12 on the 13th

I cannot believe that actually, on the 12th May (which was ideal as it was a Bank Holiday here in Germany), I FORGOT to take my pictures. The reminder had come out from Susan during the weekend and I was all set up but poof! my mind went blank and did not remember until I went to bed that evening! But I decided to do it the next day instead and still stick with the twelve pictures even though it did cross my mind to do 13.


But again, it is really interesting that even though you know the whole day that you need to take photos, it's so easy to forget. I had a completely manic day because I was determined to get all those errands done that I usually cannot do because I can't do them on foot or public transport and on this day I had the car. It was a hot, sticky day but I still managed to do everything on my list (normal for any woman I think but Ralph was well impressed!). However, some of the stops I made along the way were not captured on film because I forgot - how this is possible, I have no idea but there you go!


And I am pleased to have managed to finish the layout before the end of the month, even though once again, I am not enamoured with the layout itself. Maybe I am making it too hard for myself by trying to come up with a different design each month - maybe I should just decide on a sketch and keep to it. I will see how I go in June and take it from there. But anyway, I am pleased to have captured another month and June will be interesting because Thursday is a busy day for me and we will be in the middle of the European Football Championship so I fear my living room will be once again turned into some sort of a football studio by Ralph! So I guess the German flag will feature and probably some sort of football stuff. (mmm exciting - NOT!)

Ok, own up... who stole that last month???

I mean, it can't be a whole month since I last updated my blog. It's just not possible! I think I must have entered some alien space time continuum where I am in some kind of 5-hour day parallel universe!

It was a busy month all things told with two trips to the UK and quite a lot of scrapping although I cannot share most of it with you! Bellaboo is keeping me really busy with crop kits, National Scrapbooking Day (check out their blog to see what fun we had over there!) and their fabulous monthly kits.

Yes, I know that I say this every month, but June's kit is a total must have - and don't forget that the May kit sold out in just 3 (yes you read that right) days.

You can find a sneak peek in the shop here and I think that it would be ok if I shared a few sneakies for you here. Let's just say that it was a joy to work with and I think I could have gone on and on and on...

And just to prove it is totally possible to complete three layouts in an afternoon here is what I accomplished in one afternoon using the great Rusty Pickle based NSD crop kit (pinks, grey and black sparkle just worked so well!)

When Libby and I are working on the crop kits, we are usually really strict and try to complete three layouts in three hours using ONLY the kit supplies (meaning, you can come along to a crop, purchase the crop kit and do not need anything else except the basics - knife, glue, ruler etc) but this time, I was a little slower - too much giggling and gossiping! - and used one or two things from my own supplies for the third layout here. Try challenging yourself to only using a certain amount of supplies and see how creative you can get! It works. There are a few of the NSD crop kits available here.

And as for my 12 on the 12th? Yes I did it, even if it is actually 12 on the 13th! I have the photos and the sketch for my layout - just need to get the two combined. Hopefully, this weekend.

In the meantime, it is hot and humid here in Germany which is not really my kind of weather (how I EVER lived in the Philippines I will never know!) so I will be taking things easy this weekend in an attempt to avoid "glowing". But have a great one whatever the weather and if you come across May in your travels, send it to me - I need those days back.

12 on the 12th layout

So pleased to have got this done today. I am not overly thrilled with the layout itself but it got all 12 photos down and the important information captured. This is definitely something I want to try to do each month. It will be interesting to see the months go by and how the weather will change, how we will look different and what we do month by month. The anatomy of a day encapsulated by just 12 images - I love the idea.

I will work on improving the composition next month but this time, it was just important for me to get it done and finished! 12 photos on one layout? Sounds impossible and it took me a while of jigging them around until I found the overlap I was happy with. I like the idea of the two page layout too - I have been doing so many single page layouts recently that it was nice to rediscover them during the Bellaboo May kit and then it seemed obvious to me the 12 on the 12th would be a double too. But maybe next month, I will make the photos smaller again and leave more white space so it is not quite so busy!

