Little Corner of Ania

Ooooooh yes it's soon about time to celebrate Pencillines very first anniversary. Imagine - Pencillines is soon one year old! Ha. It seems like it has always been around to me - but I guess that's mainly because I wasn't really interested in what happened "outside" of Norway when it comes to scrapping until - yeah well, maybe a year ago or so. I dunno? Heh.

Anyways! The real celebration doesn't start until tomorrow - so make sure you do drop in then to see whats up.......but until then...here's my take on sketch #52 (see? 52! That's 52 weeks with sketches! Which is a year! Me smart!)

I kinda killed two birds with a stone with this one - this is one of (hopefully) four layouts that I'll use as examples for my class this wednesday. Just one more layout to make for that class :) And ooh I'm sooo getting Tracie-vibes from this layout! I think it's all the spots and dots and the flower which is sooo inspired by her. I *love* Scenic Route but tbh I thought the totally white grid papers was a waste - I prefer the creamcolored backgroundspapers when I use them - but for this - painting and all - it's just too perfect! And I ♥ dabbers! yumyum! These are watermelon, cirtus and aqua...and a lil nick van bantock "preussian blue" ink (not very visible in this pic). Other stuff includes SR papers for the alphas and flower, Fancy Pants for the flower aswell and Maya Road chipboardalphas and MM buttons (CUUUUUTE!). HUGE thanks to sweet Emeline Ng for being our guest this week and providing such a great sketch!

Oh and tomorrow's also first of October which means that the Bad Girls DT will reveal their October-layouts. Am *so* excited to see what the other girls have done with the same kit!! :D

Anyways. Finally time to relax some - am staaaarting to catch up. Just starting :) HAVE to share this photo of lil Amalie --- soooo enjoying her sweet lil pressie from Tracie :D A miniscrapbooking-kit :D Awwww thanks a lot Tracie *hugs*!! I think she's oogling the dinostickers Adrian got too, she went totally wild with all the stickers in that kit :D (mommymoment: I'm *so* impressed that she put all the round stickers in a circle then the little star and moonstickers *upon* the round stickers. Such a good & systematic girl!)

PS. Know my cursing about ISO? Well. *drool* Any chance for a D3 this Christmas? Then it might not matter if I forgot to turn it down or not kinda....:p Check out these ISO1600-25600 (*faint*) samples...

Det er seriøst masse som skjer nå i Oktober -- Pencillines fyller ett år og kommer til å feire det med skikkelig masse gøy nesten hver dag i Oktober - you don't wanna miss it! Denne LO'en er laget etter skisse #52 - og nummer 52 betyr jo at det har vært en skisse hver uke i et helt år nå ikke sant? :D

Denne uken skal jeg ha kurs på onsdag - vi kommer bl.a. til å bruke denne LO'en her som utgangspunkt da. Og til helgen er det jo Papirfest i Stavanger -- åååh jeg vet ikke helt om jeg gleder eller gruer meg mest....:p Eneste jeg vet er at jeg er helt *drool* etter kurskitet mitt ;D Yum! Seriøst yum! :D

Ellers skal jeg til Ålesund i oktober og - skal ha workshop en hel helg..så det er jo liksom, to hele helger jeg er vekke fra ungene i oktober...(jippi? :p). Ohwell :) Jeg fortjener det. Så detså. Siden gubben var i London på guttetur denne helgen. Så jeg fortjener begge de to helgene i oktober off PLUSS en masse vin og seffers en gave eller to i tillegg når han kommer hjem ikveld ;p

Ohwell. Off for å scrappe litt til tror jeg :)

Am alone with the kiddos this weekend. And have a sleepover - lil nephew decided it was about time to visit us. And I'm like, all work and no play. Atm they're all being good - watching cartoon on the tv.... hope the peace will last some more - had a whiny Amalie earlier today. Still....I've managed to do four layouts since yesterday - and am about to do a minialbum atm unless I change my mind. And I'd love to try get at least one challenge done for the HSS Pink Crop which is taking place this weekend (it's not too late to sign up -- there will be Cricuts to the winners and stuff).

Anyways. Waiting for some ink to dry.....

Sharing peeks - this is the Bad Girl kit...seriously LOVED working with these layouts...everything just clicked....I think two of the layouts are a bit "not me" - but I love them still - one of them is my fave ever I think! Can't wait till I can show them to you all :D And seriously?? *totally in love with the prima journalingspots* !!!! *swoooooon* Dang! Lovelovelove them!

As soon as I wrap this kit up I really need to get my classes examples done aswell - am half/half done with them - one for this upcoming weds and one for Papirfesten this weekend. AND Pencillines bdaybash is starting this monday - it'll be such an exciting month in store for those of you who decide to play along......or just have a look....both is just fine :D

OH have you seen!!! I posted my class in this weeks Bad Girls Academy ...go have a look! :D

Haha. Seriously. Haha.
Went pumpkinhunting with Eli today. We kinda heard rumors there were pumpkins to be found at some school a little outside Bergen, and like the avid & dedicated scrappers we are we decided that'd be a great opportunity for our kids (& our scrapbooking).

