Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Look Back, Day 3

So, back in 2004 Wendy Smedley and I worked with Primedia's production facility in Dallas, TX to create some videos for Simple Scrapbooks magazine.

I mentioned these videos yesterday, anyone remember them?

Production was surprisingly long and tiring, but any amount of work is delightful with Miss Wendy by your side, and we absolutely adored the talented team in Dallas. 

The project I share today is one I created for a segment on one of those videos. 

The funny story that I may never admit to in person happened on our video set. First of all, our set was AMAZING. I have done a fair amount of filming and this was a really nice set with really nice furniture, including a dining room table. I was supposed to demonstrate how easy it is to use the Fiskars hand drill and so before we started taping, I wanted to practice. I had to remain seated during the demo, so I figured I had to hold the drill firmly and push pretty darn hard. I had several pages of what I remember to be a mini book on top of a thick chipboard base -- I began drilling through the pages and clearly remember thinking, "This is not going to go over well on video, because I don't think I'm making any progress at all." As it turned out, I had drilled a hole through all of the paper, chipboard and about a 1/4" into the table! 

I was mortified, but I was able to endorse the Fiskar's drill as easy-to-use, even when sitting down!

Today's Challenge: Look back or dig out an out-of-album project you've created and set it out for friends and family to rediscover. By the way, Photojojo has a cool Photo Block kit. Click here. 

Look Back, Day 2 (Freeze Time)

So fun to read your comments yesterday and know that so many are taking my challenge to heart. Thanks! Today, I share an 8x8 album, titled "My Boys" that I created in 2004. It is an absolute favorite because it combines the kind of pictures and information required to freeze time.

Here, watch ...

I Googled those gated page protectors and I found them! They are made by C-Line. To learn more, click here.

Today's Challenge:

Spend 30 minutes looking back and see if you can find a page or project where you have done the 'freeze in time' thing. Evaluate what you did. What kind of photos did you use and how did you document the information? Leave a comment and/or link to share what you discover!

Look Back Week.

Yay. I get to host the WCS blog again. 

As I've thought about what I want to do and can do and what I believe will be most helpful to busy women in the midst of summer, I've decided to declare this week, Look Back Week. 

As you might guess, Look Back Week is all about looking back at what we've accomplished as scrapbookers. Because we have a love of photography and capturing the details of everyday life and because we can scroll through digital images for hours and because have never-ending piles of un-scrapped pictures there is a 24.7 push to get more done, faster. We simply don't allow ourselves (often enough) the pleasure of recognizing how much we've accomplished already.

So, who's in?

Each day, I'll share a short video, looking back on a page or project I love. I'll tell you why I love it and I'll encourage you to do the same. I sincerely believe that if we cut ourselves some serious slack this summer and did nothing but look back on the memories preserved and the details documented that we would fuel our creativity in amazing ways. We could actually welcome fall with an arsenal of ideas and the energy to match them.

Today's Project & Challenge:

Look back and find vacation or travel photos from several years ago. Perhaps you've already created a layout about this adventure, perhaps not, either way ... gather all of the photos you still love and put them together in a very simple mini-book. Enjoy the process of reliving this trip and focus your reflections on the stories you tell about this trip today--in other words, what are the things you really remember that need to be documented.

Note: I confirmed my hunch, that this album is a We R Memory Keepers product, and there are still several available at Scrapbook.com. Since most of my photos were vertically oriented. I chose to turn my album on it's side!

Remember to keep your project super simple. Mount 4x6 photos on cardstock and fill a few pages with handwritten journaling. Consider covering your mini-book with photos or easy strips of paper whose colors/patterns stem from the photos themselves. 

Leave me a comment when you know which vacation/trip/adventure you'll be revisiting. And when you've completed your project, post it in the WCS gallery for all to see!

Good Morning, Sunshine

Family Collaborations Roundup

Welcome to the last day of our week of sister-blogging! We thought it might be a good idea to explain our little photo over there today... it's one of a series of photos we tried to take together in Apple's Photo Booth program a few years ago; we were struggling to look normal and still look into the little green camera light which is at the top of the computer screen. Retelling it now makes it seem like one of those classic sibling "you had to be there" moments. Trust us... this is the most normal one of the bunch. We're a hoot, alright! But enough about us. Today we're featuring some brilliant family collaboration projects created by team members here at WCS!

We wanted to start with the reigning queen of family collaboration projects, Angie Lucas. As Angie once declared on her blog: "I, Angie Lucas, hereby present the easiest journaling strategy ever imagined by woman: 
Have someone else write it!"

