Tips from Pro Photographers

Since I took that photography class I have realized that taking good photos is not easy. I am finding it really challenging, actually. So I've been following a few photography blogs and trying to pick stuff up as best as I can. I came across this post but there was so much extraneous (to me) information in it that I just wanted the tips, so I decided to cut and paste them here, for my own reference and also for any neophyte wanna be photographer out there.

I came across a great tip recently (but I can't remember from where) that is going to be guiding my photos (of people) forever more: FOCUS ON THE EYES of your subject when taking your photo. Simple, eh? Obvious, eh? I'd never thought of it before, but now I know!

I also want to shout out Laura from Dolce Pics who was so kind to explain to me the deal with crop body and full frame.

Lucas Gilman: Find your background and then wait for your action to come into the frame. Shoot early and shoot late when the light is good.

David Schloss: The best thing I’ve ever heard about photography came from photographer Jay Maisel--"you can’t take a picture if you don’t have a camera." Forget about the automatic settings and spend days walking around with camera in manual mode, changing the f/stop and shutter speed by feel. Meter once in the morning and see if you can tell how many stops lighter or darker your subjects move from there. As a result, I often think of things in terms of stops of light. I’ll turn on a bedside lamp and think of how many stops lighter the room got. It’s really a great way to become one with your camera.

Tony Sweet: Isolate and simplify the subject.

Mike Sweeney: Read the manual for your camera even if you have been shooting for years, you will certainly learn something from it. Be an active member of a few of the many, many photography related boards, there is always something new to see and learn and you never know when you will uncover a piece of priceless information or learn the one thing that will tip a gig your way.

Anthony Tortoriello: I am a firm believer at shooting as much as possible any time I can. This means always having a camera by your side and using it with NO worries about what others may be thinking. To paraphrase something photographer Jay Maisel has said, we have to do our visual push-ups everyday to keep our skills in shape.

Michele Wortman: Follow your bliss and where the light lands. Shoot what interests you and whatever your passion is. It will show in your work.

Hmmm, seems like I need to go check out this Jay Maisel guy... .

Pinch me again and again

Well, another unusual thing has happened. Another layout of mine is going to be published! This time it will be in Scrapstreet, an online magazine. It was the layout titled "Pinch Me" that I shared in the post titled "Pinch Me" (what a coincidence, eh?) Nicole, from Scrapstreet Magazine, saw the layout in the Two Peas gallery, and sent me a Pea Mail requesting it. So this was super duper unexpected, but of a course a happy surprise.

I can't believe it's a week since I've posted! Life is just whizzing by, really it's going too quickly, right when I have so many precious moments to savour (and scrap). Sigh... . I haven't been scrapping nearly as much as I'd like to, but I did this page that I kinda like:

Just a simple layout for my family album. (I love that I now have a family album to do pages like this for.) All elements came from the Studio Calico December 2008 kit, except for the little die cut in the title. No design inspiration per se, just a regular customized grid collage.

I hope to do an intro-to-scrapbooking workshop for parents at big daughter's new school (November is National Parenting Month in my island). And I have lots of layouts in my head that I need and hope to get out of there and into reality. Hopefully I'll have more to share soon!

Me, again

I have no trouble doing scrapbook pages about myself. If anything, I am probably too narcissistic. So as much as I like her pages and her posts on the Write.Click.Scrapbook blog , which she is hosting this week, Marnie Flores’ challenge didn’t grab me at first. But then I couldn’t get it out of mind, and I kept thinking up things that fit her prompt. So I had woken up early on Tuesday morning and both babies were sleeping (!) and I got all dolled up (for me), grabbed DH before he left for work and we snapped some photos for me to do this page:

The design is straight from Becky Fleck’s October 2009 PageMaps. Everything is from the Studio Calico October kit , Yearbook, except for the yellow brad and the tiny stickers that spell out the date. Despite my recent post about discontinuing I not only didn’t cancel my sub, I ordered two add-ons from this month’s kit, Market Place! Everything looked so scrumptious, I couldn’t resist. I’ll use the money from my publication to pay for it—how’s that for justification. I might still cancel it come December… the thing is that I feel like the kit keeps me in the loop with new supplies, and also forces me to scrap outside my usual box… decisions, decisions.

Speaking of Studio Calico, I also incorporated a challenge from their blog into this challenge. The challenge was to use pop dots (adhesive that is thick so it gives whatever you’re sticking down some height). I have lots of pop dots, but I seldom use them, so this was a good incentive to use ‘em up. Also it helped me to get some dimension on the page with those Sassafras Lass paper whimsies flowers, which I like so much but which I tend to find a bit flat.

Pinch me!

I'm so excited I can barely type. One of my layouts was selected for publication in Scrapbooks, Etc. magazine! If you've been following this blog since August, you would have seen it already in this post, but I've replaced it with an "out for publication" sign. I can't even believe I actually did that--make an "out for publication" sign for my blog. You can see the chosen layout here where I submitted it.

I am breathless. This is so completely unexpected. I never, ever thought my layout would get chosen. I have never had any ambitions to be published, but it is really thrilling that I will actually be published.

And I have a layout to share:
The photos are not great, but they are the only ones I have so far of all three of my children together (an extremely difficult thing to get!), so I just had to do a page with them, especially since I’ve had these thoughts (what’s on the page) and wanted to get them down so I remember them (though I’m sure I’ll be thinking/feeling this way for a long time to come.)

The design was inspired by Kim Watson’s page in the October 2009 issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine.

I am one happy scrapbooker today!

Cardlifting

If when you copy a layout it's called scraplifting, is it cardlifting when you copy cards? (smile) Both were copied from The Joy of Cardmaking.

This one I did with my daughter. She selected the pattern, papers and embellishments (with lots of guidance from me, of course.) She's old enough now that she can actually do some of it. It was a great activity that kept us happily occupied for a good spell. I do hope that the nascent interest she is showing in scrapbooking and cardmaking continues to develop. I can't imagine a happier scenario than me and her scrapbooking together.

This one I did in spurts this morning. I love that I used up scraps and older embellishments that I'm not so keen on. Plus I got a little creative fix that I badly needed!

Colour combos

I did this layout based on a sketch to be submitted for possible inclusion in an Ella Publishing e-book.

I got the title from The Perfect Title.

I actually think the layout is a bit boring... I really have no hope of it being selected, which is fine. It was a nice simple sketch. I had nice photos that the sketch was well suited for. And I have a page done.

I also got to experiment with colour combinations. I'm into colour combos lately, mainly because I want to liven up the traditional pink and blue that inevitably end up on the babies' pages. This colour combo I got from one of my decorating books. I have scores of lovely home design and decor books. That was my passion for quite a few years pre-scrapbooking. Problem was I hardly ever had the chance to do it. I could dream up wonderful rooms, but to actually bring them to reality seldom happened.

In some ways, scrapbooking is a good substitute for the frustrated interior decorator. You still get to work with colour and pattern and placement, and you actually can see your projects come to life!

Creative Memories

A simple layout for my album:

Sketch adapted from Got Sketch? Sketch 54

In other scrapbooking related news... I met a woman who was a Creative Memories consultant for six years in the U.S. before moving back home to this island this summer. She’s trying to make a business of scrapbooking consulting here. I’m not so sure that it’s a feasible business idea, but I don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body, so I’m not the best person to weigh in on these things.

