Challenge #40 week of 21st May 2012

Welcome again and another week begins.

I've been going through a lot of changes recently, most of which I've been sharing with you. And it got me thinking again this week.

And then this evening, I spent an inordinate amount of time ironing 17, YES 17 work shirts, 11 t-shirts and four pairs of trousers for my DH as he will be on a business trip for some days.

So these two things came together for me and made me decide on today's challenge.

Today is one of the last days I will be able to go to work in something casual like this:

Source here

Once I finish the last of my lessons outside my new job, it will be this type of business dress every day:

Source here

It's not that I don't enjoy wearing business suits. I'm actually kind of enjoying it but I have a strange attitude to clothes that I might need to document this week :-) Now I have a work wardrobe of two grey (one dark, one light) trouser suits, one skirt and jacket and about 15 blouses/shirts to mix and match. That's it. (well there are a couple more suits if I could just drop a few pounds!) I treat my work clothes like a uniform and I think that says a lot about me and might be related to the fact that I wore a school uniform (British you know *wink*) until I was 16! There's another potential topic in fact!

But the clothes you wear are such a sign of you, your environment and your situation that I'd like you to give it some thought this week.

Be inspired by your clothes - whatever that means for you ;-)

It would be great to see your interpretations of this prompt over at our Flickr group (here) with the tag WM#40.

Have a great week everyone!

#39 inspired by clusters

Well, Pam certainly gave me a surprise this week when she offered up the prompt to be inspired by {my} clusters! How flattering was that?!? And from what I've been seeing on the Flickr board {here}, I have to say that you all rock! Those are some wonderful clusters and if any of you try to tell me that you "can't" get the hang of clusters, well, I just can't believe it any more! :-)

But the thing is that it's all about practice and I'm sure you know that I've been practicing it on almost every layout I've created over the last two years since I first took the Nic Howard BPS class, Dimensional Details. If anyone reading this is on the fence about the remake of this class which is now being offered over at BPC as part of this year's "4 experts" series (July/Aug/Sep), then I just can't recommend it highly enough. Nic has an excellent way of building up the layers and showing you how she ends up with the results she does with the distressing, layering and clustering. An awesome class, and an awesome teacher.  Come along and join in the fun!

But back to the challenge in hand.

I felt a bit of an obligation to come up with something spectacular. Something a bit over the top maybe.

But the days went by and today I realised that I have to get my act together and make my layout. So I stopped worrying so much, used the LOAD Sketchy Sunday prompt and my May Counterfeit kit, Whisper and just pottered around making my layout. I stopped thinking about the sketch and the challenge and ended up with something I love.

I ended up with a main cluster and then a mini, off the page one in the opposite corner. I was inspired by Pam's layout to include all the butterflies. Actually, I video'd myself making up the cluster with my iPhone and I'm wondering how that turned out! I'm not sure and it was the first time I've ever done it so I'm going to check that out and if it's half decent, I'll let you see it! I think I need to get the position of the camera better but it's a start.

As you can see, my main cluster isn't so big but it has many different items tucked in there - some of which you can't see. Sometimes that disturbs but mostly I try and not worry about that too much.

Pam has put her post up already so I'll be back in the morning with another prompt for the week to come.

In the meantime, come on over to Flickr and share your creations with us. We love to see how you interpret our ideas whether it's the latest or the first one we posted. Everyone is welcome and we are so grateful that you join in on what we have to offer!

#39 Inspired by Lisa-like clusters

This week flew by. 

But here we are again with another post... this time on time! ;)

I usually have embellishments of some sort on the page. I sometimes "cluster" them, but they are mostly mini clusters on one of the edges to accent some additional journaling. 

However, I seldom go all out and cluster an area of the page the way Lisa seems to so easily accomplish.

This made this challenge, well, challenging for me! But I set out to not disappoint. The first thing I needed to find were special pictures to pretty up. One of the hangups I have with clusters is that I feel they take up too much time and I am a speedy scrapper. But when the pictures are meaningful you want to take the extra time to make it extra pretty. At least that's how I see it.

