Where The Wild Things Are, A favorite Scrapbook Page from LOAD

This is one of my very favorite pages, it was created back in February 2015 for Layout A Day (LOAD). Our Theme was Once Upon a Time. On this day we looked at story books where the font variety and word placement was a visual feature of the book.

I figured if I was going to have a page where the words were a visual feature I would use words I like a lot so I used the story Where the Wild Things Are. I was given a copy at Ethan's baby shower and Maurice Sendak's story about a boy who can't quite contain his wildness and the mama who loves him is one of our favorites. I read it to Ethan in the rocking chair and later at bed-time.  We have our own actions that we act out along with the story. There was a time I could recite it without even glancing at the book.

For this page I began with some favorite images from November 2002 which capture the essence of my boy, then I arranged the words of the story to flow around him. I tried to alter the spacing, size and color to mirror the way I pause and emphasize with my voice when I tell the story.  I wanted to call attention to the parts of the story that are my favorites, either because of the way the words trip off the tongue, or because even though she is only mentioned once, the second half of the story is full of Max's mother who knows just what a repentant Wild Thing needs to feel secure and loved.  This is the kind of often wordless bond I like to think exists between me and my own Wild Thing. On the right page I was also trying to convey the feeling that the words had been shaped by the surf, drift words.

Ethan is now a senior in high school and he is more guarded about his feelings, these pages continue to be among my favorites, they capture a mood and a time that I love to recall.
Where The Wild Things Are
Font variety challenge
I think this is the first full digital page I ever made without using a template.

Digital Scrapbook Papers from Just Sail Away by LDrag Designs at TheDigiChick.com
Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Century Schoolbook Font (closest match to the font used in the original book)
Page created in Photoshop Elements 12.

Additional LOAD pages that have been shared on my blog can be seen at this link

At Scrap Happy we are gearing up for another Layout a day in October. October LOAD (LayOut A Day) is always fun, it's member run and we always have a great time. Our theme this year is A Scrappy Buffet, I can't wait to see where that theme will take us.

Scrap Happy has a membership discount running right now until the end of September, just in time for new members to join us for October LOAD.

Will You Join Me? October Layout A Day - A Scrappy Buffet

I am part of a group of wonderful scrappy ladies. Scrap Happy Family, we do a layout a day challenge for a month three times a year. I have yet to make a layout each day, but I do create more than I do the rest of the year, and I have a wonderful time!  Each day there is a prompt for inspiration, or you can make whatever you want. We share our pages in a private flickr gallery (optional) and it's a wonderful time of creativity, encouragement, and camaraderie. At Scrap Happy we are gearing up for another Layout a day in October. October LOAD (LayOut A Day) is always fun, it's member run and we always have a great time. Our theme this year is A Scrappy Buffet, I can't wait to see where that theme will take us.  LOAD has stretched me, it encourages me to tell stories I might not otherwise have thought to tell. Scrap Happy has a membership discount running right now until the end of September, just in time for new members to join us for October LOAD.  This is a great group of ladies, I've made wonderful friendships online and at Reunion, our annual meet-up event.

Here is a favorite page of mine from a LOAD past.
From LOAD514 Past Perfect 2
the prompt was, If These Walls Could Talk
My favorite four walls are the fence that encloses my backyard. Journaling: My backyard is my sanctuary. It's the place I go to relax, to escape, to unwind. It's my favorite place to be. Aren't I lucky it's so close to home.
Six of the photos on this page are Instagram photos, the one with the mug was my very FIRST Instagram.
The "Time To Relax" image was edited in the Rhonna Designs App.
Page Created with Close To My Heart Studio J (which has been discontinued)
All products are from Close To My Heart Olivia Collection

Additional LOAD pages that have been shared on my blog can be seen at this link

Project Life Pages from February Scrapbook Retreat

I went on a scrapbook retreat in February. Here are sme pages I made for my Project Life album.

Project Life is a new approach for me. It was fun to work with the pocket page protectors & just concentrate on using photos from a 1 or 2 week period for each layout. The emphasis for this album is to include more of our day-to-day activities, that means using whichever photos which capture daily life, even if they are low quality phone photos or screen captures. I like this kind of scrapbooking, it's the first time I've ever made pages that mention my online classes & projects or a photo of myself that made me cringe.

Project Life is coming soon to scrapbook stores around the country and continues to be available to US customers on Amazon. These pages were made with the Olive Edition of Project Life. Project Life On Amazon (Afiliate Link)

How Much Is Enough? MY Crafting EQ

The class I've been waiting a year and a half for has finally begun. Library of Memories is now called Finding Photo Freedom.

