Little Corner of Ania

Woah!

There's been 100 Pencil-Lines-sketches. Now that's a great excuse to celebrate a little extra dontcha think? :) And this time around I am so happy to see Pencil-Lines bring back several of the past Pencil-Lines-members to give out buttloads of inspiration...

This sketch was made by this weeks guest Kelli Crowe.
And when I saw it, I immediately thought of this 3ndypapir-paper from this years spring-collection, made by the always lovely and incredibly talented Gudrun. The basepaper matched the sketch perfectly, but made me feel a bit lazy as well, the sketch was in the patterns of the paper already, so I added a few details to the layout to make it seem like I did some effort on this layout too haha. And uh, I know. "Where's the picture??" *cough* Love me some artsyness *smile* =)

First I cut out this awesome border from a Creative Imagination-paper and stitched it to Gudruns somewhat cut-down paper.



Added some rubons to the paper- from Hambly Screenprints and Jenni Bowlin.
The I cut out some circles with my craft knife and deco scissors, inked it and stitched it to some of the circles. Love the dimension & depth it gave, esp with the rubons underneath and the Heidi Swapp bling-circles added!


I simply lovelovelove this datestamp. Don't know why I didn't get one sooner! It's small and cute and eh, cute!! Oh, and informatical, unless you accidently stamp the wrong date all over the paper like I did the first time I used it on a layout..*cough*

Supply-list: Gudruns Spring 08 paper, Creative Imaginations cs, white paper, Cats Eye creamy brown ink, Heidi Swapp blingcircles, American Crafts thickers, rubons and chipboards, Hambly Screenprints & Jenni Bowlin rubons, generic datestamp.

Now come join us for this sketch #100!! :D

Oh, and tonights the reveal-night at Bad Girls Kits -for the Sept. kit. YAY!

On a more personal sidenote. It's no secret that MetroDad is one of my blog-heroes. Or parent-hero. And this post of his had me thinking. My oldest one is a gentle one. Oh yes, he can be quite wild in the middle of the play, but it's always with a gentle and playful touch. There is no harm in him at all (I know - that's what parents say - but with him it's true). Once there's quarreling, either physical or oral he backs out. He gets confused and sad. Always had, ever since he was a toddler in kindergarten. And even if it's his own four year younger sister doing the mischief. He's a ...uh, what MD says. I've always told him to use words, that violence does not solve any problems, and never hit back. But now that I read MD's opinions...well.... I might reconsider my own stance?? I don't know. I have no doubt that it would work with the little pixie we got, but with him? Maybe I need to send him off to some kind of fighting practice before advising him to take that stance :p Luckily it's not a big problem as he's quite popular and have friends and stuff-- but you never know - better make him prepared if things get rougher?

What do you think? Is it wrong? Or does it make sense? I think it might work for smaller kids...bigger ones? Naa not so much, prob too late & the consequenses would be too fatal...? Better him gettin his ass kicked fightin than running tho if it would boil down to that? Hm. Ohwell.

So I wasn't planning on showing peeks this time as well, the reveal is in only two days...but the Bad Girl Natives are getting restless so I guess I better give them what they want...??? *smirk* Love the funkiness of this kit!!!

Oh, and if you haven't seen it yet -- The Bad Girls Top Designer 2008 contest is kicking off Sept 8th -- with signups starting NOW.


Take care -- see ya at Sunday - where Pencil-Lines will launch their sketch #100 :D

I am serious. I have no idea how I ended up here.
I am (too) used to rejections. I am used to way lousy "successratios" when trying out for things. And that's completely fine, it's a part of the game, and maybe even the fun too? But all of a sudden. Things starts to improve? o.O Unreal.

That being said, I am like o.O about this. Fancy Pants Designs. Hello?!? Totally love their designs and I've been stalking them ever since their first hint about a DT-call leaked on their blog in May - been impatiently waiting for it since. So. No. I could not resist the temptation to apply. Figured it most likely wouldn't go through at all and then I could have said I tried instead of regretting not having tried..... *cough*

So very pleased to see Jolene on the team too!!!! She is what I would picture like, the Ultimate Fancy Pants lol- her style goes so very well with them! And Staci!! How very fun haha :D It's like starting in a new class at a new school - it's good to "know" someone already to hold on to haha :) I am crossing my fingers that we'll see some more of my friends as runner-ups....you know who you are..

