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Sunday Photo + Words

Scrapbook. Inspiration from quotes

Happy Friday! We hope that everyone who celebrated Thanksgiving had a really good one. 

Today I am sharing a page that is inspired by a quote. I love quotes and have several notebooks where I collect them. 

Link to pin

 I certainly have a brain with way too many tabs open! And it usually is a bad thing for me since it causes me stress and anxiety. I am working on doing one thing at the time and to really focus, but it is hard. 

 

 

Note: With this last few weeks with extremly grey and gloomy weather it is a challenge to take a decent photo of my layouts. Bare with me! 

 

I rarely use patterned paper for backgrounds, but it has occured more often as of late. I see now that the journaling I did on my typewriter is a little bit washed out on that patterned, but I will leave it as is. I took that selfie a few months ago and thought it would be perfect for a page like this! 

 

How about you? Does your brain have too many tabs open?

 

Lisa

 

Ps. I always enjoy picking out and post the Sunday Photo + Words, and hope that you do too! I hope that you can get inspiration from the quotes!

 

 

Scrapbook: Inspiration from Home Decor

Hello! Welcome to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. If you're anything like me, you'll be cooking quite a bit today. But maybe you'll have some time for scrapbooking, too, and maybe this idea will help you find an embellishment or two.

Last Mother's Day, my daughter gave me a vase she bought at Anthropology. All spring and summer, I kept different flowers in it, but for fall I decided to go with a simple sprig of autumn leaves. I've had it this way since September and I swear, every time I walk past it I smile a little bit. Mostly because she knows me so well. (I have a little obsession with black and white/cream/pale grey/beige.) 

But also because it just looked so pretty!

The other day, I decided I'd use it to inspire a scrapbook layout. I've been making a lot of Thanksgiving layouts this month, and I was feeling a little bit tired of the usual leaf/turkey/browns motif. Grey, black, cream and orange felt perfect with these photos:

I wanted to stay true to the simplicity of the decoration, so I didn't add a lot, but here is what I came up with:

I made the flowery stem in the vase by cutting the letter Q out, using the dingbat font Hollhock and my Silhouette. (I've been wanting to do that forever!)

So here's a little challenge: take a break from cooking to wander around your house for a few minutes, looking for inspiration in your home decor. Maybe even take a few notes for ideas you want to use soon. Then put them to use and share them!

And let me wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving, if you're American. It's my favorite holiday, so tomorrow I'll be reveling in gravy and rolls and stuff and of course pie!

click | prepping for a Thanksgiving page/album

Today is day two of our preparations for our Thanksgiving project. In case you missed yesterday's post, we are planning a project (page or mini) based upon's Sue's gallery layout this month. We are going to check in on our holiday hour by hour to see what we are doing. This is in part because I loved the idea, and in part because last year was an epic fail in the photo department!

So yesterday we prepped the journaling tags. And today we are going to make a list of photos to take. (Have I mentioned how excited I am to have more than one photo to represent our holiday and feast this year?)

 

Here is the list that I came up with:

• decorations
• turkey
• finished food
• people
• prep

I figure that most of these will be covered as I go hour by hour. I am setting a timer on my phone to remind me that an hour has passed. I know all too well that once a turkey is in and rolls are rising and I start in on the sides that I will forget the photos. Hopefully a beeping alarm will help. I am also planning on telling my kids so they will help remind me. I think that being purposeful is already going to increase my chances of a successful photographic event. 

Any thoughts for maximizing succcess? I am all ears!

Only two more days!

 

write | prepping for a Thanksgiving page/album

Hello! and welcome to Thanksgiving week. I am so excited to work together to put an album or page together. I think it's going to be plenty of fun.

 

Did you see Sue's post from earlier this month? I did and I loved the idea. I am going to copy it for out Thanksgiving day. You might remember that last year I totally forgot to take any photos. So busy cooking was I. This year, I don't want to repeat that mistake so I thought I might preplan a page/album. I'm not toally sure how I want to put it together, but I know I want to follow Sue's format of documenting hour by hour.

 

To help me with the journaling, I have put together journaling tags that list the hour. I will let the photos guide the stories, and add notes that coincide with the times. I'm so excited.

Here are the tags. I made them a bit generic so that I might reuse them for another project/holiday.

If you would like to download them, you may do so here. I hope that you might use them to put together your own Thanksgiving project!

See you tomorrow!

Sunday Photo + Words

Sketchbook Saturday

Today we are going to have a little fun with last week's sketch. Rather than make something new, we are going to see what we can do to reinvent the sketch that came from Diane's layout.

 

First up, let's look at the original sketch.

 

 

To begin, I turned it one turn counter clockwise and flipped it to the reverse. Here is how that one came out.

 

In putting my layout together, I rearranged things a little in the lower corner. Let's see how the new layout came out.

It looks so much different than the original, no?