I thought I'd share with you my EQ (enough quotient) this is about what we can realistically get done. If we can do more that's great, but the idea here is to be realistic about what we can accomplish and eliminate guilt over expecting too much. so here's mine.

Weekly

• Digital Housekeeping - 15 min 3x's weekly. This includes importing photos & digi elements & maintaining my Digital organization system.
• Time in Craft Room - 15 min 3x's or total of 45 min weekly. At present the project is making the room habitable again!
• Work on primary online class.

Monthly

• 1 double page spread, monthly. I'm sick of feeling guilty! Anything else is gravy.

This Year

• One Little Word
• Library of Memories / Finding Photo Freedom
• Start taking photos, again
• Quit hitting delete on photos of me

Home

• Display some photos in the house.
  Probably this will be in a digital photo frame, but I need to find a spot for it.

Online

• I have given myself permission to do whatever I feel inspired to do & nothing more.

One Little Word: Title Page

I think this photo is a perfect metaphor for a new year filled with PROMISE.

I made a title page for my One Little Word, this is 5x7 in size & was kind of a get-my-feet-wet run on the new laptop using Photoshop Elements 9 for the first time. The frame outline & words were a PNG file which was one of the pre-class downloads. I reserve the right to change it completely if I want to as the album progresses. That's my prerogative as a woman & a digi scrapper.

I took the photo yesterday with my phone while Visiting Bayou Bend Gardens.

Not Journaling Your Christmas - Forward Progress

So I have journaled about Christmas I think about 3 days and only one of those journalings lines up with any of the prompts for my class. So I decided I need to take an approach that worked particularly well for me with the Picture Summer photo class that I took. For that class I made a list on my phone of each day's photo prompt and put a * beside it when I had accomplished that photo.

Journal Your Christmas comes to me each day as an email in my inbox. The actual prompt comes as a PDF file and it has lots of ideas and inspiration in it, including artwork... but because of this it takes awhile to read and I don't tend to read each one as it comes in. So I decided I needed a short list. Something I could look at to decide which prompt I want to tackle when I have a bit of time. Then I can jump right in and start writing, or look at the .PDF file for more inspiration. This time I'm making a checklist in Evernote. Evernote is an online place to keep notes & information that you want later. Usually I keep this kind of stuff in Microsoft OneNote (LOVE!!) but I don't have access to OneNote when I'm away from my laptop - so I'm trying to learn to use Evernote more - I have an Evernote app on my phone so I can access it during my weekly 2 hour lobby sit-in during Ethan's Speech & Occupational Therapy appointments - which is when I most often find myself in the mood to work on these things. I'm also hoping for a new laptop for Christmas, so I'm trying to make it easy on myself to get to from the new laptop out of hope.

Even though I am dismally behind on this project, making my Evernote list has made me very glad I took this class this year & didn't wait until Christmas 2011. This is an on-going class. Once you pay your registration, you have access to each year's new edition. This year I am happy to get anything down, but I feel like it is making me more prepared and knowing what to expect next year. I feel like having done THIS year I am more excited about next year and see that this is something I think I can do if I start form the first and work through a day at a time. I feel like just from deciding to take back Christmas this year, I have begun the process of recovery & laid a foundation for an even better Holiday season next year.

And you know Shimelle who teaches the class has done such a wonderful job of making me not feel stressed about it all. Every day's email (even today on December 20th) has these words in it "If today is your first day in class, welcome!" I can't tell you how "OK" that has made me feel.  Today she also said "
During this last week before Christmas, be sure to remember to enjoy the season rather than be ruled by it.  You're in charge: do what you love and let go of anything that is causing you worry.  Let your happy holiday start with you!  Have a great day!" Isn't that great. That is just the kind of thing I need to hear!

Christmas Wishes Part 1

One of the things on my Christmas wish list is a spot in this class at Big Picture Classes.

It's called Yesterday & Today (despite my tendency to refer to it as Then & Now.) It's taught by Ali Edwards and it's a class to help you learn to tell over-arcing stories inter-generational stories. Stories about things that happen over time - instead of strictly event based scrapbooking. I would love to be able to do some of this... the trend right seems to be to talk about the mundane small every day details... but I also find I have a desire to scrap about the big picture. There is a lot of pressure talking about the big picture. The other thing that really appeals to me about this class is that she promises to show us how to scrap about things for which you have no pictures. I think that will be very helpful in telling more heart stories, to not have to have a photo for everything I want to say.

