Memorable quotes

Thank you for everyone who votes for me! I do get the privilege of being the Guest Designer at Sketchy Thursdays this month. More to share later...

When I was cleaning out my closets earlier this summer, I found a pile of poems, letters, and cartoons that I had copied and kept. Some of them I want to share. Here's a lovely one written by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter :

Dear Pie:

I feel very strongly about your doing [your] duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy—but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare’s in which the line occurs Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Have had no thoughts today, life seems composed of getting up a Saturday Evening Post story. I think of you, and always pleasantly; but if you ever call me “Pappy” again I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?

I will arrange the camp bill.

Halfwit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship…

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I in comparison to my contemporaries in regards to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

More layouts from the crop...

Just a reminder that the Sketchy Thursdays design contest is still going--there are a few hours left--go here if you'd like to vote for me!

I finished up what I started last weekend. Here's one of my summer goals, a mini I started long ago:
I have done lots of LOs with numbers, but none with grammar. I'm an English teacher, so wondered if grammar would inspire anything in me, and it did.

I'm still working on the Christmas mini, which is my other goal for the summer. I hope to finish it soon so I can submit it for a mini-album call.

My friend Chelsie has this t-shirt, which I am so envious of. (I should get it...) Anyway, the Weasley twins remind me of my boys. So sweet looking, but such imps.

So when I saw this photo of my younger boy from last year's vacation, that phrase popped into my head, and a layout was born. (Note: I have scrapped this photo at least two other times. Do I care? No. New story, so that's OK.)I used the color combination from The Color Room:
I wasn't trying to make it look magical, but I like how snaky the color combo is, and the stars and waves make it a little magical.

Another LO from this weekend:
I used Studio Calico's July kit for this. The story isn't so much the photo as how my boys are whenever I take photos. Win awards for my nonblurry photos I will not. They will always be blurry because of these two. But that's them. (Or is it they? I think I broke a grammar rule.)

Vote!

I am up for Guest Designer at Sketchy Thursdays--if possible, I would really appreciate your votes! Here's my project:

And here's the link to vote:

Sketchy Thursdays design team vote

Voting is through this Tuesday.

Thank you!

Scrap day!

Today I scrapped at The Scrapbook Shop with Jing-Jing. It was interesting to see what it was like for her to put together pages based on design team materials--cute cute cute pages! Also fun to chat about companies we like and the publication and design team world. Scrap-wise, I made my goal and started working on my Christmas mini-album and dug into my Studio Calico kit. I'll post those when I get done.

I finished this next layout at home, instigated entirely by my son Dominic. He's my biggest fan and loves to look through his albums. The other day he found a page I'd made when he was a grumpy three-year-old about things he hated; when he saw it, he asked me to make him a page about what he loves. He sat me down and recited what he loves now. Here's the page I made with it, using June's Studio Calico kit and the Sunday Studio Calico sketch:

I love this layout. I wondered if I'd added too much? Regardless, I love the spirit in the colorful papers. The photos were leftovers that hadn't been scrapped; I trimmed them up.

Hopefully Dominic will be impressed too.

All I ever wanted...

Can anyone sing the tune to those words? If I said "All Girl group from the 80s," would that remind you of the song? Yep, I'm referring to the song "Vacation" by the Go-Gos.

On that note (pun intended), I am preparing for our annual family vacation, and this year is a little different. We are going, not to a National Park, but to Disneyworld. A different kind of National Park, if you will. This will be Derick's and my third time going together, but our boys' first time. And even more fun, we are going with my mother and my sister-in-law, Aunt Melinda.

