Using New Stuff

For the first time ever, I used a scrappy purchase on the same day that I bought it.  That never happens around here.  Ever.  Usually it hits the stash and waits patiently for me to remember why I bought it in the first place and for what project.  I've gotten much better about that and this is proof positive.  Yeah Me!

What I haven't gotten better about is printing photos.  What a hateful task.  I love looking through them but when it comes time to print, I really miss the days of getting a handful of photos back from the developer.  Not really but it sounds good enough to use as an excuse. 

Back in 2012, we went to Niagara Falls and as we were coming into the city, it started to look so cloudy.  This was our first introduction to the power and magnificence of the Falls.  The water is so forceful that it produces a mist that can be seen for a couple of miles away.  It was breathtaking!

 

 

 

In this photo, you can just barely see the sun.  It was a very sunny afternoon.

 

That's all for me on this lovely Tuesday.  We had a strong thunderstorm roll through last night and I slept like a baby!  Should be a wonderful day today right?  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Tuesday!!

How Many Albums Do You Have?

I was looking at my albums and they took up the entire top of my filing cabinet.  That's like 4 feet of scrapbook pages.  Wow.  I have a lot of albums.  Or do I?  I have seen professional scrapbookers who have a full bookcase of albums (like Ali Edwards) but they do this for a living.  I am so curious about how many albums the average scrapbooker has.  Call me nosey because I am but that is what is on my mind today.  Looking around, I haven't really seen too many blog post or articles about the albums themselves.  If you care to post, I would love to hear from you about your album collection.  

Last night I challenged myself to create and I love what came out of the session.   It may be a while until I get around to putting a photo on it but I will get around to it.  I struggle so much with printing out photos.  gaahh it is such a pain! 

Anywho, with the photo organizing that I am doing, I am finding a ton of my kids school photos but, and this is a big but, I can't remember what grade the kids were in and the photos are not marked with the date or anything.  So funny because as a mom, you think that you will never forget that type of detail.  Here is the layout that I created with my oldest sons 4th grade photo.....

 

Not in love with it or the next layout I have to share but they are ok and I am happy to get these memories into my 4 feet of albums:)

 

 

This is a photo of my oldest daughter and my baby sister in 1995.  I posted a photo of them together from our NY trip last month.  It is good to see how their relationship has progressed over the years...

 

 

 

That's all for me.  Thanks so much for stopping by and have a wonderful day!

 

 

Summer's Coming!

Summer is the busiest time of the year for our little family of 3 and this year we are tossing in college visits, getting a driver's permit and finding a job for Quentin into the mix.  The college visits are the toughest because he has no idea where he wants to go so he's being very resistant to taking the time to visit a campus.  We did plan to travel to MIT but I think that we are going to start with local campus's.  I think that once he gets to see a couple of schools, he will warm up to the idea.  He is very much his father's child when it comes to change.  Doesn't like it, wants no part of it, change is not his friend.  There has got to be a small piece of me in that child somewhere and hopefully we will bring it out during these visits. 

I really did think that I would get to do a ton of creating this weekend but I actually touched nothing in my craft space.  Nothing.  Which is not a bad thing but you know, I missed it.  We were busy all weekend. 

Friday we caught a comedy show at DC Improv.  It was fantastic!  Loni Love is so much funnier in person.  She was awesome!!!!!

Saturday we had Mother's Day Dinner at Fogo De Chao.  Yummy, yummy, yummy.  We drank wine and ate meat for several hours before finally calling it quits.  Great dinner conversations with my boys and we were surrounded by other families celebrating one thing or the other so the mood was very festive.  It was lovely.  We followed that up by walking through DC.  It was a beautiful night.  Warm (not hot at all, just soothingly warm) with a slight breeze.  The city seemed alive. 

Sunday we worked in the yard (it looks so good:) and that makes me so ridiculously happy) and had an early dinner.  We ate so much at dinner Saturday that we were not even hungry until the afternoon.  Getting into a restaurant on a special day is crazy in this area.  Crazy!  But we got there at the perfect time and were shown to our seats immediately.  Score 1 for team Jamison......

