As the year draws to a close, we are grateful for a year filled with new additions, a new look, and new features. We hope that you have loved everything we have created for you! As a finale for the year, we brought back a few fan favorites!
What a terrific year it has been. We can only imagine what next year will bring... Thank you, dear readers, for being here every step of the way!
I have the pleasure of loading the gallery each month, which means I get sneak peeks of all the layouts as they come in. And then I get to spend some time with each project as I post it and edit the materials' lists. But even still, when I pull open the gallery as a whole, my knees swoon, just a bit.
Like every month, there is something in each project that catches my eye. Let's go in order of appearance.
Lisa's canvas: First, I love red polkadots. And tiny ones remind me of my favorite swiss dot dress when I was little. But my favorite part is Lisa's ingenuity in decorating a stamped doily. I would have been tempted to buy an actual doily, which would not have had the same simple glory that Lisa's stamped doily attains.
Aly's layout: Such a brilliant use of cards. I love how some of the circles are names, others photos, other designs. I think the mixture provides such good balance. And helps us to see how eclectic gatherings help tell stories.
Christa's layout: My favorite part of Christa's layout is how she used border punched paper to create shelves for her pictures. This subtle tie in to her subject unifies her story and photos and design. So clever.
Aly's layout: First, the pictures are perfect. I have had three small children and this very same situation, but never thought to bend down and snap a picture of the ornaments on the floor, or the giant grin of the culprit. Times like this I remember how important it is to visit our site often for reminders of all those photos we don't want to miss!! (Such a shameless plug!! teehee!!) Second, did you notice Aly's use of the photo corners? A quiet means of defining the photos as a whole.
Celeste's layout: One of Celeste's greatest strengths is her design strength. She flexed her muscles for us again this month. Notice how everything about her layout is linear: the squares, the even spaces, the white space. And then, there's the photo. Tilted just so. Thereby drawing our eye in. And with tilt, the ninja's eyes become horizontally even with the squares, thereby providing one more bit of balance and symmetry.
Aly's layout: Did you read the journaling? It talks about a moment of quiet. I find most of my quiet holiday moments are spent staring at the lights on my tree. I feel a layout coming on!
Lisa's layout: Aside from the scrapbooking side of things, I might need some of those cookies!! hee hee. Lisa has such a way with her photos. (My favorite might be the kitty next to the elf!!) It's not just the photos she takes, but her angles, her lighting, and the details. Oh, the details.
Christa's layout: First, do you see how unseasonal the colors in this layout are? Not very Christmas-y,but really lovely all the same. And can you spot the triangle? The bottom of visual triangle is the left hand side of the layout (top to bottom). The apex of the triangle is the photo of Jed. This triangle wouldn't work without the tape at the bottom of the page in the lower left hand corner. Cover it up, for just a moment, and evaluate the difference. See? I told you Christa was clever!!
Kelly's book: I love the idea of a page or two representing each year of celebrations. I have made similar birthday books, but never thought to do it for Christmas. This is so very smart. And how fun to look at each year as it grows. Thank you, Kelly, for such a terrific idea!
Keshet's layout: Oh, food shots! What's not to love? I have taken photos of the neighbors' and teachers' treats in the past, but rarely seem to get them on a layout. I love how Keshet's layout show a close-up photo and then one in full packaging. Perfect.
Paula's layout: Paula's photo grouping is just perfect. And did you know that you can have this too? She used a digital photo cluster to put it together. These can be used for paper layouts, too by adding your photos, printing it out, and then trimming the edges. Adding the notation on the bottom of the photos makes it even more purposeful. And the layers on the title? Lovely.
Cheryl's ornament: Only Cheryl could transform a dollar store ugly plaque into this darling little creation.
Cheryl's plate: Or a plate into this? And if you try this at home, be sure to add shadows to the layers so that you can tell who is in front. It's the same as if you were using stickers. One on top, one below.
