green...purple...orange...

Oh So sorry for being such a bad blogger the last few weeks. No excuse...just a make up pos.

I have to say looking back for pages to fit the weekly colour has been a lot of fun and is motivating me to 'get scrapping" again :) And reminded me it's not about the design just the 'words & pictures'. I am going to spend some time simply re-using many of my own pages.

Green.

Now this is something I should do every year...funny reading my likes and don't likes...it could be today not 5 years ago!

I LOVE green and pink together :)

Purple.

Orange.

How funny does hubby look ... hehehehe!

Sadly...she no longer holds the pencil this way...bloody school!!

I PROMISE I WILL NOT MISS NEXT WEEK!

Diane

Look at the stars...

I have 2 pages to share that have the colour yellow in them.

Here we have taken the yellow in the school uniform and used just a few yellow accents on the page.(Yes we! Yes I had my friend helping with this page too...love it when she finishes her pages and needs to play with photos!)

In this page I just let the yellow from Livvy's shirt stand alone. It is very bright so I thought that was enough and went with a super simple background.

Now last week I asked what song the line "I see red, I see red, I see red" came from. Come on...please tell me someone knows. I will give you another week ladies.

This week  am going to give you the answer for the line that is my title.

I see red, I see red, I see red

I have pulled out an oldie for my red page.

And I love that I have used these "less than perfect" photos...they tell the real story of us as a family.

Pop Quiz time

Who sang the song with the words of my post in it?

digi scrapping

Oh how I long to touch some product again. I will be using your sketch tonight Nic, thanks. I find I am doing more digi pages as it is just too easy to flop on the couch with the laptop. Here are the last 2 pages I have made...they are few and far between at the moment :(

It has been school holidays for all of us the last few weeks so hopefully we can back to more regular posting next week. Thanks for hanging in with us :)

Diane

In the moment...

I have to say I am always inspired by fellow SAG Amy and our good SAGgy friend Alexa. The are both awesome at capturing a moment or a memory with words. I read their blogs and am always inspired to "tell the story". Today I was visiting Alexa's blog and emailing a funny story to Amy and Sharon. So I stopped and told the story on this page.

Template Ali Edwards

I changed some of the title letters to match the colours from the photo.

Magazine Inspiration

This week challenge comes directly from the pages of Australian Home Beautiful. It is one of my favourite magazines for both home decorating ideas AND scrapping inspiration.

Here is this week challenge. There is lots here to love about the design and the home wares :)

Now I must make a confession. I have not scrapped a new page with this design yet. (I pulled everything out of the kids draws in our shared study...and I can't see the floor or the desk top. I will need to clean before I can scrap...sigh.) I did, however look through some old pages and was happy to discover some pages that follow this layout. I guess this is why I was drawn to this page initially...seems it's one of my "go-to" designs.

This is pretty close to the original, just added a title & flipped the photo placement. Now I thought twice about sharing a page with me in a bikini but seeing as there is nothing of the body to see I figured why not...after all aren't we always saying we don't scrap enough of ourselves! And I have learned to embrace my freckles :)

 

Another oldie but again based around the three blocks. 

I know I have said it before...simple is timeless!!

And a question for you...see the words "last forever" on the magazine page. I am dying to know what font that is. I love it at the moment and can find ones close but not the exact one...anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

Finally...another give-away :)

One of out talented readers will be offering a great give-away next week.

Pop back next week and keep a look out for more details.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with week.

Cheers Di

Embrace your mistakes.

Well I had a chuckle at my fellow SAG's post here.
That is so something I would do... actually... have done!!! In this page I muddled up the sentence strips. (Sorry it is not a clear photo...it is an old page).

Ops! Never mind the the story is told and the moment captured. 

Dani...

Today is a bit of a personal page but that is one of the things I love about memory keeping and the supportive community that come with it.

I have been inspired by Amy and Emma's detailed journalling. 

And I was motivated to do this page in an effort to make changes in my life. 

Mother & Daughter relationships can be rocky but worth every once of effort.

And it is amazing how just writing things down can make a difference.

Project Life

Each year in the scrapping world there seems to be a "latest trend". I think am pretty safe in say this years seems to be Project Life. There are so many scrappers out there joining the PL community and so many ideas floating around blog world. I have to be honest I have spent many hours checking out a heap. There is everything for the super simple to highly embellished variations. I was bait overwhelmed with the ideas and found myself spending more time look at other PL than I did actually doing my own. I have now banned  myself from looking at all but a few favourites :)

I first did Project Life in 2010 and I love what I have as a result. (I missed last year as I wasn't able to get a hold of the kit...the scrapping world can be cruel to us Aussies!)

