Goodbye, summer

So summer officially lasts a few more weeks, but since it's the week before Labor Day, and I'm a teacher, summer is done for me. No regrets: it was a wonderful season in which I lived fully and thankfully every day.

This is a bit of a miracle, since summer vacation was one week short. See, last year Labor Day came the latest it can, and Minnesota has a state law forbidding school to start before Labor Day. (There can be petitions made to start earlier.) If you start late, you go later into the summer, which means summer break is shorter. I hope you caught all that; there will be a test on it later.

Kidding.

To prepare my students last spring for the shorter break, I taught them haiku. You probably remember haiku as little more than 5-7-5 syllables, but it is so much more. Here's the definition I use:

Haiku is the essence of a moment keenly perceived in which one image is contrasted with another.

I particularly like the idea of the essence of a moment. How often do we try to tap into the essence of any moment we live, let alone many moments? This, IMO, is especially true for Americans, who look forward to the future constantly. It's not bad--it's who we are--but it make it hard to notice the moments.

Because summer was so short this year, I encouraged my students to live a haiku summer, where they were fully aware in each moment.

I think I lived a haiku summer too, so I put together a mini album to commemorate. I used mostly October Afternoon's Fly a Kite line, which to me is the product that epitomizes this summer this year, mixed in with a few other OA lines I had left over. I used the flash card mini album to guide my photo choice; I printed wallet sized photos, trimmed them a bit, and lay them next to several strips of paper and stickers, adding a few words to detail some of the moments.
Here's the mini:












I can see doing a haiku mini-album or layout for many things: seasons, kids' growing up moments, pets, and so on. You don't need to use the term haiku; just examine the moment and descrive what it was like. Noticing the essence of the moment and trying to describe it enriches our lives, I think. I hope you think so too.

100 Moments: Moment #1

I'm a pretty fast scrapper--I get an idea, I grab product, I grab photos, and go. True, sometimes I need to let things sit so I can think about the design or what I want to say, but most of this time I don't spend a lot of time fretting about my choices.

This next layout, though, took me a week. I knew it was special to me when I thought of it, so I took some time with it.

I got the idea for this page from Jen Mohler's 100 most important moments in your life spark she introduced at Big Picture Scrapbooking's Big Idea Festival. I made my list of moments at my son's tae kwon do class. The hardest thing was getting them in order when I was done with the list! That and figuring out what's been important most recently. Having to put our dog down I saw as significant, of course, but sometimes we need the perspective of time to gauge the true significance of things. That's why I'm glad to go back and scrap older photos sometimes--or scrap the same photos!

Even before making the list I knew this moment was number 1. It's one of my earliest memories, and it was a learning experience, both about the world and about me. And my mother recently sent me photos from my first 3 years of life, and what did I find in there? Pictures from the preschool where it happened, and an Easter shot that may have been from this very event! Priceless. So here's my layout:



The hardest thing for me was picking product. I wanted something vintage-y but not too grunge-y. I have been scrapping with a lot of bright colors lately, so it was hard for me to shift gears. I knew I wanted two pages, I knew I wanted white space, and I knew I didn't want typical Easter colors or product either. October Afternoon's Thrift Shop became the anchor paper for me; the yellow paper took me a while to settle on, but this yellow Basic Grey paper from Nook and Pantry worked great. I also got some good use out of an old Daisy D's piece of blue distressed paper.

This design is an old one for me; I've used it before. It works, though! So no guilt. The greatest find for me came when I went though my red paper scraps and found an old piece of Sassafras paper with frames on it. Some worked thematically with the page, so I cut them out and used them. I set them on pop dots to make them stand out. If you click on the photo, you'll see the right one says "Bunny"!

Here's the journaling, in case you can't read it:

One of my earliest memories is at Sunday school in Niagara, New York, in 1975. (It may have been preschool, and it may have been Grand Island. My memory is fuzzy.) Around Easter the class was given a craft to make: the boys would make bunny ears and the girls would make Easter bonnets. I’ve never been a girly-girl; I wanted to make the ears but was told the girls couldn’t. This may have been my first experience with discrimination based on gender, and I remember I tried to fight against it.'