This first project can be viewed in its entirety on Angie's blog, and it's a terrific one. For her in-laws 50th wedding anniversary party, all the guests collaborated at the party to a mini-book filled with memories and heartfelt wishes. Angie's husband Travis snapped pictures of each guest and printed them out at the party, and Angie distributed pre-cut journaling cards to pair with the photos. Time commitment? 3.5 hours total.

For Angie's next project, she collected photos and memories to honor her octogenarian Grandma Neva; 85 pre-cut cards were sent out with instructions to write a message on them, and when the cards came back Angie simply assembled them all with a coordinated line of paper and a 4x6 photo album. How much do you think sweet Grandma Neva enjoyed her 80th birthday gift?

Next up is a simple, meaningful album that Jody Dent-Pruks created for her father's 70th birthday with the help of her sons Oscar and Byron. They worked on a list of 70 things they love/70 memories they have about their grandpa; Jody typed them all up, added a few felt flowers, and assembled them into a small 7Gypsies album. It would be easy to divide the number of memories required for years lived by more family members—either way, the impact of the gift is priceless.

 

Aly Dosdall created a similar project a few years ago; she compiled a digital photo book called "60 Reasons" and gave it to her in-laws at our family reunion. It included a photo of each of their 13 children (with their families/spouses) with one reason why they love grandma and grandpa from each member of each family. Instead of mailing journaling cards, Aly emailed everyone to request responses, then added them to the book as they were emailed back.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Digital photo books really are a terrific choice for family collaboration projects, because there is a good chance that more than one person will want a copy when it's complete. Paula Gilarde created a book for her father's 70th birthday that included photos from all eras of his life. Living in the digital era means that everyone who wants to have this family treasure actually can!

Click here to view this photo book.

Monika Wright loves mini-albums, so it only seemed natural to make one instead of a card for her mother's birthday! She recruited her children to create artwork to include. The final product is an excellent reminder to include family members in our scrapbooking; their perspectives are priceless and deserve to be included!

Amy Sorensen was willing to share a project that she created for her father, who has Alzheimer's. She didn't have images to share, but her description is so moving and important that we wanted to share it here anyway; you can download the project description here. If you have elderly relatives who may be suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, you definitely will want to read about this collaboration.

Download Amy's Project

Finally, we wanted to point out two pieces of writing that caught our eye by Terry Wright, the mother of photographer Erin Cobb. While Erin has been on vacation, her mom has guest-posted on Erin's blog The Pigbear; what she writes about should be required reading for all scrapbookers, memory-keepers, and members of families everywhere. Trust us. It's good.

Read the first post by Erin's mom, Terry, here... and

read the second post by Erin's mom, Terry, here.

We've had a great time this week sharing our love of family stories with you. Thank you so much for reading!

Photo-a-Day, Old School Style

Since 2005, I've completed nine month-long photo-a-day projects and one Project 365 (which actually ended up being more like Project 368 somehow). To say that I love photo-a-day projects is an understatement. I love them because they have a beginning and an end, they require just the right amount of discipline for me to tackle, and they act as a snapshot of my life at the time—something that individual scrapbook pages do too, to some extent, but not in quite the same way. Photo-a-day projects are like fast-growing flower gardens, growing into the finished product right before your eyes.

I've always done "here and now" photo-a-day projects, though—capturing things that are happening each day in real time. Why not apply this same structure to deal with the thousands of older photos I have in my possession?

A little background, first:

This is to prove to you that I'm not kidding when I say I have a lot of old photos. This is but one box; the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Fact: my mama has a whole lot more. 

Only the lucky ones are in acid-free photo boxes. This particular album featuring photos from my first few years belonged to my Grandma Rinehart, who gave it back to me a few years ago when she moved from Iowa to Florida and needed to pare down some things. 

Ack!

Hopefully I have painted an accurate picture of my Old Photo Dilemma: so many of them, and so few free minutes in a day/week/month to deal with them. I get that there is no one right way to scrapbook, but I also get that there should a general goal of not ruining or abandoning the photos in one's possession. Right?

Marie and I decided that it would be fun to try a photo-a-day project for June 2010 with old photos we have in our collections. I originally thought I'd use photos from all eras, but once I got started with a few photos from the late 1970s/early 1980s, I wanted to try for photos of Willis Sisters together if possible. I set the photo album up on my blog like I've done for previous photo-a-day projects, and committed to writing something about each one. They are not in chronological order, and I had to guess at some of the dates. Here is what I have so far (through today, June 25):

 

I have them posted individually with journaling in an album on my blog; Marie's album can be found on her blog, too.

