Project Life | Week two

It's already Wednesday, and such a buzy few days, but you'll hear all about it next week! Here is my lay-outs for week two, quite a full week as well:

The picture was created by my eldest, after he asked what Project Life is all about, and I explained him a bit. He then wanted to know if he could help, and I said "Yes you can!". The little "instax" photo with frame around was made digitally from a normal photo. I used a photo frame called "Instax Frame" by Gina Cabrera, but saved it in such a way that I'm not sure where I found it, the case with a lot of my digital stuff.

I found a link to this questionare on Ali's PL blog. Download the New Years interview here. The arrow strip is cut from the Turquoise kit's paper.

Oh, by the way, our first language is actually not English. (Therefore please be patient with my blogging!) We speak Afrikaans at home, one of the many official languages in South Africa (I think there's 16). So, if any sentence pops up that doesn't make any sense, it's probably in Afrikaans! I've decided way back when I started scrapbooking, to use English on my pages, for a few reasons, such as that it would be more accessible, say for potentially English speaking friends and generations to come. A lot of digital stuff is also available only in English off course. But I love my own language, it's warm and passionate, earthy and intimate. It says things in a way that doesn't come out the same in any other tounge. I think I will still scrap some pages in Afrikaans.

This page contains a handout from the Planetarium we visited on Saturday. I'm planning to add a strip with Ali Edwards' "Title and journal overlay" from Designer Digitals at the bottom, telling the story of the trip, and hiding the outdated date on there.

I then added in an extra pageprotector- the 3 down 4x6 page protectors from Becky Higgins. I included a postcard with the Southern (as in Hemisphere) skies.

I know that that photo at the top left is just going to get funnier every time we see it. My boys on a frog walk. I did another "instax" photo for the journaling card (I cut it from the Turquoise paper kit). I was sorry to see that the numbers included in the kit only goes up to ten instead of 31. I suppose that you can put two circles together, but I'd prefer the number on one sticker. I think I'll just start adding them digitally.

And that's week two! Thank You for stopping by...

The Monkey sanctuary.

South African schools are currently coming towards the end of an approximately 6 week break. One of our treat outings for the holiday was a daytrip to a nearby Monkey Sanctuary. It's about 20 mins drive from Jo'burg, near Hartebeespoort Dam. When we lived in Durban, we were quite used to wild monkeys coming into the homes, stealing fruit. Here in Joburg it's been a while since we saw any.

The monkeys at the sanctuary all live in an enclosed area of lush rainforest-like vegetation. Tours of about an hour each are then taken through the area. You get to see the monkeys really up close. They have all been "human imprinted", i.e. they have lived with humans. Apparently people import them as babies, mostly from South America. Once they grow older, and sometimes more aggressive, they are then brought to the sanctuary.

Some of them adapt well to the wilder environment, and others not so well. There was a twosome that stole some-one's waterbottle right out of his pocket, to everyone's amusement.

One of the water "thieves" then decided to ride along on one of the ladies' head & shoulders. There was no way he was getting off. Another monkey, who was acting very aggressively towards the others was apparently found abandoned by his owners who emigrated to Cuba.

But there are some happy stories too, like the mothers we saw with little ones. Isn't that one too cute! They said that the tell tale sign that the monkeys have adapted well is when they start breeding. I would have uploaded a lot more photo's, but it is taking extremely long. I'm hoping to do a digital lay-out and then I'll upload that at some stage. It was a great outing, I just wished we could have had more time to just enjoy the forest at leisure. It reminded me a lot of Durban's coastal forests.

Project Life | Week One

Did I mention that I love working with the paper kit? LOVE! I'm keeping January's pages very light & summery, since it IS summer here. Blues and greens are the colours I go for right now, and this is the Turqoise kit after all!

I'm still waiting for a date stamp to fill in the dates. The "start here" was cut from "Circa 1934 Borders" patterned paper by Cosmo Cricket. The half circle (far right, middle row), was cut from the paper that comes with the kit. I wasn't planning on getting the paper, but it was going to come with the PL kit. When the full kit wasn't available, my husband accidently still ordered the paperpack. But I'm starting to see that the paper might be handy...I also used it to extend the balloon photo that was printed too small by the printers.

"Summer" word-art is a freebie from Karla Dudley. The black "PhotographyFrames" was a digital freebie from Joanne Brisebois.

Just a collage of some close-ups. Since my digital album last year didn't really have any embellishments, mostly just words & photo's, I'm still quite focussed on photo's. That might or might not change during this project. At the moment I defnitely have more photo's than pockets!

"Flourish" is my one little word (Ali Edwards inspired) for the year. With that I quoted Isaih 54:10.

