Southwestern Escape

Last night, I came home earlier than I thought from a Mom's night out. Once I checked that all was well, my husband and daughter were both asleep with the windows opened enough and the fan's positioned to bring in the cooler night air, I snuck down to the basement to scrapbook!

I'm still working on our Arizona trip, because my aunt will be here this weekend, and I'd like to be able to show it to her. I'm mostly using both the neutral and the jewel snap pack. The colors are very south western in the jewel pack and the dark browns and grays in the neutral one work well with the rocks, too. Arizona is akin to a different planet! It's challenging to me, because I'm used to using completely different colors than these.

9 pages later, I felt so exhausted! I came to find out that the time on the clock in the kitchen wasn't the right time when I originally looked at it! It was actually much later! Even so, I am pleased with my completed pages and glad that I didn't realize that I should have been in bed!

Stripes are in, girls!

HI! me again! Did you know that stripes are in? Well, they are! At least for scrapbooking. I chose two pieces of 10x12 paper to make this layout. I chose the pink because it matched what my daughter was wearing and the blue, just because it looks so fun! I chose to mat my pictures in white, because the blue paper WAS a little busy, and I felt like my pictures were getting lost, just not standing out enough!

Can you find Stitch? After all, this is my insane album, where Stitch appears on every page!

I haven't been scrapbooking for a couple weeks. I have a sticker pack that I bought and am looking for. Most likely I put it in a library book when we were traveling, and returned it to the library. Oh well!

I received my new Scraps in the mail today. It's a magazine from CM that tells me all of the new stuff, and I can't wait to order now! There are new kid paper packs and album kits! They look just right for my daughter.

Scrap Happy!

What you mean to us

At my Mom's 60th birthday party, I made sure to get a picture of every guest. This is something I always do at my daughter's parties. Next, I handed journaling blocks and a CM pen to them after taking their picture, and asked them to write something to my mom. I've learned that people like to have some kind of guideline with this activity, so I asked them to write something they had learned from her, or something sweet about her and how much she meant to them. It's very important to collect them before people leave the party. They always want to take the paper and write later, but in my experience, you probably will never get that person's completed journaling box back, so strongly encourage them to finish it before leaving that day.

I then put together a 7x7 album for her, including the pictures of the party first, and then placing the journaling boxes with a picture of the person who wrote it. It's one of my favorite albums I ever made! It was relatively easy, too. I used the Paradise Storybox, and it comes with paper and journaling boxes that are perfectly coordinated.

I gave it to her for Mother's Day, and she loved it!

Scrap Happy!

P.S. I answered your questions as best as I could in my own comment. See the comments in the blog below this one!

Once a Year

Once a year, I take pictures of my daughter's little feet and hands. I also stamp her hands and feet to put on the page. Looking at the first set of footprints I have of her, and comparing them to the way her feet look now just blows me away! She has gotten so much bigger! I love her little hands and feet! I time this page so that it's right after her birthday.

Scrap Happy!

Take me out to the ballgame!

Sometimes you get the perfect seats, have a great time at the game, and even get a game ball! Those are the moments you want to capture; first with great pictures, and then on a page that compliments them! I chose the background paper because it just screamed "baseball" to me. Both the paper and the stickers came from CM. I just stuck the pictures on without matting any of them, and made sure to journal about the day. What do I like about this page? Well, the pictures! The page doesn't take away from the pictures. I love that you can see the happiness on our faces:) We had a blast, and I think anyone who looks at these album pages can tell! So, the pages convey the feelings that we felt at the game. I'd say that's a home run!

Dance, baby, dance!

My daughter's dance recital was this past weekend, and in light of that, I'd like to give some tips for taking pictures at events like this!

Y I chose to get the smallest photo package from the professional photographer because I liked the idea of having a picture of the whole group of kids and the papers they gave us strongly discouraged us from taking pictures while the photographer was there. One mother was chastized by the photographer for taking a photo and ruining his light.

Y On the way to the rehearsal, I allowed time to stop and take a few pictures of my daughter on my own. This meant, I chose the background, just a simple walking trail, with trees along side. You can't tell that there are cars driving by, can you?

Y In my own photos, I encouraged her to do some of her dance moves.

Y I took both full bodied shots and some closeups. The outfit is a big part of the day, right down to those little white shoes!

Y When taking shots of your kid and another backstage, try to either get a plain background, without people walking through, or really zoom in for a close up.

