This year I turning 22 at  January the 22nd. 

I hardly ever scrapbook my birthday, but I do sometimes make a letter page to myself. 

A "pretty" page with a hide letter to my older self. 

The page started with a watercolor background from one of my late night watercolor sessions (this one inspired of my dream kitchen floor). 

 I don´t have many nice photos of me even though my mom loves her camera, she just loves pointing it really close to flowers or stones... But on my birthday, we where both having a "free day" and she took some photos of me and Majken. (W is not in them sens she was licking my knees...)

 The letter is quit long and I didn't want to think about the length fitting on the page so I wrote it on another paper and put in a envelop, really pionting out the letter feel.

The letter is about how I am now, what I like to do and how my health is and what I have planed. 

 A tag rescued from my scrap-bin, perfect for the layout the the calendar pieces.  

 My first thought was to keep it simple but how can do that? So I through all my favorit things on the page and I like it, it's very Julia 2016!

Love Julia

I love to read, always have. I find it amazing that you can open a book and find our self in another country, in another time or in another world. The magic of books.

I think reading, is very personal and also what your read. For my it sometimes is a struggle and I have to make myself pick up the book to read, if only a page. Sometime, like today, I have to make myself put it away so I can get stuff done. The book in of itself also plays a big part, is it interesting, well written/ translated and does it capture you. 

I have read many books and keep finding more to add to my reading list. Now it's the annual book sale in Sweden and I just can't control myself! 

I have a few favorit topics that I love to read, like history, both fact and books taking place in another time. I also like to read novells. like Preservation and Pride & Prejudice.  I like to read in both Swedish and English and I think it's about 50/50.

 I've hade the idea of this page for a long time and the other day, when I was playing, it just started to appear on the page. I painted the color blocks on the bottom and then started to stamp and write. The "books" has titles, authors and just subjects that I like to read right now. As you can see I really like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Kerry Greenwood's Miss Fisher

 I wanted to keep the page fairly simple, just embellish around the photo. Letting the photo "explode", trying to visually show how it feels when getting into a book.

 Fun colors, gold and glitter. My beloved books are now documented in my album.

Love Julia

Every year I, like many others, sit down and make goals or resolutions for the new year. For example last year I really wanted to restart my french studies and even though it was hard and slow at first before I found the right way, I did it. For this year I picked a word. This word "came to me" in november/ december and I just thought it was so perfect for 2016; ACT/ AGERA in swedish.

This word mean allot right now, I have had the fibromyalgi-diagnoses for about a year and it has been hard, the years before till now. I'm finally starting to feel better and stronger and determined to find ways to become even better, stronger and more normal... The word act is a wish of that. A wish, a hope and a disire to be more active, physically and mentally. 

 I want this word to inspire me to dare more and push my limits, in a good and healthy way. I want this word to encourage me to go out and walk, to read and to paint. 

This year I will make an effort not only thinking about this word but to work with it. I find somethings so hard to do, overwhelming to do. Have been still for so long, in so much pain the most ordinary things seams like mountains to climb.  That is what I hope will change, the more I do, act the less intimidating the mountains will seam. (i hope)

 Act is my one little word for 2016 (though it feels huge) I don´t have any "musts", pages or stuff to do. This is just for me, to make me feel better... and hopefully inspire you.

Love Julia

A few weeks ago I shard a card and a layout using the Crate paper Confetti dies.

I love these dies and use them mostly to cut out leafs from watercolor paper. The "scrap" from the die cuts are so pretty I have made several pages with them and here is one:

This page is a "right now" page with stuff I like right now. So I thought, if i'm to make a page about what I like right now, I should use the stuff I like right now to make it... deep...

But I do really like the "scrap"/negativ space that the dies makes and it makes an interesting layer on the page without adding to much weight. 

 I had so much fun making this page and I think it's one of those pages that will be fun making over and over and the "right now" stuff changes. 

