#30lists September 2015 - the bases

The other night I sat down and put together my bases for September's 30 lists in 30 Days.

This year I'm using Design F, which has 11 pockets, working out nicely to three sides with ten lists and one filler card each.  I also decided to do a "cover" page, using mostly first and last page cards from my chosen kit, which is "Desktop".

So here you are.  Badly photographed, and without any of the decoration I intend to do: I do need to dig out my rukristin #30lists stamp from wherever I've put it.

I really love Tiffani Smith's "Desktop" kit for this project.  And I'm looking forward to September and beginning to list!

Currently creating - 11th March 2015

As I said in yesterday's post - I actually did some Project Life this week!  OMG!  Yes, the exclamation points are necessary, because it has been so long.  Like since January long, and I haven't properly finished a layout since mid-November.

Part of my Trello checklist of 2014 spreads that need to be finished...

(I know this because I just yesterday went through and created a list of all the layouts from last year that need to be completed, and there are ridiculous numbers of them.  Plus my December Daily album. (Next listing project is to go through that and work out which days need to be finished, which I think is a lot of them.)  Plus Monday I finished Weeks 3 and 4 of 2015, which were the first 2015 layouts I have completed.)

I was beginning to worry that I was losing interest in PL, which would be a pity (understatement) given how much PL stuff I've spent good money on.  I don't think it's that, though: I think it's actually been a case of trying to adjust to a different work schedule, and recovering from last November's meltdown, and still trying to get into a good workflow with using the app to plan my layouts, then putting together collages and saving those to the Kodak app and then getting myself to Officeworks to print out the photos and then sitting down to put them all together...

Working on Week 2 of 2015 on Monday evening

Of course, the other thing that's been keeping me from spending time on PL, at least lately, is probably the effort I've been putting in to the Jabyblanket.  Which is now at border round 4 of six, where rounds five and six are the most complicated part of the pattern (there's hearts and picots and bits where you're crocheting trebles that look like nothing until all of a sudden you go "oh, so that's where that was going!" and then you do that again.  Hundreds of times.

Here it is, laid out on the floor so you can see the whole thing, and then a detail shot of the corner.  And in answer to Alisa - the pattern repeat was four rows: I'm using a 6mm hook so the stitches are large.

I'm desperately hoping that the yarn will hold out to the end: I haven't seen this one available again since the day I bought two huge balls of it.  If the yarn doesn't last (which I think is likely) I'll do the last two rounds of the border in a solid colour - probably purple - and hope that works out.

Around here - including bentos from last week

Yesterday was a public holiday here (yay!) and as well as doing a little bit of cleaning, finally introducing the kittyboys to my cousin (she lives an hour away but hasn't been able to visit since we got the boys) I worked on Project Life!

I am *so* far behind on PL.  I have a Trello checklist set up so that I can check off weeks when I finish them - actually, I have one for last year's PL, one for December Daily (still not finished), and one for 2015.  Yesterday I finished two weeks in 2015 - the first two weeks I've actually finished yet. (Yes, we're in week 11.)

But more on that in this week's Currently Creative, coming tomorrow (hopefully).

So: this past week's bento:

I don't think I've yet managed to make bento four days in the week, which is my goal, but I did do three days last week, which was a definite improvement on the previous week, which I think was none.

This week I introduced eggs to the mix - M doesn't eat eggs or anything all that eggy, which means that if I want eggs I need to have a replacement protien for her box.  This week I'm going to try Mako Itoh's spinach-stuffed tamagoyaki to see if it's too eggy for M or not: from the recipe it looks like there's a chance it will be okay.

But this past week I did sho-yu tamago (soy sauce eggs) which were just for me.

Tuesday: This bento was rice, sweet-pepper and carrot confetti, stirfried soy chicken, and asparagus.  The rice was shaped in my new rice molds that I got at Daiso over the weekend.  The photo is of M's - she also had some babaganoush and crackers - although the babaganoush was apparently no good (eggplant too old?)

Wednesday: These two were both for the same day: M's on the left and mine on the right.

Common to both: rice, broccoli, mini-angus burgers, sweet pepper and carrot confetti

M has asparagus and some stirfried soy chicken, while mine has a sho-yu tamago (soy sauce egg).

Thursday: again, M's is on the left, mine on the right.

