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Sunday Photo + Words

Sketchbook Saturday

This week our sketch comes from a layout by Jody. The chocolate might have beguiled us!

It made for a quick and lovely sketch

which Marnie promptly put to good use!

 

We hope you, too, will enjoy using it!

Expressing Your Love

Hello everyone, Cari here! One of the things I love about scrapbooking it that it allows my to express my love. It's so hard sometimes express myself even in journaling, but those few lines give me the space to show my love. Or even when there is no journaling at all, I feel that with one layout with a good photo and pretty colors, papers and embellishments I can show how I feel.

That is the reason why I scrapbook, why I took a time sit down and tell my story, whit word or without them, as Ali Edwards Say: My Story Matters.

Today I want to show some layouts I made that made me think on this post. The first one is my and my sister, I love her so much, but I never say it to her, I made this layout expecting that some day she read this, and also I try to make a layout that would like her and pretty childish, since we were a lot younger on this photo haha.

The second layout I want to show is for my husband, for now our family is only us and our cats, and I'm really enjoying this time our life, I like making layouts that show that, how happy we are now, just the two of us.

And the last one is for my family: My husband, my two, cats and I, I couln't feel happier about the family I have. This layout has no journaling, but I feel that It express what I feel only with the decoration and the photo.

I hope you have enjoyed this entry and tell me, how do you express your love?

Have a good weekend,

Vacation Layouts

Hello. It's Aliza back for another day. As promised, I have some layouts and a project to share from our recent road trip. In the fist layout,  The theme for the month of August, is "trying something new." This, my friends, is harder than I thought. I often begin a layout saying to myself, "I will not keep doing the same thing over and over again." Only to find myself moments later, doing what I know how to do successfully.

That is what happened in my first layout; I ended up using one of my go-to strategies for starting a page. I cut up some patterned papers, I layer them toward the center, put the photo on top, add a few embellishments, and voila:

I tried (really , I did!)to vary things a little in the second layout. Instead of starting my layout in the center, I started adding my patterned papers at the top of the page. Even though my photo still ended up layered right in the center, it still felt good to make that small change. It feels fresh to me. Which just goes to show you, even small changes can matter.

I was planning to keep on churning out a couple of more layouts, but I got distracted by a project that was completely new to me. Since we drove across many states, I was inspired by a Sillhouette project on Instagram, to create a crafty map of the Unites States. I spent a lot of time watching tutorials, finding fonts and brushes, and files, to create this masterpiece.

It felt good to create something new and way outside my comfort zone. Also, it was exhausting and time consuming. But, sometimes, it's worth it.

Scrapbook: Playing with paint

Hello! It's Jennifer Larson, and I wanted to share something new I played with this summer: paint.
 I've used paint before but not gesso or modeling paste. I wanted to share a mini album where I used them. Here it is:

I created this mini album as a part of a class at Studio Calico. I had enrolled in the class years ago but set down to finishing it this summer (I'm hopefully not the only one who does that!). I did a lot on the covering. Here's the order of product:

1. Gesso
2. Modeling paste
3. Gesso
4. Punched shapes (added quickly!)
5. Gesso (added quickly!)
6. Mist
7. Embellishments

If you google "Using modeling paste in scrapbooking" you can find lots of educational resources. Here's a short video by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer that teachers you how to apply modeling paste. I won't add one for gesso because that's basically paint. Here's the back cover, which is similar:

I did several similar things on the insides with gesso and modeling paste. Here I used gesso on top of stickers to mute them, and under and over a die cut to create a tone-on-tone effect:

Here I again used gesso, die cuts, and mist to create a subtle texture and design:

I used gesso to house the journaling block and die cut:

And more modeling paste and mist within:

Mind you, this is totally not my usual style. I am a neat and tidy gal. But I did have fun playing around with all these paint and texture products on this mini album. This gives me another tool that I can use creating pages. I didn't post my whole mini-album here, but I did on my blog. You can see the whole mini-album here.

Thank you for visiting! I hope you get some ideas to play around with gesso, modeling paint, and mist.

Vacation Photos

Hi, again. I am back today to share some of my photos from the Deutsch Family Road Trip, 2015. (I am not sure why I feel the need to title our vacations, but I do.) Yesterday, I wrote about writing our vacation stories while on the road, without feeling the need to scrapbook them right away. Today, I will share some photos. In a way, this is the easy part of documenting vacations. Pulling out your camera, large or small, and snapping photos to capture all the fun and scenery.

As a scrapbooker though, as I take photos of our vacation, I wonder at the time, "What is the story here?" And that dictates some of the pictures I take. 

