Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Tips for Creating a Travel Album

 

Hey there! Carey here, and I can't believe it's only two short weeks until school starts for us! That means it's time to document our summer travels before the hustle and bustle of school begins. Today I'd like to share with you some tips on creating a travel album to get your memories documented and photos printed to enjoy. These tips can work for traditional scrapbookers and digital scrapbookers alike. 

 

 

Journal in the moment

I always take a small notebook to write in at the end of each day (or throughout the day) to capture what we're doing while the memories are fresh. A journal app on your smartphone or other device also works well. 

Select format/size of album

When you are ready to begin putting your album together, it's important to decide on the format and size. This will help guide what sizes to print your photos, how many photos to include and which supplies to gather. Often, I choose a smaller format album to capture a trip, such as 6x8, 5x7, 8x8 or even some of the cute new 4x4 albums, although I have completed full-size 12x12 albums as well.

You'll also need to decide if you will be using a purchased album, creating and binding your own, standard layouts, pocket pages or digital. For this album, I decided to create my own. However, for the next trip I plan to scrapbook (aren't we all behind?) I want to do a mixture of pocket pages, paper pages and hybrid pages/elements in a small binder album. 

Select and print photos

If you're anything like me, you take a LOT of photos on vacation. Often, I have several photos of the same thing or event. Selecting the best and most representative photos that you love or that capture the memory will help make putting the album together a less daunting task than if you tried to use every single photo. You'll also need to decide which size you'll print the photos and any photo collages you want to incorporate so you can edit and crop before printing. I do my photo editing, resizing and collaging in Photoshop and Lightroom, but there are numerous great apps to do this as well. 

Gather your supplies

Whether you're working from your stash or purchasing new supplies, it helps greatly in the quest to complete an album to gather all the supplies together that are specific for the project. I use Iris cases to keep projects together, and they also make it easy to grab and take to a crop.

Using a coordinated kit or line with papers and embellishments helps give your album a cohesive feel. Repeating similar elements (whether it's embellishments, stamps, or alphas) throughout also provides cohesion.  By limiting your choices to just a few key products and techniques, you can speed up the scrapping process by cutting down on the decision-making. 

Plan the album structure

The structure of your album could be chronological, covering each day and what happened; topical, making connections based on similar topics, activities or themes (food, people, sightseeing, play, etc.); or location-based, if you visited the same place on different days, group together by location rather than date. Once you've chosen the basic structure, you can put groups of photos together and put them in order.

You also can decide on the basic design of the album: whether or not to use dividers or tabs, to follow a set layout design that is repeated throughout, to repeat specific embellishments or stamps, or to have each section follow a specific format (for example, tabbed page, journal page, post card, scrapbook page, pocket page, in any order but repeated for each secton). Laying out your album in this manner will make assembly go much quicker!

 

Create your album

Now to the fun part! Put your album together with photos, embellishments, and journaling.

I'll be back next month to show you how I put together my album and the start of my next travel album. Please share in the comments below any tips you have for getting those travel albums completed.

 

Happy Scrapping and Happy Travels!

scrapbook.

Hello! Jennifer Larson here today. As always, I have been stitching on my pages, and I thought I'd share a few ways to add stitches yourself to add a little texture.

First, here's the page, which commemorates my boys' year in the district honor choir:

And five ways to add stitches like I did on the page:

1. Stitch a word. Using a pencil, lightly write the word on the page. Punch holes in the writing not too close together, between 1/8" and 1/4", and erase the writing and stitch. I use about 2 strands of DMC when stitching on a page.

2. Stitch down the title. Using your sewing machine, stitch about three lines parallel through the top of the title word to "anchor" it to the page. Don't worry about making them end evenly.

3. Stitch journaling lines. Lightly draw lines about 1/4" apart using a ruler. Journal, then stitch the journaling lines with a sewing machine. Don't worry about making the lines perfectly straight. Erase any stray marks.

4. Stitch photo corners. Punch holes about 1/4" apart around the corner of each photo. Don't worry about making them the same size. Backstitch using 2 strands of DMC.

5. Stitch a thin strip of paper. I like using many thin strips of patterned paper on my pages. I also like to machine stitch a line through one of them to anchor it to the page. Try that with thin strips, or stitch a frame around a block of paper on your page. Again, don't worry about stitching it perfectly straight. If it's crooked, it's whimsy.

Those are some ideas for adding quick and easy stitches to your pages! I hope that inspires you to try one (or more!) stitching techniques the next time you scrapbook.

click.

Welcome back! I hope you enjoyed yesterday's layouts and that you had a chance to put some of those journaling prompts to good use! If you do, please leave me a link so I can see!

