Challenge #342 - week of 20th January 2020

This post was started before Christmas and then edited and continued two weeks ago, so let's try to get it finished now shall we?

All my Christmas decorations were put away several weeks ago now but I did keep out a few winter items that I think look good and give me a little hygge feel at this dull, grey time of year. I have some stars, some reindeer and a couple of cute little wrapped tea-lights.

They were a hand-made gift from my mum some time ago and I love how cosy and cute they are. The colours don't go with our tree or living room decorations so I always keep them right here in my craft room and love the soft glow they provide. So when my eye fell on them, I thought it would be a fun prompt - one that fits into this time of year with all the cold weather around.

And this is where my inspiration comes from today.

I'd like you to be inspired by knitted items.

Let's think about a few different ways to take this prompt.

• do you have a favourite knitted garment that you just love to wear?
• do you get excited when it's cold enough to justify getting those winter woolies out of the back of the wardrobe?
• perhaps you or someone close to you knit and that could be your main focus today
• how about a knitted gift (I can see two right here in my room!)
• how about a funny story about learning to knit or even teaching someone to knit
• there are a lot of knitted designs in our scrapbooking products - papers, stickers, embellishments that you could use - both drawn or photorealistic
• how about using a real piece of knitting in some way on your page?
• I can imagine being inspired by the word itself "knit" which of course means to join together which could be the drive for your story

Whichever way you decide to take my prompt, I really hope you'll share. It would be great to see what you make.  You can connect with us in our Facebook group here. Tag your entry with #WMXXX (with the number of the prompt instead of the XXX) so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken.

Have a great day everyone!

#62 - be inspired by home

Another catch up layout post today and a layout about a trip over the summer "home" to the UK. It's funny, Germany is most definitely "home" for me but of course, the UK will always be "home" too. It can be complicated for people to understand where I'm talking about when I use the word because it could be either and could refer to the location I'm currently in or the "other"!

This is another layout that was also made for my Simple Scrapper Creative Team assignments using a new sketch as well as a recent Story Starter™. Simple Scrapper offers a premium subscription membership where you can find hundreds of sketches and Story Starters™ as well as many further resources inspiring you to create beautiful pages and tell meaningful stories in a supportive, communicative community environment. You can find out more information here.

The sketch appealed to me as it featured five photos with space to write out a good chunk of journalling. As usual, I tweaked it a little to squeeze in that top right photo into a title space which allowed me to fit in my top 6 photos from the weekend - three portrait and three landscape. Of course I took quite a few other photos this trip but it's a good overview of this short three-day trip from start (flying over the pretty fields of England) to finish (back at the airport and a quote that rang true for me) with all the bits in the middle including a family party, brunch on the High Street with my mum and a stroll across a typical English park complete with bandstand!

The sketch was interesting in that it included a whole bunch of circular embellishments and I decided to get happy with the Big Shot and cut out a whole lot of different sized circles from the papers that I found in my Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit (July 2019 - Mingle).

I was very brave and decided to stamp directly onto the background paper. I'm a terrible stamper and am terrified of really messing things up so I rarely attempt such a brave step. But I went for it and used a fun hashtag stamp from SC or Kelly Purkey I think and then a cheap no-name set for the days of the week. It turned out so well and I was thrilled. Maybe this will encourage me to do it more often!

A mixed-font title was needed because I wanted such a long one and it would have taken up too much space and definitely would have left me very short of various letters if I'd only used Thickers.

And there you have it. A layout for my Creative Team assignment which used up a Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit and fulfilled a Whimsical Musings prompt at the same time. That's a success in my book.

As always, I love it when you share too and if you've been inspired to create, don't forget that you can add your own creations to our Facebook group here. Please don't be shy! Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken. 

Or simply tell us in the comments where to find you... :-)

** This post includes promotion for Simple Scrapper's premium subscription membership for which I am on the Creative Team.

#275 - be inspired by Hygge

It's February and that means one thing... LOAD (layout a day). I'm not as good as I used to be but I try to use LOAD months to really get my motivation and inspiration moving on the scrapbooking front.

This month is no exception and as I write this, I have 13 layouts completed and hope to be able to complete the full 28 layouts in 28 days even if I haven't managed one every day! But a side benefit of this is always the chance to catch up on some of my own challenges.

So here is my "be inspired by Hygge" layout. 

I used my Counterfeit Kit Challenge February kit, Amour which was full of the perfect soft, pastel tones and small designs which helped to convey the feeling of calm I wanted to have. At this point I was already thinking that the kit was more than "killed" and had stated that I was finished with it. But stacking up pretty strips of paper to give my photo a base - and adding in a few scraps of Crate Paper patterns too, showed me that the kit had more to offer.

I used the photo I'd taken for the original challenge blog post here at Whimsical Musings (WM#275 here) to form a base for my thoughts and title. I want this to be more than just something I talk about. I need to feel some more "hygge" in my life. I hope this layout can inspire me to continue working on it.

