Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Getting down to basics: DESIGN

Hey everyone! I'm back and I missed you. I'm using the word "Design" in the title loosely because what I really mean to say is, "Just some stuff that I do a lot on my pages to make it look real nice". But "Design" just looked better.

You will see in the following examples that a lot of my pages fall into several of the categories that I'm going to briefly touch on. Creating a layout shouldn't feel like inventing the wheel each time you do it. It's all about finding the things you like. And doing them again and again. And these are some of the things I do over and over and over...

Grids: or as I like to call it- I really dig squares.

(Elements lifted from Kelly Purkey and Paige Evans)

(Sketch by Cathy Zielske)

I love using grids and not just the square variety. I like using circles too:

Design side-note: I used eight photos of my daughter to reinforce the number eight. And if that wasn't enough, I used the number in place of the "g" in the title. Also notice how the page is basically divided into thirds, which brings us to the next category...

The magic of thirds: or as I like to call it-How Charlie came about.

An example of dividing a page into thirds in the simplest form. But there are other variations.

The horizontal version.

And even an elemental version:

There are three different parts in each row along with three speech bubbles with three kids in each photo. I really like the number three. Can you tell? 

White space: or as I like to call it- A place where my eyes can rest a little...ah...

Design side-note: the journaling is right justified so it makes you look down to the title {3:4}, then to the photo, and then down to the text. I'm sure there's a more technical term for it, maybe?

Design side note: sometimes a small picture can make a BIG impact.

One more example:

Design side-note: sometimes a small picture with a big element can make a BIG impact too.

:)

I must say, this was hard for me to write about because 1. I didn't want to come off as if to say "Scraplikeme scraplikeme scraplikeme!" and 2.  being a simple scrapper, you probably do most if not all of these things already and 3. if I planned properly, I would've used examples from the wonderfully talented collective at WCS to give you different variations for each topic. (There's three again. Three reasons. I have issues, I know.)

If you're still with me tomorrow, I'm going to write a little bit about inspiration and where I find it.

and the giveaway goes to....

We can't thank you enough for sharing your ideas, your support, your prayers, and your money to help so many in need—it was inspiring to read through your comments and know that so much care exists! The need never ends, that's for sure...

A special congratulations to commenter #50:

 

who just happens to be Kristina:

who needs to email writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com right away so that we may put your collection of Japanese goodies in the mail! For everyone else who might be intrigued by Japanese crafty things, be sure to check here, here, and here so that you may ooh and ahh. And don't forget to support JetPens.com for all your writing needs—there's nothing so satisfying as a Japanese pen ☺

Stay tuned—Moon will right back!

give.away.day. JAPAN RELIEF

WCS and JetPens.com, a premier supplier of Japanese writing instruments, office supplies, and art products, are teaming up to sponsor our special give.away.day. today. No doubt the images of devastation from the earthquake, tsunami, and resulting nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011 have reached you; images that can hardly be comprehended as Japanese citizens and volunteers throughout the world struggle to assist a country in ruins. Scrapbookers and paper crafters share a special kinship with so many Japanese citizens, who also love and appreciate all things creative and crafty—in honor of this, we're offering a special collection of Japanese scrapbooking and craft products sure to inspire one of you:

One fortunate recipient will receive items straight from Japan: black and color journaling pens, paper balloons to decorate your creative space, washi tape, a rubber "photos" stamp, instant film sticky notes and pretty pink polka-dotted paper, milk label tags, a Scrapaholics mini-album and a Scrapaholics idea book.

What do we ask of you in return?

While not a requirement to participate in today's giveaway, consider what monetary amount you are able to give away today and give it—even if you can only afford $5. Find a favorite charity supporting relief work in Japan and make a donation while it's on your mind. Lily Kim of JetPens.com recommends New Hope, a church network combining forces in Japan to achieve measurable, positive results in aiding local populations; you might also consider the American Red Cross, or Americares. An extensive list of agencies requesting assistance is available here; Cafe Press has also organized an enormous collection of original designs to benefit Japan—check it out here.