Ali has posted a teaser glimpse at some of the layouts from the class on her blog.
Yesterday & Today will run from December 30 2010 - March 30 2011.

Holiday Classes Part 2

The second Holiday class I am taking is 25 Days of Templates: Holiday taught by Tiffany Tillman at ReneePearson.com this class I thought was a great supplement to the journaling class in case I wanted to make some of the journaling into scrapbook pages.

This class comes with 50 Photoshop Elements Page templates & the instruction is about how to use and manipulate templates to create more customized digital pages. I anticipate that I will complete this content after the holidays are over and with forever access to the materials and classrooms I can always take advantage of them. So far I have watched the instructional videos for days 1-5, not too bad. These daily lessons are mostly about 5 minutes long, so easy to work into the day along with morning coffee.

My first Journal Your Christmas page was actually made from a template from the summer edition of this class. Summer Template 11 by Tiffany Tillman at Design House Digital

Another Class: Cooking Up A Memory

I've signed up for another scrapbook class. I should be focused on other things right now, but the class was too "me" to pass up. Cooking Up A Memory and it's taught my Molly Newman at reneepearson.com.

In the class we'll learn how to create an album of recipes that includes recipes, photos, and the stories behind the recipes. We are also spending one week learning about food photography (food is HARD to photograph!!! There are a number of recipes I haven't blogged because the food looks great on the table but awful on film!)

So doesn't that class just sound very "me" I had to take it!

Have You Seen This? Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes

I saw this video on fancyMelissa, I love it. After you've watched the video go take a look at the great scrapbook page she made using words from the song. Melissa, it's fabulous!

Renee Pearson Just The Basics: QuickPage 1

Today is day one of a class I've been long anticipating. Just The Basics taught by Renee Pearson at reneepearson.com. It's a from the beginning class on Photoshop Elements.

Class began today & I am pleased to say that I have already watched the first 4 Video Tutorials and completed the first project. I made the page 9x9 but I may size it down to 6x6 so I can print it at home (something I learned to do in this class.) I wish I was better at photo editing, my current skills weren't enough to fix the overexposure in the photo.



Template created by Tiffany Tillman with elements from the kit Arbot designed by Jackie Eckles. Template & kit were both included as part of the class.

Birthday Retreat Pages: Twitterpated

OK I have scrapbook pages from my marvelous birthday weekend get away. I took these photos yesterday. I was so happy here at this retreat that the only pages I wanted to work on were pages about the retreat I am on. So here are the first pair of pages. Hot off the press thanks to CTMH Studio J online scrapbooking software!

Paper Pack: Twitterpated
Click for larger view.
Journaling Detail

I'd also like to point out that this is the same page template as I used on the Easter Morning Pages, but the left hand page is rotated, I love that I'm able to get such different results with the same template.

This Girl Could Use Some R&R

I'm so scattered these days I feel like I'm running toward all points on the compass at once. I thought I'd run down a list of them real quickly, but if you know me, you know I'm not a girl of few words. I am still planning to do further installments of the How I Learned To Scrapbook story - but want to show you photos of my first scrapbook & when I went to photo it, was a different album in that box.

The Biggest thing I've been concentrating on is Organizing Digital Photos. Get it Together Keep it Together This is a photo organization class taught by Molly Newman that I took at ReneePearson.com It was a 4 week class on organizing photos and digital elements using a program called ACDSee. I found out about the class from Julie Johnson 4 days after it started - so I had to hit the ground running. I am well on my way to categorizing, keywording, & rating my digital photos so that I can easily search them and find what I want.
It's been time consuming and exciting, and a lot of work. Due to the technical nature of the class I was trying to keep right up with the lessons in order to be able to ask questions of the instructor at weekly online video chat sessions.

During the class I also got an external hard drive. Half my photos are on my laptop and half on a desktop computer that I never use. I am in the process of migrating all the photos onto the External Hard Drive so that I'll have access to them at the scrapbook retreat I am going on for my birthday at the end of this month.

I feel like this is the most PRACTICAL of all the online classes I have taken as I am putting a system in place that I will use for everything I do. I am very pleased with the experience & am planning to take a Photoshop class from Renee Pearson in June. http://www.reneepearson.com/classes/basics.html

In the middle of all of this I also Created 8 CTMH Studio J double page scrapbook layouts in a 5 day crash session. I blogged about that Studio J Posts are here.

