My 5 favorite blog posts of 2014

Kellie Winnell is one of my favorite bloggers. She is so incredibly creative and has an amazing style. She came up with this great idea for blogging the end of the year - 15 Before 2015.

The first blog post should contain your favorite 5 blog posts of the year. So here they are, in particular order:

1. http://rockermorsan.blogspot.se/2014/01/a-creative-nudge.html
2. http://rockermorsan.blogspot.se/2014/04/12-in-14-april.html
3. http://www.studiocalico.com/blog/2014/7/14/member-spotlight-magdalena
4. http://rockermorsan.blogspot.se/2014/08/a-fresh-scrap-space.html
5. http://rockermorsan.blogspot.se/2014/12/my-winter-wardrobe.html

A CREATIVE NUDGE - about being inspired by Pinterest. I loooove Pinterest!

12 IN 14 APRIL - on how I go about putting together a photo grid.

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT - I guess this is cheating a bit because it's not on my blog, but it's about me.

A FRESH SCRAP SPACE - on reorganizing my scrap space.

MY WINTER WARDROBE - on my new obsession, the capsule wardrobe.

To see the more blog posts by others or link up your own, go here.

/Magdalena

My winter wardrobe

Remember my capsule wardrobe post a while back? If not you can read it here! It seriously is the best thing ever. I just finished putting together my winter capsule. I know I don't have to add accessories, but I had the space, so I did. 

I like getting a bit of help combining things in new ways.What I do is search Pinterest for the items I already have, like "plaid shirt", then I pin all the outfits I like with that item. My fall and winter capsule is almost the same, so that was an easy transition. I strongly dislike spring clothes and colors, so I already know that is going to be difficult. As a help I've already started pinning things for spring. Follow me on Pinterest if you want to see a few of the ideas I've found. See the red button to the right of this text!

/Magdalena

November PL

November is awful for taking pictures here in Sweden. It's so dark, and this year it's been even worse than usual. Stockholm had 2 hs of sun in the entire month! This means I didn't take many photos this month, so one spread is all I have for my November PL.

Materials: SC Walden PL kit

/Magdalena

My first Park Ave. layouts

I only got the scrapbook and PL main kits this month. Limiting the number of products I have to work with really helps my creativity. I've actually cancelled my scrapbooking subscription at Studio Calico. December was my last month. In the future I'm only getting the PL kit monthly, and then buying scrapbook products when I need them or really like them. It will take some pressure off that I have been feeling when not being able to use up a kit. I don't want to spend money on items that will sit in a crop bag. Well, here are my first two Park Ave. layouts:

I couldn't believe my luck when I found two whole sheets of POW paper in my stash! One silver, one gold. I really miss those papers and I would lovefor SC to start carrying them again. On this layout I used my craft knift to cut out some of the diamonds on the patterned paper. I then backed it with the silver POW, and added some silver sequins. That's a lesson I learned from Lisa Truesdell. Always add some thing circular when you have many straight lines and sharp angles on your project.It really softens things up.I love how wintery the layout feels, as if it's covered on ice crystals. For the words on the photo I used these templates by One Little Bird. 

Our daughter takes dancing lessons "in the city" as she calls it. So this adorable cityscapepaper was a perfect embellishment. The journaling is about her stagefright, and about her being sad that she was too shy to perform at their dance recital. That's what the tile is for - move forward, don't dwell on this one. Better luck next time sweet girl!

/Magdalena

Hello Christmas

I've started in on my December PL pages. Since the only holiday themed PL cards I have are from the SC mini addon kit, I also went through my stash and added any and all cards I could find with a Christmassy feel to them. The photos I had were from several occasions so I scattered lots of circles over the pages to make the spread feel cohesive.

I spend the entire yesr waiting for my favorite tea shop to start carrying their Christmas flavoured teas again. To document what flavours I bought this year I cut and punched pieces from the golden paper bag the one of the teas came in, and wrote down the flavours. Saffron & chili, mulled wine and orange & cloves.

