Technical Difficulties and Valentine's Day Recap

So you may have noticed that I have not posted to this blog in awhile. The reason - my husband spilled coffee on our keyboard last weekend, and I just picked up a replacement on Monday. So I'm baaaack.

While I was gone, an important and often guilt inducing holiday just passed. That holiday was Valentine's Day. While the media tends to focus on this holiday as an important holiday for young lovers, and an "opportunity" for mostly male suiters to prove their worth by shelling out lots of money for silly stuffed animals and roses, the real story is what a big deal this holiday is among the pre-school set. Valentine's Day is the ultimate test of the worth of the overworked and overtired WOHM (work outside the home mom) or SAHM (stay at home mom) to make upwards of 100 valentines and supply cookies and candies in time for the all important "Valentine's Day Party" taking place at an inconvenient time near you.

As scrapbookers, there is also another dimension - that is to make the Valentines or to buy them. Why should we make them? Well if you're like me you should make them because you have enough pink paper, stickers and ribbon in your basement to fill the landfill of a small municipality. So you feel you should use that stuff - especially since you have 2 sons and a nephew and very few occasions to scrapbook with anything pink.

Well this year, I'm happy to say I met the challenge. I created these simple Valentines all by myself. I didn't get any official word, but I believe they were a success.

But I also want to show off a beautiful Valentine's Day card I received from a friend and fellow paper crafter. Isn't this great, I may attempt something more ambitious like this next year.



Finally, I want to show off the card I made my husband. I used a $1 stamp from Michael's Arts and Crafts Store. This card has caused great concern for my kids - they keep asking why I'm gray or Daddy's gray and what we're doing. Oh, well - they will soon see the affairs of the heart only get more complicated.

Tough Guys Scrapbook Too!

So yesterday, I saw the movie Taken starring Liam Neeson with my husband. Although action movies usually put me to sleep instantly, this one didn't - so I guess it wasn't half bad, or maybe I still have a small crush on Liam Neeson, or maybe it was the middle of the afternoon and the movie theater was a little creepy. Oh, the things we do for love.

Anyway, I'm glad I didn't fall asleep during the movie, because if I had, I would have missed the fact that Liam Neeson's character was a scrapbooker. Can you believe that! Early on in the movie (before he goes on a killing rampage) you see him putting pictures in an album about his daughter, and as he flips through the album you even see a few stickers on the pages. The scrapbook even plays a role in moving the plot along. The scrapbook shows how important his daughter is to him, even though he hasn't always shown it in past actions. Unfortunately I could not find a clip of this part of the movie on YouTube or anywhere else to post here, so you'll just need to take my word for it or check out the movie - if you're into movies about dads who scrapbook and go on killing sprees when their daughters get kidnapped.

I'll Take That Challenge

A big thing in scrapbooking right now is "challenges". A challenge is basically when another scrapbooker, or a magazine editor "challenges" other scrapbookers to do a layout on a certain topic or do a layout using a certain product, etc. To participate in the challenge, a participant just needs to upload or send a layout to the scrapbooker holding the challenge. Usually the challenge is accompanied by some sort of prize. The prize is never for the "best" layout - because being competitive is not usually how scrapbookers roll. The winner is usually picked out of a hat with all of the names of the participants in it.

Anyway, this week I decided to participate in the 52 Week Sketch Challenge being held at ClassyCoordinates by Tiare Smith. Each week Tiare posts a "sketch" or drawing of a layout, and asks participants to design a layout based on the drawing. Sometimes I'm feeling the sketch, and sometimes I'm not. This week I liked the Week 5 sketch, so I did a layout.

Here is the sketch.


and here is my layout, based on the sketch.

Scrapbooking and the Passive Commute

Like other activities that start with the letter "s", I think about scrapbooking more than I actually do it. But I think that's a good thing. Scrapbooking seems to be one of those "crafts" (and I'm not sure scrapbooking really is a craft - more on that in a future post) that require more planning on the front end than in the execution - afterall the "execution" tends to be just pasting pictures, paper and a few trinkets on paper.

And that's really lucky for me because I don't have a lot of time to sit down and make pages. Many people comment to me that they don't see how I have time to scrapbook since I have a full-time job, two small kids and a household to run. Those people are observant - I don't have a lot of time to scrapbook or really to do much of anything outside of my full-time job, two small kids and a household to run. So you ask - how do I do it? Now aside from avoiding housework at all costs - because cooking, cleaning and laundry for a family of 4 can really sap away a perfectly good day - I get lots of good scrapbook planning done at my creative space away from home - the metro train. I have a 25 minute commute to work by metro train - a so-called passive commute - and I find that using this "me" time is a great way to come up with ideas, read craft magazines and otherwise be productive. It works for me.

Giving a Little Credit

While I would love to take total credit for designing my blog title header, I actually got some help from some of the great free and almost free on-line resources for scrapbookers. One of the biggest changes in scrapbooking today is that a lot of people scrapbook or design pages exclusively or mostly on their computer and share layouts through e-mail, photo sharing websites, or by printing them out at home or through an on-line photo processing service. There are many on-line resources to help people design scrapbook pages and other digital elements and I used a few on my blog. For my blog title header I used a template for the basic design from ScrapGirls, an on-line digital scrapbooking store, and I used digital pattern papers from a free digital scrapbooking kit called Magic Rainbows designed by Rhonna Farrer available at Two Peas In A Bucket. These on-line resources can make digital and paper (sometimes called "Traditional") scrapbooking faster, but before they can be used a person needs to have a fairly strong understanding of at least one of the popular photo imaging software programs like Photoshop Elements or Corel Paint Shop Pro - and gaining that knowledge can be time consuming and require a small to steep learning curve. But with most of us today taking all of our pictures using a digital camera, it's a good idea to learn to use your photo imaging software if only to make the pictures you take look their best.

Welcome from a scrapbooker in the Mid-Atlantic area

Welcome to my blog Paper Pen Pictures. This blog is about scrapbooking, finding inspiration in the everyday, and documenting a little bit of my life as a working mom and crafter living outside our nation's capital. While I will talk more about my philosophy of scrapbooking and why I think it is such a great hobby in the coming weeks and months, I just want to briefly talk about the title of my blog and why I think it fits my style. Paper, Pen, Pictures - perfectly describes my style of scrapbooking and what I think is important. I am a "simple scrapbooker" - I like to focus first and foremost on the stories and happenings in my life from my point of view, and I'm not big into embellishments and "stuff" on my pages. So if you are also a simple scrapbooker, or are thinking about starting a scrapbook I hope this blog will be a fun place for you to check out from time to time to find ideas.