Anyway, I am fascinated by the Creative Memories set up. It’s like a world unto itself. This woman has been scrapbooking for years and has never used another brand’s product, has never shopped in a Michael’s, has never read a Creating Keepsakes magazine… she only uses CM products, which are difficult to interchange with any other product. I saw some of her pages, and they are lovely. But I can’t imagine being so limited in one’s choices of everything. There is so much wonderful stuff out there! Anyway, I’m just happy that there is another scrapbooker out there, and that she’s also trying to get more people into this wonderful hobby.

Counting blessings

I am blessed to have discovered this hobby, scrapbooking. I am recording my family's story, I have a creative outlet, and I have a hobby that helps me to restore my energy and spirit, and helps me to feel human.

Much of my scrapbooking is about my other blessings--my children. They are the subject of this page I did for the challenge that Kelly Noel posted on the Studio Calico blog to do a layout inspired by these images:
This page is very much out of my norm in many respects, but I thought those pictures were so cute and they inspired me. That's reason enough, isn't it? [yes!]

Kit club quandary

I was so inspired by that page I did about my sister for the Journaling Junkie challenge 66 that I was moved to do a page featuring my other sister. Well, I kinda had to, you know? (smile)

I had some photos—not great ones, mind you, but good enough—and realized that I could do a meaningful page with them. The inspiration for this was another page I did recently. It was a scraplift of Kim Watson’s page. This is more of a derivative of the original than a straight scraplift though. I really like this design, and because the photos weren’t so great I had to keep them small and so this design worked well given that constraint.

I used my new Studio Calico kit (October) “Yearbook” (except for the brads--I need something to "lift" the page a bit; it felt so flat). I had intended to do more journaling, but I wanted to do that quote really big and the page wouldn't have come out like I wanted it if I had added more words.

Speaking of kits… I’m thinking of discontinuing my kit subscription. It has been a year now since I’ve been a Studio Calico kit subscriber, and though the kits are amazing, and though I almost always make at least one layout from a kit, I don’t think I am getting as much out of the kits given how much I am paying for them. And though I do make nice layouts with the kits, the truth is that most of the time I wouldn’t have selected the papers and embellishments that come in the kit. Maybe I’m with the wrong kit club? That could be it. But the Studio Calico community is so awesome. Anyway, it’s just a thought for now.

Test run

I’ve been so excited to scrap since I figured out how I am going to organize my layouts and albums going forward. This is my first one-event-three-ways venture. It was my big daughter’s birthday party and I had wonderful photos (I got a photographer—worth every penny, I say) and I wanted a page for my album, a page for her album, and one for the family album.

This page is for my album. I’ve used this layout (that I got from the 1,2,3…4x6 class I took when I went to CKC in June 2008) for the 1^st and 3^rd b’day pages that went in my albums. I changed it up a bit this time around though. I'm not so thrilled with the title but I don't have letter stickers where I could get all that in, so I typed and printed it with that cool new font I found recently.

These two pages are very similar, one for her album, one for the family album. I just changed a couple of photos and the journaling.

The design is inspired by Kim Morgan’s page that she shared on the Write.Click.Scrapbook blog. I fell in love with this page (and others of hers from her week of hosting the wsc blog) when I saw it and I’ve been dying to scraplift it.

Aren't those chipboard stickers darling? I love them, especially since I found them right here on this island! There's a pharmacy (in the US they'd say drugstore) that has always had a few outdated patterned papers; they got new stock recently, just a few items, but hey.

I really am pleased with myself at having figured this system out, because now there are so many layouts that I’ve done that will have a good home in the family album, and also there are so many more pages for me to do!

Of course there is the time factor… selecting and sizing photos for these layouts took over two hours one night (when I should have been sleeping) and then putting them together took another few hours well. But it's a start.

Signing out with a quote I saw today on the write.click.scrapbook blog:

[...] how valuable this hobby of ours is... the memories you’re making, the aspects of your life that you’re observing and noticing, the words you’re writing, and the pictures you’re taking are of infinite worth both now and in the future.

Just popping in...

...to share a layout I did for the Journaling Junkie Challenge 66 which was to:

Journal about a relationship you have with a sibling/siblings. The good, the bad and the ugly!! If you don’t have a sibling then journal about what you would have liked in a brother/sister.

Had it not been for the challenge I wouldn’t have done this page. But after giving it a bit of thought, I decided to do a page about me and one of my sisters. I’m really glad for the prompt because I had set out at the beginning of the year to do more pages about my family members, but had stalled on that project (I forgot!)

The design was inspired by a layout by Francine Clouden. I got the title from a new site I’ve discovered, The Perfect Title.

I have liked ruled scrapbook paper (looks like loose leaf folder paper) since I first saw it used in layouts in magazines and online. I have a couple of sheets, but I have wanted to type my journaling on it, which, with the lines, is virtually impossible. So I decided I’d see if I could find a soft copy of the paper, free, online. And I did! I literally googled: “digital scrapbook paper lined free”. My first hit was Shabby Princess, and they did indeed have a free kit with the paper I wanted.

I posed the photo and everything at big daughter’s b’day party as I knew we would both look a bit snazzy plus I had a photographer there. And I got to use this scrumptious patterned paper which I’ve had for a while but it’s so unusual I wasn’t able to use it before.

Now to do a page about my other sister…

Love notes

I've figured out how I'm going to organize my scrapbook pages from now on. I knew I would figure it out eventually. It's been the only thing on my mind (when I have time & energy to actually think) for the past week or so.

I'm going to be working on five (yes, you read that right) albums at a time, on an ongoing basis. First there's my personal album, that's all about ME and has whatever pages I want in it. Then there's an album for each of my three children which will contain at the very least a monthly update page, and any other special occasions, events, etc., or anything else about their lives that I feel is worth documenting/recording.

Then the epiphany came to me to indeed do a family album, but it will be more than just a random pages album. It will have 52 pages--a page for each week. It won't necessarily be a page recapping the week, but it will contain photos (or a photo) from that week and whatever the story about it is. I am so psyched about this idea. Not only does it give me more pages to do, but it also gets a whole lot of photos off my computer (photos that I didn't really know what to do with since they didn't make the grade to be in my album or in one of the kids') and onto a page. And, oh yes! I'm documenting my family's story.

I was figuring I'd start in 2010, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I can start right now. Many of the pages I've already done this year could go in the album, and I can backtrack to some of the photos taken earlier this year and do pages with them.

I am sooo excited about this idea. How did it come to me? Well besides constant thought devoted to it, Elizabeth Kartchner's announcement that she has a book coming out (woo hoo! and even better Mou Saha is one of the scrapbookers who has layouts in it! I've already pre-ordered mine from Amazon), and the fact that the book has a 52 layouts theme, got me thinking in that direction, and then it hit me.

Then after I had figured this out a friend mentioned (in the comments to my blog post about it, actually) that Ali Edwards had done a post about just this. Her system is actually very similar to mine. That's so reaffirming!

I really loved how she described the albums she does for her children: "I view the pages as essentially love notes to each child." I LOVE that. I couldn't have said it better. That's EXACTLY how I feel about scrapbooking and the pages I do about the children. And, too, the pages I do for myself are pretty much love notes to myself. I had just never thought of it in those exact words, though I very much felt that sentiment. (I do need to go back and read all the comments to her post, as well as all her posts about album organization to see if I can pick up any more tips.)

I can't wait to get started. Of course there's a huge elephant in the room here: how on earth am I am going to do all this scrapbooking with all my time and energy constaints? I can barely get a page done for my regular two albums, and here I've just added three more! Oh, I don't know, but it'll happen, somehow... I know it will!

