Scrapropos

How do you create? Does color play a big part in your creation process? It does mine.

The first thing I do when looking at a stack of photos is determine the color I want to bring out in the photos. I usually try to highlight the subjects in the photos by using background or accent papers that match or coordinate with the subject. Recently, I wanted to bring out the flush in a little girl’s cheeks, so i used paper that matched that color.

Sometimes, though, the best way to draw your eye toward the photo is to use a contrasting color for the background paper. Pumpkin patch photos, for instance, really pop on a royal blue background.

When in doubt, or if your photos are already very busy with color, you can never go wrong by matting the photos with black or white. I use black a LOT. It unifies the photos on the layout, especially if you’re doing a page with lots of different subjects and themes.

Yesterday, a client asked me if I prefer to work on black, white, or natural-colored pages. I didn’t hesitate to say, “It doesn’t matter.” Not long ago, I preferred to work on black. But these days, I’m finding that I wallpaper just about every page anyway. I don’t do as much single-photo matting as I once did, but I use a lot of color and pattern in my background papers. I love how my style evolves and changes and come full circle sometimes.

I recently scrapped photos of a little girl at a piano recital. The lighting was very soft - coming from candles and from a stained glass window. The overall mood of the photos was very serene and sweet. The little girl’s dress was made of white satin and black velvet, with a big red sash. There were poinsettias around and on the piano. I could have done a bold page with reds and blacks and greens, and it probably would’ve looked okay. But I wanted my colors to help tell the story, which was one of calm and peace. (I had the recital program - the music played wasn’t festive and seasonal, but rather worshipful, solemn, and sincere.) With that in mind, I used colors that evoked that feeling on the page - a light golden color that matched the glow of the candlelight (CM’s chamois) and a poppy-red color that blended the sash and the reds in the stained glass. It was my client’s favorite layout. I wish could share a photo of it, but ALAS! I was too eager to deliver the job yesterday and neglected to take one.

You can go very wrong with color. But if you focus on the photos and the story they tell, you’ll get it right. Every time.

Sometimes the littlest things make me happy. Here’s one example: my mini colander full of ColorBox cat eye stamp pads! Some are inks, and some are fluid chalks. Know how to tell the difference immediately? The inks are in black, and the chalks are in white.

I use both, depending on what color I want. The main difference is that the chalks go on looking more like, well, CHALK. The chalk is less wet, so it dries faster, and when you slide the pad across the edge of your paper, it gives a smudged look rather than a streaked look.

The most-often used liquid chalk technique on my layouts is the smudged mat technique. It’s so simple that it seems silly to give instructions on how to do it, but since most scrappers are visual learners, here goes.

After I matted these photos on the pink paper, it seemed blah. The color was perfect, but it didn’t speak to me at all. I decided what it needed was a bit of red - maybe even a double mat. But rather than double matting with paper, you can double mat with liquid chalk or ink! It’s faster and a lot cheaper.

There are two ways to mat the edge with ink: the way demonstrated here leaves a blurry-edged even line. Simply take your pad and run it down the edge of your paper.

To achieve a more smudged look, work from the outside of the paper and “push” the ink pad towards the photo. Be as messy as you want. I often go back and add smudges and streaks. I almost ALWAYS add extra smudges to the corners.

Consider using the same ink/liquid chalk to stamp your title, bringing visual balance to the layout.

And here’s the final layout. Fast to put together, colorful to look at, and plenty of room for journaling!

Beth had an empty page in her Disney album that’s been bugging her. She didn’t know how to fill it. After last week’s challenge, she started digging through her box of memorabilia and had an epiphany: she’d fill that page with the trip’s itinerary! After spending so much time mapping it out and planning the vacation, it’s only fitting that the results of all that planning make it into the vacation album. Plus, it helps trigger the memory about things there aren’t photos of. Great job, Beth! For your effort, you win a copy of Cherish. But since you already own that, I’ll have to think of something else. LOL! oh - and you’ll get a bonus prize for using the Stretttttccccch handwriting!