Design Your Life - a 12 week design concept course taught at Big Picture Scrapbook just wrapped up, I a behind so I have a LOT of materials yet to go through. This class included layered templates for Photoshop Elements and prompted me to make my first ever digital scrapbook page. Holy Cow! that seems like forever ago.

I am in the final week with Adventures in Scrapbooking: Go Hybrid taught by May Flaum also at Big Picture Scrapbook. This was a 6 week course about incorporating digital elements into traditional paper scrapbook pages. Wonderful class. I feel behind due to the photo organization focus, and am looking forward to finishing out the rest of that content. I feel like It's a little surprise package that is waiting for me to go back and play with it.

I also convinced my husband that it was better to share "the good camera" (seen in photos) with me, than to have to buy me a brand new camera. Hurray!


Gracious me if that wasn't enough now I've signed up for several future classes:
Everyday Adventures: Becoming an Explorer of your World. A 4 week class beginning April 15 taught by Tami Morrison.
Textuality A class about incorporating text and print into scrpabook pages. 4 weeks starting April 22 taught by Amy Sorensen.
Get Great Photos with Any Camera a 4 week course beginning May 13, taught by Elisha Snow.

I was also contacted by Mardel Christian & Education Stores. They asked me to review a copy of a soon-to-be-released book that they are very enthusiastic about.
Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt. I have been hearing great buzz about this book. I can't wait to dive into it!

It is a beautiful afternoon! Dinner is in the crock pot, I have a glass of iced tea ready & I'm taking it outside to read on my lounge chair as soon as I finish this post.

Telling My Story: The Introduction

This morning after a busy holiday weekend I waved my kiddo off to school, walked back to my kitchen and where I usually would brew myself a cup of coffee.... I encountered a sink full of dishes and counter tops that I could barely see. This is in part because my husband "helped" with the cooking this weekend.

The electric griddle was sitting on top of a mega-pack of paper towel rolls on the kitchen floor. His giant monster juice machine was crowding out the toaster. I really just wanted to sit down with my coffee rather than scale what felt like my very own dirty dish k2. Yet I knew that those sticky stacks were high enough for me to see from the kitchen table. If I didn't tackle that thing, before breakfast, I would only end up with indigestion.

I put on my purple dish gloves, grabbed a sponge & got to work feeling very much like a drudge. But then I remembered that I have a number of wonderful & entertaining podcasts that auto-update on my phone. I grabbed my DROID and decided that an episode of Paperclipping Roundtable was precisely what was called for. I love a good podcast! I was focused on the conversation, my mind had something to play with, something to turn upon, but all the while my hands were busy chipping away at a breakfast bowl tower of Pisa, and a dinner dish tower of Babel.

At a certain point I looked around & found the mountain had been brought low. I had finished the dishes & I had podcast time to spare. On to breakfast! I was listening to Paperclipping Roundtable 013 Taking It Beyond the Page. They were talking about art journaling, about blogs, and quilting and collage and all sorts of mixed media things that can tie in with scrapbooking and also about how each lady in the panel found her way into scrapbooking. It struck me that the unifying thread in each woman's experience had been the desire to tell a story. I think I tell stories on my blog, but that is an area where my scrapbook pages are lacking. This is due in part to scrapping photos several years after the fact and is one of the reasons I have recently begun taking so many online scrapbook classes. I am a storyteller & I want that to be reflected in my scrapbooks.

The conversation moved on to where many of these different art forms began, how old they are and at what point they began to blend their edges with scrapbooking. One panelist talked about how plain scrapbooking was in the beginning and how she realized what she was doing was not an expression of her. It made me think of my own scrapbook beginnings and all the Scrapbooking booths I approached at craft fairs, full of a desire to fill up albums with darling photos of my newborn. How as the consultant talked with someone else, I would page through her albums, how turned off I was by them, and how I would try to slink away without talking to anyone. I had no desire to do THAT to my precious photos.

So this is going to be a self-indulgent series. I want talk about how I started scrapbooking, how it was in my blood, somehow, long before was a Mom or realized what I was doing and where it has led. This figures quite well I think, with my One Little Word for 2010: Purpose. By looking at how I have come to this place, I can be more intentional about where I am going. I can set my course and (as the cook in me desires to call it) plan my meals.

(It amazes the HECK out of me that even at this point the words scrapbooking and journaling are not in spell checkers - please get with it dictionary builders! - And by-the-way why do Spell-checks not check Subject lines & Titles - they are PRETTY important too! - Exclamation points galore, run-on-sentences and strong feelings, today.)