Hiding in my stash

Though I’ve finally been inspired to do some pages about the babies, they’ve mostly been for my own album. I’ve been holding off doing any pages for the babies’ albums because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach it. And now I know my instinct was right and my hesitation was for a good cause, as I had forgotten I had Becky Higgins’ Sweet Baby kit!

I only remembered on Tuesday night when I was up late again (foolish me) doing this page:

I wanted a nice soft background paper with a really subtle pattern and there was nothing in my stash. That was when I remembered the huge kit and lo-and-behold found the perfect paper in there, and more importantly I was reminded that I have the kit.

So though I still don’t know exactly how I’m going to do their scrapbooks, I do have another parameter to help me figure it out. Yay!

And the design of this page? I scraplifted my own scraplift—it was the only way I could think to display four landscape photos without doing a boring grid. I started it Tuesday night and wanted badly to finish the page, though I was so tired and it was past 11pm. I wasn’t liking how the page was looking, which I wasn’t happy about because I so love the photos that I wanted the page to look really fabulous. Then something struck me and I said to myself, “just leave it”. I hardly ever do that—trust my instinct instead of plodding along. I’m so glad I did because on Wednesday morning when I went back to it, I thought of all sorts of things that hadn’t occurred to me before, like cutting out the little embellishment from a card, and using the rattle. And now I really like the page (smile).

Tilted

I just noticed something: quite a few of my recent layouts are not entirely linear--there are a lot of tilted photos in there. Hmmm... maybe I am actually breaking out of my clean & simple shell after all. I have been wanting to get more movement, more life as it were, in my layouts, and this, I suppose, is how I'm doing it.

This is a scraplift of Elizabeth Kartchner's page in the September issue of Creating Keepsakes magazine. At first the layout didn't really grab me, but then every time I leafed through the magazine and saw it I somehow knew that the design could work for a page of my own. And voila, it was perfect for these photos and the event that I wanted to do a page about. I really like how the circles link to the bicycle wheels.

What to put where?

Every night when I go to bed I flip through one or two of the four scrapbooking magazines on my bedside table, the two latest issues of CK and SBE. Not through the entire magazine--I only look at the layouts on the pages I’ve tabbed. And I go to sleep thinking about what page I might/could do based on those inspiration pages.

(I’ve actually been thinking that a fun challenge to set for myself would be to scraplift every layout I’ve tabbed in my magazines and in my inspiration folder on my computer.)

But truth is, I not only don’t have the time or energy, I also don’t have a whole lot of scrapbook-page-inspiration right now. I do have some photos, but I need to go through and edit and select the good ones. Also, since I’m still processing everything, I don’t have anything concrete to really “say” just yet. And, importantly, I haven’t fully thought through how I want to do the pages of the little ones. When I had just one child it was easy--a layout was either for her album or my album. Anything else went into the Just Because pile. But what happens now that I have three children and our family is so much bigger and bodacious (smile)? Do I do an album for each child? Do I start a family album? Do I just keep doing pages as the inspiration strikes and then figure it all out later?

I’ll probably do an album for each child, with, at the very least, one month layouts. Unfortunately these two little ones won't have the albums that their big sister has; then again, they might not mind, because her four scrapbooks are huge and heavy. Then any other pages I do would go into either my album, or a family album if I decide to do one. I have done so many layouts this year, that I probably have enough already for all of these albums.

Anyway, I’m still sorting this all out in my head, and I’m not rushing to do it either. It’ll come to me, I know it will.

Despite all my “lacks” of things to make scrapbook pages, on Sunday I got some great shots of DH with the little ones, and I just had to scrap them. Plus there was a layout by Vicki Boutin in the Aug/Sept SBE that I really liked, and I could scraplift it with the photos I had.

I love those flower clusters.

Unusually for me, I can’t really think of anything to say here; I think this is the least amount of journaling I’ve ever done on a scrapbook page. But I feel okay that here the photos are speaking for themselves.

Where this page will end up (i.e. in which album) I still don't know, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Tidbits

[Not a post but I need to download.]

My new favourite font: Pea Squeaker

I am into repurposing embellishments, especially flower stickers—pulling them apart, adding gems to them… makes me feel crafty and thrifty!

My scrap nook is a MESS. Not very encouraging to scrap in bursts since that’s the only time I might have to scrap… but no time to tidy it up either.

Becky Higgins is leaving Creating Keepsakes! Wow, end of an era. But she says she will still be scrapbooking.

More drastic, Emilie Ahern (whose pages I’ve scraplifted before, and whose style I really like) has declared she’s ceasing scrapbooking altogether! Drastic!

And check out all the scrapbooking stuff you can win HERE—all you have to do is enter your contact info.

That's all folks! More anon (hopefully).

I paid the price

That decision to scrap instead of sleep… I paid for it on Monday. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck. Ugh. But I do have pages to share! Despite all I said in my previous post, I did do one about my new babies (in this case, one of the new babies):

I loved these photos, and I had just the words to go with them (what I was actually thinking at that time). Plus, as an added bonus, it’s a perfect fit for the latest Journaling Junkie challenge 65 which is to “document those little moments making up an ordinary day; snippets, special moments, ordinary routine.”

I scraplifted the design from Kelly Noel’s layout.

All the patterned papers are from the Studio Calico September kit “Cotillion” (plus I got the “Tango” add-on, but it’s all mixed together, so I don’t know what is from which). I don’t think I would have selected/bought ANY of the patterned papers used on this layout had they not come in the kit, but I like how it all came together. So definitely a “trust the kit” layout. The chipboard flower stickers were from my stash. I adore these embellishments; they are so classy. I have only one left now; I would love another pack or two of these (there is one pack left at Addicted to Scrapbooking, but I can't order just one item and I don't need anything else nor can I afford it... sigh... ).

So now I have to go and do a layout of the other baby, so there's no favouring one over the other! Fortunately I have some lovely photos of me and her that I think will make a great page... just to find some time to scrap where I don't have to pay such a huge price afterwards.

Scrapping vs. sleeping

For some reason I don’t quite understand, I’m not really ready to scrap that much about the recent changes in my life, though I had thought I would be doing like a page a day about all these new and exciting happenings. I had even made a list of possible pages to do; I thought I was being so organized—all I would have to do is take some photos and fill in the details. But it hasn’t happened that way. Well I know one reason is NO TIME to scrap. If I have a break at all, a nap (or just lying down for a few breaths) takes priority. There really is no choice there. But I think I'm also still processing everything.

But I have been itching to scrap, and so Sunday night I sacrificed some precious sleep and spent a few hours doing some simple pages, all scraplifts. This one I had actually started last week but couldn’t think of a title for the page or where to put it. It’s another scraplift of one of Kim Watson’s fab pages except I don’t have a sewing machine or a scalloped punch. But otherwise it’s very much copied from the original.

(Sorry to have to blot out stuff, but you understand, right?)

I know I will eventually do loads of pages and layouts, indeed entire albums, about all of “it”—for me, for big daughter and for the little ones. For now, I’m just taking as many photos as I can and jotting down as much as I can. I know the inspiration will strike when the time is right.

There are challenges and then there are challenges

For the past two weeks I’ve been going around collecting challenges for pages that I’ve only gotten done in my head, but this one actually made it into reality. It’s for the September challenge at the The Story Matters challenge blog.

This month the challenge was “to document something you do most every day... and record it with words and pictures.”

Here’s my take:

(Not sure why it's coming out so fuzzy but if you click on it you can see it more clearly. Anyone have any tips for getting sharper images of my layouts on here?)

