Little Corner of Ania

Yay!
Happy mail day - a few weeks ago I won a RAK at Funky Finds - a blog devoted to cool and funky finds, mostly from Etsy but also a lil around - but that kind of stuff... they had a HUGE jewellery-give-away and I thought I just won one jewellery but in fact, I got three jewelleries!! And best of all?? I got the one I wanted the most!! A Lisa Leonard necklace - "love well" - same as in this photo just without the pearl (photo snagged from her blog) - but with a small hammered heart instead....YAY!!! Insta-love!! I also got a sprinkled ring from CBT's closet (very funny one - Amalie loved it - shame it's too big for her - so I'm wearing it instead and it's kinda growing on me - it's funny and I've never worn huge rings before - me like! And check out my cool black nails!) and a pair of earrings from Smu-Topia! Yay!! What a lovely start on the Easter :)

Some answers
Carrin wondered what I had done with the edges to the layout in this post. I just used my bind-it-all holemaker on it. I know 7gypsies has a a holemaker in this shape aswell, or you could just use your regular holemaker. I just wanted the edges to be like, torn without being torn..to show that although I was trying to be happy about the stuff I made the layout about I kinda wanted the holes to remind me how I felt....like...fringed edges kinda...I dunno...

And Iris wondered how I did the edges on the photos in this minibook in the last post... I just drew them like freehanded...freestyle...doodled :) Nothing hokuspokus about it...I used an American Craft precision pen - size 0.8 - I think the thickness of that helps make it kinda cool and easy to draw. That pen is also one of the best to use on photos imo - dries quick and doesn't smear...well, I haven't intentionally tried to smear it but ...I just like it for photos :) (for journaling I actually like zigs or signo best)


Classes & peek stuff
I am currently working on a few samples for my upcoming classes for Scrappejungelen in Stavanger - I believe more info about that are to come after the Easter (but keep 18-19.April available if you're around Stavanger ;) ). You're gonna play with lots of yumminess, that much I can promise you - see, I'm kinda a Prima-Donna - that is - a Prima instructor - so we're gonna play with lots of cool Prima-stuff :) And there'll be different stuff to learn in each of the classes - we're gonna do 3-4 templates in each of the classes.


Am also working on some other stuff - well, I'm kinda done but I'm thinking I should play more because I'm not really happy with what I've done to now, so we'll see....that one will be revealed by the end of this month...and no, it's not Bad Girls stuff ;p

For the photo/techie/printnerds
Oh, and I was testing some yesterday - printing in photoshop with both Adobe RGB and sRGB. My monitor is calibrated, the printer is not afaik. I let Photoshop handle the colors and chose Adobe RGB and then sRGB the next round because I thought the first print (adobe RGB) paled significantly compared to what I saw on the screen and was curious enough to try sRGB to see if there was any diff. Surprisingly enough the sRGB seemed to be more like what I saw on the screen - hmm. Weird, cause I know photoshop stores my photos with an Adobe RGB profile unless I do "save for web" - then it stores it in sRGB. Weird, but interesting. Ohwell - I usually print with my printers program anyways, it's been kinda more reliable than printing with photoshop to me (only do that when I want the exact measurements to be this and that -then I use print from photoshop) - but now I guess I know why it's been somewhat unreliable cause it's default is to print with adobe RGB. Hm. Need to test with more photos before I can tell for sure anyways. Sorry for the bad photo - late at night but thought I'd snap a proof before cutting out the photo.. hey if you know more feel free to explain to me :)

I got an award!!!
Sweet Iris and Janine both gave me this award - doh! Seriously girls, I'm so throwing that award back at ya cause - I can't list this without including you too! Love you girls :) Always a joy to drop by your blogs and see your creations :)

According to Iris the rules are;
The rules for the You Make My Day award are to re-present it to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blog land. Let them know through email or by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times yourself, and if you do, consider yourself really, really loved.

So, let's see..who else can I list?? I stalk oh so many blogs... but my fave scrap-stalkplaces must be..

• Iris - looking for the perfect layouts? Look no further. She's also such a sweet gal - *hugs* :)
  
• Janine - I have the same feeling when it comes to her layouts - they're just perfect. And all those little details!! And I love her photos - sooo envying her studio-experience :)
  
• Tracie - Seriously one of these gals you just want all the best in the world to happen to. Totally rocking the papers and SO creative! *hugs*
  
• Kathrine - alright, she's kinda a sucky blogger (and she knows that keke) - but when she does update her blog - mm love her stuff. :)
  
• Silje & Xstine - gotta mention them together :) Two cool chicks and their stuff always makes me smile and happy cause it's...happy stuff! :)
  
• Ingunn - incredibly sweet and a top notch scrapper and photographer.
  