Unfortunately, I don’t remember how the story turned out, but when I told my mother this story she said she knew—because she still had the ears! Not only my first experience combating unfairness, but an early experience in my being stubborn too.

So that's the 1st most important moment in my life--the year I was told I had to make a bonnet because I was a girl, and I said no.

Club CK Blog Hop!

Welcome to the “Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall!” Blog Hop, hosted by a talented group of ladies from Club CK. If you did not arrive here from Amy Chretin's blog, please go to the beginning of the hop at Virtually Froggy and follow the blog hop in order. By following the blog hop from beginning to end you will collect words to a secret phrase which will make you eligible for the grand prize. The details for grand-prize entry are posted at the start of the blog hop. You won't want to miss it!

Here's the project I did to memorialize the end of summer:

We had a perfect summer day yesterday, sunny but not too hot, a nice breeze, and a day at the local playground with friends. The corn in the background really is as high as an elephant's eye, which means it's time for fall.

I used my August Studio Calico kit called Summer Camp for it. I also played around with PSE 7 and made a template for all the photos. I left two spots blank and put the patterned paper there. I SO wanted to stitch but ran out of time. Thank goodness for pens.

Thank you for coming to my blog! The secret word is WAVE. Now hop on over to Annie's blog for your final clue!

Winding down...

The summer is just about at an end for me, and what a wonderful summer it's been. People ask me if it went too fast, and I say no, I savored every second. I lived it, and I loved it.

Here were some last layouts from Big Idea Festival. One I'm still working on and will post when done.

This was from a page design by Karen Grunberg. I used some of my monsters for it. My favorite part was using the little cards.


Some old pictures of me (I'm on the right in both pictures, braces, perm and all). I got the idea for this layout from Lisa Day's summers past layout--and from the leftover October Afternoon flash card that is not making it into my summer mini-album. Still not sure if I should have stitched and stamped? It's what I do, though, so I did.

ETA: Here's one I finished up.My first digi LO. Be nice to me! I tried to do the same kind of layering I like to do with paper. Grungy brushes, scroll flourishes, and floral flourishes too. Note to self: I need to install fonts.

Enjoy the last couple weeks of summer, and I hope you have a perfect summer day wherever you are--a little warm, not too humid, a light breeze, and an expanse of blue above your head. That's what it's like here in Maple Grove right now.

Big Ideas

As summer comes to a close, I'm wrapping up my summer scrapbooking projects; my time will definitely shrink once I get back in the teaching groove!

I am looking forward to seeing a layout I did in the online magazine Scrap Street. They are having a giveaway today on their blog, so check out both, and definitely check out their mag next month!

I signed up for the Big Idea Festival at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I've loved every class I've taken, and it was free to boot! I have to admit, I am brimming with ideas. Here's some of what I've done:The first page I did, inspired by Elizabeth Dillow's summer mosaic page. I've done pages about our whole summer already, but none exclusively about my kids playing with the neighbors.

Every day we've had a prompt to answer, and sometimes the challenge was to scrap it. Here the prompt was "I lack." There was no challenge to scrap it, but I got an idea for a LO and went with it! I misted the green background; IMO, Maya Mist doesn't buckle the paper as badly as Tattered Angels does.

This LO was for a day we were given the prompt "I live" and asked to scrap it. I used a kit of very bright stuff from my stash. So much fun making it! Mostly BoBunny products. I think some dimension (i.e. dimensional stickers under some clouds and buttons and jewels) and mixed fonts in titles can add a lot to the design interest in a page.

Similar to the last LO, this one came from the prompt "I learn." I've posted it and written about it before. See this post for more details.

This journaling comes almost directly from Karen Grunberg's layout, which came a day after I took these photos. Instant inspiration! And because I'm lame this way, as soon as I took the photos, I thought of the October Afternoon kites and got the stitching idea. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks of product or scrapbooking when taking pictures!