The thought of scanning thousands of old photos one after another (and writing about each one!) makes me want to jump into bed and pull the covers over my head, but scanning/writing about one a day seems completely manageable to me. I just have to actively keep my mind off how long it would take me to finish at this rate—for now, one month's worth is an achievement. I haven't decided how I'd like to preserve them yet (Shutterfly book? blog only? In my favorite photo-a-day format—a 6x12 album?) but just knowing that by the end of June, 30 photos will be preserved, remembered, and made available for sharing with my parents and sisters makes it completely worthwhile. There are details missing from both of our albums, no doubt, but the process will open discussion within our family to reminisce and add more memories that might otherwise have been lost. After working on this project, Marie noted that photos from our childhood are single treasures that (up until now) live only for the person who has them in their hands—forgotten by the rest. It's so different from today when the majority of our photos live digitally, patiently waiting to be reprinted as many times as necessary. 

So who's with us? Ready to tackle your own old school photo-a-day project? I dare you to beat our church directory photos for Most Awkward Family Photos Ever. : )

 

and the giveaway goes to . . .

Oh me, oh my! Your stories were completely entertaining.

• A surprising number of encounters with bears--gratefully you all lived to tell the tales! Whew!
• And how about all of us who slept in cramped quarters in campers, trailers, and pop-ups. And however much it bothered us then, we look back fondly at those times. (A good thing for me to remember as a parent!)
• I also learned that I would very much like to be travel partners with you. Your passports certainly get more use than mine! teehee!

Thank you, Making Memories for creating such amazing products that we love and for your generosity in providing such a lovely sampling for Laura! That's right, this week the randomator (heh heh. And yes, I know the proper term is randomizer...) picked:
Laura please email us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com before Saturday at midnight. Thank you and congratulations! Stay tuned for more sister antics with the Willis ladies!

give.away.day. featuring MAKING MEMORIES

As family grows up and further apart geographically, we tend to travel to see one another, or even better yet, to travel together. As sisters, or siblings, or even with friends, we couldn't think of a better way to build memories than to be together. So we have tracked down something fun to encourage you to get out your suitcase and get together this summer. Welcome to 

Today, we have a fan favorite

here to help get you in the mood for summer travel with their newest release, Panorama.

Panorama mixes influences from an eclectic and sweeping range of cultures.  Deep, rich colors such as paprika, cumin, fig and saffron ooze Moroccan sophistication; many of the collection’s page backgrounds and designs could have been borrowed from the ceilings at the Taj Mahal, the Vatican, or St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square.  Street sign-style adhesive stickers and die-cuts look as though they could have been lifted straight off of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street; and floral and architectural patterns offer a melting pot of flavors from Asia, France, Greece and of course, America.  The finish on each design, whether on cardstock, luggage tags, stickers, or other embellishments, offer variety as well, with some in crisp, intentional patterns, and others looking as weathered as an old steamer trunk.

 
Look what two of our newest were able to create with this fun new line. Vivian made two great layouts

 

and this adorable book mark, which highlights a fun use for the Panorama rubons (and packaging!!) We love clever repurposing!
 

And Kelly was truly inspired by all the products, making not just a layout,
 

but also a collection of minibooks. How darling are these! 
 

But she didn't stop there. No! Kelly kept right on going with an altered basket. How about that shredded paper for pizazz?

If you would like a chance to be considered for this getaway themed giveaway, please leave us a comment remembering a fun/outlandish/never-to-be-forgotten vacation memory. I'll get you started with a vacation memory which includes my sister (in honor of the Willis sisters):

When I was in junior high, our family purchased a camper trailer. (You know the kind that sits in the bed of the truck, plus a little overhang?) Well we hooked ours onto the maroon and white Silverado and off we went to the mountains in Montana.

It was a small camper with just one bed, in which my parents slept. I think my brother was relegated to the little hall/floor. My sister slept on the table that pushed down into a sleeping area. And I, being the smallest, got the upper bunk--the little cubby above the table. Just large enough for a very small-for-her-age child to crawl into. Not enough space to turn over (or breathe, really) but enough to sleep in if you held very still. I wasn't too good at confined spaces. Imagine. But I didn't complain. It was either there or share a space with my sister who thrashed about at night. And she had sharp thick toenails that could wound the sleeping innocent. (Sorry, sis. It was true.) So into the cubby I crawled. Me and my brown sleeping bag with cowboys on it. Cramped but safe.