How do you like the book covers? I’ve done that before, where I use the images of book covers in my layout, but not for a long time–I think the layouts with it are in the little one’s first year album (we’re now on her fourth year album).

Apart from the book covers, the layout design was inspired by this super clean and simple page (also featuring my favourite striped paper) by Candice Palmer in the Write.Click.Scrapbook September gallery.

I used the digital version of that KI Memories Colorful Stripe. It's the only digital kit I own, and I bought it JUST for that stripe. I couldn't resist the temptation to save the few precious sheets of that paper that I have.

You know what is really challenging me now? My photography. Now that I know how to take photographs with the manual settings I am realizing just how difficult it is to take good photos. And especially now that I'm appropriately anti-flash (as all "real" photographers are supposed to be) I am having a lot of difficulty getting really good photos. Sometimes I am tempted to go back to the auto settings and just take lots and lots of shots and hope for a good one in there. For these photos I carefully set up the tripod, used my 50mm lens to let in lots of light, etc., but they aren't that pleasing to me. This is what happens when you raise the bar... sigh... .

Happy 1st birthday to my blog

To commemorate one year of this blog, I’m doing this meme on blogging that my scrappy-bloggy friend Helen (aka Scrap Addict) posted.

1. How long have you been blogging?

One year today!

2. Why did you start blogging?

As an extension of my scrapbooking hobby--to share my scrapbook layouts and to download all the scrapbooking stuff from my head (see a more detailed explanation of what I mean by that HERE). A year in, my blog—writing about the creative process, even writing about shopping for supplies—is as much a part of this hobby for me as is scrapbooking itself.

3. What is the theme/topic of your blog?

Scrapbooking and the process of scrapbooking; also a bit about my other hobby, stringing bead necklaces; and tidbits about art that I like and music that I listen to.

4. Are there topics that you would never blog about?

I tend not to blog about my everyday or personal life, but a lot of that comes through on my scrapbook pages that I post. But the blog content itself is pretty limited to scrapbooking. I try to stay away from politics and so on, but every now and then it does creep in!

5. Do you blog under your real name?

No. I live on a very small island with a very small society and also given the nature of my job it wouldn’t be advisable.

6. What have you found to be the benefits of blogging?

It’s good for my headspace—clears it of stuff so I can think about other things (or just not think at all). I’ve made some scrapbooking friends, which is nice, because on my island there aren’t many other scrappers (that I know of). I love writing, and so I get to do that.

7. How many times a week do you post an entry?

Depends on what kind of week I’m having. Sometimes every day. Sometimes once for the week. Also depends on if I have anything scrapbooking-related to share. I try to always have a layout for a blog post. So if I don’t have a layout to share, I tend not to blog.

8. How many different blogs do you read on a regular basis?

On my google reader I subscribe to 32 blogs. These are all scrapbooking or photography blogs, most of them either challenge blogs or dedicated scrapbooking blogs, and some personal blogs that are about scrapbooking, like mine. I regularly purge from my subscriptions if a blog is boring me or if it has too much of the blogger’s personal life and not much scrapbooking as its content. I’m not really interested in other scrapbookers’ personal lives, except in so far as it is related to their scrapbooking, and reflected in their layouts.

9. Do you comment on other people’s blogs?

Yes, a lot. I always hope to get some comments back! And on my blog, not on theirs… but most of the time the gesture is not reciprocated. I don’t take it personally, but sometimes it would be nice to get even an answer to a question… . One of the reasons I comment is because I know how nice it is to get comments.

10. Do you keep track of how many visitors you have?

I have a site meter but I don’t keep track of it much.

11. If so, are you satisfied with your numbers?

I don’t have that many visitors, but that’s okay with me. I’m not doing this for attention. My main motivation for my blog is my own creative expression; i.e. it’s for me primarily.

12. Do you ever regret a post that you wrote?

Only when I do a layout for a challenge and I have to list the ingredients I used on the layout and then I don’t win the challenge. (In any case, I usually go back and erase the list of ingredients when I don’t win.)

13. Do you think your audience has a true sense of who you are based on your blog?

I have no idea. I don’t even know if I have an audience per se. I’d need to hear what they think about who I am, and then gauge it against my perception of who I am. Who am I, anyway? This wasn’t supposed to be such an existential question, but if you think about it… . Actually, now I’m curious about what my supposed audience thinks about who I am. Never really thought about it before.

14. Do you have more than one blog?

Sort of. I started a message board for a topic I’m interested in in my other life (as an academic researcher) but it has gained no traction whatsoever but that’s not at all a problem because it’s not something I’m very serious about (yet).

15. Have you ever deleted a comment from your blog?

Never had to. Hopefully never will. Can’t imagine that I would have to!

Just-do-it scrapbooking

I could also have titled this "bit-by-bit scrapbooking". I'm talking about the process that led to the creation of this page:

I've been thinking about scrapbooking every day for the past two weeks. I've been able to go online a bit and collected up a whole bunch of challenges I'd like to do. Then there are the babies' scrapbook albums that I'm thinking about. And of course pages for myself about this whole experience. And let's not forget the little one, who started big school this month, and who has also become a big sister! So lots of big events in her life to be celebrated and recorded.

But, as to be expected, I have had neither time nor energy to actually get the pages done. The main sticking point has been lack of photos. And the lack of time & energy has meant I haven't been able to take all the photos I need for all the pages I have in my head. But I really wanted to get back to some scrapping, because it is so important to my feeling well and whole, and I needed that! Fortunately, DH has taken some photos, and I've pulled a few from them and got this page done, and hope to get some more done soon.

This page came together quite easily, actually, but it was done in phases. That is, a few minutes here and there, which was all I had available! (Hence the bit by bit reference.)

I wanted to do a super special page (well, super special pageS) to commemorate all these huge changes and events, but I realized that if I waited to have the time and energy to do super duper pages, they'd never get done.

So I was looking at Kim Watson's gallery of her published pages (she is so talented and I love her style) and this page caught my eye and the journaling was so similar to what I'm feeling right now, and I decided to just go ahead and scraplift it and get a page done.

Hopefully there'll be more to come!

You know you’re an obsessed scrapbooker if:

Got this from The Examiner:

You keep an extra camera in your purse at all times. CHECK!

You own fourteen different types of adhesive and know for what each is best. Well not quite 14, but about 7 or so.

You speak “vendor” language – Bazzill, Tombow, Cosmo Cricket. Not so much.

You love acronyms – MAMBI, BG, SU, Hero, SEI, MM. Tampoco.

You have been known to dress your children to match scrapbook paper you plan to use when scrapbooking the event you’re about to attend. Well not my children, but myself… yes, I’ve done this!

You only have coupons for Hobby Lobby, Michaels and JoAnn in your grocery coupon organizer. The only coupons I ever use are for Michaels!

You consider renaming your child because there are never enough E’s in the alphabet packages. The E shortage does bug me so I made sure my two newborns’ names don’t have Es in them. (Seriously, they don’t, but not because of the lack of Es issue.)

You own several different die cutting machines…and use them all. I refuse to go down the die cutting road, precisely because it would be yet another thing to get consumed by.

You have a great relationship with Jenni, Martha, Elsie, Heidi, Donna and Tim. Not so much.

You take photos of odd things because you know still-life photos look cool on scrapbook pages. Yeah, especially now that I have a clue about my camera.

Diagnosis: Moderately obsessed with scrapbooking!

