Adjective Challenge

This is one of my favorite pictures of my little girl, Clara. Of course she’s a cutie so I have lots of faves. But this pic is one I snapped before we headed to a party and it just captured her so perfectly. Looking at this picture now, nearly 7 months later I am shocked at how much she has changed. It’s so fun to see where she was then compared to now. These papers are from the Narratives collection. And I admit that these are papers I bought because I loved them, not because I had any idea what to do with them! This LO is inspired by one using similar papers on two peas. It was a bridal picture and had red papers and background. I decided to use the black and white and go for a neutral look and let the red of the dress bring the viewer in.

Lately I’ve been trying new things like not just using white card stock (which I love), using items I purchased and never used (HS bling things), and just mixing it up a bit. I’m even tr!ing to not make things square up and be more random, but it takes a lot of thought on my part, which defeats the purpose of being random.
But I still really love a crisp white sheet of card stock.

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Inspiration: get it, use it

Inspiration: where do you find it, and how do you use it?

I look for inspiration in the scrapbooking mags, online sites like Two Peas, and Creating Keepsakes, store ads, and other magazines and print media. If it’s an ad or direct mail sort of thing I will just cut or rip it out and add it to my inspiration folder. I try to keep all of the bits and pieces that I like in this folder and on or near my desk so I can just grab what I need easily. In the scrap booking mags I will usually use post it flags since I save the entire magazine for at least a year in case there are other things I want to use. And sometimes I will just pick up an older scrap mag and thumb through it to get my ideas working. Depending on my mood I will start with the pictures or papers I want to scrap and look for ideas, or I will find a layout or project that i really like and it will inspire me to pick out the pictures from there.

In the June issue of Simple Scrapbooking I found lots of ideas but there were two layouts that I immediately wanted to use. The first was by Beth Proudfoot highlighting using only 5 products on a page. I loved the clean and linear style paired with the large flower.

I recently found the left over engagement photos from 12 years ago that we had done at Sears. Not really inspiring photos but they tell part of my story so I used them. The first layout I did was using a 5 x 7 of us, leftover love papers by Heidi Grace, pink car, a 7 gypsies love sticker, Love Elsie ribbon, and a metal heart tag frame. Everything except the white cardstock were scraps from other projects. I punched circles with my cool Fiskars squeeze punch and sliced them in half to make a faux scallop mat. I matted the photo on the light HG pink paper and cut out flowers and hearts from the other HG papers these I used to frame the photo. Then I added my heart, ribbon, and love sticker. The journaling are some of our romantic phrases from the bible, and a couple of movies. Really happy with how this turned out. I feel like a real genius for using leftover card stock to make a scallop border instead of buying scalloped card stock.
My second page is similar to Beth’s page I have a large flower and ribbon but I added another engagement photo (I have lots) and used a Heidi Swapp clock face as the center of the flower. This page has a very sweet romantic feel to it.

My third page was a layout done for an ad in Simple by Tia Bennet. I liked her use of bold pattern papers cut into smaller sizes. The picture of the little boy looking down the road reminded me a picture I had taken of my two babies looking out from the front porch. The papers are new American Crafts papers and are really bold and bright which I normally don’t use. Again I really like this layout.
Here are more examples of what I created.

This past week I’ve managed to scrap at least 2-5 pages a day. I have also posted them on my Two Peas gallery and on other sites. This just feels really good an productive. This is not how I am all the time. I go through stages in my crafting (like in every other area of my life) where I am really into doing full page layouts, I’ll make a bunch of cards, or I will make nothing but minibooks. So I don’t stress too much about getting too much into one thing or another because I know that I will burn through this phase and move onto something else. But for now, I am making layouts like a maniac!

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prounoun challenge

For Noel’s pronoun challenge, I scrapped these pictures of my girl, Clara. These are pictures of her right now, 1 month old, and 20 minutes old. She is a great girl and is part of the package deal known as the twins: Jack and Clara. Her eyes are huge and round and will melt your heart when she turns them to you. The color is somewhere between green and hazel and a bit of blue. Some days they look like the color of the sea, and others they look like my brown ones. Not matter what they are always expressive and completely moving.

