Project Life - Week 5

Moving on to Week 5 ... the 2nd week of Chinese New Year.

Title page was simple ... Jenni Bowlin stickers {Flag Banner & Butterfly}.

The Company held a "Lo Hei" lunch for the Management team so great photo taking opportunity for me. Lots of red in my layout since red is an auspicious colour. I also got myself some digital elements by Ali Edwards and used one in the photo of me and my colleague, Hui Hsin. That element is from the 6x4 Journalers Story Overlay. I used some 3D elements from another Chinese New Year card from Dad. They really added something interesting to the mini layouts. One of the 3x4 slots has the menu of our luncheon written out.

Also in the other 3x4 slots is a photo of a mug I have at work which I love!! And a photo of my walk from the office back to the MRT station ... same route every day. Sometimes documenting the dailies is important and shouldn't be overlooked.

Page 2 has a little bit on the dragon deco that we hung up in our little "garden" on the landing. I also wrote a little something about the year of the dragon. The lower part of the page covers my trip to KL ... yes, I had to go up again this time to oversee/observe the hand-over between the outgoing and new Asst HR Manager there.

As the end of the month falls within this week, I've also got an insert page which has my Instagram #photoaday pictures for January in it.

I've really enjoyed this Instagram challenge and hope to continue participating in it throughout the year. Some of the days I've had to think out of the box or take photos of things that I would not normally take photos of. Oh and yes ... there's a typo on page 2 of the Instagram photos ... it says 2011 when it should say 2012. I'd printed it out before I noticed so I'm not fussed to change it and reprint it. I've already written in the right year on the print out in my album.

Right so the other products that I used this week include 7 Gypsies Round Stamp, October Afternoon Label Stickers {5&Dime}, We Are Memory Keepers 6x6 papers {Travel Light} and Fancy Pants Design Embellishments {It's the Little Things}. Btw I try and mention the products so that if you see something that interests you, you can try and find the same product. For all my "wk" stamping, I'll be using my Typo Alpha stamp set. Date stamping is done by my Shiny Date Stamper {you can get these at most stationary stores}, and the ink I use is the Versafine Onyx Black Ink Cube. For pens, I use either American Crafts Precision pens or Sharpies. If I do use something other than these mentioned, I will make a note of it and mention it in that particular post.

I'm starting to notice that I'm doing more mini layouts with my 4x6 or 3x4 slots ... love all the little extras though it is making the album a bit bulky. I think I will probably end up having to get another album.

Okay well it's getting late here now so I think that's about all the catching up I'm going to be able to manage today. Till next time ... take care & peace!

Project Life - Week 4

Okay so I'm on a roll so let's keep this going ... :D

Week 4 ... Chinese New Year week! Busy Busy Busy!

The week for me {my PL week's start on Sunday} started with Chinese New Year's Eve which is the Reunion Dinner. We had our usual family gathering of us and Sandy for a steamboat dinner. We took some nice shots with the phone and I used an App called FrameMagic to do some multi picture photos {see the 4-in-1 of the steamboat dinner at the bottom of the first page}.

For the title page, I used a Jolee's Dragon sticker - since it's the Year of the Dragon - as well as some K&Co Chinese stickers. The number 4 is from Chatterbox.

For the photo beside the title page, for the background, I actually cut up a box that the ang pows {red packets} came in. It seemed like such a waste since the design on it was so pretty! I also slotted in a red packet with a dragon desgin into one of the 3x4 slots.

I decided to put all our Chinese New Year photos into an insert. It was great to meet up with the Chinese side of the family and catch-up. We really should do it more often! I made sure I snapped as many photos as I could. After editing, I didn't really know how to get all the photos onto one page especially as I wanted them to be randomly sized and positioned. In the end, I used words and did the layouts there - one for the front and one for the back. I then printed the entire thing onto A4 sized sheetS of photo paper and ta-daa ... back and front all done. I used more of the K&Co Chinese stickers and 7 Gypsies Journal stickers to jazz it all up a bit. At the time, I hadn't got any A4 sized inserts yet so I used a 12x12 insert and then stitched it up on my machine. Takes a bit to guide it through the sewing machine but it eventually made it.