Lessons learned today:

• Make sure you drive to the right meetingplace. Several frentic phonecalls & 25 (?) minutes later I had to admit defeat and ask Eli (& her hubby) to fetch me so I could follow them.
• Pumpkins don't really grow in Bergen.
• Those who tries are like, tiiiiny teeeny weeny small.
• Bring our own backup-pumpkins bought from the stores next year so we can take some fabby pumpkinphotos still.

Ahwell. A photo from today (of one of those smallsmall pumpkins), some more from yesterdays photosession (still got half left to proof) and uhm. That's it :p

Off to work some more - 1 LO down 3 to go! This yummy & ultracool Bad Girl kit doesn't make itself alone ;)

Aaaaaaahh!!!
I kinda DID have a zillion other stuff I was supposed to do - things with deadlines tomorrow and this weekend and all....BUT...I couldn't say no when some newlywed friends of mine asked if we could do the photosession we've been trying to fit into our schedules since like, july or so - but never got around to until now! Sooooooo instead of doing the zillion other stuff I was supposed to I'm now proofing photos and stuff for them...ha!

Lessons from todays session:

Working on some layouts for Papirfesten - just had to show you these photos of my mischievous little cutiepie ;)

Yesterday morning she woke me up with her hands full of soap..... tealygreenish soap. Wtf? We don't have any soap of that color I thought. Turned out that she woke up early, went up to my scrappingtable, "played" some with my Nick van Bantock "prussian blue" stamppad which was within range and figured out she needed to wash her hands - so she went down, poured lots of soap onto her hands and then she wasn't able to open the waterbatterythingie so she woke me up for some help. Riiight! She was pretty proud of herself too! (cue Simen: "Ahh so that's what it takes to force you to get up so fast at this hour - a chance for some photos!")

The latter is just a photo I took the other day - think it turned out great - the pouted mouth is just her saying "woof woof" - she loves pretending she's a lil doggie these days :)

Ahwell - back to scrapping - am multitasking - working on two layouts at the same time ;p


Ps! The sneakpeeks at Bad Girls for the Octoberkit have begun -- check it out! The Product of the Month will be available soon and rumor says that the tape shown will also be available in the store so you can order these from there regardless of wheter you have a subscription or not!

Psps! HOORAY for Papirloftet!!! "Newcomer of the year" when it comes to netstores in Norway! Wow! How incredible cool is that - a scrapbookstore being the winner of that?? Yeah! Apparently they've been secretly tested on several criterias ever since April - and deemed the best! Yay!

Amalie vekka meg igår morges med "hjelpe meg" - uhm - eeh?? Hendene hun strakte frem var helt blågrønne og klissete.....ook! Det viste seg at hun hadde sneket seg opp på scrappebordet og lekt med min "preussian blue" stempelpute og deretter bestemt seg for at hun måtte vaske hendene. Såpe greier hun helt fint å ta, men å slå på vannet på badet er det litt verre med - og det var her hun fant ut det var nyttig å informere mamma'n sin om krumspringet hennes. Tsktsk. Hun var stolt og i godt humør da, så jeg måtte seffers ta noen bilder ;) Lille søte jenta mi! ♥

(Simens kommentar? "Så det er dette som skal til for å få deg opp med en gang om morgenen, ja.." - jeg må vekkes både en og to og tre ganger før jeg motvillig står opp ;p)

Ps. Hurra for Papirloftet!! Vinneren av "Årets nykommer" i Postens nettbutikkåring! Noe så utrolig bra - og masse kul reklame! Sjekk feks her, her eller her - pluss div. radio og tv-intervjuer. Yay! De har blitt testet i all hemmelighet siden april på flere kriterier - bl.a. over 80 kriterier bare på forbrukervennlighet - og skåret jevnt over veldig høyt.

Once again I was at the hospital - but this time to sign up as a bloodgiver. Something I had wanted to do for a very long time - but wasn't able to until quite recently thanks to the changes in the laws regarding giving blood. You see - people who aren't born in Norway (or maybe it's Western Europe) wasn't allowed to give blood at all - even though you're adopted living pretty much all your life in Norway (bar the seven first months)...like me. Even Norwegians married to foreginers or adopteds weren't allowed to give blood. Anyways. That changed some months ago - and today I finally got around to drop by the Blood Bank to have my interview & samples taken. If everything is well - personally I think the only concern might be possible low iron deposit in the blood (right word?) - I may be allowed to give blood when my surgeries are done - sometime next year. Yay!

And you know - they're totally pampering those who gives blood! Seriously big difference - there's chocolate on the tables, various cookies, even Danish were served while I was there. There's an own refrigator with various soda & juices - free for all ofcourse. The absence of tabloids were quite noticeable too - I mean - in the other waitingrooms in the hospital the only things you can read are pretty much tabloids - glossy gossip mags, the hospitals own magazine and the occasional newspaper that someone's forgotten. Not so much at this waiting-room - there were only newspapers in this room - different ones - all new. Kinda like to say - "our patients are updated & educated people who doesn't read trashmags". They even use different needles when taking your blood - needles that are kinder to your skin kinda - even if it's just for some quick bloodsamples as I did today. Mmm...I so hope I'll be able to give blood =) Besides - you get cool gifts when you give blood - it's not allowed to pay for blood in Norway...but the gifts are really of the useful & nice kind imo :)

