Working on pages and Martha preview

so last week i left off where i shoulda been makin Friday stuff - Pets or Special Projects right?

well i began to create pages of our recent trip into DC - pictures of lots of memorials and cherry blossoms etc. I took a whole lotta photos and i'm not a good editor. rather i prefer not to use one photo when 2 or 3 will show a fuller picture of events LOL

I laid out 4 pages (containing 24 photos) and then had to set it aside to take care of some other things around here. I still have more photos to put on pages then I'll go back and journal and title things.

I scanned a few photos yesterday for a layout idea I had. Hpefully i'll work on that today.

But while I had a little time i thought i'd head over to Michael's as I read somewhere online that Martha's products were already being displayed. I had read some mixed reviews - most notably a long thread on a well-known board about the very large and expensive albums she was selling.

At my Michael's they were still working on putting out all the product but there was a good bit out already to safely say, here and now, it's all lovely. Just what i expected for the most part. It's classic and pretty. I wasn't altogether thrilled with some of the patterned papers in packages - the scrapbooking paper - but that's ok as I find myself not using too much patterned paper on pages. I use it mostly on cards and for other projects. There were 3 different sizes of albums: 12x12, 8.5x11 (landscape) and the large 18x18 size. She had 18x18 paper as well and lovely wrapping paper that could be used for scrapbooking. I liked the stamps she had and i came home with 3 different colored journaling pens (i really don't need anything right now, but pens i cannot resist - specially if they are in pretty colors!)

There were all kinds of other items and i shall have to return when ALL of the product is out but I like it. I'm so pleased. I don't think she's trying to rock the scrapbook world but I think she's made a lovely addition. I'm kind of weary of all the same companies making the same products and hers seemed much more "me" than most companies are making right now. Yes, I know you can't use your 40% off coupon on her things. I like using a coupon but if i want something i'll buy it just the same. When I return to Michael's I am going to take a better look at her albums - they looked pretty darned nice and I'm getting so much done lately I have a stack of pages but no album to put them in!

ok... back to work....

Birthdays

Huge subject of scrapbooks - birthdays - well, at least my scrapbooks.

I suspect its fairly typical in most scrapbooks.

One of those events that must be documented.

For every birthday, I take pictures of the birthday girl/boy, the cake, presents.

The usual I guess.

When the kids were younger we'd take pictures at their birthday parties.

I'd make sure to get shots of the guests, the cake, the presents.

Maybe capture a few of the games or activities at the party.

All kind of typical. I spose maybe someone would think - how boring.

But I don't. I really enjoy looking at those birthday pictures.

I love making the birthday party pages.

Birthdays are a big deal.

And the pictures and pages - well think about it like this:

Birthdays are probably THE only time you don't forget your camera.

Who doesn't take a picture of their kid blowing out the birthday candles?

And since you have that shot - the obligatory cake and candle shot - that's a little timeline you are creating for that person.

You'll always have that birthday picture.

And what they look like on that special day.

I suppose you could say the same about the first day of school picture

or the actual yearly school portrait

But the birthday picture -

It's always special.

Cos it's that person's special day.

And there is always a special smile - a real one - in those birthday pictures.

Anyway - here's the most recent birthday page I've done.

Actually I just finished it about 10 minutes ago.

And it took about that long to make - even better!

I used another one of those Making Memories Perspectives, my sewing machine and my Quickutz (this time the Zoe font).

Oh i forgot to mention - i inevitably make a pocket somewhere on the birthday pages - to hold the birthday cards. (I'm a packrat - I never throw out a birthday card).

The pocket this time is on the left hand side of this page.

I laid down a sheet of white cardstock - positioned the photos on it - placed the perspectives mat over the top and sewed down the right and left sides as well as between the two groups of photos . The perpective mat already had the large photo sewn to it.

I may actually get some more pages made today as this one went so quickly!

Easter Pictures

I was actually able to get a 2 page spread done today - yeah!

Today is Wednesday so that means "Family/Husband" so why not do pictures of the Husbands family?
We went to my brother-in-law's home for Easter dinner. And that's exactly what I took photos of - the dinner table. Well, actually, the adult dinner table (which included the youngest child who is about 22 months old and a pistol - the other 5 kids ate on their own and it worked out fine - my "kid" is a little old now for the kid table - so she sat with the adults).
You know one of the things I love about scrapbooking? It's the reliving the event or the moment as you create the pages. We had such a nice day on Easter. It was nice going over it all in my head. And it is certainly easier to journal events that just happened a short time ago - everything is so clear in your head.
I know its probably not fashionable to scrap "events" but I don't mind it at all. Actually it makes it quite simple if you ask me! I went thru my considerable stash of shtuff and found this sheet of O'Scrap Easter images - I figured why not use some of those - they were light and pastel and the photos seemed a little dark. Together the combo worked out just fine. I used some light colored cardstock that complimented the photos and the O'Scrap embellishment and it came out nicely. Oh and I used my Quickutz - Studio font for the title.
Remember I'm not trying to win any awards or get in any magazines - I'm trying to get these memories put in a scrapbook AND use up my supplies. The pages work - and my family will love them so what more could I want?
Tomorrow is Thursday - My Kids is the topic. Let's see what I can do with that!

