Issue 11 is finally here. It’s been a long time coming.

I  still LOVE everything about Etzcetera and this magazine has really taught me SO much along the way about publishing and promotion and building a publication..

BUT it’s hard to ignore the growth of Jot Magazine.

I didn’t anticipate Jot would grow so fast and demand so much of my time and energy. And unfortunately, I can’t continue working at the pace I have been over the past six months, giving equal energy to both publications as well as our Jot Spot membership site and our online workshops. So with a heavy heart I have made the decision to step back from Etzcetera for now to focus all of my energy into Jot and all it offers – the Jot magazine, our membership site and online classes.

I can’t quite let go of Etzcetera though just yet – Etz is still my baby – so I intend to still publish some special issues of Etzctera from time to time.

HOWEVER – we still have our beautifully presented Issue 11 ready for viewing. Members of our Jot Spot community have already received their advance copy as part of their membership and our last batch of 12 month subscribers also received their copies late last week.

And now, dear readers, I give you our final issue (for now) – Etzcetera 11. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for the support you have given me and everything that I do and for your support for Etzcetera over the past couple of years.

Read more and purchase your copy here>>

Thank you for purchasing Issue 11 of Etz magazine as one of our 12 month subscribers. This is your last issue in your subscription with us.

This is your own private Member’s Area so make sure you are logged in to see all of your purchases. They will be listed to the right in the side bar of this page. If you lose your way at any time, simply click the MAGAZINE LOGIN in the top menu bar to return to the Member’s Area. You can read Etzcetera by clicking the image above to view directly here within the website OR click the download the PDF version by clicking the link below.

To save this issue of Etzcetera, simply click the link below to save a copy to your computer or mobile device. I hope you enjoy Issue 11. The magazine is about 52mb in size and 80 pages and may take a little while to download depending on your internet connection/speed. Wishing you all a very merry Christmas time.

Download your copy of Etzcetera 11 right here>>

Purchase Issue 10 here.

Issue 10!

That’s insane. I can’t believe we are up to Issue 10 here at Etz Magazine. And it’s another awesome issue filled with creative people, projects and stories.

Click through to read more and to grab your copy.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Decadent choc mousse made with avocado?

Don’t tell my kids!

I am a big fan of Amy Crawford on Instagram. She’s the talented lady from The Holistic Ingredient website and she shares the most delicious looking photos on her Instagram feed and always has great, nourishing and healthy food ideas. Plus she has a really cool story about her winning battle with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and her switch to wholesome, nourishing foods. I love stories like that.

Amy has just recently launched her very first eCook Book – A Nourishing Kitchen — read more here which is packed to the rafters with goodness. The other night, I was hankering for something sweet — I don’t eat sugar anymore — so this Chocolate Mousse recipe was perfect! I have seen lots of different healthy chocolatey ideas around using avocado as the core ingredient. But I haven’t ever tried any of them.

Well, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting — perhaps for it to taste like smooshed avocado! but it was DIVINE.

Amy’s recipe called for a few orange-y ingredients which I omitted as I just wanted a plain mousse and I can’t wait to try her tip on adding some peppermint essence to give it a real mint slice taste! Mmmm. My mouth is watering. Plus it was super quick to whip up. Made me wish I had one of those expensive big Thermomix everyone is talking about but my little food processor did just fine.

I topped mine with shredded coconut.

’twas very nice indeed.

Well it’s been a long time between drinks here on the old Etzcetera website.

My blogging has been rather, um, stalled over here!

I’ve been a tad preoccupied by a mammoth project that I am living and breathing at the moment.

The launch of our new sister publication, Jot Magazine.

It deserved a nice big font because it IS exciting and magnificent and mammoth!

We are putting the finishing touches on the magazine, doing a mountain of proof reading and tweaking and fine tuning and I must say, it’s looking mighty damn fine. I’ve been lucky to be working with some beautifully talented and generous people who have been busy preparing projects and writing articles and being interviewed and sending me through their projects and layouts and Project Life spreads..

Jot is all things paper.

And we couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s all looking. We are only days away from releasing our first issue.

