into scrapbookers. They all came to my place for a few beginners lessons and have fallen in love with this hobby. Really, who wouldn't?

We will convert the whole world, one scrapbooker, by one.

scrapping those events

Event scrapping really wears me out! I like it because the kids like to see their special events and memories captured, but it is really hard work, and the ONLY way I can do it is to do it immediately. There's no holding on to events photos for 10 months and trying to get inspired. So many photos and special little bits that need remembering!

For me, it's either in the moment, or never. If I get to it, 'in the moment', I can journal easily enough, and I'll journal about the little details, the funny moments and and pop in a reflection or two. If I was to wait the 10 months, my journaling would consist of "This was you at your 7th birthday. It was fun". Nice...NOT.

So I will share with you a few layouts that I did of Amelia's recent birthday, which was about 3 weeks ago. These pages were all scrapped about 2 weeks ago. Like I said, if I waited any longer, I just wouldn't have the strength! But it has to be done, cause it's important to Amelia. And once they were done, they were particularly satisfying, cause I didn't have to feel guilty for 10 months of procrastination.

I scrapped three layouts about Amelia's birthday, because her birthday was made up of three little parts, and there was no way I wanted to try to get it all on one layout. Each part was special in itself.

The first layout was about the morning of her birthday with just our little family. It was a 6:30am event (ugh) and the night before Marc and I had set up this little tent (her b'day present) in our living room which was quite a comedic event in itself. In the morning she arose to find a tent with little pile of presents inside it. Gotta scrap that. Bed-head, dressing gowns and all. The tent is now set up in her bedroom, and she can usually be found sitting in it playing all alone. You can double click on these layouts to increase the viewing size. Probably don't need to read this journaling , but if you do, don't notice the major typo, that has since been rectified! Thanks.

The second layout is kind of similar in design to the first layout - a good standard design when you have three or four busy photos. This one was about her little birthday afternoon tea with the immediate family, who all arrived at our house at 3:30pm that afternoon. It was a small, low key event, but because it involved family members, I decided it too, deserved to be scrapped. Orange PP by Chatterbox (love it).

The last layout was the main event as far as the birthday goes. I had lots of piccy's and lots of journaling, as event scrapping often does, so a double layout was called for. The colours in my photo of the layout are quite washed out, but it was nice and bright in real life. As you can tell by the main photo, no less than a million of Amelia's 7 yr old class mates descended on our pool for Amelia's first pool party.

Marc, God love him, set up the mini Olympics in the pool with games and obstical courses involving hoops, rope and balls, while I sat around and did not much at all. I did pop the sausage rolls in the oven at one point - that was about it! Kept this party super simple with just sausage rolls, ice blocks and a cupcake for everyone.

I've learned from a past painful memory from another party that when you put 2 weeks into preparing elaborate food items and perfect little details, no one remembers it. Except you. They all just remember the fun stuff 'that Dad does' at parties. Grr. So this year there was the absolute basics. It was the cheapest, easiest, most stress free event ever, and all the kids had just as good a time. They didn't care that I didn't make bunny rabbit faces with silver balls and almond slivers stuck into marshmallows and placed lovingly into skewers. They just wolfed down the sausage rolls and were on their way. A lesson well learned.

I've also done a couple of other layouts about the fact that Amelia is now seven, like what she's like right now (likes dislikes, personality etc). Will share soon.

Have fun, and for those in NSW, it's cold and windy, and the kids are home on school holidays. Try to get some scrapping in!!

rainy day with more butterflies

On a rainy and even chilly (what's up with that?) Sunday afternoon, this is whats been going on in our house.

My almost 10 year old is planning her upcoming birthday and decided to make invitations for her five friends. She typed up the information in a word doc, chose the font and type colour -a dark brown, then I helped her format it (ie make it pretty with line spacing , alignment etc).
Amaris then printed them out onto A4 white cardstock (yes I parted with my precious white bazzill) and she cut them up with the paper trimmer.

It's funny watching her do all this stuff - they take in so much by just hanging around you scrapbooking over the years. Amaris doesn't often actually get involved in scrapbooking (I think she is quite sick of it actually with the amount that I do), but they just take it all in subconciously and via osmosis, they just know how to print, trim, and make sure they are trimming evenly.

She decided to find the new butterfly punch that she saw arrive during the week, and set about going though my scraps and punching out little piles of colour coordinating butterflies. And this is what she came up with. She is super independent, and wants to do everything herself so I had to take a back seat while she set to work. She even asked for my corner rounder!

And how CUTE are the results. I love these little invites. So simple and so effective.

The best part is that I basically had nothing to do with this event, and birthday invitations can now be made by oneself while I have a coffee!! There is much hope for the future.

This butterfly punch has SO paid for itself already!

get out the old black pen

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Today's 'Friday scrapping' layout was brought to you by my black pen, who has, sadly, lay dormant in my toolbox for way too long. Sometimes I get really sick of the cardstock border, and this week I brought out the pen, and drew some borders on. It is quick and easy and givse a soft edge feel to an otherwise 'hard' blocky layout.

The trick to it is to be confident. You can't attempt this with a timid, slow, perfectionist attitude. You just got to confidently go for it. Not fast, just not too slow, or your line will look wobbly and shaky. I just cruise along with the pen, turning the page so that my hand is at a good angle where I'm comfortable, and I draw from corner to corner, in a single line (ie no stopping), and I watch the edge of the page, trying to keep my line approximately a consistent distance from that edge, all the way along. I usually aim for about 5mm from the edge, but whatever your preference is fine.

So this layout below is about Amelia starting some Martial arts lessons. You can see the name of it as my title, I don't know how to spell or pronouce it! I had to look it up on the net to get the spelling for the title. These photos were actually taken at 6pm when it was mostly dark outside, but I managed to turn them to mostly 'day time' shots by using the enhance and lightening tools. There is a lot of what's known as 'noise' on the pics, and the quality is by no means fab, but I'm okay with that. I guess. One day I'll take some better ones of her during the real daylight hours. Still totally stuck on white cardstock...*sigh* (note: the black is the background table, not cardstock - the layout stops with the white).

Amelia is off, as we speak to a birthday party, so I just whipped up this quick card using my new butterfly punch!

Even though I made a solemn vow all year to buy nothing of the scrap variety (other than cardstock) , I just had to make a teeny exception for this. It is very cute, and I know my kids will love to punch a million butterflies. Yeah, that's right, I bought it for the kids! (ahem). I had to ORDER it from my LSS as they didn't have one in stock. Avoiding all other things in the shop, I walked straight up to the counter from the front door and said "I need a small 1" wide butterfly punch by EK success - do you have one?". It was all very definite and the sales lady knew better than to try to sell me anything else. So she just took my order and said 'it'll be here Monday". Nice.

This card took all of 7 minutes, including me asking Amelia to look in my scraps and punch out 6 butterflies for me. I decided to add the hand drawn line around the edge, as I am in a hand drawn line type of mood. Easiest card EVER! If you payed more attention to the papers and the colour scheme, rather than ask your 7 year old to punch out whatever she wants, this card has the potential to look really quite spectacular.

In a simple kinda way.

Of course. :)