Little Corner of Ania

Yesterdays Pencil-Lines’ guest was Tara Rosas. You have to check out her layout – it’s gorgeous!

Here’s my interpretation of the sketch:

My step-father sent me this cellphone-photo of me, Adrian & my beloved niece taken at the airport before we were going home. I knew I had to scrap it :)
I’ve been thinking about me and my…well, not really fear, but…maybe more like, resentment – against being in front of the camera. Because. It’s usually me who’s holding the camera. And when once in a blue moon somebody else actually has a camera/takes my camera…well, I don’t really want to be in front of it even then. I wish I felt more free and had better self-esteem to stand in front of a camera and actually enjoying being there (would help if I was prettier too, bwahaha). Hm. Ahwell. I actually liked this photo, and it made me happy. It’s one of the very few photos with me and my closest in it, sorta, so yay.

I whipped out my Hambly-stash for this one.
I gotta admit - it feels a bit sad not being on the Hambly-team anymore – but hey, I’ve been there for close to two years and it’s been two wonderful, awesome years. I’m so happy, surprised & grateful that they actually kept lil’ me around for that long (thank you Allison & kl!)! :D And now – I still have loads of Hambly-stash to keep me entertained for like, at least two more years or more, so don’t think you haven’t seen the last of me & Hambly-scrapping! :D Big congrats to Larissa & Leena for making the Hambly-team – they’re wonderful to work with, their products rocks (but you knew that already :D) & I’m totally looking forward to see what the fresh blood on this new DT will bring for the next year to come! :)

Enjoy your summer! :)

Ps. The kitchen? Well, I’m happy to say that I at least finished one side/wall ;p And it was a throughout cleaning – all the kitchen-utensils in the closets got cleaned aswell! (yes yes, allow me to be proud of something that’s probably the most natural thing in your world :p) Plus – I washed&scrubbed the floor! Yay me! :p Thanks for your (way too big) faith in me & the encouragements ;)

Ps2. Want to scraplift me? Check out this post at Swe Scrapbook! :) And look at the wonderful lifts their DT did! :D

Title: “Silent All These Years” – Tori Amos

Happy Sunday! :)

I figured I’d let you know how it’s going with my project Clean Kitchen ;p (I know you’re so thrilled to learn more ;p) Hum. Umkay, I had to lower my ambitions a tiiiny tad. The original plan was like, kitchen at day one, bathroom day two and if lucky, livingroom at the weekend. Uh yeah – well, I’m glad the hubby+kids aren’t at home right now, because the way I clean is a bit laidback with lots of breaks and so wouldn’t have worked if they were at home. Oh and plus, I did all this *after* work, so it wasn’t like I had a whole lotta time to do stuff at, sorta! But – I AM progressing! Slowly, but sure…

  See – my lovely, messy kitchen ;p

The blue outlines are day one – I cleaned the largest pantry + the top of the fridge, and sprayed oven-cleaningstuff in the lower oven to stay overnight. Lots of sauce mix bags were thrown – the oldest expired in 2000 *cough* (to my defence – I started making my own dinner & sauces from scratch a few years ago, using way less (like, 90% less compared to before) mix-bags and dried stuff when cooking dinner – thus rarely using what I already had stored. So there!)

Day two – red outlines – the fridge! Ick :p Plus, sprayed more oven-cleaningstuff into the upper oven & cleaned all the, uh, bakingsheets (??).

Day three (Saturday - green) – one of the lesser closets/pantry, the microwave, a drawer, the top of the stove and the fan above the stove. I’d *probably totally* get way more done if I wasn’t interrupted by a visit from Eli!!!! *winkwink* Oh, and I went out having a beer or two (Guinness!!!) later that night too, but – it’s not like I’d continue cleaning the kitchen at midnight, now, huh? :p

I got this towel from Eli a few days ago by the way :p I was gonna save this image for a post later next week involving these lovely French macaroons, but somebody was impatient to see the towel blogged, so here you are! ;) Thank you so so so much :D *hugs*

Right!

