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Get off the cross we need the wood

About Me

Maybe-not-really-20-something-anymore from Norway who likes to scrapbook and take photos documentarystyle and dreams of photojournalism when not working as a photojournalist and that's pretty much what this blog is about. And I like it this way.



My Scrapbooking

Been scrapbooking since late fall 2005. Currently fortunate enough to be a part of the design teams for Hambly Screenprints, Fancy Pants Designs and Pencil-Lines. ♥



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Suffering withdrawals

Posted by Ania On Tuesday, July 24, 2007 7 lovely comments

Suffering withdrawals, originally uploaded by aniia.

Alright. Vacationing is swell and dandy, but seriously, I'm not used to be this long without teh Intarwebz. My only connection to the Outer Civilisation (sp?) atm goes thru my cellphone, where I can access gmail and thus post blogposts when bored, like now. Had to go home early to the hotel w/the kids bc well, its late and they should be sleeping but no, their sleepingpattern is pretty much screwed but hey, its vacation right. Jeje.



Tomorrow we'll leave for Budapest where we'll stay for two days. Again we'll have our very own pocketguide for the city. (yeah i know, brag brag ;p) He'll actually sit w/us from Debrecen.



So can't post without a pic - heres one taken just now... Roadmaps are so the new cartoon..



Wish I could post a layout, like the one out now for pencillines, but I guess you'd have to check the pl blog for it. As far as I recall it's just scenic route pp..and tbh i cant decide wheter i like how it turned out or not..leaning towards not...I think..its one of the layouts you'd swear looked way cooler in your head before you started on the actual work :p



-Ania mobil


7 lovely comments
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Thank god for air condition

Posted by Ania On Saturday, July 21, 2007 1 lovely comments

Thank god for air condition, originally uploaded by aniia.

Cause we're now stuck in a stupid traffic-jam in the Hungarian highway and the sun is burning and the sky is merciless blue.



Ohwell. At least amalie is asleep (for now anyways) and we've been having a blast in Vienna. Everybody we've met has like, been going out of their way to help us and stuff. We've had our own private cityguides (thanks sory & roth), been to a lake outside of vienna (tulln), ate at a heuriger and been BBQ'ing at Selinas place w\really yummy food & stuff. In short, we're floored and humbled about everybodys' hospitality and general niceness (and to think it's all bc of a game).



Anyways, on our way to Debrechen now where we'll meet some of the guys who also went to Vienna to join us + meet new people and stuff. If only we could get anywhere atm!



So, just need to second myself again, thank god for ac & sleeping kiddos!



-Ania mobil


1 lovely comments
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It's a friggin penthouse

Posted by Ania On Wednesday, July 18, 2007 5 lovely comments

It's a friggin penthouse, originally uploaded by aniia.

Omg.. Staying at a friends place in the centrum of Vienna, he kinda forgot to mention that it's a freakin' 600kvm penthouse over two floors and with its own little garden with real green grass and all. I think I counted three bathrooms and one with just a shower..just wish there was ac here too. :p the pic shows adrian in front of "our" bathroom. Its a big walk-in shower and the kids love it already.



The carrental turned out to be a nice surprise so far, got a much bigger and nicer car than expected. Some minor problems with them thinking we cancelled our order, but it was solved in the end. Whiny amalie during the drive but that was to be expected. She's really into daddy nowdays, yells, kicks and flails if I try holding the stroller instead of him. Ohwell.



Waiting for another friend to pick us up soon for a guided trip around Vienna..tonight theyre taking us out for some operastuff. How cool is that.. I mean, this is Vienna!



-Ania mobil


5 lovely comments
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~~ I Wanna Do Some Altered/Ministuff too ~~

Posted by Ania On Monday, July 16, 2007 10 lovely comments
Go from Scenic Route
Frames from CL Design