I've always been fascinated by syringes and needles ever since I was little (yes yes Eli... that layout is coming....sometime....:p)..always the first to volunteer for vaccines and stuff at school....loved having bloodsamples taken....I guess if I wasn't such a nice girl I might as well be lost in drugs and stuff because of my fascination with them ;p

No new layouts that I can share yet - so I'll show you my HSS-september-layouts in the meantime - the first one showing Amalie who amazingly enough fell asleep while eating a chocolatecake (WOW!)..the second one showing Adrian - he discovered that he could make hearts with his fingers and thought that was so cool - and wanted me to take photos of him :)

Yay! Var innom blodbanken idag - har tenkt på å bli blodgiver lenge, men ikke kunnet melde meg frivillig pga de strenge reglene - bl.a. kunne ikke folk som var født i utlandet gi blod - og heller ikke nordmenn gift med disse - selv om det gjelder adopterte som har bodd i Norge i hele sitt liv - sånn som meg. Disse reglene ble myket opp for noen måneder siden, og idag ble jeg kalt inn til intervju og prøvetaking. Intervjuet gikk fint så det gjenstår bare å se om blodet mitt er godkjent nok - selv tror jeg mine muligens noe lave jernlagre kan sabortere min "karriere" som blodgiver - men da har jeg iallefall prøvd ikke sant? Vet ikke helt om jeg har lave jernlagre da, eller om det bare var et graviditetsproblem - men legen sa de ville finne ut av det i så tilfelle så.

Men! De som gir blod blir jo helt skjemt bort jo! Klart sykehuset er takknemlige for de som faktisk tar seg bryderiet med å gi blod (og å spise godt er jo viktig før man gir blod), men gosj ...vet ikke helt hva jeg forventa da men... det var konfektsjokolade på bordene, tre-fire forskjellige kjekstyper, gratis brus og juice i tillegg til kaffe og te og vann - og mens jeg var der så serverte de to-tre forskjellige typer wienerkaker og...
Yay. Hm. Kanskje det har noe med blodsukkeret å gjøre og når man gir blod? Dunno - men det var en kjekk opplevelse da :) Og så var bordene fulle av forskjellige aviser - liksom - det vanlige når man er på venterom er jo at det er forskjellige ukeblader og "Se og Hør" og "Nå" og sånn tilgjengelig - men nope - ikke her. Kun aviser var det gitt. Litt sånn "vi vet at de som gir blod ikke leser sånt"-inntrykk ellerno :p Selv utstyret som ble brukt til å tappe blod med var anerledes - med slange mellom nålen i huden og greia der man stikker reagensrørene inn i - for at det ikke skulle være ubehagelig for de som ga blod. Kjekt :) Håper de godkjenner blodet mitt da - alt står på blodprøvene nå liksom nå som intervjudelen var iorden :)

Amalie is featured in Pencillines TWICE this week! *snicker*
Tracie kinda needed a little girl and I didn't mind borrowing her Amalie at all - how can I not when you see what wonders she does with your photos..?? Head over to Pencillines to check out her layout of Amalie......it's seriously so so so cool! Yeah, she kinda got the best papers (she and Nathalie both - I need those papers!! Love the colors) imo but there's no denying how fab she is working with whatever papers it is...swoon!

The sketch is made by Kimmy from the Pencillines DT and our guest this week was Nathalie Kalbach - also known as Kalbach on SIStv. And thanks to Kimmy we got a cool sponsorship from Frances Meyer - I got the Egypt travel kit, and while I wasn't too wild about the these papers in the beginning (too subdued for me I thought) it did grow on me and I just love how this one turned out as I worked with the kit - perfect papers to create this kind of mood in a layout - mellow and soft and careful. Sorta :D

And! I've been kinda bummed that it's so hard to write nicely on paint - (normally I love to use the white Zigns baby biggies for subtle painting - I think I'm addicted, but if Im gonna write upon the paint I have to use the bigger posterman biggie30s) but! I just found out that dabbers are fab to use even if you're gonna journal upon the paint! Yay - big plus in my book..and I love the cool effects that you can get using them on stuff....like on this layout - I painted the chipboard-circle with Hazelnut and then dabbed Aqua around the edge. Kinda gives a very cool look - me like!)

Hihi - denne uken "trengte" Tracie en liten jente til papirene hun skulle bruke - vi ble sponset og fikk hver vår forskjellige papirkit fra Travel-serien til Frances Meyers.... og siden hun allerede hadde noen bilder av Amalie hos seg pga et annet prosjekt hun også trengte en jente til (minibok! som skal publiseres i en eller annen engelsk scrappeblad! :D) så lånte hun likegjerne et av bildene igjen til denne LO'en - sjekk den ut - dritflott og utrolig stilig!! Hun er bare så flink!