If you make a donation, you are under no obligation to share the details here; we simply want to end the day knowing our Write.Click.Scrapbook. family has done its part to alleviate a sliver of hardship in the world. Instead, give us your best tip for encouraging a sense of citizenship in the world, or how you talk to your children about scary news, or just leave a comment to say hello.

As usual, comments will remain open until 8:00 pm PST and one lucky number will be chosen at random and posted tomorrow. Please remember it is your responsibility to claim your lucky number by emailing us at writelickscrapbook at gmail dot com before midnight Saturday!

The teams at JetPens.com and Write.Click.Scrapbook. thank you! (ありがとう)

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edited to add... Since we planned this giveaway, we've experienced new tragedies in our own back yards here in the U.S. when tornados ripped through southern states on April 27 causing tremendous destruction... and floods threaten hundreds of thousands of acres of land right this minute. Help where you can; if you're able to fill a need, we thank you.

Getting down to the basics: JOURNALING

When I started scrapping six years ago, I made the mistake of showing my sister and brother-in-law my first pages I had created. After reading some of the journaling, I overheard him tell my sister that my pages were "cheesy".

CHEESY?!

Had I not been holding my baby girl, I think I would've kicked him in the groin. And I am not a violent person by any means. After the initial hurt wore off, it made me realize two things:

1. My journaling was a bit on the cheesy side and 2. it helped me find my voice.

Back then, I wasn't writing from my heart (or my completely warped mind). I was writing for my eighth grade English teacher. And that, my fellow scrappers, did not work.

So I ask you these questions: what are your strengths when it comes to journaling? What is your voice? What does it sound like? Is it sentimental or sarcastic? Is it eloquent or succinct? Is it sweet or dry? Is it all of the above? Whatever it is, as long as you write for yourself, you can't go wrong.

And hopefully these journaling prompts will help get your creative juices flowing.

Conversations:

This was a real conversation but who's to say you can't make it up too?

and then inside of the card:

Remember photo tip #3 from yesterday and how you shouldn't delete any photos? These were in my "Never going to proof file" and now look. :)

The great thing about babies other than the fact they're squishy is that they don't talk. So I made stuff up all the time when Charlie was a baby.

Double Duty: if any of you twitter or make status updates to your Facebook wall then the hard parts are already done for you.

At the end of the year, Facebook has an application where you can print off all your status updates you've made throughout the year. So easy...

Tell a story in a fairytale fashion:

I know this has been covered in journaling books in the past but I just wanted you all to see this layout. It's one of my favorites. I especially like the "The wife was right" part. :D

Observations: kids do some wonky things.

Your occupation: I am a SAHM to three. It's a job I can never quit or retire from. It's a job where you get no sick days or vacations. And don't even get me started on the pay...

Use art instead of words:

You could also cut up your children's artworks and make a collage out of them.

Milestones: and I don't mean just the big ones like the examples I'm going to show you. I'm talking about the ones like, when will my children be old enough to do their own laundry? When did they start bathing themselves? When did they stop holding my hand? When will the magical healing powers of kisses stop working? I could think about this topic for days. It's a big one for me.

Your dreams and prayers:

Well, I hope these journaling prompts gets some of you scrapping. Like today.

:)

Getting down to the basics: PHOTOS

Photographs. To me photographs are the heart of a layout. Eh...I take that back. Journaling can sometimes be the heart of a layout too. I guess what I'm trying to say is that they're both important but I'm going to talk a little about photographs first because I'm the host.

Neener. :)

Let's dive in, shall we?

I love taking pictures. But I don't love lugging my huge camera around the house waiting for one of my children to do something really cute or funny. Sometimes they need a little coaxing, and when I say coaxing, I mean bribe them with candy. :)

But sometimes candy doesn't even work...so you learn to work around it:

I was trying to "coax" my then four year old daughter, Maddie, to look at me. She wasn't having it but after I saw this photo, it gave me the idea for the layout, Funk. She's almost ten now and she  pretty much has the same reaction every time I pull out my camera.

