Apr10

Pocket Page Craze

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Heather

A lot of you who drop by are looking for ideas of what to scrapbook and how to scrap using pocket pages. You love my printable with suggestion of photos to take, but I’ve got some more class ideas for you to help you get started scrapbooking with pocket pages.

You may recall that back in January, there was an event called True Scrap Pocket Pages? Remember? Well, all the classes are now available for individual sale.

And! They are on sale through the end of the month (April 30, 2014), at only $9 a piece. Or, you can buy five and get the sixth one free with the coupon code SAVE40! That’s only $7.50 each!

Want some details? Let’s see what we’ve got…

Layle Koncar’s class, Pocket Scrapping 101, is a great nuts to bolts approach to learning how to start pocket scrapping. If you have any questions about pocket scrapping, Layle has got you covered. This is the class to take if you have no idea about where to start with pocket scrapbooking, since it covers everything from photo and memorabilia organization, to putting together a pocket page spread.

Marcy Penner’s class, Do You Hear What I Hear, has great tips for adding additional perspectives to your scrapbooks, whether that includes texts from your family, or bits of art and memorabilia from your kids. Plus, you’ll love seeing how she puts together a spread!

Monica McNeill’s class, KISS: Keep it Simple, Scrappy! is all about keeping the process of creating pages simple, and do-able. She walks you through how to batch process, in order to keep up, as well as to complete albums you may have attempted previously.

Stephanie Bryan’s class, Outside Lines, has some great ideas for adding hidden, and not so hidden, journaling to your pocket page spread. You’ll love her clever and simple ways to creatively add space for more stories or even more photos and memorabilia.

Lilith Eeckels’ class, Playing Big, brings together options for adding full page spreads to pocket page scrapbooks. She’s got wonderful ideas on adding traditional pages, collages, and huge photos to create more interest and excitement in your album.

Traci Reed’s class, Hybrid Hints for Paper People, adds digital options to your repertoire. The class is full of digital tricks for creating a pocket page type spread, as well as ways to make any digital layout more realistic. When combined with traditional supplies, you get a whole new, sophisticated look for your pocket pages.

If you’ve been debating doing pocket page scrapbooking, these classes will get you off the fence, and give you lots of inspiration for creating your pages.

Don’t be afraid! Jump on in! Pocket page scrapbooking is fun!

Apr8

The Benefits of Dabbling

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Heather

The Benefits of Dabbling

You may not have realized this yet, but I’m a big fan of ignoring the “rules” of scrapbooking. One of the hardest rules for new scrapbookers, and even well-seasoned scrapbookers, to learn to ignore is the idea that scrapbooking needs to be chronological.

Don’t believe me? You’ve heard of Becky Higgin’s Project Life by now, right? In part it was created when she felt overwhelmed trying to keep up with chronological traditional scrapbooking. She wanted a simpler way to document her life in a chronological way, and Project Life was born. (You can find it in her own words in her product catalog here.)

Yep. There’s the trap right there. Thinking that you have to scrap in order and that there’s a phase of scrapbooking where you’re “caught up.” You know what caught up means to me? Done. I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to be done with scrapbooking. There are always more stories to tell. Running out of stories to tell? Can’t imagine how that will ever happen. And you know what? That’s okay. More than okay, it’s wonderful!

Because I am completely against the idea of making scrapbooking feel like a chore, I do not, nor have I ever, scrapbooked only in chronological order. That is not to say I do not have any scrapbook albums that are chronological. I’ve got my kids’ first year of life in mini albums, as well as their school of life albums. (Those are actually all “caught up.” LOL) I’ve got travel albums, where it makes sense to document the trip in a day by day manner. I’ve got week in the life albums, where I try to capture daily life in detail for a week.

In short, I do some chronology. Key word there? Some. The rest of what gets done? Completely random. Pages about college are done right after pages about marriage, and right before pages about the latest weird/silly/funny thing one of my kids has done.

The result? My albums are eclectic. And possibly even chaotic. (I’m a fan of random.) And they cover bits of my life and my family’s lives. They are not complete, but that’s okay. Once again, I don’t ever want to be finished with scrapbooking.

