Stitching on my pages: from the Scrapinar

Wednesday I had a wonderful evening participating as a panelist in a scrapinar on stitching for Lain Ehmann. I made my first video tutorial, this time on stitching on layouts,* and I spent some time answering questions on stitching and enjoying the company of people who love this craft of ours. You can see my video here.

It's fitting, I suppose, that the first video I made is on stitching. I have sewn and cross-stitched for a long time. I am cross-stitching a sampler right now with a verse ("The diligent farmer plants tress of which he himself will never see the fruit") and sewing various Star Wars crafts. I also had two pages this week picked up for the July Scrapbook Trends magazine, both of which included stitching, and one of which will be published in the stitching section. I love to add stitches to my pages. Love.

I wanted to share the pages I made for that scrapinar, plus some extra tidbits I didn't share in the scrapinar, which of course came to me after it was done. (For the record, I used Studio Calico's January kit Block Party for all of these layouts. I added bits from my stash as well, since these were the last pages I made with the kit.)

Here's the first page I made, which highlights the machine stitching I tend to do:

I didn't do any hand stitching on this page, but I did some typical machine stitching as a frame and to zig zag some elements together at the top of the page.  Here's some details:

Here's the second page I did. I love the design, and I hand stitched the tickets together to add some contrasting color and texture to the page. I also stitched a line through one of the paper strips (just me stripping on a page again, LOL!) to add some texture. Plus, a confession: I had used an adhesive eraser to remove some gummed up adhesive, and it damaged the patterned paper. The stitching distracts from my damage.

Here's the third page, probably my favorite since it depicts the group I scrap with, the Scrappin' J's. On that note, mad props to the first J's: Janet for taking photos of me stitching that I used in my video; Sandra, which was going to but got sick; Jennifer, who took the photos in the above layout; and Jolene, who at first couldn't believe I sewed on pages but now does so beautifully herself.

I hand and machine stitched on this page:

And the last layout, a gift I made for my parents (they're not interested in much else but scrapbooking pages from me). I hand stitched circles using my Bazzill template and I machine stitched the title and date.

 

  

Note: looking above, you can see that super thin letters are not good to stitch on. Learn my lesson before you stitch and only sew on thick letters/numbers like the ones below:

 Thank you for viewing my pages! And now share: do you stitch on your layouts? If so, what do you tend to do?

*Just a quick note: I am planning on making two more videos at least, one of heat embossing multiple colors at once and another on making a mini album. Come back and share in the videos! I'm hoping to make one or two a month, possibly more when I'm not grading papers in the summer (heh).

Free stitching scrapinar at Layout a Day

I've been working on two things lately:

1. Commenting on student drafts of their persuasive papers.
2. Putting together an online presentation on adding stitching to your pages.

The first will take me the month of February to see to the end; the latter is almost done and ready to be sent off. Here's the details:

If you go to Lain Ehmann's Layout a Day site and sign up, you can participate next week! 

A side note: people sometimes ask me where I learned to design, or how I can scrap so quickly and purposefully. Two things: Design Your Life by Cathy Zielske at Big Picture Classes, and Layout a Day (LOAD) with Lain Ehmann. The first was billed as a class where you would be able to look at a page and know in an instant what the page needs; I have to say the class lives up to its billing. It's still offered as a self-paced class, heartily recommended by me.

LOAD I did several times. The practice of making a page a day sped up my process; posting into a private Flickr gallery and receiving comments from other participants helped me develop a keen understanding of my style. This helped me improve my design process, because I knew what worked for me, so I did it. Less pondering and moving stuff around the page.

Both of these options cost money, but I decided a few years ago I wanted to spend my money on experiences more than stuff, and I got my money's worth with these two. I recommend them.

And if money is tight? Well, go sign up for the stitching seminar!

Favorite photos

*Quick note: hurry over to Sketch Support today for a chance to win some BG Wander. It's so cold right now, I sort of want to Wander myself...

Last year when I was doing LOAD*, I read a post by Stacy Julian suggesting we spend about 15 minutes picking out our favorite photos of the year. In LOAD, I also downloaded a wonderful template for 9 photos from Barb Wong. I made this page, one of my favorites from 2010:


This year I decided to do the same project, using the same template with the same kit company, Studio Calico. Here's what I did:





Some minor changes in the design: fewer flowers, some stitching, and photo labels along the side instead of next to the photos. The background paper is the same color as the photo mat, so I misted the background paper with yellow and orange.

I loved making this page. I was in a wee bit of a design funk, and this shook me out of it.

