Write. Click. Scrapbook.

give.away.day. featuring ALI EDWARDS

edited to add:

CONGRATULATIONS to Christine Plaxco who said...

Having fun with digi scrappping. It takes me really long to do a page. Enjoy every minute of it.

Christine, please email your contact information to us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com.

If you didn't win, do not dismay. Next Thursday is only days away!

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we interrupt regularly scheduled programming for an important message

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Today is GIVEAWAY DAY

That's right, folks, today is our first giveaway day.

We here at write.click.scrapbook. are pleased to announce that beginning at 9:00 am EST our first giveaway begins.

Today's exciting gift is brought to you by the wonderful, the talented, the gorgeous, Ali Edwards!

Here is what you will receive:

A package of four of Ali Edwards' favorites from her digital collection at Designer Digitals, which includes:
Remember Sentiments Stacks
Loving Life Word Art
You Word Art
Life Text Frames

With this amazing digital package you will be able to create layouts like this:

You have until 8:00 pm PST to leave a comment telling us what you love about digital scrapbooking (if you have tried it) or what scares you most about it (if you haven't)!

Winner will be randomly selected and will receive their gift via email directly from Ali Edwards.

For ideas and inspiration about documenting & celebrating everyday life, visit Ali on her blog: http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com.

Cheap isn't a four letter word

Whew. Day 3 of hosting and I think I'm starting to finally relax and enjoy it :) Don't you like my super clever title today LOL.

Today's post is all about being cheap. Scrapbooking doesn't have to be an expensive hobby! When I started, I remember being pretty shocked at the prices of paper and embellishments. Prices still shock me, actually, the only difference is that I sometimes buy expensive items if I know that I will use them a lot. Being cheap has influenced both my product purchase strategy and my usage strategy (jeez, can you tell I come from a corporate background? Sorry, I've lost my ability to speak like normal people LOL).

Purchasing: my usual strategy is to fill up an online shopping cart with things that I like. I regularly come back to it to add/remove items over a period of a few months. If an item actually stays in my shopping cart for that period, it gets bought. Yes, even though I shop for supplies all the time, I only buy them every few months, it saves on shipping and prevents impulsive purchases that might then sit in my stash unsused. Putting things in my cart takes care of my lust for new and pretty product. Once I've looked at it for a while, it sometimes starts to lose it's appeal, at which point it gets removed from the cart. Obviously, this requires a fair amount of restraint and I don't expect it to work for everyone but it sure works for me :) Thanks to this strategy, I manage to keep my personal stash under control (personal as in non-DT related). Behold my embellishments below. Those are spice containers that are 2" in diameter and about 2" high. Yes, those are ALL my personal embellies, sorted by colour. Aren't they pretty?

Using: Once I bring product home, I always try to make the most of it. I figured if I paid for it, I should be used as much as possible on my pages! Here are a few things that I do or have done to stretch my purchases further:

Most of my layouts feature a border or two (or three). Instead of using a full sheet of paper for the border, I cut out the middle portion to use later (see picture below). I originally used a craft knife to do this but eventually found that it can be done quite easily with my rotary trimmer. You just need to figure out where to start cutting and where to stop!

 

The border was used in the "Catapult" layout from yesteray's post, and a small strip of the middle piece was used to create the scalloped border for that same layout. The remainder of the centre piece got used for the layout below as a picture mat:

 

Of course, I also cut out the middle of this layout's background paper, to use on another page :) One side benefit of cutting out the middle of the background paper is that it removes bulk from your page. If you do this for all your pages, it makes a big difference on the weight of your scrapbook and makes the album a bit easier to handle, especially for little kids!

I'm not sure if you noticed that the chipboard letters used on this layout are the same ones used on the "Catapult" layout. I tend to use the same alphas from a given set until all that's left are the z's and the x's ! I buy alphas in generic colours such as black, white, brown, and red so that I'm not limited by my paper colour choices. Also, can you tell the heart is pop-dotted? I never buy foam dots for this purpose. Instead, I use the inside of chipboard letters (the inside of the P's, B's, etc) or cut up some unused letters to put under my embellishments when I need to pop-dot something. And hey - those gems weren't red when I bought them, I coloured them with a Sharpie :)

One thing that I've realized after scrapping all these years is that while I am really frugal with consummables such as paper and embellishments, I don't mind spending money on tools. I actually think that tools can save you money in the long run because they can help you make the most of the supplies you already own. Some perfect examples are punches and die-cutters. I own three border punches that get used all the time and I just recently bought a Silhouette. These tools help me use up my scrap pile and I expect that I won't need to buy as many alphas and embellishments once I start using my Silhouette more often. I consider my money well spent when it comes to those tools!

