Scrapping older photos

I'm on a roll scrapbooking my most influential moments and using my older photos to do so. I've wanted to scrapbook my time in the Azores for a while, so I chose photos that show the house, the landscape, and the activities. I normally do just a quick color correct with PSE 10 on older photos, but in this case I didn't; it seemed to affect the color of the water and made it all less rich in tone, so instead I just used the healing tool to smooth over the imperfections. (My mom wrote on the back of  most of the photos with a Bic ballpoint, which tended to smear onto the photos. Thank goodness for the healing tool!)

I used Scrapbook Generation and Allison Davis' sketch this week to put as many Azores photos on it as I could. Here's what I did:

After I had used Fancy Pants Designs' Collecting Moments on my older photos last week, I decided to use it again; I love how the vintage colors look with my older photos.

As far as the sketch goes, I kept my layout almost identical to the sketch. The only main difference involved the size of my photos: since older photos tend not to be printed in 4x6 size, I shrunk the size of the photos along the top and right. Here's some details:

Because this is one of my 100 moments pages, I kept some of the same design and product choices--kraft background paper, a block of patterned paper and photos, running stitches going around the block--to keep the look cohesive with the other pages in the album.

I love stickers on my layouts, so to keep them down more, especially for the small ones like this, I love to stitch through them.

Thank you for looking at my page! The sketch was a terrific idea starter to jump off of and begin this photo-heavy layout. I hope you find it as inspirational as I did.

Stop by later this week; I'll be hosting a giveaway!

Favorite pages from 2012

When you read this, I should be in the air, heading to California for CHA! I will blog every day this weekend, sharing some of my favorite products and projects that I see. Until then, hee's a list I had so much fun making: my favorite pages from 2012. Since it was the year of 12, I picked my 12 favorites. (Note: I ignored the ones that are going to be published this year.) Here they are:

 

I did this page as a guest blogger at Simple Scrapper. My post was about scrapping the stressful moments of life. This looks complicated, but I'm pretty sure those are two 4x6 photos with 6 pics embedded in them.

One of my first pages for Elle's Studio. I had a love affair with big photos and bright colors this year. Plus embossing.

What can I say, I turned 40 this year. This page commemorates the event. I lay some metal numbers down, misted, then stitched for the number.

This is an "inspired by what Dominic said" page. I just got it back from publication, and I have to say, it was a fun page to make. A fun way to record your life. Have your scrapped your cool stuff and pretty stuff?

 

Another Dominic page, this time his mild obsession with water towers. This page shows my love affair with circles this year too.

 

Again: my love affair with circles. And my husband. I love this picture of us.

 

I love two page layouts. The challenge of putting them together is great. Here I scrapped my son Rowan's  black belt ceremony. Kudos to him!

This page was a serendipitous "Those products randomly sitting on my table look good together, so I'll use them on this page" moment.

 

I finally gave up looking for some iconic childhood photos and scrapped the page anyway. Thank goodness for photo frame stamps and journaling.

 

Another big photo, but I was also inspired by product-the photo frame let me zero in on my son in the big photo, and it made the page more interesting.

 

A page about my grandpa and my memories of him, especially this phrase he said. I like how everything worked together on this page.

 

Another page where the perfect product--in this case, KI Flashback--led to the page idea. I had so much fun making the page!

This one was for The Scrap Review reviewing Bazzill Beach House. Again, big photo (I guess I'm in a rut, but it's a rut I like!). This was picked for the cover of ScrapStreet Magazine.

I think I posted more than 12--oops! Ah well. It was a fun year for scrapping. Now off to CHA to see what I'll be using to scrap with this year.

"And Away We Go!"

Sorry for the lapse in posting. I have had a fun month, attending my sons' butterfly fair at their STEM school, going away for a scrap weekend with friends to Pine City, and then finishing up some of the pages I started there. I'm also up to my ears in grading--two weeks left in the term!--and my foot is slowly healing. The bottom of my foot has healed well enough to start jogging, which is good, because Thursday I'm doing this.

This week I'll be blogging at Write Click Scrapbook about one of my favorite techniques: hand stitching on pages. I hope you get a chance to visit, read, and share!

Here's a page I made right before I went on my scrap retreat, using a kit from Studio Calico (can't remember which--either September or October. I think September--I killed that kit on the scrap retreat):

I love this photo. My mother borrowed it from my cousin, and I scanned it and printed it to use on a page about the phrase I now say when we leave on road trips, which came from my Grandpa John.  You can read the journaling here:

I got the idea for this design from this layout; I wasn't too fond of the paper, which I got in a kit, but I liked how it fit as the background of this nostalgic page.

Here's some details:

 

I love clusters. And mixed fonts.

Here's a close up of the photo turn, which is really a geotag stamp I embossed and added with a brad. Love that stamp.

Please check out Write Click Scrapbook this week--I'll share some of the cross-stitched projects from around my house so you can see a little of my first creative hobby!

