Less layouts

I've been making a lot less layouts after I started PL. I kind of miss it, but it's a lot harder to make layouts than PL. But here's a layout I've made from the SC Blue Note kit. I only got the main sb kit in December and it's been quite enough to work with for me.

/Magdalena

PL December continues

I'm at page number six for my December PL. The Studio Calico "Blue Note" kit is almost gone, I only have 9 cards left. I won't share the 3rd and 4th page because they have lots of photos from the Saint Lucia event at my kid's pre-school and have lots of photos of their friends in them. But here are pages 5 and 6:

I'm still struggling to keep the pages light. December is so dark here in Sweden, especially right now when there is no snow. Making photo collages and turning fuzzy photos bland&white adds some white to the spread. 

For the first collage (with my husband and his friend) I used a free template from Paislee Press, that you can find here. The 4x4 template with the circle middle is made by Shanna Noel and can be found on her blog here. For the third collage with the arrow photos I just used PSE. I opened up an empty 4x6 file and used the ruler to line up the two photos. 

That gorgeous diamond paper on page number six is from Lifelovepaper. If you hury hurry hurry you can get yours too!

Merry Christmas friends! 
/Magdalena

PL December

It took me the longest time to be happy with this spread. I needed to add lots of white because the photos were so dark, like they are in December in Sweden. It took me three days od adding and subtracting to come up with this.

I used the SC Cuppa PL kit plus printables from SC and Paislee Press. The library card with my daughter's list for Santa is from Bananafish Studio.

/Magdalena

New insights

I'm really loving the Process class. Just as I thought I enjoyed week 3 about creating layouts the most. There were some really great ideas in there. I've made three more layouts using my new knowledge. This first one was about mixing patterns:

With this second layout I wanted to work with an irregular grid and experiment with balance:

This last one was also about balance, trying to add a large title. I added and removed all kinds of alphas and I just wasn't happy with the way it looked. Finally I just decided that it was good enough. I gave up on perfect! I cut off part of a J to make a comma, and the last E is made up of an F and a Z. 

/Magdalena

The Process class

I knew Catherine Davis' Process class would be awesome. I signed up right away. This first project is made with the SC Antiquary kit and one of Catherine's class templates.

I hardly ever make 12x12 layouts anymore, but this paper matched the photos so well. I only added a tag and a paper clip from my stash.

This seceond layout was made the featured layout at SC this week. Thank you so much! I used a pin from the class board as inspiration. 

I started by cutting out a larger triangle from the triangle paper and then placed it on top of my photos and handcut around it. The geometry isn't perfect, but perfection is not my thing anyway.I used three different photos. The tags are Bananafish Studio and was in the Salinger addon a while back. 

/Magdalena

Happy Halloween!

I love www.picmonkey.com! I usually edit my layouts there before posting. I brighten them up and sharpen them up just a bit. Last I add a drop shadoww. But they have awesome actions for editing facial pics, too. Here's a fun photo I edited for Halloween. I used a mix of the witch and demon themes.

My before pic:

My after pic:

Happy Halloween, people!

/Magdalena

October project life

I'm so glad I jumped on this project! I absolutely love this easy way of documenting our everyday life. I found my style quickliy, as opposed to my scrapbooking style. The SC PL kits make it so easy to stay up-to-date. Here are my first three pages for October:

Something I've learned is to use lots of filler cards. At first I thought they were a waste of space, but then I realized they make the pages much more airy and pleasing to the eye. My PL has been especially inspired by two people. One is Catherine Davies who makes very beautiful but simple PL spreads. They're never over-worked. The other person is Kelly Noel, who has taught me how to do my journaling. There just aren't enough of the journaling cards in the SC PL kit for me. Kelly has a very creative way of adding journaling to the filler cards also. Love that!

And you know I had a to document the fact that The Walking Dead is back on!

/Magdalena

World Card Making Day

WCMD has come and gone, but the challenges at Studio Calico are open until tomorrow. So keep creating! Here are a few of my challenge entries. I used Dana Fleckenstein's idea to print the Antiquary labels on kraft. I love it!

Materials: SC Antiquary card kit, kraft cardstock, Versafine Onyx black and Versamark stamp pads, gold glitter Zing, Hello Forever Antiquary printable labels, tiny attacher

/Magdalena

Sometimes I forget

Sometimes I forget to blog and to even read other peoples blogs. It's been three weeks since I posted anything, so here are two layouts I've made with Double Scoop! The first one has some hidden journaling underneath the photo:

And here is one I made for the BOYS challenges on the SC challenge board. The challenge was to lift one of the SC DT members. I lifted Jen J and made this:

Enjoy fall!

