Category Archives: Scrapbooking

Document Your Journey, pt 1

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We are having a great time over at LayoutADay.com during the LOAD212 Past Perfect challenge!  Each day of February Lain Ehmann is providing a prompt for a scrapbook page.  You can either play along or just do your own thing for a page for the day.  It is fun to see how many interpretations there are for each day’s prompt!  It wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you the prompt, but I’ll share my page with you!


This page was actually made on my birthday, so it was kind of fun to do a page like this!  It seems like everywhere I’ve turned in the past few months, there is someone else urging us to scrapbook about our own story!  I hope you’ll work on your story about yourself!  Why not create a page with several pictures of yourself over time?

A Happy Place

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Where is a place you have many happy memories of?  We often hear something about going to our “happy place” and here is one of mine:

Digi kit: Ever After by Krystal Hartley

Journaling reads:  Daddy built my playhouse when I was very young and it was originally furnished with a little cupboard, stove, table and chairs.  I even remember the tablecloth and napkins Mother made.  When we moved to the country, the playhouse was brought along!  This little house holds untold hours of make believe, and every time I remember playing in it or see a picture, it brings a smile and fond memories. Here is Kloe playing in it.  She is our third generation to enjoy the magic of my playhouse!

Do you have a favorite place from your past or the present?  Create a page, don’t for the journaling, and share it!

Tell Your Untold Stories

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If you are a scrapbooker, you are probably documenting special moments of your family and friends.  How often are you including your own story in those pages?  Probably not as often as you should!

YOUR story is important — the good and the bad, happy and sad.  It’s all about your life.  There is so much I wish I knew about other people in my family from previous generations. Just a glimpse into their lives would be interesting.  If you are fortunate enough to have some family heritage pictures, do you know who the people are in the pictures, or any little stories about them?  In the end, it’s the stories and the pictures that are important.

Made with digi kit Waiting for the Sun by Stephanie Ogren

If you run across a picture that has a little bit of a back story, why not get that down on paper with the picture?  It doesn’t matter if the pictures are perfect.  An imperfect picture is better than no picture if that’s all you have!

Here is a page I made from the first day’s prompt for the LayOutaDay challenge that tells about our wedding cake.  It’s not a photographer’s shot of the cake, it’s a picture of the cake while still on the kitchen table.  I had been taking cake decorating lessons during the year before we got married, and a special wedding cake class.  From making all the icing for my classes, I had ended up burning up the motors in both my mom’s hand mixer, as well as my future mother-in-laws!  By the time it was time to make the wedding cake, I had to use my grandmother’s stand mixer.

I had never seen or heard of anything other than white wedding cake, but I wanted our to taste good and I decided to make it a spice cake.  Not sure if there are any superstitions about the flavor of your wedding cake, but it seems to be good luck, as we have been married now for 35 years!

What pictures do you have that remind you of an untold story?

Does Size Matter for Scrapbook Pages?

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Have you ever sat down to scrapbook with your pictures at hand and just had a big blank page staring back at you, not saying anything?  It just lies there in silence!  It gives you no guidance or direction, and just waits for you to get to started with pictures, journaling and embellishments.  You keep moving things around, but you just can’t bring yourself to commit those items to the page by actually using adhesive — that is such a permanent commitment!  Oh how too familiar this is to many scrapbookers.

The first time I worked on an 8×8 album was a liberating feeling.  It took so little time to complete an entire album!  When we made some little 6×6 albums, they were just a breeze.  There just wasn’t enough space to worry about putting so many things on a page.  It was just quick and simple.

When I ran across the concept of progressive scrapbook pages, it just made so much sense!  If you aren’t familiar with the concept, here it is. You start with a small size, say 6×6 and use that as your page to complete.  Then you lay that on an 8.5×11 page and complete that.  Finally, you lay it on a 12×12 page and finish it off!  By breaking up the space with the different sizes, you have automatically created quite a bit of balance and variety to your page.

Even doing the reverse can be helpful!  Lay out your 12×12 then place a piece of 8.5×11 on next, and then a 6×6  It can break up enough space to give you an idea of something you’d like to do!

Here is a basic page I’ve done to give you the idea.  The finished size is 12×12, but you can see where the 8.5×11 patterned paper is, and the 6×6 that is layered on top of that!

