26.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 26 | PLOAW Week 7 | ScrapHappy February sketch

I'm back from my trip! Despite my best intentions, I did not keep up with LOAD - we stayed in several hotels and most did not have Wifi at the room. In addition, we kept such a busy schedule travelling that I pretty much collapsed with exhaustion as soon as I got to my room...
I do plan to revisit the challenges I missed, but at my own pace.

Since I got home, I've taken some extra days to get back into the groove, so to speak {thank you, Madonna} . For this layout, I combined several different challenges.

Today's LOAD prompt was to make a page about your girl crush. Though I'm in my 30s, I've had this major crush on Robert Pattinson since 'Twilight' first came out. It's quite pathetic really - LOL!
The PLOAW challenge for week 7 was to make a page without journaling, only using the title to convey the message. I usually don't have a lot of journaling on my pages, but found out that I had more to say than I had anticipated and cheated a little by hiding my journaling tag. I say it counts ;-)
In addition, I also used this month's ScrapHappy sketch (mirrored).



I tried to not make it TOO freaky "watch-it-or-I'll-get-a-restraining-order"-stalkerish - did I succeed, do you think??

12.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 12 | PLOAW Week 6

There were some problems with today's LOAD-link, so I was unable to check today's challenge. However, I still needed to do my page for this week's PLOAW-challenge, which was to use no colour, only white, grey and black.

A page about my parents, who, after 40 years of marriage, are still very happy together. They are my role models!

11.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 11 | December Daily 2011 Day 21

Today's prompt was "school days". But, you guessed it, I chose to do another DD-spread. I feel like I'm on a roll!

A spread about me baking red velvet cupcakes the night before our office Christmas party.

I'm starting to feel a bit more confident with digital scrapbooking: the left side is completely digital, and I even used digital background paper for the 2nd time this week. The right side is hybrid, and I used a strip of the same paper as on Day 4 (when I also did some baking).

10.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 10 | December Daily Day 20

We're in the double digits! Woohoo!

Today's prompt was "favorite memory". I got me thinking about when my dad got a new car when I was about 13, and the 3 of us drove to Belgium to get ice cream, just for the heck of it ;-) Didn't have any pictures to go with that, though, so I'm also parking that idea for another time.

As usual, I opted to do a DD-spread. I struggled with the (lack of) photos for 19th December, so I skipped a day and did the 20th instead.

For the past few years, our department Christmas tree is not only decorated with the usual Christmas decorations, but also with gift tags. Each tag lists the age and gender of a child whose parents rely on the local Food Bank. The employees each pick at least one tag, and buy that child a gift. I usually buy 2 gifts, one for a boy and one for a girl.
This year, our 150 employees bought well over 170 presents!

9.2.12

Designer Digitals' Quarterly Sale is here!

I came across Designer Digitals via the blogs of scrapbook gurus Ali Edwards and Cathy Zielske, who both design for them. I'm not much of a digital scrapper, so far I've done only 1 (ONE) all-digital page, exactly 1 year ago: a page for my aunt & uncle's gift album when they celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary, using only freebies.
(not that bad, if I do say so myself ;-) )

Since then I have become a bit more adventurous with using digital elements for hybrid pages: I've used Ali Edwards' templates for last year's Week in the Life and December Daily projects. (both of which are still not quite finished, BTW...)

As I've mentioned before, I've thought about doing some digital pages this month since I'll be on holiday during part of LOAD. I was hoping they would have their Quarterly Sale before then, but knowing my luck, I expected it to be after I got back home... But lo and behold, they're having this year's first Quarterly Sale from Feb 9-16, just in time for my trip! So I didn't waste any time in ordering some necessities:

a whole collection of templates
click here

...and another collection of templates
click here

Tiny Templates, perfect for Project Life
click here

more Tiny Templates...
click here

...and even more Tiny Templates
click here

6x12 format, great for Project Life inserts
click here

some solid cardstock
click here

more solid cardstock...
click here

...and even more solid cardstock.
click here

Want to dabble a bit with digital scrapbooking yourself? Two Peas in a Bucket has a whole bunch of free digital kits to try it out! You can even download a free trial version of Photoshop Elements 10 to get yourself started.