Photo tip 1: You can still take a photo even if your model is uncooperative.

Here's another example of just that:

I thought, Man, why is he such a hater? And then the layout soon followed:

Photo tip 2: If you can plan ahead, be ready with your camera:

My husband and Charlie often nap together on the weekends and I usually go in to wake them up after two hours. Charlie usually ends up upside down or perpendicular from where is starts his nap but on this particular day, he fell asleep (and woke up) peacefully in Daddy's arms. Aw...

This ended up on WCS's  "Lift a Reader" gallery back in May of last year.

Photo tip #3: Take a lot of photos and never delete any of them.

I took a total of 32 shots and only ended up using seven for this layout. It only took about two minutes for Charlie to drop his truck on my foot and then he was done. A small price to pay, if you ask me.

Photo tip #4: Use mirrors to put yourself in the your stories.

These are just two examples from my pregnancy mini album I made for Charlie. Oh man, I was seriously huge, hence the no-face in either pic. :)

Photo tip #5: Don't let bad weather stop you from snapping away.

Layout in progress titled: Thing 1 & Thing 2

Thanks for joining me today and please feel free to ask me any questions by leaving a comment. I will make sure to answer them to the best of my knowledge (which isn't a lot, just to warn ya.)

See you tomorrow!

Getting down to the basics-simple style

Hey everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day. I know I did. My husband took our three kids and left me alone for most of the day. Kind of ironic, don't ya think? Considering they're the reason I'm a mother in the first place...

Moving on.

When I asked my husband what I should post about this week, he said to post about things I know and am sort of good at like taking pictures, writing stories about said pictures, putting them all together on paper and making it look nice. So there you have it folks. Tomorrow I will be talking about photos and how I draw inspiration from them. Wednesday will be about telling your story. Thursday will be GIVE AWAY DAY, which you won't want to miss. Friday will be a bit on design and Saturday will be about inspiration (this is, if you're still around and haven't completely gotten bored of me).

Before we get started here are a couple of things you should know about me:
1. I don't take myself too seriously and you shouldn't either.
2. I'm an everyday scrapper and not so much an event scrapper.
3. I poke fun of myself and my kids. This does not mean I don't love them, because I really, really do.
4. If you don't enjoy your week with me, you can blame my husband. It will be totally his fault.
:)
5. I like to use smiley faces.

Here's just a small sampling of what you will see this week:

So if you have time, introduce yourself and tell me what your scrapping style is and what keeps you from scrapping more than you'd like. My biggest quandary is that my biggest source of inspiration are these three little people I live with. Unfortunately, it's these same little people who suck all the "free" time and energy I have left in the day to scrap.

See you all tomorrow!

Happy Mother's Day!

photo from the collection of Elizabeth Dillow

WCS/Ella Spring Cross-Training Day 12

  Bonjour!  This is Keshet Starr, back again for another round of Ella Publishing's Spring Training!  So far, we've discussed the wonders of hidden journaling and photobooths.  Today, we're going to tackle a scrapbooking classic: paper piecing.

Paper piecing, if you aren't familiar with it, is the art of creating images out of paper (or cardstock, or anything else).  By using a few basic shaped punches and a stack of cardstock and patterned paper scraps, you'd be amazed at how many critters and other images you can create!

Today, I have three fun examples of paper piecing to share with  you!

First up is this adorable card made by my Ella friend, Brenda Johnston:

I love Brenda's owl--he has so much personality and expression in his little eyes.

While this owl may look like an expensive embellishment, Brenda actually created it out of a series of punched paper pieces.

Here's a look at Brenda's process:

Combine all of these little bits and pieces, and you have the adorable owl above!

 

Another Ella pal, Monika Wright, also dished up some paper piecing goodness:

Here's what Monika had to say about her layout:

I made my paper piecing layout, sans photo. Rare for me. It just seemed fitting since I was doing a little scrapping DIY {creating a house shape} so I went all the way with that theme! The square is a chipboard piece covered in patterned paper. The sun is actually a Christmas star shape that I trimmed to look more like a sun. The flower leaves are two halves trimmed from a heart punched shape and the roof is a piece of corrugated cardboard from product packaging.

