A page for Les Papiers de Pandore

Good morning! I would like to share another layout I made for Les Papiers de Pandore. I tend to make monochromatic pages. But this time I tried to use as many papers and colors from the collection as possible. And I find that making a page in a quilt style is the best way to do so.

  

   A few close up:

I used pop dots to give dimension to the title.

Besides the grey cardstock, this page was 100% made of things from these two collections - Winter Little Circus and Everyday Portraits. It felt SO good being able to create again.

I guess, I will leave you with a cute smile we get to enjoy everyday:

That picture was picked for Project Life album and I thought I'll share it here since we love it so much!

There's one more thing I wanted to mention. I use online calendar for my Project Life. Besides moths and days, this site has weeks labeled too! It's great for PL if you do weekly spreads. You can check that site at Calendar365.com. I'm even thinking about saving my photos by week now. Will see how it works.

Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you next time!

Have a great day!

New value of Project Life...

Hello! I believe that, loosing pictures is any scrapbooker's biggest fear. This week I almost experienced that. The thought of losing a year's worth of pictures... my son's baby pictures, our everyday moments, special occasions... I could not agree that I just said goodby to all of them. But then Project Life came to my mind and suddenly that album grew in value! I was SO happy I took time throughout the year to print pictures. If I were to lose the pictures in the computer that night, at least I had about 450 saved in PL!  There - Project Life is also a great back up plan.

Luckily, my husband was able to recover all the photos for me. He went and bought an external hard drive, (the one I thought was too expensive before) and we backed up all the photos in the computer, plus I was transferring pictures from DVDs for two days! Lot's of work. But now I know what back up means and that was probably the last time I waited a whole year to to do that.

Speaking of Project Life, I decided to share a few pages in the album. It's not completely finished. I don't know if it will ever be (the journaling part), and I'm OK with that, like Ali Edwards likes to say.

Here are a few of my favorites from last year:

Week 30:

 

I have cut out NYC with my Cameo. Also, I used washy tape to hold the journaling card in place (it is easy to remove), but then I kinda liked it there, so I decided to keep it, folding half of it to the other side.


Week 23: 

I love how Susan Weinroth uses little 3x4 calendar cards. I really wanted to add some to my PL but I needed them to match the color I need at the moment. I decided to design one myself, so I can adjust the colors as needed.

Week 40:

 

Another close up of the calendar card, and a little banner I added on top of the picture - which was cut with Silhouette. I don't add much to my Project Life album, just an occasional little detail here and there. All of the week titles were cut with Silhouette too. Some of the dark ones were printed directly on pattern paper.

Week 23:

I don't have all of the journaling cards filled yet, as I mentioned earlier, but my pictures and dates are in place.

Week 38:

Another card was hand made. Phrase was designed and cut with Silhouette and than glued to a 3x4 piece of pattern paper (this one was by Echo Park, Dots and Striped collection).

That's a little glimpse into our Project Life.

Just wanted to mention: You don't have to be a scrapbooker to do a project life. There are SO many options today, and all it takes is a desire. Seriously. The rest are just tools. You don't even have to use these page protectors and cards. A nice and plain photo album would do it.

Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions, plese ask, I'll be happy to answer!

See you!

A simple card...

Hello! If you've noticed, all blogs are filled with valentines projects. It's reds and pinks everywhere you look. So, I was in the mood to create something in that theme too. I didn't want my card to scream "Valentines!", so I tried to make it a little versatile.

Card measures 4.5x6.5:

 Close up:

I found an even easier way to make paper flowers. Have to thank Silhouette for that! Now I can't stop making them. There's at least 15 of them in four different colors and slightly different sizes on my table right now.

These are adorable hands that are never far away from me when I'm creating. I love when she asks for scraps of paper, then tape, then she grabs my scissors and soon she slowly takes over half the table... The other set of hands, that are even smaller, I try to keep a little further from the table because they destroy everything they grab withing the matter of seconds or at least throw stuff on the floor, if I'm lucky.

That simple card was like an appetizer after the long "creative diet" life put me on. I'm SO hungry to create more!

Have a great day and I'll be back soon!

The rest of the DD...

Hello! I'm back! Finally I have pretty much everything where it's supposed to be. At least all of my supplies are! Everything is in one room now - my printer, Silhouette, papers, tools and most importantly - my table. Very excited to have it back!

Still haven't created anything yet, but I'm here to share a few more pages from my DD. Before we do that, I need to explain something. Somewhere in the middle of December I realized that I have too much on hand and had to say "no" to one of the things. It happened to be my December Daily. I was still taking pictures. Still had that first few pages complete. And then the idea to turn it into a December-long letter came to me. I told you before that I did a DD album for my mother-in-law a few years back. Knowing how much she enjoyed it, I decided to make it happen just for her.

