Thought I'd check in

i wish i could say i've gotten some scrapping done.
I do have a layout on my drawing table right now which is almost complete.
It's been a while since I've had a layout on my table this long - pretty much all week. I was actually cranking out a steady stream for a while there.
I'm hoping to finish that one up today and then maybe work on some Ready-to-go files.
The RTG works great if you actually have small chunks of time to work on getting the items pulled together. And time has been at a premium lately. Lots of the spare time I've had lately has had to go into other creative endeavors (see Small Smackerels ). And with the holiday season coming up I know I'll have to start working on Christmas cards. But I'd really like to continue with my son's baby/childhood albums (if I ever plan to get to my daughter's!). We'll see. Hope you all are making headway in your scrappin. And if we all have to take a break on it lets all solemnly swear we won't beat ourselves up about it!

A little organization

I mentioned i'd be tidying up my Ready-to-go file.I planned on doing that yesterday - but best laid plans and all that.

My family likes to eat so i had to go to the grocery store .....

and then i had a little visit with my sister (and nephews) before they left today.

So this afternoon was the day to clean up that file and do a little more organizing.

Here's my RTG file - all tidied up. I had some StoreInStyle folders (they're big enough for 12x12 paper/cardstock) so i used those for dividers. I have slipped some stuff into the folders themselves (small items with no place to go kinda things - like movie ticket stubs). In between each section are those large ziplocs filled with items for a layout or series of layouts on a particular topic/event. If i have the photos i put them in the ziploc too. And when i have time i can pull out a bag and add paper, cardstock and embellishments. When the bag has all the elements - then its truly RTG!

So now at least thats back to being organized only now its even better - with dividers!

While i was on a roll I thought i'd organize all the finished layouts I have but have not put into albums as yet. That was a pretty big stack of layouts since I've made so much progress since I started this Suzy blog.

I had the stack in a pizza box. The box was overflowing and I've been asking my son (who works for a pizza chain) to bring me some more boxes. Well last night he finally remembered - which is good cos he will be leaving for school this weekend! He brought me about 10 boxes. My cat, Frankie is here posing with the boxes. I put some of the boxes together and got to work sorting the layouts.

And here they are. All sorted. When I finally decide what albums i want to put these in, they'll be ready to go. In the meantime I have a few empty, unconstructed boxes to to use as these fill up.

While i'm at it I thought i would show you my photo storage. This is most of my photos. There is another box of various and sundry photos but these are the bulk of the photos. I often wonder what I'll be doing with these boxes when I have finished putting all the pics into scrapbooks!

I'm wondering how does everyone else store their photos until they scrapbook them? I know some put them in albums (the kind with the divided up pages). How do you store yours?

I'm back and I'm done

well i might journal a bit more here and there

but essentially I'm done with the Wedding Album

can i hear a Hallelujah?

Hallelujah!

Here are the last of the pages with photos

And here are the pages with a lot of memorabilia - shower invitations and cards, Pre-Cana stuff, wedding banns from the church bulletin, items from the reception venue; a swatch of faric from the bridesmaids dresses; receipt for my dress; receipt for my husbands ring; our receipts from our blood tests - you know that kinda thing. Yes, I'm a pack rat but for all pack rats everywhere - there's no better place to store your treasures than a scrapbook!

The only thing remaining is like i said a little journaling and actually purchasing a scrapbook to fill with all these pages. I saw a really pretty one the other day at AC Moore (it was a K&Company album. They make such pretty albums - especially for an extra special occasion like a Wedding album).

What else have i been up to? Well other than what you see on Small Smackerels - let's see. Yesterday i did a lot of cleaning in my room here. I also found a stack of my daughters artwork from elementary school. I know i put photos of some of them in her elementary school album but just to be on the safe side I took photos of all of them (it was a small stack - only the absolute musts I had to keep for her) and then put the originals in a page protector to add to that album. I'll get the pics printed and add that as well when i have a second.

While i was cleaning up in here I kept finding odds and ends - things that need to go on pages. Mostly memorabilia. My name should be Suzy the-pack-rat Scrapbooker okay. I threw those in my RTG file. Tomorrows project will be to get that RTG file back in order so I can actually work from it again - its trashed folks! In the interest of actually getting the cleaning up done around here, I couldnt get too fussy with how i put stuff into that file.