Of course, being a true scrapper, I can't get ready for vacation without thinking about scrapbooking the vacation. Here's where I stand: I do some preparation for photos, and some thinking about the scrapbooking of the vacation, but I also want to leave my planning a little loose. I don't want to plan photos, in other words. This is also how we vacation, BTW: we plan what we'd like to do and make a general daily plan, but there's a lot of open space for spontaneity.I have some things in mind, though. Here's my plan:

1. I will not use themed products. Granted, I have used travel paper lines from Making Memories and Little Yellow Bicycle from the past few years, but most travel lines are tropical or National Park-y for Disney. Aside from travel and Christmas lines, I prefer to avoid themed products. Instead, I can picture and album on white or black paper using bright colors--maybe from my scrap pile!
2. I will take a variety of photos. This sounds like a no-brainer, but my first few vacations, I took too many landscape photos without photos of the people--and the people were always the same distance away. I think the album will better represent our memories (and be more interesting) if I take photos of people, landscapes, closeups, medium shots, and far away shots. In other words, I'll take photos that tell a story.
3. I'll take some photos of my boys from behind. This might sound dumb, but the last page of the albums for me have always included photos of my family from behind--the readers will sort of be looking back on the vacation when they see these photos. (If anyone takes a photo of me from behind, I will hunt them down and force feed them to drink pickle juice.)
4. I will once again try to take a nice family photo for our Christmas card. Once again I will likely fail and have to make a layout like this again:
5. I will bring a small notebook to journal memories in at the end of each day. This will become my journaling and will help me remember stories when I finally get around to scrapping the vacation album.
   
6. I will probably take thousands of photos. I will also try not to feel guilty about that.
7. At the end of vacation, I will ask everyone what their five favorite vacation memories are. This will be a mini-album I'll scrap as soon as I get back. I'll pair a nice picture of each person from vacation with their 5 favorites:
8. I will attempt to delete bad photos right away, and I will attempt to edit and print photos within a couple months of our return. That one's a goal. It makes me more excited to scrap when I have fresh pictures, and it feels like a burden for me when I delay photo-processing too long.

When I finally do the album, I plan on making it 8 1/2 x 11, post-bound, mainly because that's what I've always done. I like the limited space. I also use the same design every time. Here's a same from last year:

It's a nice design, I can fit lots of photos, and it will be quicker if I don't have to think about how to set up the pages.

New summer pages

I just wrapped up four new layouts. Here's the first two, both using Sketchy Thursdays sketches:


The first is for this week's challenge. I also used Stacy Julian's color combo for the week and the Studio Calico challenge to scrap vacation photos using their collection Documentay. Love the map paper. I did a lot of stamping for this layout: see the hints of grid around the photo block? Also some Ali E stamps (this one and this one) on the journaling and the title comes from half of a Unity stamp. I left out the RV image.

The second is for a chance at August guest designer at Sketchy's. I was to use yellow and make my own embellishment. The homemade embellishment may be a stretch, but here's what I did:

1. I misted the October Afternoon paper with yellow then green, using a sunburst as a mask.
2. I painted inside the masked sunburst, then outlined it with a pen.
3. The sunburst became the home for my title and journaling.

It's hard to see, but I also distressed the page's edges. It looks good, roughing up something otherwise just plain cute.

The next one is a photo I had to scrap before the story went away:

I had found a ton of receipts cleaning out my purse last month, so I took a photo and wrote about what they revealed. Miracle of miracles, I apparently only went to Archiver's once that week! I like the little bits of pink, which I so rarely use. I used Studio Calico's July kit.

The final one is this week's Color Room challenge:

Yet again it has purple, X%&#! I own several purple shirts, but I own even fewer scrappy supplies in purple than in pink. Thank goodness for Primas, which have an endless supply of purple. I also used a purple core paper, sanding it a little to reveal some of the hue. I also sanded it to rough up what was otherwise a fairly neat LO. These kids don't really play neat together, so a little rough is good.

Busy weekend

Our weekend was filled with three things:

1. A camera-use class from National Camera Exchange;
2. Baseball with the Twins Saturday night; and
3. Chores.

The camera class was free, and basic, but it served its purpose: it made me more comfortable fiddling around with the menu, and it gave me permission/motivation to experiment before I go on vacation this year. I LOVE National Camera Exchange: it's a local company, longstanding, and you get to take the class free if you buy a camera from them, which I did a couple weeks ago, upgrading my Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot to a newer model with good action bursts. (I am calling that the "Dominic and Rowan" setting). The instructor was fabulous, and funny too: she was terrific at using analogies to make her point.