/Magdalena

Biking

My son recently learned to ride his bike. It has been a struggle for him so it was a really big achivement. Once he put his mind to it he learnt it in just a few days. It's so much fun to see him riding his bike to pre-school and out with his friends. He's so proud!

Materials: SC Marks & Coscrapbook and project life kits, Steinbeck and Salinger addons, Mister Huey's in Inky Black and StazOn ink

Also do NOT miss this amazing new class from Nina at Strömsvigt. You really want to see all the gorgeous watercolor projects. Lots of different techniques to try and a challenge to go with each. Shop the class at Etsy right now!

/Magdalena

2012 favorites

To read more about how I keep track of my older Studio Calico kit layouts, read my post below. Now it's time for my 2012 favorites! My favorite kit was Elmwood Park. And here are the 2012 layouts I like best:

To see the rest of the mini, go here!

 Stay tuned for my 2013 faves, and perhaps a give away.

/Magdalena

Back in 2011

When buying kits I like to be in controle of how many projects I get from each kit. I want to feel that I'm getting my money's worth! So I keep a file on my laptop that has three files inside that says 2011, 2012 and 2013. Within those files I have files with the names of all the Studio Calico kits for that year. And that's where I keep the photos of all the projects I've made using the kits. It's fun to go back and look at what I made then and how the kits have changed. And to see if I have changed! Going back and looking at some of the layouts I didn't like that much at the time, I now realize I don't care so much about that anymore. I read the journaling and remember the stories instead. 

But still, I decided to share my favorite projects from 2011. I started my sub with Paper Moon. My favorite kit from 2011 was Field Guide.

Picking these out made me realize I really should focus on the simple layouts, because those are the ones I like best. I will be sharing my 2012 favorites later in the week!

/Magdalena

Some Marks & Co

I have tons aof photos to scrap, but I've been working on PL so much I scrapbook much less these days. Here are two layouts I've made using the new SC kit Marks & Co.

Materials: Marks & Co scrapbook and PL kits, Steinbeck and Salinger addons, Marks & Co "Hello Forever" printables, Mister Huey's in Inky Black

I learned a trick from Tina Aszmus on how to make an easy collage using just your phone. I took a sequence of pics of my son goofing around, then I did a screen shot of my pictures folder. I then edited the screen shot in the Afterglow app. So easy!

/Magdalena

Using your bad conscience for a good deed

There was recently a thread in the Studio Calico forum on how many kits we had put away unfinished. I counted 13 out of 27. I'd like to have a better kill percentage for sure! A friend of mine had asked me to make 20 Christmas cards for her, so I though "PERFECT!". I'll bring out the 2012 December kit and make some cards. So here I was making Christmas cards in August. A lot less stressful than making them in December. Here are my two favorites:

/Magdalena

The Toolbox class

I have been asking for digi-class at Studio Calico for a long time. Finally it's here! It's not all digi but I'm really looking forwards to working with the class files. After watching the first video I jumped right in and made my first digi layout. This was fun!

/Magdalena

More PL

As I was doing my January PL page I was having a bit of a dejavu feeling. I finished the page, and continued on to February. As I was looking through my photos deciding what to print, the dejavu got stronger. And I thought "No, it's not dejavu. I HAVE printed these pictures before." So I go back and take my album out and yes. I had already done January and February. 

I like the new January page much better so I tried to rescue a few PL cards from the old page, but it didn't really go well. Now I feel so wasteful! Argh! Mad at myself for being senile.

So here they are. The re-made pages...

Materials: SC PL kits "Roundabout" and "Valley High", tags from Bananafish Studio, printables and digi stamps from Studio Calico, additional stamps from Ali Edwards Tecnique Tuesday and the SC "Inked" class

I wanted to the photo from my son's birthday party but it was so busy, it didn't fit in. So I uploaded it to Picmonkey and edited it to B&W except for the balloons. I love the effect!

/Magdalena

July PL

This month I filled two page protectors. I had much more photos than usual and was anxious that I'd run out of PL cards. Instead I hardly used any at all because I had so many photos. I stole ideas from Kelly Noel and Catherine Davis - thanks for the inspo ladies!

Materials: SC PL kit, Winona addon and the Moments cards

I loved the printables this month, so I used a lot of those. Those wonky mini alphas are my favorite ever. I want 10 packs of them! The triangle template from Catherine Davis was perfect for adding more photos to a smaller space. Here is a forum post where she shares how to merge the shapes. Overall I used more digital elements and also printed my journaling. I like how it turned out!

/Magdalena