It's Sandra here with you tonight, sharing my Mother's Day card. Of course, it's the very last minute before I get around to making a card for my mama tomorrow BUT..... never fear. There was a card put up on the Project Life Australia Facebook group recently (and if I could remember who shared it I would absolutely link them up, so if it's you please let me know!), that I knew would be a go-to design for me. It's simply two 3x4 cards, and a few little embellishments.



I've used cards from Polly's February Pocket Life kit, Salted Caramel Ice-cream (sold out, sorry). {Now I know I said there were only 2 cards, but I used one of the overlays, so technically there's 3 in this one} If I had any of the wooden enamel dots they would have gone straight on there, but I have run out, so I grabbed some pink pearl dots from my stash. I simply popped a doily behind everything, just because she is that type of Mum.



This design is so simple and fast, and would work with any kit or couple of cut down papers. It's so easy in fact, that I'm off to make one for my Grandma also!

Love and light,
Sandra xx

Here at Polly! we love to see the creative spin that our customers put on our kits and we would love to see your interpretation of today’s Sketch Duet. To win a fantastic Polly! Stamp set of your choice all you have to do is show us your take on the Sketch Duet, post your layout, card or PL card to your Instagram using the hashtag #pollysketchduet and then comment here on the blog to let us know when you have posted! Entries close on Sunday 20 April at 5pm AEDT. Kate and Lauren will then choose five winners! That’s right we have five stamps to give away! Winners get their choice of stamp sets from any Polly! stamps (while stocks last). You can see them here . So, get crafting – we can’t wait to see what you make! Make sure you leave us a comment so we can check out your creations!

Happy Crafting! 
Kate

Hey guys, so its another late Wednesday night and here I am with another blog post and Project Life layout using the February Salted Caramel Ice Cream kit. I absolutely adored the gold papers from MME in the kit this month and couldn't wait to use them. I knew I wanted to use them on a Christmas layout. From there I knew I had to strive to finish my 2013 and luckily this week I did. It is such an achievement after you complete your last layout in a year long book. My PL for 2013 was only 16 weeks since I started in September but I still felt that same accomplished feeling. I cant wait to look back on this year after completing 52 weeks and seeing how it all looks and how I feel about the whole process.


Enough rambling tonight (you can tell I am tired). Here is the layout I created. Sorry about the low quality pics. I took them today with a cloudy, rainy sky and the focus just didn't seem to want to work the way it usually does.



I am a huge fan of simple colours and white on white at the moment, especially for title cards.


As always guys you can check out my process video below and see just how I created this layout. I did start out with a lot of Polly! products from the past two kits and then later on throughout the layout wanted to really focus on those gold papers..


Thank you so much again guys for your support. These Polly! post and videos are getting the most attention on my Youtube channel and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much!

Love always Nae xoxo

Good morning fellow Polly! fans,

Kate here to share with you a 12x12 layout that I made with the Pocket Scrapbooking kit from February, "Salted Caramel", which you can find in the store here. Yes, it was previously sold out, but a little birdie told me that there a couple more have found their way back into the store. So, go get it!! It's gorgeous.

Tip 1. Use the photos that truly represent your life.

No one starts out as a professional photographer. Practise helps everyone improve, but even someone who is good at it, doesn't always have the light conditions and the right equipment when everyday memories need to be captured. My keeping up tip is to give yourself a break and just use the photos that contain your memories, whatever they may look like.

If that makes you nervous, then you can always post process them, though it can get time consuming if you let it. I generally don't use really blurry photos as they hurt my brain when I look at them.

I sometimes use phone apps like Pic.Tap.Go to improve my less than stellar photos, plus I use Picasa for effective cropping, straightening or other simple post processing, but I won't leave out something important just because it isn't my favourite photo. I include many photos in my PL that would not make it onto a traditional layout.

Tip 2. Keep it as Simple or Complex as you will enjoy.

This is a project for the long haul, so pay attention when you are creating and when you are looking at project life pages to what you will enjoy doing every week or every month. It doesn't have to be the same all the time, but if simple works for you then go with it, if lots of layering is your thing, then do that, or a mix of both. There are NO rules except the ones you give yourself. This is your album to enjoy.

