After my dissatisfied rant the other day Schellie left me this comment "It's good to try to learn new things,but at the same time be satisfied with the great things you do right now. You can never fail, it's your creativity!" And i thought how true. You can't fail because it is your own creativity. And endlessly comparing yourself with others only makes yourself unhappy. In fact I have noticed that sometimes the people you admire, when you get to talk to them have the same concerns and hang ups that you do yourself.. or I do myself i guess. So I really do have to work on being satisfied with my own work and my own creativity. They did warn us when we went to the photography course that many people are less satisfied with their photography afterwards. I think for two reasons. Firstly you are so much more conscious of what you are trying to achieve, and thus unhappy when you don't achieve it. And secondly because you are branching out and trying to utilise the camera's settings, it becomes more likely that you will have dud photos when you haven't picked the right settings. I have to admit that I am now much more conscious of my photography (see more self criticism) but when you look at scrapbook galleries the first thing I am drawn to is the amazing photographs. So many beautiful pictures, so many 'perfect moments'. That is not to say that I don't have my own share of 'perfect moments', but I am greedy... and I want more. But having said that, one of the things that amazes me the most is the people who create beautiful layouts with photos that are much less than perfect. perhaps once again it is about being happy with what you have!
Ok.. enough philosophising. This week at pixelcanvas we had a great challenge to create a page using papers that look like fabrics, use stitches and buttons, sewn-on bits and baubles, felt letters and shapes...to create your page.

Journaling: Record on your page something that is really important to you. Could be a world issue, a personality trait, or a belief...
This challenge really appealed to me, perhaps it is the 'sewer' in me that liked the idea of making a stitched up page. Here's mine. I was really happy with this.


I used HeatherT's new stitching set which I might add is on sale at pixelcanvas at the moment. They have a sale on at the moment with lots of stuff for 40% off. The ecofabulous kit is over 60% off! I have used that kit so much! And I love all the 'green' stuff in it. Heather's new stitches are very cool and look very real. Worth checking them out as I think the sale finishes tomorrow.
Then using some more HeatherT product I made this layout using her template


This template is available at Gottapixel.com for only $1.00! So cheap, and while you are there have a look at the Luxuriant kit i used to make this layout.

So it is the middle of Winter here in Australia, and way down south here in Victoria it has been pretty cold and miserable. But we have had some sunshine this week which was really cheering. Lucus stayed with us on Tuesday night, so on Wednesday i asked him what he wanted to do today and he said 'go beach'. So we did. The sun was just right for a trip to the beach and Ellie (our cocker spaniel) and Lucus chased each other along the sand. Mike and I just followed along snapping lots of photos. I have been experimenting with shooting in raw and jpeg so I can adjust the white balance and settings when i import the photos. So far i have only got to the import stage and haven't experimented with using Lightroom to 'process' the photos (as described by our guru Scott Kelby). However I must see how it works, because I took some phenomenally bad photos at the snow when I had the white balance set to flourescent when we were outside in the snow. The photos are a kind of glowing blue. Oh darn.
Our two big bits of news for the week are this.. 1. Greg the 17 yr old has got a part time job (hopefully leading to full time when he finishes school this year). And 2. We went to see Harry Potter - The half blood prince. I loved it. but i am a huge HP fan.
It's Friday now and another week has slipped by, Ben's birthday looms ever closer. His requests are simple... he would like a bass guitar and amp. I did find them on ebay for under $200 but I do wonder if we should bite the bullet and pay $400 at the local shop so we can have some after sales service since Mike and I know Nothing about guitars. I couldnt even replace a string. However Ben is now keen to play in a band (once he learns to play i guess). He has a friend who has a drum kit so I guess that is half a band... Apparently there is another boy who will be singing. So nothing will do, but he needs a bass guitar so he can follow his dream! I do miss the small children stage when they were really thrilled with whatever you bought them, and sometimes they would be just as happy playing with the box the toy came in!
Well, I guess that is another enthralling installment from the Kennedys. Stay tuned..

Today

Today there was a big event in my life. You have to understand that although I have been digiscrapping for some time now, I am still constantly frustrated by what I don't know. I am always admiring the skills of others and am rarely totally satisfied by my own work. But yesterday I put together a layout. In fact I did it quite quickly (and I might add with tears streaming down my face as I dealt with some of the most painful events of my life... darn more tears now). I had to put it together quickly and post it or i would have chickened out. So today when I found my layout at Gallery Standouts I was stunned. Yes it was simple, yes the journalling was heartfelt, but I just didn't expect to make the grade. Not me. So.. I was pretty thrilled, I felt really honoured to have been picked out. But here at the end of the day I still feel Dissatisfied. I just always want to do more. To know photoshop intimately and to be able to create brilliant art. Although I wonder if we are ever satisfied with our own work.. perhaps that way leads to complacency and that may not be helpful either.
I am determined to work on my photoshop skills though, I feel that by understanding my tools better I can work more effectively. So, I think it is time to work my way through some tutorials and try and learn how it all works better... Its kind of like a new years resolution for July.
So.. after that rant, if you are still reading, you may wonder if everything is all right in my world. And I guess it is. My children are going through a squabbling stage. I feel that it is totally unreasonable considering that two of them are almost adults. Why on earth do they behave like children? And the youngest one? He is talking constantly of the Birthday. 15 this month. I believe that he has finally settled on a bass guitar as his chosen gift. I had almost bought the video camera he had previously wanted, when he changed his mind. Typical. I guess a guitar means music lessons. Its funny how gifts have ongoing costs.
Perhaps since it is now tomorrow instead of today I should go to sleep. Before I go here is a little of my 'art'.