 

Saturday's post offered us six photography prompts. I was excited to see where they would take my pages! Rather than using the prompts to inspire new photos, I used them to help me choose which photo to use on a page. Let's see what happened.

 

1. Shoot the Whole and a Detail

This prompt was based upon Sue's page with her lovely "FunFlowers." I think pages like this are pretty cool. It gives you a chance to see the environment and also the details. I thought a picture of me with one of my darling pies would be a fun option for the whole/closeup juxtaposition.

 

 

 

2. Shoot From Behind

Francine's gorgeous layout showed her little man on a horse. It was a lovely example of how your focal point doesn't need a smile! I wanted a similarly lovely photo. Mine is much less beautiful, but it sure did make me smile!. My tiny happily running down the hallway on the final day of school!

 

 

 

3. From the Top

Speaking of perspective, the third photography prompt was to take a photo from the top, as Lisa did on her layout. I have the perfect photo for this one! 

On a lovely spring evening I was out with my little ladies. They were doing cartwheels as they normally do. Then they lay on the grass laughing and giggling. And I got a lovely picture from above. Smiles are so different from this angle. It's a curious thing.

 

 

4. Shooting Nature on Aperture Priority 

This prompt came from Cristina's layout. When I read the prompt I immediately thought about a picture I had taken of some trees that line the parking lot at my son's high school. I hadn't scrapbooked it yet, but was so excited to do so. I like how it ended up!

I am so happy to have this done. And am so glad that Cristina inspired me to do so!

 

There are two additional prompts that you can do, too!

5. Put together a layout with photos taken on different days. CLICK through your photos and pick for a theme.

6. CLICK a photo of something you love in your community.

 

And that brings us to the end of our photo prompts from Saturday's post. I hope that you will find them useful for inspiring new photos or, like I did, helpful for sifting through your folders!

Thank you, always, for stopping by!

Click. How to crop your photos with the PicFrame app

Hi! Lisa here with a super quick tip on how to crop your photos in different shapes right in your iPhone! 

 

I have used an app called PicFrame that I found in the app store and have used for a long time to make collages etc. 

So, when you click on the app this is what you´ll see. For this project you will want to choose the square frame. 

 

Click in the frame to choose your photo.

 

The when you click your photo again this menu will appear. Click shape. 

 

Now you can choose whatever shape you´d like to crop your photo into. I choose the circle option.

 

 

Tada! Now, just save your photo, transfer it to your printer and you can either print one bigger circle on one photopaper sized 6x4 or more smaller ones if you have the option to print multiple images on one paper. This way you save ink since you don´t have to print the whole images and the just punch/cut one portion of it. 

I hope this little tip is useful!

Happy day!

Lisa

write.

Hello and welcome to a brand new week! Today we are going to try out some of those WRITE prompts from Saturday's post. There were five. I hope that you will find one or two appealing. I am excited to get some layouts done without having to figure out what to say! heehee.

But seriously, lately things have been running at an emotional extreme around here. Teenagers. Every time I sit to write, my mind races around in hurried thoughts disconnected to the photos or stories that should be being written. Instead I push things round and round the page and become more and more disenchanted and frustrated. So I was really looking forward to sitting down with Saturday's prompts to actually get some pages done.

 

1. Your Calm

The first is based upon Aliza's layout. Her journaling talked about how her grumpiness evaporated once she was out of the city and into nature. I decided to do a layout about how much I love the sun as it is the thing that seems to make me happiest these days!

 

2. Include the Emotion

The second writing prompt was based upon Celeste's layout. She included a snippet about how her sons were excited to go on the boat. Sometimes we give the facts, but fail to talk about how it makes us feel. So this prompt was to remind us to include that, if just a little.

For this journaling prompt, I created a page about the winter-that-would-not-end. And how it made me feel. (And how it made my hyacinths feel! :) . )

 

3. This Is What ____ Looks Like

The third prompt comes from Jennifer's layout. She used the phrase, "This is what summer looks like." It was such a great one--I knew exactly which picture to use it on. I love this pic and all its happiness. And that was just the word to use to fill in the blank.

 

The next two are for you:

4. WRITE about the things you love in your own backyard.

5. WRITE about the relationship you have you with your cousins, or the one that exists between your kids and their cousins.

 

I hope that you will consider using some of the WRITE prompts to help your pages get started, or to take flight! If you need more ideas, you might consider making a list of prompts from each of the gallery's layouts. Why recreate the wheel? It's summer! Sunshine is calling. Let our prompts be your shortcuts!

