Christmas in August?

So I've noticed a lot of stores both on-line and brick and mortar having "Christmas in July" type sales. I recently had a great time picking up digital freebies (and I did end up putting in an order) at DesignerDigitals Christmas in July event. With all the early holiday buzz, I thought I'd finish up the last of my holiday layouts from 2008.

The first one is about last year's tree trimming and the fact that it was the first year that my 2 sons were really into decorating the tree and really helpful.
I used an 8.5 11 in. layout template from Jessica Sprague for Creating Keepsakes to layout and print my photos. I then matted the photo paper on white cardstock and added a strip of blue pattern paper from BasicGrey to balance the layout and add my journaling. Not groundbreaking, but quick and effective.

The second layout I finished up was one about making cookies with my sons.

Finishing up these layouts made me realize that the holidays in 2008 were really special because, it was the first year that my kids really "got it" - not just the presents, but the enjoying of family traditions. It was good to relive those memories and see that connection.

Feeling Crafty

So 2 Peas in a Bucket is doing a 9-week class called Thinking Inking with Jennifer McGuire. Now the class is in it's final week, but don't fear you can watch all of the short videos on YouTube. That's what I've been doing. Now in general I would consider myself more collector of rubber stamps and ink pads, and not so much of a user. I think this is because it don't really know how to use rubber stamps and ink to create the types of effects and art I see and love in magazines and on websites. Anyway, this weekend I watch Jennifer's video on using Perfect Pearls (I've added a link to this product if you don't know what it is). Basically Perfect Pearls are shiny pigment powders that you can apply to paper products using a sticky embossing pad called Perfect Medium and a brush. You use water to set it. Now I have seen people do amazing cards and projects with these powders, so of course I have several unopened jars of the stuff. So I was excited to watch this week's video on using Perfect Pearls to see if I could learn more about them.




If you have these powders in your stash I highly recommend checking out Jennifer's video. I learned a lot. I tried out some of my new knowledge on 2 bookmarks/tags I cut out using my Cricut.

Going to Creative Escape 2 weeks from Today

So I'm doing it. My mom and I are going to our first Creative Escape this year in exactly 2 weeks. I'm really excited and I hope that I really love it. This will be my first time going away on any type of scrapbook retreat, and my first time taking classes with any of the instructors that will be at Creative Escape - so everything is sort of an unknown. One thing I know for sure is that my mom and I will have a great time at the resort.

So as the event gets closer, we're starting to get a few fun things from the organizers. Check out this really cool "autograph"/ mini-album I made from a digital kit that the organizers put together for attendees. Pretty cool, I think!

Of course, I will be blogging about my experiences when I get back. In the meantime, let me know if you've ever been to Creative Escape and your experience.

It's My Wedding Anniversary

Today is my 8th wedding anniversary! Wow, time really does fly. The last 8 years with my husband have been amazingly eventful, and I'll just say upfront not all of it is fit to remember in the family scrapbook. LOL! Here is the card I plan to give him. My husband loves comics and video games, so I wanted to create a cartoon image of one of our wedding photos. This was my best effort in photoshop elements. Unfortunately, the photo is not very clear, but I like the way the card turned out.

Memories Monday - My Hilton Head Vacation Scrapbook Album

I recently got back from a wonderful trip to Hilton Head with my family. On the trip I took tons of pictures, and when I got back I was excited to get started creating a vacation scrapbook album. So I thought I would share my process for creating theme albums.

The first thing I do is upload my photos to my computer. For this trip I took a total of 200 photos over the course of a week. Not bad but before I start my album I need to whittle this down to a more manageable set of my best photos. So the second thing I do is start deleting all of the fuzzy, out of focus, too dark, or poorly composed pictures. Next I get the rest of the pictures printed as standard 4x6 photos. Not all of those photos will go into my scrapbook album, probably less than half. The rest of the photos will go in a family photo album. In addition, I will also take some of the better photos and enlarge them or add text to them for my album. But once I have all of my photos printed, I organize them and plan my album. It's weird, but its hard for me to really organize my photos on the computer. I organize the photos in whatever way feels natural. In this case I organized them by vacation events. See my piles and labels below.


Next, I decide how I will organize my album. When it comes to a vacation album the most obvious way to organize it is chronologically. And that is basically what I decided to do, but I also plan to include some relationship and fun activity layouts

Next, I gather all of the memorabilia from my trip and put it in a large ziploc bag. Some of the items I have from my trip are maps, newspaper and newsletters, postcards, sea shells my son collected, and information from the resort company we used about our beach house. Some of this will make it into my album, and some will go in the trash. But for now everything's in the bag.

Finally, I pick out an album and a basic color scheme. In this case I picked a nice cream-colored linen 11x8.5 inch landscape album from Martha Stewart Crafts that I picked up on sale around the holidays. I rarely do theme albums in 12x12 sized albums. I think the basic 7-day vacation just lends itself to a smaller size. But I don't go too small either, otherwise I can't fit that memorabilia I mentioned.