Budding Beauty

Budding Beauty Vanity that is - a much desired present that I received as a little girl.
It's Tuesday again - it seems lately i'm getting the "me" stuff done - oh well i guess it's about time i did some scrapbooking about myself. Anyway this page is about the gift I wanted and how it might seem strange i wanted a girly gift, since i was such a tomboy.
I used anothe one of those Making Memories Perspectives mats, some Chatterbox paper, a skinny ribbon and the most lovely Great Circus Alphabet from www.purpleoniondesigns.com

Yesterday was sposed to be a planning day but i wasn't able to do much planning per se. That's ok cos i've got a bunch of photos i had recently printed as well as my RTG file to pick from.

It was a dark and stormy night

okay here in Suzy's neighborhood it is a dark and stormy afternoon.

The weather leaves a lot to be desired. However we're feeling grateful because the original prediction was snow. I know some of my northern friends are dealing with that - Sorry girls.

I feel for you. This is 'sposed to be spring!

Anyway

"it was a dark and stormy night"

Reminds me of Snoopy writing his books and beginning with that phrase.

And i was thinking of that writing thing when i got on here to post some pictures of my special project i mentioned earlier in the week.

Writing anything in school was like torture for me. I don't know why. I hated it with a passion.

And so strangely enough I never mind doing the journaling stuff in my scrapbooks.

Maybe its cos i know i'm not getting graded :-)
But really i think i don't mind journaling because when i do it - i just write what i'm thinking - I want it to sound like me - so one day, when my kids read it they'll almost be able to hear me talking to them.

As most of you know i'm not one for the "explore, dream, discover, journey" business. It's just not me - and my kids know it.

However, I am not adverse to writing some pretty mushy stuff to my kids in my scrapbooks.

They'd recognize that as being me on occasion.

Moms are allowed mushy moments.

Which brings me to my special little project.

My sister asked me to make an album for a friend of hers. It's a special occasion for the friend and they're having a party. The album will be presented at the party. It's filled with all kinds of quotes regarding friendship mostly. But my sister and her friends wanted to be able to add notes to the friend to go in the album. The notes are of a personal nature and not to be shared with everyone. So i came up with a solution that i think worked very nicely. See what you think:

This i s the cover. No special embellishment on it - I decided we'd just let the pretty paper (Anna Griffin) be displayed and I added a whole lot of ribbons on 3 binder circle clippy things (what do you call those anyway?) which held the album together.

On the inside there are 15pages - 28 sides with quotes and stamped (in versamark) and chalked images. 1 more page with just a mat on each side for pics. You can see that there are 14 tabs. Each set of 2 sides was attached to a center white sheet of cardstock (sortofa cardstock sandwich - 1 blue 1 white 1 blue). The white center sheet had the tab attached to it. I ran tape along the long sides and the binding side which created 2 pockets for those personal notes. I hope this description is making sense - its kind of hard to describe. I'll throw in one more image just so you get the idea.

I used a whole host of stamps from my collection for the images. The background stamp on every page is one of my very favorites - a script stamp from www.purpleoniondesigns.com

I use it all the time. When its stamped in versamark on colored cardstock you just get a lovely hint of pattern but it only adds to your page and never detract. I printed out all the quotes on the maize colored cardstock and stitched them and the images to the pages. The tabs were all created using my Quickutz tab die. I love that die.

So there you have it. Now on to other things on this dark and stormy Sunday afternoon.

