August scrapbook pages for Simple Scrapper

Hello! I have some pages to share using August inspiration from Simple Scrapper.

This first  page uses a new story starter and an older sketch, telling the story of my childhood love of fishing with Grandpa and how my boys are following suit. (The title rhymes with "history.") It also uses some old products--the My Mind's Eye kraft patterned paper, an old Jillibean tag, and some Studio Calico Atlantic and chipboard photo turns. Here's some details:

Next is another new story starter and old sketch. That's me in 3rd or 4th grade in the Azores, stomping grapes on a school field trip. I used a lot of Project Life cards on this page instead of cutting up patterned paper.

Finally, using a new sketch and old story starter, is a page that pairs some photos of my husband as a child with current photos of him and our boys. I mostly used October Afternoon on this, mostly vintage Road Trip products. I loved that line. I also used some vintage Simple Stories.

 Instead of cutting up paper for the circles, which were in the sketch, I stitched.

Thank you for checking out my pages! Please visit Simple Scrapper for more inspiration and consider a membership, where you'll get even more inspiration.

Winter CHA 2013: Inspiring pages and products

Here it is, the morning of the second day of CHA. I thought I'd post some wonderful projects I saw yesterday; I'm also pinning them on a Pinterest board CHA Winter 2013 (on Pinterest my name is Buffyfanlarson; that's also my Twitter handle if you'd like to follow my progress around the room today and a bit tomorrow). Here's some of what I saw and loved yesterday:

I started at Echo Park, and this is the wall that epitomizes the style of many eye-catching booths: white walls, clusters of pages, fewer decorations. There are some amazingly decorated booths, but the ones I am gravitating toward are the clean and simple ones. Typical of me.

 

I loved the products and projects at Webster's Pages. I don't use them typically because they are more ornate than I scrap, but the projects in the booth did a good job showing how to use them for a clean page. The one above made good use of the Silhouette to use doses of the paper.

This next one has lots of stuff, including trim, but look how clean it is! It uses a spring/baby collection called New Beginnings--look at that adorable animal paper on the bottom!

 

And there are two things to note below: the page did a terrific starburst with patterned paper, but some are covered with overlays for extra texture and interest. Nice! Finally, those little coin purses are made with overlays. AMAZING.

I loved the new stuff with the new Fancy Pants brag books. They are bound differently to make it easier to remove covers and pages, a problem I noticed with my current Smash book; the fact that Fancy Pants addressed this concern is nice. and look at the creative way this Brag Book makes use of the template as a peek-a-boo into the next photo. For people without a Silhouette, or just anyone who likes to keep scrapping easy, these templates are cute and versatile.

 

Here's also an inspiring circle page from Fancy Pants:

 

Simple Stories Urban Traveler pages. The collection is AMAZING and the pages are inspiring. This booth was also where I ran into past Ella friend, current friend, Donna Januzzi! Though it was fun to travel the show earlier, it was more fun with friends.

 

 This is the Silhouette booth, another clean wall. I love these projects, especially the one on the lower right. Wouldn't that be a good gift for a new parent?

  

And this framed page speaks to everyone who has a little monster in her life. Heh.

 

Lily Bee's booth was amazing. This gorgeous page with the banners as a photo mat was inspiring. I also love how it uses  patterned paper as a background, not just white paper. Inspiring!

  

This one's hard to see--it was on the back of a ladder, and the twine is not part of the page. Still, patterned paper background and a cluster of papers at the top makes for a very pretty page.

 

Here's another look at a clean wall, this time Basic Grey.

 

They had two collections I loved, Hipster and Bowties. Perfect for moms of boys. If you look closely at the above page, you'll see something new to me: felt rubons. It made for an incredible title.

Bowties also connects with a feminine collection, Knee Highs. Bowties is boyish, Knee Highs is girlish, but you can use them both together if you have photos with both genders. Nice.

Look at the amazing stitching on this Knee Highs page:

 

After being on the Elle's Studio design team for the past six months, I was so happy to see Elle Price and her booth!  News: she has three paper collections coming out with her new tags, and Donna and I decided we especially need to get Day to Day, a bright, fun collection. Here's some pages:

  

  

  

We R Memory Keepers had many amazing products I'll write about later, but this page made me swoon. Again, a busy paper used to make a clean page:

 

I tweeted about this yesterday:

Bella Blvd FTW.

There is some amazing stitching on this Bella Blvd page, and the banner card underneath is terrific.

I'm not a feather person, but this page used feathers well:

My Mind's Eye had their typically beautiful products. I loved this grid layouts:

 

And this next page from Crate Paper used an already out collection, Fourteen, but the fussy cutting was incredible. I'll go back to Crate today to take some photos of Maggie Holmes' new collection.

 

Right around the Becky Higgins booth We ran into listgirl, Christine Newman! We have plans for some of the Becky Higgins collections. they were inspiring.

Studio Calico had their usual lovely layouts demonstrating their products. Here were some of the most inspiring:

  

Living under the rock I have apprently been, I did not know that Studio Calico was releasing patterned brads! They are used terrifically here. Check out the colorful stitching.

