It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas is starting to pop up everywhere, from Christmas decorations to December daily preparations in the crafting and scrapping world. I'm making a plan for this year. I've got plans to do more journaling by hand this year to (hopefully) improve the chances of completion.

Sharing a card today I made using a background from the Holiday Faves 5x7 Mini Album Vol. 2 by Nettio Design sand the ultracute December Doodads by Kate Hadfield.

The geometric patterns of the papers and the background stripes add a nice contrast to the dimensional doodles. I'm planning to make more cards using the mini albums backgrounds as well. 


 Heather

Nettio's Blog: Inspiration to Layout

Visit me over on Nettio's blog today. I'm guest posting while she is on vacation!
Join me as I discuss how I created this layout -

Inspiration to Layout

More Cool Stuff From Me!

 

So, in between some of my organizational posts, here’s a post about what has been going on with me around digiland.

I received a GSO at Digishoptalk for this layout using 10 Things About Her (Jenna Desai):

And my hybrid tutorial is in the Digital Artisan Notebook this month! I can’t post the actual project yet, but here is the sneak peek from the website!

My tutorial features the kit Affirmation by Elise’s Pieces and it describes how to create a card set and gift box for them.

Computer Spring Clean-a-thon Mid Week Update

 

If you want to find my previous post on the clean-a-thon, go here. Or click on the label – organization. If you would like to visit Nettio’s blog to find about more about the Spring Clean-a-thon, visit here.

***

So I’m chipping away. Knowing that other people are also working on tackling similar cleaning tasks is motivating. Why do I want to get my digi stash more under control? Because although I still have 27 GB free on my external hard drive. I have more than that waiting on my internal hard drive, waiting to move so that all my supplies can live together in one place. And that just isn’t enough space! I also know that the kits that are on my internal drive are ones that I like more and are better quality than some of the kits on the external drive.

I will admit that I thought for a while to just get a bigger drive to hold all of my stash. But I stopped and realized that this is the time to get myself in control. I am an e-hoarder and I really want to do something about it so that it does not take me so long to get everything backed up (and in turn I believe that I will back up more often if it is not a several day adventure) and so that I can find my stuff that I love!

With that – how am I doing on my goals for this week so far?

1. My email inbox. I’ve gone through all the unread messages and unsubscribed from 3 mailing lists that had a lot of unread messages. I still have to go through the messages I’ve starred or marked to-do.

2. Backup. Hasn’t happened yet.

3. Get into a rhythm with organizing digi scrap supplies and photos. I’ve been working each day on my digi supplies. Moving some into an archive folder (I find it works better for me than if I straight delete). Haven’t worked on photos yet this week.

Stats:

Mon. March 19, 2012

Main folders: 257

Previews tagged: 933

Total space: 218 GB

Files: 214,238 Files

Folders: 15,801 Folders

 

Wed. March 21, 2012

Main folders: 227

Previews tagged: 959

Total space: 217 GB

Files: 213,467

Folders: 15,662

I’m doing pretty well on getting rid of extra folders and I have moved some kits. Problem is: I think they are older kits with lower quality, so maybe they really weren’t taking up that much space.

4. Post about my progress – that’s me right now!

Spring Cleaning–Techy Style

 

I’m jumping on the bandwagon with Nettio this week to participate in the Nettio Designs Spring Clean-a-thon:

Since the challenge is only for a week, I don’t want to set my goals too high, but I also want to use this as a chance to kickstart myself again. I was doing well with my organizing until about February and then I got distracted.

Goals for this week:

- Clear my email inbox, to do and flagged emails

- Unsubscribe from some mailing lists so that I don’t get as much email everyday if I am not using the information

- Backup my current projects

- Get into a rhythm again with organizing digital scrapbook supplies and photos

- Post about my progress – midweek and at the end of the week

Lynnette mentioned some surprises for people who follow along on her blog, so I’m going to update my status there as well. Wishing myself luck!

Love is 5

I’m sharing a layout today about a bear. I used a FAVE-O-RITES template from vol. 5 by Nettio Designs to create this layout – (btw it makes a great layout out of anything!)

And I used this kit by Elise’s Pieces – “Love is All Around.” It has great colors with pink, red, green, blue. I think it could match a majority of themes and photos.

 

This little bear is turning five and it’s just crazy to look back at how much he and we have been through in that time.

Font: The Cutie Patootie by Heather Hess

Something I realized from this layout. This bear has three layouts to his name over several years. Why? Probably because he is a Valentine theme and lots of fabulous digi kits are love themed and he is a natural. As I thought about this though, I realized that I have other “things” in my life that are completely undocumented. That’s not fair. I’m realizing how many holes I have in my pages and how I have multiple pages on some common topics. I think I’m going to start working on a missed layout list to start and help this situation. Do you have holes in your collection of layouts that are missing some important parts of your life?

