First Bike

Who doesn't remember their first bike? Mine was green, well, not just green, this thing was bright green, with a banana seat. I named it the Green Sparkle. I learned to ride it right away, the first day I had it. I can still remember learning how. My Dad had me out in our slanted driveway, and I could ride to the end of it, but had to watch out for the road. I was older than kids that get their first bike these days. I bring this up because my daughter recently got her first bike with her birthday money. She insisted upon a bright pink Princess Bike, that is really tiny! It has training wheels, of course and we bought the matching helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. We took her to an empty parking lot to try it out. It was evening, but still plenty light, just right for taking pictures! I was able to capture that look of sheer determination on her face when she had to step on those pedals with all of her might to get herself over a bump! She was stopping every few minutes to use her new water bottle, and I captured her very first bike induced boo boo as well. These pictures really do hold that night in my memory. She was so proud of herself and I believe the pictures show that. She wore herself out, and that close up of her all flushed and sweaty shows that.

Gloomy weather

It's been icky here for what seems like a week. It is good weather for scrapbooking, though. It's nice to get transported back to happier and warmer times!

Page idea of the day: I did a sunset page the other day and it looks pretty cool. I used 3 different shades of orange and have the page covered in them, one strip of orange at a time. I placed a little yellow sun, just a circle really at the upper part of the page and I wrote in orange letter stickers on the page. It shows off the pictures of the sunset very nicely!

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Cruisin' along!

I had a long night of scrapping the other night. My friend came over and I got so many pages done from my cruise! I had been having trouble starting it, so it was a great relief to actually get over that hurdle! Once I got started, I didn't want to stop! Even after she left, early in the morning, I completed at least one more page before crawling to my bed! I'm getting used to the 12x15 pages now and learning how to best use this size to compliment my layouts. I'm working the way I usually do, just completing the pages and saving the journaling for later. They are pretty plain, but very ME! Since I was feeling so far behind, I decided not to crop my Disney pictures into any shape more complimented than a square or rectangle. This did save time. Now that I'm past that part of the trip, I am allowing myself to crop the photos into shapes. I have finished the first 3 days of our cruise so far! Remember, I took pictures of everything, so this might take awhile!

Tip of the Day: I am always a very strict chronological order scrapbooker. But for trips, I've found that I need to change my rules just a bit. For instance, in my cruise book, I am doing the pages in order of the days, but I started out with us in port, then the lobby of the ship, our room, and then what we did on the ship that first day. I took pictures of all the towel animals we found in our room and will do a 2 page spread of that later. I have always done this with Disney trips, usually having a few pages dedicated to our resort that vacation, and sometimes pictures taken on different days, but from the same park. This works best for me, because I tend to take a picture here and a picture there, and this is the only way to tie them together.

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Summer, Summer, Summertime!

Tips of the Day: The pools are open and my little one always wants to play outside, which gives me lots of photo ops! To take great pictures outside, make sure that the light of the sun is coming in from the side. This way the kiddos won't be squinting, and they won't be backlit! Evening is a great time to take pictures, now that the sun is sticking around longer! If you take your camera to the pool, try to keep it in the shade as much as possible. If there isn't any shade, at least put it at the bottom of the beach bag. Consider purchasing a water camera for shots at the pool or beach. They really take good pictures now, and although they used to cost a lot more to develope, if you send them to Snapfish, they cost the same as a regular roll of film. I was at CiCi's all you can eat pizza place the other day and they have a calender through the summer and September that gave great ideas for things that you can do in the summer. I want to try and do a lot of them! This idea booklet is free with purchase. Doing all this summer stuff means more photo ops!

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Selling Gramma for Pennies

My friend is in the E-bay business of buying stuff from yard sales and the like, and selling it for much more. She had purchased the contents of an abandoned storage unit and was surprised to find letters and photos of the family. Getting drawn into this family's story, she was wishing there were some way to contact them, so that she could return the photos. Of course, there isn't. She goes to estate sales, flea markets, and other places really regularly and she told me that she often comes across boxes of pictures, selling for a quarter because no one knows who the people are in the pictures. If you are reading this, you are probably doing something to preserve your pictures and the memories of the people they have captured. Good for you! There are so many people out there who are not doing this, just taking pictures and leaving them in a box that will one day be tossed out or sold at a yard sale. If you happen to be in a conversation with someone and they talk about their pictures being in a box or the envelopes they came in, please refer them to me, or help them get started yourself at preserving their pictures. It's so sad that they have taken these pictures and no one is enjoying them!

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selfish journaling

I have almost caught up on all of my journaling and have gotten back to our cruise photos! Very exciting! I had been having trouble with how I wanted to do them, so I set them aside, did the journaling in my daughter's albums, and read a few articles, talked to a friend, and finally realized how I wanted to create my cruise scrapbook! I want to be sure to leave enough space for journaling. This was my major realization. This was OUR first cruise , and while I do want to show the world my pictures, my main objective is for my husband and I to be able to look back and read everything, and remember! So, I'm not going to mind if people skip all the extra words I've written, but I want to include them... for us!

Writing the Right way

I always save journaling for last, mostly because I don't know what to say or I'm afraid I will write sloppy and mess up the whole page! Tonight, I buckled down and worked on journaling the past 6 months in my daughter's album. The first thing I did was take the pages I'd created and sit down with a pen and a notebook and write whatever came to mind. Often, I think of more than will fit into the space I have saved for this purpose, and then I need to pare it down. I've found that I make a lot less mistakes if I write it down first. Of course, by the end of the night, I was just writing straight onto the page. But I was also making spelling errors. I keep a dictionary on my scrapbooking table. We rarely get through a workshop without someone needing it! Of course, it only works if you actually look things up! If you do make a mistake, there's always write again strips from CM. I'm going to be using at least 3 of those on pages I did tonight. Everytime I wait this long to journal, I wonder why I did! I hate to show anyone my pages until they are completed and that includes journalling. I also have a bad memory, so I can't recall everything that happened, unless I wrote it down on my calendar. I always think I'll remember! Ha! I can hardly remember my own phone number!