And the bonus: a little me time.

Next came tailgating at church and a group bus ride to the Twins game, a big one against the division leader. The weather was ominous:


Any cloud that bubbles on the bottom is scary. Those clouds sent forth lightning and rain when we started for the game, but the weather was perfect all through the 9 innings.

We were in the upper level in the Very. Last. Row. You know what? Terrific seats. We could hear and see everything. The Twins fended off the Sox in the 9th to pull out the victory in less than two hours.

Why was it so important to finish early? Because what followed was a scary-@ss storm. Seriously, the bus ride home was terrifying. The windows steamed up since we couldn't put the windows down. Our bus driver appeared to have gotten us home via Braille driving, according to the man in the row before me. The most scary moment came in Brooklyn Park, when the highway lights went out and we noticed the trees were parallel to the ground. Yikes.

But when we got home, we saw this:

A sunset rainbow, right over the church. Hooray.

The chores this weekend were many: cleaning the car, vacuuming the house, watering the plants, helping the boys clean their rooms and put away legos, doing laundry, and trimming a bush. And at the end of the day, when I went to scrap, I tripped on my tool bag and stabbed my foot with my paper piercer.

Back up two days ago: I misplaced the cork I keep on the top of the paper piercer. I remember thinking, "Maybe I should put this in a separate place so no one gets hurt." But I didn't. I just left it where it was and got hurt. I need to listen to those inner voices.

The last time it happened was in 2009, when a friend of mine cut off the end of her finger trimming some bushes. I thought, "Wow! That's terrible!" I never thought, "Wow! That could happen to me, since I garden as much as she does!" And sure enough, while gardening on Good Friday last year (irony), I cut off the tip of my pinky finger while gardening. It was repaired, and all is OK now, but I remember that same week going to Urgent Care again to get my finger glued shut when I sliced my thumb replacing my paper trimmer blade--the Fiskars I-blade, a very minor blade unless the safety plastic comes off when you reach for it. When I went to Urgent Care that time, the nurse asked me suspiciously if I was in a safe relationship. I told her, "Yes, but my hobbies use sharp tools." Which wouldn't be a problem if I listen to my inner voices.

Going scrapping this weekend at The Scrapbook Shop in Blaine with Jing-Jing--she is so talented at minis, maybe she can help me get off my duff and start scrapping last Christmas!

Stitching

Alison M asked me at Club CK about stitching. I thought I should post about it, since stitching has been a part of my life long before scrapbooking.

I started cross-stitching when I was in 4th grade (might have been 3rd--I lived in the Azores at the time). I did a few projects, then picked it up again in high school. I'm ambitious, so I jumped immediately into super-hard patterns as well as stitching on uneven fabrics like linen, and I've been there ever since.

Like scrapbooking, I'm a fast stitcher. This is probably due to my personality--I'm a finisher, so I derive satisfaction from finishing projects--so I do my best to finish them as quickly as I can! Still, I love stitching, and I don't do it much anymore--so I love adding stitching to my layouts.
This has been made all the easier since Bazzill came out with their stitching templates. Archiver's carries them, and I own four: Flourishes, 8x8 circles, Granny Stitches, and Silly Stitches. I use Flourishes the most. (If you are interested, go to scrapbook.com to see these and other templates.) To stitch, I tend to use either DMC (3 strands), Karen Foster's Scrapper's Floss, or Stampin' Up!'s Linen Thread.

I mostly do either a running stitch or a backstitch. I've done others. Here's a LO with lazy daisy stitches:

And here's a recent one where I used cross-stitches:

I want to do more, but truthfully, embroidery stitches are delicate, and my dudes aren't delicate. Here's a link to various types of stitches: Embroidery Stitches Sampler To secure the threads on the back, I either snake the thread underneath my stitches on the back of the layout or I use tape to secure the thread. Here's a LO using this week's Color Room color combo where I used running stitches:


And here's the back where you can see how I secured the thread:


I should mention, the first time I stitched, I ripped the heck out of the paper. The key? Put the holes far enough apart so you don't mush through the paper.

