Hello

Hi there friends of SAG, how are you, scrapping up a storm? Me? Well, not so much. I've increased my work hours and I've been struggling with the home/work/life/children/scrapping balance - I am not sure it really exists actually, more like a time allocation issue I would say!

Two things today. First, a friend of mine and a friend of SAG, has started a lovely monthly journaling prompt inspired by Ali Edwards' class 31 Things. I think it is something that would appeal to many of you and I know Alexa will welcome you with open arms - and, if you need some journaling inspiration, she has it aplenty. You can click HERE to find out all about it and to read her beautiful words. I've included my page here today.

Secondly, I'm about to upgrade my camera body and I was wondering if any of you out there have any experience with the Canon 5D MKII. It's a full frame camera and I want to know if the Sigma 24-70mm EXDG is a compatible lens? My preliminary research says yes, but I thought I'd check here too as I know many of you are interested in all things photography. I'm also interested in your thoughts over this particular body and the 7D, perhaps I am better off saving a few dollars to put towards a lens? I'm only at the preliminary research stage and am in the process of liquidating some assets for the purchase ... I want to make the right decision as I'll have this camera for a while.

That's all for now, let me know your thoughts.

buy yourself a gold lotto ticket

the planets have aligned, and I have finally done a page, for the first time in eons. So, without further ado:

And because I am so rusty, I confess this is a blatant, straight-out scrap lift of a page I had saved on my pinterest board. I could go back and follow the links to see who the original belongs to, but I might leave that fun follow-the-breadcrumbs expedition for you, if you are so inclined!

This is a fully digital page above, but I do have slightly different plans for it once I print out the important bits. I'll share that once I'm done, first I have to clear the accumulated clutter off my desk in order to do the real life cutting and pasting ;-)

Here's the story:

I even made the template above, even CZ failing to provide anything that tickled my fancy or get the creative juices flowing (I KNOW! how is that even possible).

Hopefully, now I've started again, I will be able to remove those mental blocks that prevented me from just getting in and making some pages (no lack of stories or photos to be used) before these grey cells of mine loose any more data!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sharon

Scrapbooking, what's that?

One of the great things about the SAG blog and all of the contributors, is that we are not trying to sell product, concepts, designs or techniques. We just scrap because we think it's fun and we like it - simple. It means we make the pages we want to, when we want to.

The down side is, we are a bit inconsistent with posting.
That's the truth though isn't it? This is a hobby and we get to it and enjoy it when we need to or when we can. Want to hear another truth?

I have scrapped two pages since the start of May. I don't count the album I made for Ali Edwards' 31 Things class. Good, old fashioned regular pages - two since the beginning of May.

Sigh.

So, here is one of my pages. It relies on a quote from my daughter, this is one of my tried and true ways to kick start some journaling when the ideas are hard to find.

Scrapbooking is fun, but not when you feel as though you are behind or that you're not doing it properly - forget about all that stuff, it's a hobby! Just enjoy the process and the page and the story, all the rest doesn't matter one little bit.

See you when I see you.


PS  Page design is my own, digital paper is from Oscraps.

Week Nine | Kraft

After the challenging week that was Week Eight and the Black and White theme, we are moving on to the easier, and more prevalent neutral, Kraft.

White, Nightmist and Kraft are my most commonly used Bazzill colours - I spent a lot of time searching through digital shops to find the equivalent and have come across some at both Designer Digitals and Oscraps.

My first layout is based on a design Sharon came up with, it was taken from a magazine article if I remember correctly.

This next page is a Cathy Zielske template.



Have a great week, I'm looking forward to seeing what the girls all come up with this week - I have a feeling Kraft is not in short supply!

Black and White

Black and white is quite tricky, and it looks like several of the other Simple girlies had a hard time coming up with something. No worries girls, some weeks, it just doesn't happen! So here are two b/w based layouts. Both fairly old! Hope you like em.  I like the first one the best, but the second one was published in Creating Keepsakes once upon a time.

how many song titles have BLUE in them?

I have no idea, but two popped into my head straight away..

ANYHOW: on with the show. Blue. Obviously a popular colour with the Simple Girls, and I seem to use it a lot as well. Love me a nice strong navy blue, or a washed out more denim like I have used today, its a very versatile colour.

