Still Going Strong!

It's Day 13 and I am still going strong. I may not have posted here every day but I have been doing a layout a day. Sometimes a Pocket Page (or two), sometimes a 12 x 12 and sometimes a digital layout like this one for Day 10.

As I was cycling home with my son through pouring rain I realized that this cycling thing we do in Amsterdam might be a good topic to scrap this LOAD so I decided to kind of document the evolution of Thomas's modes of transporation from pram to riding his own bike:

Journalling reads: 
Raising a kid in Amsterdam means you need to be creative with the wheels. Cars are just not that practical to get aroun city in and parking is always a pain. So you try to work out the easiest way to get kiddo and everything that comes with them plus some groceries:-) from A to B. In the first few months you really need the pram so it was walking or tramming it. But then when muncher could sit we got a “bakfiets”,very popular in Amsterdam. Not so popular with my back so I was happy when we could put T on the front of my trusty Batavus and later on he went on the back. Nowadays ( he’s 6) he gets to cycle in front of me. We both love it except when it rains...but we suit up and just get going! Amsterdam February 2016

Digital template from Simple Scrapper.

And today I also did a paper layout about one of my favourite places (the topic was landmark): It HAD to be about one of my favourite places to visit: Glastonbury Tor: a manmade "hill" with a tower on top of it. Glastonbury is a special place for many different religions and it draws seekers from all over the globe to the Tor. We try to go to Glastonbury every time we visit my Mother in Law. It is a bit of a hike but always worth it: the views, the energy, all that space and the wind blowing all the cobwebs out of my head. Just love it!

This is one of the few times I actually cut in a photo, I cut all the sky out of the picture so you get to see the sprayed sunburst.

I had already documented another landmark last week. One much closer to home:

Do you notice a colour theme here? I can't help it but I really seem to gravitate towards the yellow-blue colour scheme in many of my layouts. Different shades of it but still.

Do you have a favourite/often used colour scheme? Or one you never use? I am not that big on the vintagy browns for my scrapbooks. Or black and white for that matter. Although I do love those for card making.

I'm at it again. Load 215! Day 1 is in the pocket

It's finally here! I love doing these Layout a Day Challenges and the last one was in May of 2014. Too long ago! Not that I didn't have a million things to do already but still, this so so much fun to do and so satisfying. 

The general theme of this LOAD challenge is Books and Stories of your Chlidhood and today's prompt was 'Which character did you relate to or imagine you were?'  For me it turned out to be two red heads (I only just realized this:-):  Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery and Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

Today I am taking it relatively easy with a digital layout. I'm still feeling a bit under the weather from being ill and had a late night last night. But I am very happy with how this worked out.

My childhood heroins were Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking. Their goodness and sense of right and wrong was so inspiring to me. Despite being  deemed unruly and uncivilized by the 'proper' people they would still always do what is right and always climb back up after falling flat on their face time and time again. That still inspires me:-)

I used a Simple Scrapper Digital Template and most elements came from Melissa Bennett's Oh Boy Kit from Sweet Shoppe. 

Another LOAD has started and I am taking part...here's Day 1

Today my third Layout a Day Challenge starts and I am very excited about it. The theme is Past Perfect and it's all about your past. Thursday's main theme is 'Pop Culture'and today's prompt is 'In the news' so I went with these pictures of when I was in the news...back in the last century;-) I am using them to tell a bit about my first jobs and eventually this layout will go into my 'Before your story' album for my son. 

LOAD Day 16: A brother and his tools and a sister using hers...

The prompt for Day 16 was a wrench, a tool used in plumbing if I'm right;-) It made me think about this picture I had of my brother cutting my bike loose after I had lost the keys to the lock... I had wanted to scrap this picture for a while and this was my chance. I took the prompt to tell about how I call on my brother whenever I need any tool bigger than a hammer or a screw driver. And he pretty much always delivers: huge hammers, tree cutters, brick laying equipment. You name it, he's got it or he can get it somewhere. And...he'll help me use it or do it for me. What a brother!