Me and My Journal

 

I’ve been working on writing more in a journal this year and so far succeeding. I feel like it has helped my journaling on my scrapbook pages as well by giving me ideas for pages, adapting words I have already written for my pages, or just made me less self conscious of what I write.

The gold member kit at DST for March 2012 is a fantastic kit. Full of fun elements that any digiscrapper will love. I mean -  a tablet element? It rocks. Even though I made a layout about writing with this kit, I’m planning to make a digiscrapping one in addition. I like the scratchy look to all the pieces of this kit.

 

Credits:

Extreme Digiscrapper by Dawn Inskip

The Architect Font by Heather Hess

Favorites Mini Book

 

Okay this may be one of my favorite hybrid projects ever. I used the Media Journalers by Kate Hadfield -

and the Spiral Bound Alpha to make this mini book. It was so easy to make. I just picked out some of the 3x4 journaling cards and placed some of the word art tags on each of the pages. Printed, cut, hole punched, and bound with a 1 inch binder ring. I made two of these and I liked the one that just had all of the cards facing front more than the one that was book style with two of the colored cards facing each other.

The best part? Filling it out! The pictures and words just brought to mind all of these fun memories. Lists, sentences, drawings? Whatever you want to write about the idea. And it was managable. I will treasure it forever.

A great idea is to print one out and give it to a friend or family member and have them fill out the same cards. It would be great to see all the different perspectives on the same theme.

LOVE IT! It has inspired me to do more projects like this. It also gave me an idea to jumpstart my travel and christmas journaling/pages.

Nettio Designs Scrapping Contest

 

Do you have any templates by Nettio? Or have you been thinking about using this free map template but just haven’t gotten around to it yet?

Announcing the:

Introducing the Show Off Your Awesomeness Contest
Here’s your chance to start embracing your scrapbooking awesomeness and show us what you’ve got by using any NettioDesigns template in a new, creative, awesome way. Shrink it, scale it, flip it, combine it – it’s totally up to you. What matters most is that you push yourself to step outside your box and create a layout that is awesomely YOU.
Here are the rules:

1. Choose any NettioDesigns template currently available in the NettioDesigns Shoppe (this includes the free Oh the Places We Go map template found here) and create a NEW layout showing off that template in a fun, creative way that is 100% YOU.
2. You may enter as many times as you like but you must use a different template for each entry.
3. Post your layout in any online gallery and then link us up to that layout in the comments section of this post. You have until Sunday, 2/26, 11:59PM ET to enter.
4. The NettioDesigns Team Awesome and Lynnette will select our favorite, most creative entries and the winners will be announced next Wednesday, 2/29 as part of the final day of the NettioDesigns 1st Anniversary Celebration.

And look – I get to be one of the judges – that will be a first for me. I would love to have a gazillion entries to choose from. And there are prizes involved! Now the deadline is coming up fast – you only have until Sunday 9:00pm Pacific time to enter! So hurry up and get scrapping!

London Layouts

To continue in my recent exploration of cleaner graphic style layouts – I created the following two layouts.

Visiting the Queen is based on a sketch by Cathy Zielske. And her thoughts on type.

Big Ben is my own design.

These pages were a bit of a challenge because they have a lot of journaling! The font size is a little smaller than I usually go and there felt like there was more space to fill. But I really liked the bits that I added in my journaling to add to the story. I’m thinking about creating a lot of the pages from this trip that I took in May 2011 in this style. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out what kits I want to use, I want the photos in the forefront, and maybe it will help me to get more pages completed since there is not as much layering to move around and around on the page (although tweaking a lot of type elements still adds some drama!). I love how these look.

Bookstores and Magazines

 

A new layout – with a new design style for me. A magazine style with emphasis on words and photos. I added a few elements from Bookworm by Kaye Winiecki and used the new Photobook Frenzy: A Week in the Life 12 x 12 templates by Nettio Designs. It has been a rough time for me IRL recently and what do we do to help? Go shopping! We went online to look for some used bookstores and have really found some amazing stores that are holding on!

I really love how this layout came together. I’ve been looking more into magazine style as I was researching when I did the ScrapMatters newsletter/magazine and now I am getting a chance to integrate some of that into my scrapbooking as well.  It still took a while, but came together rather quickly compared to some of my other layouts.

Celebrating 100 posts and a 1st Anniversary!

 

I looked at my blog dashboard a couple of days ago and realized that I have 100 posts on my blog! For me, this is quite an accomplishment and I am feeling ready to party!