Page 2 of my spread includes photos from a dinner we had at Sakura on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year ... felt like having sushi so off we went. Was sooooo stuffed after dinner that we had to take a very slow walk home! LOL

I've also included a slot for a lunch date Adam and I had at Swensen's as well as a little story on my new scrap/craft storage that I made. It's made of 4 corner racks that have been cable-tied together. I've also secured the unit to a lazy susan that I got from Ikea ages ago but never put to any use. I got the whole idea for the multi level storage unit from Michelle Wooderson who has a great metal storage unit in her scrap room. Have a look at this page from her blog Mish Mash ... Mish Mash - Work Space. You'll have to scroll down a fair bit in that posting to see the storage unit I mean. I love the idea of having everything out in the open and within easy reach. Her's is from Pottery Barn {which we don't have here in Singapore} and after searching around I really couldn't find anything similar so I came up with the kooky idea to cable-tie 4 of these corner units together. Michelle's doesn't rotate though and since mine's gone into a bit of a "dead corner" of our desk area, I really needed it to be able to turn around. Btw, Michelle's a fantastic Project Lifer and I've gotten a lot of inspiration from her project so please do check out her blog.

Right ... back to my other slots ... the 3x4 slots on page 2 are filled with an ang pow which McDonald's gave out. I love the design on it so knew I wanted to put that on my pages somehow. I also have a 3D element that was on a Chinese New Year card that Dad gave us.

That's about it for this week ... the other products that I've used for these 4 pages include KaiserCraft Rubons {Family}, October Afternoon Label Stickers {5&Dime}, Smash Pad {Entertainment}, Smash Stickies, Fancy Pants Element Stickers {It's the Little Things}. All wrting was done with AC Precision pens or Sharpies. The felt "Love" and arrow stickers were a freebie from an English scrapbooking magazine and the washi tape I got from a Singapore scrapbook store.

Till my next post ... take care & Peace!

Catching Up Yet Again - Project Life Week 3

I am soooosorry for the long delay ... There have been so many things going on that this has so sadly been left aside. I am hoping to get in as many catch-ups tonight as possible.

So now on to my Week 3 of Project Life ...

I have been using my new iPhone 4S to take most of my pictures. The quality of the photos is good enough for my Project Life but the main thing is the huge convenience! I don't have to lug around another camera and that's just super fine for me! I'm also mixing in a lot of Instagram photos into my project. I just love the way the photos turn out.

So week 3 started out with me having to attend a Grasio Silat Team Manager's meeting on the 15th. First meeting for the year ... so it needed to go in the book! LOL After the meeting I met Ismon for dinner at Causeway Point and was trying out the new phone. I managed to capture a beautiful sunset shot which was Instagrammed too ...

On the 16th {Monday}, I came down with a nasty flu and was put on MC for 2 days. Had to really rest coz on the 18th {Wednesday} I was scheduled to fly up to our KL office. The doc was not keen to let me fly but I didn't have much of a choice as I was supposed to observe the running of the payroll by the new HR staff in KL. It was a super early flight to KL and a horrible trip back because of a 2 hour taxi ride back to the airport because of a jam! Kept my boarding pass and slotted that into one of the 3x4 slots. I really shouldn't have flown though coz the flu had done crazy things to my sinuses and I got a really nasty ear ache on the flight back! PAIN!!!

At the end of the week, Sandy and I made a trip to the Grandparents' and Mum's respective burial places to pay our respects and clean the place before the Chinese New Year. Dad and Adam joined us for Mum's but it was just the 2 of us for the Grandparents. I took a "feet shot" whilst I was waiting for Sandy on the Woodland's platform and edited it using a free digital from Ali Edwards {One Little Week} - first dabble into using digitals and enjoy the look.

The last photo of the spread was taken by Ismon. While he was waiting for the bus on his way home, he saw this beautiful rainbow that went from end to end. Apparently loads of people saw the same rainbow all over Singapore ... loads except me! Would have loved to have seen it!

Okay so products used in my simple spread this week include my Shiny Date Stamp, Versafine Onyx Black Ink Cube, Typo Alpha Stamps, 7 Gypsies Gaffer Tape Numero, Petaloo flowers, Fancy Pants It's the Little Things Design Embellishments & Element Stickers, Ali Edwards free digital, Heidi Swapp flower, Smash Pad Blank and Pixie Press clear stickers {Celestial}. All writing was done with American Crafts Precision Pens. {Sorry but can't remember where that pink and chocolate brad comes from - part of the same set as the brad on my title page}.

That's it for this post then ... Take care & PEACE!

Catching Up again ... Instagram and Project Life Week 2

It's been a busy couple of days for me so it's great to get the chance to do some catch up tonight.

On Monday I did a bit of catching up of another sort. I've always enjoyed Instragram and love all the photos people from around the world take and put up. I chanced upon an Instragramer (is that a proper word??) through my Aussie cousin. Fatmumslim has a monthly Photo A Day challenge up and for February it's #febphotoaday (if you want to have a go). So off I went in search of photos to catch up on the first 13 days of the month.