My feat RdG paper & die cuts, dabberpaint & cats eye inkpads

New feat SR paper, Prima flower, HS bling & MM stickers

Simplicity feat Basic Grey paper & rubons, white paint & MM stickers

Stop, feat Fancy Pants paper, dabber paint and alphastamps

I was kinda slightly bored the other day and wondered what to do. Looking around I figured I needed practice doing altered stuff...I mean...everybody and their mother are so darn good at this but me...uh...well I need practice right :p Made a little minikeyringthingie from some chipboards I got from an inspirationswap. I think the chipboard's from Gyda. Thought I'd do something fun with them so I put all the words from the One Little Word challenges on them. Like, just for fun (oh the things some scrappers do just to join in on a challenge *rolls eyes* *wink*). Have still 3 or 4 available chipboards so just bring on the words! ;p (oh yeah, the first piccie - "go" - is from a Scenic Route chipboardcollection. Note to self; while dressing up chipboard is cute and the results rewarding it's also a pita detailwork. Thank god for the BG precision file set! Oh, and another note to self; ALWAYS ALWAYS push back the ISO to the original setting after each use! Dang. Iso 640. *rolls eyes*

And a little while ago I was so lucky winning in a RAK and a RdG blogcontest. And while the goodies arrived some days ago I just haven't had the time to present them properly here on my blog - and they're so great that I just have to!

Lene S. was so kind and generous and sent me not just two (as she promised in her blog), but THREE of her stamps! Wow! I wanted to thank you properly Lene, so I waited until I actually had used the stamp on something before showing & thanking on my blog. This is a thank-you card (duh) for someone we'll meet in our upcoming vacation. I'm no cardmaker, but you gotta admit this is such a cute motif no? I'm picturing pictures of Amalie in a green meadow in a summeryflowery dress and these stamps as photocorners...or something like that :) Here you can see & buy her whole collection. Thank you so much Lene!!

RdG - these papers have taken their time arriving here but now they're finally at my home - YUM! RdG was also *so* generous.....lots of 6x12 papers, monograms, die cuts, 2x of EACH of the new paperlines including rubons...yum!!! Love the new collections - yummy yummy! hopefully I'll squeeze in some last-minute scrappingtime tonight.......can't wait..!!


Thank you card using "Blomste, detaljert" from Lene Solhaug Design
Rogue de Garance!

10 lovely comments

~~ First Pencillines Layout! ¨~

Posted by Ania On Sunday, July 15, 2007 10 lovely comments

Oh lookie!
My first layout with Pencillines! Weee!!
Actually. That was the latest layout I made for them - made two others for future weeks while waiting for the MM goodies to arrive at my doorstep. Funky Vintage was the collection I got, and while I must admit I wasn't too wild about the front of the papers I recieved I've discovered I just LOVE the background - yeah - they're two sided. Love the subtle patterns on the onecolored side. Yummy! And these flowers! Luxurious velvet...mmm...and the sweet ghostalphas with the sheer & elegant motifs...oh yeah.....and I've used the papers in two other layouts since so I guess the paper's really grown on me over time :D Figured I'd use the tag maker seeing as this week was MM sponsored - the tagmaker punch & the tagmaker are always good fun to to use :) And the sketch? I rotated it some and stuff..:p

Go ahead, check the others, see Keisha Campbells take & join in for a chance on the July RAk which is sponsored by MM :)

So happy to be a part of Pencillines!! :)

10 lovely comments
Yes! Finally! Free to scrap! Well, at least for a very few days -- the swedes left yesterday you see. Anyways. Played around with some old Cape Town papers from Scenic Route (with a peek of a Love, Elsie paper) and I think I like the outcome. Kinda felt like I wanted to scrap just to scrap and for now, break out from the vivid, bright colors that's been present on my layouts lately. It feels good. I also scrapped three 4x6 pictures - now that's been a long time since I did so and it also felt good. Ohwell. Check in tomorrow -- I'll show you my first layout as a part of the Pencillines blog! We got to play around with a great sponsor for this one!

Random links:

Got Cat litter?
Seriously? Cat litter? Erhm.

How to eat Sushi
Wow. I love Spicy Tuna Rolls. And it's not even real sushi this dude says. Maybe I should try ordering something else but just Tuna/Salmon next time... The good thing however - yay for eating sushi with your fingers!

How to get rid of your junk
I so need to learn how to do that *thinks about the 30 or so unpacked boxes at the attic*

Free photoshopbrushes
Neato!

You've got to find what you love
A speak by Steve Jobs, funder of Apple. Wow. This one is a must-read. Connect the dots. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

30/30 - so cute!
Aww this is so cute and such a brilliant idea!
Maybe when Amalie grows into a lil more cooperating lil girlie...

Have a nice Saturday!

