2015 READING CHALLENGE SUMMARY FOR PL

I really enjoyed taking part in the 2015 Reading Challenge last year, and I wanted to document the books I read. If you want to learn more about the challenge click on the 2015 Reading Challenge link above, or visit my Pinterest boards. Link to the right!

I googled covers for the the books I read, and printed out photos for each book. I haven't written a review for every book, but instead written more about the kind of books I read and my most and least favorite.

The format is 9x12, but for the last page I cut a 9x3 strip from a full size all 3x4 pockets page protector.You see the page folded out below, and in the photo below that the last page is folded in, to reveal the back side of the cards. I only had one of those Book Review PL cards, so I scanned it in black and white and reprinted the image.

The top middle card here is a bonus card that Brandi Kincaid Thompson sent me, when I ordered a portrait doodle from her Etsy shop last summer. Love it!

Keep reading!

/Magdalena

PL DECEMBER

I am eagerly awaiting my January 2016 Studio Calico Documenter kit. I want to get started on the new year right now! I love the new year themed cards in the kit, and I want to wait for their arrival before starting to document Januari. I have finally decided on a size for our first album of the year. I'm sticking with 9x12 for now. I have a new album and page protectors on the way. 

I've read discussions on how to deal with the double documenting in December when deciding to make a December Daily album when you're also doing Project Life. I did both this year, and some of the stories and photos did end up in both albums. My December Daily wasn't extensive and I didn't use a ring binder and page protectors so it still felt like a different project and I enjoyed making it.

I ended up with six pages for December in my PL album. Most of the stories can be found in my previous DD posts, so I won't share them here again. I made my own monthly title card using a digital brush by Studio Calico. Most of the cards used this month are from the Winter mini card kit by Tina Aszmus, the Christmas add-on kit by SC and from Ali Edwards' Story kits.

I cut the "Give from the heart" card below from the cover of a Rituals catalog.

These photos are all from Christmas Eve, when we celebrate Christmas in Sweden. Originally I printed the journaling on the top 4x6 card on one of the Cheer Story kit cards, but it got stuck in my printer and was ruined, so instead I added these old digital brushes by Ali Edwards and printed it all out on smooth white card stock instead.

At the end of my album I've also added a summary of my 2015 Reading Challenge attempt. I'll be sharing those pages tomorrow, so drop by then!

/Magdalena

ART SPREAD CLASS

I've been waiting almost a year for this class, ever since I paid for the Day by Day class bundle in February or so. Catherine Davis is one of my very favorite scrapbookers and PL's. Her design skills are devine!

Week One challenge was to make a PL spread and repeat details on both pages to make it cohesive. I had ran out of PL cards from my SC kit, so I used some patterned paper and some of Ali Edwards Spark kit cards. This is the first spread for the month of November.

The embellishments are from Ali's Black & White kit and the digi brushes are by Little Lamb & Co.

And this is the third page for November, and it is made with my last SC PL kit as a subber.

So I will be attempting to do 2016 without a PL kit sub. There is no way I could have started out like that, but 2016 will be my fourth year so I'm hoping to have enough routine to work from my stash, digital products and Ali's story kits. I'm not sure I will by a core kit since the cards are so thin, and I'm not used to that. I will will probably buy a kit or addon or two from SC during the year as well, but I plan to not go back to subbing. We'll see how it goes!

The Movie Night digi brush is by Kellie Stamps and can be found here. I added a photo of Lavagirl behind the digi brush layer in PSE, and made a clipping mask. I then added the bottom portion of the stamp in black on top. Here's a closer look:

So will you be doing a December Daily album this year? I've decided to make an attempt this year. I succeded in finishing my DD in 2011. In 2012 and 2013 I only made it halfway through and last year I didn't bother. I plan to make a very simple album, close to this one by Jamaica. 

/Magdalena

THE END OF OCTOBER

This blog post was already scheduled before the terrible events in Paris. I was saddened to wake up to the horrific news this morning, and my thoughts go to everyone affected. It is so very difficult to understand what anyone would think to accomplish by such an act.

I will still share the pages I had planned to share with you today. 

As I told you about yesterday I purchased these Halloween printables and these Crisp digital stamps by Little Lamm & Co to use in my October PL album. Here are my last three pages for October.

/Magdalena

OCTOBER PL

This week I'm sharing my fall PL pages, and today it's time for the month of October. It's my favorite month of the year for so many reasons. Nature is beautiful, I get to wear my favorite clothes, the food is delicious (apple pie, soup, hot tea!) and last but not least my favorite TV-shows come out with the new episodes. 

For the month of October I could have wished for a PL kit with more fallish colors than the one I recieved from Studio Calico, but I mixed in Ali Edwards "Black & White" and "Spark" kits plus some awesome printables from Little Lamm & Co and managed to capture the mood of October with their help.

