Picture Day 2009

Hello and welcome back!  So it's Monday morning and I'm *not* at work - long live the sports break!  I've been enjoying my time off catching myself up on some embroidery work (I'll share that later in the week) and yesterday I finally dug into the *huge* tower of new photos and scrapbooking goodies so you can expect some regular updates and posts here throughout the week.

However, I've had this UFO from my series of class photos sitting on my scrapping board from around the end of November or start of December.  Now, you have to understand, when it comes to scrapbooking, I pretty much never leave a LO unfinished once started (completely the opposite of my quilting, it seems...)  So clearly, that needed attention first.

Picture Day 2009

In my last 2Peas order, I picked up Chic Tags' new paper line and absolutely fell in love with this bright, bold diagonal stripe paper.  I had been struggling with getting all the embellishments to work on the shelf design but with a fresh set of eyes, I decided to go in a slightly different direction and as is often the case, it worked much better.

The pinwheel I made myself and this LO features a wood veneer camera for the running camera motif in this series.  Some little leftover bits and bobs worked in here, too.

Glammed up the title with some gorgeous turquoise glitter Thickers - I just love these and their larger size works really well with photo enlargements.  I didn't have any letter 'u's left so I snipped apart a 'w', which worked for both the 'u' and the 'r' - how awesome is that?!  Love that little OA 'look' brad, too.

And speaking of brads, I decided it was high time to really start using up some stash and used a whole bunch of OA Travel Girl and MME Notable brads, mixing and matching them together with the clusters.

So with this LO completed, I'm close to being finished this school photo series.  I have one more class photo from years ago, for which I'm struggling to find a good paper combination as despite being a professional job and printing, the colour levels aren't great and there's a slight green weight dulling them and making them look 'bleh'.  Then I need to rescan this academic year's class photo, as I didn't seem to email it to myself and now haven't a clue where I've saved it.  I've also been thinking I should see if I can find a copy of my first class photo from work when I started out as a personal teaching assistant - might have to call in the colleague cavalry for that one.  Still debating on the staff photos...

In any event, I'll be switching things up for a bit as I get to work scrapping Christmas photos from 2013 and I even have a touching Valentine's historical LO I'm piecing together in my head and may actually get done later today.

Stay tuned!

Picture Day 2010

Hello again, everyone!  So this afternoon at work was field trip day - two hours of skating at the local arena, reliving my youth spent figure skating and coaching 7 and 8-year-olds how to skate.  We had a blast but boy did we come back tuckered out.  I can safely say that I will be curling up extra early in bed tonight once this post is published!  And of course I will need to snag some of the photos the parents took today to scrap later on.

But today we're back to my current series of class photos through the years.  This time it's my class from three years ago, covering academic year 2010-2011.

Picture Day 2010

I decided to return to the Fancy Pants Down by the Shore collection for my background paper; a yellowish/green, blue and white stripe.  I really like how bright and cheery the tropical papers in this collection are and they work really well for children's-themed LOs.  I added in some MME Oxford Lane paper for a photo matte and a Carta Bella Hello Again journaling card and that cute paper chain people border.  Carrying on the camera motif, I decided to use this awesome camera washi tape from Webster's Pages.

I decided to stack up all of the different borders I had pulled, which gave me space to layer the journaling card on the bottom of the page - a nice change from putting it on top again.  I also decided to take advantage of all that white space at the top of the photo and put the title there and bring the embellishment cluster down into the photo - keeping things tight helps to maintain the focus on the photo and leave some breathing room around the sides.

Also related to the camera motif, I added in some View Master reels.  This embellishment cluster combines some washi tape, stickers, spray mist and a scrap of yellow paper I didn't use on a preview project (don't you just love when that happens?).  I also used one of the Hello Again papers - the black sheet with the funky white text.  I cut out some of the words that I felt related to school and sprinkled them in with the embellishments.

And here is my journaling card with stats.  Some more sprinkled words and View Master Slide, washi tape, spray mist and coloured paper clips.  Having recently watched one of Corrie Jones' videos where she used feather accents on a LO, I was inspired to do likewise so I pulled these out from my Studio Calico Sundrifter pack and I really like the effect - a bit elegant but still having a playful element.

This week I also finally got around to scanning my current year's class photo and also the staff photo so I'll be adding those to my next photo order to round out the series.

Picture Day 2008

So you may remember that over the summer my LSS hosted a scrapbook LO contest.  I entered three of my pages but sadly I was the only contestant!  The up-side, of course, was that I also turned out to be the winner, albeit by default.  Anyway, it's taken me about two months - perhaps more - but I finally managed to get down to the shop to pick up my prize pack:

A mini-kit called 'Paris' by a small (unknown to me) manufacturer name Vive Gade (I think).  The black, white and grey-themed kit contained:

• 6 double-sided papers
• 2 washi tapes (one is Christmas-themed)
• 3 designer ribbons
• 3 wooden heart embellishments

While not all of the designs are really my style, I definitely do need more black, white and grey paper in particular so this worked out well.

So as you would expect, I thought I should use some of these new goodies and make something!  I decided that I would continue to scrap my series of class photos.  The darkest black patterned paper caught my eye, as it has that chalkboard blackness to it and in white there are maths equations written all over it.  Seemed like a good choice for a school-themed page.  I also thought the numbered washi tape would work well on a school LO, too.

I wasn't able to find my original photo from my first ever class all on my own.  I think I may have given it to my parents; my step-father finds the whole international schooling concept amazing - he calls it my 'UN class' and every year I have to show the class photo and go through all of the nationalities present.  It's sweet, really.  Luckily, however, a friend had a copy, which she scanned and emailed to me (thanks, Anya!).  My photo developer doesn't print the same size as the school photography company but I enlarged it a little to a 6x8 size, which let me play with a different layout design, which was a nice change of pace.

Picture Day 2008

Here you can see I've layered the black maths paper and a light blue EP paper under the photo and I've run the numbered washi tape like a border across the page.  The background paper is one that my friend Anya gave me a few years ago and I've been saving it for a LO such as this - it even has a very subtle tone-on-tone print of children's game names in the red section at the top; if you look really, really carefully you can just make it out in the photo.

I used the Kensei chipboard Thickers that I've been crushing on lately - it's just such a fun font.  I have, however, taken to gluing them down with a little touch of Crackle Accents by Ranger, since I find chipboard Thickers are notorious for popping off.  As you'll see in the next photo, I'm continuing my trend of including some sort of camera motif on all of these photos and I re-inforced this with a CP slide frame, which I stamped with little potty people to mimic the class photo.  Cute, right?

The journaling card is from Carta Bella's Hello Again collection - the blues just worked really well with the blues already used in the rest of the LO and I thought the 'Let me tell you...' line was a good lead in to the class stats I've been recording.  The little eye glasses and 'looking back' is from the same stamp set as the potty people and the chipboard camera is from CP's The Pier collection.