How To Cheat At "Outdoorsy"

I'm not outdoorsy. I'm beach-y, sit by a pool-y, walk on the common-y but not one who would make use of the many outdoorsy digital kits that are available and that, for some reason, I buy. I bought them so going to use them...

Here are some flattering photos of me I found the other day with afro perm and fashionable-at-the-time Deirdre Langton glasses. Despite many many hours spent organising photos I'm still surprised when I find them.  We were outdoors having an archery lesson at Walton Hall, near Stratford. We were actually only a few yards from our apartment but still outdoors, so there. I have a huge collection of wood effect papers which made this template (Studio KPD Layerworks No 1677) even more outdoorsy.

[Click on any photo to see a larger version]

Here's a more recent collection of photos from a walk in Boscombe Chine gardens - a few yards from the beach but you wouldn't think so.

The template I used here is Scrap With Liz' Focal Point no 16. Tips: Put the word "outdoors" on it and add some bits of dirt and grass. I have a large collection of dirt...  and yet another wood effect background!



You can see more pages of that Grand Day Out in Boscome here.

Essential Preparation

They say you should write about what you know so I'm not going to write an essay on good preparation  for everything in life.  Come on! Have we met?? 

I do take cruise prep seriously though (a lot more to follow on our dedicated cruising blog) and it's fun to make "prep pages".

I made this page quickly while zipping through a lot of photos from 2019 in order to "catch up". The phrase "catch up" is normally banned but just this once... I also finished a quilt, cut hubby's hair and transferred my entire life onto a new computer so yay me for achievement this weekend.

It was quick because it was a "pre-decorated paper" and all I did was add photos and the text. The "Escape..." word art was pre-made too. Cheat when you can! All the elements on the page are from Connie Prince's Bon Voyage kit. The photos show:

1) The dress I take on every cruise. It had just come back from a short cruise so I took advantage of good weather to wash it before our Aurora cruise. It's beaded silk and it's DRY CLEAN ONLY. Pffftt... forget that. That just means "not to be washed by idiots". Oh, and wash it by hand! It's actually hanging from our garden parasol, not just hanging from the sky. Or maybe I'm wearing it in invisible mode.

2) The pesky labels taken off new clothes. I can't stand itchy labels next to my skin and always remove them. It usually takes forever as they're sewn on in a ridiculous way with multiple rows of stitching. Needless to say I'm often doing this at the last minute and there have been cries of anguish as my seam ripper rips through the actual garment. 

3) Luggage labels. My printer hates these more than it hated printing tax returns. Once upon a time cruise companies took your money then politely sent you printed luggage labels.

I do start preparing well before the cruise but sometimes it gets away from me and there's a lot of last minute prep then I CAN'T SLEEP  'COS I'M TOO EXCITED!!! 

Mind Games

One thing you can do well before your cruise is prepare in your head. I made this page just after we'd booked a cruise to the Canaries. I used photos of a previous trip to Madeira (including the page background) and journal cards from the Project Life app. I added a pic of my Portguese book and the music I was listening to in Portuguese, albeit Brazilian.

Get Off Our Ship!

I like to take photos of preparing to get off the ship too - photos of our luggage and the cabin and the ship in "closed" mode etc. Well, getting off isn't exactly stressful for us since it takes us about 10 minutes to get home...

There are more cruise prep pages in the album HERE and an article on our main site HERE

Changing Shape - Adventures in Zinnia

 

No, not about dieting! My succinct view on that is "Life is short. Eat the cake. Then go for a walk."

For many years I've worked on square layouts which I'd normally print 12" x 12". I have a good print company for that if you're in the UK. A square layout just seems to make design easy which is how it becomes traditional. It's also traditional for quilting blocks, allegedly because 12" can be divided by 2,3 4 and 6. The same principal applies with scrapbook pages as far as the eye is concerned. So there's a lot in the "pro" column for square layouts.

The downside is sheer size if you want to print them 12" x 12" and an apartment by the sea beckons soon. It will be a very small one if it's to be near the beach. Scrapbook albums will have to fit on IKEA shelves because we're not spending the entire retirement budget on having a man come round to build custom shelves. The other problem is you need a specialist and therefore expensive album with square pages.

Time to change SOME of the albums to 6 x 8 which you can tweak into A5 if you want a much cheaper album for them. I'm also looking at making Traveler's Notebook (yes, I know it should have two "l"s but that offends the Google gods) pages tweaked for A5.

Along comes the Zinnia app. This is designed for planners/journals etc but I thought I'd have a go at making scrapbook pages with it.  I'm not really into planners as such. I don't have anything to plan and stickers like "unpack groceries" make me laugh. What else are you going to do? Leave it all in the porch? Journalling, maybe. Not about how I feel because I'm British and most days "meh" covers it adequately but notes about craft projects, occasional To Do lists etc. Here's a silly To Do list I made before Christmas just playing with the app (designer credits to follow):

I don't really do To Do lists either, I just kind of muddle through... 

The week 48 page above started out as a kind of planner then morphed into a scrapbook page when I added photos and other stuff. there are loads of page templates and elements in Zinnia plus you can import pdfs and photos. Tutorials and full review soon. It's mostly easy but there are a few tricks to it.

So, what to do with this page? The 2021 album, such as it is, is square so week 48 had to be square too. I tried making an ordinary square page but whatever I did the Zinnia one seemed more interesting. Eventually, after much faffing about, I simply added it to a square page with some extra bits and pieces and background from Bella Gypsy's Woodsy Winter kit. I haven't printed it yet so we'll see if it's all legible... [Edit to say it printed reall well, you can read all the text]