I like Sundays

I like Sundays now that the children are all teenagers and believe that sleeping in on the weekends is their sacred right. I completely agree, because I think a weekend sleep in is one of the great joys of life. This morning we all slept in until 10.30 which was a bit frustrating as I was planning on being 'at' the speed scrap for pixel canvas at 10.00. So I turned up late, but I caught up and managed to make a pretty cute layout.



I used a kit called Beep Beep by Karen Lewis which I had bought ages ago. I am trying to use up some of my supplies that I have impulse bought and never used. Unfortunately there is a lot of them. I have even been trying hard to clean up and even delete stuff off my EHD so that it is more user friendly. My scrapbooking now is up to 145G. That does include the layouts. But it seems rather... large! And there is a lot of stuff there that I have picked up when I was a devoted freebie hunter. I still love freebies but now I tend to consider carefully whether I really want things because otherwise they just take up space.
I had a big run of shopping this last week, so I have a duty to myself to use all that stuff. Pixel Canvas had a sale so I had to buy some stuff there, it was 40% off! Then i bought a few things by Ninascraps over at Oscraps, love her templates, very simple and graphic. Perfect for someone who is in a creative slump.

Template by Nina scraps Supplies from Jen Wilson Designs Buttons by Bed in a bag special

This layout uses a template by Timounette. another nice simple graphic design (and a freebie on her blog)

Kit Baby Boy Lauries scraps

Those two layouts were enough to remind me that I really can make ok layouts! So goodbye creative slump. And then the big excitement for my week was being invited to join Heather T's Creative Team. I am still a bit blown away by that. I didn't really think that I was up to her standard.. but she likes my style... i was seriously thrilled with that comment. Particularly as i had just spend the last week wondering what on earth my style was. Just for the record I am still not convinced I could define my style, other than "i'll have a go at anything'". Is that a style?
I have of course been hard at work reading, I got stuck into Jim Butcher and have been reading his fantastic fantasy series for a few weeks now. I am waiting for book 5 now. And I see on his website that there is a book 6 to come out in December. That would make a nice Christmas present.


Caitlin is going for her learners this coming week. I keep reminding her that she needs to study for it but she seems to be confident that she knows it. I certainly hope so, because this is the 2nd time she has booked for it. The first time she took herself there and got lost and missed the appointment. We decided that it would be best if we drove her to the appointment this time as there is less chance of her getting lost! Of course once she gets her L plates she will be after me to take her for driving lessons. It is a very scary thought. it is a few years since i took the twins but i do remember it as a very 'interesting' experience. keep in mind that I am not a very good teacher! I guess i managed to learn to drive from my parents and they were very challenging to learn from. there was a lot of yelling. And of course i was sure that I knew everything too. I can still remember driving my parents to Dunedin and dad saying, 'what did that signpost say?' Of course i hadn't even seen the darned signpost. But seriously it said steep grade trucks use low gear. should i really have been interested? Of course he made me use low gear too and everyone passed us. Very embarrassing.

