Croptoberfest

HI! I had my Croptoberfest today, the first of 2 if you are counting, and it was a lot of fun! It was hectic at first, and one person showed up an hour early, thanks to the time change. Over all, I think it was a long, but productive day!
Of course, everything happens all at once! My Aunt JoAnne from Arizona is in Pennsylvania today, but it was her last here day in a short weekend. (she just came in for a funeral) She and my Mom stopped by, and that was really special because I got to show her my business, and my workshop room, "in action"! She is actually a fellow consultant! That's not all! She is the person who got me started with the whole scrapbooking obsession! So, it was exciting, but hectic, and I wouldn't have changed a thing!

Tip of the Day: Take a second to thank the person who introduced you to scrapbooking. That first little 3 ring binder and tape tabs , and photo-safe tips my aunt sent me changed my life! It was years before I told her that she was the influence that got me started on what is now not just a major hobby for me, but a career! Thank you, Aunt Jo!
Scrap Happy everyone!

My Workshop Warmover

It has been awhile since I've written! I have done some scrapbooking this week and I have planned out my pages through August. Since I use Cm albums, it isn't hard to insert the pre-vacation pages I just completed this week. I would have done more scrapbooking, but my dear husband has been busy winterizing my scrapbooking area and I don't want to get in his way! My workshop area is in the garage and can get pretty frosty! So he bought me one of those fireplace looking heaters and put up insulation this week! He also dropped the ceiling lighting and now it's so much brighter! I'm excited to show off my new, warmer workshop area this weekend at my Croptoberfest! Croptoberfest is an all day scrapbooking event with prizes, and other special activities. I'm having 2 this year. One this Sunday the 30th of October and one on November 5th. My goal is pretty modest! I'm hoping that a combined 12 people attend. I'm also hoping to get some pages done myself!

Tip of the day: It's the time of the year when your hands need lotion 24/7. However, be very careful when you are scrapbooking, to have clean, unlotioned hands! Wash your hands before scrapbooking, and then dry them thoroughly. Make a habit of applying lotion to your hands upon the completion of the days scrapbooking. Before I go to bed, I put a liberal amount of Jergens Ultra lotion on my hands and I wear clean socks on my hands! You can buy fancy mits, but socks work at keeping the lotion on your hands all night.
Scrap Happy!

scrapping through the night

I had another one of those nights on Friday! You know the kind I mean. I could not stop scrapping because I just kept having ideas for pages! I have days where my creativity flows like a rain-flooded river and other days where I feel like I'm looking back at my own reflection from a dirty puddle of water. I was afraid to stop scrapping for fear that Saturday I would wake up without the great ideas. I ended up scrapping on Saturday, too. My pages still turned out great! It was perfect weather for scrapping; rainy, dark and cold. Better yet, I'm working on pages of SUMMER! So, for a little while at least, I was warm and still dressed in my bathing suit!

Tip of the Day: Lately, I live by the less is more when it comes to scrapbooking. I like clean lines on my pages, no clutter, few embellishments. But for my 4th of July page, I did something different! I covered the page with 2 different sheets of paper , one a patterned red and the other a star covered navy blue. I tore the blue, so that the tear showed white. These 2 large triangles of paper cover the page making a nice background for the 3 photos. (one is matted in black) I also made a tag out of white paper, trimmed in black. I punched a star-shaped hole in it, and shredded some paper to make the ribbon for the tag. I wrote right on my finger, and used my fingerprints to make a border to decorate the tag. I placed white letter stickers on more of the navy paper and cut around it, so that each letter has it's own mat. I used star stickers to dot the "i"s and to decorate the tag, which said "July 4th, 2005". I am so pleased with the end result! I think that some days are special and your page should reflect that! So for special days layouts in your photo albums, don't hesitate to go all out!!!
Scrap Happy!

The trees are falling apart!

