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Teacher Appreciation Week-Photo Tips

Hey there, I am happy to be posting about some photo tips for capturing your child's relationship with his or her teacher. I was a teacher before I had my sweet children, so I have plenty of experience both as the teacher and the parent.

First, and foremost, make sure that you ask or let your child's teacher know that you are going to be taking some pictures. They expect that you are going to want to capture some of your child's school experience, but it's always nice just to make sure.

• If you are looking to get some candid, action shots, do your best to do so during a classroom party or another time that the teacher is expecting parents. Try turning off your flash so it's not going off and disturbing the activities.
• If you want some posed shots, try emailing the teacher and asking when would be a good time to do so. Parents always want first day of school photos, but that is usually a super busy and stressful time for not only the children, but also the teacher. It might not be the best time to ask the teacher to stop what she's doing to take a picture. Nobody will know that you waited until the 2nd week of school to take your child's first day photo. :)
• Classrooms usually have wonderful, natural light, so make sure you take advantage of that light when positioning yourself to get that great picture.

Here is a photo from Francine, which is too cute! Francine said, "My tip is just to be brave enough to ask! I really wasn't sure if she would agree (I was the only parent with a camera! lol) but she was fine with it. I'm really happy that I got these since he changed schools just two months later when we moved. So when in doubt, ask!"

Layout Idea: Capture the Action

These pictures of me reading to my students were taken by my assistant, and I love that I have a layout showing me at work.

Teacher Appreciation Gift Idea: Water Bottles

A couple of years ago, I made this gift for my child's teachers. They loved them, and they were so easy to make. I just purchased a cool water bottle, filled it with their favorite candy and added a tag.

 

I can't wait to see how you capture your child's relationship with his or her teacher, and make sure to let them know that they are truly appreciated.

Teacher Appreciation Week - Playing Favorites

Hi everyone! Kelly, here, with day two of teacher appreciation week ideas. I have a soft spot in my heart for teachers, having taught writing for almost eight years before taking a "mommy sabbatical." At times I felt like teaching was one part stand-up comedy, one part referee-ing, and one part psychology! But at the same time, teaching is one of the most rewarding jobs I can think of.

 

LAYOUT IDEA: FAVORITE TEACHERS

With that in mind, today we celebrate our "favorite" teachers. I have several, and they are my favorites for different reasons. I will always remember my third grade teacher, Miss Crenshaw, who introduced me to aerobics, bran muffins, and cursive. I used to leave anonymous notes on her desk, and she played along with me for quite awhile, writing me back. I loved her energy and the way she made each of us feel special.

I also had a few professors in college who inspired and encouraged me. My senior year, I was invited to participate in a "Top Prof" night for members of Mortarboard, a national honor society. I got to invite one of my favorite professors of all time to an awards dinner. Here I am, in the photo on the left, with Dr. Ted Andra from the English Department:

And in the photo on the right is another one of my favorite professors, Dr. David Lancy, who was also invited to the dinner by another student. Dr. Andra taught me to consider the beauty of literature, and Dr. Lancy encouraged me to chase my dreams.

This is a page from a very simple scrapbook I assembled shortly after I graduated from college. It is a spiral-bound album with black cardstock pages. I used clear adhesive photo corners for photos, and a white gel pen for journaling. Very simple, but effective. I'm so happy I have these photos!

Marnie also sent me a layout about favorite teachers:

I love that Marnie thought to take a photo on the first day of school and the last day, too. What fun to compare the two! She also explains specifically why Mrs. Woodruff is perfect for Poppy. What makes a teacher a perfect fit for your child?

I also recently made a layout about two special teachers in my daughter's life. Last year was her first in a French Immersion program. Half of her school day is taught in English, and the other half in French. The whole family was a bit nervous about this, but her two teachers, Mrs. Joyner and Monsieur Levitre were amazing! They formed a bond with all the students in their two classes, and by the end of the year, we were all sad to move on to second grade.

These photos were taken at a special year-end program they put together for all the families of the students. Josie played a cat in a French play (explaining her whiskers!) and the kids sang songs (in both French and English) and recited poetry. There wasn't a dry eye in the place when they sang "We're All In This Together" from High School Musical!

 

TEACHER APPRECIATION GIFT IDEA: A "SCENTSATIONAL" YEAR

For teacher gifts this year, I found some incredibly good smelling hand soaps, and I plan on making a tag that reads, "Thank you for a 'SCENTSATIONAL' year!" I'm thinking of combining it in a basket with some other good-smelling stuff. For a few other teacher gift ideas, please visit this site for combos of small gift + giftcard + cute saying, or this site for some inexpensive crafty gift ideas. I love them all!