My favorite card turned out to be the top left one on the second page. It's a photograph of my son's class singing for us at their annual Advent morning celebration. Someone from the audience had their big head right smack in the middle of the picture, so I punched out a circle and stuck it on top. It turned out really nice!

/Magdalena

Halloween PL

I loved the Halloween PL card addon that came with the Studio calico October kit, so I wanted to use as many of those cards as possible. I put together a full page for Halloween. The kids and me also had some fun with our photos at www.picmonkey.com.

The Halloween embellishments are from the Witch Hazel line from October Afternoon. I think it came out two years ago, but I still have some leftover product.I'm very fond of everything Halloween so I tend to hord it. ;)

/Magdalena

GRIDS GRIDS GRIDS

Is what I do when I don't know what else to do design wise. Because a grid aaaaalways works.

Two-square grid:

For me a page without a living thing is too boring. So for this autumn quote page I added this photo I took of a Mourning Cloak butterfly I found inside a hollow branch. Isn't it beautiful? I used gold ink on the veneer heart and then I wanted to sew the twine into golden rays coming out of the heart. I later noticed it looks more like a spider. But hey, it goes with the bug theme, right?

Four-square grid:

This layout is about a trip to the city to visit grandma. The pumpkin photo is just for added interest. And I love that happy little fox! It goes well with the smiling cloud and the picture of our daughter. I did some off-stamping because I didn't want the title to take center stage. The veneer leaves are cut from a wreath that came in one of the SC Walden addons. The strip on the bottom is navy, and matches Nea's sweater. And yes, that mango cheese cake was delish!

Six-square grid:

These photos are from the same occasion as the top layout. We had a picnic in the meadow next to our house. It's used for grazing sheep in the summer, and full of large rocks and fallen trees, and so much fun for the kids play with. Initially I wanted to do a digi stamp title and had a nice one that said "wonder" - I think it was from a class taught by Shanna Noel. The stamp never made it onto the layout but the title was already in my head by then. I also took a tip from Nicole Samuels and traded one of the letters for an image. 

All materials are from the Walden kit and addons.

/Magdalena

AMAZING FALL COLOURS

I love the colors of the Studio Calico PL kit for October. They went so well with my photos for the month.

I have two more pages for October to do, before I start in on November. It's such a hard month for photographing. It's SO dark here in Sweden nothing really turns out good. Last year I only managed two pages for the entire month. Looking forwards to some snow falling to lighten things up!

/Magdalena

CAPSULE WARDROBE

Putting together a capsule wardrobe is the best thing I've done clothing wise in my whole life. It's amazing! The idea is to have a closet filled with just clothes you need and like for the current season. To open the door and be able to pick anything in there - wow! It takes so much stress out of getting dressed. Everything fits, everything goes together, everything is right for the weather and temperature.

So how do you do this? You start by sorting your clothes in piles. One for worn out or damaged items. Throw them away! One pile to donate and/or sell. Be honest with yourself! Does it fit? WILL it ever fit? Do you actually wear this? The next step is to put away the clothes that doesn't match the season. Pack them in a box and put into storage.

You are supposed to end up with about 37 pieces. This does not include pajamas,workout clothes, underwear or accessories. I decided not to include things I need to wear because of rain or extreme cold and such either. I don't wear those things to look good. (And I don't, believe me!)

Now some of you will have too many items by now, and some of us (me!) will end up with not enough. If you have too many, pair down again. If you don't have enough, look at what you have and write a shopping list. What is missing? 

The reason I ended up with not enough clothing (especially pants) was because I decided to get rid of my "when I become skinny again I will wear this" clothes. I was sad to see some of it go, but I feel so much better now when I don't have to look at those tiny little pants and think about what I need to do to fit into them. Let it go!

To learn more about this I recommend the Unfancy blog. That is where I found the capsule wardrobe planner, which is very helpful. I printed it out on sturdy paper and cut the pages down to 5x7,75". I didn't use all the pages but picked out the ones I felt were useful to me. I stapled them together and glued the last page to a piece of packing for rubons by Crate Paper. It has a punched hole at the top which means I can hang it on a nail in my closet. Perfect!

