Scrapbook My Life

While thumbing through the September issue of CK, I found the “Snapshot of Me” album by Becky Higgins. It’s beautiful work, and you can download a PDF version of the embellishments she used on the Creating Keepsakes Web site. There are quotes, page titles, and journaling blocks to create pages of top 10 lists, sample schedules, and your favorite things. I can’t wait to get started on my book, especially since Becky’s designs are great for the frugal scrapbooker. Since she switched the color scheme to a more gender neutral design than what’s pictured in the magazine, I may even try to get my husband and son in on the fun.

I feel very lucky to get paid to write about scrapbooking, but I still find myself dreaming about how much fun it would be to join a scrapbook design team. After all, what could be more fun than getting free products or making a little extra cash doing what you love? If you’re curious about what it’s like to be on a scrapbook design team and how you can gain exposure for your paper crafting projects, check out my latest interview on LoveToKnow Scrapbooking.  The fabulously talented Tristann Graves from A Cherry on Top’s creative team generously offered to share her tips for making a mark in the industry. What’s my favorite bit of advice from the article?  “Everyone has different tastes and styles and the industry is so big that there are lots of sites and communities looking for a range of styles and skills. You just need to take a chance and try out when sites and magazines put out calls for designers and projects.”

Take a chance…. I think that’s great advice for scrapbooking as well as life in general!

I’m always trying to come up with new layouts for my son’s album that make good use of the candid photos I’ve taken. While it’s fairly easy to scrapbook pictures from events like birthday parties, family vacations, or the first day of school, scrapbooking pictures that were taken “just because” can be a bit more challenging.

 Here are a few themes for projects I’m working on:

• Growing More Every Day (a collage of photos arranged in chronological order so you can see the month to month progression)
• What a Mess! (dirty hands, messy room, sloppy art projects, muddy shoes)
• The Things Kids Say (interesting and/or funny comments from your son)
• What Little Boys are Made Of (a custom “recipe” for your son – such as 1 cup Hot Wheels, ½ cup cartoons, and a touch of sugar-induced craziness!)
• Like Father, Like Son (similar pictures of your child and his Daddy – such as pictures of them both playing in the sandbox as toddlers)

For some reason, I always associate summer with babies. Even though my son was born in November and I have a fall birthday myself, it seems like everyone is busy attending baby showers during June, July, and August.

If you’re getting ready to scrapbook baby memories, here are some photo ideas:

• Mother’s growing belly during each month of pregnancy
• Decorating the nursery
• Baby showers including invitations, cards, etc.
• Outside view of hospital
• Clock showing time you arrived
• Labor and delivery room nurses
• Dad and Mom together
• The star of the show - the newborn baby
• Clock showing time of birth
• The doctor or nurses holding baby
• Cutting the cord
• Baby on the scale (try to include the weight)
• Close up of leg/arm with name bracelet
• Little hands curled around Mom or Dad’s finger
• Phoning relatives and friends to share the news
• Visitors holding the baby
• Getting the baby dressed in his/her first outfit
• Mom and baby being wheeled out the front door
• Dad carrying out flowers and balloons
• First ride in the carseat
• Greetings upon returning home (signs on door or lawn, excited grandparents, siblings, etc.)
• Reactions of siblings, pets, etc.
• Sleeping on Dad’s chest
• Feeding time
• Generation photos with proud new grandparents
• Visitors holding baby
• The father’s “firsts” - diaper change, bath, nap, etc.
• Baby’s favorite toys, sleeping positions, blanket, etc.
• First visit to pediatrician

On a related note, here are my two all time favorite quotes for baby scrapbook pages:

• “Babies are such a nice way to start people.” Don Herold
• “A baby is God’s opinion the world should go on.” Carl Sandburg

Although I’m not the type of scrapbooker who aspires to be “caught up”, I do try to make a page or two each week. I find the process of creating a layout to be a great way to relax. In fact, even just sorting through my supplies is rather calming after a long and stressful day. One of the tricks I’ve found that makes it easier to carve out time for scrapbooking is to keep my supplies on a small card table in the corner of my bedroom. Since I have toddler, I obviously can’t leave out sharp metal embellishments or messy paints. But, leaving my cardstock, Cricut, and stickers out makes it easier to work on a page in the 10-15 minute breaks between parenting and my freelance writing business. It may take awhile to get my page “finished” with this method – but overall I tend to get much more scrapbooking done this way than if I’d have to carve out a solid block of time for the task.