I suppose I should continue working on the kitchen, uh? :p I did the pink/purple outline today – I want to finish the whole side today at least! And wash the floors before I leave..I’m probably off to the summer-place tomorrow after work, so I better hurry up! :)

Title: “Nemo” - Nightwish

Summer-vacation has started, and the kids went off to the summer-place today with their dad. Depending on the weather, I’ll join them either this weekend or maybe next week – we’ll see.

With the house all empty, I’ve decided to be a little bit ambitious and..eh…do some… summer-cleaning. We’ll see how well that goes. While most of my (female) friends all seem to be pretty darn domestic in that department, I’m so not that kind of housewife. Nuff said. So. I decided to tackle the kitchen today and do a thorough cleaning. I’ll just finish this blogpost first ;p

If you recall the last wedding I shot – well, here’s the CD-card I made for their wedding-CD. It’s part of the Thursday Trends-post I made for Pink Paislee, as seen in this post.

Here’s the second card – a more generic one. It sort of feels a bit nautical. The trend I was focusing on was banner-ribbons. It’s such a cute touch to any project. Here the banner is made of the Pink Paislee Artistan Tape.

Pink Paislee has done an amazing site-overhaul. Not only are the design&colors new and stylish and in typical Pink Paislee-style, it’s now totally compatible with iPhones and stuff. At least that’s what I heard – I don’t have one so I can’t really verify *grumble* Oh, and if you check out the site you’ll get peeks on the upcoming CHA-news. Eeeks, truly gorgeous!! 

This layout was made for the Fancy Pants’ spotlight on About a girl-stickers. I used several of the stickers here on this otherwise pretty plain layout w/pictures of Amalie when she was approx a year old. I’ve had these photos in my photo-map for so long – I figured it was about time to use them! (I’ve scrapped these photos before – I printed out several of the photos from this photosession – and these were left over. I hate to throw away already-printed photos!! :p)

I sure miss the time I spent at home with her when she was little…just her and me…sigh..:) (okok, with the years your memories become more and more rose-tinted ;p)

In other scrappy news – look what I just made!! The Elle’s Studio Design team!! ♥  Schweet! Her tags are seriously the best, the quality and versatility is superb and I can’t wait to get started!! :D ♥♥♥

Wrapping up with this post with some photos of my kids…whom I miss already…who would have known :p We took a trip downtown last Saturday…here’s on the bus. Doesn’t she look a bit…forlorn? :p

  One of the first stops were this giant cube at Festplassen. According to Marie, it’s an art-project by Bård Breivik and is supposed to be at display here for about a month. There’s different patterns at the sides. It sort of looks like, you know, the T-1000-robo when he’s all melted and stuff. Very cool. I wonder if the cube has a “roof” or if it’s just 4 walls, sorta. Here’s the kids trying to climb it. Don’t look at me. I’m just shooting the natural action unfolding in front of me :p

Another photo from downtown – it was fun taking the kids with me downtown – they wanted to explore everything. I didn’t get to do much shopping though – it’s hard to do so with two kids who’d rather run around feely than sticking nicely next to their mom in the stores and like, just walk..sigh ;p We did get to drop by Eat my Muffin to grab a few take-away-cupcakes ♥

Right. Better get started on that ambitious cleaning-project. Wish me luck. I’ll totally need it. *cough*
I.Will.Emerge.Victorious.
Just gonna….find the right music to the project, and maybe eat a little “good-luck-cookie” before I start…or something like that…..