Y When the papers you are given tell you that pictures and video are restricted to the dress rehearsal, please listen! It's distracting to everyone around you and flashes are also distracting to the kids on stage.

Y On this same note, you may actually get better pictures at the rehearsal, because the room will most likely consist of parents waiting for their kids. As their children leave the stage, the adults will leave the room to meet up with them. We found 2 seats directly in the front row at dress rehearsal, and had the best seat in the house for taping and photographing our little girl! She happened to be on stage directly in front of us!

Scrap Happy!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!

I have used the zoo sticker pack that Creative Memories makes TWICE now. Since we go to the zoo once a year, and Animal Kingdom the same amount, I have to be somewhat creative when I do zoo pages. For these pages, I used this paper throughout the zoo pages, as well as a deep red paper the same shade as the flowers. I cut out the flowers from the paper from time to time, to add a little something to the pages. I used the same color of letter stickers, and I still haven't even journalled yet. The pages are plain, but I think they are fun!

Tip of the Day: Zoo pictures are great! But make sure you take enough pics of people you are with, too. Put at least one picture of a person on a page with all those animals, or the viewer will most likely lose interest. If you can get pictures of your loved one interacting with the animals in any way, that's the best!

Scrap Happy!

A Flower from my Girl

Hello! Isn't this a beautiful tulip? When my daughter gave it to me the other day, I thought it was so gorgeous, and would live so much longer if I took a picture of it! It's currently my profile picture on My Space. What a sweet little gift!

After I put my daughter to bed tonight, I grabbed an hour to work on her album. I didn't feel like starting with Christmas, so I skipped ahead to March and did a fun 2 page spread, using journaling boxes, matting a few of the pictures and using a couple stickers. It's cute!

Tips of the Day: The pages I did today were of an event that my husband took my daughter to. Since I wasn't even there, I simply added the journaling boxes, and I have asked him to fill them in. I'm really into using journaling boxes lately, especially since I have been journaling later, rather than at the time I do the page. Each pack of perfect fit paper comes with coordinating journaling blocks, and you can find them in the storyboxes as well. I like that they have different sizes, so that I can fit them to my page.

Scrap Happy!

A magical moment!

This Disney trip was my 10th since I have been married, so you would think that I would have run out of things to photograph. As you can see, that is not the case! I adore this page! It was taken in Cinderella's castle, and I wanted it to capture the magic and the royal feel there. The paper and stickers are from the princess pack from CM. You can't tell, but the paper has little magic wands all over it! The punch is the new mickey punch, and the paper underneath , just peeking through, is from the metallic paper pack. It's silver, but looks gold due to the lighting in the room when I took the picture of the page.

Today I did a program at my local library. I had done one before where we made a border, but today, I just did a crop talk about vellum, and showed them some of my albums and the pages I had used vellum, and how I had used it. We really only have 1/2 an hour for the program, and there isn't much you can do in that time! Next week, I have encouraged everyone to bring their albums so that we can share our lives a little bit.

Quote of the Day: Ecc. 5:3 says "Too much activity gives you restless dreams; too many words make you a fool."

Scrap happy!

Here's how I started off each day....

Here is a picture of the page that starts off our 11th day at WDW. (on the left) I used a certain type of sticker, to keep them all the same. I used a Mickey Mouse ornament sticker. I used letter stickers to write "Day ___" in this case, 11. I always wrote, "Memories of _______", filling in blanks with the date.

Scrap Happy!

Completed ALBUM!

Yippee! I finally finished the Disney Vacation from December 2006! I was so exhausted from the endless hours of working on it, that I fell asleep as my husband and daughter looked through it! Notice the pictures at the beginning of this blog? The thin album is from the Disney Vacation the year prior to last December. If you remember, I was beside myself because I was using a whole album on one vacation! HA, HA! That's so funny now! It is recommended that you only put 40 pages in an album. But in this latest album, I did 50 pages, that's 100 if you consider each side! I have to remind you that this is BEFORE my digital camera. This book is #11 for my daughter's short life so far of 5 years.

Things I did different in this album:

I tried to only take spontaneous photos. We had professional, posed pictures taken of us by the Disney photographers, and purchased the whole CD of our stay for $99. It had 245 pictures on it.

I put a Stitch on every page. It was challenging to make it that way, but my daughter does love to look for them, so I guess it was worth it!

