FINISHING UP PL 2014

Yes, my Project Life album for 2014 is done. Six months of everyday life captured in 44 pages. I am really happy with the format I chose a year ago, and I will continue on in the same fashion.

• white edges on my photos
• 12x12 size album
• switching up the page protectors
• new album every 6 months

I haven't shared the last five pages of 2014 with you, so here they are. Page 3 below has our Christmas card photo using these templetes by One Little Bird. There's Nea lighting the advent candles. She was really excited to be responsible for that throughout December. 

Aren't the Santa and angel candle holders adorable? We have them after my husband's grandmother. Love them!  Using more of the OLB templates on this page.

Documenting my Layout of the week and This week's featured project at Studio Calico, all in the same week. Woohoo! Starting the holiday braek I also had lunch with my friends and coworkers. I hearted them out on request. And sweet kids at the store wating for daddy to finish his Christmas shopping. I did some gold embossing on the mid-right card so resemble a starry sky above the cityscape border.

 In Sweden we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, and these picture all from this day. I loved the sweet little Christmas tree Dante drew at school so I asked permission to add it into our album.

The whole family has a 2,5 weeks off over the holidays, and we have really relaxed and just hung out together. Lots of boardgames and watching shows and movies. I've gotten into Grimm, which I really love. I love all chipboard embellishments, and really wanted to use all the stars from the Park Ave kit. I sewed them across the 4x6 card like a garland. The last photo is a selfie my daughter took on New Years Eve. 

Now on to making the title page for 2015!

/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

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

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

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

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

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

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Our daughter recently had her fifth birthday. I've made a spread all about that. On left side I put photos from opening her presents in the morning. I also thought it would be fun to do a number 5 collage. That may have gotten a bit out of hand, haha! Once I started I couldn't stop adding 5's.

 

The right side of the spread has a photo I took later that day, plus a favorites interview with her. I asked her a whole bunch of questions like what's her favorite food, color, movie, song, game etc. What does she want to be when she grows up? All fun things to read about when she's all grown up.

 

 



And here are the pages together:

/Magdalena

VACATION PL PAGES

As it turned out there were a lot of photos that needed to go into my PL album for July. All together there will be 12 pages, one insert and one intro page for the new album I've started for the second half of the year.

These three pages are all about our trip to Norrköping at the end of July.

I've been diving into my stash because the Penny Arcade kit is disappearing. The second page are all photos plus our tickets for the Kolmården zoo. The Paislee Press 4x6 templates are so perfect for adding lots of photos to one page. Love them!

/Magdalena

NEW TEMPLATES

As you may know, I love using templates for PL. I was happy to see these new 4x6 templates from Paislee Press, and I used a whole bunch of them for my July PL pages.

I love how easy it is to add lots of photos to a spread using templates, but still have lots of white space.

/Magdalena

PL JULY

And so it's half way through the year, and I'm starting a new PL album. Last year fit into one album,but this year the first one is already full. I'm getting much better at taking pictures and keeping things to add to the pages. I ended the first half by adding a bunch of diplomas and things the kids recieved for the end of the school year and for different activities they've taken part in.

I will make an intro page that I will post as soon as it's finished. The first two pages for July are already done. I was very inspired by this week's PL sketch. Awesome,huh?! And I also went a little crazy on the digi in general. I looooove digi for PL!

I use PSE for adding templates, printables, brushes and journaling. I've had comments from some of you that wants to do digi but don't know how. Neither did I when I first began using PSE. I haven't taken a class or anything, I just started experimenting. I've found lots of help from tutorials you can find at Studio Calico's website. There is also a forum where you can ask questions. They have two digi classes available. One basic (which is FREE!) and one advanced.

There are also great tutorials to be found on youtube. Whenever there's something specific you want to learn, search for it there. That is how I learned how to do a drop shadow on a digi brush, for example.

I'm veeery far from being any kind of expert, I only enjoy doing it. Barbara Picinich is a huge inspiration to me, and I'd love to learn all the cool stuff that she does. Just check out her gallery at SC!

All the photo circles above are created by using the cookie cutter tool, and then adding to a new canvas. The "WHAT FUN! circle is part of a free printable for SC's new Brighton Pier collection. I then added both journaling and title stamps on their own layers. 

The sun stamp was perfect for drawing attention to the bandaid on my daughter's arm. She'd just been the the doctor to get a vaccine shot. For the photo below of my beautiful hairdo (I'll bet you want a little hairdresser at home too now?) I used digi stamps to kind of make it look like a magazine cover. 

I'll be going away for a few days now. See you when I get back!

/Magdalena

QUOTES

It was suggested to me by a friend to write a book of my son's quotes. He's always had a way with words and I've been collecting quotes from him since he was two. I've made a layout about it before, inspired by a PL page by Laura Kurz. 

Her comment gave me the idea to do a June Quotes page for my PL album:

I struggled with printing this large photo. The reason is the 3x4 cards need to be cut down to fit the pockets, and then the photo edges don't match up. I tried printing it in one piece and cut it with my paper trimmer, but that didn't work. Finally I printed it in 4x6 pieces instead. As you can see the bottom pieces don't match up perfectly, but it's good enough for me!

The grid paper is from an old SC kit and the embellishments come from the Bonjour addon. Digi stamps from the Hello Hello kit plus a class from way back. I think it's by Shanna Noel.

And here's the page that goes with the quote page:

/Magdalena

A COLLECTION OF PRETTY

Continuing on with my June PL pages, I have a whole collection of pretty on these two pages. The first page is the back of the B design protector I showed in my last post. Pretty baby cousin, pretty flowers and pretty hair! I went through my PL card stash and picked out three of my older cards. That always makes me feel good!

