oh krafty day...

OK so kraft is not a problem colour for us here at Simple Aussie Girls. It goes with pretty much everything, a bit like how white is the perfect backdrop as well, but just a wee bit tastier and forgiving. And it doesn't get lonely when its out there by itself, with just a bit of a doily to keep it company. (and isn't this digi doily amazing? honestly, well to me anyhow, this page looks pretty darned "real"!)

I've got oodles of stories I want to tell, but felt like doing this one today, completely inspired by this photo someone else took at my brothers wedding recently. I was one of the photographers, but here I am liking the photo that someone else took ;-) you can hardly even see my little boy in this shot, but still I love it.

Because this was such a big exciting event in my kids lives I plan on doing one of two things; using this as an introductory page, slotted into each of their albums, and following with one or two pages of collage photos from the day. Or perhaps just get a little photo books made each. But that is more expensive so I think I will just do the couple-of-pages thing, and follow the kraft & white theme I have started with this page. If you've read my blog you would have seen the gorgeous bright colours of the wedding party, which just glowed against the stark dirt paddock (kraft coloured perhaps ;-) ?) where the wedding ceremony was held. The same effect will be achieved in sticking to the plainest possible colour scheme in these pages, allowing the bright colours to glow.

A lot of thought and breakdown behind something I have done more or less just because I liked it!

And if the page design looks familiar, you'd be right, I've borrowed one of Amy's templates. Usually I have lots of photos and lots to say and wouldn't normally fit both on this pared down design, but for today, just perfect.

I've left room at the bottom beside the date, for a little bitty white brad to go in when its printed.

One more thing: what would you like to see more of here readers? More sketches? more scraplifting? pages with more photos? pages with more writing? or just shush and be quiet girls?! please, we'd love to hear from you!

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!

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

playing dress up

a simple little page with a simple little story...

and that's all I have for today....

An Oldie

I have lots of pages in progress at the moment, but none actually finished, so I pulled out an oldie to share with you. Its about me and my hubby...I don't do pages about us very often, its always about the kids! So its nice to have a different subject for a change!!

Sorry the photo is average on this one! Like I said its an old one!

Have a good day everyone.

Saturday Sketch

Hello everyone, and welcome to this fine Saturday. My turn to give you a sketch to get you scrapping this weekend.

As usual, its very simple. Remembering that not every square or space has to be filled with something, as I will show you below.  This started off with a template from CZ, but as I tweaked and twiddled to suit my needs, I realised that end result was pretty much NOTHING like the starting point!
yep, pretty simple and straight forward, and could well lend itself to some colour blocking (and o/t I could really some pf those pinterest colour boards for inspiration when I do a sketch, couldn't I?!) Anyhow, this is what I ended up with.....
 
I've been trying to put into practise some of the ideas from Ten Tips for Better Type, alas PSE and I don't seem to be on the same page at the moment! Does anyone else have issues with their software suddenly doing, or NOT doing something, all by itself? Right now, mine has decided that it won't listen to my arrow keys when I want to nudge something along just a wee bit

I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! (don't forget to linky up, or even just leave a comment with the link to your page!)

Sharon

Places

As you all know, I've been doing the Twelve class by Stacy Julian over at Big Picture Classes.

It is really inspiring me to think more and delve deeper for my journalling. One of the things Stacy got us to think about is places we have lived throughout our lives. Personally, I haven't lived in that many different homes, but all the homes I have been in have been special in different ways. When I started thinking about all the different places, some wonderful memories came flooding back.

In particular was the first home my hubby and I lived in after we got married. We had a few really happy years there in particular because it was the excitement of being married and having our own home. I realised I'd never really talked to the kids about this house. I went rumaging through old photos and found exactly what I was after. A couple of photos of John and I outside the house. The kids thought it was wonderful and wanted to know all about that house. So this is the layout I did based on all these thoughts. I plan on doing other layouts for the other places I have lived.

So I challenge you to think about all the places you have lived and create a layout on it. It could be one layout listing all the different places or it could be an individual layout for one of the places you have lived like mine is.

I found this topic really fun to do and I loved the memories it brought back!

super simple and summery

I do hope I've not posted this here before; I have mangoes on my tree again waiting to get ripe, and also parrots seems to have appeared with the lovely rain we got last night, and they too are waiting for them to get ripe. Sadly it seems some of them can't wait, and are getting stuck into the mangoes already.