I used the Stylebook app to keep track of my capsule wardrobe clothes, and I love it. You photograph your clothes and it easily removes the background from your photos. I then used PSE to put together a collage that I taped to the page. So much easier than writing everything down! 

I'm all about comfort and have a tiny budget so it's not a fancy wardobe at all. Just clothes I love and feel comfy in. I'm no fashion blogger so I won't share my wardobe here unless anyone is interested. If you are, put a comment below!

If you put a wardrobe together I would love to hear about it!

/Magdalena

12 IN 14 NOVEMBER

The challenge for November is "Black and White". There were a lot of black and white PL cards in the October PL kit from Studio Calico so I decided to do a PL spread for this challenge. 

Stromsvigt Design is now Paper Nerd Design, and have a lovely new set of PL cards out called the Day Dream Pocket Journaling set. The bottom right card is from that line. I will be using more cards from that set in future spreads for sure! You can find it here.

To take part in the challenge (and win something) visit Nina Christensen on her blog.

/Magdalena

SOMETIMES I MAKE CARDS

Because I like to fill my stash of grab and go birthday cards and such. Whenever I sit down I make lots of them at once, because it's not my favorite scrappy thing to do. I got the Poet Society card kit so that is what I used this time, plus whatever other leftovers was on my desk from other kits. I made a batch of cards, but I'm only sharing my favorite four.

/Magdalena

ONE BUSY FALL

The start of the new semester at school has been crazy busy. I've been coming home exhausted with no energy left for blogging, which is why there haven't been many posts lately. From this week on things will be relaxing a bit, so hopefully I will have more time for crafting.

Today I'm sharing my PL September spreads. I've already recieved October kit from Studio calico, so I want to hurry up and get September finished.

/Magdalena

LOTW

This Saturday I have the honor of being selected Layout of the Week at the Studio Calico blog. It's my Stars layout from my last blog post that is being featured. Happy news!

I'm also sharing one more layout from the crop last weekend. This one went through quite a makeover after I got home.

The reason was the artificial lights at the crop which was held in a basement. What looked like photos, papers and embellishments in the same shade of green turned out to be four different shades when I got home. It didn't look good.

I had to use a much bigger photo than I originally did to cover up the rips in the paper after removing everything, but I ended up liking this layout SO much more. It was totally worth the extra work.

/Magdalena

MY FIRST CROP

So this Saturday I was at my first crop ever. I was with three friends of mine, and we were very productive and had a good time. I made 5 layouts in the 9 hours we were there. A few of them still needs a little tweaking before they're completely finished, but I'm really happy with that result. 

The hardest part for me was not having a printer for my journaling. I tried both a roller stamp,journaling by hand and not doing any journaling at all. 

When me and my neighbour arrived we immediately noticed we had brought very little stuff. I had a small bag of tools plus my IKEA desk organizer with the Studio Calico "Poet Society" kit. The majority of the people there had actually brought more stuff to the crop than I even own. Hilarious!

The Poet Society kit was very easy to work with and was more than enough for me to have products to pick from all day. Here are two of the layouts I made:

I had cheated a tiny bit by printing the grid ahead of time. The bottom layout is for a Pen and Paper class challenge.

Tomorrow it's time for my contribution to the Pen and Paper class to be posted at Studio Calico. You can still enroll for the class. I highly recommend it. Laura Kurz is an amazing teacher. Here's a sneak from the project I made:

/Magdalena

12 IN 14 SEPTEMBER

It's the first Monday of the month and it's time for another 12 in 14 challenge by the Stromsvigt DT. This month's prompt is "minimalistic". Something that should suit me, right?

Here's what I made:

I had a hard time finding that last piece that made it feels finished, but when my husband suggested I'd add something yellow it all came together. Unfortunately there was a misfortunate stapler malfunctioning, but that's the only yellow star I had left so it is what it is. I had my son sign his name to the tag since he's the photographer. That's me reading the morning paper, while little sister watches the kiddie shows.

