Little Corner of Ania

Hambly just finished printing their newest release, and have been busy shipping out the new designs... here's a layout I made for the newsletter sent out re. the shipping. Totally love the new supercute "Elephants in a row" design which I used as the background here (afaik this colorcombo was limited ed...teal on white....BUT you can find it as an overlay, and the lime green paper one is just as yummy), the "Urban Frames" clear stickers makes a nice base for the clustered stuff and I love using rubons and stickers on corrugated paper, cutting them out. Talking about the new designs, I also used a butterfly from the clear stickers & purple "old lace" overlay on the bottom of this layout. And I LOVE Adornits small letterstickers!! They're so cheap and there's lots of letters on one sheet and it looks awesome on pretty much anything :)

And. Check out the nice tutorial by Allison on rubons and canvas at the Hambly blog :)

October looks busybusy - lots of scrappy stuff happening (Papirfesten!! Weekendgetaway! Birthdays to celebrate!) - and - unless they get cancelled as the other workshops I was supposed to sign up to - lots of photography workshops & courses to attend.

Ahwell. We'll see.
Sharing some recent photos..

Ugh. Pink!
Personally I do prefer other colors on her, but when you're lucky enough to get to inherit a lot of clothes you can't be too picky. Besides. She's started putting together her clothes herself while proclaiming she loves pink. At least she's not totally mis-matching...

I finally got around to check out "Fru Luna", a very nice cafe/coffeebar like 2minutes from work... :p

Mm. More photos of Amalie.

Decorating a carrot-cake.

..and oogling the cookies I made the other day....sandwiched the leftovercream from the carrot-cake w/homemade choc chip cookies...yumm..
(ps. where were I "supposed" to focus at...the first cookie? Atm the focus is on the middle one and it feels. Both right and wrong. ALthough I guess that's a subjective matter?)

Presenting a gift to great-grandfather.

*trying to remember I have a son too* *grin*
Just kidding. Either he's out hanging around w/his friends or he's at home doing not much :p
(and yes I know - totally misfocused here, and yet it's one of the better ones of him lately. Ugh. Need to be way better taking photos of him!)


Well. Just thought this was a sorta not too bad motif. Nothing like an old tire just thrown away in the nature. Well. It wasn't that old looking, but it was abandoned..

Random thoughts - mostly work/photo-related:

• Still working on my confidence re directing shots when needed/required. Totally prefer just staying in the background shooting natural courses sorta, but can ofcourse see that it's not always giving the best results.....hence..need to work on the confidence thing instead of thinking "bleh, wish this or that was done different" when leaving the scene..(which always happens anyways I might add...) Maybe if I write this often enough on the blog I might actually try to listen to this piece of advice..
  
• I may or may not have figured out the manual pre-determined WB code. I'm not sure. Shame it's so hard to check incamera (is there a trick?) - what looks like a decent WB on the LCD might turn out to not be so on the screen. How do I really know?! (advanced/split histograms I guess?) And the incamera-screen is strictly speaking not calibred sorta uh? Sigh. And yeah, I could go back to use RAW again - but really - it's a lot of work & space when using jpgs usually's fine for most images..besides...I guess it's a bit as random as the luck you get when sticking to autoWB?
  
• Always bring the noteboard&pen along. Always.
  
