Thursday, May 31, 2012

June Stamp Give Away: Love is in the Air

Once a month, on the first day of the month, I post a couple of new or gently used stamps to give away. They usually relate to an upcoming holiday. If you want them, leave me a comment and let me know. But you have to be quick! I'll pick the winner in the next 24 hours. As June is a traditional month for weddings, I selected three "love-ly" stamps. "I love you" from Club Scrap  and the Inkadinkado Cats are gently used. The Stampin' Up sentiment has never touched ink. Let me know if you want the set.
Edited to add:  Congratulations Mary B. for being randomly selected as the winner!
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For July, the stamp give away will be special - I'll be giving away four sets of stamps, and the give away will run for an entire weekend. Why is it special? Because it's in conjunction with a special event being planned by Jennifer of Jennifer's Jumbles . . . but more on that later!

Pete Wylde


Completed "Week in the Life" Album (monthly make)

Well, I did it! I buckled down and completed the journaling and embellishments to finish my "Week in the Life" photo journaling project.  You can see the blank book at this link; the cover is above, and the completed book looks like this:
A typical day looks like this:
In the top photo, there's a full 6x6 red page on the left, followed by two dark brown 6x2 inch flaps, to which I added pictures, matted with light brown paper. The second picture shows the page created using the two flaps, and the third picture shows a full 6x6 red page on the right and a flap page on the left (with the photo added).  This gave me plenty of room to add pictures and journaling.  Here's two other pages I liked:
I kept the embellishments very simple.  I mainly used two different Close to My Heart stamp sets.  One had the date journaling stamp that I used on my cover and for each day (you can see the Monday and Tuesday ones above).  The other had a variety of stamps (the "time to" one;  a "life is good" and "good day" ticket; the phrase "follow your dreams"' and a swirl). I used these throughout the album.  I also supplemented with the "memoir" and "write your own story" stamps you can see on the cover.
Overall, I'm really happy with the album. It really chronicles a week in my life and covers my work, family and creative pursuits pretty well. I've noticed that I've taken many fewer pictures this year, so I'm really glad to have this album to really record the nitty gritty of our lives.  Plus, I'm going to count this as my monthly make for May (just in the nick of time)!
Did you do Week in the Life?  Did you complete your album?

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Musing on Online Classes and Class review: Collect and Create

I just finished up the Amy Tan class, "Collect and Create," offered at Two Peas.  While trying to compose this review of the class, I found myself contemplating why I take online classes because the answer to that will often determine how satisfied I am with a class.  Sometimes I take classes because I want to learn a new skill or new technique.  This is often the case with photography, Photoshop or art journaling classes.  Sometimes I take classes because I want to complete a project.  Many of Shimelle's classes (like Journal Your Christmas, Learn Something New, or I Confess) fit into this category. Other times I take a class because I am looking for inspiration.  I usually do this when I have a project in mind that I want to complete, and I just need a jump start (Shimelle's Pretty Paper Party or Worth a Thousand Words are examples of this). 
When it comes to "Collect and Create," I was mainly looking for inspiration (I won the class in a give-away from Ali Edwards' blog). When I read the description, I thought it would provide me with some good ideas to scrap my backlog of vacation and family pictures from 2011.  The class had five lessons:  each lesson had a PDF (about 20 pages) and a short to very short video (5-10 minutes). The lessons covered using scraps; using favorites; scrapping memorabilia; inspiration; and putting it all together.  On the whole, the materials were very thin.  As an experienced scrapper, I did not encounter any new techniques (the videos on cutting page protectors for memorabilia and creating a background with mists were the best).  Several minutes of the videos were simply Amy Tan flipping through Japanese image books or her Project Life Album.  Reading through the PDF's, I came up with a list of inspiration ideas which I did use. I discussed many of them in my post yesterday, and I would say that the layout up top today came from the "putting it all together" lesson.  But there wasn't anything really new on the list of challenges, and the ideas weren't presented with any real depth.  Frankly, I think I would have gotten as many ideas by going back through the challenges from Shimelle's last on-line crop. So, on the whole, I did not get much out of the class.
I do think the class may be more helpful to a new scrapper or to someone with a different style.  Many of the page examples fall into the category of creating a page that uses A LOT  of embellishments and patterned paper to create a stunning back drop for a single picture.  Although these pages are beautiful to look at and certainly a valid style of scrapping, it is most definitely NOT my style of scrapbooking.  Perhaps if it were, the class would have been more satisfying. 
Finally, let's talk about cost.  For me, it was free.  But the class is priced at $25, which I think is generally about right for an inspiration class.  I think I'm willing to pay more for a technique/skills class or a project class.  However, given the limited content in the class, I think the $25 price tag is too high.
Overall, I would give the class a C+.  That's just my opinion, and I'd be interested in hearing from anyone else who took the class.
I would also be interested in your thoughts on why you take a class and whether that affects how much you're willing to pay for it.  