Tomboy

here's the layout i did yesterday - it was Tuesday so it was about me
I found a picture of me as a little girl.
I got to thinking as I worked on this about why these pictures of me really mean so much.
Obviously they bring me back and I enjoy the trip down memory lane.
However I've always enjoyed looking at photos. Older ones seem so much more precious.
Way back in the day, when i was a little girl, my grandfather was the photographer. He had a 35mm camera with a lovely brown leather case. I don't think I can remember a Sunday where he didn't bring that camera with him to take photos of us. My father was an only child so we were the complete objects of my grandparents affections. As it should be don't you think?
Anyway, he took tons of pictures of us as well as ones of he and my grandmother on vacations etc. He must have been the one who took photos of my dad - I have some wonderful ones. But photo taking back then - well it seemed different then. It was a big deal. Nowadays we document every single burp our children make (not a bad thing - just an observation). I remember my grandfather taking our photos a lot but it seemed different. Nowadays people don't think a thing about taking hundreds of photos on a vacation. They just didn't do that back then. So the pictures are much more precious perhaps because there weren't as many photos taken? I don't know. I am just grateful my Pop-Pop took this photo of me. He really captured a sweet little moment here - me with my bike showing off my new horn! Such a little tomboy.
So what did i use?
I used a Making Memories perspectives (cardstock precut mats - well really its a piece of cardstock with a hole cut out for the photo - i have a variety package of these and they're really great. this particular one is for one photo but the package contains a variety to use on pages up to 6 photos.)
I backed it with a piece of red cardstock so it looks double matted.
I also used some Making Memories chipboard letters - easy and quick to use and makes a nice impact. (I just used my jumbo Zig 2 way glue pen to adhere them)
Stitched around the mat and the journaling block
Added 2 embellishments I found squirreled away - both given to me by my friend nursemichelle (you can visit her at http://solistenup.blogspot.com/ - hi michelle!) some time ago. She made the adorable heart clip (she's talented isn't she?) and the little stamp was a good color and I thought a nice compliment subject matter wise (girl on horse - girl on bike)
Today I have to veer off schedule and work on a special project - which is normally a Friday thing. I promised my sister I'd make an album she can give as a gift to a very special friend and it needs to get finished and mailed by Friday. Rest assured I will share what I make.

Catching up

Spring break is over and we're back to business around here
It seems when there are vacations, there is a lot of picture taking.
Over the break we took a little excursion (translation: picture taking opportunity)
And there was a birthday (translation: another photo opportunity)
With all these photos being taken i got to thinking about all my scrapbooking in general.
I have a bazillion photos to put in scrapbooks in some way, shape or form.
All that thinking and photo taking gets you into the
"Will i ever get caught up?" mode

When i worked in a scrapbook store this talking about "catching up" was very prevalent among customers frequenting the store.
I heard the CU phrase used in many ways (grammatical tenses and otherwise)
"I'm all caught up" said quite proudly
"I'll never catch up" said with disgust
"I was all caught up but then....." said in an excusatory manner
I am normally of the school which says being caught up isn't the be and end all of everything.
If you're enjoying making the scrapbooks, you should let yourself off the hook.
Just continue to work on pages, save those memories, blah di blah
I really do believe being all caught up isn't necessarily the point
But, sitting here, with piles of photos and memorabilia surrounding me -
I'm thinkin it wouldn't be so bad

I'm off to upload the photos I took yesterday at the Easter dinner with family and order a few to be developed. I can work in those photos to be scrapped on Wednesday (the family/Husband day). Perhaps by working my schedule - which allows me to scrap all kinds of topics each week (to prevent boredom if nothing else) I can work the old stuff and the new and somehow reach the fantasy-land of "All Caught Up" one day.

Suzy's Spring Break and Suzy meets Martha (well sorta)

Recap since last Suzy posted:

last Friday i did work on scanning a nice bunch of photos in - the pics had family dogs (that covered the pets on the schedule HA!) and heritage photos (photos of my father as a little boy, my parents on their wedding day among others - that counts for Saturday) and in the meantime i've been working on a little project - a swap with some very good friends (my charms are coming along girls :-))

BUT technically this week, where Suzy lives, it is Spring Break -and it's my daughter's 16th birthday to boot! So we have a number of things we have to accomplish this week and adventures to embark upon :-) My scrapping will fit in when and if it can.

Today one such adventure was going to an eye dr apppointment then we got to make a trip to Michaels for some things both Suzy and her daughter needed. We found our items and went to the checkout. And it was there i saw it. It, being this little bag stuffer ad for MARTHA STEWART CRAFTS.

You probably don't know this but Suzy Scrapbooker adores Martha Stewart! Yes, I do. Martha is wonderful in my book and has always been. I've been watching Martha for forever. BAck to her PBS days. Perhaps its because Martha and Suzy both are from New Jersey? well, it's possible. But i think it's more likely because Martha and Suzy like pretty things. And we both like to make things.

If you look closely at the ad it shows an open scrapbook - with just the minimum of items - the pictures and a minor item to embellish it. And off to the side there is, what one could surmise, memorablia that could go in the scrapbook. OH I'M EXCITED! I can only imagine Martha is going to set the scrapbook world on its end - if the ad is any indication. Perhaps get scrapbooking back to what it once was - a place to save your memories. Wow - what a concept. I am going to guess that at least. She might have some papers, adhesive, photo corners, items to hold memorabilia. But it will all be pretty, functional and not over the top.

Very Suzy-friendly.

That's my guess and my hope.

And what store better to introduce her products than Michaels.

As far as scrapbooking goes, Michaels has carried some items - not the scrapbook fanatic's place to shop - definitely more Suzy-friendly. Just your basic items to get you started and that is a fine thing. But with Martha on board - well who knows.

I will be at Michael's at the end of the month to check it all out - rest assured.