banner
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. ♥



2/2

~~ Various bits & pieces ~~

Posted by Ania On Saturday, August 29, 2009 5 lovely comments

I've got like, everything and nothing to say atm, so here's a bulletstyle list w/various information:

  • My friend Anam Stubbington and her family are struggling w/legal matters in order to get to stay in Canada (they're originally from the UK but have made a life for themselves in Canada and would like nothing more but to stay). Basically it boils down to having the money for all the papers needed to become permanent residents, and in order to raise enough several friends and aquitances have come together to show support by offering items or services to be auctioned off for this cause. You can see the sticky post here, and among the auctioned services are having a layout created for you by several amazing scrapbookers...and me.. (see above photocollage of the contributing scrapbookers) The minimum bid is 5$ + shipping of the final layout.

    To Norwegians who'd like to consider having a layout scrapped by me: Hvis dette er noe du kunne tenke deg - støtte en god sak & få bildet ditt scrappet av en annen en annen enn deg selv - så kan jeg f.eks. ta med meg layouten til Papirfesten i Stavanger i oktober (for å spare porto) eller hvis du bor i Bergen eller omegn kan vi sikkert finne frem til en løsning ang. overrekkelsen av LO'en.

    Anyways - do check out the complete list of auctionitems - lots of awesome stuff - jewelleries, classes, gift certificates and more - not necessarily scrapbook-related.
  • Fancy Pants Designs are having another contest - "Back to School", where there will be one selected winner and one random winner. Unfortunately only open to US residents.
  • Hambly Screenprints are having a limited ed. sale on their new designs! Every time Hambly prints new designs they print them in various colors/combos before finally settling on a few colors for mass production - leaving the rest of the non-used colors "limited ed" :) (at least that's how I understood it). Also, the DT-galleries are updated :)
  • I'm starting in a new job on Tuesday!! :)
    Been jobhunting for two weeks now (but it feels much much longer because I've been preparing for the actual jobhunting for weeks prior) and am happy to finally get to actually do something sensible ;p I am nervous and anxious but also very optimistic about this...yay :) The job is as a photographer at the local newspaper, and it's only a 15-20min walk from home..meaning I really should be using my legs more and stuff.....if only it wouldn't rain so darn much atm *cough* *cough* (and if anyone would like to have a look - here's my portfolio)
  • I love having scrapbook-friends over....especially the kind who comes over just to help me tidy up & properly organize the scrapbook-room...really!!! *thanks you know who you are ;p* I guess I should snap a photo before it gets messier again, but 1. we still have like 20% of the room left 2. I think I might have messied up at least my table and stuff already *eeks*....but it's only because Im in the middle of a project!! Promise!!
  • Looking through my Lightroom I realize I haven't been taking any photos the last few weeks but the assigned ones/photos of layouts and projects...so I promptly snapped this one by the little one....it's a well-known expression of hers these days...the pout-face..

And then I looked through photos from this summer and found some I haven't shared here before..from the first wedding of the summer..



Love this one - who needs languages when you got a DS and bodylanguage?? (Adrian with the french kid)

Have a nice weekend :)

5 lovely comments

~~ Show me how you do that trick ~~

Posted by Ania On Monday, August 24, 2009 7 lovely comments
It's Monday, which means it's about time to share the layout I made for yesterdays Pencil-Lines #149 - the last one with My Little Shoebox as our sponsor for August. We used a great sketch by Anna, perfect for MLS & their round-shaped papers. I added a few more of the tags I got from Shabby Chic Crafts on this one aswell.

The photos are from this summer when we visited my grandma ♥


On Saturday we attended the beautiful wedding of a friend of ours. The celebration took place at a sea-food restaurant on an island close to Bergen, Cornelius Restaurant, and we took the boat over, taking the scenic route before arriving the restaurant. Not being the appointed photographer as I've been the last few weddings I've attended was quite relaxing and great actually - but yeah - I did bring the camera with me :)

My brother-in-law and his gorgeous wife on the boat. Love this shot despite the sidelight being a tad too bright here (or ok, it was my settings not being optimal here, but shh :p) :)

From where I sat I ninjaed this photo of the bride and her sister refreshing the makeup before arriving the restaurant *cough*.