And I have just realised that I should put the month somewhere on the layout! Doh! I will use the small stickers and just put the month very small in a corner somewhere. Good job I realised in time!

12 on the 12th

Something new for me this month. Something I heard about some time ago - I think it might have been one of Stacy Julian's columns in Simple Scrapbooks. Then again in this post by Cathy Z last month. Sounded fun, sounded like a good idea! So I got in touch with Susan and added my name to the list - the list for a gentle but firm reminder before the 12th and again after the 12th!


So I am late. But I did take photos on the 12th which was good as a starting point.


But have you noticed that when you WANT to remember to take photos of all the little details from something (like the day for example!) you FORGET! I mean, I take photos all the time. Photos of the little details. Photos of the sky, photos of the flowers, photos of the buildings. But throughout THIS day, I kept missing the detials! I missed getting a photo of me - looking reasonable for a change as we went out for breakfast. I missed the detail of the farm shop where we bought the first Deutsche Spargel (German asparagus - long story, another post!) of the season. I missed the detail of me collecting my NEW reading glasses or the chance to get a photo of me in the glasses. I missed the detail of the said asparagus sitting on the kitchen counter, all stripped and bare. I missed the detail of the boys having a whisky tasting. The only photo of me? One right at the end of the night - looking definitely worse for wear (both of us actually!). I remembered to get Ralph waking up. I remembered to get the weather. And I remembered to get the asparagus reaching the table. So all is not lost. But a learning experience for next month!


Here are my photos for 12 on the 12th - a day captured from beginning to end.

A little birdie told me...

... that the new Bellaboo kit was fun and colourful and great to play with.

This is so TRUE!

Available to you in May but I thought you might like a few sneak peeks...

Bad blogger

Where does the time go? More than two weeks or is it three perhaps and not a blog entry in sight!

But I have been busy on Bellaboo projects - some you can see, and some you will have to wait for!

I had such a good time working on the April kit (it is really a lovely kit - full of scrumptious soft colours and loads of texture - such fun) and April newsletter - it just went on and on and on and on! I was practising my white space skills and using less and less PP which was really interesting and I was so pleased with some of the results.



















Got to dash right now (apart from the fact that it is nearly 1.30am!) but will try to get some more on the blog over the weekend...

Ah, the 80's - they were so special...

Boy, oh boy - this brings back just the best of bestest memories. I am a true child of the 80's and so proud of it. I was (and still am!) a huge Duranie even before they released their first single (here for your pleasure) and it brings a smile to my face every time I hear this song. I go back to being a 13 year old again and all the excitement that came with it - do you know what I mean?

I was always totally in "love" with Simon Le Bon and was honestly devasted when he got married. I wanted to change my name to - wait for it ... Portia Le Bon! (We were reading Shakepeare at school - Merchant of Venice? - and I thought the Portia sounded so much more exotic than Lisa. And of course it "is"!)

I have wasted a whole Friday evening wading my way through You Tube bringing back those days of the early to mid eighties - nothing else really matches up for me. Japan - Quiet Life; Department S - Is Vic There?; Big Contry - Chance; and the ultimate: David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes, Fasion, Scary Monsters. The list could go on and on.

Anyway, enough rambling from me - let me know if you appreciate my choice of Friday night music...

Like it?

I LOVE it! And I know that must sound a bit conceited but I think this is totally adorable! You might recall that I made one of these gorgeous altered magnet boards last year to celebrate sweet Isabella's Christening and I have been itching to make one for myself ever since.

Of course, this is totally different from Isabella's - in every way - which was important for me because I did not to make just a copy and anyway, Isabella's is totally wonderful and so pretty.

But for the organising class I am doing right now, we had various projects to help us with our inspiration - collecting and displaying. I decided that an altered magnet board would be perfect for me as it was already hanging and I was not really using it for anything in particular and hey presto!