Common to both: rice, kinpira (carrot, broccoli stem and beans) mini-angus burgers, carrot and zucchini muffin, broccoli.

In M's, apple and grapes.  Mine has asparagus and another soy sauce egg.  Mine was in two containers because I hadn't kept on top of the dishwashing and so I didn't have the right sized containers available.

The #Adventword challenge

I posted this to the Discernment blog a few days ago, but it also fits here.

I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to include the #Adventword challenge in December Daily or not - although if I try to I'll probably run completely out of room in my layouts.  It would probably be better to put those twenty-six photos into a couple of page protectors in my regular PL album.  Anyway, I'll work that out later, but for now, the challenge prompts via the Anglican Communion Online:

#Look (30 Nov)
#Remember (1 Dec)
#Imagine (2 Dec)
#Thrive (3 Dec)
#Abide (4 Dec)
#Notice (5 Dec)
#Watch (6 Dec)
#Show Up (7 Dec)
#Respond (8 Dec)
#Encourage (9 Dec)
#Wake Up (10 Dec)
#Breathe (11 Dec)
#Act (12 Dec)
#Risk (13 Dec)
#Expand (14 Dec)
# Focus (15 Dec)
#Experience (16 Dec)
#Become (17 Dec)
#Beautify (18 Dec)
#Heal (19 Dec)
#Thank (20 Dec)
#Ask (21 Dec)
#Relate (22 Dec)
#Delight (23 Dec)
#Love (24 Dec)
#Receive (25 Dec)

December Daily - The Materials

Last year I used a Becky Higgins mini album and a mixed bag of cards and embellishments picked up here, there and everywhere (some from CraftHouse, some from Spotlight, some from my stash).  I decided that for this year I wanted more flexibility to add pages and so wanted to use a ring binder album.  

At some point in September I found the Heidi Swapp 6x8 chipboard landscape album.  Working (slowly) on my foundation pages I kept realising I needed more pocket pages - a total of either three or four refill packets in the end. 

I'm American-Australian, and a lot of my childhood Christmases were spent in Minnesota, where you almost always have a white Christmas.  So I don't so much mind snowmen and snowflakes and such appearing in my Chritsmas kits.  I may be in my mid-30s, but summertime Christmases still seem a little strange to me - even though the last Christmas I had in the US was in 1999.  

I also don't really mind if my album isn't all nicely coordinated.  I'm still in the process of putting my title cards and foundation pages together (there's still ten days until December) - there's that pesky problem of the cards not actually fitting easily in the pockets.  But I'm using cards from:

• Becky Higgins Hollyday mini kit
• Becky Higgins Christmas Theme pack
• Kaisercraft Captured Memories: Basecoat Christmas 
• Kaisercraft Captured Memories: Peppermint Swirl
• Becky Higgins/Stampin' Up Seasonal Snapshot, printed via the Project Life App.

Embellishments are from the Kaisercraft "Christmas Carol" line, plus some from the "St Nick" paper packs, which coordinate nicely with Christmas Carol.  I've still got some left from last year's "December 25th" line which work well with the colours in Peppermint Swirl.

Numbers for days 1-24 from a set of balsa wood numbered Christmas trees found at Bed Bath and Table, while numbers 26 to 31 will be chipboard numbers from the Kaisercraft Advent Calender that I'm working on that I bought the balsa wood numbers for originally (I hope to finish the Advent Calender this week and post about it.  I'm really please with how it's turning out.

I also got a 2013 December Mini kit from Polka Dot Creative, including shaker pockets and wood and cork veneers.

I have stamps from KellieStamps (the Joy set), Typo, the American Crafts Hollyday stamp set, among others.

Finally, I'm making my own prompt cards for each day's #30lists based on these by Paislee Press, which I love, but which are in the wrong orientation.  And I put in an order today for the #30lists stamp from RUKristen.

December Daily - what I did last year

Last year around this time, I was only just getting into Project Life.  I'd done a few layouts of events rather than weeks - and I heard about December Daily.

I didn't decide to do December Daily until around December 10, when I started sketching out what photos and themes I'd use for the days I'd already missed.  I ordered a Becky Higgins mini album and a packet of Christmas theme cards that arrived around December 20, just before we left for our Christmas up in Sydney.

