Organized

I got a ton of my digi scrapbooking supplies organized this weekend!  Hurray! I participated in a National Scrapbooking Day chat over at Designer Digitals and in between chatting, I sorted through stuff in my ACDSee database. So now I can get to work on some pages...

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:

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.

A Friday layout

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

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

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!

DYL Version 2.0

Registration for Cathy's Zielske's Design Your Life class opens November 5.

Just a little bit

Heather so kindly invited me to be a contributor to this blog and in honor of that, the first pages I'm uploading are a before and after. I know Heather really likes Cathy Zielski, and I checked out some of her stuff yesterday. I have to admit, from the little bit I was exposed to, I also like her style and philosophy. Since I'm not in the position to take any of her classes at the moment, I read some of her past articles that were posted on her website (the link is posted to the left under design). Now in the scope of what I'm sure I could learn from CZ, the information I got was just a little bit of what is available, but that little bit has already made a difference.

So here is my first layout...It's ok, but not particularly great. After reading those few articles yesterday, I took another whack at the layout and I think it looks MUCH better.
Just a few changes really, but a vast improvement. Now I hope to quickly get to the point where this deliberateness in design is second nature.

On my list of things I want to do in life: Take some of CZ's classes, oh, and earn enough money to afford it!

More Preaching to the Choir

An old friend sent me an e-mail asking me some questions about scrapbooking. Writing my response to her e-mail, reminded me how passionate I am about scrapbooking. Yes, I enjoy the creative outlet that it provides me. I love trying to make my pages visually appealing. But most of all, I love telling our story. And even if no one ever cares to read it, I've had fun telling it. And I can't help but believe there ARE people who will be interested...like my kids, for one.

I started "formally" scrapbooking sometime around the turn of the century. But I have always been a scrapbooker at heart. I would jot dates and notes on the backs of photos. I kept journals. I would make my own little scrapbooks by *gasp* gluing photos to pieces of paper and stapling them all together. I would slap pictures into albums that I bought at craft stores. I have always had an interest in taking photos and recording the details that went along with them. But when I stumbled onto Creative Memories, it was like I had just stumbled onto my own personal holy grail. Wow! This was exactly what I'd been looking for my entire life. And I cranked out the pages...did I ever. I pretty much scrapbooked every picture that came down the pike and I finished big, fat, thick scrapbooks like nobody's business. I gave numerous books away and I still have thirteen books sitting on my own shelves. I will sheepishly admit that those books cover a very small span of time...about a year and a half. Yes, yes, I was quite enthusiastic.

And then I had kids. The amount of photos increased and the amount of time I had to scrapbook decreased. Suddenly I found myself "BEHIND". Gradually the supplies got shoved out of the way, I found myself pulling them out less and less frequently. It was just too hard to do with all the kids. My husband had been telling me that I should just have online photo albums - and I did - but I missed the creative element of scrapbooking that I had always enjoyed. And then I discovered digital scrapbooking.

It was perfect. I could easily share my pages with others. I could do it without a lot of mess whenever I had a few minutes to myself. It was speedier - I could reuse a design multiple times. I can print as many copies of a book as I want (seems good for a mom of four). On so many levels, digital scrapbooking was the perfect thing for me.

As my enthusiasm for scrapbooking returned, I started reading books and magazines. And that drastically changed my thinking.

Ways that I've Changed My Philosophy:

I no longer buy into the concept of being "behind". I figure whatever I've done puts me ahead of nothing so now I'm always ahead. I see myself more as a family historian or a family archivist. I'm trying to keep track of our journey as effectively as I'm able to and I'm using several tools to accomplish this. I'm "journaling" our adventures in my blog. I'm taking tons of pictures and trying to take some video too. Someday I hope to revisit some of those things to put together "baby books" for the kids. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. There's no law that says I have to follow some sort of timeline and document every single thing, every single day. I just want my kids to get the "feel" for my interpretation of our lives. So now I scrapbook what I can and I feel good about it and I don't beat myself up for what I haven't done. I've also stopped thinking that I need to scrapbook every photo I take. Which is a good thing because these days I take a ton of photos! Instead I just think about the story I want to tell and then I find the best photos to go with my words. (For more on that check out Stacy Julian's book Photo Freedom.)

C

My Color Scheme

B

A

I've started working on pages for the CZ class that I'm taking. LOVE that Cathy Zielske! If you click on this photo it will take you to the Flickr page where I've credited the designers. Cathy gave us this template to use and I'm lovin' it!

I Lost My Tooth

This weekend I participated in Designer Digitals' all day chat. There were tons of freebies and even more great information. Anyway, one of the freebies was this great template by Lynn Grieveson. If you click on this photo and go to the flicker page where it's hosted, I've put detailed information about all the components I used and I've posted the journaling.

UPDATE 9/14
Tweaked things a little:

Ella Publishing

Also, check out this cool and FREE ezine: Ella Publishing

Renee Pearson

I found a great new site with lots of resources for digiscrappers: www.reneepearson.com And this is a great week to visit because she's having an awesome "Back to School Event Thingie" with great chats and giveaways.

Clean Water

Cathy Zielske has started a "Scrapbookers for Clean Water" campaign.

The story of charity: water - The 2009 September Campaign Trailer from charity: water on Vimeo.

ACDSee

ACDSee is having a sale! Check it out: http://www.acdsee.com/

Catch Lights

Here's a great little tutorial for getting catch lights.

Road Trip

From Scrapt

The top layout is from a Designer Digitals challenge: Kellie Mize, AdChalFree-082408. The fonts I used were primarily Century Gothic and JW ChalkRubons. I did use LD Grunge for the numbers on the cover page. If you'd like to read the journaling, I'm pretty sure it's legible if you go look at the larger photos in my Scrapt album.