Digital Project LIfe

Hey there

So never did I expect the day to come that I would try digital scrapbooking but it seems since I got Photoshop elements 11 for Christmas and started Project Life in January, I have been trying all sorts of new things. Its been a blast.

I love the process of traditional scrapbooking so I will not be giving it up. And I am enjoying the physical form of Project Life for my yearly album too. However I wanted so much to do something in digi too so I decided I would do a first year album of my daughter in digi. That may seem strange as I am also working on a physical PL baby album but there is a difference. The baby album will be the before, during and after pregnancy, then first year of Lily's life using the Becky Higgins baby core kit. Lots of memorabillia and that sort of stuff. The digi thing will pretty much be Lily's first year in photos with a little bit of journalling.

The plan I have (and lets hope mum doesn't read my blog) is to get the digi version printed for our mum's for christmas there year. Pretty sure they will love it! And it gives me a chance to dabble in that other style.

So here are the first couple of digi pages I have done so far. The title page took me all of about 15 minutes as a bit of an experiment one day but that's what hooked me in.

 

Week 1 LHS

W1 RHS



Let me know what you think of my first lot of digital pages.

Holly x

Scrapmatts & FWAB Product Swap & Competition

 

Welcome to the start of Scrapmatts and Flourish with a Bling product swap! Incase you haven't heard of FWAB, they are a manufacturer of pearl, rhinestone, puffy, metallic and laser flourishes and designs that are sure to add some sparkle and shine to any creation - www.flourishwithabling.com.


Scrapmatts is an Australian chipboard retailer, offering fine designs for scrapbooking and cardmaking and have been in the craft industry for 27 years. They exhibit their designs in Craft Shows all aorund Australia www.scrapmatts.ning.com (http://www.scrapmatts.ning.com/)


We are so excited to show you what our design team have come up with so we thought a little competition would be fitting to celebrate the swap :-)





In order to enter this fabulous giveaway you can do one of the following three things:

1 Head on over to the Ning Gallery and name your favorite project you've seen in the gallery this month,
2. Head on over to the Scrapmatts Facebook fanpage and name your favorite project you've seen in the gallery www.scrapmatts.com (http://www.scrapmatts.com/) this month, making sure you've hit "Like" to become a fan.

3. "Like" and leave a comment on Flourish with a Blings Facebook fanpage (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flourish-with-a-Bling/161195340576237 ) and tell them Scrapmatts sent you.

4. Leave a comment on this post.


Do all four to enter yourself into the draw four times!

Winners will be posted on Tuesday the 7thMarch

Be sure to head back to the NING page every day this week for some more inspiration.

For now, here are some sneaks of my swap creations... head back here 1st March to see my full reveals.

Have a great week :)

Project Life Week 5

Hey there

So life at 30 = a head cold. Must have been too much excitement for one week lol I have had a sore throat, cough and now sniffles for the past couple of days. Not much fun when trying to keep miss Lily happy. So far she has not seem to have caught mummy's germs though at least. But she has been giving me a hard time with crazy late bed time the past 2 days. 2:30am the night before and 3am last night. Her dad and I take in turns trying to get her to sleep. One thing is for sure, our little miss has always been very active!

But I have mostly kept up with my project life so far this year so I thought I'd better share something of my past few weeks. I am a couple of journal spots off finishing last week (Complete with a big insert from my party). Only problem is, we haven't had a sunny day here in Queensland in what feels like weeks so my photos are downright shocking. And I probably should have taken them out of the album to photograph. But hey... I'm sick ;)

So here is my week 5 double spread (and totally shocking photo):

As the week crossed over from January to February, I included a 6 x 12 review in photos slip with instagram photos from the month. It was easier to do this document in microsoft word rather than the effort of resizing in photoshop. Not quite as neat but it did the job. This is using a WRMK page protector with the 6x12 and 3 4x6 horizontal slips.

Page 1

Page 2

 

 These photos really are horrible. I'm sorry. I should have re-photographed but with such awful overcast weather, they might not have been much better.

Materials: BH page protrectors & Seafoam card; Simple stories SNAP collection; WRMK page protector; Echo park photo freedom collection.

Please summer.. come back for the last week of February!!! I miss the sunshine.

I will share week 6 and 7 soon but maybe with some better photos lol

Holly x

THIRTY

Heya

Warning... this is an extremely long blog post.

The 16th of February was my 30th birthday. It is strange how quickly that one sneaks up when the 20s seem to last ages until those last couple of years in the 20s. Or maybe it has something to do with all the stuff I crammed into my life in the past couple of years: marriage, travel, career, paying a mortgage, baby... These things do tend to keep one quite busy.

At 20, thirty seemed so old. Now... well it still sounds old but I don't feel any older lol But I can certainly say at 30 I am pretty content with the life I am living. I have achieved a lot in my 30 years and the biggest of those things and the one that makes me happiest is the most recent... the birth of my daughter. But I am also proud to have progressed as far in my career as I have already, making it to senior psychologist at 28 and to have gained substantial assets in our lives to live a confortable life. I have my love, Simon (who spoilt me rotten with an iPad for my birthday... woot!). And together we have seen a lot of places around the world, with 2 trips to Europe and 1 each to NZ and Fiji. Almost a trip to China that became a trip to Tassie thanks to some concerns with travelling with morning sickness.

