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Shimelle Laine’s mysterious accomplice, Glitter Girl, posted another great video this week, this time about scrapping larger photos, which was pretty perfect considering I have some larger prints I’ve been dying to use. My friend Sara got married ten, correction, TWELVE years ago and I was the bridesmaid. It was such an honour to be asked, and I have so many great memories from that day! Like hoe we met early to do the hair and make-up, and the photo shoot before the wedding, and how I found myself crying so much during the ceremony so much that I think my sniffles was echoing in the church, and how all the guests held a joint speech for the couple during dinner, and dancing so much I had to take off my shoes.
We were so young then, and now suddenly it’s been ten years and Sara and her husband Tor (Thor! How cool a name is that?) have two beautiful children and a house that was once small but keeps getting bigger every now and then (they are a super handy family!). They are a happy bunch and that makes me happy.
The photographer they hired for the wedding had also taken a lot of photos for our theatre group. There are so many great shots from the photo shoot before the wedding, and not only of the gorgeous couple on their special day, but luck had it that we had a few minutes extra for a few photos of Sara and I. Among them this one is my favourite, because I know that the happy smiles are completely spontaneous.
So this is how the layout turned out:
Thank you for stopping by! Stay safe!
I had a sort of mishap I wanted to use, and that was this sprayed background on white Bazzil. I’d mixed some Color Wash and Perfect Pearl Mist, and the result was awesome and happy and bold, but didn’t match the project I was working on at the moment. However, I thought it fitted this photo perfectly. I am also considerably pleased with the fact that I’ve used both a patterned paper and some alphas that has been sitting in my stash for at least 5 years! They’re some classic Basic Grey from that time, and I loved them, and I bought them, and still love them, but I loved them so much I never used them. So, wohoo for using things from your stash!I’ve mixed it up with some Washi tape and some teen alphas from Glitz. It’s nice when you can mix old and new, I think!
The photo is of course one of Sixxten the Cat, who is a very playful cat who often brings toys around for you to play with. He’s very vocal; he has certain sounds for food or cuddles, or for when the bathroom door is accidentally shut, or for when someone has the nerve to go IN the bathroom and shut the door voluntarily, and for when he wants attention and wants to play. If you happen to ignore him, even though he’s brought toys and laid the by your feet, and even though he’s been making his intentions very clear, he will in the end poke you. Or, sort of slap you. Play, darn you! Play!
Quick Sunday night post! Dreadfully busy week, but at least I managed to finish this last layout as planned for Shimelle’s weekend crop.
This is a layout for Challenge number 7: Put it in a pocket. The idea is to create a scrapbook layout and incorporate a pocket. So I decided to add a memorabilia pocket with one of the seashells I found on the Big Strand Beach on Islay, Scotland. Me and Jed had had the most amazing day and ended it by making our way down to this perfect, 7-mile long sandy beach, and we were the only two people there. It was sort of marvellous, really. Being just the two of you, smooching on the couch at home, that’s really great; but being just the two of you, smooching on a beach, that’s even better ;). That one sunset is gonna stay with me for as long as I remember. I hope I get to go back there sometime. A perfect place!
It ended up a double layout:
This is how they look side by side:
Hopa you all had a great, great weekend. New fresh week tomorrow! Stay safe!
This was the last challenge I had time to finish during the weekend, and this was for Shimelle’s Weekend Crop Challenge No 4: Colour Adventure – Scrap with grey, yellow and one other colour of your choice.
Which turned out to be a complete nightmare! Except some yellow card stock I couldn’t hardly find ANYTHING YELLOW IN MY STASH. I just don’t do yellow, it’s a childhood trauma thing, so of course I don’t shop for many scrapbook related things that are yellow either. I’m sure if I could find a photo of myself as a kid in a yellow turtle neck, I could scrapbook it and write up a heck of a story for the journaling, but there wouldn’t be much else yellow on that page.
So, I opted out for the yellow card stock, it was just way to intimidating, but in the end I found these old Basic Grey alphabet chipboard stickers, and, bless’em, some Sassafras Lass stickers that worked. It’s not very visible on the photo below, but the third colour of choice got to be blue. Here’s my page:
These are photos from Port Ellen, Islay, from the morning when we are leaving. We were waiting for the ferry, and I took one last stroll and took some photos. Spending time on Islay is one of the best times I’ve ever had on any vacation. It’s hard to explain, but that place just made me so relaxed and content. These are sort of my goodbye photos from there.
Yes, I did it, I went rogue and jumped to the next challenge that caught my eye! This layout I made for Shimelle’s Weekend Crop challenge no 5: Inspiration Points – Take your inspiration from this scrapbook page.The page to take inspiration from is a really fantastic page by Wilna Furstenburg, who is a really wonderful designer (make sure to check out more about her work here).
