Friday, January 27, 2012

Layout Inspiration

I love seeing layouts made from the templates, it's amazing how they are transformed into unique layouts in each one's own style. I have been 'collecting' a lot of these layouts that have been shared with me,  love to share some major inspirations!

Thank you to all the ladies for sharing, sorry I held onto to some of them for so long! :P

(Reply to comment on my last post, hsmom asked which app my dh uses on his android phoe to capture    his 365 phosos: The android app my dh uses is 365 photos - it does not present the view as well as my iphone app, but it's functional in terms of capturing the photo, tracking them by days on calendar, and being able to export for my scrapping use, so good enough!)

First up, a lovely scene of gift-giving by Anja Breuer
Here is an  amazing scene from the Netherlands, Grid Doerenkamp shares the story behind it: 
 In our village we started a new tradition last year: a crib-walk. Lots of families put a christmas crib outside their house or in the window. Some dedicated women put them all together on a list and made a nice route to walk past each of them. Last year we did three days with each  a two-hour-walk over the whole route! This year there will be even more cribs to be seen, ca. 130 families participate - us included, of course!  It's fun to see how different the cribs all are. Some are big, some tiny, some have only three figures and a cabin, some show a whole landscape with mountains and houses and even a train, some are made with dolls and some with Playmobil. It's really nice to see and I have photographed them all. Some of them are seen on my layout. The village in the background is our village where we live.
And the following are just so cute layouts by Kim, who also did the fabulous LOVE layout which I posted in last year's post here. Love the photos of her kids and how her layout focuses on them!

Karen Mathre does an amazing amount of layouts all the time of her family and so much that they do together:

and this sweetie-pie layout and the yummy one next are both by Marlyn Ramirez from the Philippines!
And here are some amazing layouts by Michelle Rice of her a Round the World trip via Russia, Mongolia and China!


Here's a cute 'scary' layout by Aimee Hernandez
Next is this lovely happy layout by Kathryn :)
And be charmed by this vacation layout by 'Be Charmed Photography'!
And then there are the always awesome layouts with awesome photos from Tawn  @Homemakin' Girl



Thank you to all you wonderful ladies for sharing these layouts with us!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Project 365 + Project Life!

First I would like to wish all who celebrate the Lunar New Year a Blessed Lunar New Year!! We are in the midst of  hectic and wonderful celebrating with family and friends and having a great time meeting especially our extended family, including my cousins, their children and grandchildren!

Yes! After a few months enjoying Ali Edwards' Project Life pages and camping at Becky Higgins blog for the last few weeks, deliberating how I will go about it, I have jumped in onto Project Life, and am loving it!

When I finally made the decision in the first week of Jan, I went straight into Amazon, bought the Turquoise edition, the orange Clementine binder, and photo pockets B & F because everything else was out of stock, and I WANT to get started! Then I had to pay an incredible (Shhh!) amount of shipping for it to be shipped to Singapore. Last week just before my stuff arrived, I realised that Project Life is available in Singapore (silly me!) and ran down to Scraplicious to purchase photo pockets A and the 12X12 pockets, and I was all set! 

And here's my Cover page - scraplifting from Jennifer Woodbury's page featured on Becky's blog.
I was very happy to include our family's favorite verse Micah 6:8, using the word art I made for our living room! Also used the curvy outlined label from 'I like you' by Lauren Grier (recolored) used twice below - printed, cut out and adhered onto the Project Life cards.
Project Life Title Page
I love that we can include physical memorabilia in PL, which I miss in making digital albums, scanning them is not quite the same.
And remember these pages from my Project 365 in 2009? We love that album for capturing everyday life!
Now I only want one album for the year, and it must all be do-able, tell our stories of our 2012 without too much time and cost .... putting all of these desires together, after much deliberation, this is my plan for my 2012 Project Life album:
  • capture daily 365 photos  in fortnightly 12x12digital  layouts to be printed out and slot into Project Life Binder
  • print 3x4 or 4x6 of the everyday life photos that I want to give special mention + journal on the PL journal cards, and slot into the photo pockets 
  • include memorabilia using the photo pockets 
  • add 12x12 digital layouts for special events or memories as I feel like it 
Here's my first fortnight's Photo 365 layout - I love how it turned out :) I think I will be able to keep this up !

Credits: Background paper from Digital Design Essentials, camera stamp by Listgirl, date word art by Lauren Reid, corners by Lauren Grier, and alpha by Lili  + Yin Template 290 B.

Have made eight of such 12x12 templates, they contain 15 or 16 photos each, to make up a month, I will be  keeping the embellishment minimal so they don't take too much time, and focus on the photos and journalling- the set is available in the store in case you are interested in joining me in the fortnightly layouts - we will complete the year in 24 layouts, how's that?
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Thanks to Steph's article on Project 365 on The Daily Digi, I found and downloaded an App that is really helping me keep up with P365, using my iphone to take and keep track of the daily photos. This is the one I use: PROJECT 365 but they all work quite similarly. Here's my month's photos so far in calendar view:
It's working so well I've persuaded dh and the boys to download the android equivalent so they too can take photos from their point of view, and be incorporated in our family's 365 layouts!

I also hope to use our Project Life album to capture and be our family journal for reflections, family devotions, prayers and anything else that speaks to us as a family. On the first of January, we spent a bit of time talking about our One Little Word (we did it last year too but I failed to capture it on a layout). I printed out four copies of the word list from Ali's blog and each of us had a highlighter pen to circle the word(s) that speak to us. Now I'm able to incorporate them into our PL album!! I love that with PL, we can be a lot more up to date with capturing the everyday and the now, and can flip through them as the year progresses. I hope this will be meaningful for the whole family.
And finally, I am in the midst of finishing up our 2011 album, there are probably about 10 more layouts to go, and these are two of them, just quick and simple layouts, templates are being shared below.
These are now available as part of Template Pack 7 in the store. Thanks for your interest!

 Do share how you plan to capture 2012 memories, and if you have layouts to share, email them to me at yindgs at yahoo dot com dot sg, I will choose some to post on my blog. Thank you so much!