THREE LAYOUTS AND A CRAZY STORY

As a New Years resolution I promised myself to make at least two layouts per month for the whole year. I've been falling behind on those layouts during the spring months, but I've spent the summer catching up. The Summer of Sketches class at Studio Calico has been a great help to get me started. 

I've been working with the Expedition scrapbook kit which is the last scrapbook kit ever from Studio Calico. :/ The travel theme went well with my detail photos from my trip to the Finnish island of Åland in May. To add to the touristy feel I printed and cut the photos as faux Polaroids. I used pops of blue to tie the different pieces of the layout together. The title was supposed to say ÅLAND but as it turned out the L was missing from my chipboard package. It turned out to be a happy accident though because I like this title better, with the veneer globe for an O. And Studio Calico has sent me a replacement package, so it's all good!

One of the reasons I like layouts is the opportunity to add enlargments of favorite photos to my album. This selfie was taken when me and three friends went to see Stina Wollter talk about and sing songs from her new album Garden Songs. Stina is the blond at the bottom of the photo. She is a Swedish artist, feminist and body activist. She's an amazing person and I was SO happy to get a picture taken with her. Check out her album at Spotify, both the lyrics and music are beautiful. 

At the end of June I had the majority of my hair trimmed off! It was super scary when the hair stylist brought the trimmer out but I am SOOOOO happy with the result. This hair style is so versatile and it's been amazing to barely have any hair during the crazy heatwave we've had in Sweden this summer.

In my last blog post I promised to share another pocket page and a funny story to go along with it. I now have permission from everyone in the photos to share it, so here it is!

Me and my collegues from school had planned a picnic to send off one of the teachers who was retiring. That's her holding the glass of bubbly in the bottom picture. We were meeting up at an old 18th century mill by the stream a few miles outside of our community. Everyone brought dishes for our potluck picnic plus blankets to sit on, games to play and whatever we were drinking, so there were lots to carry. 

We weren't all that familiar with the surroundings so we didn't know a good spot to sit. We started on to the path lugging all of our stuff. We walk through the woods, over the stream and then even further into the woods. 

It was a little chilly in the shade plus lots of mosquitos so we were looking for a sunny spot. The only sunny place we found was up a steep hill of gravel. And it was steeeeep! Like I said there was lots to carry, plus two collegues had a hard time walking and climbing because of injuries. It was a tough job but we got up there!

When we get up the hill there's a wire fence. Turns out there's a current in the wires. Ouch! We have to lie down on the ground and roll under the wires and shove our stuff under too. Finally there! It's a beautiful sunny meadow and we start unpacking the food. Lots of food! Pies, salads, bread, fruit, wine and cheese. When all is unpacked three horses come running. They try to run on to the blanket where all the food is. Our gym teacher picks up a branch to chase them off but they're not having it. Our principal is terrified of horses so she runs off. Another teacher bravely packs up all the food again, with the horses charging in on her while all the rest of us are cowards and roll under the electric wire fence to get away.

So, down that steep gravely hill again with all the bags and blankets and our two injured friends. We find a shady glenn with a firepit just below the hill. It will do!  We start unpacking. Again. That's when one of the 3rd grade teachers yell "SNAKE!" And oh yes, there is a viper slithering off into the bushes. Pack up again, back through the woods, over the stream and back at the parking lot where we started.

There's a lawn right by the mill and we're super hungry, hot and tired so we just unpack everything right there. We ended up having a lovely picnic and I'm sure our retiree will never forget this adventure!

I'll be back tomorrow sharing my pocket pages from our family trip to the Swedish west coast a few weeks ago.

See you tomorrow!

/Magdalena

SIMPLE SCRAPBOOKING CLASS

I have a new class out at Big Picture Classes. It's called Simple Scrapbooking and is all about how to go about making clean and simple scrapbook layouts that still feel cohesive and complete. The lessons are based on my five favorite formulas for making pages. Each lesson has two videos, one where I flip through several examples of pages I've made using that specific formula plus a process video. I hope to see you in class!

I've promised myself to make more layouts this year. My goal is to do at least two per pages per month. Pocket pages has really taken over for me, and I kind of forget how fun it is to make traditional layouts. I keep everything I make in the same album, and flipping through it and finding different projects and formats is much more fun than a plain pocket page album. In order to give myself a kickstart I've been doing the Studio Calico LOAW challenges this month, plus Kelly Noel's new class Design Recipes. 

This layout came together with inspiration from one of Kelly's recipes plus March LOAW #2. Lov means break in Swedish, and the layouts sums up my favorite moments from our February Break from school. I used different sized circle punches for my photos and the title is handcut. I first printed out the word LOV on regular printing paper and used that as a template for my title. I love making Week in review and Month in review layouts. They are a great compliment to my pocket pages. 