I wanted to put some pictures of that album in this post, but I can't find it right now.  I used a Cinnamon mini album, and covered from December 1 to 31.  For reasons that I'm sure relate to the entirely different culture in the US vs Australia, the American "December Daily" concept doesn't seem to cover anything beyond December 25 - whereas for me it needs to cover through to December 31.  Even that misses the final day of the holiday season - January 1.

This year DD will cover - as well as two Carols services, multiple work Christmas parties, and Christmas itself - the retirement of my long-time choir conductor, my Masters graduation and the New Year's Eve wedding of a good friend.

I may be finding the prep work difficult at the moment, but I'm still really looking forward to it.  It's going to be a full month, but I want to keep a record of all the crazy.  Because I'm sure it will be awesome.

December Daily - struggling to begin

I'm starting to work on my December Daily bases...

... and I'm struggling.

I really want to have the bases done before December, but each time I sit down to work on them - in the midst of my completely chaotic craft room - I seem to end up just sitting, staring, and swearing at the bizarre-itude that is the fact that Kaisercraft Captured Moments cards do not fit inside the Heidi Swapp 3x4 pockets.  Thankfully the Becky Higgins cards fit, but I so very much love the Basecoat Christmas and Peppermint Swirl lines, but to use them I have to trim them which... takes work!

So:

I bought the Heidi Swapp 6x8 pockets, which are landscape instead of portrait, in three layouts: 1 6x8, 2 6x4s, and 4 3x4s.

I initially put the pocket pages in in the above sequence, one of each.  I'm now taking most of the 6x8s out (except for one at the first to be a front cover) to put in at intervals when I have appropriate photos.  I can't take out all of them, because doing that only gets me to the 27th of December, leaving me four days short!  I'm also thinking that I may need to bite the bullet and buy a fourth lot of pockets.

I also want to include a #30lists - well, 31 lists - in my DD, which means that every layout needs to include enough space for a daily list, and a least one photo.

I guess I'm also struggling to even write the December Daily posts I meant to write - which made sense and had awesome pictures of my album from last year (except that I can't find my album from last year, argh!)

I'll try again in the next couple days -  see you then...


"December Daily" graphic created on the Project Life App by Becky Higgins LLC, with the "Seasonal Snapshot" Project Life with Stamping Up kit.

Cultivate a good life - and record it

Becky Higgins, founder of Project Life, has the above as her tagline: cultivate a good life – and record it. When compared to the tagline of someone like Heidi Swapp (“make pretty stuff”)*, Becky’s can seem, well, a little pretentious maybe?

But in the past year since I started doing PL – and in November I will have done either weekly or daily layouts for every week or day for a full year – I’ve found that I actually appreciate Becky’s tagline.

It boils down to this: because of Project Life, I have done good things that I otherwise wouldn’t have done. Because it could be a picture or some journalling in a spread, I’ve gone out and done something interesting on a weekend instead of staying at home.

I’m such a homebody – especially on weekends. I just want to hang around at home and potter and try to Get Things Done. But it’s good to get out of the house and do good and interesting things, and I’m finding that the lure of filling a space in a layout – especially in a slow week – helps me immensely with this.

I had a particular example from earlier in the year, but of course I can’t remember now what it was. Still, it’s like the fact that the kitty boys are making me be tidier around the house: an unexpected additional benefit to something that I love anyway.

*Earlier this year, Becky and Heidi released a collaborative line. The videos they produced ended with them each using their tagline, and the result was an interesting tale of contrasts.

How I'm using the Project Life App: #2 - Planning my physical layouts

Earlier this week I posted the first in my series of posts about how I'm using the new Project Life App.  That was about making 3x4 collages to easily print out as 4x6 photos.

This time it's about the major use I can see for the app: planning my physical layouts

This is possibly what most excites me most about the app (apart from getting sets of cards like Everyday Adventure and Just Add Colour a lot more cheaply and more enviromentally friendly-ly - yeah, I made up an adverb): being able to easily plan out my layouts and determine what sized photos I need to get.  

A few weeks ago, I had a week that eventually went out to two 12x12 spreads.  I had it sketched out (badly) and it took ages to work out which photos I wanted, how I wanted to collage them and etc.  

Also, I was very bad at sketching out layout designs, even on grid paper.  (This, by the way, is a photo from my bullet journal, which I've been meaning to blog about since about June.  Must do that...)