"Father, You never change, Your love for me always remains the same. The mountains may move and the hills dissapear, but even then Your faithful love for me will remain. Your covenant of blessing will never be broken. In you I relax, in You I am safe, in You I am free to blossom into all You have planned for me! I become complete."

Project Life 2012 | Title page.

I am so excited to be at the place where I'm sharing my PL title page! To be up and running with the project. This is my 1st year of doing the Becky Higgins PL kit. I have done two years of Digital Project life-ing and LOVED it. And then just had to have a paper kit to work with and add in bits and pieces of life. Sooo, since I live in South Africa, that meant ordering the kit via Canada and paying about just as much for the shipping as for the product. A lot of waiting for the exchange rate to be optimal. Then hearing the full kit is no longer available. Ordering the core kit from one place, the album cover from another. Still waiting for the album to arrive, but SO happy to have stuff to work with in my hands.

I decided on the Turqoise kit, and hope to work my way through most of them in years to come. Just love all the numbers and text in this kit, and since we will be starting school this year, it felt very appropriate.

I'm talking too much. Here is the cover page:

(the layout idea was inspired by the great page Mary-Ann Perry did here).

I took some photos at a previous outing but they didn't turn out wonderful. On the last day of 2011 we took a quick trip to the Botanical Gardens. The weather looked ominous, but held out. It was quiet enough to put my camera on self timer, and leave it on the ground, to have the group photo's taken. I really just took a few, and I was happy with all of them. Fervent prayer works!

Just a close-up: I did our surname and added some tiny text stickers from Cosmo Cricket. I also added a text sticker to each one of the group photo's. I'm still finding my feet with the paper scrapping again as I have scrapped mostly Digital for about three years now. It's a different approach. But this project is making me very happy!

Project Life| Wrapping up December 2011

Hi, I'm already so into my BH paper Project Life for 2012. But I just want to share the last of last year's digital Project Life. Here is December's pages:
5-11December (on white paper):

I love it that we live in a neighbourhood that cares enough to actually have parents club in and organize a Santa Claus (our neighbour) to deliver gifts.

12 - 18 December 2011:

19-25 December 2011:

And finally 26 December 2011 - 1 January 2012:

The paper in the middle is from a pack called "Evidence" by Ali, available from Designer Digitals.

The photo on the left was taken by my 6 year old. I cropped it a bit and played with the colour, lightening & yellowing it and adding contrast. I quite like this effect.

That's it. Thanks for looking! Like everyone else who's fallen in love with Project Life, I can only try to express how much this album means to me. The weekly process and the end result. Looking back at my 2010 album, I would also say that it becomes even more precious over time. If you are not up to get the kit yet, and just want to see if you'll keep up with the photo taking, I can really recommend the digital route. My experience was that I often had to choose between photo's for the day instead of not having enough photo's, but that's just me! I just love how one start seeing/noticing things because of PL. How much more you are open to "cultivating a good life" (in the words of Becky Higgins) because you are recording it. And how good it feels to know that your memories are getting recorded. As long as you also make sure that you live those moments!

Project Life| Nov 2011.

A very Happy New Year to all my readers, if there are any out there! Very exciting to see that someone I don't know from Europe is now reading my blog! May the year bring you good things!

Christmas & New Year was restful and quiet. We had a fish braai on the 1st, which is becoming a New Year's tradition for us. My Christmas present was a Becky Higgins' Turqoise Project Life kit and it has me so excited! Today, however, I just want to share the last of my PL 2011 pages:

Here is 21-27 November 2011:

This is actually two photo's that was merged to get the best expression on each of their faces.

Some highlights of this week is a photo I received e-mailed from Reuben's Leggo class. Ordering Project Life (the photo is from Becky's blog). And a Cookie exchange we had at Women's group. Oh, and the BIGGEST highlight was that my husband signed a new work contract. We were planning for next year in faith, but the contract was a big exhale for us. The bonus is that he now works SO close from home (5 min drive) and has Friday afternoons off! With the shorter drive and finishing earlier he also has about one and a half hours extra time with us on a daily basis. LOVE that!

Here is 28 Nov - 4 December 2011:

This photo sits on white paper, not visible on the white screen. The little bird is something I made at a Year- end craft session we had at Women's group. Thouroughly loved to craft with friends. I'm concidering adding some text to this page, will see before I have the album printed...

Once again on white paper. Some of the December Daily photo's re-appear here. That's ok, I don't think we'll ever sit and compare the two albums. Looks like I left out the day of the week on each photo here, will fix that.

Shall we take a look at PL: December at another time? I think so.