So now it's your turn. Comments will remain open until 8:00 pm PST and one lucky number will be selected at random and posted tomorrow. Please remember to check back as it is your responsibility to claim your lucky number before midnight Saturday! Before you go, remember to click on over to the Making Memories blog and see all the fun projects and ideas they have for you there!

Circle Journal for kids

Welcome back to our Sister week! And look! We have exited orange picture zone and aged a few years-somehow skipping all the fun hair years. This picture was taken during Christmas after Elizabeth had left for college. Despite not always getting along (hello we wore exactly the same size and shared one bathroom, you do the math) I was so very excited when I got to see her. I remember going to visit her in Miami of Ohio (her school) once and walking around campus feeling so very cool. Then going to see Interview with a Vampire and feeling scared out of my mind walking around the very dark and very scary campus. And because it happens every time we get together, laughing hysterically about how scared we both were. There will always be a moment in every one of our meetings that we will end up laughing so hard breathing is a problem. And it's totally worth it.

So today I am sharing a Circle Journal that kids can do-even non writing preschoolers. I took a plain drawing notebook, covered it very simply with some paper with the plan that it will gradually be decorated each time it changes hands.
Then gave my kids a page and said draw a picture.
While Charlie my two-year-old was drawing, I asked him what he was drawing. He said "a moon, the sun, I love Mama, I love Daddy." First, how adorable and second, what great journaling my son wrote for his page. And then I handed the journal over to Lily
We are going to pretend that I didn't forget to have her title her project. After we have a few rounds off to the Dillow girls and Katherine's daughter Juliette we will have a whole lot of art work spanning about a year, and a really cool look at how their art has changed and grown. The best part is we will be able to scan all of the art work and create yet another cool Shutterfly book for the grandparents. And grandparents, please forget that you read that thankyouverymuch.

Here's some other ideas for easy peasy circle journals

• Give a pretty book to your daughter and a friend(s) when they start school with stickers, a pen, and some photo corners. They can spend the year (when they are not diligently doing their homework) documenting their friendship and their experiences in school. And you have just created two more scrapbookers.
• Do the same with cousins who are of school age and writing. Although it may take longer if they live far away, what a great way to keep them in touch.
• Create a simple book where you can write letters to your child as they grow up-you can add scrapbook pages in, pictures, anything goes.

Now before I go I'm going to share one more project from one of our oldest friends, Nancy. (So old in fact, I was the first baby she ever held.) Nancy has a very artistic family so a cousin asked everyone to submit their art work and they put it together in a Snapfish book.
She welcomes you to look at this book-all you have to do is have a free Snapfish account and click preview to see all the beautiful artwork.

More ideas? Share them in the comments below!

Perspective Memories

Welcome to day two with the Willis sisters. And what an opportunity to share dirt-oh the stories I have. Like the time Elizabeth bought a huge jar full of pennies from me for $20. I remind you while perhaps I should have known better, but a crisp $20 bill to a, well, let's just say I was "three" to make it more dramatic, sounds a whole lot better than a jar full of pennies. So we are going to stick with me being three. And not older and someone who should have known better. But really today I'm sharing some perspectives.

A few years ago my sisters and I decided to do a circle journal since we all lived far and wide across the country (and sadly, we still do). Noting again that Katherine insists that she isn't a scrapbooker (which Elizabeth proved to be false yesterday) we chose a journaling scrapbook where we could share some of our memories, stories and advice. And totally not threatening to the "non-scrapper."

One of the entries in the journal was about our memories of our Grandma Watson. We started with a simple question. "What do you remember about Grandma Watson?" Elizabeth once wrote "My memory is made complete with their recollections" and this journal made all of our memories much more complete. Using our recollections I created a three perspective layout about our wonderful Grandma Watson (click to enlarge).

In this simple, journaling-centric layout I used the journaling from our circle journal, a few pictures, and flowers that I filled in with the paint tool to look like marigolds—the flower that lined our grandma's driveway every summer.

Another collaboration project came years after Katherine wrote a beautiful poem about our Grandma Watson and her sisters. As I had this beautiful poem and the picture which was the inspiration for the poem, I easily recreated this layout three times-one for me, and one for each of my sisters.
So remember, scrapbooking isn't always about the pretty paper (although my goodness that is MY favorite part) but about the memories preserved and the relationships remembered. So email or call your sister, your brother, you mother, father, grandmother or grandfather and ask them a question: "What do you remember about __________?" You may be surprised about the response, but no matter what, you have just started the journaling to your next scrapbook page.