These are my inspiration points from her layout:
- Placement – Space above and below main focus
- The shape of the panoramic photo
- The little cut-out word in the title
- The transparency
- The little camera
So, I got to work. I didn’t have a panoramic photo, but I had these two black- and white photos of me and Jed from a certain occasion that I thought went well together in that long shape. I don’t have a stamp with a camera on (yet. I am not kidding you, I need one!) but had a small embellishment I used instead. And i got to use my absolute favourite sticker from the October Afternoon Boarding Pass collection, and that was a big bonus! I love it so much I was afraid I would never dare to use it.
This is how it turned out!
The next challenge from Shimelle I tackled last weekend was Challenge No 2: Mixing Papers: Create a page using three or more paper collections. “No worries there!” I thought to myself, since I usually mix and match without giving it much thought if I’m mixing different brands or not. But, of corse, when you suddenly have to think about it and do it by choice, it gets a bit harder.
On this layout I used papers from:
Other thingies:
So what’s this layout about? These photos are from when me and Jed first set out on our road trip in Scotland. We’d just gotten the rental car and I was freaking out a bit because there was some big roundabouts and we were driving on the wrong side of the road! (For me. For Jed, of course, this was normal, since he grew up in the UK). We drove from Edinburgh and crossed the Forth Bridge, which is massive, and beautiful. I sort of forgot to be nervous about the driving at that point.
This weekend Shimelle hosts a glittertastic, fabuamazing virtual crop, so go check it out right now! I will seize this as an opportunity to get started on Jed and I’s travel album, something I have wanted to do for a long time. And since our next vacation is in just a couple of months, it would be nice to at least have gotten started before then. My goal is to produce at least 5 layouts, and I hope I can make that goal. So, with a clear schedule for the weekend, Jed chasing other achievements on the Xbox, the cat soundly asleep on the couch and plenty of cups of tea, here’s my first post for this crop.
Challenge no 1 – Scraplifting a page by Jaime Warren
The first challenge was to take inspiration from a very pretty page made by Jaime Warren, called Beautiful Jill (you can find Jamie’s blog over here). I will try to list my inspiration points:
- Dimension – I Love the effect from the pop dots and layers
- Shapes – The clouds are a perfect theme. I have a lot of cloudy photos from our trip to Scotland ;) Also, the scattering of round embellishments could be used to give a feeling of raindrops.
- Placement – I like the shape that comes from the placement of photos in the middle and then the other bigger elements on the edges
- Washi tape – Need I say more?
The white card stock clouds are stamped with a grid stamp, and the patterned papers are from two different 6×6 paper packs from MME’s Dilly Dally, the Miss Caroline collection and from Glitz Design’s Happy Travels. I used some acrylic transparent stickers to make some round embellishments from left over scraps, and also found some items from a printed folder from the distillery to use on my layout. This is how my page turned out:
The photos are from when we went to Islay, and specifically from an occasion when we went on a tour and a whiskey tasting at the Ardbeg distillery. After the tour we strolled down to the sea to take some photos, and got to see that classic view with those big black letters painted on the white building by the seaside. Jed took an amazing HDR photo of that view (go look at it here!), and when we came home he had it framed and gave it to me as a surprise. I hung it over my kitchen table and everytime I sat at that table I always starred at that photo. We live together now, and the photo now has a place on the wall in our new kitchen. And I think it will probably hang there forever!
I think I’m getting addicted to Shimelle Laine’s Starting Points! See, I have this stack of printed photos that I just adore, and I have had a hard time getting started on them. Shimelle’s Starting Points seems to be exactly what the doctor ordered. I can look at her Starting Point, have a photo in mind but quickly make a base for a layout and then tweak it. Suddenly I see some favourite moments down on a page, and that makes me very happy. So, off I went to take a stab at this weeks layout.
Although spring is here, and I am looking forward to some happy sunshiny days like crazy, the photo that really got me singing this week was one from mine and Jed’s first Christmas, a photo of my adorable in-laws from when they came to visit. Me and jed live in Sweden, but his family is form the UK, so sadly we don’t get to see them very often. We try to go over there twice a year, but that first Christmas his parents came to see us! After some debate we decided to cook them an English Christmas dinner, rather than a Swedish (i.e. more roast than pickled herring).
Cooking the dinner actually went allright! And it was a lot of fun. Certainly my first time cooking an English Christmas dinner, but hopefullly not the last. But what I remember the most from that evening was that we all seemed to be in a really silly, happy mood, toasting and laughing. Scottish poetry was recited and there was even some dancing going on in my living room! Completely priceless, if you ask me.
