December Daily

I love that I am organized this year for my December Daily. Last year I had hardly any Christmas supplies and therefore ordered Ali's Kit from Cocoa Daisy and had to wait well into December for it. This year the aim of my album was to keep it simple. I will be away from my scrapping supplies for the entire month of December so I do not have a lot of chances to add to it. I also used a lot of page protectors this year for the same reason - i want it to be protected.

So here it is:

I used mostly Pink Paislee Pattern Paper and American Crafts Cardstock

Travel Album - Part 1

Somehow the days have gotten away from me. Sorry for not posting in awhile. Thought I would share my travel album that i have created for our trip to Australia. Today I will show the first part, making of the first pages and the front cover. Hopefully during the rest of the week i will be able to share the finished product, my finished December Daily album and some birthday photos - my little boy turned 2 last week.

Here is the outside of my travel album.

The inspiration from this Album came from Shimelle Laine's Tuesday Tutorial over at Ali Edwards' Blog I used a Making Memories Great Escape 8x8 album At this stage I am probably going to have to switch out the binding rings that came with it to larger ones as I have jammed it full of pages.

The Title Page

using Making Memories and Scenic Route papers with American Crafts rubon and used my Slice for the letters.

The Album came with 4 divider pages with tabs and we have 5 locations where will travel to - so had to rethink how I was going to use them. I ended up deciding to use them to document the actual road travel between each stop.

I printed out the actual Google Map for each of our drives onto Bazill Cardstock.

I watered down white paint and painted it over the maps, which were mounted on brown cardstock

I used distress ink and a square piece of cardboard to mask a shape onto the divided tab page and it gives a nice boarder around the map

I then layered some products onto the map to give it more interest.

I will then document our journey of the page - any funny photos, stories of getting lost (of course there are going to be some of those) etc.

I also made 2 title pages using some KI Memories Lace paper and some modge podge.

I stuck the lace on with the modge podge and then put more modge podge over the top to protect it more. I love the sheen it gives.

I will try and take some photos of the finished product to share tomorrow

I have been scrapbooking!!!!

I finally was about to scrapbook this week. I feels like ages since i got out my paper and adhesive and just got creative.

Firstly at Phyllis' on Thursday where i could scrap from 9am-2.30pm without any kids I got three layouts done

This morning I woke up and thought i really need to scrap so did this layout in between breakfast, watching the kids and getting ready for the day.

Have you met Ella?

That seems to be the words on everyones lips, well their blogs and tweets anyway.

Ella Publishing

A creation by Lain Ehmann and Angie Lucas - formally of Simple Scrapbooks have some up with a new Publishing company that will focus of e-books! From what I have read, they will be reasonably priced too. Cathy Zielske is designing them all. And scrapbookers such as Stacy Julian, Rebecca Cooper and Wendy Smedley have been mentioned as future authors!

So what do you think about it all?

I think it is a fantastic idea. Something that I will for sure buy. Living in Switzerland, however beautiful, clean and safe it is, does have it down sides. It is expensive to buy scrapbooking magazines and books. So if I can buy things over the internet and print out if i need to here at home - PERFECT!!! It will save me money, time waiting for things from the States to be delivered and well that just makes me happy! Plus there will be a free eZine released every month!

So what are you waiting for, go over and sign up to their mailing list

And if you want to hear more go check out Paperclipping

Those monthly kits ...

I get 2 monthly kits at the moment. One is a mid monthly one from Scrapmuse and the other is from a Germany company called Dani Peuss. I love getting kits! and I am seriously thinking about adding to them and getting Studio Calico too (although my husband will probably have something to say about that too). But before i even go ahead and try and make that decision I have to deal with the kits that are taking over my scrap space. 

Currently when a kit arrives in the mail, I divide it out straight away. So the embellishments go into a zip lock bag and marked with kit club and month and year and the papers stay in the bag they came in and are marked then put into my cropper hoppers. But two cropper hoppers and two "self made" cardboard holders later, I have run out of room for my kits. Also, I tend to forget that I have these older kits and work only with the newest. 

So I have a lot of supplies that i don't use cause they are not in my system - and therefore dont us them.

I currently organize in a couple of ways. Cardstock is by color. Pattern paper is firstly by brand (American crafts, cosmos cricket, pink paislee, making memories, basic grey, scenic route, sei, jillibean soup and sassafras las) and if they dont fit into my fav brands then they get put into another cropper hopper divided by color. Also i have a small amount of paper divided by "theme" (birthday, christmas, wedding etc.) 

So i am seriously thinking about either dividing kits that are older than a year into my system. But the problem here is, if i regret it I cannot go back - that would be impossible. I am then thinking that i will divide the current cropper hopper into 12, one for each month, and then as a new kit comes in i take out the old kit and either use it, divide it out or put it in my give away box for my friends who are just starting out to scrapbook. 

So what do you think? do you get a monthly kit? how do you deal with them? Would love to hear from you!

Amazon box has arrived!

These are the two books that arrived today. 

I am really excited to get into the photography book. My class is still a month away so want to try and get to know my camera a bit more before than. Perfect holiday reading material. 

Looking forward to looking through the type book. I had never really wanted to get it but saw it on amazon and thought hey, havent bought a scrapbooking book in awhile. And also the pink cover is a little cute. 

Have you bought any books lately? 

Spring Cleaning and Eye for Design

So today hasn't worked out how i wanted it to :(. My 18 month old has decided to cry - allllll day long and now has left me feeling drained and tired - so today will be an official break day for my spring cleaning. I have done all the work on the living area so i think i deserve it! Tomorrow starts the kitchen (my worst nightmare - and even thinking of changing out the days of the bathroom and kitchen) 

Anyway, yesterday I did this layout for my Eye for Desing (Color creative) class at Got crafts? with Chritsy Thomlinson. 

The sketch I used was from the Scrap Review (i think). I drew inspiration for my color combination from this ad from Home Depot in an old Real Simple. I used more muted tones. This ad really grabbed me when I was flipping through the magazine and it has been sitting on my bedside ready for me to be inspired to use it. So glad I am taking this class!

Just not really sure about this one.

The Feb kit from Scrapmuse arrived today and I was so excited about receiving it I got straight into making a layout. I used the sketch from the newsletter and off i went. I was thinking if i work from a sketch how long can this take, max an hour right. How wrong was I. I worked on this layout nearly all day, in between seeing to the kids. Kept going away and thinking about it and coming back and trying new things. Just couldnt get it to work for me. This is what i ended up with in the end. There are a lot of things I love about it, but some things I am really not sure about. But hey thats life right!

I do though, LOVE the journalling. It came to me as I was writing the first sentence and I think it is perfect for the photo. That doesn't happen often. 

Oh and wanted to say a big Hi to Karen - good to see you back! Love your recent photos. I for some reason can't post on your blog but I just wanted to say that your comments here are loved! Thanks!!!

The next thing that is playing on my mind is our trip to Australia. It is only around the corner, only 11 days till we fly out. I was thinking as i started to pack today (dont want any last minute packing here!) that might take something to do on the plane. Do you think I am crazy? Maybe make some cards from scraps? I wont have a trimmer or scissors so would have to be a bit organized but was thinking of putting 20+ hours on a plane to good use. Think will take a sketch book for sure. What do you think am I crazy even thinking about doing this??