I also have a class gift idea that I used earlier this year when one of my daughter's teachers had to move mid-year. We held a "Bon Voyage" party for her, and created a thumbprint tree for her to take with her. I drew a tree trunk on an artist's canvas, and then each student added a thumbprint leaf to the tree using green stamp ink in different hues. We had each student sign next to their thumbprint, too, and added the date and a brief message at the bottom. The teacher was so touched by this gesture, and the kids had fun creating it. I wish I had a photo of the completed project, but to get an idea, it looked like these only a bit messier! Here is a photo of the class working on it:

I hope you think about some of your favorite teachers this week, and let them know how much you appreciate all they do!

Kelly

Teacher Appreciation Week

May 7th is Teacher Appreciation day here in the good ol' US of A. I grew up in a family of teachers. My grandmother began teaching when she was 18. She finished school at 15, but then had to wait to start "Normal School" until she was 16. One year later, she had her teaching certificate and began her teaching career. When I was little she was the first grade teacher at the school that my dad went to when he was little. I remember going to her tiny, little country school and classroom in Iron Springs, Alberta, and wishing that she could have been my teacher.

With the respect that I have for teachers there is no way to not celebrate them in fine style! Each day this week we will bring you an idea for your teacher appreciation gifts and then we hope to inspire you with layouts that celebrate teachers and their impact on our lives.

We also wanted to give you time to execute your own projects, as well, so we hope having a couple of weeks will help you do so.

 

LAYOUT IDEA: THANK YOU FOR CHANGING MY LIFE

A few years ago, I saw a blog (please tell me where it is if you know the name!) where the author wrote a thank you note every week for a year. One of them was written to a former teacher. Reading it made me cry. And made me think of all the teachers that I had over the years, and how grateful I am to them for the ways that they touched my life. I was thinking that I would certainly write to Mr. Boyden my junior high school drama teacher. But I didn't.

However, a few months later I was home for a visit (my first in a three years) when I bumped into Mr. Boyden at a Chinese food restaurant. He had moved across Canada so the chances of us meeting were slim. And not likely to recur. So I gathered my courage and told him directly how much he had impacted my life. And it felt good.

I also realized that I might write and send a few letters, but until I do, I should at least record my thoughts. And I do my best recording when patterned paper is involved!!

I am hoping to slowly put together a mini album of things I learned from my teachers. But for now, I thought one page is a great place to start. 

 

TEACHER APPRECIATION GIFT IDEA: A&W ROOTBEER 4.0

You may remember from last year that we have a family tradition of giving our teachers a sixpack of A&W RootBeer. This will be our fourth year. Here is our updated tag.

Feel free to download it if you would like! With just a hole punch and a ribbon you will be on your way! It's a quick and easy way to put a gift together. And while it isn't homemade in everyway, it always seems very appreciated!

Thank you for stopping by today! See you again tomorrow!

Sunday Photo + Words

scrapbook!

Spring is here! It's official. It might feel more official if there wasn't a freeze and frost pending all weekend, but I am so happy that the grass is green and the trees in bloom that nothing could bring me down!!

 

I love scrapbooking. I just haven't said it lately, and wanted to. I was very touched by Lisa's week, and her thoughts on memory keeping. I feel energized and renewed in my commitment to make pretty pages! I hope that our three scrapbook! Saturday starters will help you want to make some, too!

 

THE SKETCH

This month, Diane created a sketch

based upon Lisa' happy layout, New Family in our April gallery, Shapes.

Want to see some awesome variations? I thought so...

 

Celeste added an extra matte below her photos, and deleted the row of vertical triangles on the right hand side. I love how the spritzing behind the photos and mattes softens the layout and draws your eye inward.

 

Lisa swapped triangles for a strip of washi and used one horizontal photo rather than two vertical, but otherwise stayed pretty true to her original. I love the bursts of yellow against the black and white. (I am having a bit of a love affair with that exact shade right now!!)

 

Aliza played this month, as well. She stayed very true to Diane's sketch, and it looks like it was the perfect starter. This layout has a sweet story... I encourage you to read it!

 

Our next variation comes from the sketchmaster herself, Diane. I love how she uses two sizes of triangles. And how she outlined a random assortment of the tiny ones. Clever. And it captures a great story of how our world is changing.

 

And here is mine. I added a couple of extras and moved the journaling to the side. I was impressed at how versatile this sketch felt.

Thank you, Diane, for the sketch this month! If you would like to download a layered template you may do so here! Please leave us a comment if you take a turn with the sketch so that we might see your good works!

 

ROYGBIV

This month the color palette

is based upon Deb's Shapes layout, Happy Dog.

It's got that lovely color of the year, emerald! I loved how the colors pop so well on the white!! (Though without the white it looks a little in your face, no?)

