Pockets with Pizzazz

Halloooooo this week !!
I luckily had the opportunity to use some of the new pinkpaislee Hello Sunshine collection! I recieved the 3x4" cards, the striped alphabet and the chipboard sticker set, I sooooooooooooo love these cards, they're rainbow coloured and mention the rain & sunshine often - ideal for the UK weather! Not wanting to sound greedy/ungrateful or anything, but I would have loved the stamps and the ephemera that go with this set too ! It was supposed to be released at the end of March, so should be in the UK shops sometime soon I'm hoping.
We had another busy week, a part DIY scrapbooking weekend away Nr Swindon, with lots of people turning up with Pocket Pages, which was very inspiring and a brilliant laugh ! Some OH, SO, Cold, photos of -27degrees from one of my boys in Canada - I nicked them off Facebook, anybody else do that with their elusive offspring? Some clothes tags, I love to include bits and pieces that are not from the kits....and I used a great big cup cake found here: http://gb.trapletshop.com/craft-wooden-shapes that I decorated with the chalk pens and stamped on.

This week I went slightly overboard on photos - what do you do when you take too many !!!! I decided to scrap some traditionally, but I also wanted to include some of them in the Pocket Pages album....luckily I had just managed to get hold of some of the Becky Higgins Project life, Design F inserts. I carefully chose some more photos....I didn't want too many extra as they were of the same event, but I'd had my 'Big Camera' with me, and that always seems to take really good photos, that I need to include. 

There are quite a few different inserts from different companies that are not complete 12x12 size, you could use them as inserts or make a complete album from them - whatever suits your lifestyle.....

A bit more of the pinkpaislee in use -  its so summery !

Going Back Week 44 and 43

I thought I might as well show you all the work I've been doing on my Pocket Pages going backwards for last year too...Its nice to be up to date, but as I had taken loads of photos last year, but never actually started, I've had to make a big effort to catch up....I'm actually back to week 23 now, so over half way there !!

I think the gorgeous sunset was the inspiration behind the colours this week, it looks a busy week !

Week43: I had a weekend away at a lovely retreat, near London, we were very industrious with our scrapping. We visited several scrap shops first and brought lots of stash !

Pockets with Pizzazz

I usually use the Design A style pocket page every other page to allow some continuity in my album. I use one with portrait style pockets for the alternating weeks. However, this week I used a Design F style. This consists of one 6x4" landscape pocket, and 10 3x4" portrait pockets. What a challenge: this took so much longer to do than a normal week. I was lucky that I had a lot of photos to fit in, and it wouldn't matter if they were small, and I'm so glad that I had my typewriter to do the journaling. Trying to find suitable cards for each picture and embellishments took a while too.

Whilst I like my mixed colour, heavily embellished cards, I sometimes wish I could do plain and simple - it would be so much quicker!

Week 7

This week was heavily weather related, with the big storms sweeping the UK. Whilst out walking the dog I captured the photo of the rainbow over the hospital - it was rather magical I thought! I also documented the incident involving a fallen tree and the dog falling in the flooded river, rather scary at the time.....

Week 8:

Having used the Design style F pocket page last week, I realized I had to repeat the process all over again this week......I think it is a good page to use, if you have loads of photos to use up of very mundane things, that need more journaling than photo.

I really liked the texture of the Houmous packaging that we had this week, so I decided to use it in one of the smaller pockets along with an ampersand die-cut made with a electronic cutting machine, and a small portion of a 3x4" card - its just a bit different from normal!

I also experimented by printing 6 photos (using Picasa) on  5x7" photo paper instead of 6x4", I think I like the slightly larger photos for the 3x4" cards, what do you think ?

That's all for this week folks....next time I'll be using an insert to show what you could to do when you have too many photos for the week and I'll be using some newly released cards from Pink Paislee that have found their way to me !!!!!