I love how Monika's little paper pieced house adds so much homespun charm to the layout--so simple and yet so charming!

For my paper piecing layout, I decided to try a very simple approach to paper piecing.

The little cookie in the bottom left of my layout is just a circle handcut from kraft paper and some punctuation marks from a tan pack of thickers!  It's oh-so-easy, and adds some fun charm to the layout.

YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT!

In honor of Ella's Spring Training, we're offering special sales on Ella ebooks each day!

Today's book just happens to be one of my all-time favorite ebooks--how's that for a coicidence!

This book teaches you how to use eight--yup, only eight--products to create four layouts.

Hop on over to Ella Publishing and use the code SPREIGHT to save $1 on Eight is Enough, by April Foster and Studio Calico!

Enjoy your weekend and have some fun scrappy time!

WCS/Ella Spring Cross-Training Day 11

  Hello again!  Hope you're enjoying this week and getting lots of scrappy "exercise" done!

Yesterday, we discussed the deep, dark secrets of hidden journaling.  Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite things--and a huge gift to us scrapbookers!  What is this, you may ask?  Why, photobooths!

There's something so classic about a photobooth. Whether it's black and white or in color, one person alone or twelve squashed together, pleasant smiles or disgusting faces, photobooths are so much fun!  Today, I'm going to show you a few ways to use photobooths on your pages.  Some of them actually came from photobooths, and others are a bit more tricky!

My Ella friend Jennifer Larson created a fun, whimsical layout with photobooth images:

Here's what Jennifer had to say about her layout:

I had these goofy mustaches, so I passed them around and took some photos. I resized them to fit in these GCD photo booth chipboards. I trimmed the photos, adhered them to the back of the chipboard, then added a piece of paper to the back so they'd stay put and adhered them to the page. Since it was a comical experience, the comedic photo booth shots worked well for it!

I love that Jennifer used chipboard to create these photobooth strips--she totally could have fooled me!

 

Another Ella friend of mine, Valerie Mangan, also took a stab at this challenge:

I love the funny faces in the photos, and the way Valerie's journaling puts it right into context!  Photobooths can be a wonderful day to focus on the everyday funny aspects of life.

Here's Valerie's description of her process:

There are so many fun and easy ways to achieve the look of photo booth photos. My favorite by far is the Pocket Booth app for iPhone. For only 99 cents you get amazing vintage looking results that are very easy to upload to a photo editing program for printing. So much crafty potential with these fun photo strips! I love the strong vertical element they add to my page.

Another sneeaky photobooth on here!  Reason #455645666 why I need an iphone (now someone just needs to convince my husband....)

Finally, I made my own effort at a photobooth layout:

For this layout, I used good old fashioned cardstock to create a "photobooth" out of two photos I had on hand. Repeating the same image with the same background helps create a photobooth effect.

So there you have it!  Three photobooth layouts, and none of them actually from photobooths!  Go figure:)

A POST WORKOUT TREAT!

Today there's a special sale over at Ella Publishing for this ebook. This book will help you tear through a year's worth of memories, and sum up your year in your scrapbooks!

Use the code LIFEINSPRG to save $1 on Year in the Life by the Write. Click. Scrapbook team!

Here's hoping you find yourself at a photobooth sometime soon:) And don't forget to stop by Ella Publishing for some spring training fun!

and the giveaway goes to . . .

Such fun reading about your treasures! Letters from loved ones, jr high class notes, tickets, knickknacks--all the things that mattered enough to keep them. Perhaps a photo and a scrapbook page is waiting to be taken and made!!

Thank you to My Little Shoebox for the generosity in providing such a terrific giveaway. We wish you all could have a box as their products are truly such fun.

Kimberly Ann, congratulations! Will you please email your mailing address to us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com so that we might get your goodies in the mail?

Don't go far, Keshet is back soon with more scrapbooking exercises to help you get your scrapbooks in shape!