After that's done, I think I'm going to stick with my plan to work on my kids baby albums. I won't be as crazy as i was about getting them done as I was the wedding album. Afterall - the wedding album was pretty limited in its scope. A baby album for each kid will take a lot of time. Because I know it's just not "baby". It's really their lives up until they reach school.

And, as I'm sure all you parents know - that's some premium photo takin time.

It's gonna take a while but thats ok. I know I'm going to enjoy looking at those pictures again.

Wedding pages

I have had these pictures in my RTG file since probably right after the wedding (of my nephew) almost one year ago. It is the last large bunch of photos on one event in my file. The rest of the pages-in-waiting I will do when i have only a small amount of time to scrapbook. I knew these wedding pictures would take up a number of pages as well as a decent chunk of time. Right now I have a little time so it was the perfect project.
I originally set aside some Making Memories double sided patterned cardstock I thought would be very "wedding" - simple and elegant - and just right for these photos. I have also been planning on taking my own wedding photos out of the very-bad-unsafe album they have been in for 22-1/2 years. I decided - ya know - since I cannot find anymore of that Making Memories cardstock I'm keeping it for MY wedding pictures! Therefore I needed to find something else that would work with the pictures from my nephew's wedding. I flipped through all of my paper. Nothing. Not only did i have no cardstock that coordinated I had no paper. So yes that's right - I had to break my Suzy rule and go buy some cardstock. Hey - it's gonna happen as my supplies dwindle I figure. And I'm not gonna make a habit of it! I knew i needed to pick up a glue pen (i love the 2way glue pens by EK Success) so on Thursday I headed off to AC Moore. I don't know when they did this but AC Moore here has added some Bazzill-by-the-sheet. Perfect. I picked up the number of sheets i needed in a nice green. I also found a patterned paper by Basic Grey, Beatrice, from the Perhaps line I thought would go nicely. I used some Quickutz fonts (Empire Minis and Paige Classic lowercase) and some pens for journaling here and there. Overall i'm very pleased. I took about 40 photos and fit them onto 4 two-page spreads that are nice to look at and best of all they're out of my file and into the finished pile.

My next project is this:

What is it you say? Stay tuned!

Working with what you have and GASC

I have been working with what i have for a few months now. Trying not to buy anything. Finding ways to use my stash (which, people, is considerable. I have a room full of scrapbooking, stamping, sewing and art supplies. Literally a room full of shtuff) I've mentioned before that in my favorite Rebecca Sower book she talks about not getting all concerned about having the perfect shade of cardstock. I aspire to this point of view. I am a color person. So lately I find that

yes - I can use up my stash - but to do so I am using up my neutrals. Things that go with anything. And avoiding color - cos if I use color it has to coordinate. It can't clash. My teeth will hurt if it does ok? So the other day - Thursday I guess it was - I decided i'd do some more laundry (see previous post) - and do a birthday layout. My daughter's last birthday. I looked through the photos and then went to my carsdstock and paper and thought WHAT am I going to do. I finally - i mean i spent maybe 10 minutes pondering the possibilities - chose this Bazzill orange. The daughter's favorite color is orange. There was some orange in the photos (miniscule as it was ) and better still - there was blue - which always will compliment the orange. (get your color wheel out if you are puzzled). Next I went to my patterned paper - I really need to use this stuff up. I flipped through a lot of paper and finally i happened upon this Imaginisce paper. (I have no recollection of buying this paper - at all.) And you know - it went really nicely and had stars all over it. I thought - she's my star so why the heck not. Some Quickutz Zoe font added and i was pretty much done. There were a lot of photos that birthday for some reason. I ended with 3 pages. Yes, I used my Creative Memories cutting system to cut out the photo of the cake (or rather the Ice Cream Pie - its a family thing). If you don't have the Creative Memories Cutting system, I highly recommend it. They have theeee best cutting stuff around.

Onward

The Great American Scrapbook Convention rolled into town again this year. I've gone every year. I hate to say it but it was not the experience it has been in years past. The first few years it was wild - you could barely move around and the noise was just incredible. Now granted I got there not long after they opened on Friday. I am sure that today it will be a lot busier. However, I wasn't finding the shopping so great. It's possible, because I have so much stuff, I just wasn't finding it tempting at all. I think its more that there just isn't the product that is knocking my socks off. I think its peaked out ladies. I've been saying this probably the last two years - the industry is gonna peak out and fall hard. Just too much all the time and really fast and finally there will be nothing i have to have.

