Category Archives: beginning scrapbooking

Jan16

Your Story Matters (a bloghop!)

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Your Story Matters (a bloghop!)

Welcome to the Your Story Matters blog hop! You should have come here from Alison at Scrapping in Singapore. If not, you can start here and work your way around the circle, or you can go back to the beginning to start with our fearless leader Lain at Layout a Day.

This past summer, I had the pleasure of joining fellow members of ScrapHappy in contributing to the ebook Your Story Matters. It is now available for sale! This is SO exciting!

First of all, this was a collaborative effort of the members of ScrapHappy. ScrapHappy is an online scrapbooking community, where anyone and everyone is welcome. This is really the nicest, most supportive, and funny group of people I know, online or in real life. Of course I jumped at the chance to make an ebook with them!

Second, the subject matter is so important to me as a scrapbooker. The topics covered everything from “How you and your husband met,” to “Your greatest fault (or strength.)” I firmly believe that the most important pages that you can do, the ones that will mean the most to you and your family in the future, are the ones that tell the story of your everyday, imperfect life. I can hear the naysayers, saying their lives are boring, but think about it from the other side of the coin. Aren’t you the least bit curious about what your great-grandmother ate for breakfast on a routine basis? Wouldn’t you love to know what she carried in her purse? You probably can’t ask her those questions now, but you can answer them for yourself, now. Someday, someone will find that information fascinating, even if you think your everyday life is so everyday it’s uninspiring. Use the prompts from this book, look at your life with a new perspective, and you will find your everyday to be inspiring.

I contributed two pages to the ebook. First up, “my morning routine.” Breakfast of course!

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Then, since I had recently moved, “the place I call ‘home.'”

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Intrigued? Want to see what the other ScrapHappy members contributed? Buy a copy of the ebook for yourself! (It’s an ebook only, so it’s only available for download.) The introductory price is $7, and I have a $2 off coupon code for you: HOP. That’s $5. You will never be able to get it for that little again! (The coupon expires midnight January 21st.)

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We also are giving away three copies to commenters who post on any or all of the blogs participating in the bloghop. All you have to do to be eligible is leave a comment here about what story you think is important for scrapbookers to document by January 19th. The winners will be announced January 21st on Layoutaday.com. You will need to claim your prize by January 23rd. If you don’t want to wait that long, buy your book now, and you’ll get a refund if you win!

Now it’s time for you to move on to the next blog, my friend Danielle Hunter’s Ecoscrapbook. She has some great ideas on reducing, reusing and recycling in scrapbooking.

The full list of participants:

Have fun blog hopping! Don’t forget, your story really does matter!
Jan14

It’s only words!

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It’s only words!

I’ve taught a lot of in-person classes, and one of the most frequent problems new scrapbookers run into is the question of what to say, and how to say it. I remember when I first started scrapbooking, I was nervous and unsure of where to start as well. I even took a class on it. The class, however, was not very useful, since basically all the instructor did was read from the book that came with the class. There was one exercise that we did where I was supposed to write as much about a particular occasion as I could remember, using as many sensory cues (sight, smell, scent, etc.) as I could tie in. Of course, being the good student that I am, I sat right there and wrote as much as I could in the five minutes she gave me during class. When she saw how much I had written she said to me something along the lines of “I thought you said you were having trouble journaling?” Right then it clicked.

Writing for a scrapbook is no different from any other writing.

What would you write about the photos you want to use if you were sharing them on Facebook or Instagram? How would you share a funny family story with your long distance family and friends? Why are the photos you want to scrapbook important to you?

In the end, that’s all journaling comes down to. It can be simple who, what, where, and when details, or you can flesh out your story and tell the why and how.

That’s all it is. The secret to successful journaling is just to write. It’s only words. They are not etched in stone, and there’s no rule that says you can’t revisit the story at a later date to make a new page that tells even more of the story.

I have a challenge for you. Make a page this week with only ten words on the page, including title. No more, no less. I’ll make one too, and show it to you later this week.

Here’s a little inspiration for you, with only five words on it. (Eight if you count the date.)

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Let’s get scrapping! No excuses!

Jan8

Choosing Photos: Printing

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Choosing Photos: Printing

One of the things that can interfere with scrapbooking is choosing which photos to print. If you are like me, you’ve got hundreds (or thousands! yes thousands!) of digital photos to sort through before you can even get to scrapbooking.

I can see you getting overwhelmed just thinking about it. 😉

Take a deep breath, and let’s keep this simple. Pick a set amount of time to work on your photos. Fifteen minutes. Half an hour. Last night, I decided to listen to a podcast while choosing photos to print. (Among other things. My ability to stay on task lately has been abysmal!) Then narrow down what you are going to look through. I chose to narrow my field to photos taken the first quarter of last year, when I realized I hadn’t archived most of the photos from last year. Then I started flagging the particular photos I wanted to upload so I can print or archive them. Here, let me show you:

(Click on the little tiny yellow square in lower right hand side of the video to go full screen)

Did that give you an idea on how to go about choosing photos to print?