The next idea from Tami Morrison was a cute frilly door hanging saying "Do Not Disturb." Now, if my boys are quiet, that is a sure sign they NEED to be disturbed because they're up to something. So instead I dug into my (sadly huge) supply of Star Wars product and made these door hangings. They are OK with having them on the door. Hopefully they'll grow to love them.

Another daily prompt, this time from the prompt "I laugh." These guys are such posers. I used the same bright kit for it, as well as my Coluzzle circle cutter to cut the circle for the photo and its "nest" in the two 4x6 photos.


The inspiration for this came from another Karen Grunberg page about anticipated sibling rivalry. I do a lot of pages about my boys being brothers and their relationship to each other at the moment. It gave me an idea!

Other pages in the works:

• Another Karen G idea about our life right now
• A Lisa Day page about my summers at the lake growing up. Pictures of me with a perm and braces. Nice.
  
• A page inspired by Jen Mohler's 100 moments idea.

A few days left, so I'm sure that I'll get more ideas! And if the idea for the Fest was to sell class spots, it worked: I'm probably going to sign up for Karen G's Book of Stories class, and though I'm not interested in their next two classes, I look forward to seeing what else Jen Mohler is teaching. Some of the other teachers I have taken classes from, so I'm always interested int heir classes!

Climb High

Here's the page I created using the journaling technique from my previous post. Sure, I could have made the page with no journaling; the title conveys a little of what I'm going for. But see how much more meaningful the page is with some of my thoughts written down as well?

The writing itself is truly only OK. Look at how I use the word "things" when I easily could have been more specific! Still, this is a page my son will treasure in the years to come, made more so because I put down my thoughts.

*I used Studio Calico's Summer Camp kit for this, which is still available here.

Journaling: All about asking stupid questions

For all that I've blogged, I have rarely written about writing--funny, because I am an English teacher, and I love to teach writing. Still, I don't want to come off as preaching, and people have an abnormal fear of English teachers--seriously, how many people apologize to any dentist they meet in a casual setting that they don't floss everyday? Yet people apologize to me about their grammar the second they know I teach English. Bah!

As an English teacher who scraps, it makes me flinch when I hear people say they hate to journal, they don't journal at all, they never do much writing on the page at all. This wounds me--what are stories without words? True, we can communicate something with just images and products, but not always. So today's post is to help those people feel more comfortable in writing their stories down.

First, we write to create meaning out of our lives. That means we have to think about it a little first and give ourselves permission to ask stupid questions to figure out the meaning of the stories we're trying to convey.

What do I mean by asking stupid questions? Here's an example with a photo I want to scrap:


I love the photo, so I want to scrap it. I don't, however, want to scrap a photo-only page. The first step in figuring out the story is to ask myself a question:

Why do I want to scrap this picture?

Here's where I give myself permission to give stupid answers. The answer, of course, is I love this picture! That is not a story, though. So I need to ask more probing questions to get past stupid:

Why do I love this picture?

Because it's a good picture. (Still stupid.)

Why is it a good picture?

I love the angle--he's so high up, higher than I ever thought he could or would go. The light is behind him, sort of a brightness to the scene. (This is better--more specific--but I don't want to create a page about photography, so I still need to probe to get at the meaning of the page.)

Why is it important that he's so high, that I didn't know about it, that he's up there by the light?

Now I can feel the meaning kicking in--those details are important because it feels symbolic--for the rest of his life he will move ahead and do things, achieving things, taking risks, trying new things--and I won't know all of them. With luck, some of my parenting lessons will stick, and the closer he gets to as high as he can go metaphorically, the more successful and fulfilled he will be.

So after asking myself questions about why I want to scrap a picture, I know the purpose of the layout, so I will be able to pull products and journal meaningfully--not a lot, mind you. Meaningful journaling doesn't have to be long. It just has to be thoughtful, and I think this will be.

New layouts

I am planning on writing about writing (ha) tomorrow, but thought I'd post some recent layouts from the past week first:

This one is a little inspiration from Big Picture Scrapbooking's Big Idea Festival, day 1. A recap of my boys' imaginative summer. I've been drawn to bright colors lately, esp. on white.