I'll be back tomorrow to put the CLICK ideas into layouts. Please stop by--I'd love to see you!

Sunday Photo + Words

In Review

We really hoped you enjoyed our monthly gallery, The Great Outdoors. Did you have a favorite layout? Anything catch your eye? Before we move to our August gallery, let's take one last look at our July gallery.

 

All It Took | Aliza Deutsch

12 x 12 | materials cardstock (Bazzill Basics, American Crafts) + patterned paper (Studio Calico, Cocoa Daisy) + flair (Amy Tangerine) + tag (Fancy Pants) + stickers (Simple Stories, My Mind’s Eye) + digital stamp (Ali Edwards) + wood veneer (Cocoa Daisy) + fonts (Burst My Bubble)

WRITE about that which makes you calm. Do you find your peace in the mountains? on the beach? in the urban jungle?

 

 

Fun Flowers | Sue Althouse

12 x 12 | materials cardstock (Bazzill) + patterned paper (Amy Tangerine) + border punch (Fiskars) + thickers, ribbon (American Crafts) + ink (Tim Holtz) + floss (We R Memory Keepers) + fabric sticker, wood veneer (Studio Calico) + mini pearls (Doodlebug) + typewriter (Remington)

The next time you are taking a photo of your garden, CLICK one photo of the whole, and then one macro. Then use them both on your layout. 

 

 

Hiking the Quarry | Jennifer Larson

12 x 12 | materials cardstock (Bazzill) + patterned paper (Lily Bee) + stickers (Lily Bee) + flair (Studio Calico) + ink (Jenni Bowlin) + font (Times New Roman)

For your next page, choose an embellishment that furthers your story. For instance, Jenny used the geo marker. A well thought out SCRAPBOOK page is purposeful, too!

 

 

Ride | Francine Clouden

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (My Mind's Eye) + letter stickers (Cosmo Cricket) + stickers (Glitz Design) + calendar (Jenni Bowlin) + chipboard sticker (October Afternoon) + fringed border (Heidi Swapp) + tickets + paper clip, border sticker (craft supply)

Don't forget it is okay to CLICK your camera to capture the back of your subjects as well. It can add a lovely air of a stolen moment.

 

 

Hello Happy | Lisa Borbély

8.5 x 11 | materials patterned paper (My Minds Eye) + cardstock (American Crafts) + enamel dots (My Minds Eye) + tag (Evalicious)

Or rather than from behind, try to CLICK from above! Perspective adds such diversity to our photos.

 

 

Life is Good | Amy Coose

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (Jillibean Soup, Crate Paper, Echo Park, My Mind's Eye) + mist (Studio Calico) + pen (American Crafts) + die cuts (Jillibean Soup) + wood sprinkles (Jillibean Soup) + cut file (Silhouette Online Store)

As you SCRAPBOOK, draw a color from your photo into the colors of the layout.

 

 

Explore | Jina Jean

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (Studio Calico) + stickers (Crate Paper) + layered borders (Crate Paper) + thickers (Crate Paper) + arrow clip (Freckled Fawn)

As you SCRAPBOOK, try using wordstrips and phrases to create a vertical column in the center, creating a strong focal point.

 

 

Summer | Cristina C. Scrap

12 x 12 | materials paper (Studio Calico, Anna Griffin) + wood dots (My Mind’s Eye) + embellishments (Studio Calico) + gesso + watercolors (Caran D’Ache, Faber Castell) + ink (Hero Arts) + stamps (Studio Calico, October Afternoon) + stickers (American Crafts) + vellum tape (BasicGrey) + sewing machine + gold thread + adhesive (Glue Glider Pro, American Crafts)

As you are taking your flower photos, try AV mode. Set your aperture as low as it will go, focus on the center of a flower, then CLICK! and enjoy the lovely sharp center and blurred edges.

 

 

Go See Do | Celeste Smith

12 x 12 | materials kit (Great Outdoors Explore by Kristin Kronin-Barrow) + font (Rockwell)

As you WRITE your next journaling block, don't forget to include the emotion behind what was going on. The "how did that make you feel" part is a terrific addition to any page. 

 

 

We (heart) Outside! | Marnie Flores

12 x 12 | materials papers, embellishments (Creativity by Crystal) + font (Bebas, Pea Comfy Cozy)

As you look to gather photos for a layout, remember they don't all have to come from the same day. You can gather them around a theme, or a season, or any other common thread. CLICK through your folders and pick to your heart's content.