60th Cannes Film Festival

Roman Polanski


Sharon Stone


Sophie Marceau


Victoria Silvstedt


Kerry Washington, Gong Li, Andie MacDowel


Leo Di Caprio


Maria Menounos


Michael Moore


Pamela Anderson


Jean Claude Van Damme


Jerry Seinfeld


Jessica Simpson


Jude Law


Kerry Washington


Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld


David Lynch


Devon Aok


Doutzen Kroes


Billy Zane, Kelly BrookFrank Miller, Kimberley Cox


Bai Ling


Billy Zane, Kelly Brook


Bipasha Basu


Jean Claude Van Damme


Chloe Sevigny, Jake Gyllenhaal, David Fincher





Rafael Nadal Pictures And Wallpapers 2012

Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal

Small Cute Animal Cat Tattoo Designs Inspiration







Animal Cat Tattoos Ideas
Cat is an animal which very familiar for human , who don't likes cat ? usually cats will domination likes by women, maybe because cats is looks like a cute animal. Make cat tattos designs in our body is very interesting and attractive ideas, your body will looks more cool. Small cat tattoo designs pictures above just for your inspiration, maybe some of you want make a cat tattoo.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Been Busy Scrapping!

I haven't been around in blog-land the last few days because I've been busy scrapping! I took advantage of the long weekend here in the U.S. to organize my pictures and supplies and then get to work on finishing my album from last summer's trip to England.  I created 28 pages in the last two days!  I drew a lot of inspiration from the Amy Tan class "Collect and Create," which I won from the Ali Edwards blog. I'll do a proper review of the class soon (and be 'round to visit your blogs), but in the meantime, I thought I'd share a few pages from my weekend and their inspirational starting points. You can click on any of the pages to see them larger and in more detail. For the page up top, I used a punch - my crown punch to be specific, in order to make these tag embellishments:
Next up, I used the paper from which I had punched shapes.  This time, it was my butterfly punch to create journaling embellishments:
The next inspiration was to layer memorabilia:
And then to use your stash. For this next layout, I used lots of my stash - tags I had created with my November "counterfeit kit" which I put together to work on these pages; vellum paper (I have A LOT of this and rarely use it, so I tried really hard to use it in this album project); old sticker letters; and a charm:
used a sketch (from the Club Scrap sketch deck) on this next layout because I knew what paper I wanted to use, but I couldn't figure out how to arrange it:
When I was stuck for embellishments on my next layout, I used a favorite - in this case, brads.  I love brads and metal:
Next up, was an oldie, but a goodie - use stickers. Yes, stickers. I know many people don't use them much anymore (and I don't either), but I did like how I used the sticker strips along the left on this layout:
The final inspirational idea was to scraplift from someone outside your box. For this last layout, I used the idea of cutting paper strips to create a background:
This last technique is definitely not my usual style, but I was definitely out of ideas by the time I started the layout, so I went with it. And I really liked the outcome!
I hope you found some inspiration today! Let me know if you did!