Excerpts From The Diary of a Designer Vol #8

Life Moves Fast

Monday the 21st of August 2017

Dear Diary...

Now that I'm trying to squeeze in work, uni and family, life it seems is just a tad crazier than usual and keeping up has become quite the effort. 

This week the uni has given us a 'study break', so there are no classes or lectures. 

[insert party meme]

This couldn't have come at a better time... because I'm EXHAUSTED!!

I've been desperately trying to keep up with a mountain of work and readings mostly centring around French painters and art critics from the 1850 -1900 period.

Now don't get me wrong... I'm actually loving it .... there's just something about staying home with 6 kids for 20 years and watching Wiggles reruns endlessly that makes pretty much ANYTHING ELSE in the universe mind blowingly interesting... but still, I've been buried under all the paperwork!

I dont know why but most of my assignments were due at the beginning of study week ... of course it would have been nice to use study week to complete them in .... but none the less it has resulted in the boon of actually having no work left for study week which means .... a week off!! 

YAY.

The house is filthy again and I haven't had a chance to scrap in ages so this week off is going to be AWESOME! 

I started today by creating a fabulous storage box for myself ... during August the Imaginarium blog featured loads of ideas for storing your chipboard collections and I confess ... looking at them  I became quite jealous and covetous !! 

I have traditionally stored my chipboards in the package they arrived in ... but after seeing everyone else's cool ideas I decided to create something for myself.

This is a Kaisercraft MDF wood recipe box and it makes for 

THE BEST chipboard storage space :)

Of course I decorated it up all pretty with chipboards, but the real magic is on the inside....

where all my different chipboards are stored in individual CD pouches that have a clear plastic panel on the front so I can see easily what's in each pouch. I picked up 100 of these on ebay for just a few $, I knew they would come in handy one day 🙂

And the recipe box dividers work brilliantly as dividers for my chip board sections :)

Tuesday the 22nd of August 2017

Dear Diary...

I thought I should clean my house today before indulging in scrapping so got cracking on that nice and early. 

Firstly I made all the kids vacuum a section of the house each before they left for school,

this consisted of 30mins of arguing about doing the vacuuming and around 5mins of actual vacuuming!!?! 

After they left for the bus I got stuck into it... 

'If I can just finish the whole house before lunch then I'll get half a day to scrap' 

...was the fantasy I sold myself.

Tradigically 4 minutes later all the kids returned with the news that they had missed the bus.

Well there goes my morning ... Now I had to drive them to school, a two and a half hour round trip!!!!! I was in a fabulous mood when I returned

 [she states flatly dripping with sarcasm] 

and promptly decided not to clean anymore, 

but rather to console myself with some scrap therapy.

this is the first double page I have done in ages ...

Im feeling so arty at the moment ... I suppose it comes from looking all those art works in my Framing Modernity class.... in any case I attacked these pages with white gesso and Inka Gold wax, a ton of metal embellishments and some gorgeous Imaginarium chipboards.

Wednesday the 23rd of August 2017

Dear Diary...

Not wanting to make the same mistake twice the kids were out the door early today and securely placed on the bus!

Now back to the cleaning ... 

I managed to get the bath rooms done before the first of many annoying phone calls started. I'm not talking about two or three rings here .... it was ridiculous ... every 5 mins the phone would sound with another person offering me the deal of a lifetime or some fabulous solar installations! 

After 7 calls in one hour I just couldnt believe it, I remember ages ago signing up for the 'no advertising calls' register, that you can do here in Australia, and I hadn't been bothered by sales calls much at all after that. 

I figured their system was broken and I needed to let them know this, but when I called the hotline I found out this directive only lasts for 2 years and mine had run out the day before!! 

Well there you have it. 

With that annoying activity taken care of and half the day gone already I happy abandoned housework for some more scrapping.

I recently got my hands on an awesome PebblesInc paper pads and had been dying to have a go with the papers. I just adore the full picture (or photo) pages and loved creating this layout that feels like an extension of the photo...

I melted embossing enamel onto the chipboards to give them that vibrant and shining effect and they were all that I needed to add to this layout along with some pearls and butterflies. I can get a tad tizzy with my layouts but I do love it when a page can look full and complete with little effort 🙂

Thursday the 24th of August 2017

Dear Diary...

Oh how I loved scrapping that page yesterday ... I couldnt wait to get rid of the kids this morning ( although I do love them with all my heart etc etc) so I could start again on another layout using the same full picture pages I used yesterday ....

 I'm LOVING this look :) 

I worked all morning on these pages and loved every second of it. I spent the afternoon uploading pics to Pinterest and googling 'sarcastic animal photos' ... I haven't laughed that hard in ages!! Of course dinner was toasties because I had forgot to do the shopping ... but hey, it was worth it ♥

Friday the 25th of August 2017

Dear Diary...

HOW IS IT FRIDAY ALREADY???

I got to bed at a terrible hour last night as I had to duck into town after hours for some late night shopping so I was totally stuffed this morning.

I had completely forgotten about this craft show I was working a stall at this weekend and as it turns out I needed to pack to go to that today!! 

So I spent THE WHOLE DAY packing and organising for that.

I loath real work.

Saturday the 26th of August 2017

Dear Diary...

Left home for the craft show at 6 am this morning ... returned at  6pm today.

But it was sooooo awesome, I'm feeling massively inspired by all the AMAZING things people make and do. Despite my extreme exhaustion from the huge day out nothing could stop me from sitting down to get cracking on a layout .... you see I got this FABULOUS string of beads at the craft show that I was dying to use :)

It's a well know fact that one inspiring embellishment is all it takes to get the creative juices flowing.... So this whole layout was pretty much just put together so I could drape this AWESOME string of blue beads on it ! lol

 I inked the chipboard at the top and put shine lines on them and shadow lines around them so they would pop off that boarded background.

The two little flourishes at the top are actually one of these cut in half.

Sunday the 27th of August 2017

Dear Diary...

Today I am barely alive!

Another full day at the craft show and I've talked so much I have lost my voice now.

I packed up after the show and brought everything back home ... 

the place looks like a bomb has hit it. 

Boxes, products and craft supplies EVERYWHERE in my studio and the house.

 It was an awesome show but it's going to take me a week to clean up from it. 

I would head off to bed early but I'm afraid that's just not possible...

You see uni lectures start back tomorrow morning and I still have three 25 page readings to get through.

Soooooooo glad I had a whole week 'off' to 'catch up'!!!

_______________________________________________________

Kelly-ann Oosterbeek has been a scrapbook and paper craft designer for the last 18 years and lives in Northern NSW with her super-sized family.

She has her own line of gloss finish butterfly stickers ( featured on the projects in this post), and sells these along with Kaisercraft Collections and layout kits online ...

You can find her and all her links at :

www.kellyanno.com

www.kellyanno.com