Friday, October 30, 2009

Another Friday layout - Before & After


Here's another couple of layouts that I did and then redid after reading Cathy Z's articles.

Before:



After:

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Yesterday & Today



I'm taking another Big Picture Scrapbooking class...shocking, I know. This one is taught by Ali Edwards who is another one of my scrapbooking inspirations. The last couple of classes that I've taken have been very journaling-centric. I don't actually have any journaling phobia, but these recent classes have given me lots of ideas for topics to write about.

This weekend I did an exercise where I hauled out my old albums to figure out what things I like and what things I would do differently. I hadn't looked through my books in quite a while (we're talking years). So it was a lot of fun to flip back through them. One pleasant surprise was that for the most part I was okay with the layouts. In fact, there were actually lots of things that I liked. One of my favorite techniques is when I scan some object and then cut it out. (Why can I not think of what that's called when you cut something out like that? It's driving me nuts!) I love titles with puns but it was apparent that sometimes I try a little too hard to get a punny title. I definitely do not like overly contrived titles. I love big chunky letters and I love letters that overlay the photos (back in the day I used vellum to do that). I love enlargements. I love pages where I actually put some effort to journal. The most consistent thing that jumped out at me was that I like to keep my designs simple. I'm not a fan of the CM style of embellishments, from back in the day. Nothing made me cringe more than pages where I'd tried to use stickers. Sometimes I can make stickers work but for the most part, that's just not my thing.

Today I worked on three pages. I'm hoping to do the next lesson tonight, and maybe even get to the layout that goes with it. In the meantime, Ali Edward's provided a link to this site which has this great list of questions. Hopefully they will get *your* journaling mojo flowing.

Friday, October 16, 2009

A Friday layout



Just because it's one of my favorite recent layouts. I thought I'd share it with you all.

Monday, October 05, 2009

And now two of my favorite scrapbooking entities collide. Hurray!

Friday, October 02, 2009


Thank you for inviting me to contribute. I've never written on a blog before so thanks for your patience if I don't do something right. I've always been a big scrapbooker (in fact I recently took a look at my jr high scrapbook pages which are in bad shape 26 years later and need to figure out what to do. If it were just photos, I could re-do them but it is magazine cut-out, funny 7th grade writing, my view of the world at the time that I don't want to lose. Any suggestions?) but somehow I let scrapbooking become a chore, always feeling a bit behind. (I think it has to do with moving to Europe and having children -- both events that created more photos than I'll ever know what to do with.) But in a little back and forth with lovely creator of this blog and I'm finding it a labor of love again. I've been stealing away a little time here and there (after the kids are in bed, before I collapse) and loving it. Also, both of C.Z.'s books arrived in the mail to me. I've only read one part and have already had an a-ha moment -- I always feel sorry for myself that I don't have room to scrap (sometimes I'm doing it on my bed!) and then I read that even Cathy Zielske scrapbooks on her dining room table and just makes the best of what she has. Totally cool!

Thursday, October 01, 2009