And the best thing is I have a bunch of ideas for some more posts. Here’s to Created by Heather.

And Lynnette is celebrating the first anniversary of her shoppe, Nettio Designs, during the second half of February.

Isn’t this one of the cutest little ads?

There’s a sale and some fun ideas to be shared. Later I’ll post a layout I created using some of the new templates.

10 Things about Her (Me)

I’m in a quite reflective mood and this new kit by Jenna Desai – inspired me to record a few of my favorite things (one of Lynnette’s –nettio- ideas that I love). 10 Things about Her is really fun; I usually don’t really go for ultra girly, but I just love so many elements and papers in this kit. The crown, the yellow ribbon flower, the doodles, and the 10 things journaling stamp! It’s half off today for something old, something new at the Lilypad.

Here’s my layout – I also used a template by Amy Martin and the font: The Good Friend by Heather Hess.

2012 Calendar

 

I used Everyday Storytelling by Jenn Barrette and Kristin Cronin-Barrow. I think it’s a good idea when making a calendar to use a big size kit so that you have a lot of papers and elements to choose from or to find two kits that coordinate with each other.  And this kit is big!

TIP: The best tip I can give for creating a calendar is to make it longer than 12 months. Last year, for the 2011 calendar I made pages to February 2012. This year I made pages until April 2013. It really helps to remember events farther in the future and also gives the calendar creator a bit more buffer time to make the new one!

Another tip: make the back cover as pretty as the front cover. When I was creating the front and back covers in Photoshop, I had envisioned the journal with the camera as the front cover and the “happiness lives here” on the back. However, I punched the wrong side of the back cover! Instead of having to reprint and use another piece of chipboard, I was able to change my plans and punch the front cover to be the new back cover. (When doing hybrid, I find I always have to be flexible and inventive!)

Back:

Page:

 

This is a sample page. Each of the pages looks different. The calendar templates are by Krisi’s Kreations (I resized them to fit my pages). I pasted the cover pages on chipboard so that it is nice and sturdy and portable. The chipboard measures 4.5 x 6.5 inches and came precut. I used the Zutter Bind-It-All to make it sturdy and This general construction worked really well last year and the size was very convenient. This pocket calendar is a great project because it is very handy and well used throughout the year!

Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it!

 

Using this kit, Boy Wonder, by Jenna Desai (half off today!),

I was inspired my the energy and enthusiasm of this kit and the bright colors. I decided to scrap some photos of my favorite parade at Disney World right now – the Move it, Shake it, Celebrate it! Parade. It’s really more of a block party but I really love the party atmosphere and watching all the characters dance!

I like the movement and action in this layout because the parade is all about moving! I also used the fonts – The Blockhead and The Robot – by Heather Hess for the title and miniature journaling.

2012 Goals in a layout!

I was so excited when Lynnette (nettio designs) created this set of templates for goal related layouts. It’s Goal-tastic. Look how cute that one with the word quote cut out is!


I was all ready to scrap because I just posted my goals on this blog. So for the journaling  - I copied and pasted my 12 2012 goals and then reordered them, took out the numbers, and changed  some to add some personal goals as well as scrapbooking goals.


Credits:
Positivity by Jenn Barrette and Lauren Reid
It’s Goal-tastic Templates by Nettio Designs
My personal goals include reading more and writing at least a paragraph in response to each book. I’ve found that when I look back at books I’ve read a while ago or not so long ago, I can’t remember as much as I’d like to. I’m not really going to focus on plot – more my response to characters, situations, likes, dislikes, inspiration….I’ve tried this with three books so far and like how it is going.
I also want to be more flexible this year. I was inspired by Elise Blaha a long time ago about how one of her goals was to do the splits. I’ve always wanted to do this in the back of my mind, but just didn’t think it possible. But I’ve been noticing that when I bend, I feel really stiff and it has gotten out of control. So any improvement in flexibility I would be ecstatic about.

Meet Harold and Vinnie.

I just think they are adorable. When they were finished, I knew they were just right. Jenn Barrette has a new kit called Puppy Love. So cute.

And I’ve been wanting a puppy for a while but I just can’t go for it right now because of the traveling I do. But these little guys warm my heart.

Here’s Harold:

Here’s Harold sleuthing out the truth in a paperback:And this is Vinnie:

I used a Martha Stewart punch (one that I got patterned off a Japanese punch) to create a weaving hole for the ribbon leash (blue ribbon – American Crafts, brown and blue ribbon – unknown company – from Michaels).  I also printed out a similar colored paper to adhere to the back and make the bookmark more sturdy.