Another one of those that don't get any simpler, with not one jot of patterned paper anywhere! Created using a CZ template, printed at home and dropped onto some heavy doublesided blue paper (there was an awful pattern on the other side, but I like this plain, linen like blue). Some brads and done.

I could have gone the smaller 8.5x11 size, but I love the white space and the expanse of blue on the double page. It just looked so busy in the smaller page format.

Don't be shy folks, we would love to see your own pages of blue, or green or orange or yellow etc, you know the drill, just leave a link in the comments or upload to flickr, just make sure to tell us!

Blue...my favourite!

My favourite all time colour is blue...I scrap with it, I wear it, I decorate my house with it! So of course I have many layouts that I can show you. But I'll pick just a couple.

I too am a nightmist fan...it is my go to background colour (second only to white!). Nightmist looks so great with so many colours.

Next up, I have gone a little digital! I created the template of a bunch of squares, added the photos and then I actually stuck bits of patterned paper in the squares with no photos (as I'm not a digital scrapper, I didn't have any digital paper to use). It is rare that I don't include any journalling, but for this layout I didn't really need to say anything. It was just a good way of scrapping a bunch of random photos from the Summer without having ten layouts on the same topic!

There are so many other Blue layouts I could show, but I'll leave some more to the other girls!

Come back tomorrow to see some more blue.

Emma

Week Seven | BLUE

Hi everyone, it's a public holiday here in my part of the world so I am going to be very quick.

I love blue.
Simple.
My favourite Bazzill colour is Nightmist ... wooohooo, I can name a colour of Bazzill, pity I don't really use it any more.

If I look back over all my layouts, blue is a predominant colour, by a long way; closely followed by green. So, this is an older page, but is uses both blue and green and is one of those random pages I am really glad I have. It's a digital page made with a template based on a layout by Beth Proudfoot from the old Simple days, she's one of my favourite designers.

Next one is a new one. 12x12 in size and using a blue digital cardstock and a brush, along with some green, well, it's a yellowy green.

 
I have a feeling that there might be quite a few pages going up this week, blue is a fairly popular colour here at SAG!

Some orange (and some graffiti!)

The end of the week of orange.  I love orange, though I have no idea why? I don't like it hugely in real life, but I love it on scrapbook pages.  Just this minute, I have put together a paper layout so I could share it with you. It isn't as blatantly 'orange' as I thought it would turn out, looking at the photo, but there is certainly some orange going on! Here it is, hot off the press.







































On browsing through some older layouts this morning , in the hunt for orange, this one jumped out at me, purely on it's 'orangeness', and coincidentally, happens to be running along a similar theme to the layout above!

(And here's another photo, waiting to be scrapped.....do I have a graffiti issue???)

And do I want to go to this place below? Um...gasp...yes, please?? Sadly I can't, as it's been closed to the public (not that it was ever opened to the public, it was just an abandoned depot, which is now guarded by several large and apparently very aggressive rottweiler guard dogs!)

(Photos by Susan Clark and William Cowan respectively)

Anyway, I have been distracted, and will now return to orange! Will throw you a couple of OLD yet favourite orange pages, these being 12 x 12, a size which I no longer scrap in. I'm a 8.5 x 11 scrapper now, due to it's speediness and ease! These layouts below have some Ali Edwards influence which that circle word stamp - must dig that up out of my supplies!

 

 

See you next week, for a new colour of the rainbow, from which to be inspired!  

PS. Apologies for mid post distraction!

Week Six | ORANGE

Well, have a look at this .... I used patterned paper!

I'm not getting the stories down that I want to at the moment, it's frustrating. Sigh.

Have a great week everyone, bring on the orange!

Purple on Friday

The last day of our purple week!

I like purple, and like when I do purple layouts, but I have very few. I have very little purple paper for some unknown reason, and always have to scrounge into the deep depths for purple cardstock scraps or patterned paper. I really have hardly any. Purple seems to have been a challenge for the other Simple girls too.

But today I have, shock and horror, a NEW layout for you, taken with my current favourite type of photos, 'Instagram'!

