Why I Scrapbook...and why you should too.

The last several weeks have been very challenging for me and I have found myself to be in some kind of dark hole from which I cannot seem to be able to emerge.  I find myself driving down the freeway bursting into tears just because of some silly thought that comes to mind...and it kind of scares me a little at times.  I've never been a person that suffered with depression (other than the typical PMS style rantings that roll around) and I really don't like it at all.  I know I'm freaking out my family with this bizarre behavior, but I just can't help it.

Here's the deal:  I am realizing that my life is passing right before my eyes, and I am on the verge of a new chapter--and it isn't just one thing, it's a million things all at once...

I think the beginning of it all started last year when Colby graduated and walked out of high school and right into a fabulous career as a software engineer (yes, he's a genius) and I realized I was nearing the end of my life raising children.  Now, within the last several weeks my youngest child and only daughter turned 16 and then went on her first date within the week (way faster than I wanted that to happen), I took Dylan in for his mission physical and we are mere weeks from him turning in his mission papers (I could swear he just got baptized), and I signed papers for my oldest son, Braden, who is disabled, stating that he is graduating from his school and transitioning out this year.  But it doesn't even stop there...I just put Savannah on a bus headed to California with the school choir, Dylan is preparing to travel to both Atlanta and Nashville for various school competitions, and my super-genius is filing his own taxes and I have now lost him as a deduction (and yes, this is sadder than it might seem).  It's like the perfect storm of anxiety for me.

All of this led me into my closet where I started perusing my scrapbooks.  Even as much as I love this hobby, I haven't even made a dent in the boxes and boxes of pictures I've taken and will never in my lifetime be "caught up".  (I hear that stupid phrase all the time and honestly have no idea what it even means!)  The thing I can honestly say though, is that those books are helping me more than any other single thing.  Not only do I have the pictures, but I have the stories that go with them.  All these glorious books are showing me just how WONDERFUL my life with my kids has been up to this point.  I don't just have pictures of vacations, birthdays, or Christmas...but I have all kinds of every day stuff that I would have long forgotten if it weren't for my scrapbooks.

A specific example of this is some pictures of Savannah that I took when she was barely three, wandering the backyard exploring the flowers--little purple pansies that had sprouted all over the yard in early spring and she couldn't get enough of them.  I followed her around taking pictures as she carefully poked them with her tiny fingers or leaned in to sniff them, but she never picked one or damaged them.  Looking at the pictures and reading the story of that day made me feel like I was back there, living it again.  I was sad for a minute that it was over, but also so happy to be able to remember that it happened.  And I also realized that it was a small glimpse of the beautiful girl she has grown up to be, who still loves flowers, whether it's the tulips just popping up in the yard or the roses given to her by a boy asking her to a dance.

I am so grateful for my scrapbooks!  They will always be there...reminding me of how great my life has been, and giving me hope for more great times in the future.

Often I hear people give reasons why they don't scrapbook...maybe you've used one of these yourself...

I'm just not creative enough to do that...

I don't really have time to scrapbook...

I wouldn't even know how to begin...

It's too late to start now...I have too many pictures and I'll never get "caught up"...

I don't have any artistic talent at all...

or my personal favorite...

No one will ever want to look at them, so why should I bother?

The funny thing about scrapbooks... it isn't about the creativity, the artistry, the embellishments, the paper, or any of that stuff.  It's about the story that you NEED to tell.  And you may not be telling the story to anyone other than yourself, but that's okay, because that's who you SHOULD be telling.  Just like keeping a journal--maybe even better, because it includes the pictures to go with it.

If you have pictures and memories, that's all you need.  Buy some paper, slap those pictures down and write your story.  Don't be afraid to use your own handwriting either.  All the rest is just fluff and in the end it isn't going to matter.  For me, I love the fluff... but if that's not you, don't let the fluff be the thing that stops you.  Include all the moments of your life--the good and the bad.  Discover for yourself how things have changed, what you've learned, and create a way to remember what your life is about...because before you know it, you'll blink and everything will be different.