Page 1: The whole family started the month ny catching tonsilitis, and our son added some impetigo to that. Two weeks on and off of being sick, so not many photos was taken at the beginning of October.

Page 2: The celebration of my birthday had to be postponed because we didn't dare invite anyone and make them sick too. The pretty dotted card is from Tina Aszmus' Specialty Winter Card Set.The MMMM! and HAPPY birthday digi stamps are from the GOSH! stamp set by Kellie Stamps.

Pages 3 & 4: I loved Ali's Black & White kit and here I managed to use both front and back of the cards. And ofcourse I had to document the season premieres of Supernatural and TWD.

Page 5: Heart card painted by my daughter and I added the stamping. Two cards from the "Spark" kit here. Me and my daughter have gone perler bead crazy and I have so many fun patterns on my Making Stuff Pinterest board. AWESOME digi stamp from the I am We are You are digital stamp set by  Kellie Stamps.

Tomorrow I'll be sharing the spreads I made with the Little Lamm & Co printables. See you soon!

/Magdalena

KELLIE STAMPS GOES DIGITAL

I am sure many.many of you are fans of Kellie Stamps. She has some awesome stamps in her shop. From now on all her stamps are digital, and with that comes a new creative team. When I saw her callout I immediately applied. I love digital stamping and add a bit of digital to every PL page I make. I was so happy to be invited to join Kellie's team, and I am really looking forwards to working with her stamps.

Here's a spread I made to document a 24 hour cruise I took with a good freind of minein September. The "Love it" heart and arrow stamp is from this stamp set that was just recently released.

Cards from Studio Calico and Ali Edwards Story Kit.Printables from Studio Calico.

/Magdalena

MIX N' MATCH PL

I almost always run out of PL cards (Yes, I will keep calling them that...) by the end of each month. I end up needing to go into my dwindling stash and mix and match those with the more recent cards. I recently started subbing to Ali Edwards Story Kits, and I've loved the cards that come in her kits so far. They get mixed into my spreads as well. 

I've finished both September and October, and am now waiting to have more November photos to choose from. Every year November is the month when I take the least amount of photos. The weather is grey and drab and not much happens during this month. Last year I only had enough photos to make one spread. We'll see how it goes this month, but I expect it will be similar.

I will share most of my September pages in this post. Here you go!

Page 1: I didn't have enough photos to fill the page, so I found an online image of one of the movie posters for the movie we went to see, and then I added our ticket stubs in the same pocket.

Pages 2 & 3: Lots of photos from different occasions here. And yes, that is my husband and Samantha Fox! I love my most recent Etsy buy, and I added the card that came with the t-shirts I ordered. Me and my husband are both huge Supernatural fans and they have some great shirts and posters,too. And not just Supernatural. I recommend a peek at Unicorn Empire Prints!

Pages 4 & 5: A day in the city, a tired girl and a grass hopper. My husband and a collegue built the "Jesus meeting the children" cut-out frame above. It was used in a cultural event in town. They were given the picture by the church, and while building the frame they were cracking up over the weird placement of one of the holes(The one below our son's face). Not sure what they were thinking when picking this painting!

Page 6: A fall photo and a print-out of a silly Facebook conversation I had with a teacher friend about playing dead at work to get out of recess duty.

I have two more September pages to share, but that is for tomorrow! Tomorrow's post also includes some fun news about a recent design opportunity of mine. See you tomorrow!

/Magdalena

RANDOM PHOTOS - ONE PAGE

I'm sure we all have those photos where we only had time to take one picture or we took a bunch but only one of them turned out good. And we want to use those photos, how do we add them to one page and make it cohesive?

Most of my PL pages have a theme like a birthday, first day of school, spending the day in town etc. And then at the end of the month I'm stuck with a bunch of random photos that doesn't really go anywhere. Often the chronology of those photos don't matter, it's just a random photo of something that happened that month.If I take a picture of the books on my nightstand to document what I'm reading at the moment who cares what exact date it was? 

If there isn't enough photos to fill a page I print out pictures of TV-shows I'm watching, the kid's favorite book at the moment, the musioc I'm listening to etc. Here are my random pages for the month of August:

What about you? How do you use your random photos?

/Magdalena

PL BIRTHDAY PAGES

Every time our kids have a birthday I do a short favorites interview with them. It's so much fun to see how their answers change. In August Nea turned 6 and this is her interview:

Favorite color: Pink
Favorite toy: My craft supplies (Yeah!)
Best TV-show: Lazy Town
Favorite outfit: My kitty cat onepiece
Favorite game: The Lost Diamond board game
Favorite animal: Ladybug
Favorite song: Sov du lille videung
Best breakfast: When I got candy raspberries for my birthday
Favorite drink: Fanta Exotic
Favorite holiday: Easter
What I want to be when I grow up: A teacher
Favorite movie: Paranorman
Favorite snack: Popcorn
Favorite food: Mix your own salad

I also made these two pages with pictures from her birthday.

