How I select photos for my pages

I know that a couple people have asked me before how many pages I get done, where I print photos, etc. I though I'd share some of my process of photo selection. I try to keep it quick and simple. That's my theme.

I scrap in the moment, true--I pick recent photos to print so that I can make a page that I'm burning to create. When I'm doing a small number that's mostly made up of 4x6 photos, I use a local developer, National Camera Exchange. (They do mail order if you are interested.) I used to use Target, but the quality is SO much better at National Camera, and the online upload is much easier, IMO. They also print 8x12, which are pricey (5 bucks) but it's a size I love, so if I need one quick, that's convenient.

I am a sequential person, though, so I browse through, edit, and print my photos by months. Right now I'm working on November and December of last year. I find photos I love and events I want to scrap that I haven't yet. I even (GASP!) find a photo or two I want to turn into a digi page.

One of the last events from October (aside from Halloween, which I'd already scrapped), was Rowan's birthday. We spent it at Space Aliens in Albertville, which is not a great [lace to take phenomenal photos, but it was an event I wanted to scrap.

Here's where my major photo selection happens: I browse through the photos, trying to distinguish between my starring photos--the ones that will be my focal photos--and my supporting photos--the ones that round out what the event was about, who was there, what we did, etc. I call the former my BEST ACTOR photos and the latter my BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR photos. Best Actors are printed larger, Best Supporting Actors are printed smaller, ususally in the same size to make design easier.

(I resize my photos according to something I learned from Cathy Zielske's terrific post on Ali Edwards' Tuesday Tutorials. If you use PSE, this is a great place to start learning how to print small sizes on 4x6. It doesn't teach that specifically, but by changing the size of the canvas and the photo spots, you can do it.)

Here were my BEST ACTORS from the birthday:

A beauty shot.


A character shot.


And a location shot.

NOTE: I do some minor tweaking of my photos. I find the auto color correction and auto correct work pretty well, especially with flawed, indoor photos like these. I also tend to add actions like Pioneer Woman's and CoffeeShop's to add color and character and fix lighting. I use the same action for all the photos in the event, mostly. Here I think I used Pioneer Woman's Boost.

Once I pick, resize, and edit the starring shots, I select a few SUPPORTING ACTOR shots, pnes that show what we did and who was there. I have created and saved various sizes of templates for smaller shots on PSE; for this LO, I though 3x3 photos would work well. I saved two to a 4x6 print. Here's my supporting photos:

A guest (his brother) playing games and dad holding the prime tickets.


Birthday boys opening gifts and meeting an Alien.


Birthday boy showing off a gift and posing by a favorite game.

Birthday boy throwing some hoops and his brother looking happy.

I used the same Boost action on these photos.

These photos I sent to Scrapbook Pictures. I use them for bigger orders or ones with many larger photos, which are less expensive here.

Though I don't have the page designed, when I get these photos from the printer, I think it should be fairly easy to design the page, which will be 2 pages. I can picture the smaller photos in a line across the span and the three bigger photos in a line above them. And to make for a perfect moment, this line just came out in stores for me to use with this page.

Serendipity.

Creative titles

Maybe because I'm also an English teacher, one of my favorite scrap supplies is letters--stickers, die cuts, you name it, I love it! However, I always seem to run out of certain letters--e, i, r, and n especially.

One way I use letters without worrying about running out of them is to make use of my patterned paper, like this gorgeous sheet from Funhouse:

I actually used two sheets, though you could do this with just one. I distressed the cut-out letters with ink and pen, then adhered them with dimensional stickers. (If you're using just one piece of paper, back the cut-out portion with a scrap of neutral cardstock.)

Look at the nice shadows that make the title stand out!


So the next time you want to use letters for a title, but like me, you may need to buy a vowel, look in your patterned paper stash and start cutting.

School year winding down

Not that I'm counting, but there are 10 school days left for my boy and me this year. Then it's a summer of swimming, martial arts, biking, tie die, camping, and scrapping.

Until then, we're staying focused on school.

Recently, Dominic was working on his math homework. He had an ambitious assignment involving fractions. He just didn't get it, so when Derick got home, he pulled out an apple, cut it apart, and voila! Dominic got it.

I hope I'm not the only one this happens to, but right then the phrase "Apple Math" popped into my head. I took some pictures, which weren't perfect--we have such bad lighting in our house. That's OK though--I scrap the memories, which are not dependent on pristine photos. Here's the LO I made using this week's sketch from Sketch Support:

The background paper was a mess up with mist I did when making a page for Write.Click.Scrapbook.

