The World According to Angie

Getting creative about taking lunch

I know what you're thinking.

Mid-day blog posts are a sign of the self-employed, the vacationing, or the goofing-off-at-work.

Setting aside the fact that TypePad allows you to schedule a post to publish later, I'll freely admit that it is one in the afternoon, and I am blogging.

And yeah, I'm at work.

But this is my public declaration that I'm going to take care of myself - and that includes taking a lunch break outside of my office.

I've been back at work just two and a half weeks, and I've already fallen back into my old routine: I grab lunch, eat over my keyboard, and work straight through the noon hour. Or even if I do decide to take a break, I don't leave my office, which leaves me open for people to stop by and pull me back into their work.

My Word for 2011 is Listen. And I wasn't doing a very good job of doing it. Listening, that is - to my heart, and spirit, which were telling me loud and clear this isn't a good idea!

So today, inspiration struck. I blocked an hour on Outlook and labeled it "lunch". When the reminder came up, I picked up my adorable little Thirty-One lunch tote (thanks, Mom!) and grabbed my laptop and headed to the cafe.

No, I'm not working. Thanks to my handy-dandy little external hard drive, I've got everything I need to spend my lunch hour quite happily engaged in some digital scrapbooking. Aw, yeah... yet another benefit of ditiching the paper and going digital!

It's a small change, but I can already tell my spirit feels lighter. As I head back to my office for the afternoon, I'll be ready to push through the last four hours of the day and give my employer not only hard work, but creative work as well.

Sweet!

2010's Monday in Photos + Words

I'm making progress, slowly but surely, in pulling together the photos + words I collected last year into a cohesive album. Here's how Monday came together:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an excellent exercise to undertake ten days before beginning my 2011 round of "Week in the Life" documentation. I've found I'm taking note of those photos that are most meaningful to me, and those that I didn't capture, but wish I had. I've also discovered while I'm good about taking pictures for a week, my weakness lies in the documentation of words.

I'm going to work on that this year ... I've got some ideas.
 

It's nearly that time again!

Now that I'm back to work after five months of medical leave (which is a super long story for another time) I'm trying to be better about exercising good work habits. Why not start back off on the right foot, right? I've always been a little anal-retentive about calendar-keeping, but now I'm actually trying to make it work for me with things like time blocking.

So I was updating my Outlook calendar, looking ahead to the next several weeks, and I came across this:

It's almost that time again!  What time, you ask? Time for me to carry around a camera and a notebook for a week, annoying my husband, stepdaughter, and co-workers by taking photos of everything. Time for me to chronicle a little slice of our wonderfully normal, beautifully boring, simple everyday life as I undertake my annual "Week in the Life" photojournalism project.

 

It's Life Art at its finest. But most people don't have a clue what that means, so I describe it as photojournalism. That works, too.

A Week in the Life is the brainchild of the amazing + talented Ali Edwards. She did her project in late July this year for a summertime chronicle. Personally, I like to anchor mine on the calendar and do it each year the week of October 1st. That marks the transition to fall and my favorite time of year, as the weather begins to cool and Dallas becomes bearable once more. It's the start of football and halftime shows and all sorts of family goodness.

I like the way it ushers in the start of our fall-to-winter holiday season.

Someday, I might swap it and do an April 1 week, but for now, I'm happy with October. It's cool to go back and see what we were doing this time last year and the year before and ... you get the idea.

Speaking of which, I got a little <cough-cough> distracted and never actually completed last year's album. My momentum tends to run out by the end of a week of capturing words + photos. So I'm working to put it all together now, and that's getting me doubly excited for what I'm going to capture this year.

I love the day-of-the-week pages with their big ol' photos:

 

 

 

 





I'm using the 12x12 Week in the Life Layered Template Album available from Designer Digitals along with the coordinating 2011 Sentiment Tabs. So stinkin' cute. As my girlfriend Audrey Reed likes to say, it doesn't have to be difficult. And speaking of Audrey, all photographs are copyright me or her.

Daily pages to come!

project SAVOR - Q ... Quiet

( graphic elements - Carina Gardner - ABC Inspiration @ JessicaSprague.com; page layout - all me. fonts - elephant, adobe garamond, and amaze )

Journaling reads: Learn to enjoy the quiet of your own company. It's not anti-social ... it's healthy.
"We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly." Besides, if you can't stand your own company, how can you foist it on others?

 
 

project SAVOR - P ... Pets

 

( graphic elements - Carina Gardner - ABC Inspiration @ JessicaSprague.com; page layout - all me. fonts - elephant, adobe garamond, and amaze )

Pets have a purpose in our homes and our hearts. They protect. They play. But most importantly, they love - fiercely and with great abandon. It's been said a dog is the only thing on eart that loves you  more than he loves himself. I believe that life without dogs is black-and-white; with them, it's Technicolor, and maybe just a little misty around the edges.