Thankyou for all the lovely comments on previous posts, they are much appreciated

Elaine x

Pockets with Pizzazz

I have just come back from a FAB weekend in a village hall near Swindon, having Pocket Paged all weekend long. I have been to numerous of these weekends, usually everybody scrapbooks, but this time more than half had come armed with Pocket Pages, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the swapping, buying, sorting and even on occasion using the cards!!!
I managed to complete 5 weeks, which whilst it isn't the most productive, it left time for all the talking, cakes and meals and having fun!
I gave a few very simple demos of Picasa and how to make collages, so hopefully they will all be going off to download and play with it, it really is very easy! And I think there was also a lot of frantic ebay searching for portable typewriters, hopefully there will be some left for others if you feel the need! I think Ikea will also be short of a few wooden cutlery draws - great for storing all your cards in.
It was also a perfect opportunity to have a nose at everybody else's pages, gaining ideas and inspiration. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one.

Week 5: Having attended another weekend retreat organised by a reputable scrap company specializing in twice yearly retreats, plus some small additional ones, if the numbers are available, during week 5, I wanted to use up some of the papers and embellishments that I had used, so decided to make my weekly card from them this week, as even more of a reminder.

This shows the cards that I could use for this weeks pages.

The week card

   The plain and simple card - perfectly acceptable to leave it like this.

My card, not too embellished for a change! (although I did add another stamp, I notice below)

Week 6:  This week the design team for Scrap365 were sent some Scrap365 wooden shapes to play with, they are laser cut shapes from wood. I volunteered to use them on this weeks Pocket Pages, I had the arrows/chevrons and cake/sweets sets:

I started with a plain craft card, added washi, one of the squidgy pin arrows, and then some stamps. I used a zig writer in chalk pastel to colour in the arrow.

I used the Zig chalk pastel pens on the small cake and coloured it in for the baking card (left). 

I also used some of the chevrons, but left them natural.

I used one of the pointing hands, cut in half with a stanley knife, stamped with the date, and split between two cards/pockets, I left it natural too.

Well I hope you enjoyed this fortnights edition, hopefully I'll be back again in two weeks time with some more completed pages and some more ideas.....I've been given some new products to try too, so will be trying to use them in the next few weeks - I'm really excited about them, and I think you will be too !!

Elaine x

Pockets with Pizzazz

Welcome again this week to Pockets with Pizzazz.

I'd like to start this week with the 'tools of the trade'. Lots of people have asked what I use to make my pages, its basically my scrapping tools, I haven't really had to buy anything more than the cards & pocket pages themselves. For most of you it should be simple to start. I use a Canon MG5350, a Canon Selphy DS810 and an old Continental typewriter.
I had the large printer and typewriter already, I did get the Selphy (second hand from ebay) just because I wanted to try one - you don't actually need it. (Although, its really great for taking to crops because its so small. The newer versions are wireless so are even better, but cost more than the £25 I paid!)

I find that printing out my own photos there and then, helps me keep up to date with my weeks, I can sit down and get a whole week done in a couple of hours.
But, I do know that some people edit all their photos for the month and get them printed at one of the many online/supermarket stores that provide a printing service. They've usually done all the journaling and put in the relevant cards - marked with post it notes to remind them which photo goes where, - so all that remains is to slip the photos into the pockets when they receive them. Its really up to you and your budget!

I keep all my cards and associated bits and pieces in this large old Ikea wooden cutlery tray that I found in the garage, it was used to store paint tubes in, but is brilliant for keeping all I need in one place. I can carry it from room to room too, so I can create when and where ever I am!

I realized as I do this post fortnightly, if I carry on only showing one week at a time, I'll be 6 months behind by the end of the year, that's not really any incentive for me to keep up - so I'm going to show two weeks at a time.
As usual the back of last weeks page, how you can make the Week marker as quick & simple as you like, or embellish it more as I do. You may notice that I have an upside down date stamp on the back of the card - easily covered by another card.

Week 3:

Week 4:

My pages are quite busy - I like them this way - but you certainly don't have to do them like this. If you're short on time just add your photos and the cards with no embellishments, just some journaling so at least you can look back and see what happened in your life without guessing - it really is up to you though, whatever gets you recording your life is good ! " />