LOAD 212 Day 9 | December Daily Day 18

Today's LOAD prompt was 'Home Sweet Home'. I actually took some pictures of my childhood home last Summer while visiting our old neighbours, but I'm really enjoying tackling my December Daily backlog this LOAD, so I did another DD-spread instead. Putting those other pics on my mental to-scrap list ;-)


This spread is about the annual combined St Nicholas/Christmas party ("Kerstklaas") that my friends and I have each year.

LOAD 212 Day 8 | December Daily Day 17

Today's prompt was 'I miss...'. Another one I struggled with (I seem to have more trouble getting inspiration this time round than during the previous LOADs...).
So I used my trusty back-up plan again and did another DD-page:



And yes, I do realise I skipped day 16 - I didn't have a nice picture for that one so I'm going to put it on hold for a while.

7.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 7 | December Daily Day 15

Wow, a week has gone by already!

Today's prompt was '...I always thought'. It could be about your expectations what your life would be like as an adult, what your family would look like (married with kids instead of thirtysomething & single with 5 guinea pigs, in my case...), or even about misheard lyrics.

I really liked the prompt but had a problem finding the right photo to use. So I once again used my back-up plan and made another DD-page. At least my DD-to-do-list is getting smaller this way!

6.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 6 | December Daily Day 14

Today's prompt was 'little girl dreams', in other words: what did you dream about as a child, and did your dreams come true?
For me, this was a bit too similar to the 1st PLOAW-challenge a few weeks ago, so I decided to do another page for my DD-album instead. That one's getting filled slowly but steadily, one spread at a time ;-)

5.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 5

Yesterday's prompt was 'the more things change...', and today's prompt was '...the more they stay the same.'
I decided to do a page about a historical figure that has fascinated me from my pre-teens when I saw the series 'Napoleon and Josephine' on TV: Napoleon Bonaparte.
My interest in Napoleon has lasted well over 20 years now, and I've collected quite a bit of stuff about him over the years. For today's LO, I decided to take a photo of my books and video's/DVD's about Napoleon and/or Josephine, and journal about how I became interested in them and how that sparked my interest in other subjects as well (Empire-period, period drama, Jane Austen, etc).

4.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 4

Today's challenge was to scrap about 'change', whether big (e.g. relocation) or small (new haircut).

A significant change in my own life recently is that my all-girl household is no longer all-girl!
Last week I adopted 2 rescue cavies, Tommie & Annika. In the last 10+ years, Tommie is the first 'man' to set permanent foot inside - though it's not exactly the type of man my mom was hoping for! {LOL}

Here's my page:

3.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 3 | December Daily Day 13

Today's prompt was to make a page about yourselves, the way you are now and what made you the way you are.

However, I really enjoyed working on my December daily album yesterday, so I decided to do the same today:


This page features the Hello Kitty advent calender I bought on a whim at the end of November. I faithfully ate one of the chocolates each day leading up to Christmas (I kept it on my desk at work, so I had to make up a few days after the weekend ;-) )
The left side is a piece of the actual calender, which I saved on purpose after all the chocolates were gone and pulled apart in order to include it in my album.
I used a strip of polka dot paper on the right to complement Kitty's bow.

2.2.12

LOAD 212 Day 2 | December Daily Day 12

Today's challenge was to use a favorite photo, whether old or more recent.

To be honest, I was at a loss. Too many choices! So I decided to use my backup plan, and work on my December Daily backlog.
I faithfully took pictures every day in December, but with the busy holiday season, I did not get around to finishing the project. LOAD is the perfect 'excuse' to work on that!

Here's my spread for December 12th:


It is not unlikely that more DD-pages will follow in the course of this month...

LOAD 212 Day 1

And we're off again!

The first challenge of February's LOAD was to make a page about food: favorites, dislikes, occasional cravings, that sort of thing.

I am a picky eater (heck, I even devoted an entire blog to it...), so I decided to make a page about that.



My box with scraps was still sitting on my craft table from earlier this week, so I decided to also use scraps and old(er) product on this page. I plan to use more scraps during this LOAD and put a dent in my scraps stash!