• Karen Russel - I don't know her - but yet I feel like I do through her blog. Yep. Major stalk-alert here. Love that she always includes so many photos of her everyday-life and her CI-stuff is cool :).
  
• Celine Navarro - she's so creative - really an artist - her mixed media background shows. Really looking forward to attend her class :)
  
• Kayla Aimee - love reading her blog. She's funny - and the most weirdest things keeps happening to her :p Another one I just stalk cause it's amusing (in a good way!) reading what she's up to.

On a personal note
Adrian is off for a few days at the summer-place with grandma, uncle/fiancee and two of the boys (they've got six kids in between them). Soo we're stuck with Amalie for a few days ;p She pouted because Adrian got to go with grandma and not her, so we gave her her Easter-egg early. Happy girlie ;) She also thought my ring was so cool that she wanted one of her own, and
proceeded to make her own from some geomag-sticks. Clever DIY-girl there, eh :) And hey this IS annoying - when it's something she wants and I initially tell her "no" she asks "bliiiiiiiiiiiizz" (she's trying to say "please" - her big brother is learning some English at school and loves to throw around english words here and there - "yes!" , "nooooo" and "please" comes to mind and well, she snatched up the meaning of the latter fairly quick). She's so cute that I give in most of the times....sigh..she just ran away with a stamp I had stamped to use with my current project...hrmf..gotta hunt her down to get it back :p

God påske!
Her har vi en hjemmepåske, men farmor tok med seg Adrian ut på hytta så vi er tre enn om så lenge - de visste ikke helt hvor lenge de skulle være ute - det kom litt an på været og sånn. Her er det sol og snø og regn litt om hverandre - men det er kaldt ute og kjennes litt påskeaktig ut i lufta iallefall :) Ungene har fått hver sine funky påskeegg fra farmor - Amalie måtte få sin tidlig for hun ble jo litt lei seg da hun ikke fikk være med ut på hytta - men vel, det er jo litt mindre arbeid med Adrian, spesielt når han kan få være med noen andre unger der ute og. Jeg var så heldig å vinne noen smykker fra Funky Finds - og Amalie beundret spesielt ringen min - hun ble så begeistret at hun lagde seg sin egen fra geomag-stickene med en gang etter at jeg bad om å få min tilbake (hun kommer jo bare til å miste den og greier.--dessuten var den for stor til henne :P).

Ellers skal jeg holde kurs i Stavanger snart om ca en mnd (18-19. april). Kurset er åpent for alle - både hørende og døve - håper jeg ser noen døve der og denne gangen. Sist jeg holdt kurs i Stavanger var det jo bare hørende der så ;p Mer info kommer etter påsken tenker jeg.

Ha en riktig god påske dere som kikker innom :)

I decided to join Celines challenge - see, tomorrow (monday) is her birthday (happy birthday!!) and she's doing this challenge to give away a prize for someone completing a project including the manufacturers she's on the DT with.... Rouge de Garance, Prima and American Crafts..although, you don't have to use RdG if you don't have any as it's harder to come by than Prima and AC.. anyways...decided to do a minibook made of RdG paper, some prima flowers, swirls, ribbons and a strip of primapaper, AC thickers (both alpha and shapes) and pen and otherwise, just paint, staples and um, I couldn't help but adding juts a tiiiny wee bit Hambly. :p Think it turned pretty cool - love that the dabber-paints matched the papers perfectly and well, just love the overall colorfest this little minibook is. The measurements are 6"x2.5" :) Am so looking forward to her class here in April - I joined the first class (Guess what!??) and wish I could join the second class aswell, but alas....the price was a bit steep bleh. Ohwell am happy I get to join one class at least - who else are going??