Francine's layout: The title is terrific and tell so much of the story. Good titles are so effective. I have been keeping track of the books we have checked out of the library on Pinterest and I know that a layout like this will be a perfect capture of our visual list! Something I love about Francine's layout is how the title is big and bold, and the flourish is big and bold, and the photos are just so tiny.
Lisa's layout: I love this one for its content. Have you a similar book? A place where you keep all your ideas together? Have you thought to photograph it and add it to your scrapbook? These items that make up our world are so fleeting. And yet, so basic for us. Perhaps you could look around your life and see if there's something you do often that hasn't yet made your scrapbooks!
Lisa's layout: Did you notice the texture of the blue ribbon beneath the photo? and how the ribbon isn't completely adhered, thus providing even more texture? The velvety softness adds to the warm glow of the lights. And again, Lisa's photos are well-composed so that the twinkle lights glow softly.
Marie's layout: The visual triangle on this layout is more like a pyramid, coming up and out of the paper. The stacked layers make the photo rise up and out of the page, catching your eye before anything else. And Marie was right on target in getting down level with the baby to shoot the photo at the appropriate perspective.
Monika's layout: Monika's design is one of my go-to designs. It works seamlessly for horizontal 4x6 photos. I probably have more than 20 layouts with nearly the same design. And, no, that's not lazy, just practical!! Further, did you notice the woodgrain tape? So hip!
Emily's layout: For a layout about a santa collection, Emily's layout is remarkably and delightfully void of santas. Rather, the title is the story and the photo is the evidence. The trees prove the season and the colors lend a cheer. Especially helpful with a black and white photo. And have I mentioned how real Emily's pages seem? And always have a twist of wry humor.
Donna's layout: Donna chose to use two patterned papers as her backdrop, though not in equal proportion. When she added her photographs, she put the narrow photo on the wider pattern, and the wider photo on the narrower strip. This slight adjustment creates flow from the vertical base of the visual triangle (the left hand side of the layout) up and through the triangle to the middle of the page on the right side. With the edge of the landscape photo crossing over onto the patterned paper on the left, the layout becomes cohesive and level.
Amy's layout: This is a wonderful reminder to get our memories on paper even if it means we must wait for the photo. And if you know what size it will be, you can create an whole layout and even place it in the proper album. Who said layouts need photos?
Amy's layout: Being a fontophile and a stickerphile, I have always wanted to create a layout like this, but have never been able to determine how to do it. Now I know who I can ask! I love the boxes and how she hand drew them. And I wish we lived close enough to visit my mom and help her decorate!!
Alexandra's tags: Such a clever way of documenting our homes. Tags relieve the pressure of having a particular number of items and are fun little canvases to decorate. And once we get some snow or put up some lights, I am totally taking Alex's suggestion to document our outside homes.
Thank you for going gallery walking with me. I hope it was helpful to evaluate the little things that make the layouts work so well.
This week you have a chance to recreate Donna's layout. She put together a sketch for you that is also downloadable as a layered template. Enjoy!
Thank you, Donna! From all of us!
School ended for us yesterday. Which means Thursday was spent elbow deep in white chocolate popcorn. Having 16 teacher gifts to put together, I thought it might be easiest to print tags. So I made tags.
In case you need them ...
... you may download them here.
Thank you for stopping by and spending some time with us! We appreciate you and hope you are doing well on your holiday preparations. Next week will be filled with more December Dailies. Can't wait to see you here!
Hi there, it's Celeste sporting a new 'do! Calendars make great gifts for friends and family. This year I put together a printable calendar base for you that you can display in an empty CD case. Please download the file at this link. The file includes blank printable PDFs for each month of 2012. As well, I’ve included digital templates so you can make a calendar like the one I did or use them as a starting point for your own creation. I also created a PNG file of digital stamps for each month. You can use these and create any size calendar you’d like!
