Disneyland Layouts and the Apples don't fall too far from the tree!

Having been back from the USA for a while now, I was pretty eager to get some layouts completed to put into the girl's scrapbooks. I will do a photo book for the whole family (which sometimes takes 6-12 months to complete!).

First cab off the rank is Disneyland of course. Disneyland was good, but it wasn't our favourite theme park.

I think they need to replace some of their rides, and renovate others.

We went to Disneyland on our very first day there - a Saturday, and then followed it up with another visit on the Wednesday. We went on the Saturday as we couldn't check into our hotel until later in the day, and Disney was a 15 minute walk down the road. Worse case scenario, we figured if we were too tired we could sit at a cafe or something!

Saturday, as you can imagine, is busy at Disneyland - the waiting time in lines is anywhere from about 40 minutes to 90 minutes. One of the reasons it wasn't our favourite was because unlike the other theme parks there was often no shade over the lines, so you are waiting in the sun. Also, every ride we attempted on the Saturday broke down and had to be "reset" and "tested". So very frustrating! As a result we only did two of three rides we lined up for that day. They actually turned people away from the Haunted Mansion ride after we had waited in line for about an hour :-(

The Wednesday visit was a lot better, as school had returned in the US. Waiting times were only 5 to 15 minutes - and no wait in some cases, so we did Space, Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones a couple of times. By the time we had done two days at Disney we had managed to hit all the big rides:

• Space Mountain
• Splash Mountain
• Matterhorn Bob Sleds
• Thunder Mountain Railroad
• Indiana Jones Adventure
• Pirates of the Caribbean

Eliza did a couple of extra rides in lieu of not redoing some of the rides, so she also got to experience the Dumbo Ride (she loves Elephants), Autopia and the Finding Nemo Submarine adventure (which personally made me feel sick!)

Anyway - here are the layouts so far, I am still working on Eliza's double page layout.

Jasmin's Disney single title page:

Eliza's Disney single title page (as you can see the pictures are the same, slightly different designs):

Jasmin's Double Page Disney Layout. I made my own labels using MS Word, used a circle diecut and then made little Mickey faces in them. I also painted the Mickey faces using watercolours and cut them out to include on the layout.

I love doing the occasional bit of art when I have the time - lately it's been doing the occasional bit of watercolour. The apples don't fall far from the tree, I am always happy when the girls get their art gear out and create their own little masterpieces as well.

This week they were watching a lady on YouTube who is an excellent artist, she did a lesson on how to do yourself as an Adventure Time character. If you haven't seen Adventure Time, all the characters have long limbs, large heads and four fingers on each hand. The girls loved the video, so did themselves as Adventure Time characters.

This is Eliza's drawing of herself. I love how she has drawn a rockstar version of herself, complete with guitar!

This is Jasmin's drawing of herself. I love how she drew herself in one of her favourite things to wear - leggings with demin shorts over the top, and her Run Wild tank top. I also love the variation in colours for her hair and the shirt!

When the girls have assignments to do, they also normally pick something artistic to do, or add an artistic twist to the assignment. For the first half of the term Eliza worked on an assignment which involved documenting a holiday for the three Year 4 teachers. They were given a budget of $5,000 and had to outline how they spent the budget including travel, accommodation, entertainment and food. They also had to provide supporting materials. It was a mathematics assignment.

For the second half of this term, Eliza has to create a souvenir for the location they have traveled to, which would be suitable to bring back as a souvenir for the students. They have to create the souvenir and also show how much it would cost to produce the souvenir for their class. So Eliza has decided to do a place mat of one of the places she sent the teachers- Sea World. For her place mat she has drawn some sea animals which Dave has scanned into the computer, and we have shrunk so that she can colour and include them on her place mat.

Here are three of the five pictures she drew:

 I especially like the dolphin!

Well - that's it for today, I'll be back with another food post probably tomorrow!
Di :-)

Documenting our lives 2015 #1

It's been a while since I have posted anything scrapbook related.Yes, I am still scrapbooking, just not as fast as I used to. There always seems to be something more important to do - eg. paying bills and cooking meals - not to say that scrapbooking and project life are not important, they are.

This week one of my layouts was featured on the new Big Picture Classes blog. A US website established by long time scrapbooker, Stacy Julian. The site has been around for a while, but recently it got a revamp, they teamed with a distributor in the US, and they have moved to a subscription based model. You pay $10 a month, and you can do as many classes as you want, over a range of topics including Scrapbooking, Photography, Digital, Art Journal and Mixed Media, Cards, Mini Books and DIY. I rather like this model, as I can do as many courses as I want, when I want. Keeps me inspired.

Anyway, here is the layout that was featured, and if you want to see the write up, click here. The idea of this layout was to complete it in less than 30 minutes - just what I need at the moment!

Here are some more layouts I have completed over the last couple of months:

The following layout was also part of the 30 minute layout class. The idea was to use a technique you do not often use, and complete the layout in 30 minutes. I chose to use my mists like water colour and emboss some stamped fish on this layout. The layout is of Jasmin representing her school at the AIS in the Northside Swimming Championships.

Another layout from the 30 minute class. The challenge for this one was to just use a lot of bits and bobs. I went back to 2013 to document one of our trips down the coast with friends to put in Jasmin's albums. I have a few layouts in her albums of when she was younger (baby/toddler) and our trips down the coast with friends, so wanted to include this one - where she is a bit older so that she could see that the tradition continued.