A Giveaway!

So...getting a page kit together for a giveaway proved a little bit more challenging than I would have liked, but it's finally ready!  Sorry it took so long, but here it is:

It looks a little crooked in the pictures, and hopefully the colors are clear (the orange looks a little tan, but it might just be my monitor).  I used my brand new Birthday Bash cartridge to make the really cute embellishments for this page and it was super fun!

The winner of the page kit gets all the pieces to put together the embellishments, two sheets of black background paper, 3 sheets of patterned paper with markings for cutting according to the pattern, the plain colored card stock for matting your pictures, and a color picture to follow.  Sorry, you're going to have to supply your own pictures of someone having a birthday...

Entering is easy, and each person is allowed up to three entries:

1. Click on this link and enter:  Birthday Page Kit Giveaway  (This will allow us to contact the winner and know where to send it--very important)
2. Follow our blog (but don't do it anonymously or we won't know who you are)
3. Share this blog post on Facebook (and then let us know in the comments)

We will put all entries into a random drawing and announce the winner on March 30th (we will also contact the winner via email at that time).  Be sure to check back on the blog often--we're hoping to do several more giveaways over the next month.  Good luck and happy scrapping!

Boy

I had to put this page in before we were finished with our 30 days of layouts. It's got to be one of my favorite portrait pages of all times, I loved the pictures so much that it made the page really easy to do!

My background is just plain green cardstock. The orange polka dot and the brown plaid is scenic paper route. The green polka dot and the stripe is Bo Bunny. All the stickers are from a Bo Bunny sticker sheet, they matched my pictures perfectly! I spelled Ethans name using doodlebug button letters. 

The brown frog and green flower are felt shapes I got from Fancy Pants a long time ago. Again I mounted my stickers on chipboard. The orange ribbon is from American Crafts and the fibers and green ribbon are from All My Memories. I also used some brown snaps from We R Memory Keepers and some matching buttons. 

Posting these pages has been a lot of fun for me, I have had a great time looking through my albums and stirring up some of my old memories! Sure makes me miss my chunky little babies though! 

Keep an eye out for our upcoming page kit giveaway! 

Spring Fling!

So yesterday was a little too hectic for my taste and before I knew it the day was gone and there was no page posted!  So here is my page for the day, and in honor of the gloomy weather I decided to go with something super springy.

I think these pictures are really fun because I love action shots!  One of my favorite things to do with my camera is to set it on multi-shot and just push the button down.  It's the very best way to get really great candids and you never know when you'll get the perfect picture and not even realize it.  Once again I took way more pictures than I could fit on a layout, so I had to pare it down and try to make it fit.

Every one of the pictures is smaller than a standard 4x6 size, with some of them half that size and the pictures in the filmstrip the smallest.

At first I wanted to put the pictures in the filmstrip in order so it looked like a moving picture, but since I had way too many, I only did it for the small pictures in the top right.  I love the use of the filmstrip to include a lot of photos!

The paper is some coordinating paper from Hobby Lobby (Paper Studio)--I love it because it takes all the guesswork out of matching the paper.

I cut the various sizes of circles using my Sizzix and a circle die cut. I love the idea of lots of circles with the page because it matches so well with the frisbees and giant ball. The ribbon is American Crafts, and the 3D bugs are Paper Bliss.  The word Fling is made with sticker letters from Doodlebug and I cut summer with a Sizzix alphabet.

Some people shy away from pink paper, especially when they are dealing mostly with pictures of boys, but it is such a fun spring color for everyone that it definitely has it's place so don't be afraid to use it!

On another note, we are coming close to the end of our "30 days of pages" and have some fun new ideas for future posts, including a page kit giveaway, which we are hoping to have ready to go next week!

Through the Years...