I am so surprised at the difference a little adjustment makes. (Might you want to try a side by side yourself?)

 

For the next sketch, I turned the origianl 180 degrees, then relocated the "flair."

 

Here is the layout that followed.

 

I ended up putting the photo on the top of hte stack instead of the bottom, as it felt out of place to have the quote above the photo. As I look at all three layouts, I find it so interesting to see how the weight of the layout changes with the photo's placement. So very curious.

 

That's it for today! I hope you will try having fun with these two variations of week 2's sketch!

Documenting December

 

Hi, it's Cristina here, and today I want to show you my December Daily albums. The most wonderful time of the year is starting soon.. and I am starting to make plans on how I want to document December this year.

I have completed a December Daily album in each of the past four years, and I am at it again this year for the fifth album. This really is my favorite project. I love Christmas, and I love documenting it.

In these past four years, I have taken different approaches to putting my album together, and I want to share my impressions with you. Each of these four albums was put together using my stash.

My 2010-2013 albums

In 2010, I used a 2-ring album. The pages were all hybrid, and I used my Silhouette extensively. In 2011, which was once again all hybrid, I assembled the album using my Cinch. In 2012 and 2013 I used pocket scrapbooking. Here's a look at the inside of the albums.

I love combining different shapes and textures in the album - you can see how I used bubble wrap at the front of my 2010 album and vellum at the front of the 2011 and 2013 albums.

What I liked & what I want to change

 And here is a peek at some random pages in my albums.

As you can see, in my 2010 album I combined a lot of different shapes of pages. I love this and want to do it again in 2014!

In 2011, I added lots of journaling to tell my Christmas stories. I used each 2-page spread per day, one story per day. I want to do this again in 2014!

In all my albums, the number of the day is featured prominently. I want to do this again in 2014!

The pocket-album approach I used in 2012 and 2013 made it very quick and easy to put together my album and I was able to use up a lot of journal cards from my stash, but I found myself writing less. I also dislike that the different textures get lost behind a plastic protector.  I will not do a pocket album in 2014.

My process

In 2010, my first December Daily, I pre-made all the pages because I was traveling for most of December. I ended up not being able to keep up with the album during my trip, and finished it a few months later. The other three years I worked on my album as we went. In 2013 I actually fell behind and I finished my album after the summer. I definitely lose inspiration if I don't work on my album in December, so I will try to stay current as much as I can. But I know now not to worry if that fails, because I can catch up when things slow down. In any case, I find that waiting to have my pictures in front of me works best, rather than having all the foundation pages made first. I will make a list of Christmas topics to use for the days in which I don't have any Christmas-related story to tell.

And now.. I'd love to hear from you! Are you looking forward to December? What are your plans for documenting this month? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Gather 'Round the Table

Hi! Sue Althouse here today, with another idea for creating a scrapbook layout based on what surrounds you in life, specifically in your home. This one will need to develop over time, but I think it is worth the effort. First, identify one place in your home that functions as a central hub of family activity. Then keep your phone or camera nearby. Take photos of the different people who gather in that place and the different activities that occur in that location. Scrap the results!

 

 For us, the table in our kitchen was the logical choice. I included friends and family, even furry ones. This is a place where we eat, play cards, knit, wrap presents, even try on make-up. And play Scrabble on cold winter days while watching college basketball. Yes, we used to play Scrabble with a real board and pieces. Now we do it on our phones. Not sure that is change for the better, but I digress...

 

I do not remember how long it took me to get this collection of photos to scrap. Maybe a year? Maybe a couple of seasons? It was definitely an idea that took time to evolve, but I love the end result. It's a little snapshop of our life in one small spot. It says much about who we are. Now we are in a new home, collecting new friends 'round the table. Maybe it's time to recycle this idea for another scrapbook page!

Thanksgiving Blessings

Hi everyone, Diane here today sharing some thoughts on Thanksgiving. While I have been out and about the last couple weeks, I have noticed that we have gone straight from Halloween to Christmas in the retail world. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Christmas...the decorating, Christmas trees and lights, favorite Christmas movies and music, snuggling up inside with the fireplace on sipping hot cocoa, and spending time with the family and friends. But, I feel I should pause before heading straight into all of that and think about everything I am thankful for this year. As I started planning the Thanksgiving meal for my family, I thought perhaps I should create some Thanksgiving place settings too. So, I pulled out my scrapbooking supplies and came up with some quick and easy tags and name cards to make the meal with my loved ones just a little more special.

To create the Thanksgiving tags, I simply added a piece of fall flair, a greeting and a strip of gold glitter to office tags and tied it onto the napkin ring with cream and gold twine.

For the name cards, I used woodgrain textured cardstock trimmed in gold with cream and gold alpha stickers for our names.

These were quick and easy and really adds a special touch to the table. I'm looking forward to sitting down to this with my family next week.

Thank you for joining me today. May you be blessed this holiday season!