Personlig var jeg først ikke helt begeistret for papirene jeg fikk - fargene var litt for kjedelige og duse synes jeg - men etterhvert som jeg jobbet med de for denne skissen så må jeg innrømme resultatet ikke ble så verst da - arkene var ganske fine til å få frem denne typen atmosfære i en LO - litt sånn mellow og var stemning på en måte. Nice! Og så er jeg superglad for dabberne mine da! Har hatt noen en stund men ikke brukt de så mye - men nå har jeg virkelig "oppdaget" hvor supre de er! Har hatt litt trøbbel med at det er så kjipt og vanskelig å skrive på tørket maling - det er nemlig ikke alltid like lett - feks med favorittmalingen min - den hvite baby-biggien - så er det helt håpløst å skrive noe på den malingen - da har jeg funnet ut at posterman-malingen er mye bedre når jeg først skal bruke den typen maling liksom.mm men posterman'en er mye tynnere og "våtere" enn babybiggien så jeg bruker helst babybiggien med mindre jeg skal skrive noe liksom....anyways..sporer av her gitt....dabberne....de er supre til å skrive på jo!! Ok, har bare prøvd denne ene - hazelnut - men det var ikke noe problem å skrive på den i det hele tatt!! YAY! Og så digger jeg effekten det gir å bruke dabberne på kanten av chipboarden sånn som her....neat.

Todays soundtrack: "It's only pain" - Katie Melua

Simple joys
Asking Amalie; "Amalie, do you love mommy?" "YES!" "Do you love daddy?" "YES!" "Do you love Adrian?" "YES!". Bless.

Did this layout for Happy Scrappin' Scrapbookin' for august. LOVE American Crafts and their papers - the graphic, bold style. Just haven't been able to really use them for scrapping until now. Sorta perfect for her tshirt donchathink?

Speaking of HSS - next weekend is the Crop for a Cure thingie - you know - support the cure breastcancerstuff - and there will be a cybercrop at HSS. Lots of fun activities and the chance of winning cricuts and stuff. Seriously. Yay!

Looking forward to tomorrows Pencillines - it's sponsored and I had a blast doing this layout. Turned out nice too, promise! :p And oh, October is SO fast approaching!! There'll be a huge birthdaybash and all at Pencillines - just so you know! ;)

Soon being October also means that there's soon time to do stuff with Bad Girls once again -- am so looking forward for my Octoberkit which should be here sometime next week - oooh all the goodies crammed in that kit....!! Can't wait to get my greedy lil hands on them and playplayplay! Oh! And it's my turn to be a teacher at the Top Design Academy this friday...the contest has been so fun to watch! Soooo make sure you tune in on friday when I'll post my class because...eh..it's MY class...yeah.. thats why! =) No, I'm not gonna give out any hints at all. No!

Speaking of kits - there's also a classkit for my Papirfestclass that needs to be wrapped up - I'm just waiting for one last item to arrive - got a good idea of the techniques I'm gonna show - it's gonna be fun! :D Just hope someone will come to my class at all....*blush*

Oh, remember the last post about frames and stuff? I've got a norwegian step-by-step thingie about the same up at Minneriket here. :)

Todays soundtrack: "Cool" - Gwen Stefani

Yay! I've been a good girl now - made a quick minialbum for my grandma yesterday. Mom's kinda been buggin me to write grandma a letter, and although I love her dearly and all (I really do!!) I'm such a procrastinator....*cough* sooooo I finally got that done yesterday and since I was taking my time finally doing that I thought I'd add a minialbum. Oh, and I got a zutter bind-it-all and had to test it ;)

Anyways - simple setup - paper - photo - journaling - laminating - zuttering :p

I got a question the other day -- how to make or find the borders & frames for the photos I'm showing here?

1. Frames can be found around on the net - Cecilie have made some really cool ones which can be bought here at Papirloftet for 20NOK (about 4$). I also love the ones Rhonna have made for 2peas - they can be found here - 4$.

Tip: Frames can be used in two diff ways (that I know of anyways :p):

As a normal frame over the photo:
And by filling the inside of the frame w/black and then use it as a clipping mask (2 layers, crtl+alt+g, see below):
Both photos are using the same frame: Grungy photo frame 7 by Cecilie.

Tip: if the sizes for the photo / frames are way off: use the transformtool (crtl-t) and resize the bigger photo so it'll fit the other. Remember to push in shift while resizing - it'll allow you to keep the proportions of the photo.

2. There's free frames on the net; check out this one by Jessica Sprague - read the article aswell, it will tell you how to use a clipping mask. No point for me to repeat what she's saying/showing ;)
This photo is using the same free file that she's providing on her site.

3. You can make your own; it's quite easy if you have the time&patience - there's loads of cool grunge brushes out there thatyou can use....

4. The one I did for this photo I just made myself by using the rectangular marqee tool and stroke: simply expand your photo (image->canvas size -> add a few more cm to both sides kinda) so that you get air around your photo, chose rectangular marqee tool and draw around your photo at a distance (I hold my shift key in while doing this - i *think* it's supposed to mean that the rectangular automatically will align itself to the middle or something like that - I *dont* know....I just recall something about shift and shrug it doesnt hurt holding it in uh :p feel free to enlighten me :p), pick stroke (edit->stroke) and the pixels you think are ok - somewhere between 1-3 depending on photosize is normally fine to me). Tada. Oh. I wrote "draw", placed it where I wanted it and removed the lines with an eraser. Easy & pretty :)

There ya go :)

Ok, fikk en forespørsel om frames og borders og sånn; her har jeg forklart litt om hvordan man kan bruke de på forskjellige måter og hvor man kan få tak i de forskjellige rammene. De fleste må man betale for - men det er ikke dyrt - rundt 20-25kr - ellers kan man søke nettet seff :)