Back in the days of film cameras....(I  know some people still use them, but where do you even buy film anymore?)...I had to be careful about how many pictures I took.  So as I sift through all my old pictures many times I find that I only took one or two pictures of something--especially if it was just pictures on a random day and not some special event.  A pile of these random pictures is how I came up with this idea for a fun page about the boys using pictures that didn't really go together and were, in fact, not even taken at close to the same time.

The cut outs that I used on these page are really cute but I have no idea what brand they are or what store might carry them.  The page is very simple--I just used the cutouts and plain card stock for the most part.  I do have some brads and and I used foam tape on the squares to make them raised, but other than that it's a pretty basic page.

The little airplane is raised up on pop dots and I attached the sign with eyelets and string so it would look like the plane is pulling it.

The fun part about this page is the journaling.  I got this idea from someone else online, so I can't take credit, but I will share.  

On each picture (you might be able to see it if you look hard) there is a number that corresponds to the journaling block.  The pictures all have a basic theme of the boys being together, so they fit with the cutout theme about boys,  but because all the pictures were taken at various times, I decided I really wanted to keep track of dates and places.  So my journal strip has numbers with the dates and a blurb about the picture.  It was a great way to combine many different activities into one layout!

I've been wanting to work on more of these random pictures lately, so maybe another page like this is going to be in the works soon...

Rock n Roll Birthday

I love hosting themed birthday parties! This one was particularly fun! I tried to decorate like a 50's diner, we served hamburgers in paper cadillac boxes with bottles of Rootbeer. And I forced my boys to dress as Greasers! They were not to happy about the apparel but I informed them that I needed cute pictures, and it was all about the fun scrapbook page I was going to create after the party! :) So they stomped off to their bedrooms and changed and voila!! Exactly the pictures I wanted!

I used a black backgound paper for this page, although not much of it shows, I wanted a hint of black behind the pattern papers.  The stripe and blue at the bottom is from the confetti pack by My Minds Eye. The  black gingham is just some old paper I had.

For the "Rock & Roll" part of this title I went online and found a 50's font, printed it on black paper and cut it out with detailing scissors. I did the same thing  with the music notes. I wanted them to look shiny like a record so I embossed them with embossing powder and my embossing gun. 

The word "birthday" is done with bazzill chipboard letters I got from O Scrap. The records are actually from the streamers I decorated with, I got the streamers from a local party store. I embossed the records as well. 

The black ribbon on the page is from Wal-Mart. The black buckles are pretty old so I don't remember where I got them. I went online and printed the words from the "Happy Days" song on a transparency and put the strip along the bottom of each page.

I wanted a greaser on my page but I couldn't find any 50's stickers anywhere! Now that my page is done, I see them in every craft store around! Isn't that how it always goes? But, since I didn't have a sticker I had to paper piece my own. I found this image online. I even had some levi pattern paper! I had a great time making him! Don't be afraid to paper piece, you'll love the end product!

YOU

When my kids were young we rarely did any photo shoots, they just weren't agreeable enough. So as they have gotten older we try to do a photo shoot every year on their birthday, I can't say they particularly like to do it but they are good kids and humor me! I chose this particular photo shoot because I loved the colors and the page kit!

When we did this photo shoot we wanted to capture some of the things that make Tyler who he is, so we took pictures of him with his ipod, because he loves music, it is a major part of his life, but  Obviously the most important part of his life is his mother right? What teenager wouldn't think that? At least that's what I tell myself everyday! 

This is another storytellers club pack...LOVE THEM! I loved the way the colors in this pack complimented the pictures and all of the tags went so well!  I love that storytellers pretty much comes with everything you  need for your page, even the background paper. I usually just add a few odds and ends to make it look complete. each of the tags had little circles printed on them that look like brads, but I like a little dimension to my pages, so I pulled some matching brads and put them right over the top of the printed ones. The punchouts on the side I mounted on more metal tags and added buttons. At the bottom of the arrow border I just added some matching ribbons and fibers. The only thing I wish I would have done with this page is maybe mounted some of the punchouts on chipboard or possibly have put them on my page using pop dots to make them stand out a little more. Other than that I love the way the page turned out, it made me realize that portrait pages aren't as hard as you think they will be. 