*LOAD stands for Layout a day, a challenge Lain Ehmann does. I've done it a few times and had a blast every time. I can't do it this year, as February looks pretty busy. But if you are thinking of it, I recommend it.

Style and voice

I am an English teacher. Part of my job is to teach writing. A couple words float around with writing that also apply to scrapbooking: style and voice.

They are sometimes used interchangeably, but I think they're different. Style to me is decorative; we each have our own style of dress, of manner, of decoration. That's what style is in a nutshell: decoration, ornamentation, organization. I think style's connection to scrapbooking is obvious.

Voice is personal, a little more who we are at our core. Voice shows up in writing by the way the writing sounds, and that's how it shows up in scrapbooking. Some people are funny, some are concise, some are warm, some are sentimental, and so on. I work hard to cultivate voice with my students, encouraging them to play around with writing techniques to figure out what works for them. Voice cannot be forced, nor can style. They can only be cultivated and discovered. Discovering "Who am I?" regarding style and voice is just as much a question of "Who am I?" as a person.

Regardless of how the two things are different, we each have our own style and voice. Adopting someone else's style can help you discover your own; someone else's style won't fit. And voice...trying to sound like someone else while writing doesn't work either, though it will help reveal to you what your voice is like!

So taking LOAD in May, which focused on style, what did I learn about myself? Not sure this was learned so much as affirmed.

1. I like white space and asymmetry, as in this page:


2. I like to overlap the photo with different words or accents:


3. Journaling strips work consistently for me, more than one big journaling block:

4. Me = stitching.


5. This next page shows what I don't like: separation of page elements. I like things tightly grouped together. For example, with this page I wish I'd journaled and put the title right next to the photo block:


6. I like lines, like in this LO. And one of my favorite kinds of patterned paper? Striped.


7. I like to cluster accents together around the page. I vaguely remember reading the eye sees these groups as a single object.


8. I like mixing fonts for titles, like here:


So that's my style, if you will. Overall tidy and structured, but layered and interesting to look at.
My voice? I think as a writer I am concise and humorous.

Papers, papers everywhere...

So I have a little over a week of school left, and I am swamped with grading. I actually fell asleep grading a paper yesterday. For the next two weeks, I'll be busy busy busy, too busy to do what I have to do for scrapping, which is edit photos. Yep, I have officially run out of photos to scrap. LOAD wiped me out of photos.

I had a great time and learned a lot about myself as a scrapper in LOAD, but my mind will be fully occupied this upcoming week, so much so that my scrapping will be crimped. Rats.

Oh, well, it will give me something to look forward to!

With a fierce heart

Our family got some bad news recently. My MIL's pancreatic cancer has returned, and she is feeling run down.

I don't even know how to describe the feelings right now, but I prayed a lot, and after church this Sunday, I sat down to write a poem about how I felt. I'm not a poet, so it's not pretty, but it is how I feel.

Today's LOAD challenge was "Never," to scrap something you never do. I took my poem and made a page without a photo. Here it is:

I should mention that my poem is not sad, but it is determined. I am determined to put my troubles to God. I know that if I let Him, He will take my emotional burdens. I pray that I can do everything I can when others need me to take theirs.

Welcome back sun!

After almost two weeks of rain and a month so far of below average temperatures, the sun has returned. My gardens are beautiful, slowly changing over from spring blossoms to summer. Based on my garden, to me spring as a color is purple, filled with tulips, columbine, phlox, irises, and bachelor's buttons. Summer is pink and yellow, mostly. Autumn is mainly yellow and purple. The above photo is a shot of my prairie smoke geum going to seed--pink, you'll see. Few things are more beautiful than this.

I finished my Project 12 layout:

Still using the Becky Fleck Sketch. I liked this one, though I added a photo--poor resolution on it, I downloaded it from a flickr gallery of shots taken by my son's teacher. Maybe I can ask for an email of the actual photo and reprint it with better resolution. I used my May Studio Calico kit. Lots of fun clustering accents here.

For LOAD, we had a scraplift challenge to lift Jody Wenke, so here is my version:

I liked picking papers that suggested web without actually having a web on it.

One more thing

I got some happy mail today: my returned layout from the February Scrapbook Trends magazine, along with some scrap goodies:

Lots of Hambly, plus some My Mind's Eye. Mmmmm...

The layout I made for today's LOAD is a scraplift from Studio Calico. Here's the layout I lifted by Jennifer T: I liked the design, even though it was made for a girl. I thought it would work for a boy too, so I switched out the accents and colors to make it more masculine.

When I finished the layout, I felt like it was still...unfinished. In particular, I thought it needed a stronger line down the middle. So I pulled out my sewing machine, set it to zig zag, and began.