I feel quite drawn to take photos of the food and I sure admire the craft of taking great photos of food (and foodstyling. Just look at Canelle et Vanille - check out her portfolio - heavenly! I wanna cook and take photos like that too! But I digress..sorry :) )

My problem w/photographing food is that I'm not quite sure how/where to focus, sorta. I assume I should have tried to get the green stuff in front of the fish more in focus aswell too, uh?
Oh, and that the food is just put on a plate in front of me and I'm not able to be too creative w/how to shoot it. Unless I wanted funny looks from the people around me I guess..they thought I was being a bit weird taking photos of the food as it was sorta :p


The main course..
And this dessert - yum! It tasted fantastic :)

Some kissing during the meal...
(In Norway one of the things we sorta do during the dinner is to tap the glass w/the cutlery (like when you're gonna do a speech and need everybodys attention..only that everybody does this at once) - then the bride&groom have to stand on their chairs & K I S S :) Well, the groom just stood here because this way the kiss was more comfortable for them, but originally..they're both supposed to stand on chairs :p Just like the fifth photo found here). The bride's originally from China, and had her parents attending (aswell as guests from the US and England..and I believe there was someone from Serbia there too)...I wonder what they thought of this tradition..or if it's a commonly known one abroad too..??)


And here's the bride & groom - who changed into more Chinese gear by the end of the evening :) The jacket of his is so cool and she's so gorgeous and sweet and I'd totally totally love such a dress (and a body to go with it too thankyouverymuch).


Hope you all had a nice weekend aswell! :)


Title: "Just Like Heaven" - Katie Melua


7 lovely comments
Am attending a wedding tomorrow - hence this wedding-card made w/Hambly (and yes! - Hambly totally is the to-go-manuf when it comes to creating wedding-cards IMHO :) ) & Prima yummies (and I love the pearl-thingie from 7gypsies which's dangling along the spine/fold aswell :) ). Decided to go w/the paper & transparency-combo once again. I really like these kind of cards - it looks so nifty w/o you really having done much to it sorta :) Looking forward to this wedding (& to not have to photograph all the time for once :) )!


Over at the Nikki Sivils blog the dt-team has created a lot of stamp+card inspirations. Here's my contribution - a quite simple card using the cherry stamp from "My sweet Cherry Pie" & embossing.

And here's my Nikki Sivils layout for Aug using "Henrys brilliance" & a bit of "My Sweet Cherry Pie", aswell as a two year old photo of my oldest first day at school.

Have a wonderful (rainy) weekend! :)

Title: "This Time Tomorrow" - Marit Larsen


3 lovely comments

~~ keep your head above it all ~~

Posted by Ania On Wednesday, August 19, 2009 5 lovely comments
Adding another Hambly-layout..
Gotta say I'm totally lovin' the color-scheme here, and just have to repeat - the black screened papers from Hambly is totally to die for - the gorgeous sheen in them...mmm..
this one came together pretty much just because I had this paper on top of my desk as one of many I was considering for another layout, and was rummaging thru my leftover-stash and put the lone, large butterfly on it while rummaging and then I fell in love with this combo...so decided I had to make a layout w/both (and other leftover-stuff, like the frame in same color as the butterfly and the white wood grain-rub on on the back of the frame *yum*)

Looking at it I am somehow totally feeling the influence of Sasha here, I don't think I've lifted her directly (not that I'm aware of anyways), but it still feels...Sashaish...well..I hope it's a good thing cause she rocks the Hambly :)

School started again for the oldest one - and today was the second day of the kindergarten for the little one. Influenced by "first day at school"-photos that I've seen around lately I guess I should post one of mine too, uh. Just to kinda say that yeah sure I've been a good enough mommy to have remembered to take a photo of the kids before they're off today...even if the only faces they wanted to do were the pouting ones (can't understand why!! :p)

Right. Back to the focaccia in the oven before I have some errands to do today...so many thoughts in my head, so much I want to accomplish, blah blah..

Oh, one more thing -- Marit Larsen, one of my fave Norwegian artists (ok, THE fave artist) has officially debuted in a few European countries, Germany & Austria included, and has put together a new album for these countries consisting of songs from her two prev albums... just thought I'd urge you all to familiarize yourselves w/her cuz...her music is so lovely :)


Title: " Solid Ground" -Marit Larsen


5 lovely comments

~~ Playing in the dark ~~

Posted by Ania On Saturday, August 15, 2009 7 lovely comments
Michelle Filo (she creates awesome digi-stuff making me wish I was a teeny tad digi & she's doing the free digi-templates for Pencil-Lines which's totally awesome imo) is the current OLW-guestdt and her gorgeous mini for this weeks word - PLAY (which Gudrun picked btw :) ) - totally inspired me to finally join the fun this time...I've been wanting to several times but never really found the time (well, I did once recently but then it was too late haha)..anyways! Here's my layout w/ mostly Fancy Pants (quite a few of the newer Kraft Kuts papers + the new "Trick or Treat" line + some older stuff) mixed with a little Prima, AC and Shabby Chic Crafts.