 

 

Jordan Lake | Kate Christensen

8.5 x 11 | materials digital kit (Going Places Collaboration by The Ardent Sparrow and One Little Bird) + alpha (Elemental: Snippy Alphas by Gennifer Bursett) + tag (Tag You're It by Robyn Meierotto) + doily (Made of Awesome by Gennifer Bursett) + arrow (Wood Veneer: Arrows by Sahlin Studio) + stitches (Bare + Necessities No.2 by Creashens) + template (Capturing Fall by Amy Martin) + fonts (Traveling Typewriter)

Right now the large photos are in! If there is a photo that you haven't scrapbooked as you didn't want to crop it, SCRAPBOOK it now in its large format glory.

 

 

#garden 2014 | Lisa Borbély

8.5 x 11 | materials patterned paper (BasicGrey) + cardstock (American Crafts) + enamel dots (My Mind's Eye) + letter stickers (Fancy Pants Designs, October Afternoon) + wood veneer (Studio Calico) + word sticker (Momenta) + stamp (Becky Higgins)

Te next time you go to SCRAPBOOK do not despair if you are missing a character in your thickers pile. Just be creative! Like Lisa with the hashtag. All is well and fixable!

 

 

Home Sweet Home | Lisa Borbély

8.5 x 11 | materials patterned paper (My Mind's Eye) + cardstock (American Crafts) + letter stickers (BasicGrey) + wood veneer (Pink Fresh Studio, Studio Calico) + stamp (October Afternoon)

Grab your camera. Stand on your porch. Think of one thing that you LOVE in your community. Now run and take a picture of it. Hurry! Just one CLICK, though. Teasing. Take as many as you would like. Then come home, print, and scrapbook it.

 

 

Camping | Valerie O'Neall

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (My Mind's Eye) + wood veneer sheet (My Mind's Eye) + chipboard stickers (My Mind's Eye) + thickers (American Crafts) + wood dots (My Mind's Eye) + pen (American Crafts) + die cut machine (Silhouette Cameo)

The next time you need trees on a SCRAPBOOK page, follow Valerie's lead and stitch a trunk and branches onto a brown triangle. Whodathunkit? It completely looks like a printed-on-the-paper element. Amazing.

 

 

Another Day In Paradise | Jennifer Hignite

12 x 12 | materials digital kit (Every Little Bit: Daydream Bundle by Deena Rutter)

Try this for a journaling prompt: This is exactly what ___ looks like. Think for 1 minute and then WRITE away.

 

 

Best Ever | Diane Payne

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (Studio Calico, Crate Paper, We R Memory Keepers) + buttons (A Flair for Buttons) + brads (October Afternoon) + mist (Heidi Swapp) + stickers (Crate Paper, Heidi Swapp, Twine & Ink) + pen (American Crafts)

Perhaps you could WRITE a little about the things that you love in your backyard. Your immediate yard, or your community. Either will do.

 

 

Capable of Glistening | Amy Sorenson

12 x 12 | materials patterned paper (Fancy Pants) + alphabet stickers (American Crafts) + fonts (Adobe Caslon, Voluptate)

Have you recorded the relationship between your children's cousins or between you and your cousins? It can be reflective, or current. Or both. The important part is to WRITE about it.

 

That's it! So many ideas. We hope you will feel inspired to create your own layouts!

Inky Backgrounds Four Ways

I love using spray inks on my backgrounds, and lately I find I have been reaching for them more that patterned papers. The more I use them, the more versatile I realise they are. Misting and spraying are options, yes, but once I started thinking od them as a general art medium, I got so many more uses out of them. (In fact I need to restock my stash now!)

Here are four ways I've used them recently.

1. Classic misting

On this background, I used my watercolour crayons to fill in some shapes, and then spritzed with coordinating inks.

 

2. Drawing

To create the circle element, I placed a paper plate on my page, then dipped a small paintbrush into the inks to draw around.

 

3. Painting

To create these stripes, I used a foam brush and painted two colours of ink across the cardstock

 

4. Stamping

I created all this polka-dotty goodness by using a pencil eraser as a stamp! 

As you can see mists are so versatile. Simply think of them as paint or regular ink, and use them that way too. Plus they are less messy when not sprayed!

Fun with embossing folders

 

Hi there, it's Cristina here with some embossing inspiration for you. Since I got into scrapbooking through digital scrapbooking, I missed out on a lot of traditional tools. I am gradually catching up, though, ever since I got into paper scrapbooking when I started Project Life. A couple months ago, I took the plunge and bought a manual die cutting machine. After considering other options (mostly the Cuttlebug, which is smaller and less sturdy, but cheaper), I decided to get the Big Shot. My main motivation to buy it was to use it as a cutting machine with wafer thin dies, but I also bought an embossing folder, just to try it out... and since then I have fallen in love big time with embossing!

