Little Corner of Ania

I shared this layout at the Fancy Pants’ Productspotlight on “My Family Tags & Titles” . I used the tag as my title, decorating it by creating a border for it, rubbing some rub-ons w/bling and attaching ribbons. I like this picture. My grandparents from both sides at our living-room back home in Oslo. Of all these people in the picture, only grandma (to the right) is still alive – here’s the recent layout I made w/her and my kid. Notice the painting on the wall behind them? My mom painted it when she was young. I love it. I’ve known it for as long as I have lived. She never got around to finish it though. It misses the shades. We keep bugging her to continue painting (and other creative stuff she did before she got us kids), but she hasn’t done so….yet :p Ah. Good memories. The old furnitures..the lamps w/dried flowers as deco… my grandparents..I have no idea how old the picture is – but it must be at least 18, so maybe 20 years old as the first one to die did when I was..hm.. 12 I think? Or maybe 13.. Looking at the picture makes me feel it’s really great haven gotten around to know your grandparents. I miss them.

I think I pretty much used “My Family” here – papers, rub-ons, tags and ribbons. The border-paper and one of the ribbon is from “Rusted Sun”, though. Here’s an older layout w/Fancy Pants’ “All about a girl”, as shown in this productspotlight here. The collection sure is bright, but not that bright as seen in the picture here – sometimes my layouts etc comes out really really saturated no matter what settings I use. I even lowered the saturation on this picture, but didn’t feel I could lower it any more despite it still being pretty saturated. Hrm. Oh, and the little one? Such a drama queen. Cute, and tiresome (no, don’t ask me where she’s got that from thankyouverymuch).

Title: “Spider’s Web” – Katie Melua

After the Communion I had some pictures I wanted to share with my family, so I started the work w/creating CD-cards for them. I believe they ought to have received the mail by now, so here they are:

First out is a card made with Pink Paislees’ “365 degrees”. I so love that collection – such fresh and gorgeous colors :) This card was a part of my Tuesday’s tip over at the Pink Paislee blog :)

The inside..

Love how the Martha Stewart-punch really fit here, along with the beautiful Bella Brad :) And the Artisan Tape! Really liking the material they made the tape of – it feels versatile :)

Mixed two of the Die Cut Tags here :)

Needed bling to spice the front some – KaiserCraft makes really trusty and versatile bling! :)
And I love the Glitter alpha, aswell as finally getting around to try out the new Artisan Swirl Embellishment which is created from a sort of weird, but rich and surprisingly heavy foam. Mine is sprayed with red Maya Mist and painted with white gesso.

Love these Prima flowers – and how the cork button makes such a nice centrepiece along with yet another bling :) 

Here’s two more, this time created with 3ndypapir :)

First off, a card made with the older designs from 3ndypapir – last years summer-collection :)

Other stuff includes flowers (both paper and glitter) from Making Memories, sticker (Photographs) from October Afternook, transparencies from Hambly, ribbons from AC and Prima and letters from AC and Adornit :) Ooh and bling from Kaisercraft :)

Love layering :)

The last card is made with the “Secret Garden” collection from 3ndypapir, spiced up with Hambly, AC and Prima :)

The inside…note how sweet the Hambly transparent stickers (flowers) fit with this tag? :) Moar layerage! ♥

Have a lovely weekend! :)

I’ve been spamming personal photos lately, so this post will start off w/some scrappy stuff before sharing a few piccies ;)

Yesterday was my turn to do a Fancy This-post over at the Fancy Pants blog. I created a notebook-binder from scratch.

The above photo is a work-in-progress-photo – the almost finished binder before the decorations. This is the gorgeous Road Show-collection by the way.

Check out the FP post to see the full tutorial on how to make this notebook-binder all the way from scratch.

