I've been busy

Reading .....
Photo Freedom by Stacy Julian and Family History Scrapbooking by Becky Higgins
Now you might be thinking - I thought you gave up on all these books and magazines. And yes I have. I stopped my magazine subscriptions entirely. But these 2 books have been nagging at me since they came out. The Becky Higgins book came out while I was still working at the store and I didn't even look at it I was so disenchanted with all the books at the time. The Photo Freedom book has only been out a few months but it talks about (in detail) Stacy's system that she's mentioned in both her previous books (which I have) and covers in her online class Library of Memories (which I'd love to take but it ain't cheap. I hoped for a "book" version and my prayers were answered LOL).
I picked up the Family History book at AC Moore with a 50% off coupon. It's really pretty great. I know it will help me down the line when I attack the stacks and stacks of old family (my childhood etc) photos I have. But what's on my mind is the pictures I've got from my college days onward - I was telling my friend June howI've been reading the book and began the timeline Stacy talks about in the beginnning. You timeline your photos so you have a reference point (who was what age when this happened for example). I created a little spreadsheet and am just about done with that and I've discovered I have 190 packages of photos in 9 boxes.
Frightening huh?
And that doesnt even count the 5 years of digital photos I've got.
So I needed to get this under control - and I'm thinking this book is going to help me out immensely. If nothing else, I've gotten a renewed enthusiasm and also realize there is more than one way to skin a cat (Frankie & Spencer - you didnt hear me type that!)
I'll be finishing my timeline probably today or tomorrow and then onto the scarey part - taking some of the photos out of chronological order (not all but some). I'll let you know how I do.

National Scrapbook day came and went

and i haven't scrapped in over a month - so there.
Life has just been so busy.
However I've been working on a project for the FIL's 80th birthday. We're having a little entertainment at the party - photos with music of his life and family. It will be wonderful. Last update from those putting it together is there will be over 150 pics submitted from all six siblings. Anyway I had to search through about 24 years of photos to get our entries. No small feat I tell you - but it will be worth it. He will love it. DH and I are going to follow up with a framed collage of photos and an album from the party.
As I looked through the boxes and boxes of photos it became abundantly clear I have gotten next to nothing done in the way of scrapbooking. Seriously, in all the years I've scrapped (10 years) I have so little to show for it. This is a recurring revelation. That is how this blog was born really. Getting so hung up in the scrapbooking world I'm not getting much accomplished.
I have to make some progress. I probably have to stop scrappin every picture (gasp!). So i broke down and ordered Stacy Julian's "Photo Freedom" book. It's the book wherein she tells her system that she teaches in her Library of Memories class. I'm hoping the book will arrive sooner than later this week. I'll do a review and then I'm going to get to work. I'm not sure if I'll follow all of her system - that remains to be seen. But I'm thinking there has to be a better way. My own little system here was definitely helping me make some headway but I've gotta get more done. Stay tuned!

Jumping Around

Chronologically speaking - jumping around.

I had been talking about these dinosaur Halloween costume pictures on Small Smackerels. I had the photos out and thought - why not. Just cos I've been working on the baby pictures doesn't mean I can't skip ahead, whilst I'm in the mood, and scrapbook these right?

I hunted through my supplies and found some paper and stickers. I even found some twistel! Remember that?

It's not the greatest layout but i like it enough. Cute colors, papers etc. The minute i started to agonize that the little trick or treat tag as well as the title were "floating" i said to myself - who the heck cares? did i really care? No. Deep down i didn't. This isn't some graphic design project or a design team entry. It's a scrapbook page. One day, I like to think my son and his future wife (whomever she might be) will look at it and say - gee our son really looks like his dad. (or something like that). Or maybe they'll say - we gotta get Mom to make our son a costume for Halloween this year!

The point is my son and future generations will have these cute photos to look at and reminisce about and that's what it's all about. Isn't it?

For the record:

Patterned Paper - Creative Imaginations

Stickers: All stickers are by Doodlebug except the thin black and white stripe border stickers which I got from Creative Memories (maybe they're Mrs. Grossman's huh?)

Twistel and Brads are from Making Memories.

Bat Stamp is a foam stamp from Making Memories - it may be hard to see but the black cardstock is stamped using the bat stamp and Versamark.

Getting back to "jumping around"....

I'm more of a chronological scrapbooker. I know many people are - I'd even say most people work on scrapbooks in this manner. And ya know I tried to get into the Simple-Scrapbooks-Stacey-Julian thought process about forgetting the dates and working on themes (that's a simplistic explanation). I even thought about trying her Library Of Memories Class - which sounds really wonderful. I know someone who did indeed take the course and they really spoke extremely highly of it. I have both of Stacey Julian's books: Simple Scrapbooks and the newer Big Picture Scrapbooking. I really enjoyed them both. I guess bottom line, it's just not for me. I like scrapbooking all my photos. I don't mind (anymore) that I have a bazillion photos to scrap. Eventually (God-willing) I'll make the scrapbooks for those photos. I have taken what I learned from those books and incorporated them into my own process and that's okay, right?

