Capturing Emerging Style

It seems I only manage one post a month these days, can't be helped, by the time I complete my PL digital and physical pages, and have some templates ready, everything i want comes together in one giant post, like this one is going to be!

First, a daily life noteworthy account that made its way to my PL:
I always tell my friends my sons do not care any bit about what they wear or how they look. They are quite the typical geek! But one day recently we were just chatting and I found to my glee and surprise, they have begun to have an opinion of their clothes :D

J    : Mom, please stop buying us those T-shirts that have words or pictures on them

R   : Yeah, I don't like them anymore, I can't believe I used to wear that 'monkey' print T for the longest time!

Me: Oh, why?

R : They send a message... Some stripes are okay, but no words please!
J  : That's right, plain shirts are best, they are 'blank', they don't say anything about you!

Aren't their ideas cool? I love their 'sense' of style, after all, it's their personal view of how they want their clothes to look, they want to remain anonymous or mysterious(?) I'm impressed! Besides, I too don't like anything with patterns, all my clothes are in solid colors, though I don't mind interesting prints for T-shirts. They take after me halfways, hehe!

I thought this is a wonderful piece of Story for our family Project Life, so I quickly took some photos of their shirts and made these Yes and No PL inserts. Super fun!

By the way, as an afterthought, Ryan remembered that there are websites where his friends have customised and ordered their own Ts and both of them made a mental note to visit the sites. I can't wait to see what they would make to wear (that says something about them)!!

Project Life (digital 365 pages)
In early September DH and I both attended our respective work place annual Dinner & Dance - both were themed, mine was 'rock star' and his was 'Retro', we tried our best to dress the part, but were probably far from it, haha, it was fun anyway. During the month we also bought two new cute goldfishes for our tank - they are J's favorites, these are our third pair, unfortunately they are not very hardy :(

(Credits: background paper by Chelle's Creation - ladybug, sprinkles by Elise Hansen, arrows and 365 days from Lauren Grier, word tags and paper cuttings from The Daily Digi's Good Life. Alpha by Kaye Winiecki)

In the second half of the month, there was no special highlight unless you count 4 visits to the dentist between dh and I as that. ouch! We still have all our teeth and they are all fixed now, so that count as good! Mario Kart is now our daily family time staple, it calms us all down for an exciting match up!

(credits: Background paper and arrows by Just Jaimee from Take My Picture, Alpha by MHK, word bubble by Designer Digital Essentials, grateful by Megan Turnridge, 'This is our life' from J Barrette's Everydaymoments, 'love lives here' by S Gleason.)

Project Life (physical)
I have four pages of PL for September. I will only show three of them here as the other has lots of photos of our colleagues at our dinners and I don't have permission to post them here.
One of the highlights of September was when we went to the Red Dot Museum by special request of Jared - the boys love the display of award winning innovative inventions / ideas there.

Ryan has spinal Scolosis (thank God it is not too bad so no treatment necessary), I spent some time one morning bringing him for his checkup - and the doctor was telling me about his growth spurts, I asked how she could tell and she duly printed out his Height Chart from birth till now!!! Amazing! Since birth, we had brought him to our polyclinic for baby checkups then later when he was in school, the health service checks them every year and I can't believe they have all those yearly records in their system!! The scrapbooker in me is thrilled!!

Jared wrote a 'Ghost Memoir' of his father's experience for his language class and it was brilliant. In it goes into the PL :)

Don't worry we are not Nazi sympathisers - Ryan had to do this History project and his classmates and him had great fun creating these 'artefacts' and making a video about WWII Germany.

Vietnam Layouts
These are the last of our Vietnam trip layouts!! I've continued to do the entire album in the Large photo + small photos layout style and it's worked out just great!

On our last day in Hanoi we visited the Ethnology Museum and they moved and reconstructed on the grounds authentic original homes from various regions - we could explore all of them - it was lovely.

Here we are on the insides of the Museum. The various ethnic costumes were a highlight. I was especially impressed by the write-ups of peoples of various ethnic origins, and how they have spread out over various Asian regions, distinct and unique, yet sharing the vast lands. Fascinating how they traced the origins mainly through language patterns, wow!

After the museum, we visited this neighbourhood where a B52 had crashed during the Vietnam War - it was still there half submerged in a pond! There was a plague but otherwise it went unnoticed by the scores of people going about their daily business in the neighbourhood. Thankfully the pilots apparently parachuted to safety. After this last stop we went straight to the airport!

Here were some shots from the trip that were just us spending lovely time together, that did not get captured in any of the earlier layouts.

And one more layout to capture the amazing, bustling, unbelievable Street Scenes.

Titles and Alphas
Denise wrote me recently to ask about the fonts I used on titles in my layouts and I would like to share some ideas.
It is obvious I put tonnes of photos on each layout, and embellish very little. But the one thing I always do is to give the layout a great title (as HUGE as possible for maximum impact)!
Title Tip
I would like to share a simple tip about how I usually create titles:
Alpha + font = Interesting Title
I almost always does this, it's so easy! Part of my title will be using typed fonts, and the other part with Alpha. And I will choose or color the alpha to pick up on a color in the layout I want to highlight.

And to share some of my current favourite alphas (used in layouts above and in recent layouts)

Karah Fredricks' awesome sauce alpha will instantly liven up any page - she has other sets and colors in her store too

Kaye Winiecki is one of my all time favorite alpha designer (her kits are super charming too!)

This chalked alpha by Kim Jensen is very interestingly textured!

Designs by Lili have wonderfully pretty alphas as well!

MHK's Fall Alpha is in an unusual font, lovely!

Other alphas used in above layouts:
The black alpha for 'B52' is from Christina Renee's Flocked alpha
The alpha for 'Ethnology' is by Megan Turnidge in her Autumn Splendour kit in The Digi Files 46
The alpha for 'Architectural' is by Heather Roselli from her Miles of Smiles kit in The Digi Files 46
The red alpha for 'Happy' is from Pamela Donnis' Be Mine kit

And finally, a last Vietnam layout capturing the kid's drawings during a lunch at a cute cafe. They lined the table tops with large white (mahjong) paper, and give every table crayons - the boys went at it - so fun!

And the template for it.

This template is now available as Template Pack 9 in the Store. Thanks for your interest!

 I would love to hear your feedback on these Large photo + smaller photos templates if you have any, thank you! Oh, and I am going to start a Yin Designs Newsletter - sign up at the top right of the side bar to receive updates of new templates, freebies and sales. THANK YOU!