Anyway, I hope I 've given you some ideas on how to stretch your supplies further. I can't take credit for any of those tips because I picked them up in forums and magazines over the years but they have really helped me keep my spending under control! If you have some tips to share, please add them in the comment section for all of our readers to see!

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you here tomorrow! I'll be sharing some of my favourite products (I bet you can already guess what some of them are!).

Laziness...sometimes it leads to good things!

 Welcome back everyone! It's Ann posting again as your WCS hostess for the week. Trying to come up with interesting content for the blog has had a few interesting side effects. One of them is that it got me thinking about why I scrap the way I do. My conclusion as of yesterday was this: my scrapping style is heavily influenced by the fact that I'm lazy and cheap. I guess I could make it sound better by saying that I'm efficient and frugal but really...I'm lazy and cheap LOL.

We'll leave the cheap part for another post (tomorrow's, actually) and focus on the lazy part for today. See, my attitude about scrapping is this: why make it harder than it has to be? Why do more work than you have to (unless you want to)? Over time, I've streamlined my scrapping to simplify as many steps as possible. For example:

Photo sizing: I admire those who print custom sized pictures for each of their layouts. I believe doing that can make layouts much more polished and interesting. The thing is...that is way too much work for me! My scrapping instantly got easier the day I decided to scrap mostly 4x6 and 3x3 pictures. Once in a while, I scrap other sizes (usually 2x2 or 5x7) but that's pretty rare. As I take pictures throughout a given month, I edit them in Photoshop to a 4x6 or 3x3 size. I use the Contact Sheet functionality in PS to put two 3x3 pics on a single 4x6 picture and save all my pictures to a folder. Once a month, I send all of the pictures to Costco for printing. When it comes time to create a layout, I already have all my pictures printed and they are all the same size so I don't need to crop them. I use them as is, and that my friends, is why I say I'm lazy. It does get boring sometimes but the pros of my system overweigh the cons...for me. The bonus is that I think this contributes to "my style" :)

Matching of product: I have always been in awe of people who walk around the LSS with their pictures, buying product to match them. Again...I'm sure layouts done that way can be more polished and whatnot, but I really can't be bothered. Besides, I get sidetracked pretty easily in an LSS and I would probably end up coming home with all kinds of product except for the ones that match my layout LOL. In any case, I almost never spend much time matching my products. If I'm using blue on a layout, you can bet there will be several shades of blues and no two shades will be the same. My rationale is...several shades actually make the design more interesting (please don't burst my bubble LOL). See this layout below? The blue from the backgound paper cannot be found in any of the other patterned papers, nor is it the same shade as my son's shirt. And look, my title uses letters that are obviously not the same shade of red (much more apparent in real life than on this picture). Still, it's a pretty good layout, right? I usually just eyeball it. If it's close enough and doesn't make my eyes bleed...it's good enough for me.

 

Matching products, part 2: when I want my layouts to match perfectly, I use kits instead of trying to match everything myself. I buy Basic Grey by the paper packs so I can have all the co-ordinating papers and stickers. Why spend time matching things when it's all done for you? Many of my layouts are done with the same line of products. I used to think that it wasn't very creative but...I got over it LOL. I love how easy it is and how polished layouts look when everything co-ordinates. See this layout below, all done with a single product pack from Webster's Pages. This looks like a lot of work but took me less than an hour to do because all the co-ordinating was done for me (and also because all the embellies are stickers so I just had to peel and stick):

 

Handwritten journaling: early in my scrapping journey, I fell in love with computer journaling. What I didn't love was the time and effort to do it. Having to be next to my computer, finding the right font, making sure that the printed journaling was the right size and shape for my layout, printing it so it would fit on whatever paper I had (usually a piece from my scrap bin)...all that was a lot of work. To avoid this, I tried printing journaling on strips. Yikes. Even worse! Now I had to trim every piece and I could never make them the same width. Finally, I settled on hand journaling because it seemed the easiest way to journal. I wasn't thrilled with my handwriting when I started but it eventually became an an integral part of my layouts, of my style if you will. In the end, I think my layouts are better for it as my handwriting breaks out the very linear nature of my layouts very nicely :)