I did create a couple of layouts last week that I haven't put here.  I am still working on my photo project and have started putting all of the pictures that I found into albums and weeding out duplicates.  I am going to give the duplicates to my children so that they will have a head start on their family albums.  With my youngest daughter preparing to have a baby, I thought that she would really love to see some of her baby pictures now.  In the photos on this layout, I was pregnant with my oldest.  Me and my best friend just happened to get pregnant at the same time.  We delivered the kids 4 days apart. 

 

I put a journaling pocket at the top (I remembered it this time and did not glue it shut) for my thoughts.......

 

 

Happy Monday everyone and thanks for stopping by!

 

Just the Facts Journaler

Journaling is my least favorite part of the scrapbooking process.  I am not one of those scrappers that often goes back and fiddles with a page.  When I am done with a page, I am done and I want to move on.  Usually immediately as there are often 3 - 4 started layouts waiting in the queue:) 

I've been thinking about trends lately and one trend that I have been loving is the use of quotes, poems & stickers used as journaling.  Even better are the teeny, tiny tags & labels to journal on.  Those make me feel as if I accomplished something really big because I wrote more than just the name & the date on my page.  The look of my handwritten journaling, on some pages, just does not appeal to me.  It looks out of place or sloppy to my eye so I tend to put it on the back of the page in most cases. 

One of the things I love the most about this page (besides the photo of my boys) is that the stickers that I used say everything that I have to say about them & why I created this page.  They are brothers but also the best of friends despite the age gap.  Quentin adores his big brother and Aaron never treats him as if he is an annoying little brother.  I am really crazy about how they get along and how each sees the other as something of a super hero.  There is definitely a more in depth story about this lo but that is all on the back of the page.  The majority of people that thumb through my album will get the information that they are looking for, but for those looking for more details, they can take the time to check out the back....

 

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Thursday!

To Trend or Not to Trend

I am really not sure how I feel about following trends.  On the one hand, I love trying new things and hate to feel as if I have been left behind.  On the other hand, I really don't want to create pages that look just like every other page that I see on pinterest and in galleries.  Individualism is very important to me but so is stretching myself creatively.  So where is the balance between being true to your style and trying other scrappers style?  Is scraplifting something that you can do too much? 

Some of my favorite scrappers have styles that do not suite me at all but I really enjoy seeing their work and can normally pick their pages out as soon as I see them.  They try new things but I never get the feeling that they are chasing trends.  And their work never seems boring to me.  They change it up just enough to keep their pages from looking like they fell in a rut.

I find that if I sit and just create what is in my head and never look out of my shell, creating becomes less enjoyable for me.  For whatever reason, my layouts don't feel "right".  But if I give myself permission to venture into styles that are way to the left of what I would do on my own, it makes me more inventive on my own stuff.  Working this way really helps me to walk the creative line between copying and uniquely me.  How about you?  Any thoughts on the subject? 

I really love the trend of the huge, hand-cut titles but I don't necessarily want to hand-cut my titles this way.  Maybe a page here and there but I think that I will admire this one from afar and try to find ways to create titles that look like I cut them by hand.  I always title my pages.  Always.  But more often than not, the titles are created using the smallish thickers or from a journal card that has a message that I like.  This page has a really big title on it that almost looks hand-cut.  The font is actually a really, really cute one from the silhouette store.  I didn't even remember that I had it!  It was perfect for this page......

That is my dad flipping on the trampoline for the kids.  He is the best grandpa ever and really spends a lot of time talking to, playing with and loving on our children.  I love how they are all sitting down looking at him in awe.  And seriously, whose granddad does this?  This photo was taken in 1996 or so but my dad would still do flips for the kids today:)

By the way, this is a Kelly Goree scraplift...

I still have to journal and add a couple more tiny photos (I plan to do all of that in the film slots) but this layout is done and going on my wall for a bit before it gets put into an album. 

Happy humpday everyone and thanks so much for stopping by!