Purple block

Purple. Purple. Purple. I have to keep writing (typing) it. I hate purple. I have a psychological barrier against purple. I am quite sure it has to do with the purple polyester skirt that was my high school uniform for five years. As well as the fact that high school was the absolute least happy and pleasant period of my entire life (it was so bad that at the time I consoled myself by reassuring myself that it could not possibly get worse, so I had much happier times to look forward to).

I’ve tried over the years to get over my purple hangup, but to no avail. When I was first expecting (this time around), armed with all the convictions of lessons learned from my first pregnancy, I bought non-maternity blouses that I could wear for the first few months of the pregnancy and also that I could wear for the first few post-pregnancy months. I didn’t have a lot of time to shop that day, and so my options were limited. One of the few tops that worked for my purposes was purple. I bought it. I wore it once, and felt quite uncomfortable in it.

But then, none of my real maternity tops would fit me anymore, and I got desperate. This purple top still fit (even though it’s not a maternity top, per se). So it got worn. And it also happened that I had gotten a purple bracelet from a friend as a gift—incidentally it was a thank you gift from one of the friends who had come to my first scrapbooking workshop! And the bracelet looks really nice with the top. So then I wanted something bright and colourful to wear for the photos for a 37 week layout. And the purple top was the only thing that fit, and that was also colourful. So here I am with a purple layout:

And guess what? I like it! I had to even google “purple complementary colours” to figure out how to work with it (I don’t have the headspace for colour theory, sorry). But then digging around in my stash I found the most beautiful patterned paper that was predominantly purple (not sure how it got there), and it turned out I had two coordinating papers from the same Basic Grey line in my stash also (totally coincidental). I adapted a Got Sketch? (#64), used up some flower stickers from early on in my SBing “career” (I think they’re actually for weddings! But I didn’t have a clue then), added some of my fab new rhinestones, and that was my page. And I really like it.

Maybe this is the beginning of overcoming my purple barrier, at long last. Now to work on getting over my traumatic high school memories… .

Scrapbooking Q&A updated

I did this scrapbooking q&a just 5 months ago , but so much has changed since then (such a short time!) that I really feel I should update it, slightly modified, and I added a couple of questions that weren’t in the first one:

why do you scrapbook?

Five reasons:

1. To organize and display my photos.
2. To preserve/record thoughts and memories, for me and for my little ones.
3. It’s a great creative outlet and hobby. Amazing stress-relief and relaxation. Cheaper and more fun than therapy.
4. The patterned paper and flower stickers are just so pretty.
5. The community and the sharing of layouts and stories.

how/when did you start scrapbooking?
I have a whole post on that.

what kind of equipment do you have?

1. Canon Digital Rebel XTi, a 50mm f/1.8 lens that I love, and a great zoom lens. And I actually know how to use my DSLR (ie beyond auto settings) because I took a class. I also have a point & shoot that is always in my handbag.
2. A gorilla tripod (it's very cool and handy) and a regular tripod.
3. A 12x12 printer that I adore
4. A scanner -- my dream is to own a 12x12 scanner -- can't wait for them to come out with an affordable one (they cost like $3,000!)
5. An IMac that I never use (I let my little one use it for her beginner computer CDs--I know, it's a shame, but I do hope to learn one of these days, plus it looks so nice, and also I can fiddle with my IPod on it, which I can't do on my PC -- I use my PC for all my photoediting and scrapbook journaling, etc. still)
6. Photoshop Elements 6.0 -- an essential tool/piece of equipment for me. When I have time to do a course I'll upgrade to Photoshop CS3 (or whatever version is newest when that day comes)

do you alter your photos?
I crop and brighten almost all my photos. But my goal is to just take better photos in the first place! I also do a lot of collages so I am always sizing and resizing photos.

what's more important...story or photo?
I used to say photos first. But I’ve grown much more reflective in my scrapbooking, so I often have the story and then need photos to accompany the story. Sometimes though I have some awesome photos and I need to figure out what story they tell, or what story I should tell with those photos. So both ways.

besides your children, what do you scrapbook about?
me, me, me and me. I scrapbook as much, if not more, about my own life than I do about my little ones’. Lately I’ve been doing more layouts about my family (ie my parents and siblings) and also about what I’m thinking (rather than just about events). I’ve even done a page about flowering trees! I have on my list of projects a scrapbook about DH and my travels over the years, but that's still at least partly about me.

scrapbooking has a bit of a stigma attached...are you ever embarrassed to admit that you do it?
A little. I feel a bit sheepish and tend to be self deprecating about it. I have in mind to try to get over this, however. It doesn't help that many of my friends and family think it's silly. I know, what do they know, right? Nevertheless, I do want to share this hobby with as many people as I can because I love it so much and I want to share the joy, so I am a bit of a proselytizer, I'm just shy about it.

what's your style?
Clean and simple, but I like to fill the page (so far I’ve only ever done 12x12 pages; I like the idea of mini books but haven't yet done one). I like a few embellishments and patterned paper, but nothing too heavy. I usually find myself doing clean lines, regardless of what I set out to do originally with the layout. I try, from time to time, to tilt my photos, to have more white space than usual, and to shake things up a bit, because frankly I bore myself. I'd love to have a sewing machine as I think that would help me get a little more "swing" in my pages. I definitely am turned off by busy pages though.

what are your favorite lines of paper?
I don’t really follow the different paper companies and collections. In fact, I don’t follow scrapbooking trends in general, but I tend to be up to date with “the latest” because of my kit club. I get patterned paper in my kits, and when I am in a scrapbook store I pick up individual sheets of what I like. That said, those that come to mind are Basic Grey, K.I. Memories (I love their colourful striped paper), Cosmo Cricket, Sassafrass Lass with the decorative border strips, and American Crafts.

do you subscribe to any magazines?
Creating Keepsakes and Scrapbooks, Etc. I was a Simple Scrapbooks subscriber but they sadly ceased publication. I also subscribe to Brain Child, the New Yorker, and Foreign Policy, but those have nothing to do with scrapbooking. I don't buy or read any other magazines, except for when I can get my hands on my mother-in-law's People (lol). I used to be a big home decorating magazine subscriber, in my pre-scrapbooking days.

will you teach a workshop again?
Yes, as soon as the opportunity arises. I want to spread the love! Especially here where people hardly even know that such a thing as scrapbooking even exists. My little one starts a new school in September, and there are a lot of SAHMs and ex-pat wives (foreigners who live here, usually because their spouses have jobs here), some of whom may scrap already, or who might be interested in learning more about it. My goal is not only to convert people but to have a community of scrappers, whether for crops, feedback & sharing, or group buying (to save on shipping and customs duties.)

do you buy a lot of stuff?
Depends on what you call a lot (smile). I don't do stamps, die cutting, painting, misting, inking, embossing, or anything beyond paper, glue and stickers, and, lately, paper flowers and brads. All simple stuff. My only tools are a trimmer, a corner rounder and a craft knife (and a couple of punches, which I seldom use. And oh yes a few decorative blades for the trimmer, which I don't use that often either.) I don't live in the US so I don't have access to regular scrapbook shopping. I am a member of a kit club (Studio Calico) so I get a box of goodies every month, which is great. I do shop online and when I visit the US, which is a couple of times a year. However, I think I have enough stuff for about 50 scrapbooks, and I really don't need anything else.

what are your favorite scrapbooking websites/blogs?
Write.Click.Scrapbook, Becky Fleck’s PageMaps, Valerie Salmon’s Got Sketch?, a bunch of blogs (individual and company-based—all on my blogroll) and Studio Calico.

any parting thoughts?