new template

It is a bit of a surprise to find myself blogging two days in a row, but here I am again. Last night after I logged off I decided to make another freebie template and now that it's made I thought I should post it. Although I have to admit that at the moment anything that relates to the internet is a bit of a struggle. We are having Issues. We aren't even sure what is causing the issues, I don't think it is our ISP which means it is our modem (probably). I don't really understand why a perfectly good modem suddenly starts not working properly but it appears that is what has happened. Last night I spent about an hour trying to open the 4shared site. No go. Today it opened fine. Downloads are a bit of a joke, with occasional items downloading reasonably ok, but mostly they either don't download or when I get them they won't open. I have stopped trying, as I am sick of getting frustrated by it. Now the big question is do we need a new modem, and does that mean we need new cards in our laptops as someone suggested. Essentially like most computer repairs it is all sounding expensive! Hopefully we can get it sorted this week because it has been more than a week so far of patchy internet and as i am obviously addicted to the internet, I do really need to get a decent Fix.
Theoretically with all these internet issues you would think that I would have been doing lots of scrapbooking, but somehow that is not the case. I am still not all that productive, and keep reworking the same photos/pages over and over trying to get it right!
I have made some cool pages though, here are a couple I did for HeatherT at Pixelcanvas.

This one uses her painted corners and dividers. I love the freehand look, and they are easily recoloured to fit in with your layout.



This little mini kit is so cute, it's called Growing up 2 fast. I think the whole growing up subject is on my mind a bit with all the kids having birthdays at this time of the year. Ben, my baby is turning 15 this month! And Lucus the grandbaby turned 3 last month! While you are visiting pixelcanvas you really should check out Heather's tutorials. They are amazing, detailed instructions on a variety of really useful subjects, including extractions, shadows and masks.

I have also done some new pages for Sara of Sweet Blossom designs.


This one is made with her Funky Baby kit which is full of bright funky colours, suitable for both girls and boys. And below is the page I made with Sara's All fired up. Both kits are available at www.scrapthatidea.com.

One of the comments I got about this layout was that it would make a great template, so... here it is.

Here is the link for the new template

As always I would love to see your layouts! Come back and post them in the guest book or in the comments section.

not a great blogger

I have decided that i am not the worlds best blogger... not even close. The problem is that i forget to do it, and that kind of defeats the purpose. Of course like most people I consider my life to be fairly mundane and not really 'blogworthy'. I keep resolving to do better but so far I am not going to be winning any prizes. Although I did in fact win an award a few months ago - something about being a polite blogger and leaving nice comments. I did feel very good about that as it is something I am passionate about. I know that for me personally, I love to hear from people who have visited my blog, just a hi, or thanks for your whatever is quite buzzy, when you are a novice blogger and aren't sure if you are getting it right.
But this was not a rant about the importance of leaving comments, because I haven't done much that has been comment worthy lately. In fact right this very second I am having a little afternoon nap having returned from a couple of days at the snow with the kids. Of course my kids are teenagers so I thought it would be a good bet that the boys at least would love playing in the snow and we were right. Ben loved it! Ben spent two entire days snowboarding and didnt even stop for lunch. He is now trying to work out how he could make enough money to take up snowboarding as a holiday. I think he will need a good job, because the whole snow sport thing is so expensive here. I think we could have flown to New Zealand for a week's skiing/snowboarding for less or certainly not much more. But the kids hadnt been to the snow since... well when they were toddlers i think. So we went. It was exhausting. It was cold. It was expensive. But it was fun. Greg is not a natural snowboarder. He turned up back at the lodge midway through the 1st morning for a break, he had numerous bruises and injuries from impacts with trees and snow, and I think also damaged himself falling off the ski lift. So it is only Ben that is our snow sport enthusiast. Greg much preferred playing pool in the bar afterwards. Each to their own i guess.
My scrapbooking has been limping along. I still don't feel like I am really achieving as well as I want to, I am still struggling a bit. But things are getting better. Our internet is an ongoing problem, so we might have to get the computer tech out tomorrow as we have very limited success with downloads and looking at any web sites with pictures (that pretty much covers all scrapbooking doesn't it?). Hopefully Craig can get it working properly, although I suspect that it is going to cost... doesn't it always? Now I am determined to get another template organised, I feel like i have been slack lately, so stay posted.. hopefully this week.