NZ progress

So I can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel for my 2011 New Zealand album. I think there are only three pages left to do - one of which I haven't started, but the other two already have the photos selected and a sketch picked out (I am currently using sketches as part of my work flow to speed things up - I'm finding it's helping).

Here's the most recent pages, including the last of our Rugby World Cup events. (Side note - we've just bought tickets for one of next year's RWC games in Cardiff - so excited already!)

Credits to follow - sorry!

The plan is to print this as a phonebook when done, and as it will be more pages than Photobox can do in their lay-flat books, I'm thinking of using Bob Books. I can't wait to have an actual physical book in my hands - definitely the disadvantage of digital is waiting until all the layouts are done to be able to flick through them in book form.

Wedding album

It took me ages to start work on this album. I wanted to get it right - for me that meant ensuring everything was in one place (no separate cards for example), and that it both showcased the best photos and told the story of the day. Plus, it had to be a combination of my style (bright and colourful) and my husband's (more clean and neutral). Eventually I found Elise Blaha Cripe's album, and that provided the inspiration I needed.

The font and kiwi bird icons are the same ones we used on our invitations, so i'm hoping the whole thing will come together quite easily. The hard part is definitely choosing the photos - we have 1000 from our official photographer and hundreds more from our guests! Here's hoping it will be finished before our 2 year anniversary!

Project Life - September 2014

Although I didn't quite manage to get caught up on my PL, I can say I'm no longer behind. I haven't done October's yet, but as it's still November I think that's allowed! September's layouts confirmed to me that a weekly format isn't what I need - there are only 4 layouts for September. We spent 2 weeks away this month, and the holiday will be documented elsewhere (along with our other Disney vacations), so I've just captured a flavour of the trip here. The other main thing that happened was our Big Garden Makeover, and that takes up most of the other two pages.

Becky Higgins design A, design C, design Q and a variation on design G.
Papers a heimann storyteller
Cards Becky Higgins cherry edition, RB PL candy, Brittish Designs at night freebie

I'm quite pleased with the amount of white space this month - I think I've finally managed not to overfill the pages!

Project Life - August 2014

Continuing with my new found speed on the PL app, I made August's pages on my phone (mainly while I was at work - sometimes my job is awesome!). I chose the photos first and saved them to a folder to sync to my phone, then added the scans of the ephemera to the same folder. Again it was super fast, and again I imported into photoshop elements afterwards to add some extra bits. Mainly this was adding text onto the photos, although I'm currently testing apps that will allow me to do this on my phone.

All pages made with the PLapp using Kraft and Summer editions.
Arrows from Becky Higgins digital PL Cherry edition
Flair badges by Heidi Swapp

The number of pages has grown again, so I'm now up to 7 pages for this month. It hasn't escaped my notice that this is almost as many as a double page spread per week, which I was convinced I couldn't do, but I'm still scrapping by topic rather than chronology and I'm happy with that. If I can get September done in the next 3 days I will no longer be "behind" - watch this space!

A new way to get things done faster

This post could also be titled, "I bought the Project Life App" and it's so fast! I honestly made 4 pages in under 30 minutes - and that was my first time using the app so that included time spent figuring things out.

There isn't much to figure out, having said that. There's no way to embellish using the app, and there's a limited choice of PL kits to pick cards from. But that isn't a negative thing - it meant I just got on with it and got the pages done. I imported two into PS elements afterwards, to see what happened if I tinkered with them a bit more.

Left - original pages from the app
Right - the finished pages after 5 minutes with PhotoShop Elements

All pages created with the PL iPhone app using Strawberry Edition kit

I then sat and watched the TV and created two more pages. That's a whole weeks vacation turned into 6 pages in under an hour total (including choosing photos, using the app and then using PSE). This is definitely going to help me in my mission to get things finished! Next I'm hoping to do our trip to Venice last year, for which I have bought one of the extra in-app purchases of the Summer Themed Cards. I've also created a file of all my existing freebie PL cards that I can sync to the photo album on my phone (hopefully) so I can use some of those too. 

Back in sunny Blighty; it's time for tea

I'm joining in with Abi again this month with her lovely meme. So come in and I'll put the kettle on - something we missed whilst we were away. They're not big on tea in the US!

I'm afraid you can't see our holiday photos yet - although we've put them on the computer it will take another couple of weeks before we've reduced them down to a manageable amount! I'll just have to tell you that we had a lovely time, relaxing in the Florida Keys then being crazy in Walt Disney World. I can show you a couple of my instagram pics from the trip instead.

Surprisingly, we came home from holiday to discover the remnants of summer are still here. Isn't it lovely? It was definitely a pleasant surprise, even though it meant the Big Garden Makeover has had to be delayed - they couldn't put the turf down while we were away as it will need watering.