I feel really lucky to have "found" scrapbooking--it makes me really happy and it's a great hobby (I think I said that already, didn't I?) And thanks for reading this far!

Two birds

I did this layout for a challenge. But this isn’t just ANY challenge. This is big league challenge. As in, if your layout is selected it will be published in Scrapbooks, Etc. July/August 2010 (yes, 2010) issue. It’s actually very simple: to scraplift one of three layouts. (It’s called the Make it Yours challenge.)

I chose a fairly simple layout by Shannon Zickel, one with two 4x6 photos and lots of white space. I had just (like a few hours before) gotten hard copies of two photos that I wanted to scrap, that went well with journaling (ie thoughts) I had had for quite a while. The pictures were taken by a photographer at a function, and I had to kind of track the photos down. They are the only recent pics of the three of us, and I needed a pic of the three of us to accompany these thoughts that I had.

As for these thoughts (as reflected in the journaling) credit should go to Ali Edwards. She is such a super popular scrapbooker (probably one of the most popular in the world) but I don’t go that often to her blog—I like her personality (at least what comes through in her blog and her CK articles)—she is so earnest—but I’m not a real fan of her style. However, a couple months ago I found myself at her blog and came across a page she did shortly before her second child was born. It was a page about how though they (she, her husband and son) were happy they were having another child, they would miss the little threesome they were. I had been thinking those exact thoughts for a while, but I felt so guilty about it. And here it was, she had done a page about it. So since I saw her page (which I just cannot find on her blog again, or I’d link to it) I knew it was okay to feel that way, and to express it openly, and I wanted to do my own page about it, as those thoughts are so much a part of the trajectory of this pregnancy.

The other accomplishment of this layout is that I was able to use up stuff from the Studio Calico July kit, Documentary. Everything is from the kit except the number 3, which is from the May kit, Playground, and the white flower and celadon brad which are from my stash. I had to substitute cardstock from my stash but I tried to get them as close to the original cardstock colours that came in the kit.

One thing (among many) Studio Calico does well is choose cardstock colours. I’ve gotten in the habit of ordering the “more colour” add on with my kit each month, because the colours they choose are so luscious. I probably should order two of those add-ons because I use them up so quickly. (Or does anyone know where online one can buy single colours of cardstock?)

So thanks to the challenge I had an easy template for my layout. By the way I have no ambitions to be published in SBE or anywhere else, so whether I “win” the challenge or not matters not a f*rt to me.

27 October 2009 - edited to add: my layout was selected!!!

Back to 2004 again

Last year early December (ie. 2008) I embarked on my 2004 album. For the past year or so I've been working backways to do an album a year for all the years I missed out on since I stopped keeping track of my life in photos and words in about 2000/2001. (Though I wasn't a scrapbooker in the sense of using patterned paper and page titles and so on, I've been doing photo albums with dates and anecdotes since I was a teenager; i.e. back into the 1980s.) So I now have an album a year for 2005-2008 (not bad, eh?).

So in December I sized and printed loads of photos from 2004, many of them to do simple collages. And then... well LIFE, namely new life, very much took over all my energy and I went into a scrapbooking slump for quite a few months. I did get two pages done but that was it.

When my SBing mojo finally came back I had my sister's wedding album to do, then I was chronicling the pregnancy, and keeping up with more current pages for me and the little one. The 2004 album was not on my list of pages to do.

But now I find myself... caught up... if such a thing is possible. (This is always a topic of discussion in the SBing world, especially in SBing magazine articles; see recent Studio Calico message board convo on the issue.)

But I still have the urge (and the time! this will probably never happen again, that I have so much time to scrap!)... so it's back to those 2004 pages.

Here's one I did just this morning:

I just chose some photos randomly from the envelope labelled "for 2004 album". Well, not so randomly actually--I really wanted to scraplift this darling layout by Amy Yingling that I came across while browsing the Scrapbooks Etc. website, which is not something I do often unless I am specifically looking for collages because there is so much on that site that I get overwhelmed. So I chose some photos that I could fashion into a grid to scraplift the inspiration layout. I will definitely use this layout again, I think it is so nice.

I used all scraps on this page (I love it when I can do that.) The title is a bit scrodded up--the stripes kind of swallow up the letter stickers and my attempts to get the letter stickers to stand out by outlining them was a mess. I just do not have a steady hand. But I'm not a perfectionist! ...as I've said many times before and which I stand by. I also wondered, is it okay to put flower embellishments on a layout about a hurricane...? LOL. Well I did anyway because I liked how it looked (smile).

I hope I haven't jinxed anything by recalling a bad hurricane right at the peak of our current hurricane season... we've been lucky so far this year... though the really bad hurricane that we had after that, in 2007, was when I properly organized all my thousands of photographs, which was essential to my scrapbooking thereafter... .

2nd anniversary

It hit me just the other day, as I was corresponding with a new online scrapbooker friend, that I’ve now been scrapbooking for two years! It was August 2007 (can’t remember the exact date) that I was in Miami and went into a scrapbooking store for the first time, and also on that trip into a Michael’s, and bought my first supplies. One of my first purchases was a corner rounder! To commemorate this important anniversary, I did (what else?) a layout.

I was inspired by this beaut from the SC gallery (there’s also a bunch of layouts using this exact same design, sewn grid and all, in the Scrapbooks, Etc. Aug/Sept 2009 issue.) I couldn’t bring myself to do such tiny pictures, so I went with 3x3s (printed at home because I didn’t feel like waiting on getting them from the photo place.) And I used a marker since I don't have a sewing machine (and I was NOT doing that by hand--using the marker was tedious enough.)

Oh, I so want a sewing machine*… .

*NB main thing stopping me is that I have nowhere for it to live in my apartment… .

Challenges, challenges, everywhere

Now that I’m into challenges, they seem to be popping up everywhere. I don’t even know how I came across the challenge blog Journaling Junkie, but I did, and here is my layout for my first challenge there:

The challenge (#63) was to journal how you feel in your heart at this very minute, specifically: If you weren't guaranteed tomorrow, what would you want your family to know? Wow, heavy stuff, eh?

I was kind of lame in that I copied my design from the original challenge layout by Stephanie Howell who actually was the one who came up with the challenge. It hasn’t ended up just like hers, but it’s clear where the inspiration came from.

The whole layout came together in a quite haphazard way. I started with Stephanie’s design, and fiddled with the papers based on what was in my stash. Then I realized I had enough of those darling Heather Bailey letters to do the title (well the ‘m’ is an upside down ‘w’ and the ‘my’ had to be done with other letter stickers), and the letters would go quite well with the colours already there. Once I’d stuck down the papers and the title, I saw that my new rub-ons coordinated well with what I had so far, so I added those. Then I thought to add a little dimension to the rub-ons by adding brads, and I had just gotten a whole bunch of new brads, so I stuck those in too. There was absolutely no plan for this page. I just put it together bit by bit.

It’s not a great page; I can’t say I adore it. But it’s okay; I like it. And you know what? That’s just fine with me.

Is scrapbooking art?

I did this page recently. It’s unusual (for me), in many respects. Here, have a look:

Everything is from the Studio Calico March kit, Garment District. This kit is odd in that I found virtually nothing I liked in the main kit, but I have used the add-ons so much that I re-ordered some of the patterned papers. But for many reasons (separate from my determination to USE THE KIT!) the stuff in the main kit just worked for this layout.