The other part of this layout is that I have used my tool (heat gun) for the second time since I got it last year. I used it to emboss the  cogs in gold (it doesn't show on this picture but believe me it looks pretty cool:-) and I was really happy about that. 

And to help me use my other tools more often I have just purchased Jennifer Gallagher's Tools School mini workshop (video). Looking forward to checking that out!

LOAD Day 14: Who? Karen!

Day 14 of LOAD, I have made it through two whole weeks. I am tired and proud. Today I was back to scrapping with paper and I really enjoyed it. I had totally forgotten about this paper I had found in a discount bin a while ago but with its bit of sparkle it really matched the picture of me and my American friend Karen. We met on exchange in Sweden a long time ago and we were instant friends spending pretty much every day together. When I went back home to The Netherlands and she went back to the US it was heartbreaking but we did our best to see each other when we could. We don't get to see each other nearly as much as we'd like but with a bit of luck we'll be seeing each other again this year.

Today's prompt was just 'WHO?' and I decided to scrap about how much I miss her and how much I am looking forward to seeing her. The picture is from 1997, the story is from the now, love the combination.

LOAD Day 13 - Typically Thomas

I didn't realize that I hadn't put this one up yet. It's my layout for Day 13 when the prompts was 'Modus Operandi' which roughly means 'The way things are done' so, inspired by Melissan Shanhun of http://www.digitalscrapbookinghq.com/blog/ who does Monthly Baby Reports of her second son I decided to do some pictures of typical things that Thomas does at 3,5. I used a standard Photoshop Elements template that I stretched to Scrapbook size. Really happy with this.

LOAD Day 12: Gangnam Style!

Well, this layout almost didn't get done on time. On top of our busy day (leaving our holiday home, including cleaning it and doing a Thomas the Tank Engine day at the Dutch Railway Museum) I got ill yesterday. Part exhaustion, part food poisoning I think. I had started on my layout in the car on the way to the museum and that meant that by the time we got home and I was feeling pretty bad I only had the background and title to do.

The prompt was the movie 'The Usual Suspects'. I had to do a bit of searching before I came up with this. Had I been home where I have all my photos on an external harddrive then it would have been easy but I had to make do with what was on my laptop: 6 months of pictures only:-) So I was browsing through my pictures as we were zooming over the A2 from Maastricht to Utrecht. Finally (I only had limited battery power) I came across these pictures of my son Thomas (l) and his friend Rayan dancing and singing along to the Gangnam Style video on YouTube. With their sun glasses on they look a bit like little gangsters so I thought that would fit the prompt well enough.

I really wanted to add some neon to the pictures as there is also a lot of it in the video. But getting the neon on the different elements wasn't as straightforward as I thought. I am only just getting to know Photoshop Elements so there was a lot of trial and error involved and I am still not sure I did it right but it works for now. This is also the first time I used a black background. I tried many different patterned backgrounds before I came up with the black last night. I think it works really well.

LOAD Day 11: Lust for Life!

Wooohooo, I've made it one third into the month: 11 layouts in 11 days. I am very pleased with this result. No guarantees for the future though, tomorrow will be a challenge. We are leaving our vacation address early (some cleaning required) and then we are off to the Thomas the Tank Engine weekend in Utrecht. This should be great fun for Thomas but a bit tiring for mummy and daddy.  We'll be home around dinner time and will have to do some unpacking etc. I am going to attampt to do my layout in the car on the way to Utrecht. I love getting this job out of the way as early in my day as possible. It means I get some proper nights sleep and that is really important if you're trying to raise a young boy;-)

As you can see on the layout our little man (the one in the blue top) loves to rough and tumble! Pictures were taken yesterday while we were visiting friends with their kids on a campsite close to our vacation address. Because I am digiscrapping for this vacation I can just use the pics I take immediately. At any size I like, that's pretty cool. I get so much inspiration from the digi kits as well. I would really like to recreate in 'paper'  that star embellishment with all the bits of ribbon behind it. But for now I went with customizing the original digital embellishment with some alphas (letters) from three different kits by Happy to Create: Awesome Life, Awesome Kid and Action Hero. I really enjoyed trying some more embellishments but all in all it's still a very simple layout, just the way I like it.