As I went to make my layout, I realized that I loved the little color sampler and I just went ahead and added it to my layout!

Do you think it looks okay?

 

TRENDING

This month there were several layouts with repeating layered shapes creating corner to corner movement. Katie, Jennie, and Lisa have the most obvious examples.

You can also see it the layouts from Erin, Aliza, Celeste, Valerie, Diane, Paula, and Lisa. Sometimes it is more subtle, or goes from top to bottom, rather than corner to corner, but the pattern is there!

 

Here is mine. I had fun making this one! I went with squares, a bit by accident, but am pretty happy with how it ended up!

I hope that you have had a fun Saturday! Thank you for stopping by! I hope to see your layouts when you are done!! 

Digging Deeper Day 5

It is my last day of hosting the blog today. It has been so much fun sharing my thoughts with you!

One thing I haven't touched on yet is where the scrapbook pages go when I've finished them. Maybe that is because that is something I am still trying to figure out. When I started doing Project Life and had realized it is the right way for me to document our lives, I thought that I would include any scrapbook pages right in there. But that hasn't happened. Perhaps it is the format? My PL album opens up so that my spreads are landscape sized and not as you would open a book. The scrapbook pages would normally be horizontal so you would have to turn the album to be able to read the journaling. I keep a separate album for the pages and I think I will continue doing so.

I asked Christine of her thoughts about this because I know she does include her pages in her PL album.

She says:
I sometimes include full page layouts in my Project Life album because I've made pages that relate to the story in my album.  I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be kept together.  Before I started doing this, I had all these self-imposed "rules" about Project Life that made it inflexible for me.  When I finally let go of that and realized that Project Life is MY album and I can put whatever I want in there, and there are no rules to it, it felt so freeing!  I don't do Project Life on a weekly basis, so combining it with full page layouts makes a lot of sense for my album.

What are your thoughts on this? Please share in the comments!

 

Speaking of Christine, she shared this page. 

 

She says: My page was using a photo that was taken on my birthday last year. When I looked at my Project Life page for my birthday week, it triggered the memory that I wanted to scrapbook the photo that was taken on my birthday.

It doesn't always have to be the same story as in the PL, it can sometimes just be the photos that makes you want to make a scrapbook page.

The image above is an insert from my PL spread that featured Easter. We celebrated with my family out of town and we Instagrammed the heck out of that weekend :) It was only right that I used as many of those photos as I possibly could! When i sat down to journal about our holiday, it hit me that although we almost always celebrate the same way, I have never made a scrapbooking layout about our traditions. Said and done!

The journaling talks about this year's celebrations, but as we have the same traditions every year, it also serves as a record of how we celebrated Easter during these times. I love that I made this and I know I will make many more about other traditions in the future!

The spread above is from the week of Valentine´s day this year. I wanted to highlight how much I love that day. So I did a minialbum and put it straight into the album.

The mini is made by a pocketed page protector and I have folded it up. This is a photo of one side.

And here is the other side. I accidentally put one of the cards upside down ;) but you get the idea! This could a great way to include an extra long story, right?!

That is it folks! My blogging week is over and I have had so much fun with this theme. If you have any questions or comments please share!

Lisa O

and the giveaways go to...

Ladies, will you send an email to us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com to claim your lucky number? Thank you!

Lisa is back today with her final installment in her Digging Deeper series. See you shortly!

give.away.day. featuring ELLA PUBLISHING (Digging Deeper Day 4)

It's Day four in our week of Digging Deeper as we discuss ways to dig deeper into your project life albums to help you create better scrapbook pages. We found the perfect addition to our week and our learning, and it is Thursday which means...

We are so very excited to be able to offer three copies of this new and amazing eBook to you, our favorite readers!! It is another great eBook from the Ella Publishing team (that is now under the BCP umbrella) and it is full of helpful and useful tips on how to Dig Deeper in your Project Life.

Here are a few words from the sponsor:

Project Dig Deep eBook: Becky Higgins' Project Life system, which is built around the idea of scrapbooking quickly inside divided page protectors, has revolutionized the way thousands of people approach memory keeping.

 We're thrilled to unveil the first eBook to dive deep into the Project Life system, revealing seven amazing strategies that could revolutionize the way you approach Project Life!

 This is your chance to join seven avid scrapbookers as they get inspired by their own recent scrapbook pages and then "dig deep" to tell seven types of expanded stories within their ongoing Project Life albums.

 Whether you scrapbook chronologically or in a story-based format, you'll love these concrete strategies for discovering and sharing meaningful stories. You'll be inspired to expand on a loved one's personality, flash back to the past, show off a photo tour of a beloved place, create a tribute page to a loved one who has passed on, explore an important relationship, and more!

 Meaningful, story-based scrapbooking has never been easier—or more fun!