I can certainly say that my 30th birthday was one I enjoyed greatly, with a celebration with friends and family. I almost didn't have a party but at the last minute kinda threw something together with a bit of  a hollywood theme for fun. A chance to dress up and feel pretty 2.5 months after giving birth. I am also proud to say I am very close to my pre-baby weight too. At least I am only 1.5kg off my usual weight and a few more off the super skinny pre-pregnancy weight I was.

But that leads me to the start of this week... which was not all happy moments. I can't remember if I blogged it or not. I think I did. But the 11th of February came with the sad reminder of the day last year I spent in hospital emergency for 6 hours due to a miscarriage. At the time it was so hard to imagine everything was going to be okay again anytime soon. But then by some amazing luck, I did fall pregnant again 6 weeks later approximately and that pregnancy was completely smooth sailing and brought us the most beautiful girl in the world and the light of my life. So it was a day that had me feeling a little flat though remembering the sadness that 12 months ago brought us.

Then I received other news that night that has still left me shocked and deeply saddened. A close friend from school whom I had not seen in recent years had tragically passed away with circumstances that make my heart ache. It shook me up quite a bit and we are yet to have the opportunity to farewell her so I know that day will be hard. I do hope she is at peace now though :( And I will always remember the amazing memories we shared over the years.

I think come next year, I will be keeping all my loved ones close and safe next February 11th.

But I am lucky to have been surrounded by wonderful people and good times over my birthday weekend. I really appreciate the effort my family went to in making it a great night.

I also had the idea from my favourite website - Pinterest of course, to have a DIY photobooth on the night. I wasn't too sure how it would turn out but there were some great pics as a result and it meant I got to be in pictures instead of being the one taking them. All I did was set the camera up on a tripod with the flash bulb, instructions on how to turn the camera on and activiate the timer. Then a bucket of props to get them in the mood. Here's some photo booth action.

 

 

Anyway... here's to a brilliant year of being 30 hopefully.

 

Holly x

 

Heritage Frame

Hello everyone,

Recently I had a friend ask me to help her create a scrapbook gift for her mother's 60th birthday. Her idea was to do a scrapbook layout, however I suggested we instead make something a little easier to display. I happen to have an abundance of Kaisercraft wood items just waiting to be used so we ended up using one of the Kaisercraft frames.

With our joint effort, this is what we ended up with, using scanned photos of my friend's mum from when she was young:

Kaisercraft have some lovely patterned papers designed to fit perfectly in the slots of these frames so it makes for a very easy and quick item to create. All you need really are some photos (and 4x6 and 3x4 photos are the perfect fit), some papers, and any embellishments you wish to add... such as chipboard shapes! This particular frame was done using the Kaiser Ivy and Blae collection, with Kaiser paper blooms and A2Z Scraplets chipboard.

The frame itself was painted white and the A2Z scraplets leave vines were also painted in complimentary colours to suit the background papers. Not great photos as they were photographed indoors at about 10pm at night but hopefully you can see those cute little scraplets hidden in there.

Thanks for looking.

Holly

Love At First Sight

Hey

So February is the month of love and over at Scrapmatts, our design team theme this month was to create around the theme of love. So what better inspiration than a layout about the ultimate love of my life... my daughter Lily. Surprise surprise lol

Amazing how strong the love for a child is instantly. She is my everything already!

Materials: Echo park papers; d-lish scraps doilys; Scrapmatts chipboard; Adorn it alphas; Purple pumpkin button; kindy glitz; other - heart doily, flowers.

Thanks for visiting.

Holly x

Happy Scrappy News

Hello

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. I just wanted to do a quick post to share the exciting news that I was the challenge winner over at Polly Scrap for January. It was actually announced on the 1st but I have only just had a bit of a catch up on some blogs and discovered the happy news.

I love the layout myself so it's an honour to win with it. Thanks to Kayla and Amanda over at Polly Scraps.

You can see the post here


And this is the layout:

Holly x

Project Life Week 3-4

Hey there

I'm back with my next set of Project Life pages for the 3rd and 4th weeks of January. Fairly uneventful 3rd week and the 4th we were mostly housebound as hubby got sick and then there were the floods in QLD. Parts of our suburb were affected but overall, very little impact on us personally. So sad for all those people who did lose their homes or worse... especially anyone already affected by the 2011 flood disaster. Can't believe it happened again so soon.

So my week 4 includes a news summary type section with key points of the flood situation. And a couple of pics collaged, which were taken from friends on facebook of places near by. One of those roads happen to be the way I would go to work if I weren't on maternity leave. And our local shopping centre car park. Not good!

Double spread

Week 3 close up

Week 4 close up

Materials for these pages included some more Becky Higgins seafoam edition. Just lovely!! Along with the BH white card and grid cards. I also used some Echo Park Photo Freedom and more of those gorgeous wood veneer pieces from Studio Calico. They are perfect for PL. And there are a couple of internet freebies on there too.. one of which was a Aus day 2012 card that I fixed up with a couple of number stickers to read 2013. Thanks to the person in the PL Australia FB group for pinning that on pinterest.