Before I forget: Today's prompt was 'Lust' and I went with Lust for Life as these three boys are just having a blast making the most of life. 

Load day 10: We're in the Library

With hubby sleeping in and Thomas happily playing with all the toys in our holiday swap home i had time in the morning to do today's layout. So I am free for the rest of the day and evening:-)

Today we are in the Library and I did a layout about a bookshop in a church in Maastricht. We came upon it yesterday and I just had to take a picture and have a browse. It even had a coffee bar in the back, how cool is that?

This is another digital layout. I use bits and pieces from two Happy to Create kits: Awesome Kid and Awesome Life.

The Awesome Life Kit can be downloaded for free at Happy to Create!

Load Day 9: Water guns and big noises!

Using the really cool Action Hero Digikit by happytocreate.com I created another page about Queensday. With the prompt being about Shooting I thought they would go well with the pictures I took of us with the water guns and making lots of banging noises at the Magic Wand making workshop. I think I will be using this kit again, it suits little boys really well:-)

LOAD Day 8: Canon shots and really fast scrapping

I was wondering if day 8 might be the day I would be skipping because today we were about to go on a long weekend away. And as we were swapping house I spent most of the day washing, cleaning and packing. When all that was done and I had a little bit of time left I decided to check out the prompt and it was Colonel Mustard. Lain suggested, among other things, to scrap an army or navy themed page. And that was all I needed to scrap the fastest page ever, under 30 minutes, including painting the crown gold!

I did the journalling in a Word document and then wondered if I could turn it into our flag by adding blue and red background colouring above and below it. It worked. Printed it out, cut photos to size, paint crown gold and add everything to the orange background paper to reflect our royal family being from the House of Orange.

The pictures are from the morning of our last Queensday. Our Queen Beatrix abdicated that morning and in the afternoon her son Willem Alexander was installed as our new King. It was a day filled with festivities and rituals. One of them being a Dutch navy fregat sailing up the IJ (river like body of water on the edge of Amsterdam) firing off 101 canon shots. All very exciting. Having my son, husband and my best friend with her 3 kids (bottom right) there made it even better.

Now I am not sure what the next few days will bring where LOAD is concerned. We are away with our little family of three and I want to enjoy my time away so I wonder if the scrapping will happen. We'll see.

LOAD Day 2: Taking a stab at something new

Thursday on LOAD 513 are about weapons and today's clue is 'Taking a stab at it'. You could literally run a knife over your layout or pierce some holes. I took the more symbolic meaning of trying something new and scrapped some pictures of a vintage layout workshop I did at Essies in Almere:

For this layout I kept it a bit more toned down than the one I did in the workshop: tearing, distressing and inking the edges with Walnut stain. The font is Calligraph421 BT, I really like it. And I already know I will use it again in the future because there is a Pirate layout waiting to be made:-)

So, what new thing would you still like to 'take a stab' at? Still on the do-I-dare list is sewing on the page. I really dread my machine playing up and it all becoming one big tangled up mess. But I already know I will do it, I can try anything!

LOAD DAY 1: Mrs. White is in the house

Well, I made it and very much on time:-)

Today's prompt was 'Mrs. White is in the house'. Mrs. White is the servant in the mystery game of Clue (Cluedo in most countries). You could interpret it any way you like: leaving lots of white space, doing an all white page etc. etc. Quite a few people went with a snowy christmasy theme. Can you believe that never even entered my mind? After so many months of cold and snow here in The Netherlands I am very much done with snow!