Sistnevnte lagde jeg selv i photoshop - ganske lett - med marquee tool + strokes.
Ha en god helg! :)

*giggle* alright, I'm exaggerating now, but I thought that title was perfect for the "My friends" CJ that's going on at Minneriket atm. We were all supposed to make a 5x7" page about ourselves and our scrapping and stuff - and I'm so excited! Granted, it wasn't thaaaaat fun to make 30ish pages of myself (all pretty much the same) -- but I'm so looking forward to get the others in return! I've already started to recieve some pages from friends who didn't participate in the swap but who agreed to mail me a page of them still - and they're FAB! Love getting a lil bit of other scrappers kinda... :) :)

Anyways - had no doubt that I NEEDED to use BG's recess-paper for the cover....so perfect for that cool, grungeish look that I recall from high school...kinda :) Made the album myself of We R Memories refillpages & 7gypsies rings....the covers are made of the hard cardstock that followed the refillpages ;)

Just had to share!
Am having a horrid headache (I normally don't have headaches soooo :( ) so I think I'll lie down a bit or somethin like that...bleh!

Måtte bare dele med dere - er med på en venneswap på Minneriket der deltakerne lager 5x7" sider om seg selv - og deler med andre. Litt sånn som "mine venner" greiene man hadde på barneskolen....kult :D Har ikke fått sidene enda - ikke fra de som meldte seg på den swappen på riket - men har fått noen sider sånn utenom av scrappevenner som ikke var med på den offisielle lista liksom -- helt digg!!! Så kult å få ha "en del" av andres stil.....yay! Måtte seff lage et minialbum til å ha alle sidene på - så ble så inspirert at jeg bare måtte lage en idag :) Sånn ser min ut - laget av hard papp (som lå i refillpakkene faktisk...praktisk! ;) ), plastrefillsider og ringer fra 7gypsies :)

Sometimes it's too easy being caught up with all the recent pretty photos - so once in a while I force myself to revisit old photofolders to see if there's any I've forgotten to scrap. Stumbled across a series of photos of Amalie drawing on the floor from june - LOVE this one. The angle, the closeness, her actually focusing on something long enough for me to get a sharpish photo of her face in the bad lighting...the fact that she loves drawing (say, which kid doesnt?)...mm.... prepared and printed some photos for future projects, but felt like showing this one. I like the font too - Micahels - cool one. *makes mental note to use it in future journaling*

Speaking about Amalie..right now she's yelling for Adrian to come help her.."ADIAN!"...dang...she sure can yell... (until recently it's been "AIAN" so I guess "ADIAN" is an improvement). Actually. Both of my kids sure knows how to use their lungs. Nuff bout that!


Playing catchup with photostuff
Wonder how the (Nikon) cameras are made? Check this one. I guess I sorta thought they were processed all-automatically or something like that. Cool! (feel free to skip to page 2 for the interesting part. Can you say....photogeekp0rn?) BTW. Yes. I want D300 or Christmas. Pretty pleaseeeee. (Liveview? It was weird not having that when I first got my SLR, now it's back..wonder how I would feel about that..) Also excited to know the price for the new 14-24mm and 24-70mm, although I suspect it'll be a taaaad outta my leauge (edit: 1800-1900$ Hm.). Still. One can hope uh. Right. Dream on! (ps. DX vs non DX? Forgot the diff - something about the sensor/actual size of the photo...remind me anyone?) Anyways. A quick review & comparison on D300 vs D200/canon 40d can be found here.

Layer tennis
LOL! I'll be watching this game for sure!


Hum nice. First one's up in a week - I'll be checkin in just to see what the fuss is about. The concept behind it sounds pretty cool to me nevertheless :)

More flashstuff
How to utilize the flash properly - kinda illustrating with photos and all. (hey, the raccooneyes are frequent visitors to my photos too!)

Histograms once again.
Hey. They're suggesting an interesting experiment though. I need to do that - I'm guilty of checking the preview after pretty much every shot.

And hm. That's all I had time for today - WOW-raid coming up!

This weeks Pencillines-sketch is up - a fabulous artist from Australia guestdesigned this week; Sara van Wijck. She's also getting ready to launch her new stamp-line, so the favoruitelayout from this sketch will get a chance to win some stampinggoodies! The sketch is yummy - so there's no excuse to not do this one ;) (I mean - chance on winning some stampingstuff plus the monthly chance of winning which this month are some SIS-TVgoodies...).

Personally I made this layout twice - wasn't satisfied with the first one so last week I decided to have another go at it and used an oooold photo of myself - I was surprised to see that this photo actually is from 1984. I guess I was four or five by then - we had a cottage high up in the mountains where there were no electricity nor running water - ahh the lovely summers spent there... to get water we had to walk like 3 or 4 minutes across a small hill (to me who was little it seemed like a HUGE hill...I dunno, maybe it wasnt..we sold the cottage when I was around 11 or so)...and there were usually sheep and goats around...the sheep were shy, while the goats were playful and curious. I miss that cottage - although I guess the grownup version of me would freak out of the amount of bugs and flies and stuff around ;p

I've used bazzill, prism (for the journaling) & basic grey papers - along with some prima flowers, printed twill I had here and some Heidi Swapp ghostclocks which I thought kinda fit.