The sketch has 2 photos, but I wanted to add another, so I did a favorite technique: I cut out a circle with my Coluzzle, then cut the photo into a slightly smaller circle. I sanded the edges of all the photos to make them stand out a little from the background.

I painted the chipboard letters with Jenni Bowlin paint daubers--so easy!--and made the apples with a shadow stamp set I have from Studio Calico.

I'm glad I made this page; I think we tend to focus on big events--the start and finish--and miss some of the moments along the way. Here I tried to slow down and record one.

Random May bits

I have been a pathetic blogger this week, undermined by business: end of the school year, projects for Ella and GCD Studios, and a busy as you-know-what week that will doubtless show up in a page about me soon.

But count my blessings, at least this didn't happen in Maple Grove yesterday. My prayers are going out to everyone affected.

We went to a wonderful wedding this weekend at the arboretum. The readings were terrific, including Oh, The Places You'll Go!, and my son was the first to recognize the recessional as a song from Kung Fu Panda (Oogway's Ascent):


(Note: same clothes as Easter. I don't do dresses.)

Here's the wedding card I made using GCD Studios Simply Surrender:


I liked layering all the different papers (that's me), but this time I also trimmed the die cut paper to layer too. I haven't done that before, so it was nice to see other ways of using die cut papers aside from the whole sheet.

Back later this week once my head comes up for air!

Singing in the...snow?

When I went on my scrap weekend a couple weeks back, I made a fatal packing error: I didn't bring any patterned paper. True, I brought some GCD Studios paper to use for a few specified pages, and a couple Studio Calico kits, but that was it.

So when I pulled out my ice skating photos to scrap, I had only the two kits to delve into. The problem? They were appropriately named Into the Woods and Singing in the Rain. The first didn't work, so I pulled out the latter to see what I could make work for snow pictures.

Here's what I did (click on the image to see it closer):


This is one of my 100 moments pages, number 8, as you can see. I'm not sure what year these photos are from, or even when the actual event happened, but it really doesn't matter.

I misted the kraft paper with Studio Calico white mist, just to add a little brrr...

I'm amazed that the back of the striped Webster's Pages paper looks so much like snow! And I loved the die cut fortune that seemed to fit so well with the story. The number 8 is from the same chipboard as the title; I removed the fabric and painted it.


I painted the Pink Paislee metal banner with a Jenni Bowlin paint dauber, Chili Powder, I believe. I scraped a little off the edges to show some silver, then added the letter stickers.

Looking forward to summer

Right after I posted those glorious pictures in 90 degree weather, the temperature tanked, the air pressure dropped, and we've had nothing but rain. And a little hail and one tornado that came a little too close. (St. Michael is only about 10 minutes away from Maple Grove.)

So no more glorious garden photos to post. However, that's why I scrap summer photos in winter and spring--because nature does not always cooperate with my life.

When blogger went kablooey this week*, this page went up at Sketch Support:




The sketch called for banners, but they seemed out of place on this page, so I stretched clouds (stamps and punches) across the page:




I also went to town with the stitching, around the outside, the journaling block, and then as sort of photo corners:



I had a bunch of 4x6 photos already printed, so I used those in the same orientation as the sketch. I only printed the 2x2 photos just for this sketch.

*Some comments were lost when blogger went down--please know that I read them. I remember Gloria and Alexandra posted--Dana too, I think? Thank you for taking the time to send your thoughts to me!

Long time no see!

Hello, spring. Thought you were going to skip out on us this year.

Evidence of spring in my garden:

My muscari bloom, then die back, then sprout in the fall. I never cut them back, but they always come back in the spring. Even this spring, oh-so-late in coming.


These are parrot tulips, I think. There was one beautiful one in the garden when we bought the house; after a few years, I split it. Now look at all these beauties. I still have one errant one in the big garden that I can never seem to move. I always leave part of the bulb, I guess.

These are peony tulips. I got them from John Scheepers, planted them in 2002 a few weeks before Rowan was born, and look at how great they still are. I thought tulips were supposed to die after a year. Guess not! (At least from Scheepers they don't seem to die out.)

More John Scheepers tulips from 2002. I learned to take photos of flowers from my MIL: get close and eye level, if possible.


Here's an interesting thing: those last tulips seem to be naturalizing. They popped up this spring by my daffodils, clear on the other side of the garden. No clue how that happened. But I'm enjoying it, though anal-retentive me is wondering if I should dig these up to put them by the other tulips.I think I'll just let them be.

NSD winner!

Using Random.org, I drew the following name and entry as a winner:

Christine said...

Like your layout. Love the stitching.

May 8, 2011 2:47 PM

Christine, let me know you full name and address and the Sketch Book volume number you'd like and I'll get your info in to Allison right away to get it sent to you! You can email me at jennyrahnlarson at yahoo dot com.