  

Speech bubbles are huge at the show, as are mustaches and arrows. Here a misting template with speech bubbles was used to create patterned paper by outlining.

  

Sometimes die cut tags can be used for alternative uses, like as a photo frame...

  

---or as a date in a pocket. Check out the awesome photo frames here too.

 

Finally, lots to love on this page, but in particular I loved the vellum photo pocket with the subdued title and the stitching over them both.

I'll be back at the show tweeting, posting on Pinterest, and otherwise sharing the inspiration I see!

Some non-holiday pages

Christmas is almost upon us, so before I shared some final holiday pages, I thought I'd share some recent, non-Christmas pages, sort of as an antidote for red and green. Here's the first:

This was for this month's Write Click Scrapbook gallery. I had to scrap some favorite photos, and I LOVED these two, mainly because I can see how much they are growing up in them. My boys have been going to the Lego Club for several years now, and I love how proud of their creations they are.

Design wise, I used Simple Stories' Sn@p! Collection. The bright colors matched the Lego pictures well. I also designed in a triangle: can you see how, if you split the page across the diagonal, the design fits into the left triangle? This is an easy way to set up a page. I do it quite often.

Here's a close up:

They get Lego Club stickers every time they go. They don't do anything with them, so I hold onto them, and this is the first time I used one. I de-acidified it, put it on cardstock, then raised it on pop dots.

This next one is with a bad photo. Now, I do not have a DSLR. I have a point and shoot and my phone, which is OK by me. Still, I get some special photos sometimes that are cruddy, but I scrap them anyway. Here it is:

I shouldn't have blown up the picture--the photo got a little muddy because I took it from a distance with my phone. Still, I had a story to tell, so I used it. I paired it with Studio Calico's November kit Sock Hop.

I added quite a bit of stuff to it, another thing I tend to do. I have Stash, so I use it, mainly by clustering in a visual triangle. I love embellishing! Here's the left side of the triangle:

 

I put it next to the focal photo and the start of the journaling. Next:

 

  

This one is at the end of the journaling. Finally:

 

This cluster is to the left and right of the title. When I cluster embellishments, that's where they go: title, journaling, focal photo. Easy peasy!

Thank you for reading my pages. How about you? Do you have things you tend to do design wise on each page? And how do you deal with bad photos? Do you scrap them anyway?

December WCS gallery sneak!

December is almost upon us, and so is the next Write Click Scrapbook gallery! The prompt for next month made me very excited; it's one I do every year around this time. And I had so much fun making the page--I just smiled so big when I made the page! Here's a sneak:

The sticker comes from the boys' Lego Club meeting last month; I've collected them from every meeting and never done anything with them. That changed this month! L\I also had lots of fun playing with the Oh, Sn@p! Collection from Simple Stories, which was so bright and fun to use, perfect as the days are getting shorter and darker. But not colder: it could be 70 degrees this Wednesday. Mind. Blown.

Thanks for checking out my sneak! Visit Write Click Scrapbook to check out the sneaks of other member too, and see some more of the stitching posts (so to speak) that I'm writing this week!

Scrapbooking on the photos

I love white space, particularly on my photos. When I use photos on my page with some empty space, I tend to overlap that space with title/journaling/embellishments, not to fill the page, but to ground the photo. Here's an example:

I did this page for Thinking Through Design, using Studio Calico's City of Lights kit. I love the photo; it just seems so poignant. When we had the whole beach to ourselves, the whole summer in front of us, my son, knelt at the edge of the water and started building in the dirt. It was just so him.

I try to take photos that are asymmetrical--my pages tend towards asymmetry in general, but with asymmetrical photos, that leaves white space to play with. Here I added the title and journaling to the right, which drew attention to my son.

Another example of white space (and my love for asymmetry!):

This page I made for my parents using some leftover photos from last summer and my boys at Mears Park in St. Paul. I used Simple Stories' new collection Summer Fresh, which is a perfect collection for boys. I sprayed with Studio Calico mist (custard?) then lay the photos on top of the messiest part of the mist, which left just a nice splash of color beside it. Even though the photos didn't have a lot of white space, I did a lot of overlapping with stickers to ground the photos a bit. Finally, I added the title to the white and a little bit of stickers to the left to form a visual triangle, leaving the rest of the page open to draw more attention to the photos and title.

And for some news...

This last page was my submission to the Write Click Scrapbook's talent search, and I am proud to say that I was one of two people selected as a winner! I have loved this site from the beginning, and I can't wait to work with such talented people.

And more news:

Please go to Scrap Street Magazine and enjoy this online publication--and my layout Summer Bucket List 2012 is on the cover of July! Sweet. We've already done 4 of the things on the list, which is great, and I also have made a mini to keep track of what we accomplish off the list. I'll share that next week.
Enjoy the weekend, and may your weather be cooler and less humid than mine. :-) Get out and take some pictures, and leave some white space in them.