♥ ♥ ♥

Title: “Hallelujah” – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Another day, another layout :)

I started on this layout at Ellens birthday, aimlessly reworking the pictures around among the papers before suddenly knowing how I wanted it to look like (yay!) – a sort of clustered area with ruffled frame around the photos. The background-paper is an old winter-paper from Sassafras actually, while the rest is Fancy Pants Designs :)

The cloud and star die-cuts were from the old Splendid-collection. I love that collection and am sad that I’m running out of it here at home!! Notice the three drops at the star? Played some with glossy accent :)

I made it for the product-spotlight on My Family journaling-book. The journaling-page is from that book. I highlighted the heart w/glossy accent :p The spotty frame-paper is made from the 12x12 notebook from the Artistan collection by the way. The papers in that book are thinner, and thus much more suited for creating such plaids.The banner-paper and stickers are from the new collection, wishful thinking. It’s such a gorgeous, feminine collection. My niece has her very own scrapbook & stash, which my daughter got to play with when we were visiting her earlier this winter. I guess I should give her her own stash aswell, but……what if I need to use the stuff I give to her myself sooner or later!??? The horror! ;p 

I got a sweet & lovely surprise in the mail yesterday. Marie, also known as Banglamarie, knit this kitchen-towel (hmm, maybe not the correct word for it – it’s used to wash tables and stuff with, not dry – help me out here?) and mailed it to me. Such a thoughtful little gift – I adore it and well, I don’t really want to actually use it because…it’ll end up dirty and stuff! (even if it’s intended to :p)

Ps. If I had an iPhone…I’d totally play this game in Vigelandsparken, Oslo, this summer!! If you’re heading there & have an iPhone – try it out! It’s an interactive game for kids utilizing the whole park :)

Title: “Please don’t leave me” - Pink

When I saw this month’s challenge over at ScrappeHuset, I knew I just had to play along.

You see, the challenge was about being inspired by “Children and language” – and it’s a neverending inspiring theme – all from funny words the kids have been saying or pronouncing (“skrokostblanding”, “jeg har savnet deg” før noen har dratt i det hele tatt), or to me wanting the kids to speak properly (meaning, speaking “østlandsk” instead of “bergensk” :p), to my oldest wondering why there were only deaf people/people speaking in sign language in Oslo (my whole family is deaf, which means they get to meet a lot of deaf people every time we’re at home – and which gives them the impression there’s only deaf people in Oslo as opposed to where we live atm). Nevertheless (yes, I am listing the other options here so I won’t forget to scrap them too ;p). The thing I wanted to scrap the most was this.

“Wha!?! Can YOU play StarCraft!?” my oldest asked me (in disbelief – can you believe the nerve?) a few weeks ago, when we installed the SC2 beta and I informed him that uh, the two accounts were for me and his dad, not his dad and him. I coldly replied with “Duh hello, I’ve been playing that game WAY before YOU were born – so there!” (I remember the anticipation when SC was going to be released, in ‘98 I believe). I guess he was too little to have remembered me playing SC broodwars – I am fairly sure he was born when it was around, hmm (guess I need to doublecheck. Lazy atm!).. :p He’s been going through our old games every once in a while, like Diablo2, SC and WC3.

Guess this is sorta cute in a nerdy way. I found it slightly amusing, at least :p

Materials used: Cardstock, Hambly transparencies & rub-ons, old, old Heidi Swapp letters (I LOVE these but the darn dry adhesive on these is ugh to remove :p), KaiserCraft bling and 3d gluedots.

Ps! 3ndypapir has gotten a new design-team-member! Big welcome to Maya Stenshagen to the team!! She’s an amazing card- and altered art-maker – a wonderful addition to 3ndypapir :)

Ps2! Cami - I´ll see if I can find the blogpost where I found the tutorial on how to create the flower you asked for. If I can´t find it I´ll do one of my own, but - it´s not really my idea so I´ll try refind the original post for you soon :)

Title: “Oh! The divorces” – Tracey Thorn

Yesterdays Pencil-Lines #191 was sponsored by My Little Shoebox. I got to play with their cute “Lil’ Critter” kit :) I cannot take the whole credit for the title on this card – I needed a little help as to what to put on the card, and sweet Maren came with several suggestions… and my fave was this one ;p (inside the card: “…you’re so darn old now!” or something like that ;p