For the color scheme I picked yellow, blue, green, brown, and orange. A lot of colors but basically earth tones. Once I've decided on a color scheme I don't get too rigid with the products I use. I tend to pick embellishments and pattern paper based on the layout I'm working on. I also don't just stick to paper. For this album I'm doing a combination of digital and paper layouts. I find digital layouts help me get more photos on my page in an artful way and more done quickly. Paper layouts allow me to add texture and include the memorabilia in a natural way. I'm using Bazzill's 8.5 x 11 inch Earth Tone Basics cardstock and Michelle Underwood's More Than Words digital kit. Finally I choose fonts. Now this is not necessary if you plan to hand write your album. I don't plan to hand write mine, so I picked a couple of fonts that I will use for every layout. This creates continuity and helps keep it simple. I'm using the Joyful Juliana font and Art House Vibe Alpha brushes for my titles, and American Typewriter for all of my journaling.

Ok, now with all of that done I start writing. Why, because I can't scrapbook until I know what I'm scrapbooking about. So after photo selection (and sometimes before), I begin my albums and many of my layouts with journaling. I write my title page. I write a basic table of contents/ themes I want to cover. Then I write about my vacation. I write about the road trip, I write about my impressions of our beach house, I write about meeting my husband's extended family, etc. I don't finish all of my journaling at one time and not everything will make it into the album, but by writing about my trip first, I have a great outline and idea guide for my album.

Now the fun part. Putting it all together. I will talk more about planning pages and adding memorabilia in my next Memories Monday.

Memories Monday - Wish You were Here?

Did you take a vacation this year? If you did, are you in any of your pictures? I hope you are, but I understand if you're not. We scrapbookers and self-appointed family historians tend to be really good at recording the lives of our immediate family (whether they like it or not), but not so great at recording our own lives or making sure we're in the shot too. I had reason to think about this lately, as I just got back from vacation. Here are my tips for making sure you're on your next vacation and in attendance at that next family reunion:

1. Put the camera down - When I first got into scrapbooking, the conventional wisdom was fill up the digital card and just delete later. The idea was the more pictures you took the more likely you were to get a few really good ones. This is great advice for a budding photographer or a scrapbook designer, but it's not particularly helpful for a birthday party guest or someone trying to actually enjoy their vacation. If you spend all of your time taking pictures, you tend not to be in any pictures (who wants to photograph you with a camera in front of your face), and more importantly you don't get to enjoy the event. So my advice, decide in advance what types of pictures you would like, focus on getting just those pictures and then put the camera down and enjoy the event.

2. Ask someone to take your picture - A lot of times simply asking someone to take a picture of you is the easiest way to make sure you're in the shot, but for some reason this is not always a natural thing to do - even around family. I'll let you in on a secret - my 5 year-old takes the majority of the pictures of me and my husband. I use a simple point and click automatic digital camera, and I have taught him how and when to use the flash, and some basic composure tips. He does a great job, and he loves it when I ask him to take my picture. So my advice, find someone to take your picture.

3. Ask for copies of pictures taken by others at the same event - Have you ever been to a wedding where the bride and groom put disposable cameras on each table at the reception? The pictures from those cameras are fascinating, because no two people view or photograph the same event the same way. While we often seek out pictures of things we may have missed from an event, sometimes it can be helpful to get all of the pictures taken by someone else. You may be surprised to find that someone was making sure you were in the shot.

So those are my basic tips for making sure you're in the shots and a part of the memories. So no one has to think "wish you were here".

What's Inspiring Me Right Now

I just received the latest issue of Creating Keepsakes. It's their travel issue, but to be honest it's not really taking me anyplace I haven't been before. That being said I get inspiration for layout colors, design and topics from lots of sources other than scrapbooking magazines. In fact, I sometimes think scrapbooking magazines are worst places to try to get inspiration because the topics are so generic and its hard to not to be intimidated by some of the work of the designers.

So this is what is inspiring me right now.

Julie Fei-Fan Balzer - I really like this designer's work. I recently saw her in action on the pbs show Scrapbook Memories and I loved her doodling ideas and her creative scrapbook style. I was delighted to find she has a blog. Check out her work.

Art Quilts - Now I don't make quilts and I haven't sewn anything since I was a teenager, but I love art quilts. I'm finding lots of inspiration in art quilt designs lately. I think art quilts and quilts in general offer great design ideas for scrapbookers because fabric piecing has a lot in common with paper piecing and the way many of us approach layouts.

Jenny McGuire's column on die cuts in this month's Creating Keepsakes. As usual she had lots of great ideas I had not thought of for using die cuts. I can't wait to try cutting out fabric by glueing it to cardstock first.

Flickr - Flickr is a great source for color and design ideas. First there are tons of scrapbookers and scrapbook layouts on the site, but even better than that, I like to just search a color like "purple" and see what sorts of pictures come back. I often search flickr when I'm stumped for color combinations or I'm just looking for the right "feeling" for a layout.

happy scrapping