Summer is the season for weddings and these happy occasions are lots of fun to scrapbook. When everyone is dressed in their best clothes, dancing, and having a good time, you can’t help but capture an awesome scrapbook page!

Here are some ideas for photos to take at the next wedding you attend:

• Guests signing the guest book
• Bride and groom dancing
• Bride and her father dancing
• Groom dancing with his mother
• Flower girl dancing with ring bearer
• Bride and groom cutting the cake
• The couple feeding the cake to each other
• Best man making the toast
• The couple visiting with family and friends
• Bride tossing the bouquet
• Groom tossing the garter
• Decorated getaway car
• Guests throwing rice or blowing bubbles
• Newlyweds waving goodbye as they leave for their honeymoon

For wedding scrapbook color schemes, I personally find black, white, and silver to be an awesome combination. You can find many wedding themed embellishments in this combo at your local scrapbook store. However, designing the page around the couple’s wedding color scheme is a great idea as well.

If you’re a bit of a perfectionist, scrapbooking can sometimes seem like more of a chore than a fun and relaxing hobby. Instead of experimenting with new techniques and challenging yourself to use your supplies in a rewarding way, you may find yourself staring at a pretty piece of patterned paper too afraid to begin your project. If so, take a few deep breaths and RELAX!

Remember, it’s only paper. Although collecting scrapbook supplies can be quite fun, your purchases are useless if you don’t actually do anything with them. The supplies you love to look at in their packages will be much more enjoyable when they are in an album surrounded by your photos and journaling.

To overcome perfectionist tendencies when scrapbooking, try making a piece of collage wall art for your craft room. Grab your pile of scraps and try tearing, sanding, crinkling, stamping, punching, and gluing various shapes and colors together until you have a design that makes you happy. See where the project takes you, instead of trying to imitate a look you saw in the last issue of Creating Keepsakes.  When you’re done, I guarantee you’ll be ready to approach your next layout with a fresh perspective.

In keeping with yesterday’s post about making your scrapbook a more realistic depiction of your life, here are some themes for pages that cover more than the obvious topics:

• Fashion mishaps throughout the years (how you found your personal style)
• A history of failed romances (the story of all your bad breakups)
• Parenting is not what it seems (the struggles of trying to raise your children)
• How could I have been so stupid? (a brief overview of bad decisions you’ve made and how you learned from them)
• My pet peeves (a place to vent abut things that annoy you)
• Random facts about me (bits of trivia that others may not know)
• Fears (either silly or serious)

My small town of about 1,200 residents is almost ½ underwater today. Although I’m very fortunate in that my house is fine, we have several loved ones in the affected flood area. And, some of the losses I suspect will hurt the most are the family photographs. Photographs bring back so many memories, from a child’s first steps to a long awaited vacation. While insurance can help replace some of the tangible necessities of everyday life, the value of photographs is hard to measure in dollars alone. After all, how many times have you heard someone say the family photo album is one of the first items they’d grab if their house was on fire?

As a scrapbooker, be careful to protect your albums. Use acid free supplies whenever possible. Store albums away from heat, light, and humidity. If you make digital pages, burn backups to a CD and store them in a safe place. Don’t keep items in your garage or basement where they may be easily damaged.

Paper + Pixels: Scrapbook Layouts by Audrey Neal and May Flaum is a must-have book for anyone interested in beginning digital scrapbooking who still wants to find a way to use up their stash of traditional scrapbook supplies. I find the concept of digital scrapbooking so appealing, but I have enough cardstock and embellishments to open a small store after almost six years of hording supplies. That’s why I love the premise of this book – it encourages you to think of digital elements as additions to your normal scrapbook layouts instead of a total replacement for the products you’ve grown to love.

The “hybrid” style of scrapbooking covered in Paper + Pixels is easy to do even if you’re not too computer savvy. All you need is a computer, printer, and basic image editing software. And, if you lack the patience to search for free digital kits online, the book also includes a fabulous CD filled with papers and embellishments for a variety of themes, including baby scrapbooks and vacation albums.