Another CD-card – this time made w/Fancy Pants summery, cool “Rusted Sun” collection. I made this one for their Rusted Sun-rubons-spotlight :)

These flowers are rub-ons – I just used them to create some embellishments. Thanks for looking and have a wonderful week ahead of you! :)

Title: “Black Hole Sun” - Soundgarden

Yesterday was a lovely day.
We celebrated Ellen’s birthday – look how lovely she decorated her place (although it looked amazing, I have to admit – I shed a few tears for the gorgeous papers she so ruthlessly cut to create this banner adorning her apartment ;) )

Here’s Eli, crocheting… seriously, pretty much all my scrappy friends have been bit by the knitting/crocheting bug, which I find….no fun at all! *sniff*

Maren slowly trying to comprehend (bwahah) Marie’s explanation on how to create this crochet-thingie.

Time for pressies..

..methinks she liked this… I made a mini from all of us girls instead of a card..she got that + giftcard to one of her fave stores.

The mini was made w/papers from 3ndypapir..you can see more images at their blog here.

We started the day with cupcakes ♥ Some people were more eager to start than others..;p

♥ this instaphoto..

Before eating, the hostess had to create a few guidelines….and uh, you don’t discuss with a lady with a knife ;p

Hummingbird-cupcake from Eat my Muffin. ♥ My fave! Pineapple & walnuts (I think)..and the frosting was to die for!

Then everybody were commanded to dig into the hostess’ scrapbook-products to create a minialbum-page for the birthdaychild, using the Fujifilm Instax mini camera the hostess had. Fun!

Here’s my page..I dug into her Sassafras, AC and Jillibean-stuff:)

Then we had homemade tapas. I’d love to share images of the amazing food Ellen prepared for us (she’s incredible when it comes to tapas!) – but… I kept getting *cough* certain *cough* (jækla linselus) people *cough* in front of the camera whenever I tried ;p

All in all, a lovely day & evening, fun and interesting discussions (TdF? Bwahha), the most amazing food, lovely drinks and way too much crocheting! ;p

Edited to add: Ellens blogpost about the birthday – in Norwegian :)

Title: “Funhouse” - Pink

My turn to host the Word it Wednesday over at Pink Paislee yesterday.
My chosen word was “time”.

The paper collection comes from Amber Road, one of Pink Paislee’s older releases. A lovely, perfect collection.

The envelope is handmade, decorated with newer PP releases.

Hand cut cherry blossom-tree from a sheet of patterned paper…Artistan swirl sprayed with glimmer-mist..

Decorative, black on black typography..

Otherwise. Been doing more writing at work and loving it, enjoying the experience and learning as I go. Taking photos and trying to write at the same time isn’t easy, though! I totally get why they love having a photographer (me!) with them! Read an amazing feature by a colleague and can’t wait for it to hit print for tomorrow. Trying out a new ICC-profile at work, which’s supposed to be the correct one (we’ve been working on uncalibrated screens for hm, well, at least two months now I think :p At least having calibrated screens should be better than what we’ve been working with until now, although stuff still looks somewhat wonky at the screen…). Am seriously nervous and hopeful at the same time re. the photos and how they’ll look in print because this Friday’s issue is a huge one. Busy working on meeting certain scrappy deadlines before this weekend. Looking forward to Saturday & an evening with wine, tapas (whee!!) & scrappy friends. Oh, and I learned that my daughter wants to be like me when she grows up, becoming a photographer & work at my workplace. She also wants to be like her father, playing badminton and working out (she hasn’t been with him at his work yet, while she has been with me to my work last week. She’s been with him to his practices though – which probably why she wants to be like him in that department). But not until she’s grown up, because it’s a bit difficult atm :p

Title: “Perfect day” – Lou Reed

I have to admit I get a bit nervous when there’s been a lot of posts with pictures, and little to no scrappy stuff here on my blog. Although it didn’t start out that way, scrapbooking have pretty much taken over my blog, and is – I assume – what most of the readers of this blog come here for. And – I do prefer to keep this blog mainly scraprelated (maybe I oughta do a separate blog for the photography? Hm).

