Today should be a free day !

OK who’s with me on this one ? Feb 29th should be an official national holiday, once every four years, a day that you don’t get any other time so that you can do as you please !!

Its official – I am doing as a please today

(work, if you are reading this – I will still be there )

So apart from wanting to take today off what else is happening, Well I am still working on my PL album, wanting to get some different page protectors in the next week or two. Again going with WRMK but getting a different combination of pockets to what I have. I really want some with smaller pockets.

Finishing some cards for Papercraft Inspirations

Designing some more scrapbook elements – border strips this time, should have those done soon.

Because I can’t possibly have a post without a photo – here is one I took of my fur baby chasing the cursor across the laptop screen, each time the cursor stood still he licked the screen – GROSS (we did clean it afterwards)

WINNER WINNER Chicken Dinner !

OK, so I used the random generator to pick my three winners

Laura Chapman, Tina.S and Pat
Well done and thank you for entering. send me your postal addresses and I will despatch your give away packs this week.

Random Give Away

For no particular reason I am going to do a small give away today.

Anyone is eligible to enter and you have until Friday midnight GMT.

There are three small packages of printed goodness :-

rectangular graph sticky labels – grey on white
rectangular zigzag sticky labels- grey on white
circular camera sticky labels – black on white

4 small cards 3×4 inches – suitable for PL
4 larger cards 6×4 inches – suitable for PL

I am a devotee of the “not corner rounded” brigade where PL is concerned, so I have left the cards all square edged, giving you the option to corner round or not as you please.

These are not just for use on PL they would look great on a variety of scrapbook and craft projects.

These are my designs and are not available anywhere else

to enter just leave a comment and your email address.

Here and There

Love trips in the school holidays but hate the traffic, road closed and a diversion on the way there and an accident and stationary traffic for over an hour on the way home YUK !

Still got a few days off but got ALOT of work to get done !

This is what my youngest thought of the traffic – one for the PL album I think.

discoveries and inspiration

Through looking at lots of different blogs and web sites, getting inspiration for PL, I have discovered new stuff that I didn’t know existed. Like these great files for die cutting machines from Kerri Bradford

I own a Cricut and before that I had a craft robo so I am fairly comfortable with these machines, I primarily bought mine as I am a FONT FREAK and wanted to create my own typographic elements for my pages. I still do this but I haven’t really progressed from this aspect of die cutting. I cut the odd shape here and there , hearts, stars and some tags but that’s really it.

I really enjoyed being directed to Kerri’s site and finding out that people are now creating really cool designs that you can buy, download and cut on your machine of choice.

Don’t get me wrong I knew people were doing this but I hadn’t yet found anything cool that I was inspired by – now I have.

I am particularly taken by the peep through backgrounds and the overlapping words/letters

Images courtesy of Kerri Bradford

motoring along

After completing week 4 and part completing week 5 I feel quite pleased and energised now.

I feel that I have made some decisions about the structure and content that will streamline the project and make it easier for me to complete. Instead of trying to find a story and getting despondent when there isn’t really one there I am documenting my week with a few photos and doing a week in review and highlighting anything else that I feel warrants it.

I am using a title card with the week number, month and dates sun-sat on it just adding a little patterned paper border in differing colours and patterns each week.

The our week in review card will be a constant each week, then if there is a significant story to tell, I will highlight it with its own mini page of journalling and photo.

slow weeks will only have one page protector and more interesting or photo heavy weeks will have two, Special stories or those that need more explanation will get their own insert.

I’m using the same typeface to journal with – American Typewriter condensed light and the stickers on the photos are ones that I bought and just ran through my printer to print a background pattern on them

I am not planning on boring you all to death with an image of every page I do but I will share some, this is the latest week very very simple just photos and words I have included a 6×12 inset this week as I wanted to tell the story of a note I found stuffed down the side of my nine yr olds bed !

I apologise for the glare from my page protectors, must get better photos, if you want to know about anything in detail leave me a comment. Thanks for looking.

About time !

for another post, even though it has only been a couple of weeks, we are already into the next month !

Been extremely busy with all the usual things, work, kids, deadlines and project life, although I have to admit today everything went on hold for some time spent out in the snow ( probably our one and only snowfall this year) with the kids and the dog, the husband stayed inside taking photos as he has been blessed with a stinking cold virus this weekend.

At least I will have some great “out of the ordinary” photos for my PL album this week.

How are you all getting along with this project ?

I thought I was struggling with mine – printer issues then no photo protectors then losing my photos really wrote off weeks one and two for me , so I decided that I would “start” at week three and if I could muster up the enthusiasm I would do something about those missing two weeks in the summer break when I am less committed.

Even so I still didn’t progress, I did my title page, well kind of, it is still waiting on a family photo.

But apart from writing in my journal on a daily basis I didn’t do much else. Not sure why really, I think I needed to establish an approach that I was comfortable with, I worked hard at that this weekend and I feel happier about progressing now even though I am not “caught up”

I have decided to start each page with a “week number” card always using the same type face but varying the decoration, I am trying not to get caught up in the whole “what is this weeks story” going to be because most weeks quite honestly its just the usual mundane day in day out stuff, the same things happening on the same days.

When my weeks are slow like this I am going to opt for doing just one page protector and I have complied a list of things to document like routines, food we are enjoying, programmes we are watching etc.

I am not following a formula for the way my album looks, I am using lots of type faces and using up my scraps of patterned paper, card and embellishments, although I am tempted by the clementine paper pack from Becky Higgins, lovely colour combos, so I may invest in that. I am also going to mix up the page protectors too, I am using the WRMK variety so my combinations aren’t the same as the official PL ones anyway.

Lastly I am going to stop messing around with my photos, I tend to tweak my photos in photoshop and print them off on my printer at home, but I am not really satisfied with the colour off the prints, so I am going to print a bunch off at costco and leave them as is, SOTC (straight out the camera) and keep them 6×4 and just roll with it.

I also need to take more landscape photos, 70% of the shots I take all seem to be portrait, plus I am still not taking anywhere near enough photos, got to start using a bigger bag and taking the camera with me all the time !

Can’t end a post without a photo . .

My dog just LOVES the snow !