The design is inspired by Jennifer L’s layout in the SC member gallery, also using that kit, but mine ended up quite a bit different from hers. But since I started with her design, I really have to give her credit. (I’ve scraplifted her before. Funny, for that layout I also trusted the kit and used a whole bunch of elements I wouldn’t have selected or combined on my own.)

I had this layout in my head for weeks. It’s hard to explain what it’s “about” because it really doesn’t have a point, or a message. I heard the song, my husband told me my stepdaughter (ie his daughter) liked it a lot, and it struck me and stuck with me. (BTW I checked with her if she was ok with me doing the page and if she was ok with me posting it on my blog; she’s ok with it all.)

When I finally did it, the outcome was not exactly what I had in mind. I wanted it to be less linear and more free flowing; more shabby chic, more whimsical. I also wanted to stitch a border all the way around it, and maybe stitch on the squares with the song lyrics in them (this was why I wanted a sewing machine, but I don’t have one and my mobility is too limited to go to a friend’s house to use one.) I wanted the page to look something like this layout by Lisa Dickenson that I fell in love with months ago. (Her blog header, by the way, was the inspiration for my blog header, and she was very sweet to give me some guidance on how to do it.)

So I emailed the page to her (my sd) to have a look, with pretty much all the qualifiers that I mentioned above. She is an artist herself, and a very talented one. And here’s what she said (inter alia):

… all those problems that you're talking about, specifically, that it didn't work out exactly how you intended, that sounds pretty normal for an artist! ... yes you are an artist! Your piece will sometimes grow and go in directions that you may not want or intend but what all my art teachers keep telling me is that that is how things that are new and great happen. So next time if it goes somewhere else don't get frightened. AND ALSO, don't feel like you're not creative just because you get your ideas from already existing pages. Every artist does. Then they build on it and make it their own. So wah-la you are an artist.

Now I never once mentioned to her anything about art or scrapbooking as art or being an artist or scraplifting, but her comments really struck a chord with me. Made me think (I sure love to think, eh?): is scrapbooking art?

I think it can be. But what I do is not art. What I do is creative, yes, and hopefully pleasing to the eye, and maybe even a bit crafty, but I don’t consider it art, and I don’t need it to be considered art.

There are scrapbookers whose work I think definitely qualifies as art. Mou Saha comes immediately to mind. A lot of the layouts over at Studio Calico, especially those done for the design gallery, are very artistic, especially the ones that use the painting and misting and sanding techniques.

But I WAS trying to do something arty here. And I suppose the process is the same as the artistic process, especially as my stepdaughter described it above. So there’s some art somewhere in all of this.

What was amazing to me was that though there’s no real point to the page, she “got” so much of what was going on in it. Like the sewing stuff—she sews, and she discovered all the little hidden sewing references in the page which were both for embellishment and which were also symbolic.

So that’s the long story behind what some might see as just an ordinary (if a bit odd) scrapbook page. What I love is how much just doing a scrapbook page can engage so many different “things” and thought processes. It’s all so wonderful to me.

I didn't win... : (

And I thought I had a good chance because not all that many people entered, and since it was randomly generated... sigh... .

Well they've already posted another challenge, and since I do use Remarks letter stickers A LOT, that shouldn't be difficult for me to qualify to enter.

But, as I said yesterday, even though I only did the page for the challenge, it did get me thinking about my loved ones, did get me out of ME ME ME mode, and did get a fairly nice page done! So it wasn't all for nought.

I really want to win

I did this layout just for American Crafts challenge and the chance to win the prize. I’m not even sure what the prize is, but I just want to win something. (I’ve entered so many blog giveaways in the past two weeks and NADA.)

So, the challenge, to do a layout all about me, did make me think: what MORE could I possibly navel gaze and find to say about myself to put in a layout? And where would I get a photo from? Of course, I did find more to say about myself (that didn’t turn out to be too difficult) and I cropped the photo out of a group shot (so it’s not very sharp at all.) I even printed the photos at home (I never do that.)

And voila:

If I don’t win something soon, I’ll need to deliberately buy some more AC stuff. Of course that’s the whole point of these challenges, to get people to use and buy their product. I’m no dummy. I see right through the strategy. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it though. I WANT TO WIN! It’s not that I’m competitive (the draw for the prize is random anyway), I just want to win something! Go figure… I can’t even explain it myself.

If the design looks familiar, it’s the same as yesterday’s post's design. I told you I really liked it.

Do you notice those little strips/stripes at the left that have words in them? Not sure if you can see them because they’re very subtle—white print on pale colours. I love that paper! That paper came in a KI Memories kit back when I was on the hunt for KI Memories striped paper. Never really looked at it closely, much less thought I’d ever use it. But I came across it last week while digging through my stash, and one of the reasons I decided to do this layout for this challenge was precisely so I could incorporate this paper with those words onto a scrapbook page.

Here's the thing though: the page started out as me trying to think of something witty/meaningful/worthwhile to say/write about myself to fit the challenge. But it quite quickly transitioned to something far more reflective, and much less narcissistic—the thought process quickly led me to think of my loved ones’ own challenges and transitions, and reminded me that it’s not all about me. (I had to blot out the stuff about my DH’s transition… it’s a bit too personal for public consumption.) That’s a good thing to be reminded of, awfully good, don’t you think? See what scrapbooking can do for a person?

Fill 'er up

Rebecca Cooper is the guest host over at Write.Click.Scrapbook this week. Her book, Real.Life.Scrapbooking is one of my favourites, and her clean linear style consolidated the epiphany I had after reading Cathy Zielske’s Clean and Simple Scrapbooking into a key aspect of my own scrapbooking style. I’m glad to see her back “on”, as I haven’t seen much of her recently in the mags or online (perhaps because she has 3 small children and a photography business!).

Her challenge was at first perplexing to me:

Have a look through some of your recent scrapbook pages - notice any similarities? Any certain scrappy quirks that are uniquely you? Maybe you don't even need to look at any of your pages to list some things that make your style...well...your style! This week create a layout simply sticking with what you do best and share your layout in the flikr group. Show off some of those killer scrapbook moves! What are some of your killer scrapbook moves or a funny scrapbook quirk uniquely you?

But then, after a bit of thought (that always helps now, doesn’t it?) I realized that I do have a signature strength, or I think I do: I’m told that I’m good at “filling up” a page without it being too busy. I attribute this to my determination to have it all on a page—lots of photos AND patterned paper AND embellishments AND lots of journaling AND a biggish title… yet I consider myself a simple scrapper and I absolutely cannot tolerate too much busy-ness on my pages (I’ve tried and I just can’t do it). At the same time, I don’t want my pages to be TOO block-y. I did that for a while, especially after I read Cathy Zielske’s books, but I later realized that while I instinctively tend towards linearity, I like a little movement on my pages. Finally, as much as I appreciate the white space concept, it goes against my grain to have just one photo sitting there in the middle of a page, all alone. (Plus, when my husband looks at a page that has a lot of white space he ALWAYS says the same thing: “there’s too little photo on that page.”)

So here’s a layout which I think is quite typical for me, and one in which I do indeed, “fill up” the page (and DH liked it a lot, especially since he took the photos!).

This is actually a little bit busier than my norm, mainly because of that somewhat complex patterned paper (the one closest to the photos). But it just seemed to me to work with the other two papers, which I thought complemented the photos and the scalloped edge paper (which I had in my stash for ages not knowing what to do with it) really well. All three patterned papers are from the Basic Grey Phoebe line, one of my favourite patterned paper collections ever—which is saying a lot for me because I don’t really follow patterned paper collections; I tend to just pick up a sheet here and there that catches my eye.