Nevertheless.

Here’s some scrappy stuff I’ve been up to lately!

I hosted the Take Five Friday over at the Pink Paislee-blog last Friday.
Here I decided to use mainly the Starlight-collection to create a layout about our May 17th celebration (the National Day of Norway). You can read more about the products I used on the PP-blog (yes, I cheated a little bit. All the stickybackitems were counted as one ;p).

I love the Artisan Tape!! I used it to create a pleated border here. I love the look of this flower, but really – it’s a bit pain to make isn’t? It’s pretty quick, but my fingers always hurt a little bit…or is it just me!?

I was also featured at the Pink Paislee – blog recently, sharing images of my scrap-room (warning: It’s MESSY!!!!!! I’m a bit ambivalent there – I’d love for it to be tidy and stuff, and yet – I’m simply unable to keep it tidy – I just create a huge mess all the time when I scrap – and since I scrap pretty often – it’s an evil circle and feeble attempts at cleaning up is pretty much futile! Your supportive comments warm my heart though!)

I also made this little necklace for Fancy Pants’ spotlight on these metal-frames:

A quite quick & simple project :) 
Hmm think I’ve caught up on the scrappy front now.

:)

Title: “Images” – Bel Canto (one of the best concerts I’ve been to was a few years back at Verftet w/Bel Canto ♥ )

Well, I finished editing the photos – ended up with 171 which made it to editing – going to go through them once again and remove some duplicates I’m not too sure about in a bit.

Nevertheless – figured I’d share more of my favorites that I haven’t shared before. Embrace yourself, cuz there’s a sh*tload of piccies incoming ;p (I hate playing faves!)

Ps. Disclaimer. Somehow I feel that LiveWriter, which I am using to write these blogposts with, doesn’t really maintain the sharpness of the height-photos too well (which I’ve sharpened for web and stuff for display). Keep that in mind! *grumble*

Walking the aisle with dad…always a touching moment..

Getting hiked…fer reals! =)

I have a soft spot for such looks…gotta love weddings :)

Tried different stuff..best man and maid of honor in the background. Not quite sure if this one worked..? Looks somewhat cool though, these positions..hm..

I think they pulled off this pose pretty well! :)

(and lol – yeah – was pondering about the sign but weary about doing any major manipulating (guess it’s the press-photographer in me?) – but as more people pointed that out – I decided to try to see how I could fix it (WTB CS5!! I hear it’s amazing in that dep). Replaced the picture - does it look better now? I am no expert in cloning and stuff, but hope it looks professionally enough done that none will notice now :p)

It’s a classic isn’t? Including such huge trees in the background?

Oh yeah! Loved the geographic lines in the background here. I think this was the only time I used the external flash (although I think I should have used it more often around here because of the sun). Am going to attend a couple workshops about using external flash (yeah, once again :) ) soon – looking forward to these – it’s always useful learning new things & refreshing old stuff I’m not too comfortable with! (One for Canon, which I am using at work, and one for Nikon, which I am using privately (and used for these wedding-photos)).

What can I say? Such a beautiful bride ♥

Remember this picture? Decided to reedit it & crop it tighter. I think this one is a much better version. The old/other picture can be found here.

Look at me ma, I can jump! =)

MMm strawberries & sparkling drinks!

Lovely laugher all around..

…and touching speeches..

Mmm another ring-shot.. ..and once more! (although I should have put these on the weathered wood or the rocks outside, instead of this pillow…think these would have given me much more interesting backgrounds..nrgh)

Someone’s looking forward to the cake methinks.

Ooh..the first dance..

♥♥♥

Ps. Thank you so much for all the encouragement & advices/tip in the previous post. I will surely keep these with me (maybe I should make myself a little wedding-notebook for such stuff? hm!) for the next wedding! :) I already got several wonderful ideas I am hoping to get around to try out… :)