I dont like Mondays

I don't like Mondays except when I worked the weekend and have Monday off, like today. And today i revelled in being off. I tried to do as little as possible, finishing my book, and working on some scrapbooking for a lot of the day. But eventually I did have to do some stuff even if the most exertion I managed for the day was cooking the dinner! I did make corned beef which is one of my family's favorite ever meals. It has to be just right... first I cook the corned meat in a bottle of ginger ale, which gives it a nice flavour. We like it served with mashed potatoes and carrots, another vege or two is ok so long as they aren't silver beet which because we get out of the garden for nothing my children don't like. They appear to prefer veges bought from the shop. Tonight it was broccoli and asparagus. Then it has to be served with mustard sauce. Lots of mustard sauce. I dont think that mustard sauce is on the weight watchers plan but I ate it anyway. It was all delicious.... thank goodness for the Edmonds cook book and Mustard sauce.
I know.. it isnt riveting, but it is the stuff my life is made up of. We have had no thrilling adventures. Right now the most exciting thing in my evening has been the search for Baking soda so Greg can make a Banana cake to try out the recipe for school cooking tomorrow. As a matter of fact we had none so he has gone to the shop to buy some. Shows how often I bake. But I do love home baking. The smell of fresh cookies makes me go quite weak. Which is why there are none here - definitely not on the weight watchers program.
To be honest I am probably not the best advert for weight watchers really. I don't tend to get to the meetings, but i have been twice. I have not managed to track what I eat for more than one day - that was the first day of course. But joining (i used the special offer join for $1.00) did remind me that I didn't like my middle aged spread much and I have lost a little bit of weight. Do you know what that means? It means that now none of my clothes fit properly. Now they are all long and baggy. I will probably have to go and buy new stuff!!!
So - I know you are probably saying, what is with all this burble... where is the scrapbook stuff? I have to admit that my mojo is a bit damaged at present. I start pages but I have a dickens of a job finishing them. I move stuff, move it some more, then delete it. I bought a couple of kits to see if that would trigger anything, but... no. It isnt lack of supplies. It can't be lack of photos... I have gigabytes of the things. It is just me. Sigh. so I have been out and looked at lots of galleries, and there are lots of inspired people out there. I did think of making a quilt, or a jumper... but then I thought, what about all my UFOs... (unfinished objects). So no new stuff. It is a good time to tidy up my hard drives and back everything up and those kind of chores that I put off. I have done a bit of reading. I read a trilogy by Jim Butcher, well I thought it was a trilogy till i found back four and five. These are the Codex Alera series and they are a good readable bunch of fantasy, great characters and the plot keeps you engrossed throughout, so they get my tick of approval. Scrapbooking? I have done some. Sara has put out a new kit called Space. A nice boy kit with great blue orange colours. I decided to pull out some of my old photos of Ben and use them. I was quite pleased with this.

As always you can find her kits at Scrapthatidea.com and she generally has them on special for the first couple of days. This one has a great stapled alpha which I love. That messy stitching is pretty cool too.
Well that is pretty much the update on our thrilling lives. No freebies today either... maybe I should write that at the top?

Pink alpha

Download here

I finally decided today that I should post the pink alpha that I made, like weeks ago, and then forgot about. Hopeless huh? So today you get, finally the last alpha for the Classic Baby kit. I do hope you liked my first ever kit. I learned a lot making it! I have been doing lots of scrapping lately, trying out different styles and trying to expand my creativity. It is amazing how many tutorials that are out there when you go looking. Youtube is a really good source for all sorts of CS tutorials. I daresay they have Photoshop elements stuff as well. I watched a half hour tutorial on how to extract wispy hair that just blew me away. It made me realise how basic my extractions are! But at the same time I came across a number of good sites with beautiful actions which are one of my favorite toys. I went looking for the Pioneer Woman's actions, having heard of them, and it turned out that she is the same Pioneer woman that cooks... i tried some of her recipes last year.
Anyway the upshot of it was that her actions are found here. And they have some free downloads which are really worth trying. There is a couple of lovely black and white actions that I was really pleased with. I used one of them to make this page.


This uses one of Vinnie Pearce's artistic overlays, which I also love, and her word art as well... The funny thing was that this photo was taken at the playground and the white bar he is holding is actually a kind of vivid orange which completely discoloured his face. I thought the photo was a throwaway, and was just playing with the action... and it just worked. Funny how that happens sometimes.
So I haven't blogged for a while. It just hasnt been that interesting! Lots of working and sleeping really. I have been following the So you think you can design contest on digiscrapaddicts.com and we are on the final round now. The kits are all still there if you are looking for some great freebies. There was so much amazing talent there.
Sara of Sweet Blossom Design has been going from strength to strength with a new amazing kit each week, and I have been such a slack bunny because I haven't mentioned them in a while. Her new kit this week is called Magic Happens and it is seriously gorgeous with lots of bling.