So I finally decided to scrap these two photos -

A little background story - My grandma and I were talking about fashion from her time and she started pulling out pictures of her in dresses from years ago. I recognized the dress pictured above from one of my favorite photos of my mom. While I was living in Puerto Rico my great-aunt gave me the picture on the bottom of my mom in her teens - and having lost my mom to cancer in 1991 I treasure any photo I can find of her. I knew it was the same dress. My grandma insisted it was her dress and that maybe my mom had borrowed it for a party, but after showing her my picture, which she had never seen before she changed her story. The girls on the bottom pictures are clearly dressed to go to the same party. Anyway, now I have two photos of two generations of my family wearing the same dress and not a single story to go along with them... 

But i love the pictures so much I couldn't help but scrap them. 

What I love is that I still stayed true to my colors and elements. It feels like my style, yet it definitely stands out in my collection of pages as a special page.

How did you do with your clusters this week? If you made a cluster, big or small, we'd love to see it in the gallery tagged as WM#39.

Until next time.

xo,

Pamage

Challenge # 39 week of May 14, 2012

Hello friends,

If you are like me - you follow this blog as much for the free and fun inspiration as the chance to see what gorgeousness Lisa will come up with.

I have been smitten and in awe of Lisa's style since I first discovered it during Feb LOAD 2011 and have been a fan ever since.

If you follow her work, you know she is the queen of pink and the master of clusters. 

Do you recognize this?

They are just a few examples of Lisa doing what she does best. I challenge us all this week to create a cluster of some kind. I will define the rules as any collection of more than three embellishments on an area of the page. 

And watch this space, as I am sure Lisa will surely blow us away again this week with her creativity.

xo,

Pamage

#38 challenged by Mondays

Ok, so confession time.

Mondays make me feel like this  {click here for image source}-

 

Always have, since I was in school. 

Originally, that was the story I wanted to document... but as I thought more about it, I couldn't think of pictures to express that... so I sat on it.

Then it occurred to me that my current circumstances don't lend themselves to that feeling. And so the final result was inspired by the title and end scene of the movie "10 things I hate about you"

... in case you've never watched it, here is the link {10 things I hate about you end scene}

And here's my page -

design wise I kept it really simple. Didn't really need any pictures to tell my story. Just focused on the journaling, and in case it is hard to read, the list goes like this: 1.       Ends the “weekend” – for everybody else, 2.       Everything seems closed - favorite restaurants, hair salons…, 3.       Everyone is back at work and can’t hang out, 4.       I’m done with school, so no real reason to go into the city, 5.       It’s theaters day-off, so no plays, 6.       Commuters create traffic and busy streets, 7.       Most errands happen on this day, 8.       Usually no coffee although I don’t get to sleep in,  9.       Most office holidays happen on this day, 10.   But the truth is, I don’t hate this day, not even a little bit, not even at all. It is my third day off!

Thanks for playing along for another week. Can't wait to see what you all come up with in our flick'r gallery. Please remember to tag your layouts correctly as WM#38 for this challenge.

Oh, and ps: Happy Monday!

xo,

Pamage

#38 challenged by Mondays

I've been singing this song all week. I woke up singing it, went to sleep with it going round my head. Such beautiful voices. Such a beautiful song. I think it's gone into my top 20 :-) Makes me happy.

Monday Monday, so good to me,

Monday morning, it was all I hoped it would be

Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn't guarantee

That Monday evening you would still be here with me.

Monday Monday, can't trust that day,

Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way

Oh Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be

Oh Monday Monday, how yould cou leave and not take me.

Every other day, every other day,

Every other day of the week is fine, yeah

But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes

You can find me cryin' all of the time

Monday Monday, so good to me,

Monday morning, it was all I hoped it would be

Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn't guarantee

That Monday evening you would still be here with me.

Every other day, every other day,

Every other day of the week is fine, yeah

But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes

You can find me cryin' all of the time

Monday Monday, ...

Which is more than I can say for Monday mornings round here! I tell you, morning person I am NOT! And Mondays? Not good. Personally, I think we have it wrong. The weekend should be five days long and the work week just two. And the week should start with a Wednesday as then the week would be almost over before it had begun!

Only joking... a bit ;-)

I knew that I wanted to mark the change in routine I'm about to have in the next few weeks and decided to go with a text heavy page using my new favourite (just one amongst many!) 6x12 extra page to fit on all those words.

As it's LOAD right now, it uses the Sketchy Sunday sketch and also my Counterfeit kit for May, Whispers.

