LOAD 512 Day 9

Today's LOAD-prompt was to use 6+ photos on your page.
I used some another set of long-overdue photos from our 2008-trip to the States.

I still have to finish the journaling, but my mind was too fried tonight to write a nice story on the page.

I did some photo-editing on the 3 pictures on the right with the buildings. The perspective was distorted in the original photos so I corrected it in Photoshop (I actually liked the effect of the leaning buildings in the main photo, so I kept that one as-is).
I found this easy tutorial online that shows exactly how to correct distorted perspective in your photos.

To compare, here are the SOOC* and edited version of the Betsy Ross House:

SOOC

edited version

*SOOC = Straight Out Of Camera

LOAD 512 Day 8

Today was another Tough Topic Tuesday, and the prompt was to scrapbook someone else's story.
I decided to make a page about my grandfather, and how he told us shortly before his death last year that he'd had a near-death experience as a young man and how that helped him not to fear dying.
Though the subject was serious, the story itself was actually a bit funny: during his near-death experience, my grandfather felt himself surrounded by bunch of beautiful women - he was almost ticked off when he was revived since he didn't want to leave them! ;-)
Fortunately for us he did come back and lived for another 60+ years.

A journaling-heavy page this time, which is unusual for me. In order not to cover the background paper (from an old Club Scrap kit), I printed the title and journaling on a sheet of thin vellum. Two photos of my grandfather, one of him as a young soldier and one taken more recently.

LOAD 512 Day 7

Today's challenge was to make a page in 30 mins or less.
I don't think I quite managed that, but this is a fairly fast page for me - most time took adding the journaling in Photoshop!

The subject (my favourite brand of sneakers!) was an idea that came to me during my recent sketching session.
Another very simple page. I tried to break out of my anal-retentive tendencies by glueing the paper strips a bit askew ;-)

LOAD 512 Day 6

Today's LOAD-challenge was to use a sketch provided by Lain. However, the catch was that you couldn't use it as-is, but had to change it around a bit.

I flipped it a couple of times to get the creative juices flowing...

Since I wasn't feeling too well tonight, I didn't want to bother with printing out photos etc, so I decided to stay in bed with my mini-notebook and try my hand at an all-digi page.
Some time ago I downloaded a bunch of freebies from the internet, which came in very handy now!
Here's the result of 2,5 hrs blood, sweat and tears:

It took that long to get it done because I created it entirely from scratch (i.e. without a ready-made template), and had to learn how to use drop shadows. (BTW, great video tutorial here)
All in all I'm quite pleased with the result!

Stamped birthday card

It's been ages since I sat down and made some cards.

Today my cousin, with whom I visited London a few weeks ago, celebrated her birthday, so I decided to break out the stamps and ink and make an old-fashioned handmade birthday card.

And you know what? I felt good getting my hands dirty ;-)
I need to do some more stamping soon...

LOAD 512 Day 5 | PLOAW Week 19

Today's LOAD-challenge was a fun one: enter your name in the search box at eBay, and use an item from the 1st page of results as your inspiration.

I was a bit astonished that my name yielded nearly 11000 (!) results... What struck me was that a lot of the items were handbags - which prompted me to make a page about my most frequently used handbags and the stuff I haul around in them (an idea that has been on my mind from time to time).

Here's my page:

I kept it extremely basic: 2 photos (with the journaling added in Photoshop), a sheet of practically ancient patterned paper (from one of the first Basic Grey lines - Aged and Confused), 2 paper lace strips and some letter stickers. Easy peasy!

I thought this prompt was so original that I posted it on the PLOAW-board as challenge for week 19 as well ;-)

LOAD 512 Day 4

Each Friday during this month's LOAD will focus on one of the 5 senses.
Today's theme was hearing. So basically anything to do with (the lack of) sound.

Since I recently did 2 pages that both featured quotes (view them here and here), I did not want to repeat myself and go that predictable route. I also didn't feel like digging up photos on the internet of my favourite bands/songs.

Then I had a bout of inspiration: today is Memorial Day in NL, and every year at 8pm sharp, the whole nation upholds 2 minutes of silence to commemmorate the victims (both military and civilian) of armed conflict from WWII on. So I decided to do a page on silence instead of sound.

The clocks symbolize the 2 minutes of silence during the memorial service. The image is a still from tonight's news broadcast.

Today also marks the 1-year anniversary of my grandmother's funeral (I cannot believe it's been a year already!), so that was also on my mind tonight.

LOAD 512 Day 3 | PLOAW Week 18

Today's LOAD-challenge was to use holiday colours on a non-holiday themed page.
I had already edited and printed these photos, and since purple is my friend A's favourite colour, I decided to go with a somewhat Halloween-y colour scheme in her honour. The yellow photomat is actually a bit more orange in RL.

The PLOAW-challenge for week 18 was to use 'special' paper instead of just regular ol' patterned paper and cardstock. I used 2 colours of handmade paper for the photomat and a background paper that almost looks like salt-paper.

I used some of Pioneer Woman's Photoshop Actions on the main photo (Old West and Burned Edge to be exact), and used photo frame brushes from Designer Digitals.

Here are the SOOC* and edited version of the main photo:

SOOC

edited version

SOOC = Straight Out Of Camera

LOAD 512 Day 2 | PLOAW Week 16

Today's LOAD-challenge was a tough one: do NOT use a photo on your page.
It seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Isn't the whole purpose of scrapbooking to put a dent in all those piles of photos?

Strictly speaking, recording any memory could be considered scrapbooking, whether by using photos, newspaper clippings, journaling, memorabilia/ephemera (think: ticket stubs, receipts, postcards), etc.
So, though most scrapbookers tend to focus primarily on using photos, it certainly isn't mandatory.
It just takes some thinking outside the box (hmmm... what a coincidence that that's the theme of this month of LOAD- not!)

Anyway, I struggled a bit with coming up with an idea so I browsed the gallery for some inspiration and came across a layout that another LOADster did for Day 1. I liked it so much that I decided to scraplift it.
Here's my version:

I stamped the journaling spots, and since the PLOAW-challenge for week 16 was to use stamps on your page, this layout was a 2-birds-with-1-stone page ;-)

LOAD 512 Day 1

And we're off for another round of LOAD!
This LOAD's theme is "Scrapbooking outside the box" - who knows what Lain will cook up for us this month...

The first challenge for this month was to scrapbook a self-portrait. I recently had some inspiration and drew a couple of sketches for page ideas as to not forget them (in fact, my PLOAW-15-page was thought up during the same inspiration-boost).
One of them happened to be about me being a avid photographer - whenever I take a walk or go for a bike ride and I bring my camera, it takes me 2-3 times longer to get to my destination than "normal" people: I take pictures of every leaf, flower, critter, statue, sign, window display [etc etc] that draws my attention (it drives my mom nuts when she's with me - LOL!)
So on this page are some photos that other people took of me while getting my photography-groove on (4 of them were taken by my aunt, who shares my interest in photography).

I tried to go for a bit of a visual triangle with the green accents - don't know if I quite succeeded ;-)
All in all I'm quite pleased with this page!