Ahwell.....Scrappedugnad :)


Scrappedugnad started up again after a long hiatus -- the summer vacation got to us all :P
So--we're starting again today with Tove Tyll -- that woman has quite an unique and eclectic style -- lovesit! She challenged us to make our own pp and to use candypaper on the page. I was contemplating really making one, like, you know, from elaborate stamps and vintagepaper and do some collage stuff, but in the end I just went for the easy solution - slap a little paint on a black cs and add some Hambly Screenprint rubons just for laughs :p Or something like that :p
The "frame" to the color-photo was made by using black cs, scalloped scissors & white signo-pen. And oh yeah -if you look close-- the y in the candy is upside down. Cba to fix that when I noticed and well, uh, eh, it has its charm?? :p Totally heart my niece - she looks *so* angelic.....but she, uh, has a will of her own :P Sigh. Miss her! Lately I've been hating not having journaling on my pages, but when I was done with this I didn't find any room for journaling -- I mean-- it wouldn't fit aesthetically methought, hence the little tag begind the colorphoto. I don't know. I try to tell myself that layouts wo journaling is just swell but.. it's just a lil quirk I have atm.

Last week or so I got a sweet peamail - Aussie Scrap Source - the blog of an Australian distributor - chose Luxe Designs for their Weekend Inspiration and they picked up two of my Luxe layouts for that post. Thank you! :D Check out the first layout there by Carole, I loved that tree - so cool!

Ahwell. Shan't bore you more -- have a lovely weekend!! :)

Yay!
Marit Larsen is releasing her second album October 13th! Can't wait!
Check out her newest single - "If a Song Could Get Me You" - and check out the cute acoustic versions she did - singing live at a train, outside a greengrocer and at Nydalen :) I love both the studio-version and the train one - theyre both at repeat here atm :)

Her songs makes me happy - although if you listen beyond the happy, catchy tunes most of her lyrics are actually sad...which makes me love them even more :p

In other (scrappy) news...


Luxe Designs launced their spankin' brand new gallery! Their whole site is being reworked -- it's not entirely done, but it's getting very very close! :D And in honor of this opening, Emily is giving away 50$ of Luxe Products to one lucky commenter!


Bad Girls is kickin' off the Top Designer 2008 contest with signups starting today! :D


You really don't want to miss this - just look at this awesome 650$+ prize!!!



And last but not least --Hambly Screenprints is having a giveaway on their blog -- hurry head over to comment for a chance to win those YUMMILICIOUS kraft stickers!!


Alright, signing off w/sharing another photo from the vacation :)

From Nesodden, where we spent a weekend with my sister (#2 from the right) and some friends from high school (& all the children..I think we had 10 or 11 children alltogether)..


And one more.. this is from Elverum- Amalie loved this game - that is -when she had the ball. When she did not she started to whine and at times (well ok, often) cry...which Adrian found amusing..

And I miss having these two girls around (just look at them..aren't they such beauties...sigh..miss them sooooo much!):


*sigh*

Oh, and my PC seem well again, thanks to way too many hours of pain (at which at several points my computer was called not so nice names as "spawn of the devil" and the likes..yep..it was that bad..). Muchos ♥ to Peter (the UK one :p) & Simen! :)

Hmmm does the piccie look a lil fuzzy to you too? Hrm.
Nevertheless..Pencil-Lines #99 (know what that means?? Next one will be #100!!!!) with Mellette Berezoski and sponsed by the ever so fabby Jenni Bowlin Studio :) I *love love love* the papers and the colors in the kit I got... so old fash! LOve her vintage style! (and did you spot that almost all of the PL team decided to use this cs as their backgrounds? LOL..Sasha..youre the outsider haha :D )

I picked the photo to use for this layout before I noticed the bingo-card I got...yep...."faith". Nice coincidence! :) When I was little, my father used to have a what, at least 1.5 meter high statue of Jesus in his office at home (along with LOADS of books and a dino-computer which was grey and orange and had the two games snake and chess in it :P). Anyways. This photo is from 1981 - I was two years old - and the statue was still raging higher than me :p Dad says I used to be fascinated by this statue...hm, I wonder where it's at now..

The journaling consists of two of the journalingcards put together and tied w/a ribbon (and a charm) - I wrote about the statue/photo on the front and a more personal note on the inner card.

Aside for Jenni Bowlin products I also used May Arts Ribbon, a small charm, a little Hambly, some leftover fabric from the June Bad Girl kit and a button from MME.

Oh by the way - what about some Primalovin'?? Check out this terrific offer over at Prima- imagine that, a chance to win 500$ in prod!!

--- warning ---nerd whining ahead!!

So.
In order to try to figure out my computer-troubles..... I'm using Windows Vista 64b, which I like and think is pretty neat apart from the little fact that most drivers ARENT UPDATED for this version, which can be a little PITA at times. Just a little. :p Anyways. Peter, an old friend of us from the old EQ-days (I remember one of our very first meetings outside Chardok like eight years ago or so :p) tried his darned best to help us over im & teamspeak but alas....after at least four or five hours (at 2.30am :p) we had to give up. We (um ok... he) did figure out how to flashstart & ninjaupdate the bios (after XX# of wasted cd's trying to figure out the boot thing from cd :p) but it wasn't really the solution after all..or well, not the solution we had hoped for :/ *sigh*

So yeah I'm having fun fun fun times w/the PC these days uh :p And it looks like it'll cost me even more to try fix it...w/new hardware...yay..