For my own page, I decided to scrap something I never have photos of, but that plays a big role in my life: my dates with Darren. Sometimes when you don’t have a photo of an event, memorabilia and your journaling can tell the story just as well.

I’ll be honest here. I don’t add a whole lot of memorabilia to my layouts, except for in my vacation albums. There, I scrap airline tickets, bus passes, menus, receipts….

But in every day life, I’m bad about saving memorabilia. Wait. Check that. I’m good about saving memorabilia, but I’m bad about including it in my albums. A couple of months ago, I cleaned out a drawer full of playbills, receipts, ticket stubs, cards, etc, and threw them away. They never made it into my albums. I wish I’d saved them now, though. I could make a Year In Review page with them, and include that in the album. See? Even a seasoned scrapbooker never learns!

I read recently that a new Mom included her actual pregnancy test stick in her album. Not a photo, but the actual STICK. Not sure that’s something I’d add, but more power to her! A friend of mine once scrapbooked a dime. Shiny and silver. Or at least it was after she cleaned it off, after having retrieved it from her son’s diaper, after having carefully inspected each and every poop, after having watched her son swallow said dime.

I can’t say I’ve ever scrapped any really off-the-wall memorabilia. Dani’s baby curls are in her baby book, but that’s not weird. People have saved locks of hair for ages.

What about you? What out-of-the-ordinary memorabilia have YOU scrapped?

You’ve got your photos. You’ve journaled the stories. Now what do you need? Here are 26 things that inspire me and help me get the job done!

A is Ali Edwards. I love her style, her passion, and her genuineness.
B is for Basic Grey paper and accessories. GORGEOUS STUFF!
C is for Cutterbee. I love both the non-stick scissors and the retractable blade.
D is for Die Cuts with a View. Paper stacks (the best way to use a 40% off coupon), vellum quote books, cool alterable mini scrapbooks-in-a-tin… but no die cuts!
E is for embellishments - chipboard, tags, monogram letters, fibers, metals….
F is for fluid chalk by Color Box. I use it on almost every layout these days!
G is for Gelly Roll gel pens. Love these!
H is for hole punches - various sizes
I is for iTunes. Most DEFINITELY an essential scrapbooking tool!
J is for Jolee’s. They’re sort of yesterday’s news, but I like ‘em anyway.
K is for Karen Foster license plates. I look for excuses to buy these.
L is for L’il Davis Designs. Cute chipboard, alphas, embellishments. Always a favorite booth at scrapbook expos because of their dollar bins!
M is for my Moleskine. I take it with me everywhere, and jot down quotes and inspirations as I come across them.
N is for never-outs: adhesives, page protectors, black and white paper
O is for online stores like this one. Clicking is cheaper than driving, and faster than calling, when you’re looking for a specific product. Order it!
P is for PAPER! Yum yum paper! CosmoCricket, Daisy D’s, KI Memories, SEI, Bazzill….
Q is for quotes. Every page deserves one, whether it’s by a famous person, some kid, or you!
R is for Rub-ons. I’m especially fond of Making Memories rub-on alphabets.
S is for sketches. I use both of Becky Higgins sketch books, and the Layout Blueprints book, daily.
T is for Tonic trimmer. I have the 12″ base, and am getting straight cuts for the first time ever!
U is for Ubiball Signo white pens. I discovered them through a friend 3 weeks ago, and they’re my new favorite white pen!
V is for VersaMark watermark stamp pad
W is for Wishblade… the amazing personal title/shape/anything cutting machine! I don’t have one. Yet.
X is for Xyron. I use the “X” every time I adhere die cut letters.
Y is for yards of printed twill, one of my impulse buy obsessions
Z is for Zig. I love the double ended tips, and the vast array of colors!

This is the most frequent excuse I hear from people who say they WANT to scrapbook, but don’t…. or from people who’ve started and quit in frustration. I want to debunk that myth. And yes, it IS a myth. You ARE creative. Everyone is creative in their own way. As scrapbook guru Donna Downey says, “You are perfect just the way you create.” It’s true! Let me prove it to you.