For my calendar, I decided to collect some of my favorite quotes and share them with my friends and family. I chose the Quatrefoil #2 Paper Pack and Spring/Summer Labels element pack from our dear friend Crystal Wilkerson. Lucky for me Crystal included 12 different colors in the pack, perfect for my calendar! I simply added paper to the tops of my bases and then a label. Using the font Rockwell, I added my quote on top of the label. Easy peasy!
By creating my calendar digitally, I can print out a slew of them to give to relatives and friends. Here's my calendar in its CD holder. If you wish to display your calendar like I did, you'll need to find an old CD case you no longer need or buy some new empty ones. Follow these directions to create the CD case holder for your calendar. You could also purchase magnetic clips from Staples so that the calendar can hang on the fridge.
I shared my calendar templates with Monika Wright. She created these fabulous 4x6 calendars and is sharing three amazing display options.
January shows the calendar embellished with some baker's twine from The Twinery and attached with cute mini clothespins. February has the calendar inserted into an inexpensive frame, this one from IKEA and embellished with ribbon...and you know you have plenty of ribbon in your stash to change out the ribbon to match each month's featured color! And for March, shop your paper scraps, adhere a bit to the top of the calendar and display on a small easel, this one from the Dollar Tree. In the extra space, jot down any important dates that you don't want to forget.
If you'd like to use these free downloads for your own office space or craft room, Monika has made them available on her blog, and will have the next quarter's calendar downloads available mid-March.
Cheryl Overton made a calendar using the digital template. I love how she used the artisan shapes as spaces for her photos. Her calendar is amazing!
Marnie Flores made a wall calendar incorporating all twelve months onto one poster. She created 12 boxes for photographs from each month of this past year. Marnie created her poster in a 16x20 size for her kitchen, and then had two extra printed in 8x10 as a little Christmas extra for the grandmas!!
If you make a calendar, be sure to share it with us in the Flickr gallery. Happy Holidays!
This month we wanted to celebrate the love and effort that we take decorating our homes for the holidays. No matter what the celebration, it seems there is always room for a little festivity!! (Or a lot, hee hee!!) Sit back, relax, and enjoy peering into our Holiday Homes.
December is here and we are thrilled to announce the return of our daily posting schedule! Much like our summer months, each day will feature a new author and a new topic. Our team is thrilled to inspire your December to be filled with paper crafting, scrapbooking, and photography. So, while the weather outside may be frightful, our site will be delightful...
But, wait, today is Thursday. And you know what that means...
To celebrate the start of December and the holiday season, we're kicking things off with an exciting give.away.day. We know that many of you are working on winter or holiday projects and would love to add to your stash of winter- and holiday-themed products, so...without further ado...we bring you October Afternoon's Holiday Style collection!
If you haven't already clicked on the link or the images above to get a closer look, the Holiday Style line features twelve double-sided patterned papers and a large variety of embellishments certain to add holiday style (get it? :)) to all of your projects. With the mix of patterns and products in this collection you'll have lots of opportunities to document your favorite memories of winters and holidays past and present and will have lots of bits leftover for cards, gift tags, etc.
Here's a layout Vivian created using die cut embellishments from the Flower Sack (clever Vivian cut them in half to stretch them!) as well as Word Stickers and Little Flyers.
An added bonus today: check out today's post on the October Afternoon blog to see the sketch upon which this layout was based.
October Afternoon is really close to having 10,000 followers on Facebook. If you haven't already headed over there to like them, please do so and let them know that you were sent there by Write. Click. Scrapbook. A little birdie told me that there might be a prize or two or more when the magic number appears.
Interested in a chance to win Holiday Style? I thought so. Go ahead and leave a comment on this post telling us what is your holiday style. Comments will remain open through tonight. One lucky number will be posted tomorrow. Please remember to claim your lucky number before Saturday at midnight.