I can see this app making that process so much easier.  It's not seamless (creating collages means changing from layout to collage, remembering which photos and cards and possibly journalling you want, etc) but there's a lot less mental guesswork with this, because you can see the photos in the layout in front of you instead of having to visualise.

So, here's my layout for Week 38 on the App.  

 

In general, this was a quick-n-dirty job.(If you look closely, you can see I wasn't even sure which week it was - on the title card I've put "Week 37?" when it's actually Week 38.)  I started working on it Thursday when I had the first three photos, but it's changed a few times since then (for example, I originally had the title card in its traditional place, upper left hand corner.  But that meant that the story couldn't flow chronologically - and I generally prefer it to do so.  I had no photos to include from earlier in the week, and I really wanted to keep all the photos from the UnitingCare AGM.  (I'm still considering getting a 6x8 of the heart made from vegetables for another of my albums.  The design work is beautiful.)

So as the week went on, things shifted.  (And then shifted again, after I'd got the photos printed - see below).

Meanwhile, because this was never meant to be printed exactly as is, but was just about designing the layout, the filler cards aren't as important as they might be in a proper layout.  And, I was able to use them as sticky notes and journaling reminders.  On one on the right hand layout I have a mention of which week this goes with.  (Enhancement suggestion for Becky's team - the ability to view a double page spread together :-) ).  I also remembered on Sunday evening what a big deal the Scottish #indyref had been, and wanted to remind myself to do some journalling on that.

And so here are the photos of the finished layout, so that you can see the progression:

Obviously, the lighting leaves a bit to be desired.  The observant will also notice that some things have changed sides (it's a chronology thing).

This layout is also waiting for an insert.

It will actually be a Design H insert, but for Reasons (including editing the photo of my brother-un-law and his fiance, and the fact that I just damn loved the rainbow hearts from the Everyday Adventure kit (which I don't own physically) for this layout) I'm getting this printed via Persnickety Prints, and when it arrives I'll cut it up and put it into either a design H or a 3(6x4) Memerology insert I have.

So.  That's an attempt at showing you the major use I suspect I'll have for the app.  I love the ability to plan: so much easier than my bad sketch attempts at an earlier week.  And you know what - it also means I can do much clearer versions of my layouts for blogging!

How I'm using the Project Life App: #1 - Collages

So, the day I got it - which was the day it was released - I wrote up a fairly happy review of the Project Life app here on the blog.

My happiness has not abated, and - in part because I've seen people on the Project Life Australia/New Zealand group wondering "what would you do with this app when you've already got lots of cards and like a physical album", I thought I'd start a series of posts showing how I'm using the app.  Because I'm using it in a lot of different ways.

First up: the collage feature.

I like using 3x4 photos in my layouts.  It lets me have a few more photos, and because I take all my photos on my iPhone, there are a lot of times that I forget to turn the phone to landscape before I click - leaving me with all these portrait photos and a Design A first half left over from last week.

So most weeks I seem to be putting together collages of two 3x4 photos to be printed and then chopped up again.  I've been using the "A Beautiful Mess" app a lot, and also Frame Ur Life for more complicated 6x4 collages on those occasions when I have multiple photos.  But I find both of those very fiddly, and FrameUrLife has incredibly annoying ads.

So I'm really enjoying the collage feature on the PL App.

Below are three collages - all very simple - that I created for Week 38.

Of these three, the bottom two were made with the intention of printing them, cutting them, and (once I'd added some journalling to the "Currently" card), putting them straight into the pockets.  With the top one I only actually needed the App screen shot (of course the App was going to make it into my week's PL!), so I chose one of my favourite cards from the "Everyday Adventure" kit for the other side.  It's now sitting happily with my other 3x4s waiting for the perfect time to use it.

Next time, the main thing I plan to use the app for: planning layouts.  (It's just that I haven't entirely finished the physical layout yet and want to include those photos in the post.)

30 Days of Lists - the bases

We're at day 24 of 30 in the September edition of 30Lists, and I find in the depths of my drafts folder... the introductory post I was going to write.

30 Days of Lists is the brainchild of Kam and Amy and is, I guess, a microjournalling challenge.  Every day in March and September there's a prompt for a quick list to write.  The lists get shared in all sorts of ways - on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and blogs.  

