Princess Camp and scrapping

Last week was my 3rd Princess Camp. I started this from an idea my daughter had when she was 4 and now we have camp once a year. I always take a lot of pictures. I have a system where I clear my memory card before camp, so that I have enough room. I have learned a lot in 3 years of hosting camp, but I still make mistakes. This year, even my new rechargable batteries ran out and I didn't have my backups charged. I had to use regular batteries, which of course don't last as long. Although I had put my pre camp photos onto a disk, I hated to erase them and figured there would be enough rooom on my memory card. I ended up filling up my card during the photo shoot on Princess Dress up day! Then I ended up hurrying to clear my precamp photos while the girls waited to get their pics taken. Poor planning!

Besides that, it was a great week! A lot of planning, a lot of work, but worth it all! I had a lot of help. It seems like the longer I do this, the more help I have needed and received. I am very, very thankful.

Now that Princess Camp is over, I have a little more free time, and was able to catch up on the baby's album that I have for his professional pictures! The last time I went in to get pictures, we did over half of them in his diaper in their tub prop. They turned out so cute, that those are the ones I ended up getting! So much for the cute 4th of July outfit I brought him in! I was able to use bath stickers and make a really cute 2 page spread. It just so happens that I had paper that perfectly matched the background in the picture, so this is one of my favorite pages in a while. I would post it here, but it has his name in the title "Rub a dub.....in the tub!" and I'm funny about posting my kid's names online. I won't do it. I used up every bath sticker I had, bubbles galore. It was a lot of fun since I am usually a sticker miser.

I'm starting a princess camp digital album, and now to get caught up on the kids books! Whew! I took albums on our beach vacation once and got all caught up in the evenings after I put my daughter to bed. Unlike at home, I don't have a million things to do in the evening on vacation, and if I were going to choose the one thing I love to do, that's what it would be. So why not spend my vacation that way?!

Scrap Happy!

Be Discreet!

Ok, so every mommy has taken the photo where you see the baby bum, right? My daughter went outside when she was 3 or 4 in nothing but a pair of rain boots. You better believe I took a picture of that! But I had her turn her back to me and place her arm across her bum, so she isn't showing anything. When I put it into her album, I made sure to use the photo corners so that we can remove it from her album and put it in a safe place if we need to. In the future, I'm aware that she might be embarrassed of that photo. My mom has a photo of me dancing around in nothing but a pair of sunglasses, which I am wearing on my waist! I was 2. But I was so mortified of that picture, and always kept it hidden away. It wasn't until I had children that I could see how innocent and funny that picture is.

I've been like this from day one with both of my kids. I didn't want their gender showing in photos of their birth! I just don't think it's necessary! Even when I take pictures of my cuties in the bath tub, I always make sure I cover their gender. I used a washcloth up until now, but found that a rubber ducky worked well for this picture of my little guy totally relaxing in his bath.

I don't know if many parents take pictures of their kids on the big potty, but for me that was a HUGE milestone in my daughter's life and I couldn't pass up a shot of her going to the bathroom like a big girl! Once again, nothing is showing, but her proud little face has a big smile on it. She knew she was making mommy happy! (It's in her album, but probably has corners.)

There is also the classic photo of baby lying on their belly, sans clothes. I took my infant's photo from the side, and she isn't in focus. All you notice about the picture is her adorable smile!

There are a lot of weirdos out there. Be careful what pictures we take of our kids. Be considerate of their feelings as they age, and think of how they might feel later if someone comes across that picture on your camera.

And to the loving relatives out there who might not think a thing of taking pictures of their nieces, nephews, grandchildren, etc. while they aren't fully dressed. "They're just cute and little!" you might say. Of course you would never want to offend your loved ones, so ask the parent before you click that photo of the children playing in the tub. I personally feel that people should ask me if they want to take a photo of my kids fully clothed! (Not relatives and close friends, but anyone outside of that circle.)

Scrap Happy!

Vacation

Last summer, we went on a vacation to California. Here are some of the photos, sideways and regular, of pages that I completed. No, these are not all of the pages I did! Not by a long shot!

Lombard Street : When getting photos here, I noticed that a lot of tourists were stopping and getting their picture taken at the very bottom of the street. In fact, I took a picture there as well. Once I did, I realized that you couldn't see the road at all hardly! So, we walked across the street and had our picture taken by another tourist. If you feel bad asking someone to take your picture, then just offer to take theirs. Usually, they will immediately offer the same. I wanted to put all of my photos of Lombard St. onto one page. How did I do that? Clever cropping! I drew my own wiggly road and used a wedding sticker for the car. Sometimes I crop my stickers to fit what I want. This is one of those times.

I'm trying to show the textured paper which I used to cover most of this page. I also had taken a pic of the street sign, and cut it out for the center of my page! (My placing of the road sign also cleverly blocked a bright, red "Wrong way/Do not Enter" sign that was at the bottom of Lombard.)

The Golden Gate Bridge: This was such an easy page! I didn't even use a sticker! I just used a page from a vacation pallet from CM, and wrote my title with two contrasting colored pens.

The Redwoods: I had PAGES of photos from the awesome redwoods. To keep them all tied together, and because I didn't have "redwood" themed stickers, I used natural pages, and some vellum with leaves on it. I have had this vellum literally for years. I had no idea what to use it for until this. It pays to hang on to your papers. On each page, I didn't use much else, just leaf stickers, and I matted pictures here and there. I fixed up this title, by using a tag sticker, cutting a green paper "leaf" and putting a title sticker over it all.

The Beach: This focuses on a page element, rather than the whole page. I added some letters, stickers and embroidery floss to this tag sticker to make my title.

Here is another pic of a redwood page. Very simple. Simple gets pages completed! Remember that! "Simple Pages, Completed albums."

Scrap Happy!

Patriotic pages

Happy 4th of July! I put some patriotic page layouts on here. I apologize that they are not straight , but blame blogger. I tried 3 times, and I guess you will have to tilt your head! I didn't include some pages, due to the fact that they were upside down!

Here is a title. Using letters of different sizes.

Above and below is a page I did when my brother came home on leave from Iraq. I made dogtags from silver paper and used the inside of silver letter stickers for the chain. To make the camo, I simply tore up paper and fitted it along the side of the page to make a border. I trimmed one edge of it to make it even.

For a trip to an amusement park around the 4t of July, I used scraps of red white and blue paper (and vellum)and punches out stars of various sizes to make borders for each page. I also had a few stars to the center of the page and here and there. I had 5 pages of the amusement park and used this idea throughout all 5.

For this BBQ on the 4th page, I kept with the red, white and blue theme, but used a red check instead. This gave my page a picnic feel.

I used black pages for this last layout. The way the pictures are slanted makes it fun~! I took the sparkler pictures during the day, and I think that's why you can see them so well. These fireworks are die cuts, but you could easily make fireworks out of paper. I decorated my fireworks with a pen to make them a little more exciting.

God Bless America! Celebrate and Scrap Happy!