Before you go, we have some sad news. Beth, Melissa, and Marcy are leaving us. I have worked with Beth since 2006 and I can't imagine my scrapbook life not including her. Not one bit. Beth is not only a fantastic designer but also an amazing woman, friend, and mother. Melissa has been with us since we launched. I first noticed her name attached to a layout with tiny footprints. It was love at first sight!! And I carry her camera strap on my camera so I will have an excuse to think of her everyday! And Marcy, my fellow Canadian, is leaving far too soon. Her pages are top notch. We are sad we won't have a chance to get to know her more. But also know that we will see her often. Happily so! We will miss you all and look forward to stalking your blogs to keep up!
That's it! Don't forget to pour over the new gallery, to visit October Afternoon, to return to leave your comment, and to include a heartfelt goodbye to Beth, Melissa, and Marcy. What a day! What a month! December is going to be awesome!
Hi there and welcome to another round of click. Saturday where we give you photo inspiration and three accompanying challenges!I thought that last Saturday's write. challenges were so good that it would be fun to use them for our photo challenge this week!
How does your garden look right now? Is autumn in full swing or do you have snow? Or are you one of the very lucky ones that still have blooms in your flower beds? Take time to document how your garden looks now, and then let's extend it to all year round.
Let me tell you how happy I was to get this bunch from my garden after I had taken my photo tour!
Clearly autumn is in beautiful swing in Amy Sorensen's backyard! Splendid!
Cheryl shares this layout about her Halloween garden!
and Marnie caught a frosty shot of her weeds, which double as her garden.
Common Things
Check your photo files and find photos from this day/week last year and take new ones from this day/week and make a diptych .
[right photo 11.10 | left photo 11.11]
[right photo 11.09.10 | left photo 11.09.11]
And these are from November 9, 2010, and the same day this year! It is so much fun to go back and see how life looked exactly one year ago!
I am doing a gratitude photo project for the month of November (you can see more here!). It is simple: take a photo of something you are thankful for each day!
I am grateful for being able to travel to attend the big craft fair.
I am grateful for our candle lit dinners.
Today I am grateful for light, for my camera, for not caring if I get wet laying in the grass, for seeing things others might miss...
Marnie put her three little things into a layout.
Here are the challenges again:
1. A Garden Story How does your garden look right now? Is autumn in full swing or do you have snow? Or are you one of the very lucky ones that still have blooms in your flower beds? Take time to document how your garden looks all year round.
2. Common Things Check your photo files and find photos from this day/week last year and take new ones from this day/week and make a diptych .
3. 3 Small Things For Which You Are Grateful
We hope that you will join us for these challenges. When you do, please share your photos and layouts in our Flickr group! Have fun snapping!
Welcome to the last day of Making it Easy! I know reading these posts and thinking about your process hasn't been so easy for the last few days but trust me, spending this time now will save you so much time and energy later that it's totally worth it. Paying attention and putting some processes in place will make the actual scrapbooking process more fun and much easier!
I wanted to end this week with a list of ideas on what you could do if you have 15-minutes of free time. Fifteen minutes feels like such a small amount of time that we often don't even bother to work on scrapbooking. But there's actually a long list of things you can do in just fifteen minutes.
And sometimes, you might have a longer period of free time but you don't feel creative at all. Even during those times you can do things that will help you create scrapbooking pages. So here are a list of ideas from me and the write.click.scrapbook team to help use those precious minutes.
Photos
Stories
Design
Supplies
Organization
Inspiration
[cork board above lisa's desk]
[I find pinterest to be an endless source of inspiration. You can find write.click.scrapbook boards right here.]
As you can see there's a long list of things you can do in 15 minutes regardless of whether you're inspired or not. I would love for you to leave comments with more ideas and then I will add them all here and we can all bookmark it so next time we have 15 minutes free, we can use this huge list of possible ideas on how to spend that time effectively.
Thank you so much for joining me this week and I hope that at least some of the information was useful to you. And I wanted to extend a huge thanks to the whole write.click.scrapbook. team; without their support, help and ideas this week would have been impossible.