People present their lists in all different ways: physical and digital, minibooks, 12x12 layouts, fussy, simple and all things in between.

To make the actual daily journalling as easy as possible, they recommend, as with December Daily, that you prepare your bases beforehand.  That way you just have to pick up the day's base, scribble away, and you're done.

I don't think I was ever going to do this in any way other than using PL.  I looked at a bunch of ideas from other people - I have a Pinterest board you can look at - and eventually landed on using Design G, with one filler card on each page.  (Design G has six spots.)

One of the big things with 30 Days of Lists is not revealing the prompts ahead of time, even though they are available all at once when you sign up - helpful for those of us 17-odd hours ahead of the majority of participants.  So I photographed my layouts once the cards were decided but before my planned next step of putting in the prompts.  (Which, in the end, I didn't do, and I'm glad I didn't.  More on that in a future post.)

Spread one (days 1-5) uses the Amy Tangerine Plus One minikit, which I love so much I ended up getting a second - and may yet buy it in the app as well.  But the orientation of the cards just didn't give me enough vertical designs to do the whole thing in Plus One (my original plan).

So, on to the second spread:

 

The second spread, and first double page, uses Fifth and Frolic, the first PL kit I ever bought.  It has turned out to be a kit I just don't use much (there are some designs I love to pieces, and some I really can't stand), so this was a good opportunity to use it.  This runs through days 6-15.

 

Days 16-25 use Kraft.  Again, it's a kit I don't use as much in my regular PLing, but I really like some elements of it.  And I will actually feel okay about using the hipster glasses card for this (I hope!)

And I'll wrap up days 26-30 with the Kaisercraft Life's Treasures kit.  I think.  I was going to say "Favourite Things" but I'm pretty sure it's not that one.  I like the butterflies.

In the coming days I hope to share the lists I've finished - and to pick up some of those threads I left tantilisingly trailing in this post.

Week 38 at Chez Stutters

Thanks to the new Project Life App I already have last week's layout planned, with the equivalent of sticky notes to remind me what I want to journal about.

But I figure that you readers out there - if there are any :-) - might still like an update.

It was the last week of school, which meant M had various activity days and evening commitments with groups of exchange students, etc.  On Thursday night I went to the AGM of the Emergency Relief organisation run by my local church.  A dear friend who lives in Sydney was the guest speaker, and although her schedule was very tight for her visit, I managed to have a few minutes with her at the end of the meeting.  And her address was characteristically awesome.

Friday night the Swans played North Melbourne to get into the AFL Grand Final, so everything was planned around that.  Friday was also the Scottish Independence Referendum, which we both took ludicrously personally even though neither of us have that much direct connection to Scotland.  Actually Friday was a pretty big day, as M got her contract renewed for another twelve months (hooray!) and M's brother and his boyfriend announced their engagement.  So happy for them!  (Huh, I'm starting to think I'll need an insert for this week after all.  Mostly just to cover Friday.)

Saturday was a gardening day - I hope to have a garden tour up later this week - and then Sunday was church, more gardening, and then an amazing free concert at the Botanic Gardens with The Idea of North - an acapella group that I have adored for 15 years and never seen live.  It was brilliant - and amazing to get a concert like that for free!

A little more gardening once we got home (seriously - we did heaps this weekend!) and then it was time to start thinking about the work week ahead: at least for me.  M is on school holidays, of course.

Currently Creating - 18th September 2014

I really didn't mean for my Currently Creative posts to die in August.  I really did mean to keep them up.  But...

Anyway, we're back, so I'd like to get going from here on in: and I'll warn you now that gardening is being included as creative.

 I think this is the only piece of crochet I've properly finished in the past couple of months.  I also have a purple neckwarmer scarf for me, but I still need to put the buttons on that for it to be finished.

This is a Swans bobble scarf made for my Swans-fan GF.  

I was quite proud of the creativity used in this PL card for my August wrap-up layout.

We got this potting table from ALDI and build it with a minimum of drama (sadly the drawer will not open).  I also started some seedlings, and some cat grass for the kitty boys.  We've also got a bunch of vegetable seedlings planted, including lots of basil.  I'll try to document the garden properly NEXT week.