 

And here is an old 12 x 12 layout that I still haven't put a title on - only 3 years late. Planning, one day, to have a title in white thickers across bottom right hand corner of main photo. Call me lazy. 

This last layout is really really old, about 6 or 7 years, but I love this layout, as it uses 4 photo (one odd shaped) and the colour combo was Cathy Z inspired.  Would do a slightly brighter green if I were to do it again, but it's still one to look back on and be happy!

See you next week!

red and yellow and pink and green...PURPLE

I guess you've worked out the sequence of events around here by now?

my take on purple, in which I delved into the archives and found some purple pages from when the girls were little and oh so cute...look at those little chubby cheeks...awww.

love the simplicity of this design, although it doesn't allow room for saying much, but sometimes not much has to be said. Seeing this page reminds me of how that little one used to plonk herself in that bike and hope that her sister would come along and take her for a ride....and I love that paper. Think there might be bits of it in my scrap drawer still.

here is a bit more of it on the next purple page, with even more brevity of words :-) That cake was a true masterpiece from my kitchen, double iced and all. Flowers were from my garden. That plant has long since died. That kid is still a ratbag though, at two she was just hitting her straps.

Does looking at your old scrapbook pages, or even your photo albums, send you on a trip down memory lane? Funny how one photo strikes a memory chord, which leads one off on a tangent and one ends up in a completely different place than from where one started....

Purple Day 2

Stopping in very quickly to post this layout...meant to be at work right now! I rarely use purple so it was a challenge for me to find a page I'd done. I don't even seem to use it in small bits!

But I did find this layout, one I love and it does have a strip of dark purple as well as a circle with dark purple. So its as good as I can get! Sorry guys...can't wait to see how everyone else uses purple.

I'll count this for my green page that I missed last week as well!!!! LOL

Have a good day everyone.

Last of the greens

 A few more green layouts for you with which to end the week! These two layouts are horizontal 8.5 x 11's - a size that I very rarely do these days.  The second layout only uses a little bit of green pp, yet the layout still looks very green because of the photo.

  This last layout is very green, and is a 12 x 12. I seriously love green and red together!!  Looking forward to a new colour week starting on Monday!

Nicole xx

Week Four | Green

I can't believe it is the start of the fourth week in our colour series, the weeks are whizzing by at the moment!
This week I am going to share some old and new pages, one is so old it might even equate to 'real' scrapping. I used cardstock and even cut out parts of my son's birthday cards to make a grid on the page, and, hold your breath .... are those embellishments on the page I spy?!

The next two are digital.

The last one was a tricky page for me to make, not because of the story, but because I didn't have the photo I wanted to illustrate the story. I am not sure how clear and easy the journaling is to read, but, in the last holidays the kids had a great experience with a local artist who let them fill in a canvas for him and then he started painting creatures from the blobs and drips of paint on the actual canvas. At the time, I did have my camera, but I felt that it was not the correct etiquette to photograph him at work, even though it was all a bit of fun, but, he had several pieces there for sale and I didn't want him to think I was trying to copy his work in any way. What do you think, was I too conservative, or was this the right thing to do? Nicole, what would you say?

Anyway, there are my green layouts for this week, I use green a lot so it was easier than last week!

Last of the pink pages

Well as usual with these colour weeks, I have had some serious decision making issues as I scrolled through all my old pink pages. My three daughters are seriously not into pink now, but of course when they were little we lived in a world of pink.  I did a layout of my clothesline with all the pink clothes hanging on it once, my fellow simple girls might remember it.

So even though my girls mostly refuse anything pink nowadays, I do have a pinkish layout that is new, I only did it a few weeks ago. It uses some Instagram photos that I printed at home myself. If you haven't yet got onto Instagram, wow, you might want to look into it. LOVING it. If you have a smartphone, there's no excuse - do it now, but apparently you can get onto it with out one - Sharon? Is that right?  You don't have to share your photos with the world if you don't want to on instagram (you can be a private user), but if you want to share them, you can.  I choose to share my photos with a select few, and it is so fun to see the photos that my few friends have taken and share mine at the same time with them.  Anyway, I am loving the blur tool, and the filters that instagram allows, and I'm loving taking really cute pics without having to haul out the camera.  I even took the photo of my layout on my phone (by getting directly above it!!).