NSD Sketch Support blog hop!

Welcome to National Scrapbook Day, and thank you for joining the Sketch Support blog hop! You should have gotten here from Suzanna's blog. If you get out of order at any time, please feel free to stop off at Sketch Support to find all the blogs--and have fun on the scavenger hunt!

Here's the sketch we used:


And here's the page I made from it:

I had bunches of brother photos that had not made their way onto other pages. I took them all and printed two more photos from a recent event to make this page. The photo sizes are different, but the orientation is the same.

The idea for the page came from some words from my son, which are on the journaling card above. Click the image to see them bigger. Words like that merit a page, I think.

My boys loved that great big red inflatable whatever.

I love my Bazzill stitching template:

Oh, yes I do...

I also love those Cosmo Cricket flower and butterfly die cuts. I'd marry them if I could. Well, not really, but I really love them.


My friend Sandra gave me the idea for putting a quotation in this spot, which I created because I had an empty spot since I messed with the photo orientation. Who knew Leonardo DiCaprio would have such a heartwarming brother quote?

And for a chance at a prize...Leave a comment telling me why you scrap! I scrap to remember the stories of our lives. Also to make meaning out of them. In all honesty, I think scrapbooking helps me make my life more meaningful. Plus, God's truth, I have to scrap because I have so dang many supplies!

So share why you scrap (Comments will be open until Sunday night at 9 P.M. CST), then hop over to Amy's blog! Thanks for stopping by; come back again.

Layouts at Write.Click.Scrapbook

Two Ella friends, Keshet and Donna, asked me to contribute page for Write. Click. Scrapbook's Spring Training celebration. Here are my pages:



This one appeared earlier this week for creating your own background. I added spritzes of mist, plus stitches, to mimic my son's sound effects, the title of the page.


This one shows photo booth photos. They weren't really from a photo booth; I shrunk the photos in PSE, printed them on a 4x6 print, then trimmed and adhered them to the page. And I love love love this line from GCD Studio called Funhouse. Appropriate for any goofy, fun event.

Two codes again for today:



For A Year in the Life, you can use code LIFEINSPRG, and for 8 is Enough, you can use the code SPREIGHT. Each code can give you $1.00 off until May 15.

Special day with Dominic

In Dominic's bag today was a card for me from first grade. I think I made a page last year from Rowan's card for me; I obviously have to do the same for Dominic's card. It was fill-in-the-blank. Here are his responses for me. Odd grammar and punctuation errors are his--more punctuation than grammar. Parentheses are my words:

My mother is the greatest mom in the world. If I could give her something special, it would be flowers. My mother looks prettiest when she was young (note the past tense). She weighs 100 pounds and is 12 feet tall (whoa). I love my Mom because she helps me clean my room (lucky boy). My Mom is great because she taught me how to read a book. I know my Mom is smart because she good at math (?). I love my Mom because she finds the time to go to my friends house before going to taekwondo. My favorite thing about my Mom is being a good cook. I love my Mom because she's the BEST MOM EVER!!!! I wouldn't trade her for a billion dollars.

I asked Dominic about the last one--I said, "A billion dollars, but not a google dollars, huh?" And he said, "Yes." Oh well. I'm almost priceless to him.

Now the specials:


Today's special discount codes are for Quick and Creative Quizzes (QUZSPRING) and Double-page Design (DOUBLESPR). For each code you get $1.00 off. Codes expire May 15.

Adding journaling strips

A couple weeks ago a reader asked about the journaling strips I add to my pages. The page I'll explain my technique on is this one:

When I was still building the page, I had a small spot on the right that I thought would be good for journaling strips:

I measured the spot, then opened up Word and typed, keeping an eye on the rulers on the right and left to ensure I kept it within the allowable space. (When measuring, make sure to leave a little space on each side to account for the space you'll have to leave when you cut them out and space them as strips.)

I then highlighted my journaling and set the spacing at 1.5, not double. This is the perfect amount for cutting journaling strips. (Note: I generally am not a font fanatic. I use Times New Roman.1.5 is perfect for that, but some big fonts need double spacing. You can eyeball it.)

I then print and cut:

My trimmer has a line so I can see just where the cut is.

I then spread them out on the page to see how I want the strips arranged before I glue them down.


After gluing, I usually draw lines around each strip for some more definition. I probably got this idea from Jen Jockisch:


And that's how I do my journaling strips!

Now for today's discount: Courtesy of Ella's Spring Training, you can go to Ella and get the following ebook, UR2 Cre8ive, for $1.00 off:


Use the code SPRCREATIVE when you check out. Code is good through 5/15/2011.