Excuse me while I go take these guys for a walk!

Jan 2012 Organization Check in

 

Digital scrapbooking kits:

I feel like I am making some headway. I’ve organized all the kits I have from one store and now I am moving on to the next. I’ve had the opportunity to search for some Christmas supplies and found a kit I didn’t even know I had and also rediscovered some old kits that I would like to use again. I find it motivating seeing my organization in practice because that’s the whole reason I am spending the time, right? For easy access. Also I need to use it to see if I really am organizing in the way that is most effective for me.

Jan 03, 2012

Today: Jan 20, 2012

Main folders: 265

Previews tagged: 845

Total space: 219 GB

Files: 214, 829

Folders: 15906

 

Photo stats:

Jan 17, 2012

Total: 76180

To Keyword: 54438

To Rename: 3313

To Star: 55668/48366

This is where I am starting from now. As you can see I have my work cut out for me, but I see the numbers going down a little. And I am really looking forward to having more photos on hand to scrap!

2012–Here WE come!

 

Here’s a recap of my 2011 scrapbooking goals.

1. To scrap more layouts again…

2. To spend less time organizing but be more efficient.

3.To incorporate more of my rubber stamping tools into my hybrid and stamp more.

4. To blog more - more posts, more meaningful content.

Good. But now I hope this year to change things a little. 

Revamped Goals for 2012

 

1. Twelve layouts a month.

2. Use more of the kits in my stash.

3. Participate in more challenges.

4. Be more active in classes.

5. In LOM fashion, 15-20 minutes on as many days a week as I can fit it in, working on my photo triage and preparation for slideshows and scrapbooking.

6. 15-20 minutes on as many days a week as I can, working on my digi kit organization and rediscovery.

7. Try a monthly round up – aiming for completion by the middle of the next month.

8. Get my memorabilia and ephemera ready for display.

9. Try at least one new technique a month.

10. Print some layouts.

11. Leave more gallery comments.

12. Update blog more with meaningful posts.

 

I am going to try and keep track of my “stats” a little more to see if  I find them motivating. If they don’t help, I am going to discontinue that portion of my plan.

2011 Goal Check In–To Make Way for 2012!

 

Here is a list of the goals I posted in July 2011 – how am I doing?

1. To scrap more layouts again…

2. To spend less time organizing but be more efficient.

3.To incorporate more of my rubber stamping tools into my hybrid and stamp more.

4. To blog more - more posts, more meaningful content.

1. Definitely heading in the right direction with scrapping more layouts. I have a couple of ideas on how to improve and scrap more. Including a really inspiring class and the completion of my Christmas book. I’ll expound more on this section later. I really want to get myself prepared so that when I have time to scrap, I’ll know what stories I want to tell.

2. Yes and no, with the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, I have had a bit of time to do more organizing. I am trying to spend a little bit of time on all the days I can to organize some of my scrapping supplies and photos. I am making progress and that is FANTASTIC!

3. Well, I haven’t done so well here – but I think that is mostly because I have been traveling a lot and have been away from many of my rubber stamps. It makes me really appreciate how much I am able still to do my digital projects since I travel with my computer and external hard drive. I will look to this as a continued goal for 2012.

4. I am happier with the posts that I have written. They say a bit more. I would like to improve on consistency. I hope to save my blog posts for future reading because they say more about where I am now. I would like to use the blog as a reflection of me but more casual. With content that doesn’t really need a layout (or could be a future layout). That really can be satisfied with mostly words.

I like these four goals and will strive to work on them in the coming year. I also have some more goals and reflections that I plan to post about later as well as my word for the year (a hint is in the fun surprises post I created earlier!). 

Fun surprises!

I love creating stuff – well because it’s fun. But I can’t say that I don’t love it when someone notices something I’ve created and says “I’m inspired too!” or simply “I like that!”

I thought I’d compile a little list of notices I’ve had over the past months that make me happy.

Hybrid Gallery Stand Out At Me So Scrappy! Oct 24, 2011

I’ve been enjoying making cards – I usually end up making cards for a particular reason and for a particular person. This year, I would like to increase my stash of cards that I can give away so that I can be more prepared at short notice.

Pinned on Pinterest! Nov 26, 2011

This makes me happy. I really haven’t made the dive into pinterest yet. But 2012 may be the year to start.

Me on the Daily Digi – Scrapbooking Books! December 27, 2011

This is something I plan to continue this year – reading more and documenting my reads by at least writing a paragraph about each book – I’m not sure if I am going to scrap them all or not yet – we’ll see what works.

I’m planning to post soon about my plans for this year – maybe if I record it – I will be more successful?!