Let it be known that I hate to sew. It seems to me that every time I sew, disasters occur. Like, say, the row of brads I put in a layout hooking onto the machine, snagging, and refusing to budge. So I try to loosen it, only to rip the page.

X%&#!

This is a great example of how my most creative and imaginative techniques come from the necessity of covering up mistakes. There are no mistakes, only creative opportunities. So to cover up the rip, linear ol' me set the machine to straight stitch (this time gently holding up the brad part of the page) and stitched row after row of wavy straight stitches. It mostly covers up the rip, or at least distracts one from trying to look for it. Here's the end result:

Job well done, with only a teeny bit of sewing swearing.

Post Mother's Day

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Mine was fun, cold, and interesting. My boys were unexcited by the meals I made Saturday, so I told them, "You're not being nice to me, and it's Mother's Day weekend. Shame on you." Dominic's answers? "Tomorrow's Mother's Day, so I'll be nice to you then." Nice.

Here's my layout for today. I used this week's Sketchy Thursdays sketch to create this layout with pictures from last November:

I used October afternoon, mostly the Fly a Kite line. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how well these Sassafras blossoms went with that line. I did a little stitching too, and rather than buying more Thickers to make up for my lack of O, I used buttons.

Fun page.

LOAD and a pest

I'm participating in LOAD again. I'm at a point where I prefer spending money on experiences than stuff, so I enjoying paying a "club fee" to enjoy the company of fellow insane women trying to complete a layout a day.

I've discovered the best thing for me to do is this: plan the page the night before, begin cutting the next morning waiting an interminable amount of time for my boys to get dressed, and then finish it up and photograph it when I get home from work.

The biggest problem involves photographing my layouts. Today, for example, here's what I encountered in photograph 1:

Yep, that's my cat. She gets lonely when I'm gone all day, and she gets miffed if the first thing I do is scrapbook then photograph. Thank goodness she didn't jump on the layout.

This is problem photograph 2:

Hard to see, but look at the rub-on doily. That is a cat hair left by my cat. Nice.

Finally photograph 3:

This one didn't turn out so great because it is raining hard and the lighting is horrid.

Despite the photo antics of the weather and my cat, LOAD is providing a lot of fun in a somewhat gloomy May here in Minnesota. How gloomy? We're supposed to get snow tonight.

X%&#!

Week in the Life

When I read last week that both Ali E and Cathy Z were doing A Week in the Life, I decided to give it a try. Though I was not able to take hundreds of photos a day or even journal each day, I discovered a lot about myself and my life, some of which I can't wait to scrap:

1. Objects and things are not important to me. I was impressed by the really cool shots Cathy took of everyday items. I just couldn't do it. With the possible exception of anything from October Afternoon and my coffee cup, I am not that attached to things. I make do with what I have.
2. Concurrent to that point, I feel like I am defined by the people I am with and the things I do. Those were the vast majority of my photos.Take the shot at the top of this post: I was on my way to the school carnival with the family when I noticed Dominic and Derick walking side by side in opposing jerseys. I took a few pictures, already envisioning a page called "Divided loyalties."
3. I did not take pictures of the most arresting images from this past week. Why not? I was too busy experiencing them. Here's a few of them: the boys spontaneously hopscotching their way into school; a pile of calculators, iPhones, iPods, car keys, and other valuables students traded me for the textbook they forgot to bring; the tick that stopped my first hour class (I'm kind of glad I don't have a picture of that one actually); the smell of the cherry and crabapple trees that surrounded my home this week; Dominic going down the big waterslide at the community center today; both boys' faces when I called them Dowan and Rominic accidentally; my first stamp club meeting on Monday; singing in choir this Sunday to the congregation's applause. This list alone will turn into a scrapbook page.
4. I don't want to scrap a ton of these photos. I think I may pick a few from each day that grab me as I'm going through PSE editing them.
5. I may not journal them either. Maybe I'll just write about the day a little. I guess that is journaling. Never mind.

Here are some of the photos I took, among my favorites:

This is as close to a picture of the big story of the week as I can get. That would be an Icelandic volcano. Wow. (And you can see abit of where I scrap--I store my most used stuff in our living room,a nd I scrap on a lap desk in the easy chair.)

The past couple days were full of rain and antsy boys. They decided to develop a rock collection and went outside, putting rocks in boxes, and lugging the boxes back to the house, where they used the rocks to create interesting play areas for their Star Wars action figures. Brilliant.

I actually took a few photos of myself. This one I still have an eye infection (ergo the glasses), and we're actually in the downstairs bathroom during the statewide tornado drill on Thursday. Forgive his demented smile; Dominic thinks it's hysterical.