This layout was from a rainbow course. Yes - you use the colours of the rainbow to scrapbook some layouts. One of the lessons involved stamping on to rainbow coloured papers. I thought it rather fitting for documenting Eliza's hair on Crazy Hair day at school.

Another Rainbow course layout. This one used the rainbow colours with a circle template and water colours (I pulled out my mists instead - I have a much bigger selection of mist colours than water colour paints!), to which embellishments of the matching rainbow colours were added. Once again - I decided to take the rainbow theme and quote Jasmin who has often said to me - "I hope Eliza dreams about Rainbows and Unicorns tonight Mum!".



You might of guessed already, that the following layout also was from the Rainbow class. I simply used the colours of the rainbow to create Polaroid frames for some pictures of a fruit picking day. - I tried where possible to match the frame to a colour in the photograph.



One of the lessons in the rainbow class also covered using the colours of the rainbow on a Project Life layout. Yes, I am still doing Project Life. I'm often two - three weeks behind, but it's all good. I'm still enjoying documenting our lives in this way. So here is a rainbow version of a Project Life layout:



The following layout was from one of Jen Gallagher's classes. She features tools and products, so that you can use some of your stash. In this particular lesson she covered using paper pads and punches, I used the techniques to complete a layout for Eliza's album of her 9th birthday.

This next one is from a journalling class. This particular lesson was about writing for your target audience. In this case it is a layout for Jasmin's album about this year's school camp - so the target audience was Jasmin.  When she got back from school camp she told me in some detail all about it, so I decided to write the journalling as if she had written it.

I also made these card fronts as part of a watercolour card course. All I have to do is stick them on to the front of a card, as I need.

This next one was from Jen Gallagher's class - this time on using ribbon and rub-ons. I haven't used either of these materials in a while, so it was nice to pull out the stash and use a couple of items.

 

The next couple are monthly summary pages for my Project Life album:

Till next time!
Di :-)

Layout Share

Five layouts to share today, completed over the last three weeks. These are all layouts to go in Jasmin's album, of her in New Zealand at the beginning of last year.

This first one contains pictures from our stay in Rotorua, including the Wai-o-Tapu thermal wonderland, Lady Knox Geyser, Mitai Moari Village and Hell's Gate.

After Rotorua we drove to Wellington, stopping at the Huka Falls, Lake Taupo, and the Craters of the Moon on the way.  We also stopped several times to take pictures of Mt Ruapehu.

After we crossed the Cook Strait we stayed at Picton, and visited the Marlborough region and it's famous wineries.

The Marlborough Sounds were spectacular - we drove Queen Charlotte's Drive from Havelock to Picton and saw the Pelorus and Queen Charlotte's Sounds.



Jumped forward a bit to do the layout for the Moeraki Boulders which we saw on our last day driving up from Dunedin to Christchurch.

Now to finish all the other layouts, hopefully over the next couple of weeks.

Di :-)

Scrapbook Layouts - Eliza in New Zealand

On the Easter Long Weekend, we had a wonderful four days at Long Beach with our friends (I will post some pictures of the quaint house we stayed at a little later on). I also took some scrapbooking with me, and managed to get through it all. My aim was to finish some New Zealand pages to go in Eliza's albums. I create a photo book for each holiday that we go on, but I also like to add some pages to the girl's albums which focus on pictures of them doing different activities in the holiday location. I had previously finished the Auckland and one other page, but have also included them here for completeness.

So here they all are (in order of the holiday locations):

 

Next job will be to complete the pages in Jasmin's album!

All partied out!

The last of the September birthday's are now over - what a couple of weeks it has been. I think we have all OD'ed on sweets and cakes!

Eliza had her birthday party the previous weekend - although it was a bit cold on the Saturday, the jumping castle was fantastic the kids had such a great time bouncing on it. Inside the castle was a hippo's mouth which would stay open for a minute, and then when it closed it raised the kids in the mouth up to the slide level so they could slide down the slide. I wish I was small enough to go on it too!



I laboured over Eliza's birthday cake the previous day - I think it was worth it. I'm not much of a cake maker (probably because I don't really like cake), but I do try and make the effort to make the girls birthday cake each year.


Eliza hates to get her hands dirty - so she found a way to eat cake without having to touch it:

This weekend just passed we had Annie's birthday in Goulburn - she turned two:


When it got to singing happy birthday, she got a little overwhelmed!

Last but not least Cam, my nephew turned 13.

The girls had a great time. It was such a lovely day they got to play outside for a while. I love this picture of Cam, Dan and Jas looking for bugs through the trampoline.

Here is Eliza with Cam, she's taken to calling him her "Love Boy" - I think she thinks she can marry him one day - I've tried to explain that she can't marry her cousin, but it just falls on deaf ears.

I love this picture of Dan and Jas together as well - they get on so well together:

I've packed up my scrappin room (the rumpus room), at the moment, so I haven't done a lot of scrapbooking - except for a couple of work layouts I had to do, to use the Magic Scraps Designer Flair pieces:




On the reading front I've finished my 38th book - Mockingjay - the third Hunger Games book. It wasn't as good as the first two books, but it was still a good read.