Also a Big Picture inspiration, a challenge to scrap how we learned. I learn by doing, and that inspired me to remind myself that my son, who is autistic, has trouble processing oral directions, so I need to be sensitive to that as I help him learn.

Next is a layout for my son's album. When we were in Disneyworld, he was able to go to a Lego store with his allowance from the last year--he got a Star Wars spaceship, little green army dudes Legos, and a Lego game. Plus his dreams fulfilled. I love the center shot with his leg perched against the other. Thinking, thinking...

I'm moderately dissatisfied with this one--I wonder if it's cohesive? I love the sentiment and the title, though, as well as those old Sassafras papers. And I love this picture of us. You can do a lot of good self-portraits using the extend-a-arm technique.


This was for a sketch challenge at Studio Calico. When this event happened, I immediately thought of a page. Is that bad?

Wall Art

I have a small house, so I don't make many crafts or altered items to go around--it's full already! But when I saw the 7gypises printer's drawer (the black one), I had to get it. When I got home from Disneyworld, I started planning how to fill it.

First I sketched out a grid and planned which photos I wanted in there and how big the photos needed to be. I knew I didn't want to fill the whole thing with photos (I got the ATC tray, so regular sized photos wouldn't fit), so I found 4 that I thought epitomized the visit. Two squares I needed for title, and one I wanted for journaling. I wasn't sure what would go in the others, but that was OK; I don't like to plan every detail.

Then I printed the photos: two 4x6 I wanted horizontal and that would survive the wood split in the middle, and two small vertical. I made a 4x6 document in PSE, layered two 2.75 x 3.75 vertical photos in it, and printed it out along with the other two photos.

Here's where I selected product: I don't like using stuff that's too themey. I know CI has lots of Disney stuff, but that really goes with nothing in my house. Plus I have a TON of October Afternoon Fly a Kite and decided to use that product: paper and stickers. I also used some Basic Grey Chip alphas I had on hand (and had all the letters to!) and pulled out some Making memories travel stuff as well.

I thought a basic pattern would be easier for me, so I alternated photo and paper left to right from top to bottom. Once I laid down the basics, I knew I had to fill some space! I dug out my Disney memorabilia, found an unused Fast Pass, a map of our hotel, and a small icon to use. Once I found those, I finished assembling it. Here's what I did:





For adhesive, I mostly used Thermoweb's sticky strip; since this frame will be hanging on a wall, I wanted the products up there solid. I also placed one photo on the top of the squares, not inside. The wood split didn't work well there, and I liked the variety of layering.

Plus I added two "hidden" Mickeys. Can you see them?

Lights, Camera, Actions!

Right now I'd like to thank my husband for "helping me" (i.e. doing it himself then showing me how) install actions into PSE 7 on our Mac which runs Windows through Fusion. (It's complicated.) He did it with minimal cursing (none at me) and no corporal punishment on the computer, so he deserves a big hand. Or cookies.

So I finally got some actions installed, and am ready to play! I first got the Pioneer Woman sets of free actions loaded. Here are some of the things I played around with:

This is the photo I took yesterday--I've wanted to take this photo all summer! It's a little dark, and the sun's through the leaves, but I love it. Look how happy he is. First I used Boost and Slight Light:


I also tried Fresh Color and Soft Faded. I really like this one:

This one looks magical to me.

I also discovered that I love Coffee Shop actions as well. Boy, if you take the time to click on links, you find gems. That's what I did yesterday when we were stuck inside in our second of three major thunderstorms that dumped 5 inches of rain on us. I clicked a link on a blog (forgot where now) and ended up finding her actions--awesome! Here's a photo I took the other day when it wasn't storming, my boys building mountains in the wet sand of the playground in between storms:


And here I used Vignette:


I changed the opacity so the burn could be seen better. Sort of gives the photo an explorer look. And just for photography's sake, I was almost on sand-level for the photo. It makes for an interesting angle.

