Paper Pile Kitten's Blog

Merry Christmas!

I hope that you have the merriest of Christmases! I have been incredibly busy in December, preparing for the Christmas celebrations in my home with my parents and a couple of my siblings. For the first time that I have had the family responsibility for this holiday, and I have had so much fun baking and cooking and learning all the traditional family recipes from my mom. We are having a wonderful Christmas! 

I'll be back with more blog posts soon! Here are a couple of Christmas cards that I made this year. The one above is made with Tim Holtz dies. They are my favorites! Red and grey are traditional Nordic Christmas colors and I love that color combo! The card below is a very fast "massproduced" holiday card that I made in several copies. It's really quick to assemble, using a pre-embossed card. I just added a vintage image on the front and stamped the inside of the card and added a jewel to the Christmas tree. 

Color of the Year 2012: Orange IS the New Pink!

Pantone have announced the new color of the year for 2012. It's Tangerine Tango! This orange color is one of the hottest colors in fashion for spring/summer 2012. The color of the year for 2011 has been Honeysuckle, a bright pink color. So I guess that orange IS the new pink* then? :)

*I'm referring to the famous quote from Legally Blonde where Reese Witherspoon is stating: "Whoever said orange was the new pink was seriously disturbed." ;D

 

 

The Trend Colors for Spring 2012

Here's a peek of the trendiest colors in spring/summer 2012 according to Pantone. There are loads of bright colors along with a couple of pastels and some beautiful neutrals.

Tangerine Tango and Solar Power are screaming summertime! Those are so gorgeous both as singles and together. Cockatoo is an awesome turquoise/aqua tone.

Sodalite Blue - finally!! I have been waiting at least a year for a navy color to make it to this trendy color list! It is not a very dark hue of navy but it is navy! Yay!

Cabaret is a reminder of the color of the year 2011 - Honeysuckle, but Cabaret is a deeper fuchsia tone than Honeysuckle and is said to be inspired by the Barbie doll.

Bellflower and Sweet Lilac are more to the pastels side of the range. They are really pretty together.

The neutrals are grey Driftwood and sandy Starfish, and I guess that the subtle soft greygreen Margarita (funny name - I would expect a Margarita to be bright and colorful) can be categorized as a neutral.

All of these go so well together. Try mixing Tangerine Tango with the neutral Driftwood or Starfish. Gorgeous!

I expect that this year's scrapbooking trend of yellows and greys together could continue with the combination of Solar Power and Driftwood! In any case, I am certain that all of these colors, and varying combinations of them, will find their way into the scrapbooking collections we'll see at CHA Winter 2012.

What do you think of these new fashion colors?

 

45 % Off Distress Ink Pad Set of Winter Colors

I was stopping by Scrapbook.com and happened to notice that the set of 3 distress ink pads with the limited edition winter colors is on sale today! You only pay $9.99 instead of $17.99 for the set! That's what I'd call a good deal! So if you haven't picked up your winter distress ink pads yet, now is a good time. There was no word of how long this sale will last, so hurry if you'd like to take advantage of this offer.

 

Ranger Ink - Tim Holtz - Distress Ink Pads - Winter - Limited Edition - 3 Pack
Scrapbook.com

 

 

Organize Your Stash Week 7 - Ideas

This week's organization challenge is a fun one! Where should I keep all my ideas and inspiration for scrapbooking? Here's the background to the challenge on Wookiemouse's blog.

I keep my digital ideas on Evernote, which is a great place to keep everything from journaling to sketches!), but my inspiration is all on Pinterest. Oh, I could pin pin pin gorgeous pics all day long. :)

Ideas and inspiration in print come mainly from magazines. I keep those in a couple of  magazine holders and I try to purge sometimes. If there's a layout or a sketch that I want to keep, I ter it out and put it in a binder. I won't part from Scrapbook Etc. or from Craft Stamper magazine from the UK. The Craft Stamper magazine is shock full of stamping techniques so that's the reason why I keep those. Scrapbook Etc. is my favorite scrapbooking magazine but these days I only buy it in my Zinio iPad app so the new issues won't take up shelf space in my scrap area. I love that!

I usually sort my ideas by category and/or project. Except for in my Inspiration Book where I scrap my ideas chronologically.

Organize Your Stash Week 6 - Photos

Ugh! This week's organization challenge gives me a headache!

Printed photos

My prints are neatly sorted into plastic pouches and binders, sorted by subject, ready to scrap. Great! 

Old photos and negatives

These should be scanned to digital (I never scrap original photos), when I find the time. The ones in photo albums are fine, but all the loose ones are in a mess on a shelf along with my memorabilia (granted, they're all in one place after our move to the new apartment this summer). I'd like to tidy up that mess by sorting the photos and put them in containers. I'll start with putting them in containers to get rid of the mess, and then I'll sort them later. (After all, it IS Christmas prep time and I cannot find the time for extensive organizing in December.)

Digital photos

I have now spent half a day on backing up and organizing my photos, because I'm behind on that. I'm not so sure that my folders are organized in the best way. Part of it is organized chronologically and part is organized by subject. I think I'd prefer them all organized by subject because I do not scrap chronologically and you can always add the date to the subject when naming the folder. My main concern is to choose photos for print and to prepare them for that. I'd like to get things done in this area.

I keep all of my photos in an external harddrive on my desk. My back up is that I upload all the photos to Picasa. That way, I know that no matter what happens I will not lose my photos. Unless Picasa goes away over night, but hopefully that unlikely event would not happen at the exact same time my harddrive breaks down. :P I also keep working copies of the photos that I would like to edit and print, on my laptop.

Weekly routine

I need a routine for handling my photos. So, from now on, every Sunday I will do the following:

1) Empty memory card of new photos into laptop folders, named by subject and date.

2) Immediately browse through the files and delete all those pics I don't want to keep.

3) Move to external harddrive and upload to Picasa for back up.

4) Choose the photos I'd like to print and move those to Print folder. Touch them up so they're ready for printing. I won't upload them to the print service and make my order until I get a good offer, but that happens at least once a month so I never have to wait for long to get a bargain price on printing my photos. If the photos are ready to go in my Print folder it won't take long to upload them and order the prints.

5) Sort and scan old photos to digital for 15 minutes or so. Getting a little bit of the work done every week.

6) Take another 15 minutes to rename folders on harddrive and Picasa, shifting the organization from chronological to subject, to make it easier to find photos.

In all, this should take me an hour a week. It's a routine I could live with. 

 

Organize Your Stash Week 5 - Scraps

I got a little behind in the organizational challenge, but this week I've been catching up, so today you'll get two updates.

Week 5 is all about scraps! I love scraps! I save the tiniest little scrap of every paper. That's a consequence of my love for patterned paper. I won't let anything go to waste. A small strip or a tiny circle could be used on a card.

My problem is that I haven't kept my scraps organized at all - I've thrown everything in a big happy pile. So this week, it was time to finally organize my scraps. I had thought about it long and hard. Should I sort them by color or by manufacturer/collection just like my paper?

I read about people that don't organize their scraps, but keep them all together and then are able to find great mixes and matches of paper. Brilliant! I'm going with that. But I'll keep the cardstock separately and my stamped images in one separate box AND working with the Christmas projects I've come to realize that the Christmas paper scraps should be in a separate box. Otherwise, I'll go crazy come next Christmas trying to find those holiday patterns in the big pile. LOL! Then I have a box for die cuts and one for prints from digital collections.