In addition to all this, the Write Around the Murray writing festival last weekend had its annual effect of at least temporarily kicking me in the butt re: my writing.  I'm trying very hard at the moment to put in at least 30 minutes of writing per day (not counting blog posts).

Almost instaneous review: the new Project Life App

I haven't yet written anything like what I meant to about Project Life, but the release of the Project Life App may just have made it all even easier.

I put this layout together very quickly this afternoon, basically as a demonstration, and to try out the Just Add Colo(u)r kit, which is available as an in-app purchase for the grand price of $2.49 AUD.  For the Just Add Colo(u)r kit, which has been coveted by PLers the world over.  Or maybe just by me.  Who knows.

I've not been big on square photos, but I've been using Instagram more often of late, so more of my photos will be starting off as squares.  But I do love the pictures on the cards, and I'm really looking forward to playing with it.  Because $2.49!

But the point of my post is to review the Brand! New! Project Life app that was only just released a few hours ago.

The app sells for $3.49 AUD (I think?  I need to wait for the credit card statement to come through) and comes with four included kits: Kraft, Midnight, and Strawberry Core Kits, and the School themed cards.  The included layouts are designs A, C, D, K, L, N, P, and U, and Squared Away 9, 10 and 15.

In-app purchases at the moment are in the picture to the left, along with their prices in AUD: I think the Everyday Adventure edition is from the Stampin' Up collaboration?   Also, while I initially thought that this screencap from the App Store had all of the current in-app purchases, I think there are actually two other Extra Layout packages.  

When you open the app, there's a skippable video from Becky Higgins if, like me, you're just NOT a video person.  Then you get to the home screen:  

The help text will go away after a while - it disappeared for me and I had to go into the "info" section to get it back again for this screenshot.

"Make a page" is the obvious starting place, where you put pictures and cards together into traditional PL Layouts.  

"Make a collage" is how you can put smaller photos into 6x4s for easier printing, or 6x8s for the new 6x8 albums.  There's a good variety of layouts for collages in both 6x4 and 6x8, and in the 6x4 collection, some layouts I hadn't thought of using before.  I can totally see this replacing A Beautiful Mess and Frame Ur Life, which are the two apps I'm using at the moment (the ads in Frame Ur Life are driving me totally nuts and I'll be glad to dump it, but it had layouts that ABM didn't - and this app does!)  I'm also looking forward to seeing whether I can use the collages to do enlarged versions of photos to use in standard 12x12 layouts - something which I did for the layout a couple weeks ago that I haven't finished yet.

"My Library" collects your Work In Progress, completed pages and completed collages, the kits you own and then links to the additional kits available (currently Americana, Plus One, Azure, Daydreamer, Everyday Adventure, Honey, Just Add Colo(u)r, Road Trip, Seafoam, and Summer.  Becky's announcement post for the app says

"each month we’ll be releasing more collections until ultimately we’ll have almost ALL of the collections available in the app."

On to a slightly closer look at "Make a page":

Tapping on any square will zoom in and give the option of choosing a photo or a card, and once you have chosen "card" instead of photo, which kit and then which card you want.

You can drag and drop photos to swap them between positions, which I love because it's just like I do when I'm working on a physical layout.  And once you're done, the export/save button lets you share directly to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or by email or sms.  The export button lets you save a full-sized layout as either 8x8 or 12x12 in the camera roll for uploading via dropbox or whatever other method you choose (which is how I got the layout at the top of this post.

Things I hope are coming:

I hope that in the future you'll be able to:

• add text to filler cards
• change the justification of text within a filler card - I often want a centered heading and then left justified text.  If you can do that, I haven't worked out how yet.
• [Edit: Oh, and a plain/neutral cardstock kit, preferably included free, but I'd probably pay for it.  Especially because I'm going to use this at least as much for planning as for saved layouts.]
• Share directly to Pinterest.

And I really hope that the Cats themed cards will be added, and soon, because it's the kittyboys' album that I do digitally.

Conclusion

I can totally see myself using this to plan out my layouts before I print my photos.  It's going to make the visualisation a breeze - I'm doing this already for last week's spread, because for Reasons I haven't yet got the photos printed up.  I can also see myself using the collage feature a LOT, especially for the couple of 6x8 albums I have.  The kittyboys' album is so going to be created on this app, and I can really see the advantage for people who haven't gone and bought umpteen Core Kits and things like that - which is why I'm already recommending it to a couple of friends who I think will love the ease and the digitalness.  Yes, I just made that word up.

