Pockets with Pizzazz

Hi everyone, I must apologize for not getting a post in last month, I completely forgot and then didn't have time to organise myself.....But one of the other wonderful DT stepped up and shared one of their beautiful pages. I for one am really liking all the different variety's of Pocket Pages, its good to have choice. I've been rather tied up with starting up my own business - I get to photograph newborn babies & weddings - but I have tried to make time to get more upto date with my pages. Infact one of my teenagers even asked if I could hurry up as there were photos on my phone he wanted to see in the album.....progress !!!

I know I'm well behind but I have every confidence that I will catch up - but I'm aware its only 8 weeks till Xmas though, so I think I'd best organise my photos, get them printed out, so I won't have any more excuses !! I usually print at home, but it might be better as I've got quite a few to print, that I get them sent off to one of the many online printers, it may make my life easier. How many of you print at home or send them off to be printed ?

I use all makes of cards in my Pocket Pages, I really mix them up, and buy the ones that appeal to me (which is most of them). I pick up little stickers and things from supermarkets, I make my own bits using dies I already have & punches, and I do buy specially designed stuff too.....I find Picassa the best for editing my photos and making collages - I just need to find more time to fit it all in !!

Week 29:

A birthday this week, a lost dog reunited with its tearful owner, my first Wedding shoot, & a funny boy making use of my stash!

Week 30:

House foundations - not for me though, some sun for a change & then some rain, a cornfield shoot, swimming in the local river and the boys version of the ice-bucket challenge before it took off !

I'm not sure who will be with you next week, but I'm certain their pages will be spectacular. I'm off on a whole weekend of Pocket paging towards the end of the month, so hopefully I'll be fully caught up before the holiday season !!!

How many of you will be doing a December Daily album, I think I'll be too busy, but I'd love to do one, maybe next year !!!

Pockets with Pizzazz

I'm sooooo behind still, I'm still taking photos and writing notes,  just to remember what we've been up to,  just incase the photographs don't jog the old memory....

Not to worry though, I WILL CATCH UP !!!

I've been very envious of all the new Heidi Swapp Project Life kits available in other countries, unfortunately the UK is behind in receiving anything. Although I do believe one company has now managed to get a limited amount in, obviously most of it sold out straight away !!!
Not to be outdone, as I've been admiring the gold foil embellishments - although I never thought I would - I got some gold foil cardstock (it was actually small Xmas cards  and cost 50p for 8 small sheets, bargain or what?) I used some of my dies to cut these embellishments out........

Ta da.......... my own gold shiny embellishments!!!!!! I'm so pleased with myself, they're gorgeous and a fraction of the cost.

Week 28: 

Not as busy week as normal, the kitten growing up and the puppy - who incidentally is dressed in a babygrow ???? A birthday to celebrate, with an English Breakfast, more dogs having fun, and the St Pauls carnival in Bristol.

Its a pity the gold doesn't show up all shiny and bright in the photographs, but I assure you it is IRL as you can see at the top of the post !

I'll be seeing you all in 4 weeks time, hopefully I will have caught up a whole lot by then...I've been busy taking millions of photos for other peoples events and editing them all, but I have planned a whole day this weekend to catch up - hopefully I won't spend the whole day talking instead...I'm looking forward to seeing the other designers work though - I love all the inspiration

Elaine x

Pockets with Pizzazz

Good morning, I'm really hoping you enjoyed last weeks Pockets with Pizzazz, I certainly did, its so nice to see fresh ideas for our pocket pages. I'm slowly catching up with mine, summer holidays are great to spend time with children, but we take more photos and have less time to actually put them in the pockets. But as long as I've got the photos, even in a few weeks time, I'll still remember what we did, where we were and how we felt, so it'll be no problem to go back and start/finish my pages. Are you all up to date, or like me behind a couple of weeks.
I do tend to get the photos sorted out in spare minutes, first in folders on the computer, I get them from a variety of cameras, Facebook and some the children send me, they all go in a temporary folder, named by the week. I then look through them and print out the ones I like best, because I mix my pockets up I usually have a variety of landscape & portrait pictures to work from. I print them out and stick them in a marked

envelope, and then when I have time, I grab the envelope and get working. All my Pocket page stash is in these two boxes if you remember, so I just plonk them down wherever I feel like working and I'm good to go! It still takes a good 1 1/2-2 hours to complete a week, but I embellish quite heavily & chat too much & if at home get disturbed many, many times. I'm sure you could put a page together in under an hour very easily if you wanted ! How long does it take you?

Week 26:

Another weekend retreat, and the National Road Bike Championships held in our town, that was exciting and a great photo opportunity! The rest food, children and animals as always! Older children going to a festival in Croatia, it looked like fun.

Week 27:

The weather has actually been very nice the last week, we've had sun ! One still on holiday, new onsie, winning a trophy in a Pinball competition (her Dad would have been so proud). More scrapping and some lovely fluffy animals.....what more could you ask for?

Well I hope you enjoyed this weeks effort, next week another designer will be showing off her Pocket Pages, I can't wait....till next time Elaine x

Pockets with Pizzazz

I seem to be doing a lot of apologizing lately !!!! This week I had my first Wedding Shoot, I loved it.....I came home and processed most of the photos. My new computer arrived, I re-installed all my photo software, started processing the remainder of the photos and my helpful 18yr old son, somehow managed to delete all the photos I'd been working on !!!! Of course I had backups and copies of the original images, but it means I've got to process them all again, and as I took 1,500 photos it may take a while !
Its also the start of the school holidays in the UK, so the first week or two is always chaotic, but it does mean there are usually a lot more photo opportunities, and maybe a holiday away?
I've also not been too well, so I've only managed to get week 25 done - I'm Wayyyyyyyyyyyyy behind, but it does seem that lots of other people are too. This weekend I've got an all day crop, so hopefully if I can get the photos printed out I should manage to do 3 or 4 weeks worth ! (That's after doing all the wedding processing first of course, the Bride & Groom are desperate to see the photos!)