For this weeks Pencil-Lines sketch (#187, guested by Jane Jones) I decided to whip out my 3ndypapir-stuff, mainly Secret Garden + some scraps from last years papers. The photos are brand new – my kiddo w/his great-grandma :)

Some extra embellishments – tulle & prima-stuff (the stitched heart-rubon is from Hambly).. Aswell as American Crafts, Prima and Fancy Pants-stuff :)

Yesterday we celebrated the National Day of Norway. Didn’t get to take too many pictures, because as parent to a 3rd grader it was our turn to volunteer at the school which meant I was standing in the balloon-booth for a while being terrified kids would throw their darts the wrong way and hit me :p

Nevertheless, here’s three photos from yesterday (and none of me in my national dress Østfoldsbunad (I got the green variant ♥) ahwell – better luck next year :p).

Amalie inherited a dress from her cousin. A tad too small, but it was nice to have her wear it once :) (and yes, that’s the flag she’s holding in her left hand – upsidedown – oops! :p)

Adrian with his classmates (and Amalie, who didn’t want to walk w/her kindergarten-peers. She didn’t leave Adrians side for the whole parade). They even held hands most of the walk. So cute – for as long as it lasts :)

♥

Title: “Dear Jessie” - Madonna

The day before the Ascension (Christian holiday, last Thursday) me and my oldest went to Oslo. I’ve brought Amalie alone with me before, so when we were gonna break the news to her that this time, Adrian would go with me, she quickly asserted that yeah indeed, it was his turn now since she’s been with me before. Phew!

Here we are at the airport in Oslo.
The reason for us going to Oslo was because my step-sisters daughter (which I guess would be my step-niece, if we’re gonna think in terms of family-relationships) was going to have her very first Communion. 
Attending a Mass (?) isn’t something I do like, every day, and the little rites and stuff that differs from what I’m used to are both beautiful and intriguing.

Like using incense, quickly filling the huge church with the familiar scent. When I was little my father liked to use incense once in a while when meditating and stuff :p

Here she is, walking down the aisle in her beautiful gown looking very very happy… “Oy look at this candle I’m carrying!”…or something like that :p
The Catholics who did their first Communion this Thursday was a mixed bunch with different traditions as to what to wear for their first Communion. I thought everybody (well, at least the girls), would be dressed like Zara, who’s Polish Catholic, with minibrides-dress and headgear – but no – the Italic Catholics seemed to have different dress-codes, aswell as the Asian Catholics and so on and so on. Most were dressed prettily though.

Adrian admiring the architecture of the Church.

I love such stained glass windows. I’m pretty sure I could get lost in such a Church taking in (and shoothing!) all the little details. :) (Only, I’d bring a tripod if I had the time & space I guess :) )

Ey, that’s my father checking out what I’m shooting. In this example, him :p

Peeking..

“Immagonnaeatit!”  
Walking past with the Body of Jesus :p

Love this twirl of her hair :)

 Tuva – sorta finding the whole Mass pretty……boring. Rebecca too in the background.

  Love this shot! She looks so grown up and so confident :)

“Oooh auntie, this is sooo boring!”. Poor thing :)

Her dress was special-ordered from Polen. Beautiful :)
(not too fond of this kind of editing, w/soft light turning the photo slightly blurred, but figured it sort of fit this particular photo..?)

All done – on the way out :)

“We’re soon done, Tuva, soon…”

I was fairly bummed because they said they would have a group-shot in front of the Church (St. Olavs Church), but as I was coming out from the Church (not being one of the last ones!!) I heard them do a countdown – and hurried down the stairs – only to snap this overblown photo (serves me right – for such hurried moments I guess using aperture-mode would be best instead of manual when not being really good at adjusting from indoors to outdoors in a snap..at least I got the ISO down :p) just as the group dissolved – duh. Ahwell.