I scrapbooked in chronological order, which I usually do. But I started off each new day with a page showing pictures of 2 or 3 things that we did over the course of that day. I kept the photos off to the side, and used the other half to record things that happened that day. I usually don't have pictures for everything, so this page was perfect for including things that I probably wouldn't have fit in, such as the weather, funny moments ect...

My Wish

When I heard the words to Rascal Flatts' MY WISH, I knew that I wanted to include it in an album for my daughter. While at the beach, my husband clicked pictures of us here and there, and I ended up doing a 2 page spread with not much more than a few matted pictures of her and I, and the words to this beautiful song. That was all it needed. It brings people to tears. (me especially!)

Sneak Peek!

Oh, I love the warmer weather! It seems like it's been winter forever! I have been dedicating a lot of time to scrapbooking. The more pages I do, the better I like them. Here is a picture from our Disney trip. It's one that I just did this weekend, and it isn't journalled yet. I love the picture of my daughter's hands holding some of the "pixie dust" (mickey confetti) so I matted my 2 favorite pictures, it being one of them. "Catch the spirit" was from the Everyday Title pack, and it's a clear sticker. I used some actual mickey confetti, and carefully sprinkled it on the sticky side of the sticker before adhering it to the page. I have challenged myself big time with this trip, by having myself put a Stitch on every page. They say that he is always taking over the Parks, so I thought it was a cute idea. Wrong! I can't tell you how hard it has been. I was doing my pages around the stitch, and what would go with him, and where. But I've changed things and am doing the page first, and lastly sticking Stitch somewhere on the page. At least my daughter will have fun fining him! I'm almost done with the Disney vacation, and then I can journal the whole album at once. Happy Scrapping or rather, Scrap Happy!

last bit of tips from the book!

Tip of the Day:

I learned so much from this book. Some things i read and thought, I'm doing this right! I felt pretty confident in my skills as a photographer. But I did learn a lot, too! I learned that i need to really learn about my new camera. How to turn the flash off, how to change the settings, how to hook it up to a tripod, A high USO number means it's easier for me to take pictures, If your picture is dark, add more exposure (+) and if it's too light, (-) reduce the exposure. Auto focus is nice, but not as good as learning how to manually focus. Estimate the distance to your subject. 20 feet away=put 20 Ft into the focus setting. This guy highly recommends Adobe photoshop. Take landscape pics horizontally for a change! (picture 1)I'm going to test myself by trying to capture a portrait without the person in it that I'm photographing! (Here's one of me, picture 2)

I have been a scrapbooking fiend lately! It's all I want to do, but of course, I still don't ONLY do that, or nothing else would get done. Scrap Happy!

See, I'm learning too!

I have captured some photos that illustrate what I learned from Nick Kelsh's book on photography. This first picture of the Grand Canyon illustrates these tips:
Try to avoid taking pictures of people or scenery in the middle of the day, when the sun is right over head. I did take many pictures of the Grand Canyon in the heat of the day, but the color was washed right out of them. It wasn't until the sun had started to set, that I captured this perfect shot. The best time to take pictures is 1/2 hr before the sun sets, or on an overcast day.
When taking a landscape picture, don't have it be 1/2 sky. The horizon should be on the top 3rd of the picture.
This second picture was also taken at the Grand Canyon. It's a picture of my daughter yelling and enjoying the echo she heard while hiking in the canyon. It illustrates these tips:

When on vacation, take the pictures that captured what you lived and what made an impression on you. Don't just have someone take a picture of you in front of every landmark you saw!
When capturing a group of people, have everyone's heads in relatively the same area. Don't try to get body shots, unless you are capturing how much the kids have grown.
Get as close to a close-up as you can. If you can get up a little higher than the group, on a chair or even a step, you can get everyone in the group with their chins raised toward the camera, and trust me...this helps everyone look better!
Take a different point of view!

When you are at a National Monument, (or Disney World;) take a picture from a different angle.

I don't have any pictures her to illustrate the final 2, but they are too good to leave out! When getting a picture of a couple, coach them a little. (I do this!) "Put your arms around each other. Act like you love one another!" " Put your cheeks together!" When photgraphing really close up remember not to use the flash! Also, you can chop the top of their head off, (above the forehead) if you are really focusing on their face. If it looks good to you in the view finder, it will probably turn out good.

take pictures of fall foilage on a cloudy day for the best color.

Scrap Happy!