Fall this year has been beautiful! We in Pennsylvania have had nice weather, and the leaves have only recently started to fall. Yesterday, my mom and daughter spent a lot of time outside, and they gathered up acorns, pinecones and leaves of red and yellow. My daughter was shocked to find the leaves all over Gramma's yard! "The trees are falling apart!" she said. Ironically, I had just finished my pages of our beach vacation that morning. Remember how I said I was going to try to use only certain sticker packs and paper? Well, I ended up using the ones I had planned for most of it, but using paper from several packs and adding a few stickers from different packs as well. I'm very pleased with the end result, and even my husband didn't seem to notice the error I had made, skipping an entire page and using it for a completely different day! If he didn't notice, then I think I'm safe, because he and my daughter were the only other people there!

Tip of the Day: Something my mom seemed to like in my beach pages: In a journaling area on one page I wrote the date, put a sprinkling of sea shell stickers to break up the page, then wrote a little something else, added another sticker, wrote...you get the idea.

Packing up the beach vacation

Well, all good things must come to an end! I am working on the last 2 pages of my beach vacation. It has been so nice...At least I now get to show other people my vacation, through my pictures! I love that part of scrapbooking, too!

Tip of the Day: I always put my pictures in chronological order, always. Well, I made a mistake with my beach pictures and ended up putting an entire page out of order. I mean, it's several DAYS behind, and I just couldn't go back and figure out how to squeeze it in. Fortunately, no one will ever know besides me. That's the great thing about a beach vacation! You are wearing a bathing suit in every picture! My tip, don't sweat the small stuff! In this case, I was able to let it go.
Scrap Happy!

Re-living my beach vacation

I've been scrapbooking my beach vacation, and (sigh) it is so nice to remember! I've been getting my pages done so fast, because I did page layouts ahead of time, and I have been doing simple pages; some cropping, a matted picture here and there, some stickers and paper for a splash of color, and plenty of journaling. There was one walk on the beach that I really wanted to remember, so I just have 2 pictures on the page, and a lot of writing. I went into great detail, so that I won't forget how the moon looked on the ocean waves, and the sweet things that my daughter said, and the cute things she does. Some things you just can't capture in a photo!

Tip of the Day: If you are going to be sharing your scrapbooking tools with other scrappers, make sure to label them with a sharpie or sticker. People don't mean to take your things, but it can easily happen when everyone's things get mixed.
Scrap Happy!

Pumpkin Patch

Over the weekend, we took my daughter to the pumpkin patch. I don't know why I never took her before! The drive was long, but it was in mostly rural areas, so we were able to enjoy the changing leaves. Once there, we took the hayride to the pumpkin patch, all 3 of us, sitting on bales of hay. My baby girl sat between her father and I, with one hand on each of our knees. It couldn't have been more perfect! Walking through the pumpkin patch was a treat, too. She was very particular about the pumpkin she wanted. The criteria was that it had to be small, like her, spiderless, and clean. This was a tall order, and she did adopt several pumpkins along the way. Mom and Dad were enlisted to carry them of course, but she eventually chose "the one", and to my amazement, it isn't near to perfection by a long shot!
I took almost an entire roll of film there! I just wanted to capture the day. It was so much fun!

Tip of the Day: I take great care to watch what's behind my subject when I'm taking a photo. It was killing me when I saw a mom take several pictures of her daughter with her chosen pumpkin, because she had the gravel road in the background. If the mom had taken the picture from a different angle, the whole pumpkin patch would have been behind her daughter; clearly a better background! Train your self to look at the whole picture!
Scrap Happy!

If you find yourself in a desert, make a beach!

I'm Back! I decided to just skip July and most of August in my daughter's album for now and go straight to scrapping our beach vacation! I am loving it! I don't want to tear myself away! I'm using Spargo pages, which is something new for me, but let me tell you, it looks so good with sand and ocean pictures! I'm also using the new wave paper from the Aqua paper pack, and Nautical Beach and Canada sticker packs. I'm going to try to do the whole vacation using just these products. I like to challenge myself, what can I say? I am probably going to end up using other paper colors as well, to compliment my photos. I've done 3 pages over the weekend, and I'm having a ball!

Tip of the Day: Every Beach vacation, I write the year in the sand, and sometimes I'll write "Ocean City" as well, and then I take a picture of my little one with the writing.

Scrap Happy!