Generic products: there are people who make the effort to find just the perfect embellishment for their layouts...and then there is me. My embellishments usually fall into one of four categories: hearts, starts, flowers, or circles. Lately, I've added butterflies to that list too. I use embellishments not for decorative purposes but as design props. I position them to help move the eyes through the layouts and I don't care too much what shape they are. On most of my layouts, stars, hearts, or flowers could be used interchangeably without much impact to the final layout. To make things even easier (and this lazy girl LIKES easy), I only have a few types of each shape. Stars are usually American Crafts (I've used almost an entire can - only a few pieces are left), hearts are either Heidi Swapp or American Crafts (another entire can almost gone), flowers are usually just cut out of whatever patterned papers I'm using, etc. The only butterfly I use is one from my Pink Paislee stamp set. Once in a while, I'll use a few buttons to shake things up but by all accounts, stars, flowers, hearts, and circles are staples in my scrapping process. Here are some layouts to illustrate my point (yes, I really DO love those AC stars LOL). Also, look back at yesterday's post and you'll see even more of these stars :)

 

Well, this is getting long so I'd better end here. What I wanted to convey today is this: laziness can be a good thing if it drives you to find better ways of doing something. I really encourage everyone to think about their scrapping process to identify the steps that matter the most and those that matter less. Simplifying the parts that are less important to you leaves more time for the things that you value more. For me, it leaves for time for telling stories but everyone probably puts value on different things, which is the wonderful thing about scrapbooking. There's no right or wrong way to scrap, there's just your way (did I sound a lot like Oprah? I think I did. Sorry).

Thanks for making it thus far. Come back tomorrow for my "I'm cheap and it's been good for my scrapbooking" post ;)

Welcome to the Ann Show :)

Well, not really LOL. However, I do have the honour of being the first weekly hostess at Write.Click.Scrapbook and that's kind of exciting, right? Truth be told, I have major performance anxiety and I spent a lot of time thinking about what topics might be interesting to our blog readers. After a few sleepless nights (well, not entire nights but definitely a few awake wee morning hours), I still have no idea and so I will just post about a few topics dear to my heart hoping that they strike a chord with SOMEONE :)

I don't know about you but I've had a blast reading about the Collective's scrapping journeys so I'm going to start this week off by sharing mine.

Like many others, my first encounter with scrapbooking was through Creative Memories. My husband's aunt was a consultant and she gave me a wedding scrapbook when we got married. That scrapbook was put away shamelessly since I had no idea what to do with it (confession - it's still packed away somewhere and I still haven't scrapped my wedding pictures). When I was pregnant with my first, I was strong armed into going to a CM party at her house and somehow ended up buying the entire starter kit, much do my husband's dismay. It was expensive LOL! Below is the second page I ever scrapped. Notice the triangle under the picture, the crooked deco scissor border with punched circles, and the random stickers (a frog? REALLY? What was I thinking???).

 

A few months later, I walked into Michael's and bought a bunch of cardstock and a paper stack. I honestly thought I was in scrapbooking heaven! Around the same time, I also discovered some online galleries (though I can't remember which ones) and saw that some people used fonts for titles and computer journaling. WOW. Talk about exciting!!! Any font I wanted!!! Neat journaling!!! From that point on, I started to deviate a bit from my white background and stickers layouts, creating pages like this one for a while (yes, at the time I thought those little blue squares were VERY clever):

 

I scrapped that way until 2005 when a few events set me on a whole new path. First, I bought a book called Clean and Simple Scrapbooking by Cathy Zielske. I had never read anything like it before and I couldn't put it down. I fell in love with her style, with her way of telling stories, and decided I wanted to scrap like her. I thought that it would be easier to scraplift her in digital format so I taught myself to use Photoshop and started scrapping digitally. Around the same time, I joined a (now defunct) online community where I met some friends who encouraged me to submit a few layouts. They were simple scrappers so Simple Scrapbooks was the first magazine to receive my submissions. As it turns out, my very first submission which also was my very first digital layout, was requested for the online Inspiration gallery. That was another WOW moment (duuuude, I got paid for a layout!!!!). Sadly, I cannot find that layout to show you as it's lost in one of the many hard drives we own, but it holds a very special place in my heart.