How about you--do you have other creative ventures, or do you focus on scrapbooking and card making?

Family tree

A few years ago my family went to Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. It was a park with a long family tradition; many years ago, a couple years after I was born, the family gathered for a family photo:

The email invitation for the party included this photo on it, and at the new reunion, we recreated the photo. (Just in case you're wondering, my mother is in the middle row on the left, and I am the one on her lap.)

Since then, I've wanted to make a page with both photos side by side. Recently, I was able to scan the original, so I printed it and put it together with the more recent photo. Here's the page:

I used Studio Calico's September kit with it. I'm nearing the end of the kit, so I didn't have many embellishments; however, one of the kits I got came with a leaf stamp. I thought it could double as a tree, so I stamped the green part for the leaves, then the veins in dark brown as a trunk, then used a Zig embossing Pen on the edges, scattered some Zing embossing powder in Leaf, then embossed. Here's how it looks:

I don't do many family tree layouts, but this one, I wrote about the family history in Minnehaha Park and how almost forty years later the family tree has grown, which you can clearly see in the same place in the park. Amazing.

Heritage photos, digital scrapping, and a giveaway!

My scrapbooking friend Alexandra asked me to do a post about scrapping heritage photos on a challenge blog she writes on called Scrap Rendez-vous. The page posted today, so I encourage you to go over and read it! Here's a page from the post using heritage photos:

(published in Create: Quick and Easy 2011)

The photos might not seem heritage, but they are almost 30 years old. They were also starting to fade, a problem I've see with photos I have from the 70s and 80s. I scanned these photos, did some color and lighting corrections, then added textures to mask inconsistencies between the photos. For kicks, I added them to a collage, added brushes, then stitched to connect the digi to the paper.

This past week I posted this LO on Ella Publishing--yes, it's full digi:

I'm not a digi scrapper, but I do like some of the effects that I can do with digi, so I make* the occasional project with digi; most of what I plan are photo books. I just prefer my own design to what online photo companies make.

So since today's post is about using the computer for scrapbooking, I'd like to share a giveaway connected to digital or hybrid scrapbooking thanks to Ella Publishing! I have THREE coupon codes to giveaway for the journaling product I used above on the digi page, from the List It! collection of Ella Fun. These products can be used on digital projects like I did or downloaded to use on hybrid pages. Here's a description of the collections (click on the collection titles to see the products in the shop):

List It! journaling guides make it easier than ever to capture important details about your everyday life RIGHT NOW.

List It! Childhood
Some of the 91 prompts in List It! Childhood Edition are obvious and universal, others are quirky and unique. But they'll all help you unlock important memories from your childhood—from school memories and family experiences to your childhood fashion and music tastes.

List It! Holiday
Many of the 94 prompts in List It! Holiday Edition are obvious and universal, others are quirky and unique. But they're all inspired by major events on the calendar, from winter to spring to Valentine’s Day to Christmas.

List It! Everyday Life
Of the 90 prompts in List It! Everyday Life Edition some are standard and universal, others are quirky and unique. But they'll all help you paint a complete picture of what your life is like—your schedule and routine, your goals and pursuits, the people you love, your home and surroundings, your possessions, and more.

If you want to be one of THREE winners, please leave a comment telling me how you use your computer when scrapbooking. I will draw three winners Friday, September 9 at 8 P.M. CST.

*When I say that I make digi pages, I'm exaggerating a little. I've made one other page and a photo book that used basically the same design and the same papers throughout. I have plans for more, so maybe I'm not fibbing.

My kind of hybrid

I love paper. I have a bunch of digi supplies, but I love paper so much I can't go full blown digi.

Still, I love playing around with digi and incorporating it into my pages, mostly through the photos. I often print my photos in smaller sizes or templates using PSE 7. I also like using brushes on the photos, actions, and textures.

Here I used templates, textures, and brushes on a LO that is a technique I've done lately and loved. It is currently published in Scrapbook Trends Quick and Easy idea book:


The photos are from 1986--yes, that's 14-year-old me. The photos were fading, so I scanned them and played around with lighting and color to restore them. I couldn't get it just right, so I added textures to them to make it look like they're messed up because...well, because I messed with them! The brushes on the edges were there just for pretty.

Still, it's a pretty blocky design. To break it up a little, and just because I love to stitch, I drew light pencil lines onto the paper LO to "complete" the flourishes. I also connected them to the journaling card.

I love that technique so much I decided to add it to the following, more recent LO using Studio Calico's Into the Woods kit:




The photos were chosen from the heritage photos my mom brought me last month. I found many with only a partial, toothless smile, which reminded me of why I smiled like that: I had horrible teeth. I didn't want anyone to look at them. I decided to scrap that not-so-great memory, with a wish that my boys never feel that way, especially if they inherit my teeth.