March started out with lots of snow and really cold temperatures. I still don't have my SC March kit because of Swedish customs but I had this March rubber piece saved from last year.

The second March pocket page is all about cousin Tim's 4th birthday celebration. I love the yellow alphas from the Summit documenter kit.

This year I'm making an effort to use more colors on my pocket pages. Going multicolored is hard for me! I tend to get matchy matchy and stick to two colors when putting my pages together. I really like the multicolored look but there is definitely a learning curve to it, for me.

/Magdalena

WINTER WONDERLAND

Winter sure took it's time to reach this part of the world. Not until February did we get to enjoy snow and cold temperatures. I'm so glad we got to have a bit of real winter before spring arrives. 

Since week 8 was "Sports Break" in Sweden, meaning we had the whole week off, I had a lot of photos for this month. February ended up filling ten album pages all together. You can see the beginning of February PL in this post. 

The Studio Calico Summit kit arrived almost two months late because Swedish customs opened the package and then lost it. Thankfully SC quickly sent me a replacement as soon as I found out what happened to my package. This is why I've used the January kit for my February pages.

I even made a page all about me for week 8. It turned out to be quite a busy week for me and I spent much time away from home. It's unusual for me to put together such a colorful page, but I love how it turned out. I've used these templates and these digi brushes by Paislee Press.

Back to school for week 9, and super cold temperatures. Nea had an accident while using a hammer in a friend's garage. Luckily it was just a bad bruise and nothing broken. Also, back to using a limited color scheme!

Dante had his 10th birthday in February. I used a mix of old and new documenter kit items, plus a print by LifeLovePaper, to put this pocket page together.

I do a birthday interview with the kids each year. It's so much fun to see how they grow and their answers change. In the photo he is holding his favorite birthday gift, which was a Harry Potter wand. This patterned paper from my stash made me think of the magic night sky above the Hogwarts dining room. 

After I put the background together, I thought it would be fun to make Dante look like The Man In The Moon. I printed the photo in black and white and used a 2" circle punch to make a full moon shape. The word art and the numbers are also from my stash.

I cut out some extra clouds and popped them up with dimensional adhesive, for a bit of dimension.

/Magdalena

MAKING - NOVEMBER EDITION

We've had an amazing November here in Sweden. Just a couple of years ago we had a record breaking lack of sun. Only two hours of sunlight during the entire month of November! This year has seen many bright and beautiful days though, and as a scrapbooker I am thankful for that. I've made more pages this November than any other year of doing Project Life.

I love the color scheme of the November Studio Calico kits.It's so warm and has a vintage feel to it.


The kids each got to pick a book to read during Fall Break, which was week 44. Dante picked the second part of a ghost story series, and Nea picked Cinderella - in English. Dante plays lots of video games and his English is really good because of that,and she wants to catch up. We've been reading it together.

Us teachers worked an extra three days during week 44, but then we got the rest of the week off too. On the last day of work we had "After Work" outing at a super cool place called Pinchos, where you use an app to order food and drinks and then pick it up yourself from the bar. 

Below, I used the tag to journal about "Old Fashioned Week" at the kids' school. Their school celebrates a hundred years and there were dressup themes and lots of other activities. 

I loved the flannel shirt style pattern of the bottom card, but the center square felt kind of empty, so I stamped all the dates of the week inside to fill it up.

The same week Nea ended up with an ear infection that caused a burst eardrum. We had to go to the hospital to get her hearing tested. With a bit of luck she'll get tubes put in next year. She's had so many burst eardrums I've lost count. That NOPE card really came in handy!

In our Project Life album I mix in both ephemera and layouts. I like the chronology it gives, compared to keep seperate albums. I made a November favorites sort of layout for Catherine davis' Design School 2 "Working with a kit" challenge. The fall paper came from an October addon, and I found these veneer alphas in my stash. I considered painting the alphas gold, but decided against it and added some gold sequins instead.

This is my favorite page this month. I tend to like the pages with lots of journaling the most. It gives them a finished look. The d&n card is a design I totally stole from Catherine Davis!

That's all I've got so far. I have a few more photos to put in pockets before it's December.

/Magdalena

MY OCTOBER PAGES

I've decided to split up my October posts. Tomorrow I will post my Halloween pages, and today I'll be showing you the rest of my October pages plus a layout. I'll be making more layouts from my October photos, but I usually focus on documenting our everyday life first.

The gold and black October card is from Tina Aszmus' Halloween mini card kit. Love it! Everything else is from recent monthly Studio Calico kits. I've also used the Autumn Vibes templates from Paislee Press.

For some reason I took a ton of photos for the first week of October, but hardly any the next. The first week of October has my birthday and also the Swedish "Cinnabun Day" - a very important occasion to celebrate. The photo of my daughter has a quote. The first thing she said when waking up this morning was "Mommy, you are the world's best everything!", then she paused and added "Except the world's best turd.". Lucky me!