This sweet photograph is of my father and Bear, his 3-year-old Morkie. Bear loves my daddy. So sweet...

project SAVOR - M ... Mommy (UPDATED)

 

( graphic elements - Carina Gardner - ABC Inspiration @ JessicaSprague.com; page layout - all me. fonts - elephant, adobe garamond, and amaze )

Journaling reads: My mommy is magic. Hugging her is like slipping into a warm bath, cuddling up in a down comforter, laying your head on the softest pillow and being enveloped in pure safety. Here, you're loved, no matter how ugly you are, no matter what you've said or done, how badly you've screwed up. I can't imagine facing life without her. I don't know how much time God's going to give me with her, so I'm making Mommy Time a priority, and I will savor every single second.

I love this photograph!  My husband shot it at Christmas during our family photo shoot. I had to switch it out for the original photo I used for this layout.
 

She's just "2 Tegan"

Digital elements from Carina Gardner's Very Cherry kit; brushes are by Jessica Sprague. Photographs copyright Angie Key; all rights reserved.

I love these photographs. They're proof that Tegan doesn't burst into tears at the sight of me any more.

This is Assignment 2b from the Digi: In Deep class I'm taking over at JessicaSprague.com, and the whole point of this one was to start from scratch - a blank PSD file - and design something using:

• only three colors (plus neutrals)
• one large focal point photo, offset from center
• several smaller photos
• leading lines
• journaling card popped off the page with a custom, angled drop-shadow
• a large letter filled with patterned paper

I then made a facing page, since my albums are largely 2-page spreads, and there were so many more photos I wanted to use from this shoot:

 

I think my favorite technique from this lesson has been the use of layered brushes. It's sort of the digital equivalent of taking rubber stamps and coating them with thick, acrylic paint ... and then stamping away - without all the mess. Zero clean-up!

I'm pretty happy with my finished layout! And I'm still loving this class.

Heart & Soul

Done as part of the self-paced digital scrapbooking class Digi: In Deep v2 at JessicaSprague.com ... elements provided as part of the class; I just recolored them to match my photographs. Copyrights remain with their respective holders, blah blah. Ahem.

This was part of lesson 2, or week 2, or whatever. Skills I picked up this week involved use of custom shapes, layering brushes (love how this looks on the 2nd page!) and use of the Warp function to create a drop shadow that makes the journaling block look like it's lifting off the page.

I created a second complementary page to house more photographs of the routine ... and since my albums are all 3-ring, it doesn't matter that the stripe swoosh doesn't line up completely. I'm not getting stuck on perfection. :)

These layouts are honestly WAY more frou-frou and detailed than I would normally create. I tend toward the streamlined, the simple, the Cathy Zielske style of scrapbooking, if you will. But that's why it's fun to take this class - not only am I picking up these new techniques, but I'm also getting a little variety in our family albums.

And these wild + crazy pages?

They are totally Veronica.

Cre8ive: Listen Quote Album

To round out my work in Week #1 of Digi: In Deep over at JessicaSprague.com, I completed the "Cre8ive Challenge" of making eight quick pages for a 6x6 quote album. The layout template was provided as part of the class materials, and the goal was to practice a few of the new skills from the week while limiting materials and fonts, and sticking to no more than 15 minutes of design time per page.

I decided to make this album do double-duty. It's housing my collection of quotes related to my One Little Word for 2011 - LISTEN.

All four layouts are copyright Jessica Sprague. Digital elements come from the Monarchy kit and Watery Wings brushes by Katie Pertiet. Fonts are OldNewspaperTypes and Ink In The Meat, both available from DaFont.com

 

 

 

I looked ahead, and it seems we get to revisit this particular Cre8ive Challenge after each "week" of the class, creating another set of 8 pages for this album. I'm so excited about getting this printed when I'm done (and getting a second one made for my mom!)

Have I said lately how much I'm loving this class?

Signs of Spring

Fonts Adobe Garamond + Cry Kitty, brush from Katie Pertiet Flourished Love, papers + butterfly mask from Karen Funk Butterfly Kisses kit

This is Assignment 1B from the Digi: In Deep class I'm taking at JessicaSprague.com ... and I'm both thoroughly amused and decidedly pleased. While Assignment 1A gave you a specific layout, all the digital elements to use, and walked you step-by-step through the whole process - in both video and PDF form - this assignment was to take a couple of the techniques we learned and create another layout.

I love well-done instructional design: learn it, do it, then apply it again. Awesome!

For anyone wanting to learn more about Photoshop or Illustrator, whether it's for memory-keeping purposes or otherwise, I highly recommend the classes at JessicaSprague.com. Highly, highly, highly...

And now, I'm on to the next assignment. :)