 So right now jan/feb 2016 I like:

to read: swedish history

to drink: ice-coffee

to eat: sandwiches

watching: Baka med Manuela

listening to: The scrap gals

making: scrapbooking

wanting: holiday

avoiding: bad weather

training: rally-O & french

Papers: Crate Paper "Hello Love" & "Craft Market"

             Webstre's pages "Beautiful Chic"

Dies: Crate Paper "Confetti"

Stamps: Crate Paper "Shine roller phrase stamp"

              7 Papers "Darcy"

              American Crafts "Shimelle roller date stamp"

Washi: PyHobby 

related videos:

 watercolor-flowers-cards

 watercolor-flowers-layout

snowflakes-in-january

I'm so happy with this page and I hope to have given you some inspiration...

More layout will be coming soon with "die-scraps"

Love Julia

The album about my school years at Strömma is... coming along... I think I want to focus on telling big stories, that has stuck with me. Things I learned or important events and people. 

This story is about a horse. A very special horse named Eminente...

Emmet, as he was known, was indeed a special horse. He  believed to be the most handsome stallion ever lived and that everyone should treat him as a king. Now the sad truth was that he of course wasn't a stallion and not very handsome...

 So why was he so special? 

Emmet was a pain to ride, as many honest horses are, if you don't do it right, they will not go right.  He was very honest, but he also had "trust issues" which ment you really had to prov yourself worthy of him. After a time, I did (but boy did I have to fight for it!) after that he was a dream to ride and I learned so much from him. That is what the story for this layout is about, how lucky I was to get to know this horse and how much he learned me. I will always remember the feeling of when he really worked and how bad he was at jumping even though he loved it! (How he got over the jumped alive no one knows)

 I found out some month ago that he had past and even though I hadn't seen him sens I left school a little bit of my heart hurt. I was offered to buy him when I left (like I mentioned he was hard to ride and not many wanted to challenge him) I don't know if bringing him home with me would have made him live longer or kept me healthier but given the chans, I would go back and bring him home.

Papers: WrMK- love notes & Crate Paper- Hello Love

Washi: Py hobby

Embellishments: Crate Paper- Hello Love

Love Julia

How many of us have one or more of these "adult coloring books"? How often do you sit down to color in them? I don't. Now there is so many to choose from but I find that many of them have such tiny spaces that coloring them is not relaxing, it just gives me a headache... On my birthday I got two and I was like... "really?!" But I'm determined to use them, in one way or another! 

So one night I sat down with one of them books got out a few pages and colored. Distress markers, water colors and mists. I had a plan; backgrounds!

This one just went perfectly with these photos from my prom three years ago and I decided to make  a "pretty" layout. 

 I picked all of my favorit embellishments and just had so much fun. This page will (hopefully) be apart of other ages about my time at gymnasiet. My plan is to make "pretty" layout and then have the story typed on the other side. That is the plan anyway. 

 So what I wanted to share was the idea of using odd materials (like wall paper) or papers that we might not think of to use in our scrapbooks. For me, using the coloring-books, will hopefully give them a purpurs instead of gathering dust on my bookshelf. 

The book I have used here is "Vintage Patterns" by Karrusel Forlag colored with distress markers i "milled lavender", "seedless preserves" & "cracked pistachio" 

Love Julia

This wallpaper thing has just begun! I love it!

Well it's a specific one, white with black vintage frames on. I have been cutting them out in dussins and have them under a big book to flatten out. 

This layout, like Monday's have some of the cute frames.

I find it so easy building a page with the frames, they are so much in of them self that I don't need to add much more to get a "finished" design. The background is WeRMK- Wildflower and the title & embellishments are Crate Paper.

 One thing to keep in mind working with wallpaper is to use more tape/adhesiv. Now I don't know how them will hold up for 100 years but I don't care, they are cute! 

 The story here is about how we spent New Years, I was so bad and my mom stayed home with me. Not that that hasn't happened before but I knew she wanted to see her friends and celebrate. So that day it was huge and I'm so lucky to have such a supporting mother

Love Julia