To make sure the journaling fit perfectly on the cards I scanned them into my computer, opened them up in PSE and wrote my journaling on the lines. Before printing I hid the card layer and only printed the text. Perfect fit! Unless the washi tape doesn't hold the card still and it slips in the printer, as happened on the pink card below.

/Magdalena

NEON LOVE

As promised. Third day in a row of blogging. Summer vacation does my crafting good! The page for today is all about our end-of-the-year picnic in the woods with our sons pre-school class. It's his last year and in the fall he'll be in school. I've covered the faces of their friends for privacy.

I love mixing up my page protector designs. It's one of the goals I had for 2014. This B-style design went well with my photos from this day. I started out making a page title on the photo of a patch of lily-of-the-valley flowers I found in the woods. Underneath the title I did all filler cards.

There's a lot more embellishing on the page than what I usually do. I got the Bonjour addon this month, which is all embellishments. Such a great idea! And the Bonjour kit was shock full of awesomeness.

Materials: SC Hello Hello kits and addons including digi stamps and printables, speach bubble digi brush from the SC Trendspotting class, Versafine ink, Hero Arts Neon Pink ink

/Magdalena

ON THE WEATHER

Yesterday's blog post was about putting yourself in PL. Today's post is all about the weather. The stamp set from Guten Tag is all about the weather too, so I used a few stamps from that, including the digi brushes from the shop. I looooove digi in PL!

June in Sweden has been both hot days and one crazy hail storm. That's my daughter's hands showing the hail. The "aura" around the hail is a SC digi brush that I think was offered for free a while ago, but it would be easy just drawing lines on free hand too.

I also did some digi "off-stamping" on the photo of my feet. I drew the color from my dress and adjusted the opacity with each row of words. The blue-to-green striped card has some IRL off-stamping using the word RAINY.

Materials: all cards are from the Hello Hello PL kit except the 4x6 cloud card which is from Bluegrass Farm, stamps and digi also from this month's SC kits, Versafine stamping ink plus a leftover veneer piece from Sugar Rush.

Tomorrow I'll be PL'ing with neon colors. See you then!

/Magdalena

YOU IN PL

I've been slacking quite bit on blogging this month. With hopes of doing better! We now have 7 weeks of summer vacation ahead of us. There should be plenty of time to blog and create.

As a parent doing PL I think we are many that also slack on adding photos of ourselves to our pages. Am I right? The kids are so much cuter, and more interesting. At least that what I tell myself. But I just don't think that's true. Our kids will enjoy reading about their parents lives too, and getting to know know us better. Especially when we're not here anymore. And imagine if you had that kind of a treasure about your grandparents! Wouldn't that be amazing?

So thinking of that I started out June making a page all about myself. Yes, I did. 

Materials: Studio Calico Hello Hello PL kit and addons, plus matching digi brushes from their shop, Zing embossing powder in glitter gold, golden sequins, Mister Huey's in opaque white and a few pieces from the Hello Hello scrapbook kit as well

/Magdalena

12 IN 14 June

It's the first Monday of the month of June and so it's time for the Stromsvigt "12 in 14" challenge. The theme of June is sequins. Sequins are something that has grown on me. I didn't like them at all when they started popping up in the Studio Calico kits. I thought them too girly for me. It didn't take me long to change my mind about them though. I love the variety in color and shape. For my part in the challenge I decided on a PL page.

This page is all about our fun day at the fair and the sequins I've used are from the Studio Calico Color Theory sequin packs in 24 Karat and Mint Hint. When using sequins I like to either stick to one color and vary the shape, or the opposite, vary the color but stick to one shape. You can see examples of both on my page above.

I know there's been questions asked about how to attach them to your page. Most of the time I use small drops of glue that dries clear. You can also use your sewing machine and stitch them down as I did here:

I love how that makes them look like a garland. You can also handstich them. Here's an older page where I used that technique:

 

Even using your tiny attacher to staple them down works! I added a few stapled sequins to this PL card that already had a string of printed dots along the edge.

 



Now it's your turn to create! First visit the blogs of my fellow Stromsvigt DT members, and most importantly the blog of Stromsvigt founder Nina Christensen. That is where you find out about this month's prize and also where you leave a link to your creation. Links in my blog sidebar. Have fun with this challenge!

/Magdalena

Long time no see

Last weekend I met up with two friends I haven't seen since high school. The very early 90'ies in other words. (Yep, just dated myself there.) We also had some very warm weather. This page is actually page number eight for May, but you'll have to wait until Monday to see page number seven. I created it for the monthly "12 in 14" challenge by Nina Christensen and the Stromsvigt DT. By the way, there's still time to enter the challenge for April - which was using washi tape. See link to the right!

I really love the "Pictures and words no 9" templates and digi brushes by Paislee Press. I took some inspiration from one of the templates in the pack when creating the top right card. The summer fun digi brush comes from this month's SC kit "Hello Hello". So does the celebrate summer brush that I used on the photo to the left.

Enjoy the weekand and see you on Monday!

/Magdalena

RAINBOW SCHEME

For some reason I found the Camelot PL kit quite hard to work with. I liked the kit as a kit, but my pages don't fall together as they usually do. The cards don't go together and I'm having to adjust the colors of my photos very often. For this spread I had so much color in my photos, and I just gave up on finding a coherent color scheme. I decided to go all out rainbow! So here it is:

Materials: SC Camelot PL kit with Arthur and Lancelot addons and some bits and pieces from older kits, Paislee Press "Pictures and words no 9"

/Magdalena