For the next couple of years, I honed my design skills via Cathy's column in Simple Scrapbooks and scrapped mostly 8.5 x 11 pages with single pictures and cardstock. I loved that style of pages and to this day still love the layouts I created then:

 

In 2008 however, I looked at my pile of completed layouts and was completely overwhelmed. I am a pretty fast scrapper and had scrapped A LOT OF LAYOUTS in those single photo years. That wasn't a bad thing in itself but I was trying to declutter and simplify my life. I wanted to scrap MORE pictures with fewer layouts. My solution? Switching to 12 x 12 pages. When I did that, I found that cardstock looked really plain on a 12x12 page (whereas I loved the crisp look of it on 8.5x11 pages) so I started to use the patterned papers I had thus far considered too pretty to use. Thus, my affair with patterned paper began :) To this day, this is the style of pages that I create...multiple picture layouts heavy on patterned papers and fairly light on embellishments:

 

 

These layouts represent my current style, one that I'm really comfortable with. I have no doubt that my scrapping journey isn't complete and that my style is ever evolving...that's what keeps this hobby fresh and exciting for me :)

Well, I hope I haven't bored you to tears and that you'll come back tomorrow. I've planned a post called "I'm lazy and it's been good for my scrapbooking". I kid you not :)

Finding What's Necessary

quote selection and photography by Rebecca Cooper

It All Started at Provo Craft Warehouse

When I was in college I worked part-time at the Provo Craft Warehouse, pulling and packing orders for craft stores around the country. (My claim to fame was pulling product for more orders in one four hour shift than any other employee ever had! They even bought me an ice cream cake to celebrate. To this day, it remains one of my proudest achievements…) Anyway, way back then (1997), the scrapbooking section only took up a tiny portion of the warehouse and consisted of die cuts, letter stickers, and a few basic paper packs. A couple of my sisters had started scrapbooking by then, and I couldn’t believe how much money they “wasted” on this hobby. In fact, after I got married in 1999 I informed my new sisters-in-law that I would never, ever scrapbook. 

Four years later I was living in Memphis, TN, thousands of miles away from my family, and pregnant with monoamniotic twins, which is a rare and extremely high risk situation. (Twins that share an amniotic sac = umbilical cords get tied in knots which can cause a sudden loss of blood to one or both fetuses) Long story short, I found out I would be spending seven weeks in the hospital prior to giving birth so that the babies could be monitored every few hours. Seven weeks in the hospital! Luckily, I love to read (which means I can’t go more than a day or two between books), but even I don’t want to sit around reading all day every day. 

So my sisters and my mom sent me some scrapbooking supplies and I found the box that held my wedding pictures and the pictures I had of my oldest son Jack, who was two at the time. I checked into the hospital with my pillow, clothes (I refused to wear a hospital gown and made the most hilarious pair of striped maternity jammies you’ve ever seen), a bunch of books, a box of mix tapes I’d made, and my scrapbooking supplies: some cardstock and patterned paper, two pens, ten packs of letter stickers, glue sticks, and deco scissors of every variety. And I started slapping pages together every morning while I waited for my unbearably awful breakfast and watched reruns of Dawson’s Creek (I didn't get very many channels at the hospital). 

This is not my first page, but it is the first one I remember feeling really proud of. I designed that cake and cut that paper frosting out all by myself!

So after the babies and I made it home safe and sound from the hospital, I saw that a scrapbook store had opened up right next to Walmart, where it felt like I was spending half my life buying diapers. I moseyed on in, not sure whether I was even planning to keep scrapbooking. And that’s when I found Cathy Zielske’s first book, Clean and Simple Scrapbooking. I remember dragging my husband back to the store to show it to him, telling him this is what I wanted to be doing.

So I started scraplifting Cathy, and that’s when I started really loving this hobby. 

I scraplifted for a while, until I felt like I had a good idea of the style I most enjoyed. I also realized what I liked most was keeping track of and writing down the stories of my family’s life. I used to start with pictures that I thought needed to be down on a page. Now I almost never begin a page until I know what story I want to tell with the pictures I have.

And with the addition of our fourth son last summer, the stories (and pictures) just keep coming. I can't tell you how much fun it is to have baby pictures to scrapbook again!

Evolution.

Happy Saturday!  It's Tina here, enjoying a lovely afternoon, browsing through my layouts and really, really enjoying it. I must say, it's not that often that I actually pull out my albums and look through them. They're on a shelf in my garage/scrap studio/spider haven, and rarely get looked through (that's about to change - more on that in a bit).