For Pencil-Lines we have the crazycool (crazy as in that being a good thing, I totally love her style) Ashley Wren guesting and nrgh, I don't really like my layout for that sketch but dang her totally totally totally rocked! I have to try let loose and just like, relax and sit back and just scrap the way she does cause she really rocks the stuff. Anyways. Nice personal sentimental-valued photo, sucky layout. Can't always win hm :p

Was gonna add some future peeks but hm, this post is sooo photoheavy already so guess I'll wait ;p I can and will promise this is gooood stuff though keke ;p And I'm gonna do some awards soon aswell (thanks Iris!!) guess I'll save that for a shorter post tho :p

In other words...we had a nice sunday - I spent the day with Amalie and my husbands grandmother visiting various graves for the Easter before heading back to their home and cooking dinner for the grandfather, my husband and kiddo who had been to the summerplace to check on the boats and stuff. The weather was sunny and bright but the air was crisp and so cold... and by the evening it was snowing again. Ohwell. Adding some even more photos - yikes - sorry ;p

Ps!! Bored during the Easter? Don't forget the ongoing challenge over at Scrappedugnad bout making a layout including circles!! And there's a new challenge inc friday...yay ;p

Fin dag idag - Simen og Adrian ble med Beste til hytta for å fikse båten og sjekke at ting var ok og sånn mens jeg og Amalie ble med Ma på en liten kirkegårdtur før vi dro hjem til Ma og Beste og ventet på guttene for å spise middag sammen. Før vi dro hadde jeg en kjapp fotosession med Amalie her hjemme - søtnosen min =) Hanen og hønene så vi utenfor Fana kirkegård - noen private som hadde de frittgående i hagen sin - helt frittgående altså, porten var åpen og greier så de kunne liksom stikke av men neida - de holdt seg innenfor hagen :) Nyydelige farger på hanen. :)

Still exploring these mood-swings, venting to a few friends over the net and stuff, reestablished some small and big focuses and actually got a number of things done & confirmed and settled and also a few new goals along the way. Made yummy muffins w/babysmarties inside cause that's whats yummy (Thanks for that push Kath :)). Oh and I scrapped too. Wasn't gonna but did on a whim. Damn am I good?? ;p

Doing this layout felt terapeutic. Lemonade and stuff. Yeah. That's good.

Awight. I'm still moody, I guess it's just a part of the whole postop-thingie so I guess it's somewhat ok. When you can't do much about your own situation and know you won't be able for a while still it kinda makes you frustrated and in turn makes you moody. Kinda just something I have to go through. Sorry I was kinda grumpy yesterday on the blog but hey I really appreciate it if it helped a bit..and no, it wasn't directed at anybody in particular, just one of those small annoying things that when keeps repeating itself goes like blergh in the end ;p

Today I'm trying to like, hm, I dunno..breathe. Get back on top of things. Pretend I'm doing something that matters still. I decided I'd take photos of the little thing that helps or makes me happy or well, like, count your blessings or whatever.... just not that important - just small things :p

And because it feels good Im gonna share the photos here. Not because I think they're splendid or great or whatever...just..because I feel the need to, because I think it's a part of a healingprocess just posting and stuff.... dang Im going awfully personal and unclear and squirrely and messy now. Sorry. Just ignore and move on. Don't want sympathy - just need some empathy. I think. At least that's what someone said quite recently and I thought that was good. Should have some scrappy stuff again in a while so just be patient with me in the meantime while I work this out :p

Ps. I paniced the other day. No nailpolish in the house. None that wasn't dried up and old. What has happened to me? I used to care about my nails. Somehow that got lost in the course of the years..and all of a sudden I just felt like, I need nailpolish NOW - I need a base coat, I need at least one preferrably two colors (one bright and natural, perhaps pearlywhitey and one dark like dark blue or dark green or burgundy or just simply dark) and a topcoat. Nrgh. That's how a weird state I am at atm. But really. Need to start taking care of my nails again. I'm told it's probably a part of the kids growing up becoming more independent and me starting to yearn to be something more than just a mom...but to be myself again..sounds plausible to me.
.

Codevertification is the work of Satan. Or worse.
Grumpy. New rule. Code vertification = not on my bloglist anymore!
Blame yourself :p I needed a shorter bloglist anyways.

So I get a permission to leave and I grab it cause, well, I don't do much but sleep and stuff at the hosp but hm, tbh, there's like a reason to why sleep all the time at the hosp no? Sooo admitting defeat I'm going back there tonight and hopefully I'll be home tomorrow in a much better shape than atm. Cause atm it sucks being me ;p

Alright. Didn't get the piccies to work yesterday so. Leaving the text as is. Went home for a bit yesterday (sunday) and then back to hosp same night. Am home again today and well, I am feeling better but if I like, rock a bit and tug deep deep inside I can feel the dizzy tingle of sitting on a merry-go-round. Funny eh? Ohwell. Nuff boring talk.