So even if it might seem a bit oddball to do a Christmas layout in the beginning of April, I for one am very happy I got this photo into my album. And I’ve hardly ever used my Christmas themed papers for anything else than cards before, so at least I made a small dent in my stash. Yay!
I have had this starting point from Shimelle last week rolling around in my head. Overall her sketches have really given my creativity a kick in the butt lately, but I haven’t tried out a starting point yet, so I thought it was about time. I am very dedicated to using small scraps from my box of left overs right now (I certainly have some favourites in there I would like to get on a layout instead of just having them waste away), and last weeks starting point is just perfect for that. So, better late than never! Here goes:
Me and my parents went on this amazing trip in 2010. We went on a road trip in Tuscany. It was one of those completely incredible lets-get-lost-and-see-what-happens trips, with lot’s of fantastic little Tuscan towns and good food and wine and great coffee and sunshine. So many impressions! Both my dad and I had just gotten back into photography and I think I took almost 1500 photos that week. I have weeded a lot of them out, of course, but among the hefty numbers of photos I’ve kept there are some clear favourites, and this is one of them.
Again, I’m very sorry for the crappy photo. I seem to only have time to photograph my layouts late at night. Far from ideal! Anyway:
I’ll try and translate the journaling:
At the end of the week it was time to leave Volterra and head back to Viterbo and, in the end, Rome. Spring rain! Suddenly all the green completely changes tones. Heavy clouds rested on the mountain and of the roof tops and old walls of Volterra. The cypresses are no longer standing tall and proud, but are tousled by the wind. How could anyone describe the scent of the fresh air? Go to Italy in late spring!
We took a detour over the woodland hills of Colline Metallifere, on this damp day a veritable jungle of chlorophyll. Tangled roads leading up into the mist. Incredibly beautiful ans such a contrast to the cultivated hills of Tuscany.
After several hours in the car our need for coffee was dire. We found a small café in the town of Massa Marittima, but the town seemed completely deserted. It turned out that everyone was attending the Sunday mass, and the café we were in was the place to gather in afterwards to have a cheeky glass of Campari. Enter stage right, a group of people in their most fashionable Sunday best, lead by a very sharp lady in high heals. We, the wrinkly, dusty tourists, were given a long stare, and then it was very clear that we were NOT invited to share the free nuts that were placed by the bar. But we enjoyed our perfectly balanced 1-euro cappuccinos and ordered ourselves another one.
I love the photo in this layout; I think it’s the dearest one I have from that trip. It’s my dad, me and my mum (a rare combination in one and the same photograph), sitting on our bar stools in that little café, in front of a huge mirror. So I snapped a shot of all three of us through that mirror. When I see this photo I can really think back and remember how happy I felt in that moment. Because I felt that we were all happy and in a really good mood, after having spent an amazing week together driving around in Tuscany and finding new amazing things every day. And finally finding a cup of coffee that day.
The lovely Shimelle posted a new Sketch to Scrapbook Page the other day, and I found the sketch to be very alluring; there was way more stuff in that sketch than I would usually dare to put on a layout. Maybe I’m coming out of my shell, hehe. As I flipped through my Box of Forgotten Prints I Really Love (BoFPIRL, in short… ehm) there they were, the perfect 4×6 photos just waiting to be scrapbooked.
Following the sketch, this layout took me roughly an hour. AN HOUR, people! I usually spend way more time than that on a design, biting my nails, moving pretty paper around, getting ink on my fingers and glue in my hair, not being able to make up my mind. So, this sketch was a total kick starter for me. Thanks, Shimelle!
This is the finished layout, I apologize for the really badly lit picture!
In the photos you see our old family dog, who sadly passed away a few years ago. He was a happy little dog with loads of funny mannerisms and quirky personality streaks (something that seems to happen with all the pets in our family). Just as the rest of us, he was always happiest when we were out by our summer cabin. He was a free pooch there, hanging around the family but sort of deciding his daily curriculum as he pleased. He had a habit to take himself for a walk every day, checking the perimeter of the house and our orchard, and then strutting down to the waterfront to dip his paws. After he’d shaken the water off, he’d stand in the sunshine with his nose pointed at the horizon, and sniff the sea. Just enjoying himself. Then he’d mosy up to the cabin again, hoping for a treat.
He was a very special dog, we talk about his funny little ways quite often. He was with us on so many special occasions… It’s funny how, thinking about one specific memory, opens up a whole bunch more. There’ll prolly be more doggy layouts sometime in the future.
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