Fan of Annie Sloan

One personality having inpired me recently a lot is definitely Annie Sloan. She does a wonderful vintage chalk paint range that need no primer, are super easy to use and look fantastic.

She has a great eye for relaxed, vintage country style wih some Scandinavian scent mixed into English and American country.

I visited her in her shop in Oxford last summer and it was so awsome, both her and everything she sells and does. What an inspiring and energetic lady! Most of her books are sold out, but I have managed to grab some of them in charity shops and via internet.

I will definitely soon buy her latest book, just for inspiration. I'm sure it will give me some ideas for scrapbooking, too.

Visual planning and self-exploring continues

For inspiration, I'm adding some more Larsson's wonderful watercolors. I could spend just hours watching them, gliding in into their romantic world of past times, summers and lovely vintage family life.

List 2: What I like visually (part one)

I was looking at scrapbook stores online and tried to visualise how the papers and materials could look in layouts, when in use. I also tried to remember what kind of artists, styles etc. I generally like - mabe that could help in determining with what kind of materials to start.

I love Scandinavian, mainly Swedish, country style. I like 19th century, Victorian and Edwardian eras and vintage in general. I like romantic country style, old English countryside, American country and vintage living. I like different shades of whites, reds and old pinks, blues, greens and browns. I love handmade things, rough linen fabrics, cheques, ginghams, dots, country florals, patchwork. I love the look and feeling of old timber, all wooden and rustic.

Magazines such as Home & Garden, Homes & Gardens, Country Living, Beautiful Kitchens and Period Living, plus others alike, are my favorites. We live in an old house in the beautiful English countryside. I love Laura Ashley furniture and fabrics.

One of my all time favourite artists is Carl Larsson. The painting above is one of his most famous ones - he used to paint his family life with watercolours. Here an excerpt describing him briefly: Carl Larsson, (1853-1919) was a Swedish painter and interior designer.
Born to extremely poor parents, Larsson’s childhood was not happy. However, at the age of thirteen he was admitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. After several years working as an illustrator of books, magazines, and newspapers, Larsson moved to Paris, where he met his wife to be Karin. This was to be a turning point in Larsson’s life. In Paris, Larsson painted some of his most important works. Carl and Karin Larsson raised eight children and his family became Larsson’s favorite models. Many of his watercolors are now popular all over the world. In 1888 the young family was given a small house in Sundborn, by Karin’s father Adolf Bergöö. Carl and Karin decorated and furnished this house according to their particular artistic taste and also for the needs of the growing family. Through Larsson’s paintings and books this house has become one of the most famous artist’s homes in the world. (copied from here)

List 1: What we did have for scrapbooking

As I told you, I started doing a research at home on all the scrapbooking materials we potentially had. Having no deep knowledge on what could be used I just tried to use my imagination and the thin information I had gathered so far, by the beginning of September.

Here is approximately what we had:

1. A laminator machine, both for hot and cold laminating, for up to A3 sized papers (no idea if this machine is for any use in the craft, but listed it anyhow)

2. Loads of pouches for the laminator, various sizes from business card to A3.

3. 1 pack (1kg?) photo printer paper. No info whether acid free or not, but it should be ok for photos, so...?

4. 1 pack (=100) of printable transparencies No idea if acid free?

5. Various packs of different sizes of 'official' Epson photo paper, glossy. I guess this shouls be acid free.

6. Different ribbons.

7. Different buttons

8. A multi-task printer from Epson. Can be used for quality photoprinting, photocopying and scanning.

9. Ink for the previous gadget. No idea if acid free or not.

10. Different kinds of paper paged photo albums. No idea if acid free.

11. Lots of empty glass jam jars with their lids -> good for storing this and that?

12. Lots and lots of nice fabrics to use for various tasks - to cut empellishments out of them, to use as backgrounds etc. etc?

13. A lot of Scotch Magic Tape. Though no idea if it can be used for scrapbooking?

14. Different kinds of scissors.

15. Various threads, thick and thin, lots and lots of colours. Mainly cotton, but also acrylic etc.

16. Different kinds of tiny glass beads.

17. Old lace.

18. A Nikon digital camera.

19. A MAC laptop

20. High speed internet connection.

21. Artist quality water colors.

22. Caran D'Ache water color pencils.

23. Various brushes.

24. Big pack of acid free markers. A little bit cheaper than Promark but good quality.

25. Various and mainly useless crafty staff - useless because most likely acidic. The only way to use them might be to scan a paper with nice color and then print it onto acid free paper etc, but will not list those items here.