Do you do Project Life? Are you 'caught up', or doesn't it matter to you? I am now officially behind, for the first time since I started. Somehow October has crept up on me - and I still haven't scrapped August. Never mind, to get six months into the project and only be one month behind is pretty good I think. I'll get to it soon. I'm thinking of getting the new PL app - have you got it? It look super easy - and would mean I could scrapbook at work!

While we were away I bought a new album for my India/Nepal trip. Originally I had a post bound album, but it just isn't big enough. I had to decide between one large album or two smaller ones, and decided on one large one.

Becky Higgins @ Michaels 

I wanted the album to fit with the colours of the trip, so got one that's much more patterned than I would normally choose. Now comes the less fun task of transferring all the layouts that are in the old album into this new album! How do you deal with tasks that are not so fun - any tips?

Anyway I had better go and get on with other not-so-fun tasks - we're having our nieces to stay this weekend, so I've got lots to organise! Keep your fingers crossed that the weather stays nice for us!

How not to get things done

So the reason for the lack of posts recently is simple - I haven't made any layouts. I got over tired and over stressed and couldn't find any creative spark. I sat down in front of both my craft desk and the computer alternately, but no luck.  Oh well, everything goes in fits and starts I suppose.

Meanwhile I have been creating more photos to go in the scrapbook. We're currently on holiday (hooray! Thanks for the sunshine Florida), and whilst we're away The Big Garden Makeover is taking place. So hopefully in two weeks there will be a stack of Disney pictures and a much improved garden to inspire some pages.

Meanwhile it is my husbands birthday today so I'm looking forward to a nice meal on the Key West waterfront, and I plan to listen to this episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable again to fuel my scrapbooking drive.

New Zealand 2011

We moved to New Zealand in March 2001 and lived there for almost two years. Needless to say, we took a LOT of photos! I discovered digital scrapbooking whilst we were there, and so a large proportion of the photos were already scrapped when we got back. I've got the early part of 2011 to finish, and the very end of 2012 (after we left our flat and were just travelling).

Currently I'm working on 2011, and am making good progress. I've got a system going that allows me to break each layout into sections, and that's really helping me scrap faster. Today I've been sorting the very last lot of photos from the year, and working out how many layouts I need to tell those stories.  I think the answer is eight, but it might be seven.

That (hopefully) means I'll shortly be ready to get my first book of digital layouts printed! I'm leaning towards using Bob Books at the moment - they're a bit more expensive but they do lay flat pages and large albums. The other option is PhotoBox - their lay flat pages have a maximum size of 70 pages per album, which I think means I'll need a few albums. Anyone got any experience with these?

Here's my two latest NZ layouts, both from the 2011 Rugby World Cup which was held there, and ruled our life for about 6 weeks!

heart ribbon - sweet shoppe designs
paper - sweet shoppe designs
talk bubble - persnickety prints
camera - scrappin cop
word art - becky higgins
layout - scraplifted; sorry to the currently unknown source!

 paper and ribbon - Coreenslike
RWC - puff paint patriot
"Love it" and journalling card - MissTina freebie journalling cards
layout sketch - scrapbook.com

Shopping for inspiration aka Getting things finished step 3

Having sorted through my 'stash,' I realised I don't actually have much stuff. There wasn't a lot of 12x12 paper, almost no letter stickers and very few useful stamps or embellishments. That could only mean one thing - time to go shopping!

I did some ordering on amazon, nabbed some Becky Higgins page protectors at 25% off at Hobbycraft, then headed to Home Sense for cheap paper pads and finally signed up to the Studio Calico monthly PL kit. All of this has now arrived and I'm excited to start scrapping with it!

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I'm not very good at keeping going with one project. I like to flit around and dive in and out - which generally means nothing gets finished. So I'm trying hard to resist the urge to start on the pocketed pages, and actually get some of the other projects completed first. America is almost done, and so is New Zealand 2011. When they're done, I might allow myself to go crazy with my new stuff!

There's also a UK Facebook group set up by Shimelle Laine and a couple of others, where people are selling off their unwanted stash. So far I've bought some chipboard alphas and some alpha stamps. To top it off, I'm actually heading stateside in three weeks, so I might get chance to do some more shopping!

Project Life - July 2014

I'm definitely getting more into Project Life as the year goes on. It helps that I had more time to do things in July, so I had more things to take pictures of. I still find I occasionally forget to take photos (mainly when we're out for dinner), but I'm getting better.

July took 5 12x12 pages, which is a record for me. That also means it took a lot longer. In retrospect I think I would have been better using 6 pages and giving myself a bit more space - but that's not something I'm very good at! My style could definitely be described as "cram it all on"!

