First off, thanks for all the lovely comments yesterday, I got quite a few laughs! It seems that kraft cardstock is a favourite of many of you as well, so I'm in great company!! Today I want to talk about all the things I scrap about. Along the way I'll point out a few tips and tricks that I used on the pages I'm posting. This will be a pretty long post so thanks in advance for sticking with me!
As I said yesterday I started out scrapbooking travel photos. I later branched out into photos of my childhood and those from my years at university. It wasn't until I started cruising online message boards that I realised that the majority of scrapbookers did pages about their kids. I'm so glad I didn't notice that in the beginning, else I may never have gotten started! And up until April of this year I scrapped about everything but kids. So what did I scrap about?
My Childhood
Where better to start than all those tiny weird coloured photos from the 70s? Whenever I go home I try to find old photos that my family members have and scan a copy for myself. Since I no longer live in the place of my birth, these memories are very important to me.
My sister and I circa 1975 matching outfits and all. I used this photo pretty much as it was, but this is a reprint of the scan I made of the original.
These photos are from the 80s and I used them as is.
It's official, kraft cardstock is perfect for old photos!
Places
I expanded on the idea of travel to scrap about places near and far. Be it the corner store, or the Caribbean, I get lots of fodder from locations.
These photos were taken on a Sunday walk around the city.
Tip: I used some Making Memories Christmas themed paper on this page! If a pattern isn't obviously themed then I use it wherever I can.
As I looked back the way I came along the beach (in Barbados) and saw my footprints, this old saying came to mind. I immediately snapped a photo.
Tips and Tricks: I used my Slice cutter to cut out all the frames from scraps.The scalloped mat was made by cutting down a 6x12 scallopped cardstock by Bazzill
People
I wouldn't call myself a very good portrait photographer because I prefer candid to posed shots. Couple that with my shyness and most of my photos of people are pretty bad. But the good shots I do get, I love to use on pages to talk about my friends and family.
Tips and Tricks: I used a scallop punch to cut out all the patterned paper pieces and used my sewing machine to create a stitched grid.
Two of my close friends from high school. This photo dates back to the late 80s and is an original.
Tip: I used the embellishments, journaling spots and title letters to cover up all the wasted space in the photo. I was traveling at the time I made this page and didn't have access to a scanner or photo editing software to edit the photo.
I do a lot of pages to record our love story.
Look Ma! No kraft!
And of course my largest amount of pages to date are about me. Call me vain, but I am my most patient photo subject, plus I know more about myself than any other subject! :)
In this page I documented how my life didn't exactly go the way I thought it would. Once again I used a Christmas paper (this time by BasicGrey) on a non-themed page. And those pink chipboard letters date way back and were by Lil Davis Designs.
Food, Glorious Food
We live in France and my husband loves to cook. Nuff said. I have hundreds of photos of food and drink. What else should a scrapper do but get them down on a page?
I paper pieced a tomato from red patterned paper for this page. I am ridiculously proud of that for some reason!
Events and Holidays
This category is the thinnest one for me, I really have a hard time scrapping events. The only holiday I do manage to do a page or two for every year is Christmas, because it's my favourite.
And when I do scrap events I tend to focus more on the details like the decorations rather than the people or event itself. It's an area that I need to work on!
Things
I take lots of photos of objects in my attempt to be artsy. They also end up on pages because I figure years in the future it will be fun to look back to see what objects were precious or part of culture at that time.
All the photos on this page were totally random ones. I used a square punch to cut out interesting bits from them and created this grid collage.
Random
This covers a lot of my pages. I love quotations, book excerpts and song lyrics and sometimes they are perfect to describe a feeling or moment captured in a photo.
The journaling is an excerpt taken from the book Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The photos I used here were not very good ones originally, they were blurry and grainy, having been taken at night. But I loved them and converted them to black and white which really improved how they looked!
Oh baby!
Since late last year though, the main subject around here has been first my pregnancy, and then Kieran. I don't have a pregnancy album and I'm not doing a baby book, I just capture moments as I normally do and then tell the story.
Photos taken at 17 weeks pregnant.
I did say that I go crazy with patterned paper backgrounds sometimes, remember? I did a blog post about Kieran's super cloth diapers and this is the page that came from that.
Well if you've made it all the way through, you're a trooper! Remember you can click on the photos to see them bigger. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have, and sign in tomorrow when I will talk a bit about my scrapping process.