I focus on choosing photos that

a: tell at least one story. more is better

b: show personality

c: make my heart go pitter-patter

I do NOT print every photo I take. Did you notice that I have 888 photos in just that quarter alone? I will never ever scrapbook all those photos. Never. And I am okay with that.

I don’t even print every photo I upload. Some of the photos I upload will not make the cut as far as printing, but because Shutterfly has free, unlimited storage, I use them as an additional place to archive the photos I love.

There are lots of other photo printing places out there. Choose one you love, and USE it. You’ll never get any scrapbooking done if you don’t have photos to use!

Don’t give me any excuses. You CAN do this.

 

Jan4

You Are Inspired!

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You Are Inspired!

No matter if you are just starting to scrapbook, or have been scrapbooking for years, there’s one thing you can do to motivate yourself to scrapbook. What is it?

Think about your “Why?”

Why do you want to scrapbook? Do you have a specific project you want to do, like a wedding album or a family history book? Do you like playing with paper and ink, or pixels and brushes? Or do you realize that time flies all too quickly, and that what is normal today, is all too far in the past tomorrow?

This is the most important thing you can think about if you want to keep yourself motivated and excited to scrap. Every single GOOD scrapbooking class I’ve taken has brought in this idea as part of the class material.

Let me show you some of my reasons (and I have many):

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Class assignment from Cathy Zielske’s Design Your Life class at Big Picture Classes

The following few pages are from the class album I mentioned in my previous post about making mistakes.

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The title page

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Capturing the everyday

reasons pg 10

Telling my story

reasons pg 9

Sharing family history

This is such a useful process, I often make pages to remind myself about why I scrapbook. A couple more recent pages :

LOAD 211 24 copy

100_7479In short, I scrapbook because there are too many wonderful things, too many everyday things to remember. It’s my creative outlet, my memory saver, and my celebration of life in general (the good AND the bad.)

So if you are stumped, or stuck, or wondering if scrapbooking is really for you, take some time today and think about WHY you want to scrapbook. If you’re feeling really motivated, make a page and share it with me.

I’d love to learn why you want to scrapbook.

 

Dec21

I Make Mistakes. Regularly!

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I Make Mistakes. Regularly!

One of the excuses I frequently hear is “I’m afraid I’m going to ruin ___.” Sometimes it’s a piece of paper. Sometimes it’s a photo. Sometimes it’s even the memory you’re trying to record.

Well, I’m here to tell you, sometimes you will mess it up. And that’s okay. Sometimes you’ll have to start over. Sometimes you’ll be able to turn your mistake into a happy accident. Sometimes you’ll just throw it in the circular file, and never look back.

The thing is, you can’t let a mistake, or the possibility of a mistake, keep you from doing whatever it is you’re trying to do. I’m sure you’ve learned this in other aspects of your life. Now I’m asking you to apply that mindset to scrapbooking.

Let me give you an example from my own experiences:

I have been stamping for a very long time. Luckily, while there wasn’t a local scrapbook store when I first started scrapbooking, there was a local stamp store, whose owner was also a wonderful teacher. I learned a lot by taking her classes. One of the most important things I got from her classes was that by knowing your materials (inks, papers, textures, etc.) you could minimize stamping mistakes. (I’ll have a .pdf and short video about avoiding common stamping mistakes available for anyone who signs up for my mailing list, once I get that up and running.)

I used to teach EK Success’ Scrapbook Design University at my local JoAnn’s. Each week, I’d bring in sample pages, and my album covers were getting ruined by the mess left behind by the Wilton students. No matter how much I cleaned, I still managed to get frosting on my linen albums.

I decided I needed an album dedicated to the class, so my personal albums wouldn’t get ruined. I had a post-bound album I had bought at JoAnn’s, but it was UGLY. I decided I’d stamp on the cover to try to pretty it up. It had a smooth, non-porous surface, so I decided to use staz-on ink, which is permanent and dries quickly, even on non-porous surfaces. I also had a bottle of staz-on stamp cleaner, so I was sure I’d be able to wipe off any mistakes I might make. I also knew that since the cover was smooth and almost slippery, there was a higher than average chance I’d mess up an image, but the album was so ugly I figured I couldn’t make it any worse. 😉

Sure enough, the very first image I stamped, my hand slipped, and I blurred the image. I got out the cleaner to wipe up the mistake, and all it did was smear the image some more.

I wasn’t expecting that!

I sat back, and considered my options. Forget about the whole thing, and use a different album? Keep going and hope I didn’t slip while stamping any more? Or decide that the smear wasn’t a design flaw, but a feature?

Of course I decided to turn my flaw into a feature. I continued with my stamping, and after I stamped each image, I smeared it with some more cleaner.

Here’s the final product:

100_5998Sort of interesting, in a good way, right?

The thought I want you to take with you as you begin your scrapbooking journey is this: You WILL make mistakes, and you CAN find solutions for any mistake you make. Embrace imperfection. It makes life (and your scrapbooks) much more interesting.