I simplified the process as much as possible. I was SO glad my album was constructed mostly of the envelope pages. It was a perfect solution to include notes from everybody and drawings from my four-year-old.

The rest of the December Daily 2012:

 

Saying goodby to another year of December Daily fun, but this doesn't mean I won't do any holiday or winter related scrapbook pages anymore.

Thank you for your patience and I'll see you next time!

Have a great weekend!

January 13...

Hello! I realized I needed a little explanation here for my absence. It's basically a very boring post, but I don't want you to think that I'm gone or that I decided to quit blogging. It's just the changes in our house. It took a long time to figure out the best way to rearrange things. It takes even longer to do that! Since both of my girls are homeschooled now, we really wanted to give them the best conditions for quite surroundings that would be both functional and cosy.

It has been two weeks since I did something scrapbooking related! Two weeks! I can't wait til I get my table back and have some fun in my creative corner!

To leave you with a picture, I guess I can share a photo of "the most creative" thing I did in the past two weeks - наши домашние вареники.

We made half with potatoes and the rest with cabbage. They were good. My husband loved them, but I can honestly say, I'm not going to do these again soon. It takes half a day to do these and they are gone in one sitting. I didn't even take a picture of cooked vareniki.

Before I go, I realized I did do something scrapbooking related this year- my DD. It is almost completely done, so I will share it next time. Have to go now, but will be back with some pictures of DD soon!

Thanks for your patience!

A little gift...

Good morning! We are in the middle of some changes around the house, which left me without my favorite spot - my creative corner. I realized, I can't create if I don't have my own spot. Besides that, I'm getting ready to say goodby to my camera, which makes me sad and scared. It needs to be shipped off to get fixed, but I'm afraid to be left without it for up to six weeks! I was putting it off for too looong now, and the time has finally come to do so :(

But for now, I'll share a little gift idea, I made for a friend. Originally, I wanted to give one of these to all of my sisters, but... you know when the desire doesn't match with the opportunity or time. December was just way too busy, as always.

I made some boxes, and filled them up with homemade cookies and a matching holiday kitchen towel. 

Waaaah.... I'm still looking for an excuse to put off the shipping of the camera. Why is it so hard? Was I just too attached to it? How am I going to post things? What I'm I going to add to my PL? waaah...

Well, I guess I would have to use my sister's camera sometimes.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope to be back soon!

Welcome 2013!

It's a new day, new month, New Year and a new beginning! Happy New Year to everyone and I wish 2013 to be one of the greatest! Best wishes to all of you!

LOOKING BACK...

I love seeing "Top 10" posts at the end of the year, where bloggers post their favorite work. Obviously, I can't do that, but it was fun to look back and sum up the blogging life in 2012. Last year there were 95 posts published (please keep in mind that I was pregnant first half of the year and had a newborn the other half) There were 45 new layouts made, about 30 cards, 3 mini books, many more started but never finished, thousands of pictures taken, lots of precious memories recorded and a Project Life album kept going.

Instead of posting my favorites I decided to go online and check what other people liked from my work this past year. I didn't post all of my work to online gallery, but among published layouts, I found that this one was the most liked, for some unknown reason (again, it all depends what day and month it was posted):

Followed by the next two, both winter pages:

Overall, the most liked project last year was my Vacation mini album:

But I also found the ALL TIME FAVORITE project! It was viewed 1300 times, bookmarked many times and has 15 sweetest comments from other scrapbookers! It was a travel page I made, where the original idea came to me while I was falling asleep (yes, I had to get up and draw the ugliest sketch just to remember it in the morning). Here is the winner:

Thank you all who took their time to come here and leave comments, which were firing me up to do next project. Thank you sisters! Thank you friends! Thank you new followers - seeing a new name added always made my day! Thank you ladies for buying cards! Thank you everyone who stops by! I hope this place continues to bring you whatever you come here to get - weather it's inspiration, ideas, chat, check my spelling or any other reason:)

I guess I will share my three favorite pages of the year with you... I don't keep my pages in chronological order. After they are done, I just add them to the 3-ring binder album. Doing so, I usually try to keep the best one on top, and the page that didn't turn out quite well, I place at the end - that's how I found my top 3 :)))

Do you have a page that stood out for you? I would love to hear!

Also, I just have to mention that last year I was proud to be a guest designer at Two Peas in a Bucket and Les Papiers de Pandore ! It was a great year and I hope 2013 will bring more good to all of us!

But more than anything, last year we've experienced countless of blessings and I'm thankful to my Heavenly Father for that! 

Once again thanks for visiting and have a Happy New Year!!!