I Really Love This Page

and that is not something that I say often about my own pages.  Usually I kind of pick them apart and focus on what I feel I didn't do right or for what didn't match the way I thought it should have.  This page is different.  I truly just love everything about it from the colors to the papers (the ones that were screaming for me to put them back in my stash so that they wouldn't have to be cut up:)) to the embellishments.  It just fell together.  The picture is one my hubby took of my little guy when we visited Universal Studios.  We were trying on wigs and he just looked so adorable!  That hair looks like it could really be his....

 

 

The next lo is of me and my little guy.  My husband snapped it at dinner one night.  My hair was falling forward and he snapped the picture at the perfect moment when it was framing me & Q.  The lo talks about how free he is during this time in his life.  He doesn't mind showing affection, wearing quirky things or delighting in weird stuff. 

 

I put a couple of pictures on the lo that represented just what I meant.  In one he is wearing his Halloween costume and had had it on all day long.  It was a gladiator one and it didn't bother him at all that it was essentially a skirt.  Now, he would not even wear it to bed!  The third picture shows how proud he was of himself for peeling the skin off of an orange in one piece.  So weird to be happy about that but he had been trying to do it for days and was finally able to get it right.  He displayed the peel in the kitchen for days until I finally made him throw it away, lol. 

 

 

 

Anywho, thanks for stopping by and have a great Wednesday!

Creating Scrapbook Layouts With No Photos

I'm not talking about photoless pages but about creating pages than printing & adding your photos later.  I talk about it a lot.  I do it all the time.  In fact, I have a stack of about 7 layouts sitting on my desk that I plan to print photos for today.  For me, the worst part of the process is editing and printing my photos.  My husband is an amazing photographer and I love the photos that he takes of our family and adventures.  Me, not so much.  My photos are often dark, out of focus, to far away or just plain crap.  Our older photos tend to have many of the same issues that the photos that I take have.  But, and this is a big but, these photos definitely represent memories of our life that I want in our family albums.   So I end up editing 90 percent of the pictures that I put on my layouts. 

Friends, I do not like editing photos.  I don't want to take the time to really learn how to do tricks with my software and sometimes my program has a mind of its own and will not print the way it should.  Bottom line, the stuff that makes me happy is the creating.  The rest is grunt work.  This is one of the why's of why I would create scrapbook pages without photos.  Sometimes, I will remember an event and get a page idea for it and I feel the need to get to work on the page right away and I don't want to stop and print pictures.  Or I will have a story that I want to tell and I plan to take photos that represent it.  Crazy right?  Crazy fun and easy:)

So you may be wondering how it works.  It is not hard at all to create this way and it works for mainly 2 good reasons:

Reason #1 - I'll have to edit the vast majority of my photos anyway so why not do it to fit a layout that is already done.  Photo editing programs have made it fairly easy to resize photos so the different photo sizes are easy for me to get. 

Reason #2 - Photos often need to get cropped in this house so this is a step that can easily be customized to make them fit a page I've already finished. 

This is such a great method for me and I have been using it for years.  While I do have a few layouts that don't ever get photos, the vast majority of pages are done and in my albums.  These are going to get photos this week.....

I was able to create a couple of layouts this weekend that I did have photos for and I have about 4 pages done that I created with my kit.   It did get easier to get some pages done once I relaxed about using only the kit products.  Trying to make myself only use the kit was a major pain! 

This is one of my youngest a few years back when we had this epic snow storm.....

 

 

This one is the September page for my calendar.........

 

 

And this is a layout about when my youngest was little.  We could not keep him out of our bed!  He loved his room and would happily nap in his own bed.  When we tucked him in at night, it was always in his own bed and he didn't fuss about it at all but it never failed, he would wake up in the middle of the night, climb a flight of stairs to get to our room and crawl in bed with us.  It took years to break him out of this habit!

On the home front, my husband has finally gotten around to installing the backsplash in our kitchen.  I LOVE it!  Seriously, I am in love, love, love....