I find it fascinating, that the world now TRIES to take photos that have heaps of grain and 'noise' and weird colour - that look 1970's ish, considering they spent years trying to get rid of those elements out of photography.

So here's my most recent layout, that has bits of pink.  Watermelon-y warm pinks.  Still finding very old scraps of patterned paper to use!  Can you believe I still have remnants of this old American Crafts paper?? (Black/white one on the right).

This next layout is SIX years old!  That bubby is now eight . I always liked the composition of this layout, and it is decidedly pink, flower and all, so I share it with you.

And this last layout below, is a 'calendar' of the month of February, 2007 for middle daughter. A nice reminder of what we did back then, and how we filled our days.  Also, fairly 'pink'. Might be good to go back and revisit this calendar idea now that life is busier as the kids are older.

 

Hope you have enjoyed our 'pink' week. Next week  - a NEW colour!

Bye, 

Nicole xx

Pink - An Easy One for Me!

So last week I definitely struggled with Yellow, so I'm very happy to have Pink this week as that is much easier for me! I have a daughter, so automatically that means some layouts are Pink! My daughter is 9 and is totally not into Pink anymore (she is all about Aqua & Black!), she once was into Pink, so I have many a layout containing pink. I didn't have time to make one especially for this week, so I pulled one from the archives (hopefully I haven't shown it here before!). This layout is about my daughter and her new baby cousin at the time.

Have a good day,
Emma

Week Three | Colour

In Red Week Di posted some song lyrics, if I am guessing correctly, the song was I See Red by Split Enz.
If you know who sings the song ... I Don't Want to be a Stupid Girl .... then you will know that this week we are dealing with the colour -


PINK

Ahhh, pink. Mind you, that is not what I initially think when faced with this colour. I find pink an extremely difficult colour to scrap with, it is not a colour I gravitate towards and when I was a paper scrapper, finding shades of Bazzill that were just right, was always difficult.

I did make a page especially for Pink Week, but when I was emailing with Sharon she told me I needed to break out a bit, be adventurous and use some paper ... as in patterned paper and not just cardstock.
I really go through stages with my scrapping and right now my 'stage' is extremely minimalist as far as papers are concerned. Most of the layouts I have made this year have used a plain white or off white cardstock, as you will see in my first layout - which is also a template I made myself.



When I scrap, I do not like spending too much time deciding on papers and obviously I don't like spending time on embellishments because I rarely use them. The paper choices get in the way, well, for me, they distract me from telling the story and what I want to do in my layouts is tell a story. I like a simple design and my photos to be the embellishment for the story.

Anyhow, after a quick look through some of my older layouts I found this one that uses pink more creatively.

See Sharon, I haven't let you down! ;-)
The photo in this one was put through a couple of filters in Photoshop, it was blurry but cute enough to use.

So, that's it for pink as far as I am concerned. I am sure the girls will have many other examples to show you during the week, and, if you get the chance to play with pink this week, let us know so we can visit you and see your great layouts!

Bye :-)

Week Two | Yellow

Moving on from Red Week, we embark on Yellow.

I love the colour yellow, it is bright and sunny and happy. But, I can barely find a page with yellow included.
After work a couple of weeks ago, I came home to a busy inbox where Sharon and Di were chatting away. We eventually came to the topic of cooking, more to the point, thinking of what to cook - a complete nightmare if you ask me! Right there and then I decided to scrap a page on the topic.

I might not scrap a lot of yellow, but I certainly cook with yellow - a lot.
The page is a template of my own combined with cardstock from Designer Digitals.

More Red

A couple of red blasts from the past for you. I love red! These full paper pages are from 2007 - that makes them FIVE years old.  And even though that is paint on that first layout (hello!!!) and I would never do that now the colour red never gets old!! The chubby bubby in the middle of the top photo is now eight, and these are how my other two 'little' girls look now. 

(The layout titled 'You' shows the same girl as the first photo here.  How did that happen in 5 years? )

Slight change? But how good is scrapbooking when you can look back at moments like this.  Red moments!

Nicole x