This one I took after I shot the photo of Derick and Dominic at the carnival. Even though I appear to have something in my teeth, and Rowan is giving me his standard cheesy grin, I love this photo.

This might be the best photo I took all week, of my bleeding hearts right after the rain.


This shot is poor quality, but magical in that it's such a close up of a rabbit--though I get a little Elmer Fudd on the X%&#! rabbits. I do garden, you know. (BTW, that "Community Pit" sign at the bottom is directly over the space where I store my scrap supplies, LOL!)


Maybe the funniest picture of the week, Derick playing Dominic's quarter sized violin.

It's easier to get a good shot of Dominic and Rowan than it is to get a good shot of my cat. Here she is, looking adorable and in her favorite spot: in the chair where I sit so she can drape herself over me. (This is the easy chair I scrap in.)

I have now run out of the pictures I printed last week, a bad thing since I start LOAD next week. If memory serves, I won't have time to edit when I do that, so I'll have to work hard this week to send in a photo order, most likely of the photos I took in December. So as odd as it may seem, I plan on spending the month of May scrapping the winter holidays. Go figure.

Vacation

One of the best things about LOAD was meeting a particular goal I had: finishing my vacation album from last year. I met that goal, excepting two pages which I haven't printed photos yet. Here's my last two pages, which I made Sunday and Monday.



Here's a link for the entire album thus far on twopeas, if you want to see how it looks together.

ETA: if you want to look smaller, stand next to a tree in Olympic National Park. Just sayin'.

Back and busy

I guess I'm a B student right now--busy busy busy! It's the last two weeks of the trimester for my students, so I'm up to my ears in grading. Since it's about 2/3 through the year, I get the pleasure of seeing their improvements catching hold. Yay them!

I'm done with LOAD--lots of fun and I met my goal of finishing my vacation album up through the pictures I have printed. Now I can get back on the wagon and do some stuff I've been putting off:

• Working out. I DEFINITELY put that on the back burner last month, so I need to step it up (no pun intended) if I want to be ready for shorts in the summer.
• Editing photos. I have to finish vacation, finish November, and select photos to put in Rowan's School of Life album that I fully intend to start by next weekend.
• More grading. By this weekend, I want to have finished 40 arguments, 20 persuasive letters, 20 binders, and two quizzes. Then I'll be about 1/3 done, but I'll have made a substantial dent.
• Choir rehearsal. Our church is putting on Jesus Christ Superstar for Palm Sunday, so we have rehearsals twice a week. True confession: I grade papers while the soloists are singing during rehearsals, but a teacher's gotta do what a teacher's gotta do.
• My hybrid class. I'm taking a class at Big Picture Scrapbooking by May Flaum, and though I am not going fully to the dark side, I'm happy to learn more digi techniques to incorporate into my pages.
  

I have to admit, it's easier to go at this list with energy since spring is on the way. The snow is still deep, but I can tell it's receding. And more importantly for optimism, the sun is coming up and clearly visible when I get to work in the morning (I start at 7:10). Joy!

Here's a peek at my last LOAD layout. It used a sketch from Sketchy Thursdays, and I added a digi tag from the hybrid class to it. Happy spring!

Lent

Hey, Grace! Thanks for the comment--good to hear you got the box, and I'm glad you got CK working again.

Lent is here. Even though I'm Lutheran, I like the idea of giving something up and dedicating that sacrifice toward something else. Charity, for instance. Last year I gave up scrap shopping...which I am currently doing. But I have to admit, I gave up shopping in January, my birthday month. It took me the month to spend the three gift cards to Archiver's I got, and then my husband gets me another one for Valentine's day! So my sacrifice feels a bit insincere. I want to give up scrap shopping for Lent, but I just got a GC to Studio calico for a layout I had published in Scrapbook Trends magazine last month. Can I use the GC and not have it count? How about the birthday money I got from my grandmother?

Here's the layout published in Scrapbook Trends:


The universe obviously wants me to scrap shop, so I'll use the GC, give up shopping until Easter (which matters--I just reached my 60th layout today, so by the middle of March I should be done with 100 layouts), and give the birthday money to charity.*

And here's the latest LOs:


Another vacation layout. I am loving making this album. My son told his pesky brother last summer, "Let sleeping boys lie." I had totally forgotten that until I made this page!


I got the idea for this layout from Diana, The Lonely Scrapbooker. Every child needs a Just Because page.



These two were for this week's Ella sketch. Fun!

* Minus $20 I'll spend to get a lovely die cut. I'm so bad...