Meet the talented ladies whose stories compose the eBook:
Amy Schubert
Annette Haring
Elisa Blaha Cripe
Jessica Turner
Kam Altar
Megan Anderson
Melanie Britt

 

And now to the easy rules of the giveaway. Comment on this post. Yes, that is it :) Leave us a comment telling us how your project life albums have helped your scrapbooks and scrapbooking! Comments will remain open throughout the evening and three lucky numbers will be drawn at random and posted tomorrow morning. Please remember that it is your responsibility to check back and claim your number before Saturday at midnight!

Thank you, Ella Publishing for sponsoring our give.away.day. and thank you, dear readers for stopping by! Bon chance!

Digging Deeper Day 3

Today I am sharing two examples on how I have used a story in my Project Life album and made scrapbook pages with them. But first I want to show you what Celeste shared with me.

 

She says: Here is week 12 of this year and here is a layout that expands on one of the photos.

I have tons of examples. I tend to include a photo and a sentence in my project life album then elaborate later.

Here is a photo of a page in her PL album. She chose to highlight the story in the upper right corner, like so.

Awesome, right?!

 

 

Here is a look at my 14th week of PL this year. In the following layout I took the story about how I love that I could plant some seeds and that they already sprouted (down in the right corner).

 

Saved my Instagram photo to my computer and simply printed the photo after sizing them in Word. 

 

Gardening is a very big deal for me so it is clear that I will take every opportunity to include stories about that!

This one is an insert I made to hold a few more stories in my PL album for week 14. (Yes, this is the same insert as I showed Monday!) This was the week when my new love got up super early, made me breakfast, walked me to work (at 6.15 am) and we found a heart on the ground :) Turns out he would do that more than once that week!

I really wanted to make a layout that recorded what kind of man I think he is. Our relationship is new and I love the thought of me going back and read about my feelings later.

 

Ok, that is it for today! Be sure to come back tomorrow for an awesome giveaway that has something to do with my theme for the week!

 

 Lisa O

Digging Deeper Day 2

Hi there! Did yesterday's post inspire you to look through your own Project Life album and see stories that needs to be recorded a little deeper or just one that needs its own scrapbook page? I hope so!

I will continue to show you a few examples on this theme today.

I turned 34 in February (and by the way I totally claimed to be 33 in March still!) and I had a few of my favorite people with me for the entire weekend.

It made it into the PL spread for that week. In there I told more the story of that weekend, but I usually make layouts each year to capture more of who I am right then. 

On this layout I shared about how I thought this year was going to pretty much suck (I am going through a divorce) and that I didn't have high hopes of a happy birthday, but that life moves quickly and in happy ways sometimes :)

I think it would be awesome to make an extra insert in your PL album whenever you or a loved one celebrates a new year of life and just jot down somethings about them that tells the story of them right now! 

Christine shared a page she did with inspiration from this PL spread in her album.

She says: I went to an Amy Tan class at my local scrapbook store last year on Week 21. I loved learning and scrapbooking with other women. I made a page at the class that was inspired by that love of crafting.

This is a perfect example of how the story doesn't have to be the same both in the PL and in the scrapbook page you do.

My daughter has a best friend that she has known since they were 2 years old. I printed a photo collage she made with photos of a day they spent together and quickly added a few words about that day in my PL spread. That sparked me to make a layout about their friendship.

One thought that has come up while I was writing these posts is that this has been such a good lesson for me. I feel like I have recorded memories, stories and relationships that I hadn't done before.

At one point a few years ago I said to myself, I am done. I am all caught up on scrapbooking. And while I still think that it was true at the time, I feel like I learn something all the time and my scrapbooking has changed through the years. At first I made pages and pages just to be able to have something to show. Next I did it as a kind of therapy and those pages were focused on me and our everyday life. I believe that it was during 2012 it changed for me. Changed is perhaps the wrong word, evolved is a better way of putting it. I lost both my grandparents during last year and while it was hard times, it got me thinking of all the things I would have wanted to know about them and how lucky I was to be able to hold my grandmothers hand while she passed. I went home that night and wrote everything down, the events that led up to her last breath and my feelings. I am so grateful I did. I will forever know that story because it is written down! Perhaps I would either way, but I am sure the details would fade. 

Do you have stories of your childhood friends? Like detailed stories of how you met and hung out? I don´t, but I love the fact that my daughter now will. 

The Project Life way to record our lives has helped me see the small everyday stories, but has also sparked some really interesting thoughts about what I (since it´s me making the spreads) choose to see as valuable to memorykeep. I, of course love both the smaller, shorter stories and the longer ones that come out of them!

 

Stepping down from the soapbox now ;)

Go do some memorykeeping!

 

Lisa O