I really triggered on the 'house' bit in the prompt and remembered how, when we moved into our home 5 years ago, we painted over the purple and green walls of our living room with a soft white. It felt so good to paint away the old colours and start fresh. Of course, 5 years on I really want to add some colour to our 'natural' colour scheme of whites, coffee, honey and chocolate but that's a different story.

I was dying to use my new Distress paint dabbers and thought it would be cool to do some painting on the page. Finding some cardstock in exactly the same colours as the ones we painted over was a big bonus. Now all this messy painting isn't really me but I really enjoyed it. I couldn't help myself though when it came to the journalling and printed out the text. Cutting them out in neat little strips and attaching them very carefully:-)

I also went outside my comfort zone with the kind of photos I used. These are, in my view, a bit boring. Ugly even and I prefer to scrap catchy or pretty photos. This challenge is already pushing my boundaries in a good way.

I got my layout done in between daily chores: whenever I got an idea I just went and did it straight away. Find the photos (not so easy, they were in boxes hidden in the back of a closet), pull out some card stock, paint, paint some more, paint with stencil, type out journalling, print, cut, stamp title and then added some embellishments as it was feeling a bit flat:-) Because I was on a deadline most of my perfectionism got pushed to the side: no time for better ideas, just keep going!

I'd love to hear what you think and what you would have done with this prompt. Thanks for stopping by!

Getting ready for LOAD: craft space organization

It's only my first time doing LOAD and I have been reading as much as I can about how to get ready for LOAD. I've done a few specific things in the run up to LOAD that make me feel much more comfortable about the daunting task ahead of me. And maybe this post will help you too. It's a combination of both how to get ready for LOAD and how to speed up your scrapbooking in general so that it's faster, easier and even more fun to put your stories on paper.

A few weeks ago I decided to turn things around in my 'office'. My desk was very utilitarian in an administratieve kind of a way. Not representing what I spend most of my time on: Making paper creations. My scrapbooking and art supplies were all neatly tidied away in some cool boxes. This meant that when I wanted to go and do something it would mean having open boxes all over my room (and the rest of the house:-). And because I didn't always feel like doing that I would either not make a layout at all or it would be a bit lacking in the decoratieve department. Also, I had bought lots more art supplies (think acrylic paints and stencils etc.) recently that I wanted to use in my scrapbooking but they were tidied away even further. So they didn't make it to the page and I felt guilty about that. Not a good thing!

So I decided to put all of my art supplies within easy reach: Paints, (glitter) glue and sprays in open containers hanging on the wall. Punches, inks, wooden stamps and sheets of lettering, flowers and ribbon in drawers on top of my desk. On top of the drawers are  two baskets: one with clear stamps and the other with small 6x6 patterned papers. My main 12 x 12 papers are in the book case right behind my desk.

In the four drawers under my desk are some more essentials: adhesives of course, embellishments and scrap drawer. 

The scraps are both just odds and ends but there are also some clear files with colour coordinated scraps that were leftover from layouts I made. I've found that this way I can easily match them up again or use them to make quick cards. A tip from Lain :-)

On the pin board right in front of me: my go-to-layout. A layout that is easy and satisfying to make when I am stuck for inspiration and want to make the deadline:- This is a layout by Aphra Bolyer. I got it through a friend and it is just so easy and quick. One photo is all I need! 

More ideas to speed up your scrapping in future posts. Thanks for reading!

Call me crazy but I'm doing it: LOAD 513

May is always a very busy month and I might be regretting this but I am going to partake in LOAD 513!



LOAD, or Layout a day is organized by Lain Ehmann for layoutaday.com. The idea is to create a scrapbooking layout every day for the month of May. Daily prompts will be sent out and there is a great community of scrappers to help, inpspire and motivate.

If you would like to take part please visit http://www.layoutaday.com/load513/ and sign up.

I'll be posting my makes here and telling you about the experience. I'd love to hear from you!

Wish me luck:-)