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!