I am just hoping the whole crap won't permacrash on me and all I really really want is just to be able to edit my photos in peace (editing photos w/4gb ram is woooonderful by the way)

----- end of nerd whining!

---- start of photograph/photoshop-geekin'

So.
I am trying to catch up these days.
So here's some photolinks I simply don't want to forget, or want to save & reread at a more quieter day.

• Annoyed about the dustbunnies living in the scanner (or maybe editing old vintage photos that's too scratched and stuff?). Don't forget the Dust & Scratches filter :)
• I intend to practice manual focusing (at least I keep saying this to myself), but uh, how do you really measure w/your eyes the distance to what you want to focus at? Surely won't do on runnin kids uh? Well, unless you stand still and take photo of a spot where theyre running to and click once they enter the area you know you have prepared the focus at hmmm... Nevertheless- here's some practicing tips...and here's some reasons as to why use manual focus.
  
• One of my best intentions are to learn the flash better. Yeah. That's what Ive been saying for a good long while too along w/the manual focusing thing. Still. I'm linking it here and there so I won't forget. Or something like that.
• Lightroom 2! Here's a nice review by Scott Kelby..I have to admit...I delete all my RAWs once edited (unless it's photosession-files), so I have a hard time sticking to Lightroom as I lose the keywords&organizing etc anyways?? And I find the sliders too fiddly so I prefer these in ACR...Im sure there's workabouts around them though, cause well, "everybody's" using Lightroom?...feel free to share :p This bullet-style-list by David Ziser sounds pretty promising though...
  

---- end of photograph/photoshop-geekin'

:p
Have a nice week :)

That I actually feel a little bad for not having had too much scrappy stuff to show you this summer as I've been on a long vacation...

..so here's a peek for this Sundays Pencil-Lines! :D Esp since Ive been missing these gals a lot - missed taking part of the weekly sketches....and such a fabby sponsor - and because it's my first real layout in what feels like a little eternity, boy did I feel a lil rusty =)

Now. Off to prepare the teaching-schedule & classes for this Fall - love teaching for Prima!! :D

Ps. Saw Wanted and Hellboy 2. Wanted was well, there's alot of eyecandy in the movie, I loved Nightwatch myself and I love the style of the russian director...but other than that it was a pretty shallow movie kinda- but nice to watch if you like cool stuff & Angelina Jolie. Hellboy 2...lovelovelove...esp the scene w/the old lady and the cat...hahahah...Hellboy's so cute there... really like the style and humor of the movie... a very nice sequel :)

No, I did not win.
But I became a Runner-Up!!!!!!!! *faint*
So much more than I dared hope for considering I thought I messed up the prints!!!

*gotta scoot to pickup the little one in kindergarten*
Sorry for the short, boring post!!! Just HAD to share. o.O
Crazy.Crazy.Crazy!

Gawd!

So yeah - I'm alive and well - arrived home on Sunday after 6+ weeks out of town. Home to a defunct computer which won't allow me to properly edit my vacation photos (and it's seriously a LOT of photos..including two weddings...). Love seeing BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) when I'm about to finish the last RAW-photo causing me to lose out and having to re-edit. Sucks. Still I keep starting up Photoshop when I should just leave it and wait until the problem is fixed. Ohwell. Proof that I'm stupid I guess =) Or that I love to edit the same picture twice or even thrice and only 5-6 in a batch at a time.

I've scrapped - on my second layout now- future Pencillines layouts so can't show them yet - but GOD how lovely this feeling is - to scrap once again :)

Anyways, pulled out a few photos from the vacation to share...

Woke up one morning (in Elverum) and saw these monkeys in bed together..they even held hands *melts*


We spent 08.08.08 at the Vigeland Sculpture Park.

We spent a few hours here at Teknisk Museum.
This is my sister, the kids and me in front of the heatsensing camera. Kinda cool eh. (And yes, all the blue IS water :P - we had to wear wellingtons to enter this area which was filled with water to illustrate the changes in the climate and stuff :p)

We spent a few days waiting for this dino to hatch..


We attended my cousins wedding in Konnerud..


And another wedding in Ålesund..


