I am now finished with drill #3 of Tracey Clark‘s section of Big Picture Boot Camp. This drill was to use one of the photos we took of our ‘muse’ and do something tangible with it. Suggestions were to make a banner, decorate and hang the photo with pretty thread; make cards or a book mark, which is what I did. I just happened to be in need of a new book mark and a birthday card.
Drill #3
I put three rhinestones towards the bottom right side of the image on the card and then stamped “Happy Birthday” on the inside before signing it. My friend liked it, and I was pretty happy with it, too. I cropped the image again into a 2×6″ size and positioned it on one side of a 4×6 portrait-oriented matte card before printing it. I then folded the card in half along the edge of the photo and adhered the two sides together to make the book mark a little thicker and sturdier. I then rounded the corners and poked a round hole in the top for ribbon. Voilá, that drill completed.
Now, I went on to the next set of drills by Cathy Zielske, number 1 being to use common margins. That means make a layout with even, balanced margins all around.
Drill #1
Not every margin is equal in size, but the sides are equal, as are the top and bottom, and the margins around the photos making the layout overall balanced.
I really like Cathy’s layouts because of her symmetry and balance, and they tend to be easy to put together, too. I get her templates at Designer Digitals and use them to make a hybrid layout. I really don’t care so much for digital layouts anymore; I like the feel and texture of traditional layouts, however, digital templates make great sketches, and ensures my getting sizes and spacing correct.
Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll be sure to be back with more drills in the very near future.
Finally! I completed my sketches for my 28 Days of Sketches class, and I couldn’t be happier! I didn’t like being so behind, and I really don’t like unfinished projects sitting around, so I got down to brass tacks and finished the last four sketches. Whew! Here you have it, ladies and gentlemen:
sketch 25
This, I shamelessly scraplifted from Sasha Farina (I loved her take on it so much).
Sketch 26
Here again, I borrowed some ideas from Jenni Hufford‘s take on the sketch. I love her work.
Sketch 27
This is my “I-just-want-to-get-this-over-with” sketch that took maybe 30-45 minutes. Not the greatest, but I got the story on paper which is an accomplishment in itself.
Sketch #28
The photos and journaling are not centered as they should be, hence the edge embellishments being where they are.
I also haven’t been up-to-date on my One Little Wordclass, so I took some time recently to get caught up there, as well. I can show you June, July and October assignments, but the rest are a little too personal to be shown here, please forgive me.
This is June’s assignment, creating mini canvases…a chance to be creative and artistic, and I was not feeling particularly creative or artistic. I did my best!
July’s assignment, putting lyrics on cards that represent our word. Mine is serenity. I had trouble finding lyrics, so I opted for poems, and one haiku.
For October’s assignment, I found nine more photos which best represented my word, serenity. The dark photo in the bottom right hand corner is supposed to be the blue moon behind some clouds one evening back recently when the blue moon made its rare appearance.
Wow, I feel so much better, now! Being caught up means I can relax a little more….after I finish getting caught up on Project Life….(there’s always something.) Thanks for stopping by!
I’m having a fun Memorial Day doing nothing. I’m still in my pj’s, making a mess in my room scrapbooking and having the time of my life because I feel like I’ve got my creative groove back. I’ve been itching to create, but how and what? The “artist” block is gone (although I’m certainly not an artist), and the ideas are flowing.
Recently, my hubby blew up a photo of me when we were in New York to 8.5×11″ size, and I think it’s a perfect canvas to scrap onto, so I had some fun with it today:
I’m still reliving the memories of that trip, and I’m so happy we took as many photos as we did. Now, I’m off to have more fun. Enjoy your Memorial Day!
I look forward to the first of each month because it means a new assignment for One Little Word. This month we are to utilize the divided page protector to find 9 photos that represent where we are right now with our word (mine is imagine). If this is foreign to you, here is a link to the class for more information. I love this class because it is ongoing, and you really have to dig deep within yourself and be willing to grow.
….Or, how not to make a mini album! This is my completed “Scrapbook On The Road” mini album from Ali Edwards that I put together last March. It’s been sitting on my shelf all this time waiting for this very vacation. I have taken a week off to enjoy some good weather, rest, and Hubby’s and my wedding anniversary. We went to the coast last weekend after not being there for several years, and it was wonderful! The stats: I took 479 photos. Yes, you read that correctly. 4-7-9. I used 163 of them in this album. I also took 16 photos on my iPhone, and used 5 of those as well for a total of 168 photos crammed into this not-so-little book. Imagine if I still used film? I found some on Amazon; a 4-pack of 24 exposure Fuji film is around $9-10. I’d still be broke. I am a sentimental fool, and I cannot not photograph! The beauty of digital these days is being able to do what I did without regret, remorse, or having to go into debt. The interesting thing to me is, I deleted photos as I went along on this trip, so 99% of the photos are good and usable. I just cannot put that many into one book! So, I have plenty of good material for use in other projects later on.
