A summer of mini albums

I have scrapbooked some layouts this summer, but mostly I've worked on mini-albums. I have a few posts to share.

First are some mini albums I had started but not finished or continued.

The Halloween album I made this year, for example, I had made a mistake on the most recent photo. The ring holes did not match up, so I fixed it by printing a new photo and re-punching the holes. Here it is:

Next, I hadn't recorded the last three years of our family 5K's in the 5K album.

NOTE: I noticed doing this that I had the wrong dates on the album cover. I removed them and will fix it.

The trick about using SMASH! albums is working around the designs. Here's what I did:

I use a few graphic collections: KI, Echo Park, E.G.--to embellish these pages.

Next I added the last couple years of family photos to my Easter album. I should mention I JUST found an older photo I never included This one's not done.

Finally, I made an album with Write. Click. Scrapbook a few years ago about little things that make me happy. I left the last few pages empty, meaning to fill them up but never did. And so I finished it this summer.

I had run out of the brown foam stickers, so I used a similar-toned, similar styled Thicker.

And those are my completed and updated albums! Thank you for checking them out. I made a few more that I will edit and share later. Like I said, this has been the summer of mini-albums.

New gallery at Write Click Scrapbook!

The beginning of a new month means a new gallery at Write Click Scrapbook! The theme is Everydailies. Here's my two contributions:

I am slowly, slowly starting to run again, after almost a year of being sidelined due to plantar fasciitis. I wrote about that journey of making running part of my everyday again. Here's some details:

I love clustering accents. Here I used products from October Afternoon's Daily Flash line.

To make the photos stand out a bit, I stitched around them with bright kelly green thread. I also stitched a frame and a border in that color too.

I am not terribly fond of pink, but I had some in a kit, so I paired it with this bright green and other bright accents and love it.

Here's my second page:

My son's everyday involves anything technical. This was basic--he disassembled his watch and was replacing a battery, I think--but I wanted to record his obsession with circuitry and gadgets. I used remnants of a kit here, plus some added stickers. Here's some detail:

I like using my embossing buddy to remove the stickiness from stickers and adhere them with dimensional for more...well, dimension.

Thanks for checking out my page! Please head to Write Click Scrapbook today and get some inspiration from the gallery to scrap your everyday.

Adapting sketches: changing photo sizes

When I use sketches, I often look at them as general shapes. I think of photos I have that fit that shape, then I adapt to make it work.

In this case, I used this sketch by Allison Davis. The photos were horizontal, but I had three smaller square photos, so I used the sketch for this story. Here's what I did:

For the most part, aside from the photo sizes I kept the sketch the same. I sunk the photo block lower on the page. For some reason, I saw my page more as an L.

Here's the details:

I misted the background with yellow and aqua to match the colors of my page. For the products, I mostly used my August Studio Calico kit. I used my Cameo to cut the title. I generally like to cut in two colors, then layer them on top of one another.

With the Fancy Pants Chalkboard tape, I punched it like I normally do. I think it added a nice bit of depth to the color on the page. I then stitched over it for contrast.

Thank you for looking at my page! Please visit the other people who used the sketch and see their variations this week.

Write Click Scrapbook sneak!

With the days rapidly winding down to Christmas, I'm busy busy busy. One more day at work this week (ugly sweater day) and then time to finish shopping, see the Hobbit, go to church, then sled.

In a little over a week the new Write Click Scrapbook gallery goes live! Here's a sneak of what I made:

This was an unusual page for me to make. I'll talk about why when the gallery goes live. I will give you a hint about theme: the feather, which looks like a quill, was the perfect accent!

Enjoy the evening, and may it be warmer where you are than it is here--I went jogging in wind chill that made it feel like 6 degrees. I need a face mask for running.

The life and death of creative ideas

I have a notebook with pockets that I bought at Target where I keep track of my creative ideas. I like the pockets so I can keep memorabilia or master lists I might need; I can also keep photos in them to plan pages if I'm going somewhere (like taekwondo to watch the boys). I post some sticky notes on the inside cover and list page ideas when I get them, either spontaneously or when I'm browsing photos on PSE, deciding what to print. 

I did that with the following page:

I was poking around an iPhone app I use when jogging, MapMyRun, and discovered I could find out how far I'd run this past summer. When I added it all up, I was surprised to find I'd run 131.27 miles. (Somewhere on the trails by my house I'd left 12 pounds behind.) I needed to make a page about this accomplishment, so I printed an iPhone photo from a 5K my family ran in August (I didn't want to take a photo special) and made the following.

I had these big numbers in a Studio Calico kit and decided to use them for this page, along with the map and number paper. (Note: I rounded down because the big numbers only came with one digit. Guess I should have run another mile!) Here's some details:

 

I used this page on the Thinking Through Design lesson on adding dimension to pages. You can see how many accents I popped with Dimensional stickers. Even the photo!

Back to the creative journal: When I finish pages I've logged in my journal, I cross them off the list. But some ideas stay on that list for a long time. A loooong time...

What happens with those ideas? Sometimes I just let them go. I had been excited to do them once, but not anymore. I might even have printed photos for them, but I think it's OK to let creative ideas die. They die a good death. It's OK.

Other times I leave them on there and the page eventually gets made. Here's one of them:

 

 

 

I went to CHA Winter and Summer in 2011 representing Ella Publishing and had printed photos, intending to make a page about each event. I never did, though I made minis of both. That will usually make me abandon the idea, but this one kept nagging at me. I wanted to make the page! So I pulled out some Jillibean Soup papers I'd pulled when I intended to apply for the design team( I never did--regrets! Ah well, next year) and got to work.

Here's some details:

Please know I corrected that errant gem!

The Studio Calico word bubbles I backed in pink paper.

I liked using the photo for part of the title and the calendar for the journaling. By the way, those were mistable Thickers. I bent them prying them off my cardboard box I mist in. Next time I'll put them on wax paper in the box. Hopefully they'll bend less.

So here's my question to you: how do you keep track of ideas? How do you plan? And how about letting creative ideas die--do you? Or do they get life support? :-)

Hobbit riddles, scrapbooking, and My Precious

My husband has been reading The Hobbit to my boys. They love it, and Derick does terrific voices as he reads.

When we were in Maine last summer, my son Rowan said something that reminded me of a riddle from the book--you know, then scene where he encounters Gollum underground and they have a riddle battle over whether Gollum gets to eat Bilbo or escort him out of the cave. I laughed at what Rowan had said and asked him the winning riddle in response:

"What is in my pocket?"

The answer, in case you haven't read the book, is the Ring, AKA Gollum's Precious, which he doesn't know he lost and Bilbo found. The scene is quite dramatic.

Rowan, however, hadn't gotten to that part of the story, so when I posed my riddle, he said triumphantly, "Your iPhone!" We laughed and shared the reason why with him.

Ever since, when he sees me messing with my phone, he hisses at me, a la Gollum, "My Precious!" What a card.

I had to memorialize the story, so I made this page:

I used Studio Calico's September kit. I like how basic the product and design are, which highlights the story.

I used a lot of circles, since the story deals with them--the Ring. The striped green circle was a leftover piece from my Write Click Scrapbook page for next month's gallery. It was so pretty, I didn't want to throw it away. I'm glad I got a use out of it on this page.

Sometimes the perfect embellishments are the most literal. When I saw the kit had a pocket in it, I knew I had to use it on this page.

On a side note, I love this picture of me, weird though it is. You can see how I regained my waist after I lost 12 pounds running this summer. I made a page commemorating the running. I'll share the page after it goes up next week on Thinking Through Design.