Big Picture Classes coupon code--and a giveaway!

If you know me, you also know that I am a huge fan of Big Picture Classes. One of the most pivotal moments for me as a designer was taking the class Design Your Life, which sped up my process by making design decisions more automatic for me. And taking last year's class Twelve made me think about the stories I record more purposefully, helping me to become a fuller storyteller, if that makes sense. And right now I am having fun getting started in i.Scrap, recording my story in ways I haven't thought of before.

Those are only a few of the classes I've taken. I've enjoyed many more, so I am pleased to be able to offer a coupon code for the following class, Grammar-Free Journaling with Angie Lucas! Here's some details:

Grammar-Free Journaling with instructor Angie Lucas

Learn a dozen creative and useful strategies for telling awesome stories in completely new ways—no paragraphs required! Be free. Be Grammar Free.

Starts 8/15/2013 $35.00

Class Description

●      Who's teaching this class? Hi, I'm Angie Lucas, word nerd extraordinaire, and I'll be your Grammar-Free Journaling instructor.

●      Is "grammar-free journaling" a thing, or did Angie Lucas make it up? Okay, okay, I made it up. The idea is to tell truly compelling stories in creative new formats using the fewest words possible—and to stress less about paragraph flow, sentence structure, transitions, and the rules of writing.

●      What does Angie Lucas have against grammar? Absolutely nothing! I'm willing to bet that I love grammar even more than you do. But just in case you don't like it, I'll show you 12 useful strategies for skipping the grammar altogether.

●      Who is this "Angie Lucas" anyway? I'm the new Editorial Director at Big Picture Classes, a professional writer and editor since 1998, the founder of Ella Publishing Co., the former managing editor at Simple Scrapbooksmagazine, and an average pianist (which is not at all relevant to this workshop).

read rest of description here

New to Big Picture Classes learn about us and set up a free account here

I have worked with Angie through Ella Publishing (now affiliated with Big Picture Classes) and enjoy listening to her every time she is on the Paperclipping Roundtable, so I know this will be an incredibly helpful and fun class that can transform your journaling and give you more options when you scrapbook.

First the coupon: for all my readers, you can use the coupon code WRITERIGHT to get $5 off the class Grammar-Free Journaling. You will need to use the code by August 21, 2013 to get $5 off this class.

And now the giveaway! Leave a comment on my blog, telling me what you think about journaling on your pages--what you tend to write, how you feel about journaling, how you tend to do it--and I will draw a winner Friday, August 9, 2013 at 8 P.M. CST. Check back after that to see if you are a winner, and grab the coupon code to sign up for the class anyway, which is sure to be both fun and helpful.

Winner!

Thank you for everyone who entered the giveaway. Random number generator selected 7, which is listgirl! Listgirl, contact me at jennyrahnlarson at yahoo dot com and I will get you the ebook info! Then you can start scrapping your cat Noodle. :-)

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? :-)

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!

Winner!

How's this for random? I plugged the number into Random.org, and it selected number 1!

Marg said...

Thanks for the awesome tutorial! I have yet to play with my Lost and Found papers but now, you've got me thinking! I tend to use very basic patterns and like stamping on my cards. Thanks for sharing your time and talent at Ella!

December 5, 2011 7:14 AM

Marg, please email me at jennyrahnlarson at yahoo dot com and I will send you the coupon code!

Ella Friends blog hop: Cards!

Welcome to the Ella Friends blog hop! This has been a wonderful year working with such a talented and friendly bunch of women. I'm honored to have been on this team.

As a final farewell, we are hosting a blog hop focusing on cards. Our ideas come from this wonderful ebook:

31 Thank You Cards, by Kimber McGray, Heather Nichols, and Kristina Werner. The book is filled with design inspirations for creating various beautiful cards. At the end of this post I have information on a giveaway that can include an ebook, so be sure to read to the end!

I took inspiration from the challenge to let a beautiful piece of paper shine. Here's what I did, on a Congratulations card:

I cut out the intricate design from a piece of Lost and Found paper from My Mind's Eye. (I never use those intricate part for layouts, so it was great to put it to good use on a card!)

I also took inspiration from another challenge: to use multiple colors of mist with a template. This time, though, I used it on a layout! The book is not just great for inspiring card ideas. I used a piece of die cut paper from a Studio Calico kit as the template, and these three mists:


Mister Huey Shine, Maya Road Buttermilk Cream, and Mister Huey Lemonade. I laid down the Buttermilk cream heavily because it's the lightest, followed by a smidge of Lemonade, then a dousing of Shine.

I turned the template sideways for an interesting angle:


Then covered the edges with paper to color only the inside of the template:


Here's the design (upside down):

When I looked at the LO the next day, I thought the top looked too empty, so I decided to add another misting with the same template.

Since I had already adhered the rest of the LO, I covered them up with wax paper to prevent mist seepage.


And here's the finished LO, complete with additional details:

Design inspired by cards! I may go back and stitch lines under the journaling. Still deciding.

Thank you for visiting my blog! All of you can use the code CARDHOP one time for a $2 discount off of the ebook 31 Thank You Cards; code expires 12/10/11.

Now for the giveaway: Please leave a comment telling me what you like to do with cards--design wise, product wise, you tell me! Your comment puts you in the running to win a Gift Card to Ella Publishing, which you can use to buy this wonderful ebook. I will keep comments open until Wednesday, December 7 at 8 P.M. CST.

Thank you for visiting my blog! I hope you can stop by again. Now please visit the wonderful creations at the blogs of the other Ella Friends participating in this hop:

Brenda

Monika

Donna

Francine

Jenni

Valerie

Keshet

Mary Jo

Diana

Have a great Monday!

Ella digi winners!

My three men (Derick, Rowan, and Dominic) each picked a number for winners of the Ella List It! ebooks. Here are the winners:

Steffanie said...

It's my constant resource for all things scrappy. I use it to search for ideas, techniques, design. I also have done some hybrid and digi scrapbooking---but only a bit! I do journaling and sentiments. A little bit of this and that, I guess!

Jen said...

I consider myself a hybrid scrapper. I use my computer to manage and edit photos, obviously. I use it for some of my journaling or to print digital elements for my traditional pages. Sometimes I make a photo collage. And I have even done several completely digital pages (using templates). But I like to touch and move things around, so I don't see myself going completely digital. Thanks for the chance to win!

joel & ginny said...

I use my computer when making digi pages and sometimes for journaling on a paper LO. Of course I use it in sorting, purging, and uploading my photos. I also use it to scan heritage photos, but that is an ongoing process for me.

Thank you, ladies, for leaving comments! Please email me at jennyrahnlarson at yahoo dot com for your coupon codes!

Think small

The article I wrote after CHA for the Ella ezine just went live this week! You can get to it by following this link. I also want to direct you to a friend who contributed, Alexandra. Her blog is always so inspiring to me. I have probably bought more products after seeing her use them than any other blogger.

I used Studio Calico kits or products for all of the layouts. The following was from the December kit Metropolitan:

Rowan is standing on a snowbank which makes him taller than my FIL, who is about 6'5"!

This next one used Who's Who (January):


These two used February's Candy Shoppe (though the first also used Countryside):


This is what my garden looks like now, BTW.

I can always count on these two for a goofy face.

And this last one used Studio Calico's newest lines Countryside and State Fair. Thanks to April, Greg and SC for sharing these gorgeous lines!

I love these butterflies...

Tomorrow I am planning a RAK, so stop by again for a chance to win some of what you see above!

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!

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.

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.