I wish I would have kept up on the portraits from the time the boys were little, I probably would have caught some really funny candid shots! 

Preserving School Memories

I don't make one page layouts very often, but when it comes to school pictures and you only have one photo, there isn't really a good way to turn them into a two page layout.  Even though these two pages aren't part of the same layout, I used the same basic idea for both of them, so I decided to post them both.

I saw the idea for the little squares at a scrapbook store a long time ago. They were selling sheets of paper with the squares on them, but I realized I could make them myself and print them out for a lot cheaper, plus I'd be able to include any category I'd like for the kids to fill out.  I am so extremely happy that I did these pages when the boys were young!  The answers they gave, and their handwriting preserved forever make these pages priceless!

To make the pages for the boys to fill out, I just created some text boxes in Word and filled in the categories.  I left the black outlines on the squares and had them fill out the pages before I cut the squares out so it would be easier for them.  I actually love the misspelled word "tooth" with the extra h crossed out--it gives it more character.

The only thing I asked from them is that they write within the box--no input on answers or even suggestions--I wanted it to be their genuine responses.

The stickers for the red page came from Pebbles, Inc; the blue ones from O Scrap.  These pages were super simple--all I had to do was piece everything together to make it all fit and glue it on.

A lot of times I go overboard and make my pages complicated, so the fact that these are so basic but so fun makes them extra special.  I really love them, and in retrospect I wish I'd done this with my kids every year and created an entire album of just these school pages.  Sadly I didn't, and there is no going back.  If your kids are little, make the sheets for them to fill out.  Even if you don't do anything with them right now, one day you'll be glad you have them.

My Thinker

Little could I have known way back when these pictures were taken and I scrapbooked this layout just how prophetic they would be about my sweet son.  I was not present when the photos were taken, my husband took them while the two of them were up in the mountains hiking, but when I saw them I instantly fell in love with them.  I'm not quite sure I've ever seen pictures that summed up his personality so well!  He's been a deep thinker his whole life, and now that he's almost 20 years old, I realize how well all that thinking has served him.

I could possibly alternately title this page: "You just never know when those weird things you bought are gonna come in handy".   All the patterned paper on this page was bought at this little off-the-beaten-path scrapbook store.  They were selling these packs of paper that were nothing but strips--approximately 4 inches wide--there were about 100 strips per pack, and I momentarily thought "What will I do with 100 strips of the same patterned paper...and when will I need just four inches of it?"  But they were only about a dollar per pack, so I bought them anyway--lots of them in all different colors and patterns.  Then I tossed them in a drawer and they never made an appearance again until this page came along.  The piece under the title needed to be a little wider, so I just lined up a couple of strips and glued them on together.

The word "thinker" is another word I made using WordArt.  I flipped it and printed it on the back of one of the strips, then cut it out with my precision scissors and craft knife.  The other letters are metal tags that I bought in a plastic bag from the same store--no name brand on them or anything.

One of my all-time favorite elements to include on a layout is poetry.  Maybe it's the English major buried deep inside me, but I just think poetry expresses feelings that can't be expressed any other way.  Sometimes I write my own poems, but they are usually cutesy or funny and always rhyming.  I love this one to go with this page, and I'm not even sure how I found it...but it must have been some kind of miracle.

If you haven't ever created a page like this, I challenge you to do it, and I'm not talking about the layout--I'm talking about capturing a child's soul in photos and preserving it so succinctly that fifteen years down the road you can look back at it and remember that moment when you discovered exactly who they are.  