Becky Higgins digital PL templates A, R and Q
Studio Calico Brighton Pier and Wanderlust Journal Cards freebie
The Cottage Market polka dot papers
Sahlin Studio vintage carnival paper
DigiDewi under the sea freebie journal card
Polaroid moment frame currently unidentified freebie - please help credit!
Ziggle designs orange 4x4 freebie card
yellow hello card from Persnickety Prints
Tags from One Velvet Morning and List Girl

I'm not yet blog-savvy enough to put the pictures side by side - sorry!

USA - almost there!

The America albums are rapidly approaching completion. Today I've been working on the final layout, but first I want to share the first new layout I've done for these albums.

Both of the 'new' pages are designed to add context and better tell the story of why we went to America. They will go at the beginning of the first album, after the cover page, to form a sort of introduction.

Papers from Amy Tangerine Ready Set Go
Journalling pen Sharpie ultra fine
Everything else old stash

I don't think I've ever done a title this big before, but I think like it! I also used PicFrame to create the two smaller photos - I just dragged them into a 4x6 template and had it printed as one photo. I'm planning to do this with a lot of my photos, which is also new to me - previously I have only printed at 6x4. We'll see how it goes!

Redone pages

I've never redone pages before, but I had 2 pages in my USA album that I hated. I've always hated them, they just looked half hearted and not really done properly. So I decided the time had come to redo those layouts. This is what the first one looked like before:

No idea where this paper is from!

 and after:

PL cards printable freebies from misstina
Paper from Studio Calico Atlantic paper pad
Letters from a very old stash!

The second page I forgot to take a before photo (oops! still getting used to this idea of photographing layouts), so here's the after:

PL cards free printables from lemon and honey
Paper and ribbon old stash

I also finally finished the journalling on this layout - it's been waiting for the score for a decade!

All old!

I'm fairly happy with the first redone layout, and I quite like the baseball one too. I'm not so keen on the second (Gettysburg) layout, but you'll have to trust me when I say that it's a lot better than it was - the background paper was wallpaper before!

My photos have arrived from snapfish, and my mum has arrived with the visas for me to scan, so I can get on with the last two layouts in these albums soon!

Getting things finished - step two

Having made my not-so-small list of unfinished projects, I've then subdivided each project into the various parts needed to complete it. Each project has the same basic steps, although these vary slightly depending on whether the project is paper or digital and how much I've already done.

Here are the steps:
1 - choose (and print) photos
2 - sort memorabilia/ephemera
3 - get album and page protectors together/set up folders on computer if digital
4 - collate any products bought specifically for that project (more on this later)
5 - sort photos and ephemera into topics
6 - get scrapping!
7 - title page, closing page and check the album tells the whole story

And how they apply to my America albums:
1-6 basically done, apart from 2 pages which I really don't like (and never have).
7 - not really. There is no end page, it just suddenly changes to another completely unrelated topic.  There's also no story - nowhere in the album have I explained why we were in America and where my parents lived. I'm not really surprised by this, as they were my first ever scrapbooks and journalling wasn't as big then (certainly not for me anyway, how much was everyone else writing in 2003?).

So that means I need some new pages, and some new photos. I've ordered a couple of prints, and my mum is bringing some with her when she visits next week. They will allow me to add two additional pages to tell the story.

So I end up with a to do list of:

• redo 2 pages
• end page
• 2 story pages
• rearrange abums and take out other layouts

I've already done the last part, and I did the end page yesterday. I used this idea from Kelly Purkey, and made a map of the places I visited during the two years.

Washi tape from Whimsy Designs
Tags from October Afternoon Travel Girl Miscellany Pack
Dymo LetraSet printing
Rest - too old to know!

I'm quite pleased with this page, although I wish I'd made the map bigger as some of the smaller states (like the one we lived in!) were a bit fiddly. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to show you the two redone pages, and then the end will be clearly in sight!

Starting out...

Just to be clear, I'm not starting out scrapbooking. Or blogging for that matter. I'm starting out blogging about scrapbooking. I figure this will allow me to post layouts online (for challenges etc.), join in with some fun memes (like Abi's time for tea), keep a record of where I'm up to with my scrapbooks - and be accountable for my progress (or lack of it!).

I've always crafted, mainly focussing on card making and calligraphy when I was younger. I started scrapbooking in 2003, when my parents lived in America. I was at university at the time, which meant that I often didn't have the space to scrap. I did a lot of my layouts in the holidays, working alongside my mum at her dining room table. When they came back from the USA in late 2004, I did what I could in my shared student house.

In 2006 I graduated and had a whole room to spread my craft things out in - but I was working between 56 and 90 hours per week, so again not much got done. In 2010 my now husband moved in, and I lost my scrap desk to his computer. Then in 2011, we really made crafting difficult.

We moved to New Zealand. With only 8 boxes for 2 years. there was no space for craft things. I though scrapbooking was once again on the back burner - until I discovered it could be done digitally. Hooray for photoshop elements!