Those were the main things we had. I have most certainly forgotten about many, but never mind. ;)

Starting it turned into a Major Project

First I thought starting scrapping would be as easy as just sitting by our dining table and starting. But there was a tiny but. I would most certainly never ever have more than 30min-1 hour continuous time per session, so surely I wouldn't be able to finish anything in that given time.

So, obviously I needed a scrapping space, right?

Well, getting there, slowly!

I started a massive reorganising of our house, as one thing usually leads to another. In order to get a crafty space, I needed to take some things to somewhere else...and to have space for them I needed to move some further items - you see the vicious circle arising, don't you? Well, my legs, back and hands certainly can feel it. I've been moving furniture from room ro toom, from shed to indoors and vice versa, I've been painting this and a little bit of that, planned new functions to new rooms and deleted some functions from some rooms, organised our 25 metres of books, organised all my baby's clothing (small, ok and big ones), vacu-packed loads and loads of textiles, duvets, pillows etc. that we won't need for some time.

Currently I'm organising our walk-in-closet, reorganising our living room, planning the reorganising of our master bedroom and happy with the result of reorganising our combined playroom-scrapping space.

I never really would have guessed that it could turn out to be this hard to start making layouts into a 12"x12" piece of paper!

Now the end, or should I rather say start, seems to be rather close. Once I get the whole house into shape and order again I can finally start.

That is, if I have any energy left at that point.

Discovering scrapping..?

Woo-hoo! This is my first ever post to this blog, which is about to be about the journey of a mom into the mysterious world of scrapbooking!

I have never ever scrapped, and only got to know the entire concept last summer. Some of our friends came to visit the Uk and wanted to find crafting stores...for scrapbooking material. I was completely astonished and first did not know what to think about it - paying sums of money to be able to, store photos? In a nice way, ok, but still?

Then I did what all of us do nowadays as we face some new concept: I googled, and googled, and googled. After that I googled some more. Well, it seemed that scrapbooking is not such a bad idea after all - seemed like something that you could do even with a toddler perhaps. Or, maybe it could be mama's own thing, a way to be creative, relax and have a hobby at home? Hmm...AND you would get very nice albums of memories, photos of your dearest ones. Started to sound like my kind of thing.

Some time passed, as I was very busy with travelling here and there (we have family sprinkled nearly all around Europe and everyone wants to see our little sugar cookie baby girl as often as possible). Then we got stuck to one country, due to some formalities with our car. I was dying to get back home, to my own cosy spot where I could relax and have all my nice things around - plus start scrapbooking of course!

By the beginning of September we finally got back home. Just to realise our garden looked awful as it had not gotten any TLC for months, and also the house itself needed some maintenance work - our little baby girl needed her own room, I had to go through loads of her clothing to sort out the ones too small, the ones fitting and the ones too big. I had to go through mama's and papa's clothing, too - as it was becoming colder. All kinds of those little everyday tasks that prevent you from concentrating into something new and exciting.

Of course my main task - and very dear, too, is to play with and take care of our little precious baby girl. Actually, she might be officially toddler now, but for me she is still baby darling.

In mid-November I started preparations for starting scrapbooking. I got a brilliant, although little megalomaniac idea; I would START by preparing scrapbooks as x-mas presents for our families. Filled with our daughter's photos of course. And, at least 20 pages for each to start with - later on we could send them separate pages to put into their expandable albums, right?!

My husband agreed with this wonderful idea (he seems to have a great trust in me indeed!). So I started researching with my perfectionist character (it can be a pretty exhausting feature sometimes). I made a list of what kind of styles I like, visually. I also made a list of what ingredients ie. materials we'd need. And, before that I made a check on what we already have at home. Then I started tracing for what needed to be bought.

I'll come back with the lists and tales of how the hunting has been going on.

Meanwhile, pls wish me luck! It is less than a month left to Christmas, and zero layouts ready. I haven't been able to start yet, because - I have the block already. Too big plans too little experience - uups!