Scrapbook My Life

I hope has enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. Here are a few journaling questions to help you start scrapbooking those Thanksgiving day photos:

•  What is your favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal? Are you a traditional turkey and stuffing kind of girl or do you prefer something more unique?
• What non-food rituals do you associate with Thanksgiving? Do you enjoy watching football? Planning Black Friday shopping trips? Playing board games with your nieces and nephews?
• What are you most grateful for this year? Friends? Family? Work accomplishments?

If your Thanksgiving day photos didn’t turn out quite as nicely as you had hoped, remember that creative cropping can work wonders. It’s hard to get group shots where everyone looks perfect, but it’s fairly simple to crop the person who is blinking or squinting out of the photo. If your photos look overexposed or underexposed, try adjusting the contrast and converting them to a sepia tone for a traditional-looking Thanksgiving layout.

Summer is just around the corner! With kids home from school and warm weather calling, it’s often hard to find time to scrapbook. However, if you snap the following pictures, you can guarantee you’ll be in great shape to get caught up on your album when fall rolls around again.

• Dirt tracked into the house by little feet
• Having a BBQ with family and friends
• Creating works of art with sidewalk chalk
• Frisbees sailing through the air
• Kids blowing bubbles
• Fruity, frozen drinks with paper umbrellas
• A child soaring on a tree swing in the backyard
• Sleeping under the stars
• Serving fresh squeezed lemonade
• Riding bikes around the neighborhood
• Watching the sun rise on an early morning walk
• The car packed for the first family vacation of the season
• Wide brimmed hats and colorful sunglasses
• Climbing trees
• Watching movies at the drive in
• Screaming and giggling on a giant roller coaster
• Eating cotton candy
• Building sandcastles
• Applying sunscreen
• Children feasting on dripping popsicles
• Lying on your back, watching clouds drift through the air
• Spending the whole day in your swimsuit
• Slices of juicy watermelon

Unless you happen to moonlight as a professional photographer, you’ve probably considered cropping your photos to make a more appealing scrapbook layout. When done carefully, this can be a great way to enhance the subject of your photo. If you’re careless, however, photo cutting and cropping can be a mistake you’ll regret for several years to come.

The first rule of any scrapbook technique that involves permanently altering your photos is to make a copy of the picture first. NEVER cut or crop an original, irreplaceable photo! If it’s not a picture from your digital camera, scan it or take it to a local copy shop before you start your layout.

Next, consider the importance of background details. Cropping is a great way to eliminate clutter from a photo, but sometimes this extra “stuff” has a deeper sentimental meaning. Future generations may want to know what Grandma’s couch looked like in her first apartment or what color Aunt Mary painted her kitchen in 1995. Using a mixture of cropped and uncropped photos is often the best way around this dilemma.

A final word of caution—think twice before cutting your photos into hearts, stars, or other novelty shapes. The occasional circular photo can be appealing, but too many shaped photos looks dated and amateurish.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m afraid my photography skills are nothing exceptional. While I do occasionally manage to get photos I love, I have a lot of images that are personally meaningful but lack the “pizzazz” needed for a great scrapbook layout.

A few tricks I’ve found to make ordinary photos seem more appealing:

• Experiment with the various filters available in Photoshop Elements and other image editing software.
• Have photos developed in sepia tones to create a warm, vintage feel for your pages.
• If the bright colors in a photo are distracting, consider having the photo reprinted in black and white.
• Create an interesting image by cutting a photo into strips and piercing it back together, leaving thin margins between the strips.
• Create a photo mosaic by cutting the photo into a random pattern and piercing it back together in the same manner.
• Accent photos by adhering letter stickers directly to the prints to create simple photo captions.
• If you love the look of torn photos but hesitate at the thought of tearing your prints, tear a hole in your background paper and mount the photo behind the hole. Use patterned paper or cardstock with a white core to mimic the photo paper. Fold or curl the torn edges, then chalk them for added texture.
• Print a photo on canvas or textured cardstock to lend a “portrait” quality to an informal snapshot.

Children are a popular subject for scrapbooking layouts, but getting a good photograph of your son or daughter can be a challenge. When my son was younger, he loved to have his picture taken. Now that he’s more mobile, however, he’d rather be anywhere than in front of the camera.

Here are some tips that may help you get better pictures of your children:

• Let kids be kids. Children are naturally mischievous. When photographing your child, spend some time simply observing the action. Candid pictures of kids playing, exploring, and goofing off are often the most precious.
• Bring out silly props. Toys help shy kids loosen up. A fake mustache or bubbles may great props for any child.
• Capture the less-than perfect moments. It’s natural to want pictures of happy and smiling children, but you don’t need to cancel a photo session if your child is in a bad mood. The goal of photography is to capture life as it is, not as you wish it would be. When your son or daughter is grown, you’re guaranteed to look back on those grumpy expressions with fondness.
• Practice creative cropping. Avoid centering your subject exactly in the middle of the frame. Letting part of your child’s body fall slightly outside your viewfinder will often result in a more interesting picture.
• Use your flash outside when shooting with the sun directly behind your child. The flash fills in the shadows you’d normally expect to see.
• Zoom in. When photographing your child, get down to his/her level. Photographs taken eye to eye are much more interesting than those taken when you’re merely looking down at your child.