Arctic Zone

I've been trying not to post just vacation pictures on here, but there are just so many fun themed pages from a vacation, that here I am posting yet another one! This is the Wild Arctic at Seaworld!  We got to experience a simulated helicopter ride over frozen tundra, when we disembarked there was a realistic Arctic research station. We saw, polar bears, whales, walruses and an ice tunnel, complete with the growling of polar bears! There were so many cute set ups to take pictures it was really hard to narrow it down to just a few pictures for my page, so I actually broke these pictures down into two different layouts. Here is the first.

I used Three Bugs in a Rug paper. This was actually a packet that came with sticker letters and a sticker sheet. I used the letters from the kit to spell "arctic" and the word "adventure" is done with rub ons. I mounted the skull sticker on the top of the page onto a metal tag. The frame on the bottom is a plastic expressions frame from Heidi Grace. I  used some of my thin twine along the bottom, I just wound a couple layers to make it look like a coiled rope.

I had much more fun creating the second page of this layout!!!

I used more of the words from the sticker sheet which I  mounted on more metal tags along the top of the page, you can get these tags at walmart, they are just sale tags you use to price things at a garage sale. I just added some odds and ends buttons I had that matched. The real fun came in making my crates at the bottom!

These are made out of chipboard. I cut squares out of chipboard then I cut thin strips out of chipboard  to boarder the squares to make them look more like boxes. I had some pattern paper that looked like wood so that's what I used to cover the chipboard. I printed the labels on transparency, so that I wouldn't have any glue showing I made the transparency squares big enough to glue under the boarders. Once they were all glued I used my walnut distressing ink to make them look worn and again wound up more twine for the coiled rope. I had to put a couple of the crates on pop dots to make them look stacked. Super fun to make!

Dinosaurs!

Back when the kids were little, we spent some time in St. George and went to the Dinosaur Discovery. Considering all kids have some kind of fascination with dinosaurs at some point, they loved seeing the actual fossils even if they didn't have giant life-sized replicas.

This was a GREAT chance to use my Cricut Dinosaur Tracks cartridge.  I am sorry to say that this cartridge is retired now...not sure why because it is very cute and original.  While other carts have dinosaurs on them, none are quite as good as these.

The paper I used is from Crate Paper--it was a fabulous coordinating set that I got at the Scrapbook USA Expo a couple of years ago.  I don't know if Crate Paper is still around, but I sure have a lot of their stuff and it's all cute.

These letters for the title are stickers that came with the pack.  They have a bit of a textured look--kind of fuzzy (but they aren't).  I love that the kit came with a lot of letters--too many times I don't have what I need and can't use my stickers, so I tend to buy multiple sheets when I get them.

These fossils are part of the Dinosaur Tracks cartridge and they were super fun to make!  I was actually very impressed with how well my Cricut did cutting these out because they were very intricate.

Since the page was pretty full with all the dinosaurs I made, I had to create a place for journaling to go. The picture on the top of the page is actually a pocket, and the green piece behind it with a tab can be slid out.  Guess what I discovered when I pulled this page out to get some pictures?  Yep...someone forgot to do their journaling.  Oops.

So that's my page for the day.  If there is a particular theme of layout you'd like to see, please let us know in the comments section and we'll see what we can come up with!

Zions

It's always hard for me to do nature pages. I always am more productive when I scrapbook if I have a theme, nature just isn't specific enough for me. This page however came together really fast and was easy! Thanks to Crate Paper!

Crate Paper has the cutest packets! I have had this one for a long time and just didn't know what pictures to put with it. This pack came with the pattern paper, sticker letters and numbers, glitter dies, and glitter stickers. 

I used my kiwi lane templates to make the waves at the bottom, and again I used my walnut distressing ink to make it look worn. I used my circle cutter to make the circle at the top of the page. The jewel brads are from a QVC pack my sister got me at the convention a long time ago. My title is made using foam letters from Adorn it, they have the cutest letters I always stock up when we go to the Expo. I used the sticker letters from the pack to spell the words "national park" 

I put almost all of my die cuts on pop dots to give the page some dimension. There you have it! Another easy page!!! Have fun Scrapping!!