This is also my layout for the second assignment in Laura Kurz' "Pen and Paper" class. If you haven't joined this class already, go do it right now! (Yes, you still can.)Laura had me sobbing with just the introductory video. Yes, she is really that good!

Since the class is about writing I wanted to add a translation of my journaling for those of you that does not speak Swedish:

"Lately Dante has been borrowing my phone to take photographs. His pictures aren't always pretty and sometimes they are out of focus, but he photographs our everyday life. Mommy, daddy, sister, messy rooms and bath towels hung up to dry on a door. He's also taken a whole lot of crazy photos the entire family have laughed at really hard. So thank you, Dante, for helping me document our everyday life! I hope you will keep on doing so."

To see the rest of the Stromsvigt minimalistic projects visit:

Nina Christensen
Katharina Pradel

Don't forget to add a link to your own minimalistic project at Nina's blog for the chance to win a prize!

/Magdalena

ONE WINNER AND TWO LAYOUTS

The winner to my giveaway is....

"Changing that bookshelf made such a difference! It looks like a much more pleasant spot to work in now, and certainly much more organized and clear than mine! Thanks for sharing! [SC = meegs]"

Congrats Meegs, I will contact you through Studio Calico!

I also have two pages to share. One I made a while ago, and that I actually did handwritten journaling on. Something I rarely do. 

And a two-pager I made yesterday. It's extremly simple.I scanned the patterned paper and used PSE to put the journaling lines in the right places, than printed it out. I wrote about my daughter's fifth birthday. The photos are all from that day too.

/Magdalena

FAVORITE SCRAPPERS BLOG HOP

Fun fun fun! I've been nominated by Ginny Hughes and Tara Elias as one of their three favorite scrappers. I was so happy to recieve their e-mails. It's such a compliment to be nominated of two people I so greatly admire. I have so many of their layouts on my Studio Calico inspiration board. Please go visit their blogs!

Accepting the bloghop nomination means answering a few questions:


 1. What am I working on right now?

Right now I'm trying to finish my August PL pages. It's going well. I also need to make a few more layouts with my Sandlot scrapbook kit. There have only been two layouts from that kit so far, and subber's reveal is tomorrow! Also, I have an assignment to finish for Laur Kurz' Pen and Paper class. I'm SO excited to be asked to be part of that class. Sneaks will be posted as sonn as I'm done with my project.

 2. How long does it take me to create a project?

Usually about an hour or two. PL spreads can take longer, especially when I'm starting to run out of cards from the kit I'm using. I can ache over a spread for days then, before I'm happy with it. That can't happen with a layout because I know if it takes that long to finish I won't be happy with ever. Either it falls together in one sitdown, or it goes in the trash!

 3. What are my favorite things to create with at the

 moment?

PL spreads for sure. It might seem a bit contradictory to my latest answer, but the spreads are so much easier to put together. The page protector are like having a template, and the SC kits make it so easy. Just print your photos, pick som matching cards and embellish. 

 4. How does my writing/creating process work?

Usually I pick my background paper first. Then I'll look through my photos to see what I want to use. I start thinking about where my journaling and title will go, and then print my journaling on the background. I rarely have a plan so after gluing everything down I'll look through my embellishments and try to add something. That's the hardest part for me. I always feel like everything I add is too much.

 5. How do I become inspired and stay inspired?

Recieving my scrapbook and PL kit boxes from Studio Calico is my main inspiration and motivation. I doubt I would still be scrapbooking if I hadn't stumbled upon the Studio Calico website and later become a subber. Other places of inspiration is the Studio Calico galleries and Pinterest.