LOAD Bloghop 2012

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The LOAD challenge for February 2012 is almost here, and we hope you’ll participate!  LayoutADay.com owner, Lain Ehmann, makes sure participants are treated to many interviews, tips and inspirations from the best of the best, while being challenged to create one layout each day.

If completing at least one layout each day of the month seems like a daunting task, never fear, I have some tips that can make it easier.

  • Pick a Theme. If you decide ahead of time what you want to work on, you’ll be able to pull together the pictures you want to use.  Be sure to gather more pictures than you may need, because sometimes a photo you didn’t really intend to use suddenly seems to be the perfect choice.  By selecting a theme, you’ll be able to pre-gather some of your supplies.  Paper and embellishments just seem to be easier to select when you have a theme in mind.  You will naturally select a different set of items for a  set of pages for a baby book, than you might for an album about your family’s heritage, or a vacation to the tropics.

Use interesting information for a layout in your theme!

  • Have supplies and adhesive on hand. Again, by planning your theme, you should be able to have pulled out what you need.  Nothing is more frustrating than being in the middle of a layout and using the last bit of adhesive.  It could make you want to go mix up some flour and water paste to finish up, and I don’t think that is considered archival quality.  If you know you use a lot of brads or buttons or ribbon, and you have nothing to match the papers you just love for the theme you just decided on, you’re not going to be very happy.  Change something or get appropriate embellishments now!
  • Caution: This is the perfect time to use up some of your supplies, so don’t go hog wild on new things to match the new paper you just bought!  You may actually may make faster pages if you limit what you are using!  Crazy, but true.  Limiting your choices even with digital scrapbooking can be helpful.
  • Pick pictures that mean something to you. It will make it easy to journal and you’ll be so glad to have the pictures and stories on layouts to enjoy.  After all, in the end it’s about the pictures and the stories!  How I wish I had stories to go with some of the pictures that have been from previous generations.  Who am I kidding, even names would be great!

This picture always makes me smile! Simple layout. DONE!

  • Don’t feel that you have to scrap in chronological order! Pick a picture or several and just do it.  Don’t let a sweet picture wait to be scrapped just because you didn’t get to that year yet!  Just do it!

A day spent with 4 generations of family, doesn’t happen every day!

  • Don’t feel like you have to start from scratch! There are so many templates, pagemaps or scrapmaps to give you ideas!   Becky Fleck’s site PageMaps.com is a great place to start.  There are monthly ideas on the top of the left menu bar.  Look for her archives as well.  With that many ideas, there can be no excuse to get started!
  • Get started right away. Don’t let a blank page just stare back at you.  You may want to try a progressive scrapbook page if you seem to be stuck.  Start with a 6×6 page, then layer that on an 8.5×11, and finally lay that on a 12×12 page.  (I’ll be showing one of these in the next few days, so stop back by!)
  • Plan Ahead. Make sure you plan some time into the day to work on a layout.  If you have more time one day than another, you may complete a page and start the next one as long as you have thing at hand!
  • Strive for done not perfection. You can always add or change something later, but just get your layouts done!
  • Enjoy the experience. It is so fun to see everyone’s work that is loaded into the Flickr group each day.  Think of all the ideas you’ll have after looking at all those other pages.  However, don’t feel like you have to look at every page, every day.  I’m not sure that’s possible!

Thanks for stopping by and visiting!  The next stop on the tour is Janet’s site.

LOAD12 Blog Hop Participant List:

Margie     http://xnomads.typepad.com
Kelli          http://www.scrapbookgirl71.blogspot.com
Jennifer   http://atthebluebarn.blogspot.com
Lisa           http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com
Monica     http://scrapinspired.com
Kimberly  http://www.kimberlykalil.com
Eileen       http://thinkinkpaperscissors.weebly.com
Danielle    http://acoffeeaddict.com
Pam           http://dailypamage.blogspot.com
Katrina     http://k84mansramblings.blogspot.com
Cate           http://www.lifebehindthepurpledoor.com
Gayle         http://www.lifeonlilypadlane.blogspot.com
Heather    http://heathersdragonsden.blogspot.com
Gina          http://randomthoughtsmindlessmusings.blogspot.com
Kristie       https://kristiesloan.com
Janet         http://khashabfamilymusings.blogspot.com
Lydia         http://lydiaink.wordpress.com