I really love the results! Here are a few cards I made for my Project Life album. The process is so quick and easy, and works with pretty much any kind of paper. I love to add watercolors or stamping to the embossed cards, and I even tried the faux letterpress look.

Embossing and watercoloring

I love to use watercolors to accent my embossed cards. This first example uses a thick grid card from Studio Calico. Since I wanted to use watercolors heavily on this card, I needed thick paper that could hold that much water and paint.

Embossing folder: Amy Tangerine

This card was done using a cheap index card from Staples. My watercoloring is done in a few spots and using little water, so the paper held up well.

Embossing folder: Tim Holtz

This next card was done on thicker paper. Adding a sticker and my photo, this card is ready to put in my Project Life album.

Embossing folder: We R Memory Keepers

 

Embossing and stamping

As a big fan of stamping, I also love to combine embossed cards with stamped accents. Here's two examples. 

Embossing folders: Cuttlebug (left)          Tim Holtz (right)

 

Faux letterpress

Finally, since letterpress is all the rage and I love the look, but don't own any letterpress plates nor paper, I have been playing with creating a faux letterpress look with my embossing folders. I just used some Hero Arts shadow inks to make this card (index cards from Staples). I inked the embossing folder with the ink pad, and ran it through the machine. Next, I cleaned the folder, inked it up with another color and embossed again.

This one is probably my favorite plate set! By We R Memory Keepers

Seriously.. embossing, where have you been all my life?? ;) Are you a fan too?

Click. | Background Photos

One of my favorite things to do on my layouts is use what I think of as a "background photograph" as the place I put my title or journaling. Yep, right on top of the picture! Quite often I add the text in Photoshop, but I've also put sticker letters, die-cut words, or stamped phrases on top of the photo. For example, in this layout I put my title on top of a wildflower photograph:

 

I like that the image combined with the title adds a little bit more to the story I'm trying to tell. It becomes a sort of personalized embellishment.

If you want to use a background photo on your layouts, though, you have to plan ahead a little bit. While you're taking pictures of an event or an experience, watch for images that would make good background photos. You want to leave some white space (though quite often the space isn't actually white, of course!) that you can later fill with text. Also include something that connects to the place or the experience. I often find myself down on my belly taking pictures that later become the background for text—odd angles are always interesting!

Here are ten ideas for taking background photos...watch for them on your summer adventures:

 

1. Flowers and trees. I confess: I have a weakness for photographing flowers. I can't resist their colors and textures. Same with trees. Like in the layout above, I use a lot of my flora photographs as background images. It's like keeping the flowers with me forever!

 

 

2. Feet. But not just any feet—feet doing something. Wearing cute shoes, dangling in chilly water, racing through sand. They tell a good story. Just leave a bit of space for writing in.

 

 

3. Unique details. Almost everywhere you go, you'll find some beauty that is unique to that place. For example, I took this background photo while walking around Old Faithful Basin in Yellowstone.

 

 

4. Garden details. I admire beautiful gardens and try to snap photos of them whenever I find myself in one. The background photo in this layout (I put the journaling on top of it) is from a water fountain that was in the garden where the wedding was held.

 

I liked the shape of the fountain, and the water with the mountain in the background, so I took the picture (even though my sister-in-law thought I was weird!) just because I liked it. It became a perfect background photo for the layout.

 

5. Sunsets. The visual drama is a perfect spot for a powerful title.

 

6. Related objects. Bowling pins at your best friend's fortieth birthday party. A pile of seashells at the beach. The mess left on the counter after your daughter's prom preparation. Almost anything you experience has the potential for objects that tell a story. Photograph them!

 

 

7. Beachscapes. The beach is full of "white" space...usually those beautiful shades of turquoise and blue. I like to include people in my beachscape photos because they give a sense of scale to all that beauty.

 

 

8. Natural landscapes. I tend to take a lot of photos of nature when I'm outside. It's one of my favorite things about going hiking. Watch for interesting perspectives—as with this picture, I like to include something small balanced against the larger vista:

 

 

9. Man made landscapes. This can range from your favorite spot in Disneyland to the architecture of a busy street in New York. The pond and water fountain in this photo are both man made (the ducks aren't!)

 

 

10. Signs. Signs in a background photo serve double duty...they are visually interesting and they let the viewer know where you are. (Sort of like a subtitle for your layout, yes?) I take photos of signs nearly everywhere we go, and I find them endlessly useful.

 Have you ever used background photos in your layouts? What other images would you add to this list?

Happy clicking!