Arjun - Little Star

To me he is a little star anyway. A lot of kids are doing all sorts of activities these days. When we were growing up we were not exposed to as many different games and nor was the technology so advanced. We had only one channel being aired on TV when I was growing up in India for the longest time. We had a few video games but not as many.

Arjun likes to play sports - baseball, basketball and soccer. He is also good in Math and is learning to play guitar and learning Karate. I wanted to document this in a layout using the Pie chart idea from the Hello Story class.

So here is my layout:

I mainly used the Marks and Co kit from Studio Calico to make this layout. I loved the stitching template by Amy Tan that came in this kit. I stitched the arrows and the stars using a brown thread. I also used some wood veneer hearts from Studio Calico and star gold clips from Two Peas In a bucket. The enamel dots are from Cut and Paste collection from MME.

I water colored the pieces of the pie to tie in the blue and orange colors. I then embellished two of the slices and wrote Arjun's activities and roles in the larger pie slice. For the photo itself, I once again used one of the mask provided by Ali in photoshop elements to create the semi circle photo. I am loving this masking technique. This is totally new to me and I am sure I will be doing a lot more of this in the future. One of my favorite aspects of this page is the punched circle around the central circle. I did it using the lucky 8 retro scallop punch.

Hope you like the page! Have a great day.....
~Neela
 

Yosemite

It's been some time since I posted..... we did a mini vacation last week. We went to Yosemite. It is a gorgeous place. We were there for about 4 days and drove to the bay area and met up with some cousins and relatives.
It was a long drive to Yosemite with little kids and in-laws but we made it. Chandu drove all the way with just one major stop for lunch. We stayed in a cabin which was about an hour away from the Yosemite Lodge from where all the tours started. We didn't do any major hikes or adventurous stuff because of the diverse ages of the family. The tours were the safe way to go. We did the Valley floor tour the first day and the Mariposa grove tour the next day. The views were breathtaking. The Giant Sequoias in the Mariposa grove are 3000 years old and are about 300 feet tall. It was fascinating to get to know the history behind how Yosemite became a National park and the facts about the Giant Sequoias.
It would get challenging with Surya sometimes as he would want to run all around the place and when we went on the tour in the Marioposa grove, our family got split up and Surya and I ended up sitting with this lady who was extremely annoyed that Surya was talking continously through the audio tour. A couple of times she frowned at him and he started screaming even louder that she was scaring him :) . But on the whole I am proud that we did a trip like this with a three year old. On the third day we did a little hike to Bridal Veil fall and did a picnic lunch by the Merced river. Later in the afternoon we dropped everyone home and Chandu and I came back for hike in Tuolumne Grove to the giant sequoias. It was a simple hike and just took an hour and a half but was beautiful and enjoyable. In the evenings we would just hang out in the cabin and watch movies. It was pretty interesting not to have internet connectivity or cell phone reception for almost a week. You realize how much of an extension of your daily lives these things have become when you don't have access to them.
So after that long story, here is my layout for Hello Story class week 7 ( I missed making a layout for week 6 but hope to catch up soon). The topic for this week is Pie Charts. I love this topic and I am blown away with all the beautiful layouts that Ali Edwards created this week for inspiration. I lifted one of her layouts for this layout of mine. I thought the best subject would be Yosemite as we just did our trip. Here is my layout:

Ali provided us the masks for creating the pie chart. So I used photoshop elements to mask my photos into the pie chart. She also provided us an out line which was a .png file. I then imported this into Silhouette studio and converted it into a cut file (.studio file) so that I could cut out the pie chart instead of hand cutting the circle out. I don't trust my fussy cutting much. In this blog post, Ali explains how to convert a .png file to cut file using silhouette studio. I also cut out the background using a paper from MME (find your wings and fly) with Silhouette and stuck it on a white Bazzil cardstock. I created the tags around the pie chart with Making Memories tag maker ( I really don't know why I accumulate such stuff .... but it does make me happy when I put it to some use). I also used tags from Chic Tags to write all my journaling and embellished them with Studio Calico wood veneer. The deer and the MME background paper is from Salinger kit from Studio Calico.

