Baking up Both Pages and Cookies

My kids enjoying the Christmas Cookies I made

I'm still trying to get all caught up on my daughter's album. Although I have been working hard, I'm not sure I'll be caught up to this Fall in her books by the time we leave for vacation. Christmas has pushed it's way up to the front of my thoughts as well. I received a new camera as an early Christmas present and I have a lot to learn about it. I already like that it takes pictures with a flash, as my old camera was not doing too well taking indoor photos this entire year. With my Canon, I could tilt the camera and the photo would change from horizontal to verticle, making it best for reviewing your pictures. But my Panasonic doesn't. :( I'm not used to all the buttons yet, but I'll get there.

I am currently scrapbooking photos of the spring. I did 23 pages on Saturday! I repeat the phrase, "Simple pages, Completed albums" when I find myself dawdling or trying to create something too complicated, as I tend to do.

Tip of the Day: Don't be afraid to use your pictures as embellishments instead of stickers. For example: I took pictures of the eggs my kids dyed and punched the photos with a small square punch. I made a border of yellow paper and stuck the egg squares down the center of the strip. I have also used my daugher's art, her chosen pumpkin, flowers at a park or even animals we saw. It's hard to find the right sticker sometimes, but your pictures will be sure to match. You can always cut something out of paper. While it definately will take longer thatn slappin on a sticker, paper embellishments are unique and you can choose the exact color to match your photos or page design as well.

Scrap Happy!

The good, the bad, and scrapbooking

Our last day of the tripday 3 of being bitten

2nd to last day, unable to keep anything down

I have been scrapbooking an awful lot. I haven't been completing my 7 pages a day lately because I found that the only way to do that was to stay up very late at night and I was getting exhausted and grumpy. So, I have been doing what I can. I finished my daughter's Disney vacation from last year (taking up 1 1/2 albums) This vacation contained some of the hardest pages for me to scrapbook. It was that reason that I had trouble getting through it. We had a rough time on our vacation last year, having bed bugs for a week. My daughter was bitten the longest and had the worst effect from it, so it was difficult to scrapbook and journal about that. I know things could be worse, but while I'm mindful of that, it doesn't make it any easier!

Today marks a year since we first found the bite marks on her and began the week (and a day) of misery. It was fitting that I sat down with her tonight and read her the just completed scrapbook for the first time. I usually try to keep things positive in my kid's albums. This time, I did something that I haven't done before. I told the story of our vacation as I always do, including some of the bad, but not all, and then on the last page, I typed out the story from my point of view. I wrote honestly and included every detail I hadn't added previously. At the end of it, I really stressed to my daughter that in life, bad times do happen and that I hoped that she would remember that there were good memories made as well. As I finished reading it to her, she leaned back against me and smiled. Her eyes were a little wet, but she didn't say a word.

Scrap Happy!

Tips on Hiding your Imperfections

Just as I hide my son't too long hair under a hat, I find the need to disguise or hide things in my scrapbooking.

Hiding imperfections using black and white /Sepia. On this page, (above) I used Sepia to bring the focus on Snow white and my daughter. There are several people in the background and they could be distracting. I felt that the Sepia gave this a classic feel. I sometimes change the shade to B& W or sepia if I'm trying to hide the fact that there is too much light in a picture. I had a photo of my daughter from a night time parade that was too washed out. When I changed it to Black and white, you couldn't tell.

Cover the flab! I purposely covered my belly with the giant blue hat when I put this page together. There's nothing wrong with that!

Red eyes: I don't use fancy photo correction tools, just the ones that come on my free picture sights such as Snapfish and York. (Both are the same set up) But I don't think that the red eye correction works well, so I don't use it. Instead, I use a red eye pen from CM. You might not feel like it's doing anything, but just dab the eye carefully and gently and you will see a change.


Journalling mistakes: I hate when I make a mistake when journalling! Sometimes I cover up my mistake with a cleverly placed sticker. I also have plain cover up stickers that match my pages from CM. Sometimes, I'll move a photo down a little bit to cover an "oops!" If you are writing on black with one of the pens from CM especially designed to write on black, you are usually able to use an eraser to fix your ill placed mark. It's also OK to leave your mistakes. It shows that you are human, and it shows the kids that you handwrote in the album. In todays age, that is becoming more and more rare.

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Don't Ignore the Signs!

Ever since I started to scrapbook digitally, it has changed the way I take pictures. I take a lot more pictures now that I can use as a background or "sticker" of sorts. I like to take pictures of all kinds of things and add them to my traditional scrapbooks, too. The above picture is of my husband and daughter in a restraunt. I took a pic of the sign outside the restraunt and adhered it to the picture.

Below: I used the "Celebrate Today" picture as a decoration for my journaling box. Believe it or not, this was a napkin that I took a photo of!

Another sign is used on this page as a title sticker of sorts.

I have been a scrapbooking fiend lately. My goal is to complete 7 pages a day and I have been pretty close to meeting that goal. I am so tired some days because I scrapbook mainly after I put the kids to bed and I can spend an hour on a page design easily. I'm working on Disney pages. I have created a lot of pages that I like. Coming soon: Scrapbooking Ideas Specifically for Disney Parks, Tips on Hiding your Imperfections and Making your Photos and Pages Blend Together.

Scrap Happy! I am!