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope that you will give scrapping without photos printed a try.  If you do, I would love to hear your thoughts (love it, hate it, or indifferent:))

Happy Monday y'all!!

Including Everyone In My Scrapbooks

I don't seem to be doing a very good job of that.  In fact, when I look back through my pages, there are some people that I love very much or who have had a profound impact on my life that I don't have layouts of at all.  Like my brother.  Or my grandmother, who practically raised me.  Most of my layouts seem to be of my oldest daughter, youngest son, 2 of my nieces and 1 of my nephews.  With my husband and oldest son thrown in every now and than for good measure. 

Why I don't know.  I have wonderful stories about all of these people.  Some photos too but for whatever reason, I don't tell them in my albums.  That must change.  I feel as if my scrapbooks tell a story about our family and as of now, the story is not 100% accurate.  I am sure that I don't have more than 1 or 2 photos of my grandparents.  Not sure why as we spent a lot of time with them.  Both sets.  My fathers parents lived on a farm and we were there most weekends and my mothers parents babysat me, my sister and my brother until I was about 10 years old maybe. 

Even after they stopped sitting for us, they would always get us for road trips, crafting, fishing and visiting (as my grandmother called it).  She loved to take us to visit her friends because she said that we were always well behaved.  I can remember many afternoons spent in her friends parlor sitting and having a tea.  Not touching anything or talking much bc kids in those days did not speak unless spoken to and they certainly did not touch.  All of her friends seemed to have hundreds of delicate little things! 

Anywho, I am making really good progress on getting my boxed photos sorted and should be done tomorrow.  Next phase is weeding out the duplicates and putting them in a rough order by time period and place.  I hope to be done with that by the end of May.  My duplicates will be farmed out to the kids so that they can start their own family albums.  Wish me luck!

I do have a layout to share.  It is of my oldest and my best friends oldest.  They were born 4 days apart and were as thick as thieves the first part of their lives.  Like twins.  They loved each other and could calm one another down just by being close together.  This is one of my favorite photos of the two of them. 

 

 

 

Well that's all for me today.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Tuesday!

 

Creating With A Kit

does not seem to be in my lane.  I love the kit that I put together but I am not enjoying the process of creating with it.  I think I need to relax and just go with the flow and not impose so many rules on myself.  If I'm being honest, I had the same problem when I was part of a kit club.  I would get them and feel as if I had to use the stuff in the box and nothing but the box in order to be doing it right.  I'll give it another go, without the limitations, and see if it makes me any happier.  

I was able to start 3 new layouts, but none have more than just the general laying out of the pieces done.  Hopefully since they are mostly done, I will be able to finish them today. 

This layout I created about a road trip me, my husband and the little guy took to Baltimore, MD a couple of years ago.  Probably my favorite picture of the entire trip was the one of my son making the fish face at the sculpture.  It really shows the lighter side of his personality.  As he gets older, he gets more and more serious so it is nice to see him having fun and being silly.  Of course, he is much to old for stuff like that now that he is a semi adult:).

 

Alrighty then.  Off to see if I can create something decent with my fantastic kit.  Wish me luck and thanks for stopping by!  If you created a kit, I would love to hear how you are getting through it.

Putting Together a Stash Kit

is exciting!  It really made me look at the stuff that I have with fresh new perspective and I can't wait to dig in to this.  Here is a look at my kit.

 My papers are all from the We R Memory Keepers Farmhouse line with the exception of one.  That is a green iridescent vellum that I have had for so very long.  The photo makes it look gold, but it is a really pretty yellow-green.  Not sure how I am going to use it but happy to have it in the mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The flair is going to be a serious challenge to use with the other stuff that I picked out.  Just Keeping it interesting y'all.

 

 

 

 

Sorry that some of the pictures are so dark.  Don't quite know why my camera was being difficult.  Not a bad kit if I say so myself.  Since we are not planning anything this weekend, I'm hoping to get all 6 of my layouts done. 

The layout that I chose for inspiration is pinned here and here is my sketch.  Thinking that maybe I should have chosen a less challenging design but I love this lo from Leslie Ashe.