My paper crafting days started in 1995 or so at a Stampin' Up! demonstration. I remained a faithful card-maker for years and had amassed a large collection of stamp sets, and even became a SU! demonstrator for a while. But I never really got into the scrapbooking craze. That was about to change.

I started scrapping in late 2002/early 2003 during the adoption of our son, Aidan, from Haiti. We spent time with him in Haiti during the process and took lots of pictures of him, and I started scrapbooking as a way to stay close to him when we couldn't be together, and as a way to keep myself from going crazy during the 11-month adoption journey toward bringing him home. Here's the very first page I ever scrapped, and the cover of the first album I made. I was an 8.5 x 11 girl from the very beginning:

At the time, my scrap supply consisted of Stampin' Up! stamps (which I used to create my background paper and title), eyelets, and SU! paper and a few other things I picked up at my local Michael's.

For me, vellum, torn paper and eyelets were big back then. 

It was during this time that my new love of scrapbooking added fuel to my love of photography. I had joined 2 Peas and saw Tara Whitney's work and things just grew from there. As a scrapper who had always kept my photos front-and-center, I was inspired to take better photos for my family and for my pages, and to learn everything I could about photography. I got my first digital SLR in early 2004. Two more digital SLRs, a nice collection of lenses, my own photography business, and eight Simple cover photos later, my passion for photography is still stronger than ever.

When we adopted our second child, Makena, and as I scrapped even more (now with lots of pink!), I noticed my simple, photo-focused style was mostly still intact, but that my collection of scrapping supplies now required the conversion of our two-car garage into a scrapbooking studio and the installation of a whole wall of IKEA cabinets.

This layout above was the first time I ever tried sewing on a layout.

This layout marked the beginning of my use of drawn lines on my pages, which I still do all. the. time.

I guess I've always been a simple and easy scrapper and that's why Simple Scrapbooks magazine was such a huge part of my scrapbooking. And because now that I have three kids and even less free time on our hands, I have stuck with a less-is-more approach, and that same philosophy still rings true.

  

Now, about those 12 or so binders and albums full of layouts. I've been selfish. I have kept them safe, away from grubby and not-so-gentle hands, not wanting any of my pages bent or torn. And it's only been within the last few weeks that I realized that even though the process of scrapbooking has been for me, the pages I make are really for them - my three precious kiddos and my handsome hubby. So tonight we're going to look through them, touch them, talk about them and laugh and giggle about funny faces and silly stories. A new phase in my enjoyment of the pages I create. 

I've really been enjoying these last few days seeing how everyone's pages have evolved, both here and on our Flickr group. If you get the chance, I'd love to see yours, too!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Makings of a 21st Century Scrapbooker

Oh, has it been fun for me to read all these scrapbooking histories—what a powerful and lasting hobby this is, purple-handled scissors and all : )

My own personal history of scrapbooking is a little different. In early childhood, I appear to have been a taper-of-things-into-highly-acidic-albums, but only if it didn't interfere with my obsession with sticker albums. Here is a sample page from the highly acidic "Scrap Book" I have in my possession:

I won a GIANT Easter basket for that coloring contest victory. I remember it well. It may have been the reason for my lifelong love of entering contests—the potential for winning copious amounts of chocolate. Mrs. Roach was my first grade teacher, and I've always loved saving birthday party invitations, for whatever reason. The monkey one is from a friend I still keep up with on Facebook! And that Hello Kitty sure looks good after all these years. She hasn't changed at all. 

I don't have any of my sticker books—I'm hoping they're tucked away somewhere in my parents' basement, because they were... OK, are... prized possessions. Did you keep sticker books? Trade for stickers you really, really wanted out of your friends' sticker books? Carefully arrange and rearrange your stickers while other children were riding bicycles? Hee hee hee.

Next came my Magnetic Photo Album With Handy Plastic Cover Sheet Period. It lasted a long time—from early childhood to March 1995, to be oddly specific—I must have read somewhere that magnetic photo albums were bad news that month, so I immediately stopped running from the KMart photo counter to home to put my newest photos in albums that minute. I can tell this is when it happened because the last photos are from a ghost town named Castle, in Montana—a place Matt and I visited when I came to visit my new home just before I graduated from college. It's a pity, kind of, because I have a lot of photo envelopes stored in photo boxes that don't get enjoyed nearly enough.