• Remember to jot down things I need to do different/remember to be aware of after the different shots. Things like. Groupphotos w/a mainperson - pull the person in focus a bit more in front of a crowd behind him aka closer to the camera, instead of having him in the middle of the group. Eh. I don't remember more atm. But there's lots of little, annoying basic things which can be improved. Hence. WRITE.IT.DOWN.
• AIR. Remember to add air & space around the motifs. Screw composition. Or at least composite w/enough air around, as composition is easy enough to fix post-processing due to various photosizes on the finished paper-layouts.
• It would be quite handy to learn how to clean stuff in the camera. Like. Sensor and stuff. But. It's Scary stuff (yes - capital S!). But handy if I knew the correct way and stuff. I guess!
• Still can't decide on a 24-70mm or 105mm macro!! Ugh! Advice? Am really leaning towards the zoom, but having a macro would be quite handy...+ it's after all a much longer (?) focal lens than what I have avail (50mm and 14-24mm)...
• Cute outfits w/high heeled shoes/boots or sensible, durable, boring workclothes for work?? *sigh* I know - it's raining cats and dogs here quite often plus I might be req. to shoot dirty stuff and go to dirty & muddy places.....hm...lots of my photos have been of dirty stuff in one sense or another come to think of it...so. I really should opt for the latter - been using rainboots. But. Want. To. Use. High. Heels!
• I don't mind sharing photos on my blog, but Flickr or serious photography-galleries or contests? UGh no. The thought of it scares me. Silly I know :/
• Hai, anybody tried photos on acryl-frames? Like these? Or the alu-frames? How's the quality and diff. vs reg canvas? Any advice on what kind of images for these kind of materials?
  

Title: "Corduroy" -Pearl Jam

Trallala.
The kids loves to listen to stuff@youtube and I figured I'd show them some quality-stuff..like Knutsen&Ludvigsen ;p Since my CD is sorta scratched and stuff.... :p

Anyways. Sharing some recent projects....

Fancy Pants Designs "Rough & Tough" collection - not only for boys ;p
Totally loved the photos of the kids from the late wedding we attended ;p Just look at Adrian in the background looking at Amalie......... :p This layout was my contribution to the product-spotlight at their blog..

A cute babycard - love this paper from the "Little Sprout" collection (Fancy Pants Designs aswell). This one was for the spotlight on the "Little Sprout" glitter die cuts (go check out Amy Petermans supercute frame. Loves!).

This layout is made with Nikki Sivils "Boo-tiful" collection and was created for the sketch inspiration. Love the intense colors of this line. Gorg! Go check out the other ladies' interpretion of the sketch :) This is by the way also my last creation as official DT-member of Nikki Sivils - I've enjoyed my term at the doghouse! :)


And finally - here's the Pencil-Lines layout - for sketch #153 w/Debbie Nicholas as the guest. Mixed some Jillibean Soup, Hambly & Shabby Chic Crafts tags for this one :)


Right! Busy w/a few scrappy deadlines looming above me but what do I keep scrapping? Some non-deadline-just-for-fun-stuff! Ahem duh. Have a lovely weekend - I'm atm situated in my scrappy corner sipping red wine & scrapping away *snicker*

Title: "Kanskje Kommer Kongen" -Knutsen & Ludvigsen

I've hardly taken any photos of the kids since starting to work.
I take a lot of photos at work, and when I get home I'm pretty exhausted. Lazy. And so on.
Note to self: try to change that.
So. I've been walking with Amalie to the kindergarten before work a few times, and figured I'd snap some photos at the same time. So there you go. Amaliemania! ;p


She loves to listen to "mommys music". Daddys music? Not so much. She'll bug daddy to switch.
Mommymusic = a personal guarantee that it's quality music ;p (*cough*) Oh, and whenever she hears a song she knows I like on the radio, she'll bug me and say "Mommy, that's the song YOU LOVE!".

She loves to eat bread with brown cheese (sorta norwegian speciality..goat cheese ;p) with mayonnaise. *ugh* Oh, and with cucumber on top. *doubleugh*


They had the police visiting the kindergarten the other day, and Amalie came home exlaiming that if we ever get thieves in our home we had to dial "one-one, one-one, two!". "One, one, two?" I asked. Yes, "one-one, one-one, two!" she solemny said, if we ever heard "loud noises" we had to call that number. Good girl. Except. It's 1-1-2, not 1-1-1-1-2 sweetie :p



She's been planning her birthday (which by the way, isn't until April next year). We're to buy her three presents, "Littlest pet shop", "princesses" and a third gift she haven't really decided yet. Um. Whatever you say pumpkin.