WEEK 25:

A pretty average week again - this is what life is really like, and the children still wait excitedly to see my pages - a good sign!  Hopefully its the start of summer, the flowers in the garden are looking spectacular. I was away for the weekend on a retreat and had some new pj's....and we're trying to eat more healthily, well apart from the big jar of cookies !

I'm using some of my handmade cork embellishments and some funky foam arrows I made from my Sizzix Tim Holtz artful arrow die....its a whole mixed bunch of arrows that are perfect for using on these pages, I used card stock, funky foam and cork to make a pile of them !

I believe for the next Pockets with Pizzazz you're going to have a new volunteer designer, it'll be really nice to show you even more styles of pocket pages. There's a lot of talent on the Scrap365 design team and they are slowly starting to embrace this style of memory keeping.

Hope to be back soon, Elaine

Pockets with Pizzazz

Sorry folks, who knew it was Wednesday already !!!

I've been busy preparing my own embellishments en masse these past few days....I set aside a couple of hours and get to work with some of my stamps, punches and die cut shapes.

Arrows are a great favourite of mine and work perfectly with the pocket pages. I just use up my scraps of card stock. These arrows are from Spellbinders and are tiny, so take up a very small amount of card. I even used funky foam to make some and they worked perfectly well too! Cork worked but its very delicate....

With the cork, I used one of DCWV's cork stack, 15 sheets of 6x6" cork, absolutely brilliant for stamping on. I used a combination of Technique Tuesdays Ali Edwards stamps and some new Kaisercraft stamps to cover the 6x6" sheet, look how many stamps I managed to get out of one sheet!!!! I then either punched or cut by hand around the image - it was very easy, and I love the results!

Next time I'll show you some more homemade embellishments - y'can never have enough !!!

Week 23

Not a huge amount happening this week, I think I'm starting to like the ratio of photos and cards now, although I'm sure I will have weeks where I am over-run by photos, and will struggle to fit any cards in! I think I'm just going to have to accept I'm not into plain & simple, although I love that style too !

Week 24

The weather was actually warm enough to have a water session in the garden, luckily I had my camera handy. We have a new puppy addition for one of the boys in Canada, a gorgeous little French Bulldog called Bali, named after their travels. The kittens are growing up quickly and will soon become a nuisance I'm sure!

Hopefully the editor can now sit down with a glass of wine, instead of her morning coffee to read the post - sorry ED xx

Hoping you get some inspiration from this weeks pages - I'd best start getting up to date with the next lot - (yes, even we fall behind some times!)

Pockets with Pizzazz

My GO-TO pile of embellishments.....every now and then I spend a couple of hours sorting out some home made embellishments. This pile is made up of stamps that I stamp out onto matte photo paper and punch out, ready for adding to my pages. I find it so much easier to do this en-masse, rather than individual times for each page. I'm getting to know which ones I use the most and can easily stamp more of those.
I have an article in the Scrap365 Oct/Nov issue out on the 12 Sept with more of my homemade embellishments. Most of them are very basic and easy to do, I think sometimes we just lose inspiration or more likely forget what we have available in our own mountains of stash !

 Week 21

Week 21 consisted mostly of torrential rain & walkies, with perhaps a holiday for someone and lots of healthy food ! I love that FaceBook allows you to peek into your children's lives, although sometimes I wish I hadn't, they have waaaayyyyy more fun than me !

Week 22

Quite a relaxing week for a change, kids relaxing and not listening to me - nothing new there ! Cat had kittens and another festival for one of children - (although at 25 are they still classed as children?). Loved Tom's picture of his alarm calls to get up for a new job !!

That's all folks.............hope to see you in a fortnight and look out for the PWP feature in the Oct/Nov feature of Scrap365....if you want to see more PWP in the magazine, there are lots of other fabulous designers to see and inspire you, leave a message for the editor.....WE WANT MORE !!!

Pockets with Pizzazz

Good Morning, welcome to Pockets with Pizzazz once again....To be honest I've been really, really busy with life these past few weeks and have struggled to find time to get up to date......but I have managed, mainly due to a 12hr crop I attended the other weekend. It's not that I don't want to do it, I love doing it, life just gets in the way sometime!
I've been reading more & more on FB groups, that people have all the stash, but can't start. I think people seem to have way too high expectations of themselves and expect a perfect page straight away, when I look back at my first pages - I cringe.....it takes time to find your style, everybody is different. If you come from a scrapbook background, you may prefer to change your style completely....I can't believe I don't ink anything or distress !!!! Its as plain or as busy as you want it, colourful or serene as you want, its your album, your memories, your time ! But once you start, be warned it is addictive....

Week 19:

A fun crop, some lovely walks - (its about time the weather improved)....and I love finding photos the children have taken on my phone - do you?

Week 20:

Some more lovely weather, we actually got to spend time in the garden. I attempted a challenge on one of the FB groups and made my week card, I used one of the Tim Holtz Sizzix dies, (I'd just got it in one of their mega sales). I overlapped photos, and cut one in half to spread across two pockets.