4 lovely comments

~~ Ooo ~~

Posted by Ania On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5 lovely comments

Oh did you see!! It's drawing closer - on sunday we'll debut on Pencillines!! Here's the presentation of the new girls, including yours truly! :D

Got some alonetime yesterday while the guests were away for the movies -- scrapped like a lil maniac because there was some calls I wanted to try join....don't think I can show the layouts yet but I must admit - I'm very very excited about especially one of the layouts I made...it turned out really great I think!! And tonight I'm attending a crop so it'll be MORE scrappingtime for me. YAY!

Speaking about the movies -- if you're in for the obligatory summeractionmovie then go watch Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard. Now, I'm usually not too hot for sequels, especially not for socalled actionmovies/comedies - but this one DOES NOT DISAPPOINT ONE LITTLE BIT! Oh yeah - like the Norwegian saying goes; the old people are...oldest...or whatever...:p Seriously, it's so good, it's pure joy & action & good jokes (okok, the jetplane was maybe a lil bit over the top but hey, it's a sequel, it gotta top the others no :p). Pure entertainment & good value for your money.

Ahwell. I'm up early because I need to watch the kids while the rest of the house is asleep still -- think I'll try prep a new layout! :)

Oh, and the picture is of a flower in our backyard - one of the flowers next to the trashbin actually.....I think it's a loose seed from the neighbours garden...it's really beautiful... shot up against an overcast sky w/my 50mm. Desaturated & added a lil bit of sepia.. it reminds me of the generic pictures you get at say, IKEA and the likes.......but as someone told me, hey, there's a reason that they sell..... I guess...I like this one....and it woulda been cool to have one on my walls that *I've* taken instead of a generic IKEA picture..hmm...

5 lovely comments

~~ I'm alive... ~~

Posted by Ania On Tuesday, July 10, 2007 2 lovely comments


Wow. It's been a while eh. But yeah, I'm still around, still alive ;p
Being invaded by swedes (and a serb) is good fun - showing them around some (including golfing!) and ofc - being gamers it also includes setting up a base (at someone elses house ;p) for all the computers for the rainy days :p

Anyways. Been reading up on lenses and stuff lately, and just can't decide. Personally I feel that I'll use the wideangle-normalrange more for "serious" photosessions -- that is - 17-85, maybe even up to 105-135 -- that's all fine. Anything above that is an added bonus, but really, it's only when I wanna stalk my kids that I use the lens on 200mm, and it's more like...cool and dandy but doesn't happen *that* often really (true!!). Anyways. One day I wanna go for Nikkor AF-S DX VR 18-200 and the other day I'm drooling over 17-55 f/2.8 and/or 28-70 f/2.8 and/or 17-35 f/2.8 (damn their stupid pricetags! really, I'm not looking at the price, I'm just looking at the nikonwebsite which lenses I'd like based on specs only and when I check their prices afterwards I'm like gawd fuxk it not that one too ><). I am trying to accept that I'm more in for the 18-200 one for now...pricewise....but damnit :(
Help. Meh!

Oh. Soon going for a vaccay ourselves -- and I need to do some taxfree shopping at the airport -- any recommendations for a nice, ok foundation for mixed/dry skin? Please do let me know! :)

Totally missin' scrappin, but will drag the girls to the local crop on weds so hopefully I'll get my fix then ;p

Laters :)

Oh ps! The new Pencillines DT-additions will debut next week! Am so excited!!

And from August on it seems like I'll be designing for this store aswell - cool! :)

2 lovely comments

~~ Invaded by swedes ~~

Posted by Ania On Tuesday, July 03, 2007 3 lovely comments
A totally cool photo taken today :p
Pink shades!
Soon fed up on my "woe is me" layouts? :p
Ohwell. Bored kiddo at the school. Hmmm..
So not much time to update the blog nor scrap and stuff these days....but! I can still spam you with like, old layouts and photos and stuff. Yeah! I think I will. No wait. I just did. Ha. (I'm so funny *rolls eyes*)

Hm. No, not my laptops. Cool ones though eh?

3 lovely comments

~~ CHRISTINE! :) ~~

Posted by Ania On Monday, July 02, 2007 3 lovely comments

Hey Christine! You won! :)
Email me at ania krøllalfa gmail dot com :)

LOVED reading all of your stories, so sweet & cute :)
Wish I had time to write more atm but am kinda swamped -- guests arriving in a few hours and lots to do still! When I get more time I'll post a few layouts and maybe another photoshopthing to play with....