Here's why I wanted actions in the first place: I rediscovered some old photos of my husband when closet cleaning this summer. I wanted to use actions to play around with the photos a little. Take, for example, this precious one taken of my husband's family when they lived in Hawaii, those lucky dogs:


And here is PW Boost:


Coffee Shop Attic Vintage:


PW Colorized:

I'm still figuring out how to save the actions to the desired folder--and make them show up when I open the actions!--so I'll keep playing and having fun.

More memorable quotations

Another find when I cleaned the closets this summer: a page of quotations from Forbes magazine in the 1980s. Here's a few:

"Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age." ~ Albert Einstein

"Nothing ages people like not thinking." ~ Christopher Morley

"It is better to create than to be learned; creating is the true essence of life." ~ Reinhold Neibuhr

"It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done." ~ Oscar Wilde

"The constructive loafer uses his mind during the act of loafing, but he does not try to control his mind. In other words, loafing is educated day-dreaming. I do not plead for more loafing. I defend a reasonable amount of honest loafing as a tonic that is good for the body, mind, and spirit." ~ William Feather

Now I'm going to go do some loafing today. Maybe with scrapbooking products near me...

Supply challenge

One of the best things about organizing my supplies is the rediscovery of old stash. I find that inspiring, and I try to jot down those creative ideas in my notebook before they float away. I did this with the following page a few months ago:

I had felt guilty about not using my rub-ons much lately, so I sorted through them and found a frog holding a balloon. My son had received a frog Pillow Pet for his birthday, so I had the inspiration for my birthday layout. (I won't even mention how ancient those cloth brads are--but mixed with current stuff, they don't look so old!)

I remembered those rub-ons when I worked on my Color Room layout for the week. The colors matched the left-over rub-ons, which went with a recent photo I'd taken of my sons and their friend, so I put it all together into this:


I tend to be an inspired-by-story-and-photo gal, but I find getting inspired by product sometimes leads to greater creativity (and more satisfying layouts). This process of inspiration-by-product meade me ponder: I think we ALL want to use up some old stuff. We bought it, so we hate throwing it away, but it's hard to go back to old stuff when that new stuff is so...delectable.

To help dig into the older stuff, I'm dedicating myself for the next few months to using my stash. Not all of it, of course, but I tend to shop in stores for inspiration more than shopping in my stash--and limiting myself helps increase my creativity.

So here's my categories of stash:

• felt/fabric
• stickers
• die cuts
• stamps
• ink-mist-paint
• buttons and brads (I have tons of these)
• patterned paper (ditto)
• ribbon
• chipboard
• overlays and acrylic
• flowers
• metals
• digi products (the worst organized part of my stash)
  
• tools: rulers, die cut machines, templates
  
• punches
• rub-ons
• glitter/gems
• mini-albums
• pencils/markers/chalk

That covers pretty much everything I have. So how am I going to use it?

1. Each layout I look at my list (it's in my idea notebook), I think about one product that might be good for that page, and I look through that product in my stash for inspiration.I limit myself to just one product to search through in my stash, and I try to pair it with my imagined page.
2. If I get inspiration for another project during my search, I take out the product, leave it out, and jot down my idea. Here's an example: I saw these remaining animal rub-ons and thought I'd use the pig on my Chinese zodiac sign; the stars I'll use as a mask for a 4th of July LO; I can always use a pretty white rub-on flourish; and the dresses (which are new from my Studio Calico kit) I thought I'd use on a LO about how I NEVER wear dresses. Much to my husband's chagrin.
   
3. I also consider my page in process and think of how I can use similar products that I haven't used recently. Case in point? Substitute eyelets instead of brads:
4. If I feel mojo-less, I organize one supply to get inspired by product. It usually works.
5. If I have a product I want to use for whatever reason but I don't have an idea for it, I leave it on my table. I'm a tidy person--not Poirot tidy, but it offends me to see this orphaned product so much that my creative juices inevitably get flowing just to get that sucker off my table.

So I encourage you to look at this list, pick one area that you want to get started on using, and use that product! If you do, please leave a link--I'd love to see what you did in getting inspired by your stash.