PL JUNE

With the June pages finished I'll be starting another PL album. I'm planning to do a 12x12 album for the second part of 2016. I've taken lots of photos this month so there is quite a bit of work left to wrap up June. Here are my first 5 pages of the month.

I'm loving the square cornerns of the documenter cards this month. So much easier to work with. I've lifted an old spread by Catherine Davies where she used punched circles to pull the page togther. I've lifted it many times before, I just love how it looks! Find the YEAH! digital stamp here.

While I have you here reading my blog I must really, really recommend the graphic novel series "Love & Key" by Joe Hill. It's a bit brutal but the story is really amazing for those that enjoy stories about the supernatural. It centres around a family that inherits a large, very old house filled with mysterious keys that unlocks anything you can imagine, including a great evil.

In this spread I used a mix of old and new cards to give it a summer feel. Instead of punched circles I did some messy date stamping to create cohesiveness.

I really love doing pages in all one colour! Here I pulled every red card I had and picked my favorites. This whole page is about a day spent with my collegues celebrating the last day of school. Summer vacation, whoohoo! (Faces blurred for privacy.)

Here is a mix of photos from our first week off. I stuck maintly to black & white plus bright yellow. Pineapple sunglasses FTW!

This week I have a challenge posted on the Studio Calico blog. Hop on over and see what it's about!

/Magdalena

MAKING CARDS

How I miss Studio Calico's card kit! I only got it 3 times or so, but it was enough to fill my stash of birthday cards and other greetings for a long time. I easily got 20 cards from one kit. Recently SC had a sale and they had a bunch of card kits in the shop. I only really wanted one, the Galileo kit with the cute bunny and ice cream stamp. It got sold out before I managed to grab it but another member kindly sent it to me since she had several already. SC rocks that way!

Me abd my daughter sat down to make a few cards today, and this one is my favorite!

It looks like the little bunny is popping up in the window waving it's arms and going "Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello..." It's a top folded card that I punched a window in and then glued a strip of the hello paper inside. The bottom of the bunny lies flat but I tucked some foam adhesive under the ears. The card still looked a little empty so I stiched on the silver banner in the corner.

In the card below I stamped the strawberries in red ink, then I flipped the stamp over and used the back of the stamp with pink ink to color them in. I love the contrasting blue cardstock I used as base. I added the gold heart for a little additional color and texture.

I hope you haven't missed out on Kellie Stamps June release that includes clear stamps this time! Here I combined the Galileo bunny stamp with the Slim Jim alpha stamp set to create a fun bunny birthday party.

My daughter let me borrow her water colors to paint the bunnies in, and then I added some sequins as confetti.

And here are two more cards I made today:

I'm not a card maker, and only sit down and make them in batches like this maybe once a year, but I hope I have given you some fun easy card making ideas. I don't have the patience to spend more than maybe 10-15 minutes per card, I'm sure there are more you like that.

Keep on making stuff!

/Magdalena

ROUNDING UP MAY PL

I've wrapped up my May pages in our PL album. I've used a whole lot of Kellie Stamps digital brushes, old and brand new. First up is a page about a family day in Stockholm. For those of you that don't know Swedish geography we live about 100 km north of Stockholm. By train it takes us just short of an hour to get there. Usually we have some sort of cultural and educating activity planned when we go there (teacher moms, sigh), but this time was just for shopping and having lunch.

The "DID SOMEONE SAY ___________________" is so awesome! I love it! I see myself getting so much use of that one. All digital brushes on this page are from the June release and you can get them here. This month there are also TWO clear stamp sets and a sticker sheet in the release. Don't miss these!

I rarely record anything sporty because we're not a very sporty family, but in this page there's a whole lotta sports! The top two photo are from a 5 km run I participated in with my collegues. It's a race aimed at recruiting blood donors. I forgot my running shoes at home so had to run 5 km in my Chucks. But I did it! The bottom photos are of our daughter who started soccer practice. She has since quit soccer practice... We'll see if it is an interest she wants to pursuit again in the future. 

On my last page of the month I recorded the books I've read in May. You can find the book rating digi stamp here. I found this fun photo of Stephen King on Pinterest and kept the heart on his shirt red while changing the rest of the photo to black and white. I've read his Bazaar of Bad Dreams. It's an anthology of short stories. I liked the stories and the fact that he has written a short introduction to each story talking about how he came up with the idea for it. I've also read parts 5 and 6 in the Locke & Key series by Joe Hill. It is BRILLIANT! If you like horror and graphic novels you need to read it. So good! I got them from the library, but after I finished the series I ordered the set from an online book store. I know I'll be reading them again. My last book in May is "Kunskapens frukt" (The Fruit of Knowledge) by Liv Stromqvist. It's about the role female sexuality has played throughout history. It's presented in the form of a graphic novel. Very interesting and enlightening!As you see in the photo I'm currently reading The Fireman by Joe Hill but I haven't finished it yet. All books are added to my 2016 Reading Challenge Pinterest board.

Yesterday my June documenter kit from Studio Calico arrived so I can finally start in on my June pages. Looking forwards to it!

/Magdalena

HELLO SUMMER!

It's June and summer is finally here! Only two more days of school for the kids, and six more days of work for me, then eight long weeks of summer lazyness. I can't wait! We have a trip to Legoland in Denmark planned and the rest of our summer activities will be spontaneous. 

Our daughter recently signed up for soccer practice, and that inspired the journaling of the layout above. The Swedish word "Hopp" means both jump and hope, and I wrote all about my hopes for her not to have to suffer through sports and gymnastics like I did in school. I was so tiny as a child, short and skinny, and that is rarely an advantage in sports. I was I ran the slowest, jumped the lowest and couldn't catch a ball to save my life. My fine motor skills have always been top notch but my grand motor skills are lousy. I'm so happy that isn't the case for my daughter. 

I used the bouncing balls as a guide to place my punched circles at the bottom of the journaling page, and then added a heart sticker under the title. Since my photo paper is A4 size and not letter size I needed a strip of paper to fill it out. Some gold star sequins finishes the layout. 

Today I'm also sharing a sneak for the Kellie Stamps June release:

/Magdalena