3 lovely comments

~~ Just HAD to snag this one ~~

Posted by Ania On Sunday, July 01, 2007 0 lovely comments

Create your own Fridge


Go wild! :P

0 lovely comments

~~ More editing fun ~~

Posted by Ania On Sunday, July 01, 2007 5 lovely comments
Having more and more fun with editing. Ofcourse. For real real bad pictures there's not much *I* can do. Pro's maybe, but I'm just barely learning. And I like playing around with actions - by looking them up in the history or if youre even more ambitious, toggle the dialoguethingie on so you can see exactly every little adjustment and how it is done and even change them along the way to adjust them to your own pictures and at the same time learn more. It's somewhat boring though if you have a buncha pictures to edit so usually it's better off off & just readjust in the history in the end kinda before merging the layers. :p
(and yeah - the optimal would be to have the correct/desired exposure when shooting pics but often sometimes it'll be off when youre using manual settings & following your kids in&out the shadows in a sunny day..like this..)

Anyways.

Original picture, taken in the shadows:

Original picture

Alright - adjusting curves only (did I mention how much I like how Adobe boosted this tool in CS3?). And some unsharp mask. Ignoring the somewhat overexposed area at the upper part of the picture (which could be fixed *if* I wanted to by using two layers of the same pic and adjusting the curves of one layer and then using the eraser with say, half opacity and erasing the dark part of the dark layer then merging both part kinda I think but that'll be too much hazzle and I'm getting a headache thinking about it already ;p) Besides. I like overexposed pictures. Have I mentioned? When taking pictures I usually overexpose them one or two steps intentionally. Sure yell at me, tell me it's wrong, it's not textbook blah blah blah but it's MY pictures so nyah!

Adjusting curves only

Alright. Now that I'm happy about the picture it's about time to use an action to add a lil piazzah to it. In this case I wanted it more vivid and bright. (ofcourse..just dupe the layer and put it to hard layer or something else and adjust the opacity and eventually do another layer in screenmode but I often find I like the subtle and more pro hands of the actions much better for now)
So. This is what I kinda got when running it with minimal (none I think) individual adjustments. Too vivid and IMO somewhat fake.

Playing with the Itty Bitty action

So after some adjustments of the layers and even removal of some this is what I ended up with. Yeah. Me like.

The actioned picture after some adjustments. And the one I'll most likely use ;)

Now. What can we learn from this?
Well. Before using actions your best bet is usually to try and make the picture as "normal" as it can get. Once in a while actions can save your bad bad pictures (usually after heavy individual adjusting from you aka more work for you). However, it's much easier for the action to do so if the pictures already been fixed somewhat. Well. I think so anyways - but heaven knows I'm no expert so they (the experts that is, duh) might say I'm just wrong. Ohwell. Just sharing some observations I make while trying to learn :) Hm. Bedtime. Will stop bore/confuse you now :p

Jaja. Jeg er mer og mer into redigering for tiden gitt. Men altså; jeg har stilt dette spørsmålet før og stiller det igjen; er dette virkelig helt "ok"? Min kjære tok et kjapt blikk på redigeringa mi og lurte på om dette ikke var litt juks. Hmmm. Hva synes dere? Juks eller helt ok? Burde jeg ha stoppet ved justeringen av curves (bilde nr 2) - der bildet ser helt "normal" ut?? Eller er det helt greit å redigere det slik at bildet endte sånn som det gjorde for nå -- siste bilde - litt mer intens men ikke så voldsomt som bilde nr 3. What do you think? Personlig synes jeg det er gledelig at det faktisk går an å redde dårlige bilder, og i noen tilfeller, faktisk få de til å bli brukbare. Og hvorfor ikke prøve å gjøre de litt mer lekre? Eller er det virkelig juks. Hm. Ikke mer juks enn å bruke sort-hvitt bilder da? Eller sepia? Eller en eller annen sort-hvit "tone"?? Åh har jeg nevnt..sort-hvitkonverteringen i CS3 er digg! Oh yes. I'm in love. :)

Jaja. Lalletid tenker jeg. Får scrappe dette bildet imorgen nå som det er klart og brukbart ;)

Ps. Fortsatt tid å bli med på RAK'en! Om du faktisk har det stempelsettet fra før så er det helt ok..jeg er bare veldig nysgjerrig på historiene deres....så gøy å lese de jeg har fått til nå :) Scroll litt nedover bare :)

5 lovely comments
    -Get off the cross we need the wood-