A reminder if you are interested in scrapping heritage photos: for many more creative ideas for scrapping heritage photos, check out How to Scrapbook your Personal Heritage from Ella:

Right now it's my go-to when I'm checking out my heritage photos to scrap.

Layering embellishments

One of my favorite techniques is layering embellishments. I like to find different embellishments and group them together for an interesting look on the page; the more you look at the page, the more you can see. I did that with the following page, inspired by several shots of me as Wonder Woman when I was a kid. Priceless.

I tend to embellish last, and I think it through after I've created the basic page. Here's my process for embellishing:

1. I survey the page for embellishment spots.

This was the page after I built its foundation. It's a solid start: I misted in red and yellow on top of the paper, which has a happiness meter on it. I worked within the design of the paper for this page.

When it comes to embellishment location, I tend to be a slave to the visual triangle. Most of the time, that means locating embellishments next to the title, the focal point photo, and the journaling. In this case, I pulled a couple Studio Calico notions out and put them on the page, just to see how they looked. I liked it, but I had only two, so if I wanted a triangle, I'd have to do something else.

(That's the lap desk and ottoman I work on, BTW.)

2. I pulled out embellishments I thought would coordinate.

I went through my stash and selected some products that would match the color tone of the papers and the photos, as well as ones that would fit the look of the page. It wasn't terribly frilly, so I avoided anything particularly delicate. I went with things that were primary colored and sort of...superheroish, if that can be a word.

I put these next to the layout to see which fit the color scheme best and worked best with each other.

3. I layered according to my three guidelines: something flat, something dimensional, and something textured.

I wrote about this last week, but when I embellish, I think about layering in threes:

• Something flat--stickers, paper, rub-ons, stamps
  
• Something dimensional--dimensional stickers, flowers, gems, brads
• Something textured--stitching, especially, but also paint

In this case, I used some Studio Calico label stickers for flat, some brads, the notions, wood veneer buttons from SC, and a photo turn for dimensional, and a little linen thread in the buttons for texture. Here's what I came up with at that point:

It looks nice, but without much in that third layer, I thought it lacked movement, so I added some stitched flourishes. Here's the final layout:





One final thing: I didn't make each embellished spot the same. They're different sizes, the biggest by the title, which I thought was the most important, then the next by the journaling, then the smallest by the supporting photos. I wanted the eye to travel in that order though the layout.

ETA: I should mention, I had several ideas for adding more embellishments, specifically brads to the scallop sticker on the left and machine stitching on the patterned paper. I decided not to, since the page looked good as is. I applied this principle by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

(I'm not suggesting I'm perfect, BTW--but the quickest way for me to destroy a page is to put too much stuff on it. I'm living my One Little Word: Reduce!)

So there it is, my childhood dream of being Wonder Woman.

Time warp, the photo edition

My mother is out in Minnesota visiting us for Dominic's birthday. She came with two small boxes of photos from my childhood, something I never had myself. So I have spent the week leafing through stacks of gems like this:

My husband refers to this as the money shot. Remember underoos? I didn't until I saw this. I had also forgotten I wanted to be Wonder Woman. But who didn't? (BTW, I couldn't get the red eye corrector on PSE 7 to work on this photo. If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know!)

Here's another beaut:
Check out the glasses and the socks. I remember this trip, not the details but the fact that my mom made sure to take us when we lived in Jacksonville. Thanks, Mom.

I'm sad to see that I have a camera here, but I don't have any pictures. I bet I threw them away because they weren't good. I'm kind of like that, or I was at that age. So right now, when I give disposable cameras to my boys, I print the photos and put them in little photo albums for them.

Here's another lovely one:

One's bikini is not complete if one is not wearing a cowboy hat too!

Another money shot. I wanted to be a ballerina too, even though I'm kind of clumsy.

I plan on scanning all the photos. I've set up a folder on my computer for the edited scans. All of the above shots I tweaked in PSE 7, just doing an autocorrect and color correction; that was needed because many photos were rescued from those evil auto-adhesive albums that killed photos in the 70s.

So what am I doing with this? I have taken inspiration from Ella's latest ebook:

How to Scrapbook Your Personal Heritage by Aby Garvey and Wendy Smedley gives LOTS of hints for using photos like these winners to capture stories from farther back in the past, which
is helpful when the stories from way back when might be vague, but our current feelings are just as relevant, and just as much of a story to boot.

For me, I put together two photo collages to scrap. Here's the stories I'll record:

1. All my Wonder Woman shots. I found three. That definitely warrants a page.
2. All the photos of me in upper elementary where I wasn't smiling with an open mouth. This is a little bit sad. I had horrible teeth and was really self-conscious about smiling with an open mouth. I don't want my boys to feel that way, so I'll scrap something about that.

When I finish these pages, I'll post what I do with them, along with some inspiration and a little giveaway! Look for that next week.

This weekend, look for a blog hop with the Sketch Support gals. Buckets of prizes await...