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.

trying to get back in the groove

I don't know about you, but certainly in my part of the world, scrapping, and the time (and energy) in which to do so sometimes isn't abundant. Or the motivation to be honest.  But the other day I got my act together and ordered some prints, and in the meantime did a page digitally with some I didn't get printed.

Wholly inspired by this found somewhere around the goodness of the www.  Nothing like a bit of scrap lifting, even if its just an interpretation, to get one going.

and here, my finished (digital page)

I had lots of photos I wanted to include and so kept the whole thing very linear and graphic. As always with my digital pages, I bear in mind that I have to print them at home, and this 8.5 x 11  double spread allows for plenty of room for trimming or adding any "real life" embellishments I may feel like when I'm sticking this down. I envision that I will "hide" the patterned paper when I go to print (or not, depends how lazy I am feeling!)  and add real paper to the empty spaces, and mount both pages on dark brown (java probably!) cardstock.

So folks, how has your scrapping time been going? As you can see, all of us here at Simple Aussie Girls have been afflicted the same way, life just gets BUSY!

laziness abounds

Not sure this page was executed quite like what was in my head, but its done.

And that's all, she wrote!

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.

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!

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!

Week 8 | Black and White

Now this week was hard. It wasn't hard to find a layout with a black and white photo, that would be cheating, but it was hard to find a predominantly back and white layout.

I had to search the archives, I've had a new layout for nearly each week up until now .... my excuse is that I had to make three birthday cakes last week, and they were all for the one person.

Gotta love U2. I didn't get to see them last time they were out, actually, I've only seen them once in concert and I'd love to see them again one day.

Black and white; any pages to share?

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!

oh so lovely orange

I like orange. I scrap with it more than I thought I did, it is quite a versatile colour, very much like green.

A fully digital paper (you may notice that the paper is the same as Amy used on Monday) printed out on photo paper at home, I will mount on some kraft I think and of course I will have to whack a brad on there in front of the title.

This layout takes photos from  a years worth of swimming, mud and water play. There was a LOT of them :-) And its nice to see how the faces and hair have changed during that period of time!

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!

Week Five | PURPLE

I am a child of the eighties, and this week's layout is proof.

I love this movie, sure, it's never going to win any awards, but that doesn't matter, it's good film.
Escapism; exactly what I like in a movie.

As for purple, well, I use it more than I think, well I did when I used cardstock. I don't have many purple digi pages. Purple is more versatile than you think and I'll leave further explanation and examples to the others, who are more colour cognisant than I.

Purple, love it or loathe it, have you used it on a page recently?

thinking green

I love green. So it came as a surprise to find that this green page (which you may be mistakenly thinking is brown) was terribly hard to assemble. Took ages. I realised that I don't normally scrap by colour, but am governed by the photos that I want to use more so than anything. (and I find myself frustrated that there aren't more mainstream scrapbook paper manufacturers that aren't taking the simple-I-would-think move to go digital).
May I present my take on green:
This is how I envision the finished product, plonked on a nice bit of brown bazzill.
and the main bit so you can read the little bit of journaling. This isn't the layout to expand on the strange wiring of daughter #2 but as I was doing it I was thinking about how this child will either run the country or end up in jail, most of her escapades come from her little brain keeping itself occupied. The hard part is keeping it occupied for good rather than evil.
And there you have it, I have written the journaling, or the starting of, for another layout right there. Next week perhaps! :-)

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!

better late than never - pink

sorry folks, have been caught up in the real world that is living in rural Australia, mustering cattle and long story short, nothing went as planned or expected. ANYHOW, I am back now and here to share my pink page.

One would think, that having two daughters, pink would be a colour that predominately featured on my pages, but as I look through them this is not the case. Sure there is pink but more of an accent, same as the yellow. I do quite like pink, and hot pink in particular and it is one colour that you will find in my wardrobe in small doses (love a hot pink blouse with dark blue jeans or even white linen pants!)

Just a few little snippets of memory about daughters 7th birthday, I have a couple of more photos I wanted to include that speak for themselves, but after not being able to include them in a pleasing fashion digitally I have decided to print them and include in a 6x12 photo sleeve beside this layout in her album.

Don't you love the way scrapbooking is evolving?  Love the use of photo pockets everywhere....

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 :-)

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.

yellow - day three

I find that I don't use yellow a lot either, not that I don't like it. Its such a cheery, gorgeous colour, but it is one that is pretty strong and I find that its best used in small doses. Just like in clothing, its a brave or vibrant person that can wear it full strength. But team it with some other deeper, more muted colours (navy and yellow? so crisp and perfect) and it all becomes terribly delicious.

As you can see I am a lazy cow and again reverted to the tried and true CZ templates to save my bacon. Not a lot of yellow, but just enough to make an impact.  The page is a few of my favourite instagram shots - late to the game I know, but I don't own an i-phone but recently upgraded to a cheap android version, to which instagram has just been introduced. Its got me, hook line and sinker. I love it.  You can see my instagram page link on my blog.

So tell me, do you like yellow? do you scrap with it, wear it? decorate your house with it? (I had a secret, rather impractical ambition to have a yellow handbag. It would not get a lot of use, but geewhiz, I've seen a few of them around. Yellow is IN people!)

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.

Red - Day Three

Sorry I'm a bit late posting today, but I'm here now :-)

So, RED. I like red. Red shoes, red handbags, red accessories.  Funny then, when it comes to making a page, red isn't my first choice of colour.  Like in real life, I like red as an accent, an accessory.  So that is how red came to be on my page.

(template by CZ) A digi page, when it comes to printing I will turn off the background, print the white bit and stick it down on a bit of blue bazzill (I don't know the colour names like Nic does).

And reading the journaling through again  it seems I need to revise my English skills, I've used two different words that mean exactly the same thing in the one sentence. I can't remember the term for that (grey matter not firing on all cylinders today) but see if you can pick it.

What do you think about red?