She still tries to cry whenever she doesn't want to do something, or doesn't like what we're saying. She'll pout and put on her whiney voice and sometimes she'll even cry for real (I usually find that part hilarious, which sorta just insults her further if she catches me almost laughing. Bad mommy). And hang her shoulders forcefully down - the whole deal. She's quick to snap out of it though when she realizes we're not falling for her tricks and (usually) ignore her attempts to protest. Unless she sees me trying to hide my laugher :p

She loves to sing.
And to randomly exclaim: "Mommy's best! Daddy's best!" and won't reveal which one's really the best. We're both equally best.

I might be wrong but I *think* she's imitating me. Or my camera. Or both.
What gave it away? Uh. Just a feeling :p And the fact that she made the clicking sound of the camera & pushed the button once mine did. :p


I'm may be biased but. She's so cute. And spunky. And in dire need of a haircut :p

I'll be back with scrappy stuff on sunday. Or something like that :p

Scrappy stuff first -
here's my recent Pencil-Lines (#152) w/Janine Koczwara :)
Mmmm look at the lovely new Hambly-stuff: the Old Lace paper (this combo was limited ed) and the doilies-rubons layered on thick transparency :D Oh, not to mention the clear butterfly-sticker stuck on transparency :) I decided to sew the paper to white corrugated cardstock (doesn't show too well here I think?) then dry-brush the paper w/white gesso (obvs I needed to do a better job at covering the top, but ahwell)....then I wanted to play off on the lace-pattern by adding a layer of white tulle over it, so that it'd look like it had real texture sorta. Think it worked out pretty well irl, but the picture doesn't really show the layers..

This past weekend I cashed in my bdaypressie from the hubby... a 6-hour-long-hike - which sort of got sabotaged by the weather.

**insert lots of blah blah why we didn't do the hike** **thick fog** **cats and dogs** **blah blah** **no camera because of the heavy rain** **windy** **blah blah**

We still hiked for like 3 hours...soh!

Right.
So, no images from the hike - but here's some from Spisekroken - the restaurant we went to after chilling at the hotel-room for a few hours (I might have napped a tad too :p). Loved the food - highly recommended. Small and cozy. And pretty darkish - all the photos here were taken w/ISO1250 (look ma, no noise ninja! :p).

Someone became a bit impatient. I'm sorry.
Taking photos of food Is.So.Addicting!
Especially when it's not often we're eating food worth taking photos of. Pwetty food! Pwetty settings!

His starters. King Crab.
My starter. Duck!
(I *love* duck. And bunnies. No bunnies on the menu tho :( *please don't hit me bunnylovers!* )


His main course: Roast veal :)

My main course. Lamb shank. Lovely!
(I originally opted for kid (goat meat), but it wasn't available soooo :()


Time for dessert! Mm.
Mine..(don't make me explain what it was tho, I don't know the words. Oh wait. Nutty. Heavenly. Fruity. Yummy! :p)

His.. home made ice cream of different sorts.

Oh, and mine again! :)

Then we watched District 9. Tbh. Listening to the South African accent of the actors (it's a South-African movie, duh) was sort of funny in a disturbing way. I found the movie somewhat cute and intriguing. And slightly amusing.

Anyways. A lovely weekend was had indeed :) And I feel old. Sigh. Instead of ending the evening at a nightclub we opted for icecream (Ben&Jerrys!) and an early retreat to the hotel room :p If that doesn't make you feel old (it's like, being defeated) then I don't know what does :p

Title: "My life would suck without you" - Kelly Clarkson

This weeks product spotlight over at Fancy Pants Designs was This Girl Die Cut Papers, and I used a small part of the round one to... eh.. round off the top on this layout. Three things to note about this layout. One - I LOVELOVELOVE the photo of me, my mother and my grandmother. Two - I totally LOVE this red, swirly glittery transparent die cut I used as a photomat (I had two and I'm outta both now. Ugh!). Three - I love sticking the bracketed (?) journalingsticker on corrugated cardboard and cutting out a wicked awesome edge. Mm.. and I love the heart-chipboards on this layout aswell, but that'd make it four things I love about this layout. Hm. :p