Personally I mix it up depending on the amount of time I have and the supplies. For this month's kit I felt the cards were quite decorative, both the transparencies or the cards with lots of printed layers, so I didn't add a whole lot on top. Here is the final layout:

Tip 3. Balance your colours to make it pleasing.

Project life includes a lot of bits and pieces in lots of small pockets, from your ephemera and photos to products. Unlike a 12x12 layout there is not single piece in the background bringing it all together, so you need to take a look over the whole spread over the time you are working on it to check that the colours are balanced.

Because you are including the real stuff, photos and content from your life, you need to pay attention to making it all work cohesively and one secret to doing that is to make the colours harmonious across the whole design. I try to have one or two colours that are spread across both pages. Here there is a triangle of pink, an insersecting smaller one in kraft and a diagonal line from top left to bottom right in green and teal colours that draws the eyes across the page.

Hey guys,

Nae back again with another Project Life layout. After about 6 months of doing Project Life, I have really started to find my scrap style again! Its great and its so nice to finally have a formula to work to. Pastel colours are really not in my scrap formula but in February's PL kit, I was given a little challenge. The cards were pastel and quite busy. Most of my layouts usually use less busy cards but despite this, I was still able to use these beautiful cards to my advantage and fit them into my style!

You may be a little concerned for how far behind I am with PL but dont worry. I am working on both 2013 and 2014 and you will be happy to know, with these Polly! assignments, I now only have 2 weeks left of 2013 to do. This layout is of my week 13 and 14, the first weeks of december. Life was really busy with me for work so not a lot of photos taken but a lot of things happening!! Im sorry if you are sick of looking at Christmas. I am not a fan of themey papers and embellishments and Christmas papers are one of my biggest hates. I hope this layout will help inspire you to not use such traditionally themed products on your layouts but still conveying the essence of the holiday.


So for this layout I decided to stick primarily with the cards from the kit. I plan to use the beautiful gold black and white MME papers for another layout later on in the month. When I was doing my layout for this week I completely misplaced my embellishment add on kit and I am still trying to find it. It definitely would have looked awesome with this layout.


As much as I had no idea what I was going to do with the teeny thin washi tape, I soon found a new love for the stuff. I loved using it as a background strip for my journalling. On photos, on cards it worked everywhere and just gave that beautiful little hint of colour!


And as always, with every post I put here on the Polly! blog, here is my process video!! I hope you enjoy guys. Thank you so much for all your love and support especially on my youtube channel. I am now up to 160 subscribers. I love your comments and subscriptions so please leave me some love on the videos!! I always post back!



Thanks for checking in guys. I am loving your support. I cant wait to get back on here in a few weeks and share with you another fun Project Life layout!

Love always, Nae xoxo

Morning Polly! fans,

My post today is going to be a little different for me - not my usual Project Life spread, but instead, a few pages of my One Little Word album. I know that many of you will be familiar with Ali Edwards One Little Word class, but for those who aren't, here are the details. Some of us on the Polly! DT are joining in the workshop this year, so you may get to see a few spreads here this year. My word for 2014 is REACH - reach my goals, reach out to distant friends, reach for my children, reach inside to explore what I want - you get the picture.

As soon as I saw the Salted Caramel Icecream kit for this month, I thought it was so pretty! Far too pretty for me to use in my boy-centric Project Life. And those transparencies - I knew I had to find a way to use them, because they were just so beautiful. It was then, that I remembered my slightly neglected One Little Word project, and knew that I had something to work on. Now, I will say that this spread was extremely difficult to photograph - because of overlays, transparencies, pockets etc. Very hard. But I hope you can get some inspiration from the spreads - I just love how they turned out! I completed these spreads while at Camp.Paper.Scissors with my fellow DT members Carol & Lauren. We had such a wonderful time together. So onto the pages.

To start with, I decided to do a page to show off those beautiful transparencies. I felt like they didn't need much else added to them. Yep, hard to photograph!