Digital page, not sure if its a CZ template or one I made myself, I honestly can't remember. Someone else might be able to recognise it!

The end of the school year is nigh and plans are being made for the holidays - nothing too solid, but talk of swimming and creeks and sleepovers and santa. I believe the wet season feeling we have today (rain, oh lovely rain!)  is contributing to that feeling!

Thanks for dropping by!

Sharon

a quick lift-a-page challenge for you

Well, its my day again and I have to say it snuck up on me, and caught me somewhat unprepared. With a quick bit of thought, I decided to lift one of my favourite pages, done quite some time ago. As I challenge you to do as well.

Here is my original page (which I suspect was probably inspired at some stage by Nicole, however was done so long ago I cannot remember for sure!). This same chubby bubby is now 7 and not so chubby. Still has a penchant for mud, and covering her little brother in it as well. A traditional paper and cardstock page.

Amy, ever the gold star student of challenges ;-) was quick to take up the challenge and produced this little number in no time at all (and hey, that looks like digi bazzill cardstock there Amy!) Amy flipped the design over, I love it.

And here is my refreshed take on my own layout. Digi this time, as I can't actually use or get to my scrap desk at the moment. Long story. Well, not so much, but its boring and you don't really want to know.

Now I realise that this doesn't have a title, and I sort of like it like that...perhaps when I print it I might add in some thickers or something. I seem to be doing a lot of pages on the boy lately, but I guess he is a pretty rich source of content at the moment, being home by himself with me, before he goes to school next year.

Now you know the drill, you are welcome to play along, just linky up down below (when one of the other SAG girls who knows how to put the linky thing in) and leave a comment so we know to come visit your blog! Or of course, there is the Flickr pool too, again leave a comment, if there is no email to let us know we won't ever get to see your contribution!

Might even do a show and tell if enough join in. Hope you like this super simple page, which is really open to interpretation.

Thanks for popping by

Sharon

what is perfction?

One of my favourite bloggers is Karen Russell. For a long time now I have been regularly popping in to see what she is up to. Now don't get me wrong, I am not some strange lurker of others lives but there has always been something about her photos that has completely drawn me in. To the point where I almost feel like I 'know' her and her lovely family.  I just couldn't put my finger on what it was I loved so much about her photos. Yes, they are what I would consider technically brilliant, the focus and lighting was always spot on but it was more than that.

This week I started her class...'Snapshots of a good life'. And within 5 minutes of downloading my first lesson the answer was right there in front of me, the reason I love Karens photos so much, they are "emotionally perfect". I love the notion of an emotionally perfect photo for so many reasons.

Our first assignment was to find a photo we had already taken that we considered to be emotionally perfect. Well, seems I was going to fail my first assignment, choose JUST 1!!! ONLY 1!!! Oh man, easier said than done, here are a few I considered...

As scrappers we know our most powerful pages are the ones with those photos that speak to us and the words that record treasured memories kept for generations to come.
Here are 2 of the simplest pages I have ever done yet I consider them emotionally perfect pages!

Todays post was supposed to be a question and answer post (and yes again I am late)...so here is my question to you...

Do you scrap for
1. just the fun of it?
2. to record the memories?
3. both of the above!

And if you answered 3 (which I suspect you may) then can I add a challenge to this post...

Go now and find a few 'technically perfect' photos, choose the simplest template/layout/sketch you can, set your timer for 5 minutes and journal as much as you can about your photo. DO NOT stop to fix grammar, spelling etc (worry about that later) ... just type/write ... and don't get hung up on sentence structure (remember I am a school teacher and so I can give you permission to forget all you know about grammar)...put it all together and please share with us!

I'm not supposed to put the link here today (if you don't tell the others I will so we can all see your pages...shh).


Diane
xx

lift yourself...

Firstly, an apology I missed the last 2 Mondays. No reason or excuse...just forgot sorry!
I have a ton of photos sitting in a photo box just waiting to be scrapped and I am rapidly losing interest in scrapping many of them. I have culled to just the ones that really have a story to tell and I decided to pull out my old albums, find a page I like and lift myself.