Am not quite feeling well atm so I guess I'll quit writing for now. Had a surgery a week ago and was all fine & dandy until this weekend - suddenly all the missing pains and ouchies kinda hit me. So playing with my classkit for Papirfesten will have to wait until tomorrow I guess. Bleh. It's delicious!

I promised some time ago to share my photoborder but kept forgetting to; here you can download it. At least I think it should work..? It's zipped and the photo itself is in .psd - so hm, useable with photoshop I guess. All you need to do is to add photos (in their own layers ofc) & remember to keep the borderlayer in the topmost position kinda. And if needed, just use Ctrl-T and shiftkey to resize it to your own preference :) Any questions do let me know :) (and for the layout I used with this photoborder - look at this post)

Now, I made this outta two or three diff. photoborders made by Andrea Rascaglia, so all credit should go to her :)

Have a nice weekend! :)

A layout I did last night just because - one of the future sponsored kits for Pencillines are Frances Meyers (I can tell such stuff can I? Hmm....or maybe not? Ohwell..let me know :P) and I got this pretty, lovely kit...I think it's one of their new kitpapers..you get both pp + chipboards in one such kit....and after I was done with the PL-layout I just had to continue use the papers :D So. Wanted to join OLW (pure) & DW2007 (stitched hearts) so here it is; Pure delight :) My kiddo is so sweet - he's an absolute natural in front of the camera...if I want him to pose...he usually do...and he makes both sweet & silly faces....and whenever he senses me just wanting to take photos of whatever he's currently doing...he lets me without noticing me at all... he's totally a scrapbookers dream! :)

I handcut the title...boy it's been a LONG time since I did so! This kinda proves that 1. I don't really need any diecutmachine since I don't use cs-titles that much 2. I don't need one at all since when I want to I can cut them myself! :p (but hey, I won't say no if somebody decides to just throw one after me! :p)

And! My newest obsession - ranger dabbers!! Lovelovelove the paintdabbers. Yay. Works wonderful with chipboard. Love! And look..I used striped pp! Wow. :p (I love to shop striped pp but I too rarely get around to actually use them :p)

And...a tag from Heidi..almost forgot this one until I saw Sue's post :)

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Hekate Toyota (uhoh. Nice name. not.)

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)
Oreo Cookies Bixit (Ok I know Oreo Cookies is a cookie but it's also my fave flav from Haagen Daaz...and I had to pick Bixit cause I don't really know my fave cookie but I like to use it for my cheesecakes :p)

3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)
Alex (lol..)

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)
Aqua Kitten (alright..I don't really have a fave color as I know of..I think..but I'm in love with the aqua color from Ranger dabbers atm soo ;) )

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Cecilie Naomi Seoul

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Lexan (Uhoh. Hey that's my bil's charactername in Wow :p)

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink put "The")
Purple the Magarita (hm. right)

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Otto Alfred (That sounded pretty german eh :) )

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne, favorite candy)
Mania Lollipop (Armania Mania..mm.. love the new apple perfs from DKNY too - got both the red and green ones. Funky!)

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names )
Anne Lise (boring. my name is Anne too :p)

Have a wonderful weekend y'all! :)

All is well..
Soo yeah, I'm home & safe from the hospital and things went much better than I expected. No real pains so far - but I'm still eating those prescribed little pills regulary cause I don't really want to find out wheter I'm supposed to be in pains or not ;p

Got to read Digital Camera World while at the hosp - I think it's becoming my fave mag while reading at the hosp along with the stacked up mags of CKs that I save for these trips. I know people keep saying how CK has lost it's quality, but I still think & feel I got inspired by the summermags to scrap. That's good no? Anyways, some links to share from the photomag - their issue was mostly about B&W which was pretty interesting - and Virtual Photographer 2.0 won their "Editors choice" when it came to B&W actions for photoshop - it's an oldie but apparently a goldie, so here's the link for those who are new to this: Virtual Photographer 2.0. Other free B&W actions includes: B/W conversion and Cybia BW-Plus. Feel free to head over to their downloadsection on the web for more actions, frames, backgrounds etc. :)

I've scrapped since I came home - but can't show you stuff yet as they both were for future Pencillines-sketches - but hm I can show you some peeks can't I? Yeah. Think I'll do so ;) It's kinda boring doing posts withouts pictures of some kind imo :) And tbqh....I sorta think the detailshots are way prettier than the whole picture of the layouts...*blush*

And! Classinfo! Yay! :)
As for now I'll be teaching classes at Stavanger and Ålesund in October and Ål in November addition to some classes locally in Bergen. Contemplating to fit in Oslo too - but I don't really know - all the other cities are like, weekend/weeklong trips so I really dunno if I can do another weekendtrip away from the kids...but hm. We'll see. There will be beginners classes, advanced classes and workshops stretching over a whole weekend and even a whole week (Ål). Let me know if you're interested in more info :)

So long for now :)

Oppdatert kursinfo! :)

Stavanger 5.oktober-7.oktober: Under Papirfesten kommer jeg til å holde et eget kurs; "Detaljer med dimensjoner" lørdag klokken 11.00-12.30. I tillegg kommer Kerry Lynn og Ingunn sine kurs - også de på lørdagen - til å bli tilrettelagt for døve. I tillegg til kursene blir helgen full av masse morsomme scrappeaktiviteter & greier - gleder meg masse! Har akkurat satt sammen kurspakken min i samarbeid med Oddbjørg og Scrappejungelen og venter spent på den i posten - må jo forberede meg til dette kurset og ha noen eksempler å vise frem liksom ;) Kan definitivt love at dette blir litt av en digg kurspakke!! :D
Kontakt enten Papirfesten direkte her eller spør gjerne meg om mer info via email.