So I'll be honest here. I LOVE making my album pages but I HATE photographing them. Mainly because to prevent glare I need to remove every single card from the pockets and then put them back. For this blog post I couldn't be bothered (sorry, not sorry) so there is glare in these photos.

In our family you get to pick dinner on your birthday, so I picked pizza. Not because it's my favorite but because it's the only kind of restaurant nearby. I didn't want to cook, and I didn't want to have to go into the city on a school night, so pizza it was. I picked the Quattro Formaggi - four kinds of cheese including blue cheese. The kids were horrified that I picked moldy pizza for my birthday dinner, bwaha!

Also how happy are we that Supernatural, Stranger Things AND The Walking Dead are back on? 

I know you can't see it in this picture but the closeup of the kids' eyes shows off how different their eye colors are. Dante has blue eyes with lighter rays and Nea has green eyes. They asked me to take a photo so they could compare. 

Skipping week 41 because I didn't take any photos, here is week 42 on the left and week 43 on the right. I don't always record the weekly number. I know my photos are roughly in chronological order so not having a date on something doesn't bother me. 

I took an afternoon of from work and went to get a haircut. I had time for a stroll around the city before a friend met up for dinner. We ate at a super cool place called Pinchos, where you order through an app and pick up your own food and drinks from the counter. They serve delicious tapas and the decorations are circus themed. They even have entertainment through speakers in the bathrooms.

Fall is for reading! Refurnishing our bedroom meant I got to trade my nightstand for a bookshelf. Woohoo!

If you have visited my blog before you know that every year I do a birthday interview with the kids. This year I thought "Hey, why just the kids?!", so I made a birthday interview layout for myself. All products are from the Studio Calico October kit "Gypsy Moon". I hope you notice how I used both a border punch and a label maker for this layout. It's been years since they were brought out for scrapbooking. And yep, I'm 45. Imagine that!

Stay young at heart people! I hope to see you tomorrow for my Halloween pages.

/Magdalena

SEPTEMBER GUEST CT AT STUDIO CALICO

I was really excited to be asked to guest the Studio Calico creative team for September. It's such a colorful kit that suited my style perfectly. I got to work with both the scrapbook and documenter kit plus the mini book and fall card addons and a few extra stamp sets. You can find all the creative team projects here.

This floral paper was my favorite paper from the scrapbook kit. It looked great on top of the black cardstock. I used the bottom strip of paper to add a bit of punch next to the photo. This is my favorite photo from our summer roadtrip to Dalarna. I love how their cool poses don't match the beautiful countryside setting at all!

Nea had her birthday in August and every year I do a birthday interview with the kids. I used no patterned paper for the birthday interview layout, just every single button in the package! The title stamp got some golden dots from a gel pen.

As I may have told you before I keep my layouts and pocket pages all together in the same album. The layout above goes with this pocket page, that I've made with the August documenter kit.

The first week of August is also GISHWHES week. GISHWHES is short for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. It's such a fun event that focus on charity both by donating money but also comitting random acts of kindness throughout the week. You're in a team with 14 other people trying to complete around 200 crazy and creative challenges. The whole thing is organized by American actor Misha Collins. This year GISHWHES saved 40.000 acres of rainforest in Nepal and rescued a dance school aimed at providing a career in dancing for underprivilaged children in South Africa.

One of the items for this year was to get the quote "We create therefor we live" tattooed on your body. I wasn't the one to get the tattoo, but I thought it was a wonderful quote. I put it on this layout to document my parttaking in GISHWHES of 2017. I picked the rainbow stripe paper and cut it in tiny triangles to make it look like a big colrful explosion of creativity. The photo was taken by my daughter. I'm wearing a caveperson costume I stitched together for one of the items.

I wanted to put some of the items I completed in my album, so I put together a pocket page too. I used the August kit with a few other items to make a GISHWHES spread. The items you see here are toys caught in the act, snail yoga, recreating a page from a children's book, recreating a celebrity photo shoot and then tweeting it to said celebrity (check the hashtag #embracereality for more hilarious recreations!), my favorite cartoon character made from spices, an Enochian typewriter, giving flowers to someone exiting a place of worship other than my own, a caveperson demonstrating glass blowing and showing off a teacup and saucer holster to bring a bit of sophistication to the wild west.

I was super excited to have my Rihanna tweet picked up by the GISHWHES team on the second day of the hunt. Don't I look just like her?

Besides the three layouts above I had a pocket page spread in the CT gallery for September. It was all about our day of fun at Gröna Lund, the Stockholm amusement park. We spent the day on the rides and in the evening we got to watch Alice Cooper in concert. Something Dante had been looking forwards to since Christmas.

Come back tomorrow to see the rest of my August pages!

/Magdalena