Thankfully I've let most of that guilt go these days, and dig through those boxes for what I need when the mood strikes to revisit 1995-2003. In that huge amount of photo albums pre-dating 1995 is my first foray into scrapbooking, sort of. My friend Nancy and I took our photos to the beach in the summer of 1989 on her family vacation, and armed with white office labels, a blue ballpoint pen, and scissors to cut random friends out of pictures for emphasis, I went to town creating a fully-captioned magnetic page photo album of my life to that point. (Cut-out friends not pictured to protect their dignity identity.)

 

Whoo boy, those are some nice looking photos of me. And check out that dress for the 8th grade dance. What a sharp pink cummerbund I had! Incidentally, I still keep up with my date from that evening on Facebook as well. He wore a matching pink sweater that night : ) And, I'm proud of early indications that I could care less about chronology.

While all my friends were apparently running around with their deco scissors cutting their beloved family members into Easter eggs and whatnot in the 1990s, I was not scrapbooking. I knew that I wanted to do something with all the photos and ephemera (I have a LOT of ephemera) but I didn't know what. There was a lot of hand-wringing during this period—what to do, what to do? I picked up a copy of Memory Makers in 1997 and decided that wasn't what I wanted to do, but I didn't have any other ideas so I just kept busy taking pictures and putting them carefully in photo boxes for later. In the meantime, I made cards. Lots and lots and lots of cards. Many with deco scissors, many with rubber stamps, and many more with punches. And on my best days, all three : )

Sadly, I cannot find my classic doozy of a Christmas card—the first one I ever mass-produced and sent out. Let's just say I really, really, really loved that little snowflake punch—even more than I did on these examples. I think it's packed away with Christmas things, though, so it will have to stay in the vault for now. My story continues similarly to many here—after a lifetime of searching aimlessly, I found my creative answers in Simple Scrapbooks. First from Stacy's book of the same name, and then from the magazine. (A magazine!! Every other month!!) I didn't start scrapbooking right away—I pored over every detail in every issue and also over at Two Peas, where my life was literally changed forever with creative possibility. Well into the 21st century, I made four albums to give away to my parents, Matt's parents, and my sisters. Topic? New baby Maddie. Of course.

These days, I scrapbook all sorts of topics. Sometimes I scrapbook a lot, and sometimes I go for weeks—or even months—without so much as picking up a piece of patterned paper. But when I do, I am always so excited about what I've made, even if it doesn't always include punches or deco scissors. : )

Thanks for sharing your personal scrapbooking histories over at the Flickr Group : )

I'll see your deco scissors and raise you Mrs. Grossman's stickers.

When I first heard the word scrapbook as a verb, it was 1993 and I was living with a family in Walla Walla, Washington (say that 5 times fast!) while student teaching. The husband was a Master Photographer and would host these very progressive Creative Memories "Shoebox to Showcase" workshops in their home. He offered me a free spot in one, and so as not to seem ungrateful, I accepted.

I was more impressed than I expected to be. The woman who conducted the workshop was very creative and did some layouts that would be considered amazing for the early part of the scrapbooking era.  I'll never forget one that included a paper-pieced quilt with alternating photos and cardstock, stickers used to create fabric patterns, hand-drawn stitching, etc. 

I bought an album (minus the spine, since that attractive feature would have consumed my lunch money for the week), a pack of cardstock, a couple of Pigma pens, and an assortment of stickers. That summer after student teaching, I dove in. 

This was the second page I made. Do I even need to mention how proud I was of that life preserver or how long it took to meticulously cut out the rope?

By the way, that was the second of only seven pages I made before I decided this hobby took way too much time and was going to cost way too much money. (Ha! If only it were still that cheap.)

Four years later, I got married. Guess what I received as a shower gift? Yep, a Creative Memories wedding album. Great. Now I was obligated to make an entire scrapbook. Well, at least the pages were pre-designed with titles, journaling lines and decorative elements so that I wasn't facing a blank canvas each time. 

Guess what, though? I actually enjoyed it. By that time, Michaels had a few scrapbooking items, and I even found some wedding-themed ones. Who knew?

Here's a spread of our time in Hawaii. Mrs. Grossman would have clapped her hands with glee.