Lovely, scrummy layers!

This was a great layout to think about and make. The journalling is meaningful and that combination is always my favourite type of scrapbooking. 

Now let's see if I can manage any other of my missing prompts...

Don't forget that if you're inspired to create this week, that you can add your creations to our Facebook group here - we love it when you share so please don't be shy! Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken. 

Or simply tell us in the comments where to find you... :-)

Challenge #275 - week of 15th January 2018

Have you noticed that the days are getting ever so slightly longer here in the northern hemisphere? Every day we get a few minutes extra daylight. I bet most of you love that! Personally I love the short days and the long nights. It makes me feel like I have much more time in the evenings to potter around and even scrapbook because they start so early! I truly love this time of year (well, not January per se but you know what I mean!)

Which got me thinking about our next prompt.

This week, I'd like you to be inspired by hygge.

You have no doubt heard of this Danish way of life that has found its way into the hearts of millions as a way of getting more comfort and contentment out of life. The Danish are the happiest people in the world according to survey after survey and many consider that hygge is the secret to their success.

A quick search online will bring up thousands of hits but this blog (Hygge House) caught my eye with a beautiful aesthetic, gorgeous photography and a reminder that hygge is a feeling not a thing!

Photo from Hygge House - http://hyggehouse.com/hygge

Maybe you're interested in bringing the concept of hygge into your own life and a page about that would be perfect. You could create a page talking about all your favourite winter traditions that help to keep you warm and cosy. You could be inspired by the typical colours and materials that seem to appear in any photo tagged #hygge - neutral and natural tones, chunky wool, wood, copper and bronze, candlelight, warm drinks, cosy socks and an open fire. You could go back in time and talk about the dark winter days of your childhood or a time when you were snowed in and had to make your own entertainment in the light of a room full of candles. You could write about your winter dreams and hopes. Or how you are counting the minutes until it's all over and the long days of summer are finally here!

You can add your photos to our Facebook group here - we love it when you share so please don't be shy! Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken. Or simply tell us in the comments where to find you... :-)

Challenge #263 - week of 26th June 2017

Midsummer's Day has come and gone here in the northern hemisphere and hard as it might seem, the days are already getting shorter! But we've already had a prompt for that (WM#174) so maybe you'd like to head back to that one if you are inspired by the long, heady evenings at this time of year.

But it meant that I needed to come up with something different for our prompt this week.

I headed over to my Pinterest board and noticed several trends in my own pins that got my brain working and this one won out.

This week, I'd like you to be inspired by bar carts.

Pinterest source here

Pinterest source here

These are just two stunning carts have caught my eye and I'm simply determined that I'm going to get one of my own for our home. I want to introduce a weekend cocktail hour round here and bring back a little glamour with something as inspiring and pretty as these. I just need to track down a bar cart first to get me going.

How can you interpret this prompt this week? Go the straight cocktail route or maybe some routine you would like to introduce in your own home. Take either of these photos as a sketch or inspiration in itself, or a single element they highlight. Both of these photos have beautiful colour schemes and provide stunning elements such as roses, gold pineapples, pink champagne or cut-glass crystal glasses. You could even make a layout about how you use Pinterest to inspire you. There's a lot of paths you could take this week. 

Whichever way you see the inspiration this week, I'd love you to tell us where it took you. If you'd like you can share your layout with us over at the Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery with the tag WM#263 or you can post it in our Whimsical Musings Facebook group again with the tag WM#263.

#73 inspired by organisation

I'm the same every year. I vow that this will be the year when I manage true organisation in my life. Every year I fail miserably. But I do think that it gets a tiny bit better.

And there's parts of my life where I am totally over organised. Clothes, kitchen, cleaning stuff, decorations. Well mostly anyway! And then there's the items which I love to organise when I have time and space. Books, CDs, films, filing, my scrapbook papers.

But there's not a lot of time and space has not been allocated for a lot of stuff yet. So, yet again, organising is on the list for this year. You never know, 2013 might be the year! I try to get these types of jobs done in small 15 or 30 minute chunks when I'm here alone and therefore, I might manage a few more of those than usual this first half year.

And I'm not the only one like this in the house. There's someone else who gives the impression of being so controlled, so tidy, so structured but is very much like me! And so when I walked round our home taking photos (thinking I would do a new house post), something very much caught my eye and it just summed up this side of our control freak vs disorganised characteristics!

The result was this layout for which I went back to my delicious October 2012 Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit, Brighter. This is the 9th layout from that kit and I'm sad that maybe I can manage to squeeze one more layout out of the box. But the layout makes me laugh. No doubt you think we are crazy!

Ok, so these 3's are not so good for e's but I had four sets of these tiny letters and not a single e in either case and these the only 3's left too. Why oh why don't they give us more e's???