Join our fast growing JOT Facebook page here..so you can stay in the loop.

It’s no secret I looove Instagram.

It’s the one social media place you will find me hanging out the most. I’ve never really gotten the hang of Twitter and I find Facebook a tad confusing. But I do like the easiness and friendliness of Instagram. And photos + words = well, my favourite thing.

Now, I am still no expert over there in Instagram land,  but I do use a few different photo apps that I thought I would share today. In no particular order, here’s my

Top Four iPhone Photo Editing Apps — according to me

1. A Beautiful Mess

Well hasn’t this little gem taken the world by storm these past few days. I’m seeing this app used on a TON of Instagram photos. The brainchild of sisters Elsie and Emma from A Beautiful Mess blog, this little app allows you to “add new life to your favorite photos with custom filters, fun fonts, and hand-drawn doodles”.. This is such a fun little app and has added extra add ons such as extra fonts and doodles you can purchase for 99c.

It’s also a great little time waster

I’ve added text, cute little arrows and doodles and borders to create this Instagram photo.

2. PicTapGo

This has become my go to when it comes to editing my phone photos. I love it. I am a recent convert.

Why I like it – it’s easy to use and the range of filters and adjustments really do enhance my photos. My favourite filters are Lights On and the Auto Colour filter and a slider allows you to adjust the intensity of all filters quickly and easily. Layer on the filters, go back a step or two or start all over again with a quick tap on the screen. You can then save the finished photo to your camera roll, email it or upload directly to Instagram.

Plus you can take crisp, clear photos directly from the app.

And the more you use it, the more the app gets to know your favourite filter combinations and saves them for future reference under “My Style”.

3. Diptic

This is an oldie but a goodie. I’ve been using Diptic for ages to get nice rounded corners on my images or to create multi photo collages. They’ve recently upgraded the app and it now includes a ton of new templates for lots of photos!

4. Squaready

A free app that crops any image into a square, ready for uploading to Instagram.

However, the charm of this little app for me, is it allows me to add in a portrait or landscape orientated photos that I don’t want cropped into a square and it allows me to then upload to Instagram keeping it’s original shape.

For example, this photo was originally a portrait orientated photo and had I imported it into Instagram, it would have ended up cropped like this:

However, I wanted to show the whole photo in Instagram so I used Squaready to make sure the whole image was included. Then when I uploaded it to Instagram, the image is not cropped square and the whole photo is visible.

Have a great weekend everyone..

This was a much wanted Mother’s Day pressie. From my eldest kiddo.

Along with Kath & Kim Season 1 and a pair of novelty elephant head bed socks – because let’s face it, we ALL need a pair of elephant head bed socks in our life!

He chose well, although he was (strongly) encouraged to buy the book by me – it was high on my wish list!

And I scored big time this Mother’s Day from the rest of the family too with more fluffy bed socks, cosy pjs, a new iphone case, Milk Bath from The Body Shop and an assortment of other goodies. Plus breakfast in bed, flowers from Ken and the kids, lunch with my parents, flowers + chocolates from my sister, flowers from my dad AND a beautiful bath products pack from my mum. I was totally spoiled and I’m very thankful for such a beautiful family..although there were some squabbles amongst kids during the day as is normal for all families!

Anyway, I love a good business success story and have long followed Janine Allis and her Boost story so I was keen to dive into this book. I wish I had bigger blocks of time to sit still and read it all! But I have to be satisfied with snatching small snippets of time here and there to bury my nose in this book. I am really, REALLY loving it.

Here’s a snapshot of our Mother’s Day.

Yes, that’s a blurry photo of my mum and sister and me..but very nicely focused flowers in the foreground and the only half decent one of the three of us together. And no photo of son number two with his mum! He is most uncooperative and it wasn’t worth the argument..plus he had to dash off early for his work shift…

Hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day too.

I’m always after cool new ideas to try out for Project Life and paper crafting.

I stumbled across this delightful blog today by Erica Hernandez. It’s jam packed with Project Life ideas, printables, craftiness and pretty pictures. I spotted this idea from Erica... to print onto label sheets. HOW COOL is that!