Having said that - I did indeed buy a few things. First - I spied one scalloped circle giga punch by Marvy Uchida. I have the scalloped oval and was kicking myself I hadn't gotten the circle. There it was - and i wasn't going to hesitate cos I only saw the one.

I also happened upon a booth by a company I don't think i've seen before: Distinctly Me They were the nicest two ladies with some lovely products and, as I told them, the nicest layouts on display at the whole convention. They had the most classic layouts I've seen displayed. Not tons of product all over them - just well designed, good looking pages. And you could see their photos. The pages would sell anyone's products the way they were done. Anyway i bought a package of very pretty cork embellishments as well as a bottle of something called Paper Glide made by Inspired Crafts . They demonstrated this product for me and I was sold - it makes dry embossing very easy to do - the stylus just glides right over your paper.

Okay - I need to do non-Suzy things now. I do have a little special project I hope to share in the next few days. We'll see how much time I get to work on it over the weekend.

Yeah Yeah Yeah and distractions

Yes, Mondays can be planning days (see the schedule) or they can be actual scrapbooking days.
I decided since I had this in my head - had stuff in the RTG file, I'd go with it and make this page.
I love this silly picture. When i found it in that pile of pictures i was really surprised. I hadn't remembered the Beatles wig. What a hoot. Anyhow, I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts for my kids. I normally pencil in the journaling so I'm straight but I didn't this time and it's rather obvious. Oh well. Not going redo - this is Suzy. She's a doer - not a re-doer.
If you look closely you'll see a spot next to the first "h" in yeah. I think its a drip of glue. Another possible reason to re-do but again I resisted the temptation.
These are, simply put, distractions.
(you could argue they're a perfectionists nightmare - and believe me, they are tugging at me. But i'm a recovering perfectionist. I'm doing pretty well just posting this and all the rest of my imperfect layouts. )
Every day is filled with distractions. Tons of reasons not to get things done.
My little Suzy schedule is my method of dealing with the distractions.
I am good with a list/schedule.
It helps me see past the distractions to my goal of getting my scrapbooking done.
And so far - it's working like gangbusters. I am very pleased with my progress.
I've got a stack of layouts done - o'course now I need more scrapbooks to put them in but hey, one thing at a time.
I'm not getting hung up on what everyone thinks is "scrapbooking". I'm doing my own thing and its working well.
If i veer off the schedule - sorta - like today doing a page instead of planning more pages - that works too. Ya gotta be flexible.
I could give a fig if anyone likes my pages but i truly appreciate when someone stops by here and says kind things. That's always nice.
But my purpose here is to get my scrappin done. Enjoy it.
If I help someobody else along the way, with my Suzy ways, well then I'm pleased as punch.
Oh - almost forgot - I used Wordsworth Fun Letters Alphas for the title.
And now - I'm off.

birthday layouts are like laundry

no sooner than you're done with it then it starts all over again
know what i mean?
i don't really mind doing them.
actually i enjoy looking at the pictures
i get nostalgic
birthdays past
i'm kind-of-a sappy sort anyway
especially about my kids (although i don't think they'd describe me that way)
however, i digress as usual
The point is my RTG file is full of birthday layouts waiting to be done.
Since yesterday was Thursday (my kids day - see the schedule to your right) i chose to do my son's last birthday (it's practically his next birthday! a big one at that)
I looked at what i had - a few pictures and a variety of birthday cards. There seemed to be a lot of green so i went with some green patterned paper. I mounted it on top of some white cardstock so it wasn't so flimsy.
I'd made a birthday card - hey June remember that class? - and thought it would make a good title - why make another when i had a perfectly good card to do the job right?
i did want to put a caption under the main photo - my son making one of his silly faces at me - he really is most cooperative of my picture taking - but he also is a little bit of a clown.
On the left side i made a pocket for all his birthday cards (i can't help myself - i save every card). The one with the pirate caricature of my son was drawn by my daughter - she's pretty darn amazing isn't she? And, for him - the card was perfect. He loved it.
So there you have it.
Just like most of the layouts i've been doing since adopting my Suzy philosophy - there's no award winning layouts going on here. no amazing design.
There is, however, lots of scrapbooking getting done.
And I'm happy with that.
oh - a few products i should note - Purple Onion Designs Submarine alpha for the "this is what 20 looks like" caption and some very old (but who cares cos its festive and birthdays are all about the festive) Making Memories green paper with dots. Also if you're curious - thats a MiMi accessory tote holding some other rubber stamps i have (decided against using them - they didnt have the right look and didnt fit the space well). I love this little piece of organization. I dont bring myself places to crop much - but just having 3 sets of tiny stamps all in one place is wonderful.