Got this one of Zara and her mother on the way to the car, though:p

No idea why Tuva is giving Adrian the look here, but found it pretty amusing :) We had some time to kill before the dinner started, so we waited at a nearby Cafe for some Latte/Mocca/cocoa :)

I did all the indoor-Church-photos w/ISO1250-1600, but am thinking I could probably have done ISO2000/2500 and instead tried to make sure to expose them correct/overexpose them slightly to minimize the noise. Hm. Definitely needed to up the shutterspeed at some photos, which turned slightly blurry, bleh. Oh, and WTB 70-200 f/2.8, I used my 24-70 f/2.8 during the whole trip – and from where I was placed I guess a 70-200 would have been quite handy. Also, I need to get some sort of noise-reducing program (or at least CS5 - *drool*). I used to have Noise Ninja, but it wouldn’t work with CS4 so it’s a bit bleh having to load CS3 for NN only sorta. None of the photos were run through any noise-red. program, which shows in some of the areas, but ahwell. It’s sorta charming no? ;p

Anyways. Slightly annoyed when people kept telling me to not use flash, when I DO NOT USE THE FLASH.AT.ALL. I am aware of the customs of photographing a Mass (or inside a Church for that matter) thank you very much, and it’s surely not to use flash (ok if you’ve spoken w/the priest in advance + it’s like, the bride walking the aisle or something like that, but that’s another case. Still prefer to not depend on the flash).
Also, sort of wished I could move around as some other (with on-camera-flash!) did, but I was a good girl and stuck to my appointed bench. I guess it’s ok to not work for once too, although I did take a few photos still :p

Right.

Tomorrow’s the National Day of Norway, I’ve got three cakes to bake and need to get some scrappy stuff done aswell. Off to “work”! =)

Ps. Am sorta feeling unsure re the Live Writer and how it treats my photos, I’m sharpening and saving them for web, doing my best to optimize them for display, but I feel they look diff and slightly off / not too sharpened when online. Could it be something that’s happening when Live Writer posts the pictures to the web? Something with the blogformat? Hmmm. Prob just me who sees the diff, but it’s annoying :/

Flying to Oslo in an hour or so w/my son – his turn to go with me to Oslo (as Amalie’s been with me at least once before). Going to meet my family and attend the communion of my steph-sisters daughter (I’ve never attended one so I’m looking forward to it!)

Leaving you with two cards I’ve made lately in the meanwhile :)

This was made for the Pencil-Lines sketch #186, where we were sponsored by Theresa Collins :) Check out the post for more awesome inspirations :) I used a frame from the Theresa Collins collection, as well as flowers from Prima and background-paper from 3ndypapir :)

As for the communion – needed a card, so made one outta Prima, Tattered Angels and Hambly :)

Closeups….hm..yeah. The inside – more Prima and Hambly :)

Have a lovely weekend & stuff, and send us good thoughts so we won’t get stuck in Oslo if the ashes decides to float over Norway when we’re about to get home…. :p

Ps. until I’m back, check out these links:

• Fancy Pants new collections!!
• Free, awesome textures!
• Free, awesome actions!
• Don’t forget the Hambly DT search!
• :)

Now some more pictures from Marens wedding ♥

Discussing who’s wearing the pants in the marriage?

One of the advantages of being bride&groom is that you get to eat first before the others ;p

The siblings writing a note to the newlyweds (all the guests got blank notes where they could write whatever they wanted to the couple).

The speeches were both touching… 

Funny…

..and potentially embarrassing…just like the speeches in a wedding should be ;)

They even became parents during the speeches (her uncle gave them a couple goldfishes, as compensation for the ones he killed when she was little).

Yep. That’s live ones alright! Marie gave a speech (and an album) :)

 Pouting bride is pouting! Lookie! Me, Eli & Marie!

They handled all the gifts, and here they made sure they didn’t miss any envelopes or gifts underneath the booth while moving them from this one to the table in the big room :p

Weddings totally are such hard work!! Here’s me and Marie :)

Teehee…totally staged by the way, it’s water in the bottle & no fish were harmed during this session :)

  There’s something about men in skirt…(or ok, kilts).

Giving someone the eye…..:D

Haha they do make a cute couple donchathink…. cute, Maren, cute :) (her father right next to her btw)

  Marie and Eli is so easily entertained – they kept communicating via Facebook…..

Lovely party :)

♥