Been fun as it challenges you to take photos of things I guess you'd not really think to take pictures of. Even got my sister to take up the challenge too! Hopefully at the end of the month I'll have a nice eclectic collection of photos to print off to put into my Project Life as an insert. Shall update here when that happens! :D

Right, now onto catch up of my Project Life. We're already into week 7 and I'm only just updating the blog on week 2 ... must get a move on!

Week 2 started out with our Silat team - the Woodlands Zone 2 Cheetahs - doing a performance during a wedding. One of our student's sisters were getting married and her mum had asked if our team could perform during the wedding. In total, the kids performed 4 times - 2 Silat Pengantin {pengantin = bride/groom} performances and then 2 demo performances. The kids and their parents spent a great day together and I think everyone had a lot of fun ... well I enjoyed myself ... {btw, Silat is a form of martial arts originating from the Indonesian/Malaysian region}.

The left hand side has my week 2 title page and 2 group photos of the team. The bottom left photo was taken of a shop window along Orchard Road. With Chinese New Year just around the corner, this was a different approach to decorating the window. Usually you only ever see red lanterns (as on the right hand side photo) or deco in red.

There's also a small photo of Ismon's birthday cake from the Carousel restaurant team. It's one of our favourite restaurants to dine at and we've been going there since Adam was in a pram. All the staff there have been there for ages so they've seen Adam grow up and are always so tinkled to see how tall he's become. {He always gets free coca-cola from Sylvester, one of the servers!} We'd wanted to go on Ismon's birthday but it was booked out solid because of the holiday period. Note to self: next year book super early!

On the right hand side of the 2 page spread are another 2 photos of the team. There were so many good photos of them! And I just love how they all get along so well together despite their different ages!

The bottom left photo is a picture I took of work ... that's where I spend most of my week ... sat in front of my computer!

Then on the bottom right is a collection of photos of our dinner at the Pizza Hut in Jurong Point as well as the Chinese New Year deco they had up there (red lanterns!!).

For the 4x3 slots I put in the invitation card for the wedding (it was a long card so I had to fold it up but made sure one of the main designs was visible). I've also go a picture of my new iPhone 4S! Had to wait quite a bit for this coz they'd run out of stock! Horrors!

Some of the products that I used for these 2 pages apart from the Project Life Core Kit items include my Shiny Date Stamp, Versafine Onyx Black ink cube, Typo Alpha stamps, Typo Frankie Alpha sticker, miscellaneous silk flowers, AC Precision and Sharpie pens and 7 Gypsies stickers (Congrats).

Till next post ... Take Care & Peace!

Catch Up ... Week 1 of Project Life 2012

Back with catch up ... Just finished with my PL week 6 but will post that a little later on once I've done the catch ups on weeks 1 to 5. Hopefully will get these up this week.

Alright ... week 1 was pretty eventful for us. Apart from the usual excitement of the New Year, our nephew Didi got engaged. Big do and lots of photos taken so week 1 had to have an insert.

Quick aside: as I'm doing 2 pages per week, I've decided that any inserts into a week will be smaller in width than the actual photo pocket pages. I'm using Design A for each 2 week spread. There are other configurations available but I'm going with this one. I'm thinking of using other configurations for other projects ... hmmmm ... crossing fingers that I shall be able to get round to everything I have planned.

Right back to week 1.

Each week will have a "title page". These come as part of the core kit for you to identify the week if you want to (PL is designed to be totally flexible to be what you want it to be ... so experiment and enjoy ... I am!). On my title pages, I've decided to stamp the dates of the week - my weeks run from Sundays (which happened to be 1 Jan 2012) through to Saturdays. I've also decided to indicate the week number and will be using a Typo alpha stamp to stamp "wk" (I guess that'll be some sort of continuity through the entire year though honestly, I'm just really going with the flow as to what makes me happy at that moment ... I'm guessing that should really be the whole point right?).

This page also shows some fireworks we watched while ringing in the New Year with our friends. We also attended a Misteri Jam 12 concert - Jangan Takut Hantu (Don't be scared of ghosts) - which was held on 1 Jan in the evening at Fort Canning Park (yes, our 1 Jan was a very very busy day!). A first for me attending this kind of event and I actually had a really good time. Thank goodness it didn't rain!! I saved the ticket stub and put that in one of the 3x4 slots (note to self ... must keep more bits and bobs to put into the pockets).