/Magdalena

DUCKS AND RUNES

The last to weeks before schoolit was just me and the kids. I can't drive so we had to think up things to do that didn't require a car. One day we took the bus into our nearest town to visit the amazing Pelle Svanslös playground.

On our way there we walked through the university park and the kids discovered the old viking rune stones on display. They got really excited and ran around wanting to find all of them. They found fifteen in all, and wanted me to read the inscriptions on all of them. (No, I can't read runes. They all had interpreted signs, haha!)

The three photos taken infront of the river are my favorites. The kids were looking at the ducks, when I asked them to pose for a picture with their backs to the water. My daughter went to put her arm around her brother and he thought it was a duck attacking him. He screamed and jumped around - see the first photo. The other two photos is them cracking up over it. 

/Magdalena

DAYTRIP TO STOCKHOLM

Every summer we take a daytrip to Stockholm to visit one of the many museums there. This year we picked Medeltidsmuseet. I highly recommend it, especially if you have young children. Our kids loved the small scale model of medieval Stockholm and ran through the houses to see it all. There is no entrance fee and there is a beautiful park just outside the museum.

We also found out that Dunkin'Donuts had opened a store in Stockholm and went to get a box of donuts from them. Maybe I'm a little weird but I'm always disappointed in donuts. They look and smell delicious but the taste to me is meh. I guess I just don't like donuts! 

/Magdalena

VACATION PL

You may remember I posted a mini album about our July vacation about a month ago. Even though I had made the mini I wanted to document our trip in our PL album as well. It ended up filling the first five pages of July. 

I always feel good when I am able to fit a few cards from older kits. Some of these cards are over a year old. I've also gotten hooked on a new font for my journaling - Gabriola cursive. When I size it to 8 I can fit a ton of writing in a small space, and it's still readable and looks good.

As you can see I have switched to a 9x12 format for the second half of the year. I'm not sure what I think about it yet. I'm still so used to the 12x12 pages that it takes a lot more planning to put these smaller pages together. I may go back to the larger size in January. We'll see!

What size is your PL and how do you feel about? Will you be changing sizes, or are you happy with it?

/Magdalena

PL JUNE ROUNDUP

How is your summer? This year Swedish summer has been rain, rain and some more rain. I don't even remember a summer with this little sun. I'm so glad we had that week in Spain to fill up on vitamin D. 

Allthough I have to admit I don't mind the rain that much, because it takes away the stress to get out and to things. Instead I get to be home and work on my Project Life album. 

I've finished up my June pages which turned out to be eight in all. I won't be sharing the first three because there are so many photos of non-family members, but here are the remaining five. 

This spread is a mix of a whole bunch of old Studio Calico PL kits. I never got around to using the JAN wood veneer in January, but I found a use for it by cutting off the N to make it say yes in Swedish. I've used these 3x4 photo templates by Paislee Press a whole lot.

I also have some exciting newsfor you! On August 3rd my brand new class Creative Titles at Big Picture Classes is going up. I'm so excited! I really hope that you will enjoy it and get lots of inspiration from it. I've been taking lots and lots of classes this summer and I promise you the $9.95 monthly member fee is so worth it!

/Magdalena

MAY PROJECT LIFE

For the month of May I will be sharing all my pages at once. My Studio Calico PL kit was late to arrive, and I have been very busy preparing for something fun I will share with you soon. 

I started the monthly page with the large chipboard piece that came in the kit. I embossed it with Zing opaque white and added a few embellishments. The happy mail text is not a digi brush. I put it together using two different fonts in PSE. Pam Baldwin's Text Tricks class at BPC has been great for me in learning how to combine fonts. I have much more to learn in that area.

How awesome is the digi brush in the bottom right card? It's in a set called Sm(art) Mouth by Paislee Press and One little bird. Originally it's said This is how I roll,but I edited it in PSE to say we instead. I started out with a blank 4x6 canvas, cropped my photos to circles and layered them on the background. The digi brush was my last layer. After printing I added the yellow number stickers.

These two pages go together as a spread. The page on the right is half a Design A page protector. On the left I used these 3x4 templates by Paislee Press.

On the back of the 6x12 page I have documented Swedish Mother's Day which was May 31st. At the top there's a flip-up pocket, that I cut from the leftovers and attached with washi tape.

Inside are pictures of the cards my kids drew for me. And that is the end of my May pages. I'm currently working on my pages for June, and will share them soon.

I hope you are enjoying your summer so far!

/Magdalena