'the lane' layouts

Hey, I actually made it here on time this week. My life has picked up into full swing craziness, with the first of three major events starting tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I have to fly to Melbourne with eldest girl to take her to a weeks training session with the Australian Ballet School. She's excited at the idea of going on a plane and staying in a hotel. We'll see how she copes at doing ballet for 6 hours a day, every day. Eek. Oh well, I'll be hanging around having lots of coffee's cause I can't afford to take advantage of the great Melbourne shopping, thanks to the costs involved in getting her to and being part of the Australian Ballet school! It's just her and me, another ballet girl and her mother, so it'll be nice once we get there.

Here's my layout of the week to share with you.

I used a 6x8 enlargement of this photo that I love of all my kids and the cousins, riding various vehicles in the lane behind my parents house. As always, I did three pages for my three girls as they are all in the pic, and the variations are below.

Only the bottom of each layout varied, because I didn't have enough of the same letter stickers for three layouts. On one I just computer printed the heading, as I couldn't be bothered to search for more stickers. And on the last image, you see a teeny bit of glitter on that birdie! The lovely Alexandra sent me these cute little embellishments, and I am really liking this little bird and his glittery wing. That last layout also has a thin black border/frame around the edge of the page. I often have to succumb to the lure of the border, but I held strong on the other two.

The journaling is the same on all three. Letter stickers and big flowery pp is by American crafts, all bought here.

See you when I get back from Melbourne, in time for next Friday!

lifting oneself

You all know what I mean by that - I mean scrap lifting of course.

I did this quick layout above the other night of Amelia's last game of soccer for the season. I tell you, this size page (8.5 x 11) is SO easy. I just printed a narrow column of text somewhere over on the left side of the page, and then when it came out of the printer, I literally just shoved the 5 x 7 photo on wherever it fit, and filled the space beneath the photo with patterned paper, so as to bring the length down so it was in line with the bottom to the column of text. And that was about it. Talk about your 10 minute layout.

This layout below was the one that I lifted from. It is basically the same, but used two trimmed down 4 x 6 photos instead of one 5 x 7. I do like this second layout better.

I'm all about simplicity, swiftness of execution (arty for 'really really quick') and having the memory documented. It's all good.

I will be back THIS Friday for sure - sorry about last Friday - I ended up driving south to Narooma (4 hours away) with a friend Friday morning, and putting on a very quick, last minute mini exhibition of paintings. It was totally crazy and we drove back the next day. Heaps of fun, though, and sold some art, but totally forgot about Friday blogging!

One layout that I'll show you this Friday comes with a mild glitter warning. See you then.

another mid week post!

Wow, eh? Is that two midweek posts in 2 weeks?

Meet my husbands grandparents. They are 90, and are the cutest pair ever!! The live on the other side of the world, and my girls have never met them.

I share this layout below with you because the event was cool, not so much the layout. the layout's okay, I mean I'm happy enough with it, but it's nothing new or interesting, and it's a design I have repeated many times over. But that's okay. The story is down on paper.

Thanks to the wonderful world of technology, my girls were able to 'meet' the great grandparents for the first time in an almost live-ish type of way, and they were able to say 'Happy 90th Birthday' to their great grandfather who lives in Connecticut, USA. Thanks to skype, the great grandparents were able to see them in something other than a photo for the first time, and watch them as they spoke with weird Australian accents. It was a very cool event, especially for the oldies, as they don't own a computer, so this was all very exciting for them. One of their grandsons in USA, my husbands cousin set it up for them.

How cute are they wearing their pink outfits? Had to break out some pink patterned paper for that one.

And our big news of the week, is that yesterday we got a new niece and cousin!

Remember the big belly from two posts ago? Well this is this cuteness that was in that belly. Isn't that weird, and incredible, and miraculous, that something so perfect comes from inside a belly??

We got to meet the new family member, 'Olivia Jasmine' at 14 hours old. Girls were beside themselves as you can imagine.

and all were totally in heaven when they got to cuddle her.

See you soon. xx

....cake decorating and scrapbooking unite..maybe???

As we speak, I am trying to decorate a cake for middle girls birthday today using icing, wooden skewers, cardstock, thickers, circle punches, string, double sided tape and candles. I have officially now gone completely mad. I will be back this afternoon with the results, and maybe a layout?

Update: wa-la! Sorry for not mentioning it earlier, but this cake idea was totally inspired, possibly stolen, from this one at Sharons Blog who was inspired by this one! Sorry I don't know who to give credit to for the second one, but thanks Sharon and mystery internet person for the idea.

mid week layout

A mid week post, like I promised! :)

I did this layout last week and I thought I would share it with you, as it is an example of fitting four photos on one 8.5x11 layout, and it shows highlighting a word or two from your journaling to make a title. (And the photos are a bit funny).

The problem you would normally encounter when increasing the font size of a few words in a sentence as I did with the words 'a facial' is that the line spacing under just that line would then also increase. Which looks weird and is annoying. You can either manually adjust the line spacing on the tool bar so that it's all uniform, or write the title in a separate text box and drag it down into place (after 'tabbing' in your paragraph to allow enough blank space for the title to fit into). that may well not make sense, but I haven't had a coffee yet....

Back on Friday with more scrapping. :)

If there's any questions, shoot.

winners, a pregnant sister and some scrapping

....and the winners of last posts 'Scrapbooking Girls' ebook from Ella publishing are commenters Number 8 and number 10, which were Emma and Miriam! Congratulations girls!! Email me and I will send you the special code to download your free ebook. If you aren't Emma or Miriam, but would like like more info on the 'Scrapbooking Girls' ebook, you can check it out here. Thanks to all those who commented - even my own mother found this blog and gave a comment - wow!

This morning my 9 month pregnant sister (due on Sunday) came over with her 2 year old son, Hugo, and we had some fun with the camera and a white sheet....

I've started to take some photos of some local families so if you know you live nearby, shoot me an email.

This week I got a new printer!!! YAYAYYYY! After 5 weeks without one, I was starting to hyperventilate, and when the printer repair guy called and said it was going to cost $280 to FIX it, I said he could keep the printer. My gift to him. And I would just get a new one. So I did, and I've scrapped!!! Oh it was so good o finally be back into it. :)

I scrapped the book week/book character photos of two weeks ago. I scrapped three pages, one for each child, in 3 slightly differently designed layouts - different because each one used a different amount of photos. They were very busy, event type photos, so I kept things as simple as I could on the scrapping side.

That's all for today - will try for a mid-week post next week - promise!