And instantly had to try it out..I only had a few Avery labels on hand and I wanted to have a few different designs, so I chose some digital papers from Paislee Press and layered them onto an A4 page in Photoshop.

If you are particular (I’m not!), you could certainly do a test print and see where your paper designs print on a blank page and then add your labels over the top to make sure the paper designs print on the labels you want and theres no overlap..but I didn’t do that.. I just eye balled it to line it up and off I went and my printed designs hit the labels I wanted without any issues..

I used double sided tape to attach the label sheets to my blank A4 page and fed it through my printer.

And voila! Pretty printed labels ready to add to your work. Easy peasy!

So what can you do with these pretty labels??

How about using them to decorate these super duper 3x4inch printable journaling card holders.Perfect for Project Life when you have more of a story to tell and can’t fit it on a standard 3x4inch journaling card..

Now I love a good hidden journaling pocket and I m the first to admit I love to tell a good story so I tend to have a LOT of journaling in my Project Life spreads…so this idea of Erica’s (she is a clever chicky!) really appealed to me..

Find the template plus the blog post from Erica here.

And the printed stickers were the perfect, simple finishing touch for these envelopes..And here’s my little cards waiting to be filled with journaling notes and bits and pieces!!!

Make sure you check out Erica’s blog. It’s delightful.

I am in love with this handy dandy little photo processing gadget.

Introducing my new little Epson PictureMate. And no this isn’t a sponsored post – just a post about my new found love!

I haven’t ever been totally, absolutely satisfied with the photo processing at Big W. Sure, they have a great matte finish option but I was starting to feel like my photos were a bit hit and miss. I do all my photo editing within Photoshop and was finding I needed to really pump up the brightness on all my photos as Big W tends to print them so dark! And it was tricky to gauge the right amount of brightness to add to each image.

It was becoming frustrating and I would get a batch back and while some were great, a lot weren’t so good. PLUS I wouldn’t ever run to Big W to have say one or two shots processed so I would have to do a big lot of photos at one time to make it worth the trip.

Enter this little guy!

I first read about the PictureMate on the Project Life Australia Facebook group a few months ago. The Project Life girls were raving about it and after a lot of research and deliberation and a chance visit to Officeworks for something else and spotting one on the shelf reduced in price, I decided to buy it.

And it’s been the Best. Decision. Ever.

Without a doubt, this little machine is the best! And it’s made Project Life much, much , much easier and more convenient.  I snapped up the last one at our local Officeworks for the great price of $120. It was easy to set up, works like a dream, prints out beautifully crisp and clear 4x6inch photos and I can print directly from my computer OR by inserting my camera memory card.I can also print two 3x4inch photos on the one sheet or even a 4x6inch sheet of mini photos just by setting them up in Photoshop and printing them out.

I compared the same Big W processed photo to one from the PictureMate and you could see the difference instantly. The PictureMate print was much lighter and brighter and more true to life…. the BigW print was much more dull and certainly darker in the detail of the photo.

The PictureMate comes with a toner cartridge and 20 sheets of 4x6inch photo paper to get you started. Additional ink/photo paper packs are available from Officeworks. The packs have 150 4x6inch sheets in them. The paper is glossy but not too glossy. If I had one complaint it would be that I do prefer a nice textured matte finish with my photos but the glossy paper is fine!

So yeah, I’m the first to admit that you can’t beat a professional photo lab for top quality photos BUT the PictureMate comes pretty close. Plus I don’t have a professional photo processing lab nearby. And as far as cost – yes, you will get cheaper prints at Big W and Harvey Norman and Kmart but in my opinion these PictureMate pictures are heaps better..

Plus it’s quite the crowd pleaser.. I did a demo for my family when we were at my parent’s place for lunch the other day and chose a random photo from my camera card and printed it instantly. Everyone was most impressed ..

But the main thing – I can print off photos instantly for Project Life – without having to wait or stockpile a ton of prints to ensure the trek to Big W is worthwhile AND that was the decider for me!