New layouts

I have been plugging away at a few layouts, spending a lot of time on them to add the details I like. Here's the first:

I used this week's Sketchy Thursdays sketch for it:

The photo is one I love, taken in Idaho when we went to Derick's mom's funeral. Though the photo was lovely, it was a wee bit fuzzy, so to mask that, I added a few grunge layers take from Fudge Graphics. I also added some flourishes just because. The effect reminds me a little of an Andrew Wyeth painting, especially the barn in the back. Makes me feel like home. The journaling is a little haiku-ish--no great meaning behind the page, just I love the feelings his photo evokes.

The next is this month's Project 12 layout, using Studio Calico's June kit:

Here's the sketch:

Just in case the blog cuts off the right side, you can see the whole sketch here.
I added more photos for it, using the 4x6 template for 2.5 inch square photos. I think it works well. (An interesting note: I just got a new camera, and I had a little trouble with the second picture: the camera kept telling me I wanted to focus on Dominic's face in the lower right and set it on portrait mode, which made it a little fuzzy except his face. Sometimes smart cameras are a little too smart.)

Finally, I did last week's challenge at the Color Room a little late. Here it is:

I took some of my "journaling" from some random thoughts and Facebook posts. A fun idea for what to do with Facebook postings, I think. I also relish getting some good use out of those number brads: how long have I had them? Job well done when old supplies can be used, I think.

Thanks for looking! I had a lot of fun making these pages, different in story as they all were.

Making templates

I am not a digi gal. True, I own various free kits, background papers, brushes, and so on, but I rarely use them. I took May Flaum's hybrid scrapping class at Big Picture Scrapbooking, which got me using my digi supplies more than I had, but I love moving pieces of paper around too much to go fully to the Dark Side. So I'm Anakin Skywalker in Episode 2 when it comes to digital scrapbooking, not Anakin at the end of Episode 3.

The most common way I use my computer to scrapbook has been to create digital templates for my photos. I learned how to do this comfortably from a Cathy Zielske tutorial she did on Ali Edwards' site (Cathy's got a lot of great digi/hybrid tutorials: explore them here). If you want to figure out how to create templates, watch the video and download her step-by-step guide.

I have a spot on my computer where I save digital products. I have them organized according to product type: kits, frames, journaling spots, brushes, and templates. When I create a template, I save it in the Template file by titling it something helpful. Here's some of my go-to templates:

• 4x6 wallets (a 4x6 document with two 2.5x3.5 wallets on it)
• 4x6 3-inch photos (a 4x6 document with two 3 inch square photos)
• 4x6 2-inch photos (a 4x6 document with six 2-inch photos)
  
• a 5x7 document with two 3.5 photos

I like 4x6 inch templates for obvious reasons: I can print them cheaply with my next photo order. If I make a photo collage that I want to print as is, then I usually make it an 8x10 document. I like printing my photos through scrapbookpictures.com, but if I'm impatient, I want regular-sized photos that I can print at Target quickly too.

After I load the photos into my template, I save the new file with a new name, then I "un-do" the photos I put in so I can reuse the template. Once you learn how, it's easy-peasy, and that makes it even easier to fit a lot of photos on one or two pages.

8 is Enough

For the July cover interview I mentioned my favorite Ella ebooks: Design Workshop, A Year in the Life, and Stretch Your Sketches--but that was before I read 8 is Enough.

What a great book! I decided to see what I could do with the challenge. Here were my supplies:

• 3 pieces of patterned paper: The Girl's Paperie On Holiday, American Crafts Abode, and Studio Calico Documentary.
• Karen Foster turquoise Scrapper's Floss
• Autumn Leaves Stampology journaling spots
• Fiskars Threading Waters punch
• Quickutz Studio alphabet
• 7gypsies naked photo labels

And here are the four pages I made:


The first I used this week's Studio Calico sketch on. The idea for the page came from my sons fighting in the back of my car. I was listening to MPR news while they said that today, July 1, texting is now illegal while driving! Now, I've never texted ever, let alone while driving, but I wondered how much more distracted I could be while my sons were in the back seat? Ergo my LO.