Here is the book:
I debated on adding more to the cover, but I'm leaving it alone for now.
I like the look of white on white, but I needed to trace around the letter stickers with a gray pen so they would show up just a little more.
I love these transparencies (left).
This is a real map on the left that I cut and stitched a heart onto. That idea came from Martha Stewart Living.
The tags in the pocket have photos of where we stayed on the back that have been cut into the shape of the tag.
The tag on the right is from My Mind's Eye, and is perfect for things like this.
The photos on the right are from my phone. Left the camera at the cabin!
I tried to add little borders to the white spaces above and below the photo on the left, but it didn't look right. I covered them with this 7Gypsies tape which is only a little better.
The little stickers I used throughout are 'Word Fetti' travel stickers from Making Memories.
To put several photos onto one page, I used my Moirai Compositor in Photoshop CS4 to create a collage.
The Maya Road envelope contains a silly photo my husband took on a tag that I somehow wanted to include, but not on a page. I love using real postcards in my books (right).
The backs of postcards make perfect journal spots!
Pages that look like the one on the right are made from plain transparencies covered with a piece of sewing pattern on both sides and adhered with either Mod Podge, or Gel Medium.
This envelope (right) has business cards from most of the places we visited.
The page on the right is chipboard covered in white acrylic paint. Very difficult to journal on; I went through at least 4 pens.
Lists are fun! This one was a random, spur-of-the-moment decision because the side of the page has those numbers.
Ali Edwards came up with ingenious idea of putting two tags together side-by-side and covering the back with paper to make a unique little page!
That envelope on the right contains the necklace my husband made for me out of a thin piece of seaweed and two little shells shown in the photo directly underneath.
Oy vey! More acrylic paint that was just so difficult to work with! I do love the effect, though.
I loved using Basic Grey's Micro Mini Monogram letters. Perfect size!
This envelope on the right has more ephemera in it like menus, receipts, etc.
I made a pocket out of the bag I got at one of the souvenir shops when I purchased my postcards. I cut it down a little and used a circle punch at the top to put more things into.
The End.
Lessons learned from this:
If you take 479 photos during a vacation, try to weed out the best so that you have maybe 50 or less to put into your mini-album (unless you’re going to make a regular size one, and good luck with that…it may get finished next year.). Put the rest onto your Flickr site, or add a couple of two-page spreads to your usual album.
If you know you’re going to have a lot of stuff to put into a mini-album, don’t use chipboard pages. They add thickness and bulk.
Don’t try to journal on painted pages!! At least cover the page with a coat of gel medium on top, and/or get some super writing pens (lots of them). If I ever discover a pen that will write on anything, I’ll be the first to let everyone know. Not even my trusty Sharpies would write on the paint!
Make sure your holes will be big enough for your binder rings. The Crop-o-dile is a wonderful tool, but the largest hole is only 3/16″ which is not really big enough. I had to re-punch most of the holes, and I did a poor job of it. I don’t know how to get bigger holes in the chipboard pages (except for a Binderie Punch, but it’s awkward). I’m going to campaign for We R Memory Keepers to make a bigger Crop-o-dile hole punch (at least 1/4″).
Plan better. Being spontaneous can be good, but for an endeavor like this, I wish I had slowed down a bit and put more thought into where/how I will put my photos in.
Don’t use glue sticks (at least not cheap Costco ones). I did, and by the time I was ready to put my photos into the book, it was falling apart. I had to use my Scotch ATG gun to reattach things.
AAA maps are a wonderful way to add embellishments: they’re free, and you can cut and punch them to your heart’s desire to add some pretty classy art to your pages.
If you don’t have a Moirai Compositor to create collages on your page, consider adding divided page protectors. There are some which can hold 18 small photos (both sides) and I personally have had success in cutting them down to a size that fits my book. Plus, the page protectors can hold small treasures like business cards, some sand, a shell, etc. (sew across the top to seal).
Taking photos of little treasures I found on the beach was a real boon; some didn’t make it home in one piece, so I at least have a photo of them (you can always print these out small and put some in an envelope if you want to save room).
I probably didn’t need to include all of the meals I had in my book. I did want to remember these meals (especially when we go back again next time), but maybe a scrapbook layout of fabulous meals would have been just as good a way to document that.
All in all, putting this album together was a labor of love (like every scrapbook page!) that I will leave just as it is. Last night I was disappointed with the way it turned out (too thick, messy handwriting, poorly punched holes, etc.), but it’s my documentation of fabulous memories that I put together myself. I won’t change a thing, I’ll just learn from it and do better next time. Happy travels!
I’m scrapbooking, so of course I am, and today in The Mother LOAD class, it’s Mother May I Monday, which means we get to break the scrapbook rules (which are what…..I’m not quite sure…..). Today’s prompt is to create a layout in a different size that what we’re used to. So I created mine in an 8×8, rather than the traditional 12×12 or 8.5×11 size. And, I created not one, but four mini layouts because the photos I used are from my awesome brother Rob, and I couldn’t use just one! I wanted each photo to have its own canvas. I didn’t feel like doing much to the layouts (I wasn’t there, so I had little to journal about) because I wanted the photos to have a chance to shine pretty much on their own.
page 1
page 2
page 3
page 4
The word art is from Ali Edwards at Designer Digitals; ribbon is from Crate Paper (Toy Box collection); alpha stickers by Basic Grey.