Not only are we both disorganised, we are both collectors. And this is one of his. This collection has reduced. A lot. Ha ha! But it's still broader than most bars you can go into. And I have to say that I do get the benefit of receiving the best Cosmopolitan in the world on a regular basis.

And then, because my room is very much on my mind and I don't really know where to start, I decided to use my September CKC kit, Packing, to just make a layout that might help to keep me motivated about getting my room the way I want. I am busy collecting some ideas from Pinterest, but this is it right now. The two close ups are there to show me how I don't want to use my wonderful Expedit shelves. I want my room to look stylish and pretty and creative. At the moment, it just looks a bit stuffed. I couldn't resist adding some cute effects to my photos to pretty them up a bit.

For ease, I've been using a lot of sketches over the last week or so and this is one from Creative Scrappers#244.

There's more layouts in my head for this prompt and I'm excited to see where this has taken you too.

Hope you share over at our Flickr gallery (here) with the tag WM#73.

Have a good week everyone.

#62 Inspired by Home

When I set out to accomplish this week's prompt I knew I would tell stories I needed to tell. I knew which products I wanted to use from my stash of Ready Set Go stuff. What I didn't anticipate was that I would be making one of my favorite spreads of all time.

I am not sure why I am in love with this page above any other of recent times. The pictures are fun, the products are great... but mostly it is the story that I think makes me love this page. But enough babbling, let's get to it.

The first page of the spread used a sketch from Simple Scrapper's Premium Membership - the November collection. It was initially a 8.5x11 which I easily converted. And boy, am I glad I did. The wood paper really sets a tone for these pictures. They were taken over the span of 10 years and document the transformation of the home. The title doesn't make much sense and the page seems a little bare...

 
That is why I added a 6x6 page. I was able to add a picture of Steve, the mastermind behind the transformation - and a pocket for hidden journaling. I traced the heart from the die cut and placed it on the opposite page. I love the symbolism this creates. The heart of that house was Steve. 

 

But I had SO MANY photos of the years fixing up the house that I wanted to add many more photos. So I added a divided page protector with 6 more photos to complete my spread. I even found a photo of Gaby and I working on the house back in 2002/03! I tried to place the before and after shots side by side for comparison. 

 
I then added the patterned paper with the birds because this country home ALWAYS had colorful birds around. It is one of my most vivid memories of the house. I added the rest of my title to the front of the 6x6 -  and I like the message it has on it's own. I also added the address since it was something I wanted to document. And I used the stamps from Ready, Set, Go to tie this page with the opposite side. 

 
to finish it all off, I added all three layouts into page protectors, lined everything up like I wanted and stapled on the seams of all three pages to create a cohesive page. Pretty cool, huh?

But wait, that's not all.

I had one more [or seven to be honest] stories left in me.  I chose to document my current "home away from home" in this colorful and fun one page layout. believe it or not, I used as many pictures as in the previous layout but I didn't mind shrinking them into there 4x4 collages. It was more about the feelings these photos elicit versus the details of the home. 

 

I had a blast [well, except for all the times the first layout made me cry] making these pages and adding these meaningful stories to my albums. Thanks so much Lisa.

I have already seen knock-out beauties in the gallery and I hope you will contribute your story too. I love seeing your work based on these prompts.

I will be back tomorrow morning with our new assignment.

xo,
Pamage

Challenge #62 week of 22nd October 2012

By the time you read this, I'm hoping I am settled into our new home - more or less.

It's hard work and stressful to move house and right now, it looks like I will be living without a working kitchen for the first however many weeks of living there. But hopefully the boxes will be mostly unpacked, the garden will begin to gain shape, my scrap stash will have found a new place in my new room, and I will feel a bit more settled once again.

This is my new scrap space. It's unpacked but not yet sorted. I've yet to find out how it will work for me and it most certainly needs prettying up to make it mine. Not nearly enough pink!

While my move was not planned, or even wanted at the time we decided, I'm hoping that this "house" will really become our new "home".

Home can mean different things to different people. When I am in Germany and talk about home I could be talking about the UK, but I'm usually talking about where I live. When I'm in the UK, you have to pay close attention to the context as I might mean UK, my mum's home, where I live or just Germany! But my heart is mostly in Germany so that's always a good place to start.

Home is where you go to at the end of the work day, home is where you kick off your shoes and plonk down on the sofa in front of the TV, home is where your loved ones or loved one (in my case!) is, home is where you cannot wait to get back to at the end of a holiday, no matter how great it was. Home truly is where the heart is.
I recently did this layout for LOAD about those darned packing boxes, so once I'm back and running when I get back "home", I'm hoping to get an unpacked layout done for this prompt :-)

Now, if you hadn't already guessed, I'd like you to be inspired by home this week.

Can't wait to see what you think about home and we'd love to see your creations over in our Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery {here} with the tag #WM62.

Have a great week everyone!