And then there was also a small inspiration clipboard which is simple but still so pretty. I adore the Infuse range of papers from BG and am so pleased that it was suggested in class that we made everything coordinating. It is such a simple suggestion but one that has made a big difference to how I feel about how it all looks. I think that left to my own devices, I would have made each item in a different BG range which would also have been lovely, but this coordination pleases me. I will also use Infuse for all the labels and other decorative bits that are bound to follow. It makes me smile and isn't that what it is all about?

Product? Technique? things to think about

Following on from last entry's discussion, I continued with the challenge of starting somewhere different for a set of layouts.

The first is product first. And this was much more difficult than I thought it would be! Maybe it was because I did not have a "kit" to work with - I just decided that I wanted to use Periphery because it has been sitting there patiently waiting for me all these months and I was really looking forward to jumping in with it. I would make stylish, effortless layouts like those I admire so much on the galleries. Mmmm, not be to. Was it me or was it the product - I took out all those gorgeous papers and looked at them and .... nothing, blank, void! But I had an idea that it might work with architechtural details so I fished some out and forced myself to make the layout. But I am unsatisfied with it - it is uninspiring, boring even. What is wrong with it? But what else could I have done? This is frustrating.

I was flumuxed and surprised because when I get the Bellaboo kits, I HAVE to work product first and the ideas come quite easily (well most of the time LOL) and often I have a complete layout before I have even sorted out the actual photos because I am working on more of a feeling of what I want and know roughly what photos will fit.

Anway, enough moaning...

And then there was the tool/technique first.

This was MUCH more fun! I was thinking about what I could do and then realised that I had the BasicGrey notch tool that at the time, I just HAD to have but really, when have I used it over the last 18 months - not that often let me tell you! So out it came and I liked the idea of the semi-circle. But decided to move away from the idea of scallops and make a stamp edge instead - just on a big scale. Once I had the basics in mind, I needed a stark contrast paper and the brown Chatterbox was perfect. Mixed it in with a couple of other brown tones (colour - another blog post coming on that one!) and I was away.

Apart from the fact that it took me ages to notch the edge with the tool and it was quite hard work, it all came together really quickly and looks very much like the idea I had in my brain. Much more satisfied with this one and once again, journalling round the edge of the page seemed ideal. More Chatterbox in the form of these wonderful olive letters and it was all finished.

I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would and may well use this technique again to get me out of a rut - it really made me think about it.

Only one more to do from the challenge prompts - my "natural" way. I actually think that this does not really exist - each of the methods has made me think, yes, this is it. Maybe I will just go with the flow and see how it works out.

By the way, the spell checker here on Blogger seems not to be working for me any more so apologies for any typos or spelling errors - don't understand why it isn't working any more. It was fine a few weeks ago....

So, are any of you brave enough to rise to the challenge? Shall we do a round of this again together?

Different starting points

I'm doing an online class right now over at Big Picture Scrapbooking (Get Organised Be Inspired) and one of the tasks was looking at how we scrapbook - what is our method, what order do we do, what do we reach for first.

Each day we were to start at a different place and create a page given a specific "prescription".

Design first

Story first

Photo first

Product first

Tool or technique first

It has been really interesting so far (although I am not through them all yet!) as I STILL cannot say what I do on a regular basis - I think I might be a mix!

Anyway, you already saw the design first (Get a LOAD layout January 27th) but here are my story first and photo first. They are not brilliant layouts but once again, important to get the memory down and recorded. I am still playing around and trying things out - not always successfully!

I had written up my Joe story some months ago in rough and this was a good incentive to get it down on pretty paper at last - I love the story although I think you maybe had to be there to "get it"!

And I had printed out these self-portrait photos thinking I might use them for the Bellaboo Floral Frenzy kit but somehow they were not quite right so i quickly got them down on a layout as part of this photo first process.

I think that I mostly do the next process - product first - as most of the layouts I have been doing recently have been focused around a kit - either a Bellaboo one or one that I made up myself out of my own product. But I still have to do this process and then lastly, the tool or technique one.

By doing this, it should help us identify how it would be best to organise our product so that it aids us in the way we naturally work! Still trying to figure that one out but getting there.

How do you work?