I just completed the finishing touches on my Week In the Life project. It took much longer to complete than I anticipated, but here it is.
I participated in this project last year during the month of May, and I had used this American Crafts binder that still had plenty of room in it (this project doesn’t really take up enough space for an entire album, in my humble opinion), so I used the same album for this year’s edition, as well. The first half is 2010, and I made a “bookmark” as a divider and labeled it for the second half, which is 2011.
Not overly decorated, like most of my albums…I’m a minimalist when it comes to these things. I’ve had too many covers come apart, and it’s just not worth it since they will be put on a shelf anyway.
I started my Week In the Life (WITL) project on Monday, July 25, just like Ali Edwards (the head master/guide/initiator/guru of this annual memory-keeping experience). I ended on the following Sunday, and you may notice that some days have more photos than others. There are just so many pictures I can take at work (HIPAA rules), and at other times, I just plain forgot to get out my camera (really!). Some of the times on the photos may be incorrect because I was literally guessing at times, since I was not very good at writing times down when I took a photo, and it didn’t occur to me to look at the photo’s meta data until after the fact (doh!), and I really didn’t feel like reprinting everything…I’m using so much ink and paper with this!
So, please forgive the fact that this is so imperfect, but the bottom line is that I have documented my life for one week, and it will be really interesting to look back on this later on in the future.
Intro page
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
The end page.
Not showing are the notes I took which I put into page protectors and included in my album.
Originally, I was not going to include these, but then I thought, why not? These are my thoughts and the details of my doings, and it saves me time and money if I don’t rewrite them onto journaling cards. I credit Ali with giving me the idea; I think it’s a good one. Including your hand-written notes and journaling into your memory-keeping makes that memory more authentic and special. Your handwriting is a part of you, and your notes can include some important details you may not want to forget!
This was a great project that you don’t have to wait to do. Once a year, Ali Edwards (aliedwards.com) puts on this project, inviting anyone and everyone who has an interest in documenting their life for one week to participate. It costs nothing to join in; it’s not a club, and you do not have to do anything you don’t want to. She puts it on during a specific week which she chooses each year, but there’s no reason at all why you can’t decide to do something like this for yourself any time you choose. You can also put your documentation into any sort of medium: an entirely digital album, a mini album, or something like Ali does, but with your own twist on it. It’s just a form of inspiration which you may take a closer look at your life; pay attention to the little details, take note of what you really do/feel/say/observe/eat during a typical week in your life and document it for posterity’s sake. Can you imagine how your life will have changed 20 years from now? And imagine your grandchildren and their grandchildren getting to experience your life through your eyes, and really getting to know who you are. Fascinating.
Saturday, I put together the 11th challenge for my Design Challenges class. The layout was to incorporate different sized fonts, with the emphasis on the journaling, or writing more so than the photo. At first, I was a little stumped. Looking through my photo galleries in Photoshop, I ran across one that is very special to me. I haven’t put it into a scrapbook layout yet, and somehow, I found myself drawn to using it that day. What do I say about this photo? How can I possibly express myself adequately? I decided to just start typing what was in my head, and go from there. I may not have all of the facts 100% correct, but I reached into my heart and this is what happened…
Not a great layout, but a meaningful one.
I hope they don’t get mad at me for posting this. It’s just something I am compelled to express. Have a great Monday!
Today I begin documenting the week in my life. I started doing this last year, and it was really fun. I look forward in later years to coming back to this to see how my life has changed. I also enjoy paying attention to the little things; what do each of us do all day? How do we live, what do we eat, how do we feel? I find it so interesting to look at Ali Edwards’ blog during this project to see how each of our lives are unique and similar. Legal voyeurism.
My day contained no adventures, no special happenings, no chaos, drama, excitement, or even interest, really. I got caught up on my class assignments and projects, finished printing out some cards (now that my printer is working again) for a personal project, met with an insurance agent and talked about long-term care benefits with her and the hubby, participated in an online class chat, and received a package in the mail. I grilled some chicken for dinner, and finished up some work after dinner. I always read my book in bed and try to get to sleep before 11 pm. Wow, I know that’s just too much excitement for some of you, so try to contain the yawns, please. Here is a “snapshot” of my day:
Day 1
And, the two layouts I did manage to complete:
Using blue in this assignment for "Colour! Or is it Color?"
Using my favorite products for this assignment of "The Mother LOAD"
I know that sometimes the photos don’t do the subject justice. One of these days, there will be such thing as an affordable large-size scanner, and it will be mine.
I’ll be back tomorrow for the next episode of A Week in the Life…