Using stamps and lost & found

so i pulled these pics out of my RTG file and began to work on it yesterday. (i had to put the whole thing aside - these people actually wanna eat everyday - go fig!) I just finished it this morning in an unprecedented early morning scrap. Anyway....

I decided to use my Lizziebelle stamps from Purple Onion Designs as i thought they'd go nicely along the wave. The title was going to leave a very empty upper left hand side of the layout. As i was thinking about that little dilemma and playing with some quickutz beachy dies (i settled on the starfish as you can see) I recalled doing a tag a few years back that had a beachy theme. (yeah, i like the word "beachy" this morning). I dug through a shoebox i have filled with little projects hoping to find the tag. I can't always find what i'm looking for in this room despite all my best efforts at organizing. (Ask me where to find a particular brad or pencil - yeah i can tell you that - they've got a home - my drawings and little projects - well they're kind of here, there and everywhere, kwim?) Fortunately the tag was in the shoebox and i made an audible squeal - not only did i find the tag, but the color i remembered using on it was just so right. Problem solved.

I got to thinking i really should stop my practical ways of making things for certain projects. Lately it seems i'm not making things for the sake of making them - and i really should. It happens that i was able to use my lost and found tag - but if i hadn't made it in the first place i'd probably still be wondering what i'd be doin to fill that empty spot. Well this is a discussion I should save for small smackerels huh? ok. back to your regularly scheduled Suzy program....

As i said, I used my Lizziebelle stamps and stamped them with a turquoise ink (SU!) and colored them in with a white prismacolor. I'd tried a few different color inks on some scrap paper trying to decide which ink would work best and all-in-all i'm pleased with the results. I have to say I spent way more time on this layout than I've been spending - given my new Suzy philosophy. But every once in a while that's okay. I did feel much more Suzy in that i didn't agonize overy a single thing.

Okay - onward. Today is thursday so I'm gonna go check out what i have in the way of RTG page stuff on my kids.

more busy

just have had to put my scrapbooking on hold -EEEEEK - i know. not for much longer. just too many other things i'm sposed to be doin. kinda stinks but thats what is. i have done some drawing and cardmaking when i've had a little free time. Cards that needed to be made and get out the door - i just missed the mailman and now the latest 2 cards will be late. oh well. hopefully over this weekend i can dip into my ready-to-go file and make a page or two. thanks for your patience

It's Monday

and its time to plan again
actually today i'll be going thru my RTG (ready to go) file
I've been getting so much done my file is getting smaller
this is a good thing
but it also requires that i see what needs to be done imminently and also to start planning some pages for the future - so when i've got time i can just pick up and work on something!
i'm pondering a few possibilities:

working on my wedding photos (not the official wedding photographer album - got that - i'm talking about all the photos people took that day and gave to us, the memorabilia from that time frame - that kinda stuff. i actually put all that stuff in an album years ago. during the first year we were married. I've been married - eek - over 22 years! so that means all that stuff is in a bad, i mean BAD kinda album. So i really need to make this a priority.)

working on my kids baby albums - from reading previous posts you have already assessed the ages of my kids - one in college and one in high school. so Yes - working on baby albums is long overdue.

those 2 projects alone could keep me busy for a long time. Not as much the wedding album - the kids baby albums and childhood albums. I've been working on their school albums for a long time and they are mostly up-to-date.

Ok so thats what i'll be doing today in my spare time - which is not so spare today but i'll do my best. I promised more pages so here's another.

i used Purple Onion Design stamps: Pink Flamingo Small, Skinny Dip (the word "smiles") is colored in with prismacolor pencil and the little flourish is from the Vintage Journaling set.
ok - go make some pages or plan something to make this week ok?

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.