And the benefit is that I always have stories to tell. I tell stories based on what is inspiring me, and motivating me at any given moment. I’m never thinking that I have to finish one particular (uninspiring) story before starting another (interesting) one. There’s no guilt, no must-dos, and no RULES! As a result, lots of stories get told. And that’s good enough for me.

Do you have any rules that get in the way of you actually creating pages? What are they? Are you really going to let them stop you from doing something fun?

Apr3

Time for Another Scrapbooking Marathon!

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Heather

Time for Another Scrapbooking Marathon!

Yep! It’s that time again! Time for another round of Layout a Day, aka LOAD as the regulars like to call it.

What exactly is LOAD? It’s a thrice yearly challenge to create a scrapbook layout every day for a month. The next one starts on May first. This will be the last public one for the year. (To participate in the third LOAD each year, you need to be a member of ScrapHappy.)

What’s so great about LOAD? Well, I’ve got lots of reasons to love it. (You can read them here.) But my reason for loving it today? LOAD gives me permission to make scrapbooking a priority in my daily life, but by participating in it, I also get to not feel guilty about not scrapbooking at other times of the year.

What does that mean?

Let’s put it this way. If I only scrapbook during LOAD, and make a scrapbook page every day of each challenge, that means at the end of the year I’ll have made 120 layouts. That’s 2.5 full albums worth of pages. That’s a lot of stories told. Especially if I continue to scrapbook, and continue telling stories, even after my kids fly the nest. If I live for another 30 years, that’s another 75 albums. 75! I’d have to have an entire wall dedicated to scrapbooks. Speaking as someone who’s had to clean out too many family houses in the past ten years, that’s a lot of STUFF for my kids to have to deal with.

So by participating in LOAD, I get a LOT of storytelling done, and that frees me up so I don’t HAVE to scrapbook at other times. (You’d think I scrapbook all the time based on this blog, but I don’t!)

Heh. Unlike a real marathon, where you have to train in order to successfully complete it, in a scrapbooking marathon, you’re not going to injure yourself if you just jump right in!

You could even, if you’re a multi-hobbyist, use the LOAD format to give yourself permission to concentrate on each of your hobbies in turn. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

One last reason I’m excited about LOAD this May. It will be round two of a Past Perfect theme, as far as the prompts go. What does that mean? A few years ago, we did a LOAD called Past Perfect, where we concentrated on telling our own stories, rather than that of our loved ones. It was one of the most fun LOADs I’ve done. We’ll be revisiting that idea this May, and I’m really glad about that. After all, the story we’re most qualified to tell is our own, don’t you think?

So. Have you signed up for LOAD yet? If you haven’t go do it right NOW!

Apr1

An Artful Mess

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Heather

An Artful Mess

The little art pieces I made for the ladies at Lain’s crop at the beginning of March have been getting a lot of comments and questions on how they were created from fellow ScrapHappy members. Rather than keeping those details just with my ScrapHappy friends, I thought you all might appreciate some information about how to make your own little art pieces as well. (Lots of affiliate links coming your way!)

First of all, the base is watercolor paper. It’s a bit heavier than cardstock and holds up well to wet techniques, which this is.

Next came the background creation. I used stencils from Martha Stewart Crafts, Heidi Swapp, and The Crafter’s Workshop (mostly Julie Fei-Fan Balzer’s line) to spray mist a couple layers of color. I originally used some of Dyan Reaveley’s Dylusions, but those are very water reactive, so they moved and smeared when I applied the gel medium. You could use other mists–think Mr. Huey’s or Fireworks— to get less smearing.

Then came a paint layer (liquitex basics), either with another stencil, or some recycled materials like bubble wrap or mesh, and a sponge to apply it. For some backgrounds, I also used stamps and pigment ink, and then heat set the whole background before moving onto the transfer stage.