I adapted a Got Sketch? (#80), but I enlarged the dimensions of the photos slightly, have quite a bit more journaling than the sketch suggested, and played around a bit with the sketch’s patterned paper layout. (I really like this sketch a lot—I’ll share another layout I did with it tomorrow—especially because it’s a nice way to use up the round scalloped edged paper in my stash that I was having difficulty with.)

I didn’t do this layout “just” for the challenge; I had in mind to do it eventually. But the challenge motivated me to find some photos and get it done. I do hope it showcases this (supposed) strength of mine. But in the end, the really important thing is that I enjoyed doing it, and I have another page completed. And THAT’s what I love most about these challenges—they are helping to motivate me to scrap, scrap, scrap. Yay!

Trust the kit

I was determined to use my new Studio Calico August kit “Over the Rainbow” for a layout as soon as I got it. Not because I particularly like or love the kit, but if I’m going to spend all that money every month on a kit, I am darn well going to use the stuff. Plus, the kits are helping me grow as a scrapbooker, and I need to actually use them to continue that process.

As sometimes happens when I use the material in a kit just for the sake of using the kit, I use papers and elements that I would never have purchased on my own, or that I would never have put together myself. I just trust that the designers who put the kit together know more about colour combinations and so on than I do, and go with what they have. Which is what I did here:

The only elements not from the kit are the white letters (spelling next) and the floral embellishments. The flower stickers went so perfectly with the papers that I chose from the kit; I was amazed. I had these in my stash and they’re not the easiest embellishments to work with because the colour combinations are so unusual, but I guess whoever designed them was on the same page (no pun intended) as the designers of the SC kit. I’m going to stick the remainder of the pack of stickers in with the kit.

The design was pretty directly taken from Got Sketch? (#25). The only thing I added to it was my own custom border (which was in part because I botched up trimming one of the papers).

I love that I am chronicling my "heavy stuff" journey like this (I sound just like a scrapbooker, don't I?!). I write most stuff that’s going on in my head/life in my diary every day, but I seldom go flipping through it, not the way I go through my albums. And my diaries are ultra private. My scrapbooks are what I want my children and maybe others near and dear to me to know of me and my life, and I like this medium of relating my life to them. Plus, I just like doing the pages!

Page without a point

This page has been in the works for a good while. Last year, for some reason that I am still not aware of, I was struck by the poincianas which bloom in the summer here. They are all over the city (and all over the island, actually) and they are so bright and vibrant and gorgeous. I took a couple of snapshots of a few trees last year, but I don't even know what I did with them, I just felt like I had to take photos of them because they were so beautiful. This year when they bloomed again, right around the time I did the photography class, I became quite obsessed with taking photos of them.

But getting good photos of the poincianas was a logistical and photographic challenge in many ways. First, many of the poinciana trees are in places where buildings and road and other stuff is in the way of a good photo. What I was seeing with my eye--the blossoms and the leaves in all their glory--was not what would come out in the photo. What would come out was ugly buildings and power lines.

Then there was the time of day issue--the best photos are gotten close to sunrise or sunset. Close to sunrise I am generally asleep, or even if awake, the little one is asleep and I can't leave her to go on a photography expedition. And evenings it's rush hour, so stopping traffic to take photos of trees is not really advisable. Weekends? I'd seldom be in the city to take photos.

Then there is my, ahem, physical condition--not exactly suitable to climbing on car rooftops and walls and so on to try to get the shots that would best convey the beauty of the trees that the eye sees.

Eventually I decided to give up on getting ideal or perfect shots, and just took what I could, when I could. I had a list of the fluffiest most blossomingest trees that I compiled from my own driving around the city, and my friend who also started seeing poinciana trees everywhere she went, thanks to me (heh heh), would alert me if she came across a good tree that would make a good photo (she took the photography class and understood the composition and distracting background issues).

Next year, when I no longer am lugging this belly around, and hopefully I'll have the logistical arrangements at home to go out early in the morning, I'll go for really good photos of the poincianas. It'll be my 2010 summer project.

Logistics aside, I was still left with the question of, what am I taking these photos FOR? But then I got motivated to do a scrapbook page with the photos. Last year I wouldn't have thought of doing a scrapbook layout entirely of poinciana trees (what would be the point, right?) But this year, in part thanks to Francine Clouden (yes, Francine again!) and her discussion on Write.Click.Scrapbook of the pages she did about all sorts of things, including food, I realized that a page doesn't have to have a "point" per se, for me to scrap it.

THEN I came across this quote (on the layout) that put into words exactly what I felt when I saw/looked at the poincianas, and the page really began to come together.

So without further ado...

Though I didn't use the sketch grid itself (originally from Got Sketch?), I looked to Lynn Gharahy's page that she did for that sketch as inspiration for the border element.

That punched edge with the flowers was made using my SBer friend's border punch. We traded punches (temporarily) at the crop she hosted. I've been getting as much use as I can out of it. I do miss my punch but happy to have this one in the meantime. It's so great to have real live (as opposed to only online) SBer friends! I can't wait for her (and the other convert from the second workshop; together we three ordered supplies and will split the brads and sequins) to amass enough supplies that they'll have stuff they don't want/use and be ready for a swap.

Everything except the green backing cardstock came from the Studio Calico March add-on kit Chiffon.

This page may not have a point, but I love it, and it means a lot to me. That's all that matters, isn't it?

Ahead of the curve

I scraplifted myself again! I had made a grid collage layout inspired by an Eileen Fisher ad and now I've done another, a compendium of summer stuff for the little one's year album:

Coincidentally, this fits perfectly with Maggie Holmes' post on the Studio Calico blog. It's like we were thinking the exact same thing--look at what she wrote:

The other thing that is inspiring to me is the simple collage of images cropped into squares and placed in a grid... It is a no fail way to organize a lot of photos for a layout. Or it would also be fun to do this same thing with different patterned papers and include just a few photos in some of the grids. I also think it would be fun to create my own collage of summer photos and put them in a grid like this to create a sort of "summer recap" themed layout.

I had done my layout over a week before she wrote that! Granted my layout has rectangles, not squares, but still. And the colours are in tandem with the summer colours from yesterday's post, which was motivated by the other Studio Calico summer inspiration blog post, again way before the post was posted! Am I ahead of the curve or what? (smile) Truth is, it doesn't matter one lick to me. I'm just amused at the coincidence.

Yesterday I got to scrap all day (big, big smile) and I also got to listen to music all day (can't remember the last time that has happened)

Playlist: Snow Patrol's album Eyes Open.

Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler's All the Road Running.

James Blunt's Back to Bedlam and All the Lost Souls.

These were my favourite albums of 2008, most of them completely out of my usual norm of preferred music. And Juliet, if you're reading this, you're getting (at least some of) these for Christmas!

Then these came after them on the playlist on my IPod because of how I had the music sorted, and I just left it:

Lionel Richie's Back to Front (I think this is a greatest hits album)

Bad Boys Soundtrack I can't believe this is a 1995 album! 14 years ago--wow, makes me feel like I've been around such a long time, yet I feel so very YOUNG! (lol) The music still sounds fresh though.

Erykah Badu's Baduizm one of my favourite albums of all time

Light 'n' easy

Meaning: no heavy stuff today (smile). Just two simple, summery layouts that I did yesterday.

I got the page design for this layout from yet another fantastic sketch blog/site that I just discovered this week, “Got Sketch?” I just scrolled through all the 2-photo sketches and selected this one, #78. I will definitely be going back there for more sketches.