Mommy Love Note

So it was Thursday and time to do a layout about one of my children. I had put aside these pictures of my daughter in my RTG file with an entirely different patterned paper some time ago. I had bought this adorable Basic Grey paper with space ships all over it - really cute. When i laid it down next to the photos on Thursday i thought - ew - nope - that isn't going to do at all. It just was too busy for the photos and not the feeling i had in mind at all. And this is ok in my book. Even though i had ever intention of using that paper for this layout i realized it wasn't going to do. Refile paper and pull out something else. Again it was Basic Grey. But something that complimented the photos and not the idea behind them. Incidentally these pics are from 1998 - a trip downtown to the Smithsonian Air & Space museum (yes, we are very lucky to live so close to such amazing places to visit - Washington DC is a treasure trove of fun things to do for kids and adults). It was Space Day or something - and my daughter got to try on a real space suit - she looked so darned cute. Anyway these pictures are from an "event" however when i look at them - and when i went to make a scrapbook page about them - i had more of a "moments" thing in mind. I don't know of another way to label it - "moments". It is one of those terms that gets bandied about when scrapbooking is discussed. A lot of layouts with one photo and one word or short phrase. And i have to admit sometimes the ones i've seen in magazines had a phoney feeling for me. It just isn't me. Those of you who know me well know how much i detest the "explore, dream, discover" thing - the worst for me is "journey". How i hate that word. Almost as much as "awesome" but i digress. I want my scrapbooks to be me - and real. So i don't do too much of the moments thing. I am proud and happy to scrapbook events. But you know it IS all good. So when i took a look at these pictures of my daughter i thought - look at little miss confidence. You can just do anything you set your mind to cantcha? And truly she can. So - a moments layout was born. But i hate that moments connotation so i guess its more of a Mommy Love Note. When she looks at this page (in the near future or in years to come) she will know that I think she is amazing - that she has this tremendous I-can-do-anything confidence - and i know she'll be a success at whatever she chooses. And that is something i think might come in handy for her to remember on occasion when life gets tough.
Ok - friday is pets or special projects. Hmmmmmm

I'm back

Sorry its taken me a little time to get this stuff posted. Anywho -

Wednesday's pages were to be of Family/Husband.

I originally thought i'd go to my ready-to-go file and pull out a bag with a bunch of wedding photos from my nephews wedding last summer. I decided against that and went for some vacation photos from last summer. There are still a few pictures left in that bag but i did manage to do a 2 page spread of a little side trip we made to Cape May. There would have been even more photos of Cape May but my camera decided to break during our trip. Now that was awful. Me without a camera - and all those gorgeous Victorian homes in Cape May i'd been dying to see and photograph. The trip was in August and for my birthday (in September) i got a new camera. Phew.

On the right hand side you can see i made a pocket out of a page protector. (I always have some kind of memorabilia i want to save, so i do a lot of pocket pages.) I sewed that on to the cardstock after i had put down a photo. For the title block i used some Purple Onion Designs alpha stamps - Pink Flamingo Large. Stamped those in versamark and added some Tim Holtz Distress Antique Linen embossing powder (which looks kinda like sand in this venue). The patterned paper on the left hand side is Karen Foster. I used a Quickutz sand dollar die that i covered in versamark and then dusted with Pearl Ex micropearl.

You know as basic as these are i wish i could say they didnt take any time. I still take way too long doing this stuff. Its my way, i guess, to work slowly. I think of things i'd like to do and then hem and haw about doing them. And end up doing it anyway. Oh well. They are still done and that is the important thing. I need to think less and do more - how bout that!?!?

the weekend was a bust

as far as scrapbooking was concerned.
Are you all laughing at my grand schedule and how i haven't kept up?
well i was going to panic and say - Hey Suzy, this isn't working!
You said Saturday was Heritage - and you didn't do any of that
(well actually i was doing a lot of cleaning on Saturday and uncovered some photos my darling husband just set aside - not with all the rest of our photos - and they were definitely what i would call Heritage :-) Pics of his parents as children. Adorable wonderful copies of the originals one of his sisters had given us. So yeah that's Heritage and they need to get out of the manila envelope they are in. Check that! And put in an album.)
Then Sunday was Miscellaneous - and gosh was it ever - i did everything but any scrapbooking!
So like i said i was about to panic and then i thought -
No - that isn't what this is about.
I'm not going to beat myself up for not getting any scrapbooking done.
I have my schedule and when time permits, I'm going to follow it to facilitate my scrapbooking.
But i have a life - and sometimes it doesn't permit me to do what i'd like to do.
But when i do have time - I won't go wasting all of it.
I'll check my schedule and see what is on the agenda for the day and go from there.
ahh... that feels better :-)
So today is Monday - you know what that means
(for those of you that are old enough - does this remind you of the Mickey Mouse Club - I'm talking the original Mickey Mouse club with Annette, Cubby, Roy.. )
Monday is planning - so i'll go through my file and see what i've got semi-ready so tomorrow, and the rest of the week, time permitting, i'll get some scrapping done.
Have a good day!