If you’re feeling unsure about how to create a background, any of these True Scrap classes are full of ideas and techniques: Project Miscellany with Stephanie Ackerman, Memory Minutes with Tammy Tutterow, Doris Sander with Four Stencils, Four Ways. Those are just a handful from the True Scrap back in October. There are a lot more that would provide lots of inspiration and instruction if you’re still looking for something fun. (And True Stamp is coming next weekend. If you haven’t signed up for that yet, why not? So much inspiration! So many fun people! It’s definitely worth every penny. You can sign up for the live event here, and then have access to the tutorials whenever you want.)

The photos I used are just some of the pictures I’ve taken over the years of flowers I’ve found or grown. If you want to use any of them with your own transfers, you can buy a print over at Redbubble. The method I used was taught in this class from last October’s True Scrap 5. Stephanie Hamen shows three methods for making photo transfers. I used the gel medium method.

After doing the transfer, I added a few more stamps and stenciling over top of the image, especially on the edges. I found some great quotes to use from Cosmo Cricket, and cut them up a bit. Then I got out my pitt pens and white gel pen and did a bit of doodling and zentangling. This book is a great resource if you’re interested in learning to zentangle.

The cool thing about doing these was that, even though it was a pretty long process, no one part of the process took very long, which means I could sit down for ten minutes and do one part, and then go do something else while that step dried.

So what do you think? Want to try to make one of your own photo transfer art pieces? They’re a bit addicting. 😉

If you have any questions, drop them below in the comment section, and I’ll answer them as best I can. Don’t be shy!

Mar24

Finding the Time

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Heather

Finding the Time

One of the biggest complaints/excuses out there about why people choose not to scrapbook is that they just don’t have the time.

There’s this perception that scrapbooking and memory keeping in general takes this huge amount of time out of your day. I’ve never found that to be the case, but that may be due to the way I approach the whole concept.

Making a scrapbook page doesn’t mean you have to have all your photos printed and organized first, nor do you have to make your page extremely artistic or even tightly designed.

Nor do you have to do ten pages about one event, or even tell the story in chronological order.

Scrapbooking is so much simpler than that.

It is one story, and a piece of paper to write it on, plus a picture or two or three to illustrate your story. That’s it. Everything else is bells and whistles.

You don’t even need paper. A status update on Facebook, like this one I put up yesterday is totally scrapbooking. It’s just a digital version.

Now, I’m not recommending that you never put anything on paper. In fact, at the rate in which technology changes and gets damaged, having only digital records would be a recipe for lots of lost memories.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. Especially if you use it as a temporary warehouse for memories, for when you have five minutes to document your story in a more lasting manner.

So that’s one way for you to capture memories quickly and easily. You’re even probably already doing that.

How about a couple other quick ways to document your life before we finish for today?

Next up? An old school organizing tool–your calendar or agenda. Yep. That pile of paper hanging on your wall or tucked into your purse. That is a great, quick scrapbooking tool.

Simply write down memorable things someone said or did in the relevant square, and you’ve done some scrapbooking. Really! It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Last up– journaling cards that are designed for pocket pages. This is the latest trend that has been sweeping the scrapbooking world– it’s been going on for a few years now, and shows every sign of expanding and really and truly altering the way people save their memories.

It’s a simple concept–write a few notes about a day or an event, and pair it with a few photos, and you’re done. You can add artistic elements if you so desire, but the important thing is saving those memories.

The cards are about the same size as a playing card, so are really easy to slip into a pocket or purse to have handy when you just have to capture the latest goofy thing you heard. (Around here, we concentrate on goofy and silly, in case you were wondering.)

That’s all you really need to start scrapbooking. Really.

A memory, and a place to store it. It doesn’t matter if it’s digital, or paper, it’s still a memory worth saving, and it doesn’t take very much time at all. You can definitely squeeze it into your busy schedule.

You were going to post that adorable cat/kid/spouse photo anyway, weren’t you?

NoExcuseScrapbooking.com

What's stopping you from starting?

Pocket Page Craze

The Benefits of Dabbling

Time for Another Scrapbooking Marathon!

An Artful Mess

Finding the Time

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