The latest from our GSG

We had another great scrapbooking weekend (aka GSG) the weekend before last, with Mum, my two sisters (Stace and Na), Auntie Karen, Fiona and a 'newbie' Tracey who I know from the photo club.  Here's what we produced (in no particular order!):

Finally, a page about Stacey and her first car (from 2006 - yes, I'm quite behind):

Just another page using the photos from our family photos 2009. When I looked at these photos, the one thing that struck me was how all of our eyes (even the boys, who aren't related) are nearly exactly the same shad of blue/green, and how much they stood out in the photos.  Perhaps I should have called it something a little more meaningful, but at least the title draws your attention to look at all of our eyes:

I wasn't actually here when these photos were taken, but I love how they look like they're having so much fun:

One of John's 'middle' brother and his wife at their wedding in 2009.  I've done quite a few of these two now, so, though it pains me to say it, this is probably the last 'Ian and Prue Wedding' photo that I'll scrap.  I need to do a few more of John's other brother and his wife now:

A nice simple one of Auntie Karen and Uncle Gary, who have become so special to us in the last few years since we've all been in Mackay together:

The same layout as above, but this time using one of my favourite photos of the two of us (taken on a lunch cruise in Dubrovnik, Croatia).  The picture itself is showing nothing special, but I just love how relaxed we look:

Another simple layout, this time showing our new car (well, new this time last year anyway):

This page was challenging to put together because I tried to pull together different colours, textures and patterns that didn't necessarily 'go together'. I do love how it turned out. The photo is Mum and Auntie Karen, with their 'other sister' (sister-in-law, really) Auntie Debbie.  The three of them are just so wacky and just love being together:

A 2009 New Years Eve layout showing some of the silly antics my parents and Auntie Karen/Uncle Gary get up to when they're together:

Now, this one was just fine - actually, I really like it - until I took to it with the Maya Road mist and ruined it! We each got two bottles of spray mist as part of our kits, and I kind of went to town! The idea I think was good - I put down some letter masks and misted over the top. It worked great! But, to try to protect the photo, I placed a piece of scrap paper over it, so the mist had a very distinct line where it finished and it looked funny. So, I did a few more sprays, and ended up making it worse, and covering up the photo of Mum with green paint! I then tried to wipe it off with a damp paper towel, and just smeared it! So, I think I will be doing this one again.  It's obviously of Mum at her 50th party:

As I said in a previous post, I've decided to just scrap some of my favourite photos from our trip, rather than do a whole album of them.  This is obviously one of my favourites! It's not the best photo - I look flat because I'd been so sick that day, I had to use a flash which meant the Eiffel Tower itself isn't well lit, and we're probably a bit too close to the camera.  But I love it! It's so special to me, as seeing the Eiffel Tower was part of a childhood dream of mine and it was finally fulfilled:

And of course, I had so many good pictures of the tower that I had to dedicate a whole page to it.  This is the same layout as the Mr Q layout above:

Finally, another layout of my cousin Chris and her husband Andrew at their Las Vegas wedding.  I just love so many of these photos, so I wanted to do just one more page.  Now this is how the mist is supposed to look! Nice and whimsical without making a mess!

All in all, I think it was a great weekend! We all got heaps of pages complete and I think everyone was pretty happy with them all. As always after one of our GSG weekends, I can't wait for the next one so hopefully everyone else wants to do it again!

I'll post again soon with some photos of the completed photo book - it was delivered a couple of weeks ago. There are a couple of things I'm not happy with, which are the fault of the printer, so they've offered a replacement which I need to get off my butt and order!

A snapshot of the photobook

I have spent considerable time over the last couple of months since we've been back from our trip editing our photos, and planning and putting together the files to order a photobook.  Although I'm obviously a very keen scrapbooker and still love doing that the traditional way, we had soooo many photos (6002, which became 600 or so when whittled down to the 'bare essentials') that the task of scrapbooking them for an album of the trip was just too much - and would also be way too expensive.  So, we decided to make a photobook instead which covers photos from the entire trip along with a few words about them.

Rather than use the layouts or templates that come with each company you can order the books from,  I decided to make my own file in Photoshop that covered the entire page and used the number, size and shape of photographs that I wanted, in the layout I wanted, with the text and font the way I wanted. That way, I could have the page laid out exactly right, and the photobook program would just see it as one big photo to cover the entire page of the book.

The front cover has a square cut-out and just the middle bit will show through.  You can probably guess that the photo above is the front page.

There is a total of 99 pages plus the front page, which is the maximum number of pages allowed. I think I fit about 600 photos into this book, of all different sizes.  I had 'highlight' photos that took up the entire page, pages that focussed on one monument or part of a city, and pages that were city overviews.  Some pages had writing on them (and those that didn't had accompanying writing on the facing page) and some pages were titled.  Each page (except for the higlight photos) had the city and country written in the outside bottom corner of the page (ie the left-hand pages had it on the left, and the right-hand pages had it on the right), although looking through the pics below most are from the left side!  Here are some of the pages from the book:

Harvey Norman Photos (online) had a 30% off photobooks special last week so I placed the order. They say to allow up to 10 days, and we're coming up for that now so hopefully it won't be too far away.  I can't wait to see how it turns out!  I'll post some photos of the actual book when it arrives.