 6. What is my signature style?

It's so hard to describe your own style, but someone on the SC forum once did it for me. I was so flattered by the description I saved it. I so wish I would've also written down who wrote this, but I didn't. If you should read this and recognize your quote, I'd love for you to tell me who you are! Here's the quote:

"I think of you as having a very distinct style that I do really admire - graphic and edgy are adjectives that spring to mind, and you tend to approach shapes in an interesting, novel way! I can see that you experiment with techniques and styles, but your layouts also seem to have an essential, distinctive quality - sort of akin to, say, how Ann Demeulemeester releases collections that are more gauzy or "girly", and others in which leather predominates, if that makes sense."

Thank you, whoever wrote this!

Now it's time for me to nominate three scrappers in return. At the moment I only have two names to share as I'm still waiting for a response from my third pick. (Also why my post is a day late!) I've decided to wait a little longer since this is a person I'd really like to include. When, and if, I get a positive response I will write another blog post.

In no particular order, my nominees are:

Kelly Xenos: Kelly is a fairly recent discovery of mine. Her layouts and PL pages have taken me by storm! If you have missed them in the SC gallery you can find her projects right here. Her style is clean and simple and I feel like she always manages to add just the right amount of embellishments to compliment her page. Also I wish my handwriting was awesome enough to use in my PL like Kelly does. Love it!

Jenny Mira Lambert: I have been adding Jenny's layouts to my favorites at Studio calico for a few years. Her style is completely her own. I would call it rock n'roll style! Go check out her gallery and see for yourself! Isn't that awesome? It takes talent to make your pages look so effortless, whether they are or not. 

Thank you ladies for letting me pass you the torch! Looking forwards to seeing your favorites next week.

/Magdalena

A COUPLE OF SHOUTOUTS

And my PL album continues into August. I haven't shared the first page of the month with you yet. I love starting a new month with a fresh Studio Calico kit. This month it's called Sandlot.

The two pages after this one are all about my daughter's fifth birthday. If you haven't seen them, you can find them in this post.

And here are pages four and five!

If you like the golden best year yet card I recommend you visit this Etsy shop. That card is part of a beautiful birthday themed printable by Little Lamm & Co.

And if you like my daughter fun knotted hair headband, you can find the instructions here. I sub to the Cute Girl hairstyles youtube channel, and she makes some amazing braided hairstyles! I've tried a few and they really look a lot more complicated than they are. 

And don't forget to enter my RAK in yesterday's blog post! It's open until Friday.

/Magdalena

A FRESH SCRAP SPACE

My brother and his girlfriend just moved in together, and because of that I have a re-made scrap space. It's one of those "if this goes here, then this needs to go there and then that needs to go over there" kind of things. He's giving us his couch, so we're throwing out the one that's in our game room. And that's what led to the whole refurnishing carousel and so I have a nice new scrap space. Love it!

This was the old space:

It was nice, but I hardly ever sat there because the shelf blocked out the natural light from the window. It was also not practical because it was very unorganized. The black boxes hadn't been sorted through since I started scrapping in 2008! 

This is the same space now:

All my albums went with the larger Expedit downstairs to the kitchen. And to answer a question posted to me on Instagram, yes this does fit all my scrappy stuff! Here's how it's organized:

So what's in the jumble box, right? Empty crop bags, my heating tool (it didn't fit in the toolbox), a cutting mat, water colors and my half finished December Daily from 2012. Yeah. That's not going to get finished either, but I couldn't throw it out.

And yes, all my veneer is mixed into one bowl including the alphas. No, I can't find anything. No, it doesn't bother me, haha! I hardly ever use them anyway.

On my desk I keep the things I use all the time. My tiny attacher, my acrylic blocks, black ink and four circle punches. Behind the door on the left I have my mists and embossing powders and the tiny drawer on the right has dimensional adhesive, tiny attacher refills and new cutting blades for my paper trimmer. The large drawers has a few stray things like half used Thickers packages and some lovely LLP screen prints.

And guess what?! There is something for you on my desk as well. A whole bag full of unused items I cleaned out when reorganizing. All you need to do is put your name in the comments below. If you have a SC user name please post that, so I can find you easily should you forget to check back! I will randomly draw a winner to be posted on Friday August 29th. 

/Magdalena