Something struck me last night while looking back at that album. It's filled with tons of handwritten journaling. I am so very thankful that the instructor at that CM workshop was a heavy journaler and so I assumed that's what was expected. I may laugh at my design choices, but I sigh contentedly when I see my newlywed thoughts captured while they were fresh.

Shortly after I finished our wedding album, the first LSS in Spokane opened. I'm pretty sure I browsed with my mouth hanging open. I purchased a Cropper Hopper cart to hold my burgeoning supplies and continued to make pages here and there to document our second year of marriage. Events only, of course.

I was so proud of this one. Such stunning title work, don't you think? And my use of stencils to shape the photo into a bear and create the tree border? So clever. Don't overlook the cut-out photo that shows my husband's foot perched on... the air? Apparently that was before I had learned about grounding my elements.

Then in 2001, I had a baby. A few months later, I discovered a brand new magazine called Simple Scrapbooks. I believe it was the second issue that had an article about albums documenting baby's first year, and I excitedly chose my favorite "formula" and adapted it. I went out and bought all the supplies at once, choosing different coordinating cardstock and patterned paper for each two-page spread. It was the first time I had used something other than white filler cardstock to make pages. I printed my journaling on vellum and attached each block with eyelets. Thrilling!

The last page in the album is of my son's first birthday. Did you go beyond tearing edges and actually rip paper into shapes, too?

At this point, I was pretty much hooked. I continued to make pages, and then when I discovered Two Peas in a Bucket in 2003, even more of the scrapbooking world opened up to me. Later that year, I read something somewhere about sending in pages to get published, so I thought I'd try it. The very first page I submitted got picked up by Ivy Cottage Creations (now Scrapbook Trends). 

Goodness, that was so easy! I needed someone to tell me that it really wasn't, and that after picking up the first two projects I ever had published, that magazine would never request my work again! ;)

I went through a period of thinking I needed to fill up all 144 square inches of my pages. That, my friends, was time consuming.

When it came down to it, my favorite pages were usually the simplest ones. Pages that actually left a bit of white space.

I finally reached a point about two years ago when I decided to stop asking the question, "How would [insert name of well-known scrapbooker] handle this element/photo/journaling/title/etc." I was finally at peace with the fact that it didn't matter. Amazingly enough, scrapbooking started to feel a lot more fun and a lot less like work.  

(I had to throw in this one of my shirtless husband--photo circa 1993--because no magazine is ever going to publish it.  Plus, today's our 12th anniversary.  Indulge me.)

I scrapbook a variety of sizes and orientations, and I'm even back to frequently using white as my background. I may use the words "caught up" when paying bills, but never in reference to my scrapbook pages. I enjoy the process as much as the finished page, even if it takes me three hours to do a "simple" layout. And while there are exceptions, journaling the stories—usually in my own hand—is still central to what I create.

I've often thought I need to look up the Huie family in Walla Walla and say thank you for inviting me to get my photos out of the shoebox. I'm sure they'd be surprised to see they went from there to here. I know I am.

My turn to reminisce

Wow—I am loving seeing everyone's pages—past and present. So fun! I must admit, it has been rather a hoot looking back through some of my old albums and choosing a few layouts to share with you. Like several others on our team, I started scrapbooking after attending a Creative Memories party thrown by my neighbor. I had just recently had my third child and had stopped working part time designing stained glass windows due to her medical needs. Scrapbooking looked like a fun way to keep my creative juices flowing.

Here are a couple of my early layouts:

  

 

Gotta love my use of Pigma micron pens in the first page and especially all those photos cut into 'eggs' in the second. And look how I wove the basket!

 

Here is the first layout I had published. Kim McCrary came by my house and chose it for an article she was doing in Creating Keepsakes. I had never so much as glanced at a scrapbook magazine at this point, but of course, I had to buy this issue because it had my layout in it :) On the reverse side of the magazine page with my layout was the first ever call for entries to the CK Hall of Fame. On a whim, I entered. And won. After that, scrapbook magazines became a big part of my life.

 

Here are some of my layouts form the paper tearing era. Note the Becky Higgins-inspired lettering!

 

Eventually, I  got into more of my own groove...

  

Then, while working on Beautiful Basics for Simple, I made a rather sudden switch to 81/2 x 11 pages. This really helped me settle in to a more consistent scrapbooking style.

And I've stuck with that. It suits me best. Here is my most recent.

Well, thanks for letting me share a little of my own scrapbook journey with you :) Wherever you are on this road, I wish you many happy memories to make and share!