When Stampin' Up! called to see if we wanted to help them celebrate, we said, Absolutely! Here is a little about their celebration:
Want FREE brand-new, exclusive digital content from Stampin’ Up!? Join us as we celebrate Digital Scrapbooking day with a four-day online event, November 4-7. Access your FREE downloads from MyDigitalStudio.net, after completing a quick survey. Our downloads are compatible with most design software, so tell all your friends!
Be sure to join in! Play along! We did. Here are a few projects we made using Stampin' Up! digi products.
Use the word tree to make a quick easy holiday card.
or some fun home decor!
The graphic elements are a fun touch for a layout, and the neutral tape strips are a perfect addition.
And the brushes that are included are perfect for a quick card.
There is also a sweet holiday minikit that easily prints to make cards. Look at Cheryl's cute one.
Such fun. Please stop by MyDigitalStudio.net to download your freebies and then have fun creating your own layouts, cards, and decor!
The haunting is over, now let the gratitude begin!! In honor of Thanksgiving, we wanted to take a look backwards and remember. This month's gallery is entitled, Remember When. We hope you love it.
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This month's theme can include photos taken a few weeks ago, or many many years ago, or no photo at all.
Chances are your journaling is going to be heartfelt, and perhaps a bit lengthy, but don't make it so, if a few words is all you feel inclined to write. This is a great time to be authentic in retelling your memories.
Did you notice a design element that appears consistently on this month's pages? We saw several of our designers grouping smaller embellishments together. What a terrific and subtle way to help further the story in continuing the theme of collected memories. What do you think?
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Please don't hesitate to leave a comment telling our teammates how much you appreciated their layouts this month! We can't thank you enough for adding us to your very busy schedules. We hope you know how grateful we are that you take the time to come visit.
Once last thing, please take a minute and click over to visit Ali, Renee, and the Magpie Club. They are terrific sponsors and we couldn't keep this place alive without them!!
Happy Halloween! Donna Jannuzzi here, and I'm going to be your host for this week. Starting tomorrow we'll take a look at scrapbooking projects which span an entire year and I am really looking forward to sharing some great projects and ideas with you all. But before we get to that, I thought we'd have a fun day! After all, Halloween is all about fun, right? I've asked the team to gather their favorite Halloween projects to share with you and here is what they sent me:
Aly Dosdall made this cute card using punched circles and machine stitching
She also sent this adorable and creative Halloween Countdown
For a complete supply list as well as instructions for how to make one for yourself, please visit the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog.
Amy Sorensen made an amazing Halloween quilt this year
You can see more details of the quilt, as well as read all about her creative process, at Amy's blog.
Celeste Smith showcases her fabulous, simple style with this layout
Cheryl Overton has several projects to share, first this Halloween house which doubles as a treat box
a set of cards
and last, but certainly not least, Cheryl sent along this banner
If you need an easy and quick Halloween decor project, you can download the images for this banner and make one tonight!
Christa Paustenbaugh made creative use of non-Halloween themed papers to make this cute layout
I recently created a couple of Halloween cards
and a Halloween gift tag
Here is my favorite Halloween layout from last year
Lisa Kisch had several projects to share as well. This layout,
a card made using a classic grid design,
and this treat bag
Monika Wright shared a download with you for these treat toppers
Bonus: the toppers are sized to fit the sandwich and snack-size baggies that most everyone already has at home, no need to go out and purchase special cello bags for this project!
Rounding-up our post for today, Vivian Masket shared this layout
which happens to be a recent favorite of mine. I love it so much that when I first saw it I pinned it to our WCS Pages we love board.
She also shared this Halloween Bouquet
Each flower of the bouquet is made from three punched stars, two big and one small, angled and layered with pop dots and then adhered to a skewer.
I hope you've enjoyed all of the projects the team has shared with you today. Lots of great ideas for last minute Halloween projects, and for scrapbooking tonight's photos of trick or treating.
Tomorrow we'll start our look at scrapbooking your year. See you then!!