We did a lot more during our vacation too, like going to Arendal and Nesodden and Sweden (Uppsala and Degerfors - center of the world ;))


So let's see..what more has happened during the vacation,...scrapwise....I got a layout requested by Scrapbook Trends, which's pretty cool as it's my first time...I have no idea if the layout arrived safely though, but I hope so- mother in law arranged the shipping while we were away.. I made the Hambly team (yay :D ok, this one is a bit worn out by now I guess as Ive blogged about it already =))... I learned that I got two layouts in the Skin and Ink Sept issue - cool - thank you so much to Anam who arranged this :D Fellow Luxe-DT member Sherry Stevenson is teaching an online-class at NYScraps if anyone's interested in checking it out. Speaking of Luxe Designs, check out the cool new blinkies over here!
Oh, and I just learned I won some pretty pretty pretty trims from Websters Pages, yum!! :D

All in all - it's good to be back - now, if only the computerproblems could be solved asap...

The we went to visit my grandma, where the children played with this little lady - my cousins daughter. Her parents are getting married this weekend - looking forward to the wedding!!



Then - late at night - I crashed this party at 11pm...this photo is taken at 3.40am or so -- when most of the scrappers had left - this group played it hardcore =) Thank you SO much for giving me my scrapping fix (all I had was two sheets of Hambly transparencies, two identical sheets of Hambly rubons and three sheets of patterned papers. oh, and a bag of brads - all of which I purchased at Papertrends right after my vacation started) and for the lovely company & the delicious food! The above layout was made for Fatima -- it was her birthday and everybody made a page for her minialbum. I managed to use mostly of my own stuff, and borrowed some primaflowers & bling from my kind neighbours :) At 3am, when most had left the party - those of us who remained decided to do a round robin - each of us had 5 minutes adding something to a layout before passing it on. I think I just added Hambly to everybodys layouts as that was all I had lol :)

Thank you so much for letting me crash the party so late (wish I could have come earlier) and thank you for the lovely end of a lovely day - both those on this photo and those who left earlier!! So happy to have gotten to meet both new and old friends!

Linda, Pelle, me, Fatima, Kirsten, Kristin

Oh yes. Everybody is raving about this movie - both before and after it premiered. Well. I have to say it's really an excellent movie, way better than I expected. I thought in advance that it might have been hyped up a bit esp. given Ledgers tragic death and all the blah blah because of that but naa, he really is brilliant in that movie... so delightful twitchy and squirrely and plain crazy... all the little moves and twitches... and the story felt solid, good....so yeah - it's well worth the goddamn money (theatre's so darn expensive these days...I remember the good old days when a movieticket only cost 45nok....sigh..and yeah, I'm that old so shuddup :P) Oh and I kinda liked the sweet, dark (or well, tragic..) lovestory in the movie, it felt right...beautiful..

One more thing - you keep thinking "ok, now it must be over??" at least twice in that movie...I don't know if thats good or bad, hm..

Ohwell.
Also - just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all of you sending me your best wishes & congratulations re. Hambly!!! :D I guess Im proof that yeah it really never hurts to try even though you know you won't make it at all....

1. Give her five minutes in new clothes/being newly bathed and she'll look like a gypsy in no time.
2. She'll blend talking and signing/pantomine quite naturally - she knows some sign-language and when she comes to parts where she or something she's telling about is doing something specific and/or she has no word for it she'll show it with her bodylanguage instead.
3. She loves doing car-sounds with her little tongue sticking out (and unfortunately - yeah, with salvia all over the place too).
4. She loves the trampoline - calling it "hoppeline".
5. When we drive out she'll always say "goodbye house, goodbye hoppeline".
6. She pretty much always wants to do whatever her bigbrother does. He "abuses" it sometimes - but only for the greater good - like when he knows she has to go bathe or sleep or eat specific stuff when she doesn't want to - he'll pretend he's gonna do so too and she'll follow.
7. She LOVES milk!!! Drinks a lot and she'll often take milk or water over soda. Hopefully it'll last for a while.
8. She loves mayonnaise on her bread.
9. She'll fold her hands, look at you with her big eyes and say "pleeeeeaseeeeeee" (yep, in english - learned that from her bigbro) when she wants something.
10. She likes to play Drome Racers on the PC. Don't wanna learn how to navigate with the mouse though.

Oh and she loves butterflies. And I love her. So much.

Or well, rather - there's general issues w/ sitemeter (a web-based counterservice which I have been using) and Internet Explorers of certain releases: if you're one of those whose blog is affected by this annoying problem, simply just remove all of your sitemeter-widgets/snippets of code. It's a fault that lies within Sitemeter (and IE) afaik - go to their site if you use IE and you'll know what I mean - it wasn't corrected after eight hours (atm) which's a lot for impatient internetusers :p

Anyways. I was using both sitemeter and statcounter and I guess I'll stick to statcounter only from now on :p