Nytt: Ålesund 26.-28. oktober: En hel helg med bare scrapping! Vi begynner med nybegynnerkurset på fredag hvor dere får vite alt dere trenger å vite om scrapbooking og prøve dere på noen layouter, før vi fortsetter med både minialbum- og teknikkurs på lørdagen og avslutter med free-for-all scrapping på søndagen der vi gjør ferdig eventuelle uferdige prosjekter. Kontakt enten Helle eller meg for mer info.

Ellers blir det scrappekurs igjen under Kunst og håndverksuken iår som ifjor på Ål folkehøyskole 19-23. november - der er det begrenset med plass så skynd dere med å kontakte Ål for påmelding og mer kursinfo. Det blir muligheter for både å scrappe og lage forskjellige gaveideer til jul :)

Og så har vi de lokale kursene her i Bergen; 19. september, 3. oktober og 17. oktober. Igjen: ta kontakt om dere ønsker å vite mer :)

Sånn - det var ukas reklamebit fra meg ;)

Well, it kinda feels like that to me - haven't blogged since weds :P
Been busy doing stuff - and also trying to wrap up the weddingphotoediting - which I finished about 2am sat night. Yay. Also got a little flashthingie setup for webpresentation for the family & their friends aswell - think I'll take some of the best photos & do an own separate presentation when I get around to it cause I'm like, sorta proud about the photos & wanna share even though I've got loads to learn. I also want to be more bold with the editing/colors of the photos, but I had the potential processing in mind and that's always tricky -- I mean - just because the colors/photos looks good on my screen doesn't necessarily mean it will at others screen/when theyre processed. Ohwell. As I said - got lots to learn.

Sharing some more random weddingphotos for now just because I want to :p

And! Sunday = PLday = new layout to share! This time we were sponsed by SIStv & Jeanette - got the fabby Candytown-kit :) Can't say I'm too satisfied with my own attempt on this sketch - I think I did two or three different versions before deciding to just go for this one -- so please just ignore this one and rather head over to the Pencillinesblog cause the other girls just totally blows your mind with their layouts from the same kit! Seriously! Anyways - this is the 'I "heart" candytown' collection from SIStv & I did some glossy accent on the embellishments which ofcourse doesn't really show here in the scan.

Also sharing the layout I did for the Casino contest at Minneriket - yay - the contests at Minneriket just totally rocks :) And I love this layout because it reminds me of the wonderful times we had during our recent vacation - here's the breakfasts we had in Wien.

Btw. Did you see the Bad Girls Design Academy? The contest is on now -- first class was by Ms. Rago herself and was about Color Theory. And there's already a lot of great homeworks already delivered in the gallery! Wohoo! :D

Anyways. Stay safe & behave - tomorrow I'm off to the hospital once again for another surgery -- this time I'll be gone for one day only - so I'll be home again on tuesday. See yas :)

BTW. Did you know that Happy Scrappin Scrapbooking are hosting a fabulous Scrap Pink Crop Sept 28th -30th? If you sign up by donating to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Foundation through their site you can win one of these prizes:

1st Prize Cricut Expression Machine
2nd Prize Cricut Machine
3rd Prize Cuttlebug Machine & many other prizes!

Yay! See ya there..? :)

Oh yes. It's that time of the year again.
The day where I magically become one year older and none the wiser. Or something like that. Something inside of me tells me I should start panicking now if I haven't already. Yey.

Over to lighter things. I got Carnivale season 1 on DVD from my hubby. A little past midnight he asked if I wanted my pressie and I told him sure why not. I think he's proud of having figured out this pressie all by himself - tbh I thought he'd pull out the "let's do our annual Shopping Day where I'll go with you to stores & promise to tell you my honest opinion and won't complain while you use my creditcard for a whole day" pressie again hehe. I love it - I think he's cute no matter what he do :) And mother in law dropped by to give me some beautiful flowers & to let me know she'd give us another night out complete w/babysitting & paying for our dinner/movie. Cool! And we're soon heading out to eat dessert haha....we've been talking about doing that for a while...go out and just have dessert...cause when we once in a while actually take the time (&money) to go out and eat we rarely get to really enjoy the dessert because we're so stuffed by then. So. Today we've had a light dinner here at home and are going to order oreo-cake. Yay! :D


Edit: Okay. In the middle of this post. Doorbell. Flowerdude with another flower to me. Dang I really am becoming old - I usually don't get flowers for my bday. When I open the card attached I see that it's from my hubby. Lol. Aww. He bought the flowers and wrote the cards at the flowerstore and made them deliver it to me. Haha. Ok. He's cute. :p

Ohwell. Off to eat cake! Attaching my 2 last layouts for the grandjackthingie. See yas :)