The page also has a picture of Didi's cake for Mariam (overflow from the insert ... there were too many yummy photos!) and a photo of another nephew, Yusri with his girlfriend Farah. Just love this photo of the 2 of them!

The right hand page has some photos of Ismon's birthday celebrations. It was his birthday on the 7th. We also went to Arab Street on the 6th to get his birthday pressie (I got him fishing gear so we had to go shopping together otherwise I would have undoubtably bought the wrong stuff!). We stopped in at Fika - a halal Swedish restaurant/cafe - and had some of their yummy cakes!

The last photo is of our Silat kids (Adam's silat team). We had a performance on the 8th for one of our Silat team member's sisters' weddings (sorry about the mouth-full ... both her elder sisters got married on the same day and we were invited to perform). So on the 7th we spent the afternoon and evening rehersing for the performance.

Each week, I'll also be doing a week at a glance slot basically to summerize what's happened during the week. I read it being recommended by another Project Lifer on her blog ... will update here if I can find where I saw that.

Then the insert ... both sides of the insert are basically photos of Didi, Mariam and their various gifts to one another. The insert is a Design G from the Project Life selection. It's a 10x12 size and the photo configuration allows for vertical 4x6 photos too.

Some of the products that I've used in the 4 pages include my Shiny Date Stamper, Versafine Onyx Black ink cube, Typo alpha stamps, AC Thickers (Lullaby), 7 Gypsies label stickers (Romantique), 7 Gypsies Fill in the Blank stickers, Uniball Signo pens (white & gold), AC Precision pens and Sharpie markers. I love the white star and heart clips that I've put on Didi and Mariam's photos but for the life of me, I can't remember where they're from.

That's about it for today. Will hopefully get to do catch up again tomorrow. Till text time ... Peace!





Catch up ... Project Life 2012 Title Page

Back today with a catch-up post on my Project Life 2012 so far. Today I thought I'd share how I did my title page.

I wanted something simple to kick the whole thing off so I picked some favourite photos taken of us during last year's Hari Raya celebrations.

Top left is a Hambly overlay (Camera collection in pink) with some K&Company Eco Modern Words & Icons Die-Cut cardstock. I love the "It's All About Family" tag ... :D

Top right is one of the 4x6 cards that comes in the Project Life Cobalt edition core kit. I stamped the words "52 weeks of our lives" using my Typo Alpha/Number stamp set and Versa Color cube in white. Didn't quite turn out the way I had hoped ... oh well ... life isn't perfect but I'm still happy ... :D

Center left to right is our photos ... I cut up the journalling card boxes from the core kit and used them to mat the photos. Seemed like such a waste of the boxes otherwise and I love the front of them with the words Love, Live, Document and Laugh. There are 4 so will slot those in where appropriate during the year.

The last slot in the center is also a card from the core kit - I wrote our names down and put a brad with a flower through it. Can't remember where the brad comes from but I thought it was cute!

For the bottom left corner I cut a 4x6 piece from a Flair Design Family paper that I had. Emphasised the word "Family" that's in orange by outlining it with a black American Crafts Precision Pen (most of the journalling will be done with these pens - Christmas pressie from my lil sis).

The bottom right corner is a family photo of the 3 of us. I used a Uniball Signo pen in white to just do a bit of outlining.

And that's about it for the title page. Back again another day to do more catching up ... Peace!

My First Post ... Why??

I've been wanting to do this for an extremely long time ... I'm an excellent procrastinator though so it's taken me forever to get my "finger out". This is totally new to me so I guess anyone who's kind enough to read this has to be a tad bit patient with me ... I'm guessing I'll get the hang of things as I move along.

Why the blog? Well I've always wanted a way to share photos, thoughts and interests in some way and this seems like a good way to do that.

PLUSSSS ... this year I embarked on Project Life ... For those not in the know, it's a memory keeping system developed by Becky Higgins that is very addictive and so much fun! I've decided to do it a week at a go and have got myself the Cobalt kit ...




In part, this blog has evolved from reading all the other Project Lifers' blogs and being inspired by their ideas and tips. So ... I shall try and play catch-up to show everyone the last 5 weeks of my PL effort as I go along.


Here's how I'm storing my Project Life


Anyone interested in finding out more about Project Life, please visit Becky Higgins' website at http://beckyhiggins.com/ . There's a link on the site that will tell you where you can get a set (plus all the bits and bobs) for yourself anywhere in the world.

Okay so that's about it from me for my first post ... I haven't a clue how often I will be posting ... I imagine at least once a week if not more ... depends what's interesting enough to share I'm guessing.

Have a fantastic week ahead and much Peace!