Bigger means better

I love to include 8x10s in my albums. Now that I have my digital camera and have to order each photo rather than just getting the whole roll developed, I occasionally order larger sizes, such as 8x10s and 5x7s of pictures I want to show off a little more. This really works well for group photos, so that you can see everyone. I encourage you to work with larger pictures as well. Especially if you use a 12x12 album. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see that I have used corners on my picture, rather than taping it into the book. I did this because I used to remove pictures from the book and place them into frames in my living room, and then replace them in the book. Now that I've realized that my pictures can get damaged while in the frames, and that it is hard on the pages, taking them in and out, as well as hard on the photos corners, I have decided to stop doing this.

Scrap Happy!

Easter past

One year for Easter, I decided to use one distinctive paper to co-ordinate all of my pages. The colors lent themselves nicely, because they were bright and Eastery! I kept the pages simple, using the paper as borders for pages and mats for pictures. I used the cutting system to cut perfect eggs in various sizes, and used the same letter stickers throughout. For the last picture seen here, I took a picture of one side of the table and then my dad stood where I had been to take a picture of my side of the table. I then sliced the photo and positioned it on the page, leaving a strip of space between people to make this "panoramic" shot of our family dinner.

Paper Pieces

I went through all of my papers and organized them! I found paper I didn't know I had! I save my scraps, not the teensy tiny pieces, but the larger ones. OK! I save some small ones, but I know I will use them eventually! I usually stick these scraps in a bag, but lately, I don't even look through the scrap bags, I just take out a whole new piece of paper. Let's face it, it's a lot easier than hunting for one! With my new organizational method, it should be easy to see if I have what I'm looking for without looking through 5 different bags of scraps. I used folders, and seperated the paper like so: patterns, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, pinks, tan and browns, whites and vellum, blacks and grays, silver and gold. I have 2 folders for each color set. In the front folder, I keep my scraps, and the second one holds my whole sheets and close to whole sheets. I don't just have the scraps floating around in the folder! I used ziplock -type bags that I have gotten with certain CM paper packs. They are clear, so i can see inside pretty easily, and since I have sorted my scraps by color, I will only have to look through the bag that contains the color I need. You can buy a paper holder from me! It holds 12x12 paper as well, and has it's own strap so that you can take it with you.

Coloring Eggs

A lot of times when people see my pages for the first time, they comment on how simple they are. There really isn't a whole lot going on, but then again, there doesn't need to be! I love straight lines, a well placed sticker, and descriptive writing. I also like titles, and pictures that tell the story.Last week, a fellow scrapbooker was looking at a page I'd just finished and she said, " See, that's what I need to do. Just make plain pages! Then I wouldn't be so far behind." Inside, I cringed! NO! Don't say THAT!!!! I still spend a lot of time choosing paper colors and matching stickers with the pictures. I hate to think of my pages as plain, but if you call them simple, that describes them just right!

Tip of the day: Want some ideas for different Easter pictures?

* take pictures of the kids facial expressions as they open the plastic eggs filled with goodies.

* take close ups of their tiny hands as they hold eggs in their hands to color them with a crayon before dying them

* Toss the colored eggs in a basket and have them hold it for a photo. (usually I do this in her Easter dress)

*Take unposed pictures of your kids looking for their Easter baskets, your toddler chewing on the only egg he found, and your angel pouring the cups of dye together to overflowing. Basically, take pictures as life happens

*I always take a picture of my daughter at church. One year, I made sure to have the stained glass windows in the backround, often I take her picture on the stage after service, in front of all the lovely Easter flowers. Sometimes I take a picture of her with her little friends, who are dressed in their Easter finery as well. If it's nice, get a picture outside of your church. The doors of our church make a beautiful backdrop.

*I always take a picture of my daughter with her filled basket. That might not be original, but I like to write down what is inside it each year, and I like a picture to go with that. Her tastes change so much from year to year, that I already get a kick out of looking back at what I got her last year!

*In Crayon, my friend writes her child's name on an egg, along with the year (07) and takes a close up of it every year.

*Any tradition you have should be documented. If you read the Easter story to your kids, have someone catch a few pictures of that. Take pictures of what you want to remember!

Scrap Happy!

Past Easter pages

Something I have always wanted to do is show you some of my past page ideas. These are from LAST year's egg hunt. It's hard to see from these pictures of pictures, but my daughter has some animal print on her dress, which gave me the idea for these pages. I'm always trying to think of something a little different!