Oops! Forgot to share this layout of Amalie - Pencillines sketch #48 with Judi VanValkinburgh aboard. I love how it turned out!! And I love this photo of Amalie -- we were taking our morningtrip down to the kindergarten and it was such a nice day that I decided to bring the cam along.... so here I am walking with Amalies hand in one hand and the cam in the other - hence the slightly funny angle.. :p Ps. The girls at Minneriket are lifting this layout. How fun :D

Not much happening here atm - still editing weddingphotos (halfway into the makeup-session now!) - and the reason I'm so slow is that I load one photo, multitask with a zillion other stuff, go back to the loaded photo, edit it, loads the jpg to CS3, multitasks once again browsing whatever then 5 mins later I recall the photo and checks CS3, adjust curves some then saves the photo...then loads another one and goes off wandering for 10 minutes before remembering that oy, I'm actually editing photos & swap back to the CS3window........ :p

I'm also in the progress of making my friends CJ - alright -- next time I'm thinking about entering something that requires me to make 30+ similar 5x7" pages (it's so SMALL!) - please beat my head with a huge bat! It'll be fun getting pages from friends Ive learned to know through the Norwegian forum Minneriket - but still -- I feel like in a creative downside when it comes to creating this one -- I'm making the most boring, most noobish pages. I'm really sorry but I am. *sigh* I know - I could just make a page then make all the others just like that one -- it was the plan too - just that I haven't found the right template yet so I keep grumbling and acking over my stupid pages. So now you know - don't expect much from me for this one - but hey - it's the personal messages of the pages that's most important or..?

Anyways.
Wandering around, browsing the net....here's some cool links.

• Nikon's cooperating with Flickr! It'll be interesting to see what will become of this site.. looks cool!
• Haha, check out Dolce & Gabbanas new campaign. It's apparently being accused to objectify men. Gawd. How unusual.
• Been curious to learn who this Bill Hicks dude is - some friends keep quoting him over and over (waffle waitress anyone?). I think I like this guy :p The Letterman-incident was intriguing. Need to learn more about this guy :p (I'm no smoker - not anymore anyways - but I loved this quote among others: I smoke. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your fuckin' mouth)
• Nice overview of what the diff. blendingmodes in PS actually do (in Norwegian). I've kinda known by practice but not really really known. Nice to have it written down :p
  

Oh! Just saw that my balance LO was among the faves on OLW. Cool! :)

Ahh I had a lovely evening out with my hubby last night -- one of his bdaypresents from his mom was her babysitting the kids and paying for a night out. We went to Louisiana, a creole restaurant downtown - yummy yummy lovely food & even yummier dessert! Then we went to see a movie -- unfortunately Stardust isn't out yet here in Norway (can you tell I'm so looking forward to that movie!), so we were quite on undecided what to see - but ended up with Knocked Up. Haha. Funny lil movie - quite predictable, but yet a little gem with all those characters and stuff (check out the E! lady and the E! boss - hilarious..and the E! editor..). And Katherine Heigl is just oh so adorable - loved her since her days in Roswell :) (and Paul Rudd is totally totally yummy..ever since his clueless days :p)

Anyways. Thought I'd show you my Bad Girls Septemberlayouts - and do have a look at the others layouts too...there's some amazing work done by the Bad Girls DT there..esp love how Tracie shows that this kit is indeed just fine for boy-layouts aswell.

And.
There's a number of very very cool things that has happened sb-related to people around me lately, so I thought I'd gather them all and make a lil list and give each of them a lil shoutout just because they deserve so and because I'm *so* happy for them;

1. Iris Babao Uy - my fellow Bad Girl actually made one of the MMM 2008! (aka the inhouse-team for Memory Makers) - how totally fantastic & amazing!

2. Tracie - another fellow Bad Girl and a Pencilliner aswell - this foxy lady made the Piggy Tales DT along with another Bad Girl - Celia - who's recurring for her second year with them. So cool! Tracie - I know you'll totally rock these papers - they do seem to be you!

3. Anam aka Kihaku - from Pencillines also -- she recently won a huge contest called Lucky7 at scrapbook.com with a totally gorgeous transparent layout...way to go and wow what a prize!

4. Linda!! Aka Calle! Aka the lady behind the newly made clearstamps from Cali Designs. In my last blogpost I mentioned this cool mail I got that totally surprised and blew me away -- yeap -- that was from Linda, who's been so nice and mailed me (and a few others :D) two of her own stampdesigns. So cute! So rock! Have a look at her designs which are sold at Papirloftet. So totally cool. Huge congrats and huge thank you for the nice mail :)

5. Papirloftet! One of three finalists to Postens (the mailoffice in Norway - they've got monopoly on all the mail/shippingstuff...for now...:p) Newcomer Online Business Award 2006-2007. That's so freaking awesome!! A scrapbookstore which actually gets nominated *and* manages to enter the finale..? Wow. It would be fantastic if they won, they truly have deserved it, but still - so fun just to get to the finale! Way to go!

Don't forget the BIG Bad Girl Design School contest!! 800$ worth of stash to the winner, and prizes to three runnerups aswell! Head over to the message board to learn more!

Oh. And it's Sept already. Dang where the heck did the days go!? Soon time for me to grow old again......yeah..it's that time of the year...eek..