There are the posed family photos that simply say, "we were here."

 

There are the photos that cover some of the details of the journey of our life on the road.

 

And there are the photos that tell the really rich stories.

Like, who we spent time with:

 

And how a city boy, who does not love nature, managed in a cabin surrounded by moths:

And about his brother, who is happy to be close to nature.

 

And then there are the photos that capture beauty and scenes that we don't get to see every day.

 

Trust me, there are many, many more. Some will get made into scrapbook pages, and some will just exist on the computer. Some of those scrapbook pages will tell stories, and others will just help display some favorite photos. I will share some of those layouts tomorrow.

Writing on the Road

Hi, everyone. Whew, this summer is flying by. I am trying to make the most of my last days of freedom by getting a lot of scrapbooking and general crafting done. And, I get to share my whole process with you over the next few days.

This summer, for the first time since 2012, we went on a family vacation. And just as we did in 2012, we went on a road trip. My sister and her family were vacationing in Orlando, Florida, so we decided to join them down there.

I packed up some scrapbook supplies to take along. I even printed some pictures along the way. 

Do you know how many layouts I scrapped while on the road? Zero.

But, I did use some of my supplies to jazz up this little notebook.

And, instead of scrapbooking, I just made sure to keep on writing about what we did, what we saw, what we ate, and how we were feeling (it was not always good). While it's a different feeling from having a nice completed page, having time to just focus on words without worrying about pictures and papers, provides its own feelings of creativity, accomplishment, and calm. 

 

In addition to writing, of course, I took many pictures. And I will share some with you tomorrow!

 

Sunday Photo + Words

Saturday Sketch

This month we are looking to our January 2010 gallery, Favo(u)rites. Our first sketch comes from Candice's layout, You Are Loved.

Here is the resulting sketch.

Marnie stayed true to the sketch in creating a Fourth of July layout.

 

And then put a quick landscape one together as well.

 

In case you would prefer a 12x12 layout, here is that sketch as well.

 

Marnie put a layout together using the sketch.

 

Then she cropped it in to make it a bit more current.

 

Have you a preference?

We hope the sketch comes in handy and that it helps you put together a layout or two! Happy weekend!

scrapbook | highlights

Hello lovies!! I've been MIA here due to some other commitments but I'm back to share a new layout to go along with our monthly theme of "trying something new." 

Here's a hilariously honest truth: I have neophobia. Neophobia is "the fear of anything new." It is often associated with the study of taste. I'm infamous in my family for never trying new food. I like redundancy in my life and take comfort in the mundane and monotonous. (Don't I sound like a barrel of laughs?) I often read the ending to movies before I go see them and I don't like to listen to music I've never heard before. My husband gets a big laugh out of that because he insists there was a first time I heard every song I love. :) Hmm...I guess he's right about that. 

My dislike for trying new things often extends to my scrapbooking. My style has stayed consistent since about 2008. Instead of feeling like I need to change, I embrace my consistency. I describe my style as "clean and classic." I like what I do and feel like I know how to achieve a look I love, however, every once in a while, I do want to freshen it up a little aka "try something new." 

Recently, I have been obsessed with watching YouTube videos by my friend, Jen Schow. She has 100+ videos of her lovely layouts and she always inspires me to scrapbook. I've watched her so much that I can kind of hear her in my head now when I'm making layouts and I feel myself thinking like she does. This is a good thing. We can all find inspiration in other talented scrapbookers and keep growing in our design skills.

One of Jen's go-to designs is to layer papers under the photo. I normally start with a sketch and make a very linear layout but for this layout, I decided to just start cutting papers ala Jen, and layering them. I laid everything out before I committed to gluing anything down. Once I was happy with the design, I adhered the papers and photo. I really love how this came out! I'm still obsessed with cursive titles so I cut the title on my Silhouette Cameo, then I looked for a trio of embellishments to finish the page. Voila! Easy-peasy-done!

This page is about my daughter trying something new. I looked through a stack of 100 photos I had developed recently until I found one with a story about trying something new. This is the story of Caroline getting highlights for the first time. It took me a while to adjust to her new hair color (you're not surprised, right?) but I love it now.

One fun surprise on this page is that when I needed something to put in a blank spot to the right of the photo, I looked through my red color bin of embellishments and found this acrylic piece that had been in my drawer for years. I thought it was perfect because it reminds me of hair blowing in the wind or curls!! It's also the perfect shade of red. I'm a stickler for matching colors perfectly. 

I had fun trying something new! Breaking out of the box is always a good thing! Tell me something you have tried new lately in your scrapbooking OR something you want to try! I want to hear!