LAYOUT FROM SCREEN TO TABLE

Most of the time when I design a layout it's moving photos and pieces of paper around on the table, but sometimes I will design the layout in PSE. Then it only needs printing and assembling. Those layouts usually comes together very quickly. Especially this layout that I plan to share with you. I started out looking at this pin:

The layout is going to document our hotell in Mallorca, so I opened up a few images in PSE and started figuring out how I wanted them placed. After placing them out on a blank letter sized canvas, I decided that in order to make the layout a little more dynamic I needed to add A) at least one circle element and B) a photo with people in it. I picked a photo of the kids outside the lobby and used the cookie cutter tool to crop it into a 1,8" circle. My plan was to punch it out using my 2" circle punch, and I wanted the photo to have a white frame. I also added some journaling in the same spot as the pin.

I printed two separate images. One with the photos hidden, on cardstock. And one with the journaling hidden, on photo paper. If you look closely you will also see a few unfortunate orange paint splatters that my daughter made by accident. She was sitting across the table making puppets from toilet paper rolls. One of them was a fox, thus the orange paint.

And here is my finished layout. All the pieces assembled and title and embellishments added. 

All materials, except the flair, is from Studio Calico kits. The flair is designed by Brandi Kincaid and more of her designs can be found here! Brandi also has her own Etsy shop where you can buy digital items but also make custom orders! 

/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