I love the topic for this week and plan to make at least one more layout. Circles are real pleasing to the eye.... don't you think.
~Neela

Arjun+Rahul=Friends

This week's theme for Hello Story class is Math. It is a pretty fun week. Ali designed some fun math elements and gave us tips about how to incorporate it in layouts. The layout that I made is a scrap lift of one of her layouts on a similar subject. It so happens that the sketch for this week at Elle's Studio kind of coincides with how this layout was make by Ali. So I combined the two and had a lot of fun creating this layout. I think I have enjoyed making this layout a lot more than some of the other ones that I have made recently. It is less serious. I also like using all the bright Elle's studio papers.

Here is my layout:

Both the boys are so silly. Rahul is already 9 now and Ajrun will be 9 soon. They met last week and had a good time catching up with each other.... their latest fun activity was to play Minecraft... they connected with each other the ipads and ipods and played for hours at a stretch.
Here is a list of some of the materials used for this layout:

• Patterned paper from Cameron Collection - Elle's studio
• Packaging material from the July Project life kit from Elle's studio
• Brad from Crate paper
• Rhinestones from Scrapp'n Supplies
• Stickers from October Afternoon
• Yellow washi is from MME and the Numbers one is from a Japanese store in the Bay Area. I am glad to get to use it finally.
• Arrow paper clips from Two Peas in a Bucket
• Enamel dots from MME - cut and paste collection
• Amy Tan paper from Yes Please collection from Planetarium kit

Here is the sketch from Elle's Studio:

 

Passage of time 2008 to 2012

I was inspired by one of Ali Edward's sketch for this layout.....It said 5 years ago. So I selected the year 2008 to create the right side of my layout and collected all the photos and created my grid. I then decided to do the left side with 2013. But then I was unhappy that only part of the year is done and I would not have a whole year to show for 2013. So I ended up doing 2012, so this shows a difference of 4 years instead of 5 years. I chose to use mainly black, white, gold, grey and silver embellishments as there was already a lot going on in the photos.

For this layout, I spent quite a bit of time trying to collect photos to make the grids. In the process, I also ended up organizing a lot of my photos. I am very happy with that. I had the photos distributed on an external hard drive and on a couple of computers. I now have them all nicely consolidated and mostly organized.

The whole process of collecting the photos for 2008 and 2012 was so much fun. Surya was born in 2010 so that was a sweet little addition to our family in those 4 years. It is also so cool to see all the changes that Arjun has had in those 4 years. Marriages happened and babies were born, kids have all grown up. Things have changed over the years but also a lot of relationships and friendships have remained the same. 

 Here is a list of some of the materials I used for the layout:

• October afternoon sprinkler - screen door
• Heidi Swapp colorshine - Gold 
• Silhouette - I designed the cut files
• MME enamel dots
• DCWV Black card stock from the Neutrals pack
• Stamps from Teressa Collins Freestyle and  I don't know the origin of the star stamp ( it could be a recollections stamp from a happy birthday stamp set) - I embossed the clocks to give them a little shine
• Phrases - 'The passage of time' and 'Time flies' are handouts from the classroom
• Patterned paper - Today from Studio Calico

Still totally enjoying the class but I am finding it harder to keep up with my goal of finishing two layouts for every week before the next week starts. 

Have a great day.

~Neela

Arjun's Thoughts About Summer

So we are on Hello Story Class week 4 by Ali Edwards. The prompts for this week was time - the passage of time, a moment in time and how time flies. I especially liked one of the layouts that she made of her son expressing his thoughts and writing it down. I really wanted to make Arjun do something like this for quite some time. It was really nice to get a framework for something like that from her example. I pretty much scraplifted this layout that she made.

I made Arjun write down his thoughts about summer till now and incorporated that in this layout. Here time is the highlight and that is why the time at which he wrote down his thoughts and the photo was taken has been given prominence.

Here is my layout.

I used a bunch of cardstock from different scrapbook kits from Studio Calico. This is a very simple layout but I can't believe it took me as long as it did. I just cut out strips from various papers and stuck them lengthwise for the background. On the whole I think I could have done a better job but I think the goal is to record the memories and I am happy with the results.
Have a great day....
~Neela