It really is as great as the publicity said it would be, and the prices are so much lower than I think everyone was expecting.

Questions or requests for screencaps, ask away and I'll do my best.  I'm happy to champion this app, because I love it already.

Currently creative - 6th August

It's Currently Creative linkup time again.

I'm afraid I haven't been all that creative this past week, although I've made more than a few poppies, from a few different patterns.  In fact I think that I've found my go-to quick poppy pattern: the first three rounds of Heidi Bears' African Violet pattern.  I've done nine of these poppies since... Monday, I think? This week's poppy pattern review was already set and half written, but I think I'm changing it up (depending on whether I can get myself organised in time, of course.)


I've also signed up for September's 30 Days of Lists, for which I blame RUKristin.  (As she's an ambassador for 30 Days of Lists, I suspect she'd be rather pleased, actually.)  I'm beginning to investigate ideas for how I plan to set out my lists - do I incorporate them into PL; do I have a separate notebook... (Pinterest board here).  I've got a month (or most of one) to make that decision, thankfully.

Finally, I've given in to washi tape.  We've had a couple fabulous new books at work with all sorts of ideas for how to use washi tape, and it's not like I don't have lots of the stuff.  So I'm beginning to use it more in my personal bullet journal (and on my bullet journal) and I'll probably use it more on other things, too.

Currently creative - 23 July

It's Currently Creative linkup time again! 

Last week I finally began to work on poppies.  I've been working on the Poppy Project at work since we first found about it.  But this is the first time I've actually started working on my own contribution to the project.  

I've also been working on the Project life blog posts, and consequently on my PL layouts. Like my HtTyD2 cards :-). During the first week of the school holidays we went to see it, and then the GF found the dioramas at - would you believe - McDonald's. But I had a great time turning them into PL cards: almost as much fun as I had watching the movie.

Monday night was the first day in more than a week that I didn't work on poppies: I got back into working on writing!  I've begun to develop a new idea for a middle grades novel, have opened a new file on Scrivener for the research on it (the amount of information available via the Australian National Archives is kind of amazing), and although my 'voice' just isn't right yet (far too sophisticated), I've even written some scraps that - because of their over-sophistication, just won't be usable.

Of course, I still have some other writing projects I should be working on. 

How I Project Life - weekly layouts, part 2

When I left off, I'd completed my basic layout of cards, photos and ephemera. With the exception of the Weekly Review card I'd prepared earlier, I didn't have any journaling done. So, the next steps are embellishment and journaling. 

I include stamping among embellishment, and I'm beginning to do more of it. I absolutely love the stamps I've bought from Kellie Winnell, and I now include her "Week" stamp on every title card. 

I also use stickers (you can just about see some in the background in the photo above)' and I love the look of wood and cork veneers.  It's hard see in the photo below, but there's a cork arrow, and a coffee-cup cutout from washi paper in on the two 3x4 cards.  (I really need to improve on my photography skills.) 

Each week gets the week number (although I got rather mixed up along the way: now I use Epoch Converter to check the week counts just to confirm) and the dates, Monday through Sunday, on the title card. I mostly use stamps for this, for consistency and because I don't so much like my handwriting (does anyone?) I used Kikki.K rubber stamps until I got the Kaisercraft clear stamps, which I use just because they're quicker.  And I like them. 

Anyway, after stamping comes journaling. 

You can see stickers in a couple of places above,  along with the journaling on four cards.

One of the features of the Becky Higgins PL cards is the bi-fold cards. I used one in the week 26 layout to provide an extra three sides for journaling. 

And after journaling comes "staring at the layout to decide whether I'm really done or whether something is missing". Which it usually is. 

And the answer is usually "washi tape"

I love washi tape. I use it as labels, as highlight, as decoration. 

I realise that these pictures are a little like "spot the difference".

On the Yellow Sub/week 26 layout, I ended up using matching washi in red and yellow to bring the Ember Card in to the rest of the design, and to do the same to the random picture of socks. I also embellished with button stickers (from Daiso) as well as the surface crochet  and use of matching yarn on another card. 

So that's my Week 26 layout.  I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that I will keep going on my PL posts during the rest of the month.