It's Tuesday

but i'm not posting something yet about the category for the day - me

i will give you another pic of some pages i made last week but first i'm going to digress a little and tell you about 2 books.

The first one i just included in my sidebar - i'd pulled it out last nite and realized i should mention it here:

Scrapbooking Life's Little Treasures by Rebecca Sower

if you don't have this little treasure i highly recommend it. I think i've got most every idea book there ever was - up until about 1 year ago - when i decided they weren't doing me any good. (I don't want to put anyone's book down - i had just come to a place where it was not for me anymore. I was on my way mentally to the Suzy place i'm now at in my head - how's that?)

I absolutely adore this book. I return to it over and over to just look at and be inspired by. I actually have her other book Scrapbooking Life's Little Secrets as well - and a fine book it is - but the Treasures book will always rank among my favorites.

If you're interested I'm sure you can find it available from the Creating Keepsakes website.

Okay - i said 2 books

The second book is a novel.

Rockville Pike by Susan Coll

here's a link to it on amazon ( i wish i could figure out how to hide these links within the title - however )

http://www.amazon.com/Rockville-Pike-Suburban-Comedy-Manners/dp/B000OZ28JW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-3756686-2294242?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179870804&sr=8-1

I'd read a review in the Washington Post some time ago about this book - named after a road in not-s0-far-away Maryland. I am always amused by books with familiar locales in them (and we always get hysterical at references to the area in movies - they always show lovely locations but the actual geography of living in the Nation's Capital area - well you never see the traffic in the movies and it never seems to take any time to get anywhere LOL) but what really intrigued me is that the main character gets involved in scrapbooking! It's a small but somewhat important part of the story. I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend the book but it was strangely amusing and the references to scrapbooking definitely had been researched (perhaps the author had been to a Creative Memories party or two).

Okay here a few more layouts i've accomplished. Nothing fancy but I had a lot of photos of places in Washington, DC. We'd done a day downtown for the Cherry Blossom Festival and to see 2 of the monuments we hadn't been to (WWII and Korean War) and revisited a few others (Lincoln and VietNam). I used some River City Rubber Works stamps as well as Quickutz Zoe.

better late than never :-)

okay so i'm a little late with posting this.

I went to take a picture of it this morning (kinda conked out early last nite) and apparently i had unplugged my camera and it wasn't charged.

Then i had to wait for it to charge.

small sigh.

by the way i'm not going to be scanning pics of layouts.

scanning and then merging etc - too time consuming and definitely not suzy's purpose here.

the purpose again is to get moving and start scrapbooking

with no real concerns about what is hot and what is not

maybe using up some of my considerable storehouse of supplies

and tools

Now normally i would never use the colors i did on this layout of my daughter and driveway chalk drawings. And i bet there was a time i would have never used the patterned paper i did. It's this paper that looks like a driveway with chalk drawings.But one day i came upon that paper in the store and i thought hey that would go very nicely with those pictures. No real need for anything else. its decoration enough. I filed the paper with the pics.
I went to the ready to go file - everything is in large ziploc bags - and these pictures of her was the first available bag with pics my kids (it was Thursday).
So i pulled everything out of the bag and realized i still needed to pick out some cardstock. So i started looking through the cardstock and initially thought - no i don't have what i need. DING! Wrong answer. If i am going to get things done i really need to stop the perfection thing. You know what i'm talking about - theeeee perfect paper and theeee perfect cardstock color and theeee perfect embellishments. Nope. No more. Uh-uh
I remembered something i read in one of my favorite scrapbooking books - by Rebecca Sower. The book is Scrapbooking Life's Little Treasures
here's a link on Amazon for you
http://www.amazon.com/Scrapbooking-Lifes-Little-Treasures-Rebecca/dp/1929180330/ref=sr_1_1/002-9650614-4419251?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174660827&sr=1-1
She talks about "making do" and how she never gets bothered about having the exact shade of cardstock. "It's likely that when you're searching for that perfect shade of blue, at least two dozen other colors or shades will work beautifully".
Now that one stuck with me. Initially i thought - what are you crazy? I was a graphic design major in school. It's all about the color for me. Putting together colors etc.
But, in the grand scheme of things
- remembering my Suzy goals -
i thought you know - she's right.
Who is my audience here?
My daughter.
Will she care?
Not a speck (with this particular child, artist that she is, believe me, she won't care. It's just not her nature. )
So i looked through my stash and i picked the blue and the orange -
a lovely shade of cantaloupe
and orange is my daughter's favorite color.
cool
so there you have it.
Now lets see if i can meet a goal for today
ttyl