Tip of the Day: The more pens the better! I have every color pen that CM sells, and I use them too! I like to find that perfect color that compliments my page. Here's a secret! Creative Memories pens are changing! They will still be the same pens, but they will be different colors! Remember the pen sets you used to only be able to get from having a party?..... OOPS! I've said too much already!

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Fast and Personal

I recently completed my daughter's 4th birthday party pages very quickly and I wanted to tell you how! I made sure to get a picture of everyone who came to the party. I handed out journaling boxes from one of the storyboxes and asked everyone to write something to my daughter. I made sure to hand out CM pens as well. I gathered them all up and when I got my photos back, I just matched the photos of everyone with their journaling block and laid out the pages. Usually 2 pictures and their matching blocks on each page. Since the boxes come in the storybox kit, it includes papers that match and I used them to easily mat the photos with cooresponding colors. I was surprised at the ease! I simply used princess stickers that went with the colors, using one sticker per page to keep with the theme of the party and I was done in one evening! WOW! It was the fastest I have ever completed one of my daughter's parties in pictures!
Think out side the box! This would be great for a graduation party, wedding shower, baby shower, Over the Hill party, Congratulations or good-bye.

Tip of the day:
* If you really want everything to match, you could hand out journaling boxes that will match what the person is wearing. That was just too much work for me, not that I thought of it until I was scrapping the pictures. However, I didn't have a problem with matching clothes because the storyboxes are so versatile. It was a toss up with using Tuscany or Vineyard, and I ended up using Vineyard this time.
* Another hint, people don't know what you want them to write, so if you have an idea, let them know. Things like, "When she grows up I think she will be..." or "My favorite thing about the birthday girl is..." "My favorite memory of the birthday girl is when we..." "some wisdom I would like to pass along..."

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On a Roll...

My husband has a new project, painting my daughter's room. This gives me 2 good excuses to work on my albums. My husband is busy so I don't feel guilty working on my own project, and my daughter can't get to sleep while my husband works right above her on the new room. So, I've been putting her to sleep on the couch in our Steeler den. This is right next to my Mexican Marketplace, so I scrap as she sleeps. She doesn't want to be down there all alone. It has been nice having my mom come over several times to scrapbook with me late into the night! I like to scrapbook with others. It's nice to have a second opinion.

I have caught up to her first bike page (Memorial Day)! I have 2 rolls of film to pick up tomorrow though! I also haven't started our December trip to Disney World, which is going to be a major undertaking. But I have finally started my husband's and my Cruise! We went to Walt Disney World for 2 days beforehand, and I have completed that part of our getaway. I stuck to the basics, not allowing myself to crop the pictures any other way than just straight lines. I'm using the largets size album Creative Memories carries for this album. It's 12x15. The hardest thing to get used to is the paper not fitting perfectly. I was surprised to discover that the album pages are actually not as wide as the 12x12 album pages! I chose this sized album because I wanted this album to stand out and because I believed I could fit more into this size per page. I haven't really fit more onto the pages, probably due to the width. Still, I'm having a good time remembering our trip!

Tip of the Day: My newest scrapbooking thing is putting letter stickers directly on top of my photos. I love the funky font stickers! Since they are clear, they make it look like you have printed the words on your photo. You have to be careful not to use anything other than CM products right on your photos though. Even if it "says" it's safe, I don't trust anything other than CM directly on my pictures.

Scrap Happy !!!

a collection of assorted thoughts!

I'm just thinking back to where I was a month ago! I was warm, because I was in Disney World with my husband! I was looking forward to a week of parent's only and our first cruise! Now it's all in the past! (sniff) I still have to scrapbook the pictures so that I can show them to everyone and mainly so that we can relive the cruise by looking at the pictures and reading everything I'm sure to forget very soon!
I have been scrapping my daughter's book and I'm working on her easter egg hunt pages and just finishing them up. I did something a little different this year. I wrote "on the PROWL for Easter eggs" and I decorated with a leopard print paper and some animal footprint stickers to compliment the dress that my daughter is wearing. I still might put some egg stickers on the page, but as of right now, it doesn't look very Eastery!

I like the pages I've done in the last few weeks so much that I spent an hour looking at them and showing them off at my workshop on Friday!

Tip of the Day: Try to think outside the box! I always hear, "I would never have thought to use that sticker there, but it works!" You aren't always going to find the perfect sticker for what you are doing. Sometimes you buy a sticker pack and are stuck with stickers you think you will never use. But you may be able to use them in ways you don't expect. I love to finish a sticker sheet off by using that sticker I have had in my possession for 2 years! What I am trying to say is that there don't need to be flowers in your pictures for you to decorate the page with them!

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Save some space!

My daughter's birthday was today! She is growing up right before my eyes! Sometimes I feel guilty scrapbooking when I could be playing with her! Especially when she asks me to play, and I think, " I'm doing this for you! You just don't know it yet!"
The pages I have been able to complete, while not many, are pretty darn gorgeous!!! I am so happy with them! I am now caught up through the middle of April of this year, well sortof! I still have not scrapped our vacation to Disney World in November! I have been ordering books from the library, and getting a little bit of inspiration from there. The pages in there are so elaborate that I usually take just one page element idea that I like and use it, and skip all the rest.

Tip of the Day: It's a proven fact that the human eye gets tired and overwhelmed if you have too much going on on a scrapbook page. I know several people who don't like the white pages, but leaving some blank white space on your pages is pleasing to the eye.

Scrap Happy!