available at scrapthatidea.com
And the new June collab kit is also out, this is a very cool kit with a beach theme. Here are the layouts I made with it


Once again availabe at scrapthatidea.com
So that is the update. Hope you like the alpha. That is the end of Classic Baby. I think it is probably time for another couple of templates and then... maybe I will get my next kit out.

time goes by so quickly

and i realise that I havent blogged for ages. But you know sometimes it feels like there is nothing really noteworthy occurring in my life. I have been to work, helped my husband a bit with his assignment which involves the finer details of left bundle branch blocks - not sure what that is? Trust me you dont want one. It is a cardiac thing, he is doing a postgrad certificate in critical care this year amid much swearing and muttering. I am chief grammar and spelling and wording assistant. I am learning a lot about left bundle branch blocks myself.
I think that I must have SAD, seasonal affective disorder. I think it means you get down in the winter. Because I have to admit that now it is cold and frosty that I just find it hard to get up in the morning. I keep missing Queensland and wondering why we left. We have long conversations about why we left, to reassure ourselves that we did have reasons. But both of us so hate the winter that at this time of the year the reasons just dont sound good enough.
So there I am a bit down in the dumps, not liking the weather, not liking my job much, my kids are fighting lots.... dreary isn't it?
I know it will pass, and part of it has been the ongoing issue of my back pain, which really does bother me. I am often so intensely angry. I am angry with the person that created the situation where it happened. I am angry that when I have time off because I can't work, they pay me a pittance. I am angry because the pain specialist told me that my best solution was a non clinical job. I have worked for years to become a midwife, I love birthing!!! I am angry because.... it just doesnt seem fair!
So. What i should have written as a heading, is dont read my blog today because it is a big grumble.
How about instead I show you something fun?

This is Benjamin almost 6 years ago! He was such a hard shot. Always goofing off... actually not much has changed. I made this page for Digital Paper Hearts using a kit called my li'l monster by Phantom scraps. You might recognise the template? Yep decided to reuse it because it just worked so well. But I wondered if you might be interested in a little tutorial on how to make the coloured edges?
I kind of discovered this by accident, and thought, wow that is one cool and easy technique!
First of all open the paper you want to use for the edge. On CS i then right click on the paper and go layer from background. You now have a transparent background behind the paper. Now draw a big square on the paper about 1cm or so inside the edge. Dont worry too hard the first time because you can play around with this till you get what you like.
Ok next go into select>modify>feather. Pick a number from 5o to 100 px. I usually do about 50. Now your outline is curved. Hit delete. Hit it again.. as often as you like till you have the feathered edge you want. The more you delete the finer the edge becomes. Then just drop it onto your layout. It is almost like a chalked edge. And so easy huh?
I do have another technique i use to make a chalked edge but that requires making a path, perhaps i will go through that another day. Hope you like this tutorial.. love to see any results???
and i promise that i wont grumble next time.

new template!

I was sitting here tonight and thought... why don't i make another template. And so I did. How easy is that? It's one of those classic templates which always look good, and with a bit of imagination you can make it look really good. Here we are enjoying a rainy weekend. I say enjoying, because we really do need rain. But since my plan was to catch up washing this weekend, it kind of doesn't really work. I guess that is why I have time to make templates.
I have been having a great time downloading some fantastic kits from the DSA So you think you can design competition. Today their newsletter came out. It is worth a look, as there are lots of discount coupons for some great scrapbook shops. I had a great shopping spree after the last one. Anyway I am in the middle of watching Billy Conolly travelling to The Ends of the Earth. It is a great series, so i will post my template and go.

I made this layout a while ago for a challenge at Elemental Scraps using
Elemental Scraps Zazzle Collaboration Kit.
Miss Vivi Starting School background paper.
Fonts Pea Susan, Palantino Linotype

Download template here
As always I would love to see what you have made, I am getting a few beautiful layouts in my guest book at the bottom of the page. Maybe next year I will be brave enough to try for the SYTYCD challenge!