I 

M&M World

The m&m outlet in Las Vegas is a really fun place to visit. They have all sorts of things to buy and you can watch a 3D movie starring the m&ms. A great place to visit, and don't forget to pick up some chocolate while you're there!

There aren't any m&m embellishments to buy, so for this page I had to create my own. My background is just plain black cardstock and I used pattern paper from a Die Cuts paper pad, again, can't remember the name of it. 

I went online and found the m&m characters sized them to fit my page and traced and paper pieced them. They were a lot of fun to do, other than the eyebrows they were pretty easy, I found myself misplacing the eyebrows a lot and did a lot of searching! I did the same thing with my title. I did the word 

"world" with button letters from Doodlebug Designs. 

I made my m&m's using a circle punch and cut "m"s out with my cuttlebug. I made this little cluster and also a border running down the side of the page.

I recommend eating m&m's while working on a page like this, it really does help with your inspiration, but when isn't chocolate inspirational?

Time for Tea

Okay...so in my opening post I said I would be posting layouts where I managed to fit lots of lots of pictures...and this one might just be the Queen Mother of those pages.

The Tea Cups at Disneyland...every time we go over to ride them, the picture taking goes something like this:  I don't ride, because, frankly, at my age I'm not sure I'd come off alive.  Sadly, I just don't do spinning anymore.  So while everyone else rides, I turn my camera on multi-shot and once the ride starts, I pretty much depress the shutter button and start taking pictures.  My intentions are always to "pick the best and delete the rest" but that rarely happens because I'm bad at making choices.  So when all is said and done, I have anywhere from 20-50 pictures.  Out of that scenario, this page was born:

I fit 28 pictures on this page total.  It took a lot of hard thinking to figure out how to do it, but once I had the idea it was pretty easy to carry out.  The paper is just random stuff from my stash--nothing that was coordinated, I just picked paper that matched the really cute Mad Tea Party stickers I was using.  The ribbon buckles and tags are from Scrapworks, and the ribbon is American Crafts.  It was really surprising how easy it was to coordinate all these pieces even when they weren't sold together originally.

 The filmstrip on both pages was cut using my Mickey and Friends cartridge and I have used this particular piece a LOT to make more pictures fit on a page, or to help tell a story with the photos by putting them in order.

In this case, I use pictures that were in consecutive order for the filmstrips, so it would actually replicate what you might see on a filmstrip.  The pictures are small, so you can't see a lot of detail, but because they are action shots, they are super fun and I just couldn't leave them off--you can see hair flying and funny faces--priceless!

In this picture you can kind of see how the pictures look being put in order...if you looked up and down really fast you might be able to see the cups actually spinning.  Okay... not really, but that's kind of the idea.

So if you've counted the pictures, you might have noticed that they aren't adding up to 28.  That's because unless you're looking, you don't see my "secret element" on this page--the spinning wheel.

That blue frame at the top of page two is actually a hole in the page.  See the circular piece at the top?  That's the wheel behind the little frame.  The frame is cut from chipboard to make it sturdier and covered with paper.  Directly behind the hole is a piece of transparency glued to the back of the page.  I put that there so that as the wheel is turned the pictures glued to the wheel wouldn't get caught on the hole.  The journaling block was printed on another transparency and is held onto the front with the same brad that is holding the wheel in place.

Picture #1

Picture #2

The space between pictures... all the pictures are glued on at an angle so when it turns they are upright.

Notice there is a notch at the top of the wheel.  I put notches in between all the pictures so it can be turned a little easier.  All in all there are five pictures on the wheel.  I hooked the wheel on temporarily so I could turn and trace and turn and trace--that's how I figured out where to glue the photos.

Hopefully the explanations are good--this was really a fun technique to use to get a lot of pictures onto this layout.  I'm sure I will need to use it again in the future since I don't know how to delete.