Here's a 12x12 with handwriting from around 3 years ago...

and here's one I did today. I think I will get through the pile quick this way... I hope!!
Why not grab an old favourite page of your and 'lift' yourself. If you do please leave a comment so we can stop by :)
Diane

funny thing

if you think that bits of this page look a little like that they've come from CZ, the you'd be right!

Took just the text part of the CZ template and printed on plain white card, a strip of paper, thicker and photos. I think I also loosely based part of this on a page of Nicole's, but cannot remember which..you know you see something you like and the little gem stays in your head for that "one day".

I didn't add the extra bit to point #6: Georgie told her father that mum had "a new boy, a little teeny tiny boy called Bill" - the look on his face was priceless - as he processed this information and she continued her story, he realised that I was not in fact pregnant and hadn't told him (as the little teeny tiny boy lived under Angus's cot and only came out at night).

Anyhow, pop back on Friday, its my turn for a challenge and apparently it must be a difficult one, according to the SAG's!

Sharon

owl

I've heard that Diane acquired a very cute new 'stampin up' owl punch (from Emma) about a day after I finished this layout, and if I can get my hands on that punch for a minute or so I would be willing to re-do this traditional paper layout, to include a punched owl!

In the mean time, here's the layout as it is at the moment, mixing b/w and colour photos of my youngest girl being very much herself. Always perched or balanced up high somewhere. Hanging or swinging, often upside down from a high branch somewhere. Yesterday at my parents house she was scurrying along the back fence which is a rendered concrete wall about 15cm wide. She was in a crouched position on her hands and feet, and the wall has a good 6 foot drop. We noticed her from our position inside the house, a small distance away, and my Dad says, "she looks like a ringtail possum scurrying across the wires".  Does anyone else's kids have animal like tendencies??

Dance

Ok so I'm a bit like Sharon at the moment and the creative juices have not been flowing...mainly due to life just being so, so busy. So I pulled this page from the archives so to speak. This tells the story of my daughters first year of dancing and the concert. Looking back on this photo now, the girls look so little! Its hard to believe they grow up so quickly.

Don't forget to pop back tomorrow as Nicole will be giving us a tutorial - I'm looking forward to it.

One other thing...ANNETTE (winner of the Stampin' Up! pack) can you please email me your details directly (ejkirton@bigpond.com) as we are having trouble with the SAG email address and can't get access to it. Thanks!

reality scrapping...

I am a HUGE believer in real life scrapping. I do not want an album for my kids full of pretty pictures and fancy pages. I want albums that tell the story of their lives. Warts and all!!! I want them to know what life was like growing up...the good, the bad and the ugly. And they need to know Mummy rarely wears make-up and was forever trying to loose weight.

This is the story of Liv's Sleep Apnea.

dance...

Keep those challenge pages coming girls. There are lots of great interpretations :) If you have just arrived at SAGs scroll down a few posts to find our first challenge.

The page I am sharing this week was inspired by an evening of pizza, chocolate,  tea (yes just tea) and scrapping with Nicole. So credit to Nic for the design...

but  credit to me for that cute kid in the blue singlet! My baby girl Livvy :) Oh and what about the cutest little neighbour in the pink skirt...she is a doll!

best mum...

Wow, great response from the challenge. The SAG team loved visited each blog and looking at what you'd done! (Kirsten, we all tried to comment on your blog, but they bounced back :(). THanks all for getting involved - please continue to add your links under the challenge from yesterday so we can see what you've been up to. Next Monday is new challenge!


Onto today's layout.
While I am very FAR from the 'best Mum ever', middle daughter who is particularly loving, thinks for now, that I am. So I'm going to go with it while I can!! She left me this sweet little note on the fridge.
I made her tell me why she thought such a thing. PS And I do have a T-shirt just like that with a tree on it (and God love her, she even made my legs thin!).

but wait ... there's more

Just to show you another example using this same template, this time I left all of the photo areas visible and added two pieces of digital patterned paper and two photos. I also removed the word art from along the bottom and changed the title too - super versatile.

pets...

An old layout, but one I like even though there's a serious typo in journaling. Spaces for 2, 3 or even 4 photos. And kids do have guinea pigs now! Blue pp by Basic Grey, Green pp by Stampin UP.

fishing...

 

The beauty of simple layouts are that they are timeless...this layout is 3 years old!