I started my digital layouts in November, and managed to be "caught up" by the time we left our apartment just over a year later. I have continued to scrap digitally since we came back, and am looking forward to getting my first book printed soon (I hope!).

So where am I at now? I've started doing digital Project Life this year, using Becky Higgins' digital templates. I'm also completing digital layouts from early 2011, and trying to complete paper albums that I started years ago. I'm hoping to share all of these here, so we'll see how it goes.

To start with, here's my Project Life layouts for June. Hopefully I've managed to resize and save them appropriately! I do PL monthly rather than weekly, and a month takes as many pages as it takes, which is working for me at the moment.

Fonts: DJB tell your story (Darcy Baldwin freebie @ Sweetshoppedesigns).
Papers/cards: A Shaw Happy day freebie,  DHD this is why, M Bennett sunny days.
Elements: Love stamps,  flutter swirl, A Shaw happy days bow, KD Brushed up life sentiments.
Templates: Becky Higgins Design A as above.
Some are unidentified as I downloaded them before I realised I should keep track of where they came from!
Sorry for any lack of credit, if someone can tell me where it came from I'm happy to amend this.

Getting things finished - step one

For me, step one is obvious - define "things." I've done several courses about goal setting, and how targets should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timed). I know some people work best when they can chop and change between projects, but I don't really get anywhere when I do that. My motivation is driven by progress, so breaking up a task into smaller sections means more things to cross off the to-do list!

So here's the list (in no particular order) of scrapbook projects currently in progress.

1. New Zealand 2011   (digital, almost done)
2. Our wedding            (digital, a few pages, fairly organised)
3. America 2002-2004       (almost done)
4. Family events and holidays        (few pages, no organisation)
5. South of France          (no pages, some organisation)
6. Paris              (few pages, some organisation)
7. Dublin            (few pages, some organisation)
8. University           (Few pages, no organisation - however I'm very excited about this one, having listened to this episode of the Paperclipping Roundtable several times)
9. India and Nepal 2005           (lots of pages, well organised)
10. Thailand 2008           (few pages, quite well organised)
11. Project Life 2013        (digital, few pages, kind of organised)
12. Project Life 2014         (digital, ongoing, up to date, well organised)
13. Toulouse            (few pages, some organisation)
14. The journey home 2012-2013            (no pages, limited organisation)

Hmm, that's quite a long list! You may notice a theme - prior to this year I only scrapped travel/vacations. I travel a lot, so that's still a lot of layouts to do! As you can see, some of these projects/albums are almost finished, and one is ongoing but up to date. The rest are in various stages ranging from lots of layouts and pretty organised (more on this later) to only a couple of pages and just been defined as it's own topic!

In order to keep me motivated, I'm going to start with the albums that are the closest to being finished - America and India & Nepal. I've already started working on these albums, so I'll have to blog that in retrospect. 

I've decided that anything I haven't started at all (no photos printed or layouts made) will be done digitally, whilst anything that has physical photos or the start of a 12 x 12 album will be done with paper. Yes, that does mean there's another list of projects I want to do but haven't started yet!

Next up - step two - make a giant to do list!

Time for tea

I'm joining in with Abi this month and inviting you in for a cup of tea. I love the idea of this, and have read various 'tea' posts over the last few months, and now I'm ready to join in.

If we were sharing a cup of tea right now, it would have to be iced tea! It's so sunny at the moment, and I'm not good with hot drinks in this weather. My husband is - he'll have a cup, so I'm happy to put the kettle on! Would you like an apple to go with it - they're freshly picked from the tree in our garden?

It's lovely to be able to relax with a drink and chat to friends. It still doesn't seem real that I've finally finished with exams, and I have time to do what I enjoy. We met a friend from New Zealand for coffee yesterday (iced mochas, yum), and it was lovely to catch up. Between her exams and mine, we haven't seen her for a year!

I've got so many projects I'm excited about at the moment. I'm having to rein myself in and concentrate on a couple at a time - or none of them will get finished. That's what got me into this mess - starting too many projects, so I'm determined not to start more until at least one is finished! Are you good at finishing things? I'd love you to share any tips!

We're choosing photos to put on the wall in our house - we have six photo frames for the spare bedroom,  so it seemed fitting to chose a photo of each of the six continents we've visited. I got that idea from Natalie - she's been to all seven. We wonder how many people will realise that's what we've done - do you recognise  the locations? Hopefully we haven't been too obscure!

In our bedroom we're choosing picture of us - this is much harder! Maybe I can show you the short list so you can help us choose? It will be nice to have some photos on the walls so we're hoping to get them printed this week.

I can't chat for long, as I'm still recovering from being unwell. It was nice talking to you though - see you again next month?