Here are a few speeds from my 2010 album...

I kept it all very simple and just used the kit.

I included some photos of the kids paintings and tried to include a photo of me at least once a month.

I also got the kids involved in the journalling.

This year I am going ok...a few gaps to sort out but here are my first few pages.

Yep...I have a photo missing I keep forgetting to get printed.

This year I am planning to include some other pages. This will be the family album from now.

Here I have added a page using an Ali template as I have soooo many holiday photos 

and just wanted to include a few more.

Again I sticking close to just the kit. I will add a few extra bits here and there...but not to much.

Are you doing project Life? If so we would love to visit if you are blogging and say hi so leave a link.

Edited to add: For Aussies Project Life is available here.

Connections...

There are lots of things I love about memory keeping. I love photos and the stories,  I do enjoy the creative side of it ( even though I have had to let go of my love of glitter after an intervention by Nicole!) and especially love it when my kids look at their albums.

But for me the one thing I love most is the ability to make connections between my 4 children. I love seeing a photo of Mark on the page with his sisters. And they love to read about him and know they are a lot like him.

I had originally planned to just do a page of the kids on their first birthday but when I went back through the photos I found a common theme...they are all very messy cake eaters :)

 

At the moment this is a digi page. I will print out the photo section as an 8 x 10, then print the title and a journalling on some white Bazzil and mat it on some black or maybe java. And maybe add a brad or 2. I like the texture of the cardstock. I will post the end result next week.

Oh and one quick tip! Looking back at old photos is a lot of fun.

  

Oh to be so young and fresh faced again!!! My boy and me...I love it!!!

Don't forget to leave a comment on Sharon's post to be in the running for an great motivating prize!!!

Welcome 2012

Well, the festive/silly/school holiday/Australia Day season has drawn to a close for us Aussies.
It certainly is a long couple of months for us here in Australia. So much happens in the months of December and January and the weather can hit us in extremes.

February sees the return to school and some sort of normalcy (actually insanity at most places as the homework and after-school activities soon consume our lives)!

But most importantly February brings some renewed enthusiasm to tell the stories of our lives. New ideas and projects can be found on so many blogs. Here at Simple Aussie Girls we will continue to do what we started last year ... share how we record the stories of our lives in a simple way.

I must confess I have not scrapped in a while although I have managed to accumulate more digi products and bookmark lots more inspiring blogs. So fingers crossed this will spark a return to story telling ASAP!!

During the break we took the family to Canada and California for a wonderful holiday. I took over 9000 photos and am working my way through them right now. Here are a few I have popped into a great free template I downloaded here. I am thinking it looks like a great and simple title page!!!

To anyone reading this from Canada...Can I say your country is stunning!
The Rockies are one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen in my life.


I hope you will join us in 2012 and continue to tell the stories that matter most to your family.


Oh, and be sure to check back in on Wednesday when Sharon has an awesome giveaway up for grabs.

Who's in?

Well, it's December 2nd and so far i am on track with my Daily December :)

Day 1 photos.

Each year we think we have enough decorations but each year there are always new fun things to be found.

1. There are two of these 'Ho Ho'.

2. I liked the idea of this advent calendar. It hangs on our front door.

3. They where well priced and well they are blue!

4. We all need Christmas cups for out milk each day :)

The template is an Ali Edwards one.  I am using these and some bits and pieces in my stash to create a hybrid album. 

Are you doing a December Daily? 

Leave us a link in the comments if you are so we can link you up on our Daily December page.

What I see...

I loved Nicole's red page. It inspired me to do this.

What do you see everyday?

Diane

Christmas...

yep I said it!! It's times ladies to embrace it, time to get into the spirit and time to watch the bank balance decline at an ever so rapid pace ;)

This is an oldie but a favourite. I do love the simple joy of taking kids decoration shopping. They get so excited at the first sighting of the decorations in the shops. It really is "the most magical time of year"!
What are some of the more simple things you enjoy at Christmas?

Diane

doing cartwheels...

Ops...nearly missed my day...again! (Thanks for the reminder Nic.)

I have a really really simple page to share today. It's all about the story of Maddy and her cartwheels.

I will print this out as an 8x10, trim it and pop it in a 8x8 page protector.