Supplies: Bazzil card stock, Stampin Up pp’s, prima flowers, Basic Grey Ribbon, Chatterbox stickers, Making memories rub on. Other: note card and 2$ bill. 12 x 12

The story of the 2$ bill.
Today we took the twins to breakfast and like always they charmed everyone who walked near our table or sat near us. An older gentleman stopped by the table to say hi to them, they gave him their best smiles and giggles while he talked to them. He gave them each a 2 dollar bill and told my husband it was to start their retirement fund. As we left the restaurant, we stopped to say bye and noticed he sat by himself. It was really sweet how he talked to the babies and how they responded to him. There are times when people try to get them to smile and the babies just refuse. But it seems like they know when a sweet smile is really needed and never fail to brighten someone’s day. We’ve been in doctor’s office where really ill people were waiting and looking sad and both babies will put on the charm.

I have to think there is something inside them that knows love is needed. For me, when I’m being cranky or not feeling well, a giggle and a smile from them helps make things better.

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Honesty? How much is required?

I’ve been collecting, scanning and documenting a lot of old family photos. My grandma is the only person alive who may know something about them but won’t talk a lot about them because of personal reasons. So I ask what I want and she answers what she wants and this works for us. As in any family when you start looking to the past you will find all sorts of stories even those that people would rather not talk about.

And this brings me to today’s topic: Honesty. Maybe a better word would be authentic? So here are a few questions:

1) How honest/authentic are your scrapbooks?
2) How honest/authentic should you be in your scrapbooks?
3) Can you be too honest/authentic?
4) Who is your audience, should it matter?

Let me start by saying when I ask about your honesty I’m not asking about your moral character or if you tell a lie. I’m talking about dealing with the full spectrum of stories in yours and your family’s life. Are you willing to capture with words and/or pictures the full deal? Or would you rather focus on the here and now and let “sleeping dogs lie”? One of the great things about scrapbooking is it is totally your choice. If you want to scrap everything, if you want to scrap only the special events and holidays, if you want to scrap chronologically, if you want to scrap in themes. Whatever. It’s your choice do what makes you happy.

So to answer my four questions, it’s all up to you. Even if you don’t want to dwell on unhappy times, you can still be honest with yourself and admit you don’t like to dwell on these things. I think you need to do what makes you happy and feeds that creative need you have to scrap. Honestly, there is a lot of bad things in the world and it’s too easy sometimes to let those things dominate your mind. Who can blame you for wanting to focus on the good and postive?
But, and this is just my opinion, what if you could scrap for yourself and use this art to come to terms with things? I believe that if you use scrapbooking as more than just a way to document and entertain you could actually use it as a healing tool. I know for me it helps to write down my thoughts and feelings, it puts things in perspective and hopefully to rest. When I scrap (unless it’s a gift) I scrap for me and for my kids. One day when my kids are older and curious about what I was like as a teacher, it would help them see me in a different light.

Just think, the money saved on self help books and/or counseling you could use to buy lots more scrapping stuff!

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Keeping it real, good and bad

I don’t normally scrap with a theme or plan out an entire album. Usually I just scrap as I go and stick them in an album. Heck I can’t even commit to a size depending on what I’m working on.
So I found myself organizing old photos and bits of memories of when I was a science teacher and decided to make a little album. As I planned which paper I would use, metal or flowers, stickers or stamps, I eventually got to the tough part: the journaling. I had a great plan, I had a square Sarabinder with dividers that I could alter and stamp, I bought these cool, fun papers from American Crafts (& matching buttons), came up with a basic plan for the album, divided it into 3 sections and went from there. This was going to be great, I was so excited to have an album with a theme, start to finish, coordinated colors and embellishments, and a plan.


Then I went through everything and divided it into 3 piles to go with my 3 sections, selected things to scan and reduce in size, this was going to be great. And then it happened I started to read some of this stuff and remembering. And quite honestly there were points in my six year teaching career that just plain sucked. This process stirred things up in my mind and really made me stop and think about whether I wanted to continue with the album as planned, or just do a “soft” deal where I could keep it light and easy. Who was this album for? Who would care enough to read it? My husband, my kids? Or was this just for me.

About me: I am a head on kind of person. I face things head on (mostly), I come to your head on, and I can’t be anything other than I am. I’m the person who if you say “give me your honest opinion” I will give it to you. (Actually I would give it to you anyway.) I can be blunt and those who know me know that if they don’t want a real and direct answer they don’t ask me. I can’t apologize for this, it’s just the way I am, although I do try on occasion to avoid hurting people’s feelings.
That being said, I knew if I was going to do this album, I would do it all and deal with the feelings it stirred up as they came.

So I’ve started the album and it will be an ongoing thing as I find more stuff. And I’ll deal with the feelings as they come to me, good and bad. And yeah, I’ll be naming names and being honest because this is for me.
Here it is so far.

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