New Scrapbooks and Cards Today is out!

I have just read it online, and you can too! I am in this issue--page 53--with a double page  layout using mostly the 100 Days of Summer Collection by Simple Stories about a fun picnic our family and friends had last summer. Here's the link; I hope you enjoy these fun and colorful pages as much as I did!

Scrapbooking without photos

Sometimes I think we get caught up with the photos driving our storytelling. I don't want to say that's wrong; however, I do want to suggest that this method may not be the only way. And it shouldn't be, especially when we have a memory we want to scrap but we don't have the photo to accompany it.

How do we deal with that? Here's a few things I've done in the past few years:

1. Scrap a page with no photos at all. I did this a couple years ago on the following page (click the page to see it larger):

   

The page started with the October Afternoon vintage typewriter sticker, which I'd gotten in a Studio Calico kit. People on the message board wondered how to use it. I decided to design a page around it by scrapping all the evidence that I am getting Old. (I felt that way again this year reading the book Flotsam to my students as an introduction to postmodernism before we started to read The Things They Carried.  A key part of the book is when the young boy takes film out of the camera and goes to a one-hour development place--remember those?--to see the photos. I jokingly explained to my students about film, one-hour photo development, and photos that can be held. My students are all the jpg generation.)

This next one that I made a few weeks ago was inspired by a loss of three photos, all of which I can vividly recall, even without the pictures:

  

I used the Airmail stamp set by Studio Calico/Hero Arts to replace the photos that otherwise would have appeared on the page. Here's some close ups:

 

Hand stitching titles is super easy. I'll post a tutorial soon.

I also like stitching circles on the page. A blog reader asked about that a while back; I'll include that in the tutorial.

  

Finally, a page I made earlier this spring. I was inspired to scrap about my favorite children's TV programs when I was growing up. I didn't want to figure out how to use a screen cap of the TV programs that I could find online, so instead I googled images of TV sets, found a vintage one I liked, copied it into Word and enlarged it, then used it as a template to paper piece my main image instead of a photo.

 

2. Pick a random photo to accompany the memory. I do this a lot, especially if I'm doing a personality page rather than an event page. Every time I print, I include random pretty-good photos of my family, just to keep on hand for when I do this kind of page. Here's one I did recently for my son, writing about what he's like at age nine:

More stitched circles.

The journaling came from the Ella ebook Essential Guide to Scrapbooking Boys. Rather than doing a page for each prompt, I used the page prompts as interview questions and put his responses on the page. The book is on sale for the rest of the month at a super duper low rate--go now!

3. Go out and take photos, even if they are not of that actual story moment. If it's not too much of a burden, I take pictures for the express purpose of accompanying the story I'm going to tell. I feel no guilt about this--I'm not "staging" anything. Heck, that's what professional writers do, with the exception of breaking news. Not every story I tell is breaking news (thank goodness!). In fact, the majority of what I do is more like feature writing, so bring on the staged photos!

Here's a recent example:

Yes, I took a picture of my shoes. They're not pretty shoes, but that kind of helped me tell the story, so that's OK.

Thanks for reading about what I do when I want to scrap a story for which I have no photos. If you want to read more about this, Write Click Scrapbook posted this great article on the same topic with even more ideas on scrapping without photos.

Have fun scrapping!

My first Scrap Review is up!

My first review at The Scrap Review is up today!

The collection I got to work with is the Bazzill Basics Beach House collection. I made three projects, two layouts and a card.

The first page was for its intended theme: the beach! I made a page with our summer bucket list, photo pun intended. I got the idea from this photo and a page I saw recently where a person made a summer bucket list. Might have been Jill Sprott? Here it is:

Here's some details:

 

You can see that the collection worked well for fussy cutting and didn't have colors that would overwhelm the photos. I cut the tags out of patterned paper, I think from the 6x6 pad.

I also made a non-themed page about our one and only snow day we've gotten in my teaching career.
(OK, there was another snow day, but I was at a workshop, so I feel that didn't count!)

 

  

 

 

You would never know looking at this page that the papers come from a beach collection! Awesome flexibility.

(Trivia note: the sledding hill is right above the beach in the first page. If you look in the distance in the big snow photo, you can see the umbrella skeletons.  I love that these two pages are in the same place but two different seasons.)

And here's a card:

I'm not really a cardmaker, but I love this one. And can I also say how nice the Stampin' Up! baker's twine looks with this collection? I used it on every page.

If you like this collection, please visit The Scrap Review to leave a comment by midnight Friday EST for a chance to win the collection! Sorry, US residents only for this giveaway.

Back soon with a post on scrapping events or moments without photos.

My non-Pinterest scrap space

My house, though I love it much, is small. I do not have huge windows, glorious natural lighting, and wide open spaces and a white kitchen. No, my house bears no resemblance to Pinterest at all.

Every time I go on Pinterest, I drool. Then I feel a tight squinching in my chest, knowing I can never get in my house what I see online.

In case anyone else gets that squinching feeling, I thought I'd post my non-Pinterest scrap space. Here goes:

 

I scrap in my living room. I do have a teeny corner of the family room downstairs, but my back is to the room downstairs, so I use it for storage rather than work. Here, I sit in the easy chair, use my lap desk to scrap, and am a part of the family.

(Note: this photo doesn't match the rest of the photos. I was watching Bones while I took these photos, as I'm wont to do. However, when I took the photo, the image on the screen was a little...unclear. It could have been an autopsy photo, but it wasn't clear, and I didn't want to yuck anyone out. I didn't notice it until I went to edit the photos. So I took another one. Sorry about the incongruity!)

 

This is the only Expedit my husband will let me get (it's not big, so it's not heavy). I use it for albums, paper, Thickers (lower right) and random chip letters (the juice glasses). I'd like a shelf on the section to double up the glasses and fit more elsewhere.

To the left are my 3-ring binders I keep inspiration I've cut from magazines, plus classes and design team handouts.

This is the spot to the left of the chair where I scrap. I keep a tin for paper scraps on the end table. I also have a few inks I need to re-store to my scrap storage spot downstairs. Under the table is the magazine/idea book rack I keep inspiration in, plus a bin for new papers, a storage container for embellishments, and my storage bag for tools, adhesives, and pens. (The bag is one I got at Target. It's actually a gardening tool bag from Smith and Hawken.)

I also keep my kits in Craft Keepers here. I tend to use my kits to death, so I don't have more than two at a time.

 

This is to the right of the TV. I keep my patterned paper here organized by color (the top is multi color, then ROYGBIV, then brown, white/black/grey, then die cut paper).

On top are small letter stickers and my popular, small stamps.

 

This is to the left of the TV. I have an Itso I got from Target filled with popular supplies: Washi, DMC, templates, brads, thread, etc. Next to the Itso are storage bins I got from Joann's for sale. One is for scraps, the other for stickers and overlays and die cuts. On top are the most recent embellishments I've purchased and my tools storage bin.

 

Right by the TV (you can see Bones is on: I don't listen to music but instead watch ROKU or movies while scrapping).  The muffin tin is an embellishment storage bin for the class Twelve from Big Picture Classes.  It takes up a lot of room, so I'm not sure I'll keep it when the class is over. I don't have a huge amount of space.

So that is my space. I like being near the family, and since it's near the family, it requires regular cleaning up. That's a good thing.