The page protector with the 6x12 slot is a EP photo freedom one. I set this insert up on Photoshop Elements... which I am so proud of. Going back a couple of weeks I didn't even own this program but now I'm making templates lol I then printed it out on A4 card and added an extra bit of card with some washi tape. In future I'll use proper 12 x 12 cardstock as I had been using photopaper but realise its not really neccessary for this type of insert.

Also, those week in review cards are simple ones I designed myself in Microsoft word. Very basic but they fit the purpose well as I can change the colour of the border and title each week to suit my colours. I just printed them out on the 4x6 grid cards from Becky Higgins. Simple but effective!

Anyway, I've almost finished week 5 and am contemplating how to start week 6. Being a newbie means I'm still not overly fast lol But I'm sure I'll streamline in time.

Thanks for visiting.

Holly x

Project Life Week 1-2

Hello

Can you believe it is already February? I am shocked how fast time goes by as a mother. I don't feel like I achieve a great day most days other than meeting her needs and a little (not nearly enough) keeping the house tidy... okay that bits probably a lie. I spend the time I should be cleaning being creative. Thankfully Lily is a great baby so each day I manage to squeeze in some sort of crafting. Especially since I am now the newest Project Life addict.

For those of you who do not know what Project Life is, it is a simplistic style of scrapbooking and memory keeping envisioned by Becky Higgins. Essentially it takes the time consuming part out of traditional scrapbooking as Becky has put together kits that pretty much have everything you need to throw together a yearly scrapbook. Her core kits come complete with enough journalling and filler cards to fill an album. In fact, Becky offers starter kits with an album, page protectors and a core kit so all you need to add is your photos and journalling really. Easy.

Here is the link to Becky Higgins blog if you're keen to learn more: Becky's Blog

But in saying that, I have never been that simple so Project Life isn't always as quick as that if your style is a bit more like traditional scrapping, which is my preference. I am only a newbie but I already like to mix it up a bit with different kits or using bits of my stash for embellishing too. Its up to you what you want to do with your Project Life. Same goes whether you want to be a daily record keeper, weekly or just event based.

So that's enough on the educational stuff... now onto the actual photos. My title page is incomplete as I plan to have a family photo session organised soon and will use photos from that shoot for my cover page. So not much point sharing that as it is really just using some Simple Stories SNAP free printables. 

Now you may laugh... I actually completed January around a week ago. Then decided I wasn't overly impressed. I thought I would prefer a monthly style PL, but decided I did want a weekly breakdown so I ended up re-doing my entire January. Oops!

Here are weeks 1-2 full page spread:

Materials: Becky Higgins page protectors; Becky Higgins digital seafoam collection; Becky Higgins Mayfield kit; Becky Higgins grid cards; Simple stories SNAP free printables; SNAP paper; American crafts thickers; Studio Calico wood veneer; EP alphas; Martha Stewart ink; D-lish scraps doily; Dymo labeller.

                                                                   Week 1 close up:

Week 2 close up

The Becky Higgins Seafoam collection - digital (Can be purchased here).

I have also included a quote on my cardstock which can be downloaded as a freebie along with lots of other well known inspirational quotes from current Project Life DT member Elise Blaha here. I thought it was a great quote to start off the year. Elise is also the designer of the amazing Seafoam edition.

Also in the past couple of weeks since learning of Project Life and starting my own PL journey, I have discovered a whole big world of freebies out there. I have also learnt a few basic editing tricks in Photoshop Elements... something I had no clue about a week or so ago. Yep, even I am amazed I purchased elements from a digital kit! But keep an eye out for freebies for those of you who are just starting out or considering the digitial scrapping option.

At this stage, Becky Higgins products can be purchased from Craft House in New Zealand for Aussie customers however come May, it will be available for purchase from many local Aussie retailers, in time for the new release products. And there are so many of them. I cannot wait to get my hands on a few of the upcoming core kits!

So... have you tried Project Life? I'd love to hear other people's experiences and reasons for PLing!

Holly xo

Mini Album

Hello everyone

Can you believe it is February already? I can't but then again, things are busier in my household these days.

Today I just wanted to share a mini album I did with the arrival of my daughter in December. I had prepared most of it before she arrived so it was just a matter of adding photos and a bit of journalling. The mini album has been shared on the A2Z Scraplets FB page so you may have seen the front cover already, however below are the rest of the pages:

The album is a Kaisercraft wooden butterfly album I had in my stash and it was embellished using the Kaiser TigerLily collection... which is fitting since my daughters name is Lily. There are 3 A2Z Scraplets new releases featured in the album. Chipboard is perfect for embellishing mini albums as it is flat and doesn't add too much bulk to your pages. I especially love the Welcome to the World scraplet on the front cover.

 

Also in case you have not already seen the news, you can now buy A2Z Scraplets products direct from the online store. No more trouble trying to find the exact chipboard piece you want from stocklists now. Go check it out here.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

Holly :)