I do want to point out the "brads" I made with the scrapper's floss. They are in the holes of the punched border. I made them by stitching French knots.

"Free" items used: cardstock (kraft, 2 blue), pen (black), and a paper piercer. (I used the paint side of the pen to ink the stamp.)

This was the second LO. I'm least satisfied with it. It records an important story, though, about my son's latest lost teeth. I liked the way I did the title, and I really liked the magic sparkles I stitched.

"Free" items: cardstock (brown, white, blue), pen, and paper piercer.

This next LO is my new favorite. I didn't use the stamp anymore, nor the yellow paper here. But I LOVE the stitching. Very happy with that. I also used the "remnants" of the punched border for it. I have seen other scrappers do that, but I used it here, since I was limited and wanted a change.

"Free" items: cardstock (brown), pen (white and brown), paper piercer.

I like this next one. It masked a not-so-great backlit photo. I didn't use the stamp again. I think maybe I should have made the title with yellow paper? I like the stitching on this one too. And I love the sentiment: as long as the crying child is not ours, we are on a date. Sweet.

"Free" supplies: cardstock (2 blue), pen, paper piercer.

So what do I think of this process? For me, I stretched my creativity but I was WAY slower. Seriously, I normally finish 6 LOs at a Mania, and I only did 3. I'm glad I did it, though. It made me look more closely at my pages for creative opportunities.

Note: I used a ruler to figure the stitching. Not always evenly, unfortunately.

And the winner is...

I actually picked two winners--I'm going to Scrap Mania tonight with friends, so I felt like giving two flourish templates are. The winners are Keshka and Marti, both of whom love their border punches! (I love mine too and am bringing them all to Mania tonight!)

Ladies, email me your names and snail mail addresses at jennyrahnlarson at yahoo dot com and I'll put them in the mail as soon as possible!

Book rec and garden pics

Don't forget you have until tonight at 9 P.M. Central time to leave a comment on this post for a chance to win the Bazzill flourishes stitching template!

I have done a ton of reading this summer; most recently I finished In a Sunburnt Country by Bill Bryson. Along with the poetry of Billy Collins, Bryson is a perfect summer read. I've read Mother Tongue, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, and now the book on Australia (true confessions, not all three this summer). You can't help but feel good and even enlightened after reading his books. I often laugh out loud while reading. If you're interested in what else I'm read this summer, you can follow my Good Reads link on the right side of the blog.

With the exception of my pink clematis and my now-dead rhododendron, my gardens are doing amazing. July is the month they say "Ta-da!" Here's some of what's blooming here in Minnesota:


This is a close up of the most blooming section of my garden. You can see a couple shades of coneflowers, some heliopsis (false sunflower), gooseneck loosestrife (which is getting too much to rein in for me, so I'll be digging it up and tossing it when the weather lets up), allium, and my sickly clematis. A robin likes to sit on the metal structure that holds the clematis and poop on it. I don't know if that's what is killing it, but I'd look sickly if a bird crapped on me every day.


These pink lilies didn't show in the above shot. They are quite lovely.


A close up of some of my yellow flowers. Yellow is my favorite color, and I love this lily. I think it's called "Happy Day." Isn't that great?

These are called balloon flowers, for obvious reasons: check out the incipient blossoms.


Bee balm for me is hit or miss. It tends not to spread wildly, which it generally tends to do--anywhere but my garden. Still gorgeous though.


This is called a Buffy's Doll lily. Any guesses why I planted it? Ha!


This is butterfly weed, an ugly name for a gorgeous blossom. It is supposed to be kind of touchy here, but it loves my garden. It always comes up waaaaaay late in the spring--end of May, almost.


I didn't use fertilizer this year and somehow ended up with a metaphoric ocean of daisies. Guess I'll have to split them next year.

(Note: I didn't show any of the areas where I need to deadhead or weed, which are plentiful. It feels a little less humid today, so I may feel up to going out and wrasslin' with weeds.)