I'm thinking that this type of book would be a great way to document photos from the year (like a summary book once a year) or a special even that you have heaps of photos from (like a family Christmas gathering).  I could also see a 'baby's first year' book or something.  The finished products are so slim that they don't take up much space in the bookcase or on the coffee table, but it actually gets digital photos off the hard drive and into a book you can actually flick through.  It took quite a while to do and set up the templates, but I think it will all be worth it.  Plus, the time spent is fairly miniscule compared to the time if I had scrapped an entire album of the whole trip - and just think how much it would cost!

This book cost a total of about $120, while an empty scrapbook album costs about $40 alone!  Add in 100 pieces of plain cardstock (with absolutely nothing else) and that's another $65 - not to mention the photos themselves! Even at the 9c special at HN that's at least $50.  So, although $120 sounds like a lot, I think it will turn out to be a great book for considerably less cost than a scrapbook.  Plus, the major benefit is that it will actually GET DONE!! I will still definitely scrapbook some of my favourite photos from the trip in my normal 2010 scrapbook, but the finished album of the entire trip will always be there too.

Now that I've got my templates done up, I would be more than happy to help family and friends do one - I know a couple of you have been thinking of doing something similar so just let me know.

Hopefully it will arrive in a couple of days.

My birthday haul

It was my birthday last Friday, and this weekend I finally had the chance to put all my little goodies to work!  I've used pretty much everything I got (or bought with some money I was lucky enough to be given) in this room:

I got a new chair - to replace my $20 5 year old 'The Warehouse' chair that always had one wheel falling off whenever I moved! This chair is so comfy, and wheels around great!

I also got these:

Floating shelves! I've been looking at these shelves and planning something like this for a while.  My desk used to be 'behind' me when I took this photos beneath the window, but I knew that I wanted some shelves above the desk so I moved it to this wall a couple of months ago.  I love that they let me get some things that aren't necessarily used off my desk. (And if you notice that the same photo is in both photoframes, that is because they are also new and that is the photo that came in them! I'm still deciding which photos to put in them.)  John and I spent a couple of hours yesterday putting them all up - he did a load test on the shelves and is happy that I haven't exceeded their capacity! I told him his handiwork is perfect and he doesn't need to doubt it!

At KMart they had a beautiful black eiffel tower sculpture/decoration thing that I loved! I thought it would look great on my shelves! I am planning on getting a long skinny canvas printed with my black and white eiffel tower (and big ben) photos to put either side of my big window, so I thought it would look great together But, I didn't want to over do it, so I'm just waiting a bit until I decide exactly what I want on my shelves.  I'm wishing I had bought one of the cheap miniature eiffel towers the gypsies were selling while we were lining up to go up the top in Paris - they were heaps cheaper than the one at KMart, and would have looked just as good (and been just a little authentic, probably made in China still but at least bought in France)!

Using some online blog posts and websites as inspiratioin, I also bought some metal rod towel rails and attached them to the bottom of the shelves as a storage rail for my lettering.

I absolutely love it! This is not something that I had planned for very long (only a couple of weeks) but I'm so glad that I did! It means that I could free up a whole shelf in the white unit next to my desk (in the photos above) to store my other birthday pressie - which enables me to bind my own notebooks and albums!  You can see it in the clear storage box on the second shelf in the photos above.  A bind-it-all!  (This notebook is for the wife of a guy at work who is expecting.)

I also did another one on the weekend, which I think I'll keep for myself. I love it, and I'll post a picture of that later.

While I was reorganising my room, I also did this:

My ribbons used to hang off hooks on the side of my white shelf unit near the door, but just looked a little cluttered. So, I stole this idea from Fiona and hung clear hooks on the wall to show them off!

I'm now jumping on the bandwagon and no longer calling this the craft/sewing/scrapping room - it is now officially 'my studio'. Much more serious sounding don't you think!

I can't wait to get in there and create something! I've been feeling a little 'blah' about this room for a few months - I had it too cluttered and not well organised, so I was never really keen on doing too much in there as it always involved cleaning stuff up! Now, with a place for everything to go that keeps it pretty much off my table, I'm set to go!

Thanks for my birthday pressies, everyone! Whenever I'm in my studio making something, I'll be thinking of you all!

Some not-so-recent recent cards

It's been a little while since Father's Day (and various other birthdays in our family) and I realised I haven't posted the cards that I made.  No offence to any of the men I sent these cards to, but to be honest, male cards just aren't the most fun to make!! No ribbons, flowers, frills or 'pretties', and lots of browns instead of pinks!