Wanted to share the Fancy Pants loving lately - looooove these papers so much...the photos just doesn't yield them any justice! :/

The first layout bears an explaination maybe - you see - we went BBQing in Vienna last summer and our little girlie went to sleep - and slept through most of the evening. When she woke up she instantly wanted in on the fun and grabbed the first and biggest sword she could find, went down the stairs and joined the game. You see, our hosts were RPG-players - as in playing roleplaying games for real - having a wonderful arsenal of totally cool weapons made of soft foam :) Lots of fun - dunno who had the most fun - our kids or the big kids ;p Anyways - love how Amalie just flung herself into it - alright Athena had a spear as her official weap but ey, details ;p Can't get over how cool she looked carrying a sword larger than herself haha...

The second layout is for Pencil-Lines (with Corinne Delis as our guest this week - love the circles!!), and the third one for Scrappedugnad with Dina Wakley and hey, even more circles! ;p

I'll get around to the other tags as soon as I'm able to think straight. Which I'm not really atm sorry!

Love crackle paint! And finally got to use the dresden (?) wings I got from Kathrine long time ago - cheers! It's so cool! :) And yes. That's Amalie luggin around with a sword. A huge badass sword. *snicker* Made of rubber natch, but oh so very nature-like... we visited some friends who were into real life roleplaying and they had this huge arsenal of totally cool kick-ass weaps :)

In other news... Gary Gygax is dead. No, I didn't know who he was until like, he was dead, but apparently he's like the godfather of D&D and AD&D and stuff and a lot of stuff might have been different if it wasn't for him and his buddy making out the whole roleplaying-genre & rules - or so they say. I briefly tried AD&D once with some guys I met on IRC (Niklas, Joakim and Elin among others as far as I recall). I didn't really do any good, I insisted on carrying a corpse around and all that silly stuff :p But then I tried playing a MUD and got hooked and well, I've loved Diablo (ok maybe not really rpg that one?), EverQuest, Baldurs Gate, Heroes of Might and Magic and World of Warcraft and several more games in that genre - both multi and singleplayer. And oh, there wouldn't have been no Dragonlance (I used to compare myself to Lauralanthalasa while I'd rather be like Kitiara) nor books bout Drizzt!! I guess stuff might have been been a whole lotta different without this dude. So three cheers for that man - I mean - they gave us nerds something to do ;p

Introducing the kiddo to literature
Lately I've been thinking a lot about books and stuff and I finally went down to the bookstore asking for Neil Gaiman for kids - and found "The wolves in the wall". Yay! In Norwegian though - I wanted to read this for my kid and see if he maybe just maybe will be interested enough to try read on his own. You see, he loves being read for but shows no real interest in actually learning to read. He just shrugs it off: "You know I can't read mommy" or "I don't remember *then takes a wild guess* as to what letter this or that is unless it's an A for his name or E for grandma's name". Which to me is a bit weird cause I was all about reading when I was his age. Anyways. He seemed to really enjoy the book-reading. Yey.
Oh, speaking of Neil Gaiman - Odd and the frozen Giants are available through this World Book Day thingie for 1£ (UK only afaik - bugger!)

Alright.
Got tagged by Iris - 7 random things bout me. Hm.

• I might yell more out of surprise rather than actually being/feeling hurt when I hit myself or something like that. It's a reflex! Sometimes I might laugh too.
  
• I can't live without the net. True story.
  
• I hate it when I'm told by the docs I should not color my hair for a while and my hair turns into carrotyellowishorange. Ugh!
• I don't like porridge!
• I still think being a parent is frickin SCARY and something for grownups, not me.. I wish it was enough to just like, love and hug your kids and never let go.
• I'm pretty much always sleepy :p (no big surprise for those who knows me)
• I usually dress in brown and dark blue and militarygreen...subdued boring colors...while I really want to dress more...colorful and pretty...I just...can't! Always fall back on those "safe" clothes...
  

:p

Oh, and my kid turned seven the other day (Ick. It's a reminder that I'm like, old...and yes! It's all about me!) and my mom was around and stuff and I still haven't put up some photos! Uhoh. So. Here they are - some of them :)






Her kommer noen bilder fra da mamma var her og Adrian hadde bursdag :) Good times :) Takk for besøket mamma!