A scrapbooking desert

Hi! It's me again, and I hate to admit that I haven't scrapped in over a week. My challenge didn't get the desired affect, and I failed miserably! I just don't seem to have the desire right now to scrapbook! Don't be horrified, it's probably just a phase, and I'll get over it as soon as I make time to scrapbook! Until then, here's a tip!

*.:Tip of the Day: Dots can make such a difference! :. Sometimes, I like to sprinkle a little pixie dust, if you will, all around a sticker, page title, even my pictures themselves.*. Here's what I mean. You have completed your page, but it just looks so blah! Using the fine tipped pens, draw some tiny dots right on the page, here and there. I like to use the round tip pen as well, but a little more sparingly. You can use as many colors as you like, or just one. Stop when it looks just right! .:
:*:Scrap Happy! :.*

Take me out to the ballgame!

For someone who often pretends she is playing in a go-go (baseball) game, my daughter really didn't pay much attention to what was happening on the field when we took her to her first Pittsburgh Pirates' homegame. It was the last game of the season, and a toasty 79 degrees in the stands! But the Pirates actually WON, and they even hit a couple homeruns, so we were able to see some fireworks! Best of all were the shots I got of my 3 year old, eating ice, wearing my too-big baseball cap, crawling through the pirate ship, and smiling with her mom and dad before the game. She loved the pirate music and the players turned into pirates that they showed up on the Jumbo tron. She ate the meat and tomatoes out of my gyro, loved having a huge pretzel, and made her dad and I crack up when she threw her arm up in the air and yelled to get the lemonade vendor's attention! These are the memories that I didn't get captured on film. But through the power of the pen, they will be remembered!

Tip of the Day: Save your tickets and put them on the page next to, but not touching your pictures.
Scrap Happy!

Why I Scrapbook

I want the same things that almost everyone else wants. I want acceptance and love. I want to be able to say to the world, "This is me. This is who I am, this is what I like, this is why I am the way I am; this is me. " Hopefully, people will still like me for me. If they don't, then I can find others who do. This is a new way of thinking for me!
So, why do I scrapbook? I like that creating these albums for my daughter helps to remind me of all we did together, and all that she has learned, and the cute things she says...OK, everything! I like that these albums will give her a good self-image, show her how loved she was, and let her relive all that she has already experienced. But I don't know if this is the only reason I do scrapbooking. I think I do it because I love to do it! Now that I'm grown up, I don't really get to paint and draw and play with clay. But doing these albums is the way I express my self now. It's my artistic side, unsuppressed! I'm not bragging, but I'm good at it! Seriously, there aren't a whole lot of things I can say that about!
I've changed some things in my personal profile. If you want to know more about me, feel free to check it out. My e-mail is listed in my profile, in case you'd like to write to me! Thanks for reading my blog!
Tip of the Day: Although I've never done this myself, I told my friend about this idea, and it turned out looking so cool! Take one 12x12 page and use the square punch to punch out the faces of everyone who came to your event. ( My friend used her snapshots from the cameras placed on tables at her wedding.) Using the squares like tiles, place them in neat rows covering the whole page. You might want to put a picture of the guest of honor in the center.
Scrap Happy!

Baby Shower

I have a baby shower to go to today and I'll be giving her baby scrapbook supplies from Creative Memories! I love to give album making supplies as gifts because it gives people a great start. This friend is an avid scrapbooker and when I asked her what she needed, she told me, "Give me any of the baby stuff, I need it all!" I don't know if she's having a boy or a girl, (I think she's having a boy, personally!) but that's Ok, because most of the baby stuff is neutral. I'm sure that she is going to be excited to start an album for her baby, I know I was!

Tip of the Day: The way I started my baby's album was this, I put her hospital picture on the first page along with some information about the birth and what her name means. Then I did a 2 page spread on me being pregnant, with a picture from each month. A page of the ultrasound and ultrasound photos, and us getting ready, (painting the nursery, choosing names, hanging little dresses!) and then a few pages about her shower. Then I went to the birth and so on. I want her to know how much we were anticipating her, and how she was such a big part of our lives from the moment we knew she was on her way!
Scrap Happy!