Here are the various Dad cards (for Father's Day and we had a few 'man' birthdays around that time:

^^ I finally got to use those brads that look like screws that I've been harbouring for literally 4 years! 

Yes, there was a little bit of a blue/green/brown theme.

There were also a couple of girl birthdays:

That one above that says 'for you' is an envelope-thingy that I made to enclose some tickets for 'Ben Hur' and associated plane/accomm tickets for John's Mum that were from the whole of her family.

There was also the card I made for my Mum, and the matching guest book that everyone signed at her party, but of course I forgot to take photos of them didn't I?

That same weekend, I managed to finish one page:

I used one of the 8x10 photo collages I put together in photoshop, and just stuck it straight down, added some strips of paper and a couple of flowers, and it was done.  I love doing pages this way, it's so quick and I love how they turn out.  I've got a few other photos I did like this that I'm yet to scrap, hopefully I'll get to do them in the next couple of weeks.

One last little project I was working on, and I absolutely love how it turned out.  I'm not over the moon with the binding, I had my heart set on it being wire-bound, but it wasn't to be.  This a little something for a couple I know (not sure if I'm supposed to be sharing their names...):

I'm sure there is a lot of information expectant Mums (and Dads) need to remember, and I thought a cute little notebook (with blank lined pages inside) would be a handy way to keep it all together.

I learnt an easy way to do ruffles on my sewing machine!! I just put on my walking foot (for some reason it doesn't work as well with my normal foot), set the tension to the highest and the stitch length to the longest and it just ruffles it up for me! Sure beats sewing gathering stitches and then pulling the threads, etc.

I took these photos on a bit of a gloomy morning, so I'm not too happy with the colours in the photos, but didn't see the point in spending too much time in photoshop getting it just right. But I love those two fabrics together! I would love to buy some more of that green, but Spotlight seems to have run out.

That's about it for me, I'll be back soon with some more stuff I've been up to.  Actually, most of what I've been making is for gifts so I probably can't share all of it!

Mum's big party!

Gee, I didn't realise it was so long since I last posted. Time flies, and Christmas will be here before we know it.  Luckily I am well on my way towards crossing things off my Christmas list.

A couple of weekends ago it was my Mum's birthday - let's just say she turned ... 35.  Anyway, my sisters and I organised a surprise party for her, which was a little risky as she had been insisting that she didn't want a big fuss or a party - just family around for a bbq.

That morning, Auntie Karen and Uncle Gary arrived in Rocky from Mackay, bringing Nanny with them. Well, no-one could wait for Mum to open her pressies, so they gave them to her then. Isn't she beautiful?

Later on the in the afternoon, the main surprises arrived - her brother and his wife (she's like a 'real' sister to Mum and Auntie Karen) and their two kids from Brisbane, as well as her other brother from Brisbane. They were the major part of the surprise, and what we all looking forward to the most.  The look on her face when they arrived says it all:

We had arranged for Auntie Karen and Auntie Debbie to take Mum out for coffee so that we could get ready for the party, and so that her other two surprise guests could arrive (some long-time friends who she doesn't see all that often).  Here's Mum with Auntie Karen:

Getting ready for the party is a breeze when you've got the men of the family who are all 9 foot tall (well, that's a bit of an exaggeration):

When Mum walked through the door, she was so happy!

She said that she suspected something was going on when all of a sudden she was dragged out for coffee, but thought it was just so that we could do something with her present! She wasn't expecting this:

And then she looked over and saw the cakes:

The cakes were made locally here in Mackay, and then we transported them down to Rocky in our car. Sugar Siren Cakes did such a fantastic job with the inspiration photos I gave her and our colour scheme, they looked far too good to eat.

Mum opened her presents, with the main one being from all the family - a hot air balloon ride over the Gold Coast!  The first picture is when she opened it, the second one is when she realised she'd actually have to do it (rather than just talk about it) now!

Then the party started.  Mum has this thing for silly hats and other attire, and this time she had bought some silly glasses for us all to wear.  Obviously, she had grossly underestimated the number of people there, so Na had bought the extras that we needed so that we were all 'lucky' enough to have a pair of our own. There were some crackers there, and everyone wore them with good grace!

Even Nanny got in on the action and looked smashing!

As normal, we had to have the obligatory family photos. Well, with our family, this is never straight forward - look how many shots we had to take (and these are the 'grown ups') to get the 'good' one.  Personally, I think the best ones aren't necessarily the 'good' one!

For dinner, we had a 'hot dog smorgasboard' with a create-your-own hotdog stand with a heap of different toppings.  It was a lot less work than a normal bbq, and something a bit different.  Unfortunately, I don't think there were any photos taken of that part of the night, despite the 26 cameras in attendance!

All in all, it was such a fabulous night, and worth the organising and cloak-and-dagger involved with smuggling everything into the house when John and I arrived from Mackay the day before. Mum has this way of getting information out of everyone even when it's supposed to be a secret, but this time she didn't succeed! 

Happy (belated) birthday Mum, you are so loved by the whole family.