I joined a "lift-me-up" challenge Karla Dudley arranged on her blog the other day. Thought it'd be a fun tidbit - and today I finished that layout :) I am lifting Nicole Klein, and this is the layout I chose to lift..adjusted it to lettersize and rotated it some. Now, when I was done with this layout I kinda found out I should have sewn some on it, but ohwell, too late as some of the areas I wanna sew into are embellied and bulky and stuff. It did feel weird scrapping with these kind of colors, but they did fit the photo and the singlecolored ones are just so beautifully made :) This is the "papa"-papers from Fancy Pants :)

And here's the Pencil-Lines layout from sunday - with a gorgeous sketch by Jolene and guest-layout from Kerry Lynn! :D These are the MME papers and hum yeah - I'm a bit into childhood-photos I guess.

And just because I simply adore the vibrant, gorgeous colors on these layouts, here's peeks for this weeks scrappedugnad and pencillines. Yumminess!! And yes...even more Fancy Pants :)

Ohwell, off to work again - will be gone thurs-sun and have more stuff I need to wrap up before so and preferrably get another layout or two done aswell!

Alright, lemme just say in advance: pardon the language. Been watching "The Wire" intensely the last week or so (just started on season two :D) and I think I might be a lil more influenced than usual (great series by the way, really like the in-depth thingie they got going on there and the convos are pretty cool too....there's like five seasons and I hope it'll keep being good throughout kwim). But shit man - this stuff is just so beautiful it makes me wanna cry!! What am I talkin about? Well, the beautiful lil package Fancy Pants sent me for winning on their blog. Yeah baby - spankin' new FRESH PAPERS from CHA -- all of'em including diecut-sheets! YAY! One sheet each from all of the new collections it seems - hot dang!! I know it sounds crazy for non-scrappers but seriously, stuff like this makes me just so happy :D

However.....I'm having a dillema here...... I don't wanna cut in those pretty pretty papers!!! :( :( Grr!! I keep trying to find the least liked paper kinda (when I saw the collections on the net I was like, yeah, two or three very cool must-have lines - but the rest? not so much...but hot dang, they all are so great irl!!), so it won't be that bad if I cut wrong kinda, but ugh, it's so hard.....I like all of the papers and I do wanna use those pretty ones....hrm... better speedy up cause I'm determined to use them for the next weeks Pencil-Lines! Just...have to make sure I won't like, do any mistakes :p Anyho......THANK YOU SO SO SO SO MUCH FANCY PANTS!!!!!

And look at this...pretty wicked eh? Scrapbook and Cards today along with the stuff I got from them under it - I guess it's like, everyday&small stuff for some, but to me it's pretty cool... here's my layout right under Caris (my fellow BG-dtmember)!! How cool is that? That they put the two of us together on that page like that?? :D

Mom's still around - at least for a few more hours before she's taking the train back to Oslo. I'm editing photos from January and February -- want her to take CD's with them with her back home (my own personal backupsystem - giving cd of photos every month to them in addition to backuping my own photos).
Taking RAW photos is great but it also req. me to have to edit every single photo kinda and convert them into JPGs.. I'm also ruthlessly deleting the RAW photos once Im done editing (apart from photosession-photos kinda)...I don't have much space and well, once Im done editing I don't return to fix it - I mean..I can see that my own editingstyle is evolving and all that and how I edited photos three months ago isn't how I'd do it now (usually).... but ohwell...cba redo stuff so Im like, done and movin on...so... er nuff babbel. LOTS of cool mailstuff happened lately - like, the Fancy Pants RAK I was so lucky to win (on their blog) arrived and HOLY SHIT IT'S LIKE THEIR WHOLE CHA PAPERCOLLECTION!!!!!! I'll up a photo asap..just....droppin by to upload this months Bad Girl DT stuff while the ACR is workin on converting 73 photos from RAW to JPG...that stuff takes ages!! Also got my layouts back from both Scrapbooking MM (lol it's been like 14-15 months since I made these layouts!) and Scrapbook and Cards today (the latter with some samples of Imaginisce papers and two numbers of their magazine with my layout in yay).... so cool! :D Anyways. Will write more soon, just wanted to up those lo's! Here's the BG LOs :) And PLEASE do check out the DT gallery!!! YIkes!!! This month is so freakin great - three new ladies to the DT and both them and the old girls rocked it for sure - so many different styles - so great! :)



LOVE the apron!

Minialbum w/photosession-photos of Amalie and Adrian :)

A lil nostalgia - me & my mom from the 80's....thought all that stuff kinda fit into the nostalgia-category :)

Yeah hum what can I say - kids will be kids eh? When they were done diggin the dirt they looked like little gypsies! (and I hope I'm not insulting anybody now :p)