Are you following us...if not please do. We have a fun little treat to give away when we get to 100 followers :)

Diane
xx

Mini's...

nope not skirts....I have long given up on those ...sigh!!
So today I thought I would share a few really simple minis I have made. I love all the super creative mini albums I see on blogs I visit but to be honest I have never really made a super creative one. I would love to but just can't find the time. I have soooooo many photo and stories to tell before I can play.

My mini's are in actual fact themed albums. I like 6x6 and 8x8 sizes for this. I tend to follow Cathy Z's lead and create my smaller albums with a simple and basic colour scheme. And I find they are a great place for photos that I love but don't have a big story to go with them.

This mini I created a few years ago with a Ali Edwards kit and is just a year of my favourite photos of the girls.

It is a 6x6 album, the same as the American crafts one. There is some simple hand journalling and not much else.

The next is an 8x8 album of again my favourite photos but with a simple colour scheme.

This is based on a CZ album. I love that I just chose 2 sheets of pattern paper and some colours, cut it up and stuck t in with the photos. I printed them as 6x8 the cropped them to 6x6. I made them all b&w so the colours didn't clash but I'm not sure i'd do that again.

And finally ... in 2008 Nicole and I and lots of others did a slightly different take on the 'photo a day' idea. We called it "52 Weeks".

It is simple 1 photo a week, with a week of journalling. I really like this , Maddy pulled it out just the other day and started reading it. She loved looking back. And isn't that what we all love most about what we do :)

Have you got a good idea for a mini? If so please share it in the comments with a link if possible. I think I need to get back and do some more like these. Actually I have one in the planning stages right now... I will share it soon.

For you Aussie girls...enjoy the long weekend and thanks for stopping by

Diane

what about you!!!

Sheesh.late again...sorry!!

Come on scrappers, how many pages do you have about yourself? Seeing as we are heading to summer here in Australia I thought I'd share one of my favourite ways to spend a summers day...in the ocean!!!

Yep...thats me hehehehehe!

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

Challenge # 7 - The News ...

Hi there again. After a week of looking at all of our scrap spaces it is time to actually use them and come up with some new pages - and a new challenge for you all.

I remember reading a while ago, probably nearly two years ago, an article over on Ali Edwards blog about having a good look in your albums to see what was missing or what you'd like to include more of. For me it was extended family and events going on locally and world wide. In the past year or so I have made a big effort to include pages that go beyond what is happening to my immediate family, sometimes they are simple facts and figures, sometimes they are my reactions to a news item and sometimes they are random thoughts that pop into my head after noticing a newspaper article or listening to the radio.

So, here is the challenge - find something that is happening locally, nationally or internationally that sparks your interest, makes you cross, proud, happy or sad and get it down on paper or pixels. Your inspiration may come from the radio, the newspaper, the internet or the television and it can be serious, thoughtful or hilarious - that part is up to you!

Let's see what we have all come up with ...

First up today is Sharon, her page is one she recently made to include in her WITL project - this is a great idea as I know many of you might wonder where a page like this would fit in your albums, I would say this is just the right place!

Next is a double page spread from Nicole. Nicole has deliberately tried to emulate the feel of a newspaper with her headlines and design. I love how she has taken two events and then expanded the journaling to include emotion and memory, these pages would also fit beautifully into your regular albums and could be included as part of an end of year summary.

Emma has used an international event to spark some very thoughtful journaling, make sure you enlarge this page if you can't quite see what she has written - it is, again, a wonderful response piece to a large event that most of us enjoyed earlier in the year!

Diane responded to a newspaper article that has featured a local and a national issue. I love the juxtaposition of the political and the sporting, this is really emotive journaling and I love the passion with which she has responded to these events!

Finally today I have a couple of pages to share. The first one is a response piece, it contains barely more than the facts and figures about the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan earlier in the year. I wanted to make a layout that was stark and thoughtful.

Secondly, this page is about my favourite all time sport and how much I love the rivalry between these two teams and countries. I used the recent World Championships as the springboard and journaled about the excitement and also a little bit about the inequality between males and females in the sporting arena, especially when it comes to how much they are paid and how much media exposure they receive.

So, there you have it - that is what we at SAG have come up with in response to the challenge ... now it is your turn. Don't forget to leave us a comment when you get your pages done, well, you can leave us a comment even if you don't get a page done - we love to get them and we love all those great questions you ask and the feedback you have been providing!

See you soon,

Amy