Just wanted to share this photo I took this morning when walking to the work. I dunno if the hedgehog was dead or just napping (next to the road..smart hedgehog..prolly a squishy one by now if it wasn't dead already ;p)..I just felt an urge to snap a few photos before moving on :p


And this was my view - uh - yesterday or the day before that (yes, expect a few diff. images of the same scenery from now on :p All I have to do if I see something interesting outside is to go through the large window next to the lunchroom to enter the roof..and start snapping pictures..fun :) ). The clouds were dark and grey and dull but the sun was shining through making a beautiful upside-down crown sorta shining down. Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture its entire glory in the image. Jeje. Something tells me I'll get plenty of oppoturnities to practice anyways... :p

And yeah - some observances re. work (Sorry! It's fun&new to me!!):

• Having people call me by my name is weird. I'm not entirely used to it, and am contemplating asking people to please just call me by my nickname. The longer it takes it harder it is to ask about that though.
• Same with presenting myself to people when at work - I have to remember to present myself by my name, and the entire name, and not my nickname or my first name only. (And yes, my family (apart from my mother :p) and friends all call me by my nickname)
• Despite being pretty exhausted by the end of the day I am throughoutly enjoying my newfound 8-16 life. I get do a few mistakes, learn to do and shoot different stuff and best of all - I get to work with a medium I really enjoy - photography.
  
• One of the journalists I've been working with the most just found out we've actually studied together (or rather, been to the same classes - way back when my oldest was a wee little baby and I attempted to study Nordic at the University..she majored in that field and when I mentioned I had studied it too she was like - ooh I knew I had seen you before - you were the one with the baby in the classes! haha :p)
• Working at a newspaper is so so so intriguing and I couldn't have found a better place to start! I am so loving every little aspect of this..... hope this feeling will last :)
• I have to say. What a difference a good lens will do!! The paper is a small, local paper and all the journalists all have their own workcameras, which I've been borrowing as there's no extra bodies atm.... so I've been trying 350D, 400D, 40D so far...all Canons..and a wide array of lenses ranging from ugh kit-lenses to the super darn heavy (but awesome) 70-200 f/2.8... and well, it basically comes down to the lens imo... it's superinteresting getting to try out different things (although the perfectionist in me prefers to use my own camera because it's the one I know best and I love my lenses and I do want to deliver good pictures when it comes to the quality of them sorta.....but it's not always possible to use my own camera due to the limitations re. my lenses..plus I really oughta learn to use the cameras available rather than relying on my own, which's....my own personal one :p It's a handy backup-camera tho :p)
  

Anyways. Have a lovely weekend, and send me a positive thought or two as I'm about to embark a long, long hike tomorrow and it's raining cats and dogs atm :P

Title: "Moonlight Shadow" -Mike Oldfield

I'm falling behind on sharing my various scrappy projects. Usually I create stuff I can't show right away, and once I can I do immediately (or close to) - but there's been stuff like my bday&starting a new work and stuff lately so....!

Sorry!

Right, nuff w/the apologizes....I'll start w/the Nikki Sivils stuff for September - I simply fell in love w/her gorgeous line "Boo-tiful" (such intense colors...!). Sure, it's quite Halloweenish, a thing that's not really commonly celebrated here in Norway, but who says you need to use it for Halloween-stuff only?

Here I used it for a photo of...uh...well, it's a testshot I did at a girl/scrap-trip and some of the girls (I know who it is!!) thought it was fun to ruin my testshots w/bunnyears ;p It's a "just for fun"-layout and I love the way it turned out :)


Ok, can't ignore the Halloween-aspect of the line entirely - so I made an Owl-candybag out from the 6x6" paperpads and the Owl-chipboards (yes, an owlshaped minibook made of chipboards - I know there's a lot of owl-lovers out there! And if you're not - well - they do make cool bags for Halloween uh? :P). The paperbag is sprayed w/Glimmer Mist (graphite).