My plan is to set my thickers aside and to use only my cameo to create the letters that I need.  When I need thick letters, I will just cut multiples of each letter and stick them together.  This is really going to work out well for me.  No wasted letters that I have to figure out something to do with and no missing vowels that force me to change the perfect alphas for something else.  That kinda turned into a mini rant but I won't be breaking up with thickers any time soon.  Love them too much. 

Of course, I will still probably have to pull in more cardstock for matting and maybe some washi and splatter inks but that's okay bc I group those supplies in the same category as adhesive.  My intention is to hold myself 100% accountable to the challenge I made me:)  No cheating.  At least not a lot of cheating:)

I do have a completed layout share.  Two to be exact.  Numero Uno is a page featuring my oldest son and my feelings about him leaving home.  Specifically how much I want to see him happy in his life.

 

 

Numero Dos is my October calendar page.  I just skipped right over September lol.  I will get back to that in the next couple of weeks or so.  This is a crucial time for the calendar project, 3 months to go.  Can she do it?  I hope she can bc it would suck to have a whole year except for 3 months!

 

 

 

 

 

 I am so excited to get photos for this page! 

 Anywho, that's all for me today and thanks so much for stopping by!

I Love A Challenge.

Don't you?  I really miss some of the challenge blogs that have gone away.  They stretched me and helped me use my ever increasing stash.  Since I don't have anything better to do ;), I decided to create a scrappy challenge for myself.  If you want to play along, I'd be happy to scrap along with you.  I am going to be very ambitious here and give myself to the end of the month to finish.  So here's the challenge:

1. Create your own kit using:

• 12 - 3X4 Journaling or Embellishment Cards
• 1 Stamp Set
• Electronic Die-Cut Machine for Alphas
• 2 Flair Badges
• 20 Assorted Brads and Eyelets
• 1 Pack of Flat Stickers (The newest you can find in your stash)
• 1 Pack of Layered Stickers (The oldest you can find in your stash)
• 1 Pack of Chipboard Stickers (Crafters choice:))
• 6 Sheets of Patterned Paper
• 6 Sheets of Cardstock
• 1 - 6X6 Paper Pad
• 1 Roll of Ribbon or Twine

2.  Find a layout that you really love and make a sketch based off of it. 

3.  Use the sketch in 6 different ways to create 6 different layouts. 

The challenge is to use only the kit to produce the 6 layouts based on your sketch.  I am so excited to get started.  I will come back tomorrow with my kit.  Yay. 

This weekend I spent some time going through my photo albums and completed layouts.  I am putting aside the pages that don't have journaling or ones that still need photos and making it a priority to get that done this month.  I don't know if I mentioned this or not but I spent a few years dealing with a serious creative slump.  We have had so much going on and our life (& home) has just been a chaotic mess.  Nothing bad or tragic, just the way life is sometimes.  But I was left too exhausted to do anything outside of the absolute necessary.  Thankfully I seem to be through the slump and am back to creating everyday. 

This weekend, we went to check out a campsite and fell absolutely in love with it.  There will be no real roughing it, but we will get to enjoy sitting around a fire talking, roasted marshmallows and time spent together under the stars. 

We also took a trip to the Tidal Basin to get a look at the cherry trees in full bloom.  They were stunning!  They never cease to stop me in my tracks with their beauty.  But man oh man were there a lot of people there.  You could not even take 2 steps without running into someone. 

I do have a couple of layouts to share.  The first one is of my niece when she was itty bitty.  She is a complete character all of the time but this time she was outrageous.  Don't ask me what she was thinking, I could not tell you.  She had sand everywhere!  My sister is one of those super patient moms that does not get upset about little things so all was good at the end of the day.  I probably would have freaked out just a little because there was So. Much. Sand. lol

 

 

This layout was actually created for Studio Calico's Sunday Sketch but I never got around to submitting.  Love the page though. 

 

 

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!  If you decide to do the challenge with me, I would love to see what you come up with.