Playing with night-photography is fun and I'd totally go explore it more if I wasn't feeling lazy in the evenings (usually....*cough*).

Ahwell! Have a wonderful weekend - here it's the last one before school&work catches up on us next week :)



7 lovely comments

~~ Mari & Ben's Wedding Photos, part 2 ~~

Posted by Ania On Thursday, August 13, 2009 0 lovely comments
Time for the second&last batch of photos from the wedding :)
Although it had been raining pretty much every day leading up to the wedding, the wedding day itself was free of any rain - wonderful! We even had sun most of the day.. granted, there were some threatening clouds, like on the photo above, but all in all - the sky respected the wedding ;p

Before the dinner the band (in which the bride&groom was a part of) had a rehersal..here's one of their listeners...*smirk*

Relaxing on the lawn.
The brides speech. Notice the emotional groom. *insert collective "aww" here*

K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
The kids couldn't resist - they had to try out the instruments & mics. This one brings out the lols - she had her fingers in her ears all the time while trying out the diff. stuff on the stage (which by the way was in the garage, making it a real garage-band :p) :)

Dancing Queen (&playing around w/wireless flash. Def need to play more in order to learn it for real)
Time for cake..
..and the band to perform..

Party & concert in the garage! :)

The next day I had to try some ring-shots. Yes. There's rings in the photo somewhere.
It made me realize that I really really would like a real macro-lens. Please.

Another ring shot. Did I mention I need a macro lens already? :/


Oh, and I gotta add this one of the kids. Three Norwegian and two French ones. All too darn cute&handsome. (and yeah, playing together were no problem for the kids- everybody loved the toddler and esp the two oldest ones ran around playing & played some w/the ds)


Kristine Said,

Kjempestilig album! Hadde tenkt å trykke like i google reader på denne jeg, men finner jo ikke den knappen!


Knappen finner du på bunnen av selve posten i Google Reader - hos meg er det den linjen med "add star", "like", "share" "share with note" etc. :)

0 lovely comments

~~ Won't see what might have been ~~

Posted by Ania On Tuesday, August 11, 2009 6 lovely comments
Soooo while someone is waiting impatiently for the newest release from Hambly to arrive (it's on its way!!) I figured I'd try clean up my scrap-stash a bit by making a little mini I've been meaning to make for a long time but (as usual) never got around to...until now, natch.

So I whipped out my scrap-stash of leftover Hambly transparencies, a stack of woodgrain tags from Shabby Chic Crafts (woodgrain + awesome colors = you can't ask for more!) and a heap of favorite quotes from my favorite lyrics printed on kraft cardstock. Yum!

So far I've gathered a few from Maria Mena, Marit Larsen and Tori Amos (well, from her first album so far - her lyrics rocks!). I don't really have the heart to cut into perfectly good sheets of 12x12, so I'll expand it as soon as I get more scraps. I think. Need more Tori Amos and Regina Spektor!





By the way - I noticed a nifty command in my Google Reader the other day - no idea how long it's been around but anyways - it's a "Like" button :) Soooo whenever I'm scrolling past posts and like them but don't find the time to comment (or if someone's got wordvertification and I really need to be really motivated to comment on these..soz!) I just click the "Like" button. Just to say I liked the post even tho Im not commenting. Lazy but nice :) I guess it can only be seen if some other's also using the Google Reader, but it feels nice nevertheless to leave an (invisible) print.


Title: "The Unforgiven" - Metallica


6 lovely comments

~~ Ben & Mari's Wedding Photos part 1 ~~

Posted by Ania On Sunday, August 09, 2009 4 lovely comments
So last weekend we attended my husbands cousins wedding, and I did my best documenting the whole day. It was a pretty laidback and wonderful wedding, and a good time was had by all - ofcourse :)

Right. Piccies!

A friend of the bride picked us up in a vet cabriolet in the morning. From like 1960. Awesome :)

I like taking photos via the mirror :)
She got ready at her grandma's place, which was like next door to the "Tinghuset" where they were getting married :)

Sorta boho chic no? :)
I really like this photo - the groom on his way inside the "Tinghuset" :)


The groom getting emotional. Aww :)
Look at the bubbles to the right!! :)


Love these shots from the car :) Kinda stylish 60's :)

Love the wide angle when you can take such photos :)
Sorta like this one :)


And this one :)
And that's it for now :)

However, next time I don't think I'll be using the wide angle as much as I did this time-- need a normal-zoom-objective for my fx asap! Still, they proved fun photos once you look past the distortion :)


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