Right! Movin' on to Fancy Pants! :)
I made this bookmark for my son who asked me if I could help him find a bookmark (he started reading books for real..books w/lots of tiny text and none or few pictures :p... this summer and I couldn't be more proud of the fact that he actually likes to read...yayy!!)

Anyways.
I used a piece of chipboard from the Mix-n-Match chipboards, a sheet of the edgepaper from "Rough and Tough" and a lot of leftover-rubons from both newer and older lines from Fancy Pants. Oh, and the kraft-alphastickers :) If you wanna see more ideas for this border-paper from the Rough & Tough line, head over here :)

I also created a little grocery-list & noteboard outta the 8x8" square Mixed Media books, a sheet of paper from the 8x8" pad from "The Daily Grind" and a bind-it-all. For more info and instructions, check out this post :)


Just do remember extra strong magnets. When I went to the craft-store to buy myself some magnets for this project, I found something called jewellery-magnets. And they were like, small, silvery & elegant and darn strong! Way stronger than the usual large, black magnets I remember from my childhood (which I also purchased by the way....having a small stack of magnets here should be somewhat handy hm? I think..).

And finally - a Pencil-Lines sketch (151, guested by Irene Tan) w/white corrugated cardboard (LOVES!), IKEA paint (LOVESx2), glimmermist (love how it's perfect to white corrugated cardboard..note to self tho: Spray first *then* add paint. Not the other way around. Rly.) and pieces of Hambly Screenprints, Fancy Pants, Bazzill and Scenic Route (the chipboard).

Title: "Nobody's baby now" -Nick Cave (whatev)

I am not sure if my daughter actually gets the concept of giftgiving, or well, maybe she do...sortof... because to her it's about finding a gift that she would love to have herself, and then being first in line to use it once it's opened (she insisted daddy would love pet shop toys and kept suggesting girlietoys when he was going to figure out a wishlist for his bday..after order of her ofc). In this instance however, she was spot on. I LOVE this little cute gift from the kids :D :D I'm so gonna frame it & hang it right in front of my desk :D And it's MINE, get it Amalie!??

Anyways. Yesterday was such an awesome day. Much thanks to the ladies who didn't mind spending it with me, good food, scrapbooking and an old frame. ♥♥♥

I wasn't the only one who had bday....we made sure to celebrate Sonja too, whose bday was earlier this week.

I'd like to call this motif: "Rage against the Canons". Or "Me Against The Canons". Or something like that. Oh, and ugh, I'm so not handling being in front of the camera too well. At least not when Im gonna open my pressie and they all go "wait wait hold" and whip out their cameras ...hai, I'm just opening some pressie, duh! *grin*


Another of the pressies from the kids. A bubble-maker-machine. Which I LOVED :D And it played an important part of our photosessions too. Yay! Ps. Eli. I don't think you really wanna eat them pwetty bubbles.


Photosession!! We were too lazy to move too far away so all these photos are from our back-terrace. I pulled out the old frame I purchased uh, sometime last year. I just never got around to break it out earlier *blush* (I want a larger one w/way broader frames, but this will do in the meantime :) ) Here: Eli & Maren doesn't want Marie in the frame...

We all took turns w/the frame. I'd love to share the others, but I dunno if they'll want me to (being in the frame alone is a bit scary)...soooo...
I wanted to break out!

Photosession #1:
Left behind: Sonja, Maren, Ellen, Ann Hedvig
Left bottom: Eli, me, Marie, Karina
Such pwetty faces.

Photosession #2:
Left behind: Sonja, Gry, Maren, Ellen
Left bottom: Eli, me, Marie, Ann Hedvig
More pwetty faces uh? :p

Thanks for an awesome day/evening ladies :D
I don't have any photos of the layouts from the Round Robins, so feel free to hit Ellens or Maries blog for more photos including the layouts from the game :)

And to everybody who mailed, texted or commented a greeting on my bday - thank you so much!!

Ps. I like the word "twenty-ten" - I'm totally gonna use it ;)