Each of my work days are individual and different and have been since I started teaching business English as a foreign language 11 years ago so I could actually do a layout like this for each day. I did a page some years ago where I recorded all the different companies I work for which was interesting and I can still think of one or two directions to go with this prompt before my job really changes. Another list of layouts to add to my inspiration list I suppose. Who knew that a single day could give me so many ideas?

Where has it taken you this week?

It would be lovely to see your creations in our Flickr gallery (here) with the tag WM#38

Challenge #38 week of 7th May 2012

Hello out there? How are you all doing today? Another Monday, another week and we are delighted that you are back and hope to see you joining in whenever one of our challenges takes your fancy!

Now I'm hoping that the link below works for all of you - I know there are some licensing issues for music around the world and I can't view a lot of what is linked up in blogs from the US for example.

Anyway, if you can, just take a minute to listen to the song below. Truly one of my top faves of all time.




(And if you can't watch it, perhaps you should pop over to YouTube and watch it there instead.)

Take a deep breath, close your eyes and just listen to some of the most wonderful harmonies... ever. LOVE IT!

So, what is this all about then?

Well, I thought it was about time we had a "Monday" challenge, as in...

Found on Pinterest but the linking page seems to have been spam and has been blocked. But it's lovely anyway, isn't it?

And this one seems to be linking to the Silhouette site so I guess this is a die-cut download. LOVE IT!

How do you feel about Mondays? Hate it, love it, feel tired before you even start the week or do you feel reenergised at the thought of another week full of possibilities?

This week, I challenge you to create something that tells us how you feel about Monday (or let's face it, another day is fine too!)

Can't wait to see how you take this challenge. Don't forget to link up over at Flickr (here) with the tag WM#38

#37 Inspired by questionnaires

I spent all week thinking about Pam's prompt this week coming back to what she said about reaching out across the miles to someone. But somehow, it just didn't happen. I had a dozen and one things on my list and just got overwhelmed and behind on everything. Which is a shame. I thought it might have been fun to question my mum or even my brothers and sisters.

Never mind, adding it to the list!

But then inspiration hit yesterday when I was thinking about the day out we'd had last weekend up at the German North Sea coast. It was wild! I loved it. It was exactly what I'd hoped for. It's a long long time since I was last at the seaside and had added it to my "list". I was thrilled to get there at last.

And then I matched up that wonderful feeling I could still feel with a list of word prompts that I'd seen online and a version of which I tracked down on Pinterest (here).

Then it was clear that I was going to use the very imperfect iPhone photo selfie I'd taken on the beach. The LOAD sketch was simple and just what I needed to lay out the elements I wanted to include and then I finished off this double duty challenge by using my March Counterfeit kit, Soothe. The muted colours were perfect for the mood I wanted to convey.

So, once again, I end the week with more ideas for future layouts, but that's part of the fun of these challenges - my list is getting pretty long :-)

Looking forward to seeing what create for this prompt and to picking up some question ideas to add to that inspiration list!

#37 Inspired by Questionnaires

Hello all once again.

I have been a busy bee creating, probably to make up for all those consecutive days of not sitting at my work table.

I have another layout for you, and hopefully you like this one, because I do.

I searched the web for a questionnaire I liked and couldn't find one, so I made my own. I then posed the same questions to every member of my house and took an instant picture of them. I had my sister return the favor for the picture and answered my own questions.

The layout came together quickly after that. All in all, from the time I wrote up the questions, this took me 1.5 hours. And the best part is that I have an accurate picture of a little slice of our life. I love that.

As far as techniques go, I kept it all really simple. The only new thing I tried was with selectively punching out parts of the edge of the paper with my border punch. I saw that used somewhere and thought it looked really cool.

Hopefully this inspires you to do the same. Just ask your family simple questions and see how much your answers compare and contrast.

xo,
Pamage

#36 Inspired by Earth Day

A few days late, but never fear, I am back.

I apologize to our readers for the delay, but it's been a little out of the ordinary around here...

Anyway, here's the layout.

The use of the instax minis was fun. I hardly make use of that camera enough. I love how imperfect the shots are. The real explanation is that my printer ran out of ink, so I had to improvise.

I kept the color scheme pretty monotonous with the GREEN but I like that. And the journaling went in a completely different direction, but I loved that quote from the Superforest Manifesto - so there you go.

Until next time.

xo,
Pamage