I’ll admit that some people are blessed from birth with the creativity gene. But I absolutely believe that you can become creative even if you don’t feel that you’ve been blessed with natural creativity.

Honestly, I think I’ve experienced both. I’ve been blessed with creativity in many ways, but in other ways, it’s been a learned thing. Decorating and arranging and composition have always come naturally to me. Since I can remember, I’ve been a shutterbug. At a relatively young age, my portraits were good enough that friends and family started asking me to take portraits for them. I’ve always had a knack for arranging furniture and decorating; I’ve spent hours upon hours helping friends bring warmth and personality into their homes. These things just came naturally to me.

But when it comes to the arts, I’ve never felt naturally blessed. I’ve tried to do serious art, but my people always ALWAYS look like cartoons. I’ve tried to do calligraphy, but I’m just not good at it. And scrapbooking…. Seriously. If you think about it, most of my scrapwork is just art based on other art, copied from other art, inspired by other art. I once bemoaned that fact to my husband.

“I’m not really creative. Everything I do is really just a knockoff of something I’ve seen,” I whined.

He reassured me that ALL art is like that. There’s really not a brand new idea out there anywhere! Artists and creative types take what’s around them and adapt it. To some, that comes naturally. To others, it has to be learned. But it CAN be learned.

I know this from teaching women to scrapbook. At first, they’re so timid. They need me to hold their hands. They can’t make decisions about paper, layout, which photos….

They ALWAYS say, “I’m not creative.” But really, they ARE. It just takes them a while to find it. And when they do (and they always do), they SOAR!

The worst thing ANY artist can do is compare herself to another. If I tried to compare myself to Ali Edwards or Becky Higgins or Cathy Zielske or any of the other famous scrapbook artists out there, I’d surely think I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. So I don’t. I’m creative in my way, you’re creative in yours. We’ve all been blessed with a style all our own. Sometimes we just have to FIND it.

How, you ask?

Start by copying. No, seriously. Plunk down 5 bucks for a scrapbook magazine, and copy some of the layouts. Don’t be timid. Just dive in. Participate in challenges on scrapbooking message boards. Make yourself try a new technique. Give yourself assignments. Dare to step out of your normal holding pattern and explore other paths. THAT’S how you learn to be creative. Practice. Practice. Practice.

You’ll be amazed that once you start just DIVING IN, creativity will start to come naturally to you. But first ya gotta start.

One of my favorite songs - “Brave” by Nichole Nordeman -says,
“I’ve never known a fire that didn’t begin with a flame
And every storm starts with just a drop of rain”

…and so it is, I believe, with art. Nothing creative was ever accomplished without starting SOMEwhere. So…

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, BEGIN IT!”
- Goethe

One of my earliest (and most favorite) layouts is a Thanksgiving page. It was a last minute idea, and I slapped together a quick border before trekking 8 hours north for a family holiday. There, I nagged all my families members until every one of them had written on the page. My aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, sister and daughter all wrote what they were thankful for. They were all resistant, but I insisted that they do it for me. I’m ever so glad! My Grandpa died several years later, and this is one of the only things I have written in his hand. I still feel warm and loved when I read his words, all these 9 years later: “I am especially thankful for all my family - just keep on keeping on - striving to do God’s will in all that you do. I love each and all of you. Grandpa Lewis”

I’m not fond of the page decoration. My style has changed a dozen times since then. It’s dated and boring and blah. But that matters NONE. The pages I’m doing today - the ones I love and am so proud of … someday I’m going to look back at those pages and think, “Yuck! I mixed brown and RED together? What was I thinking back in 2006? Why did I tear so much paper? What’s with all the smudged ink on the edges of everything?

Styles come and go. Fads change. Scrapbooking evolves.

But the written words remain precious. Doesn’t matter what the decoration looks like. WRITE YOUR WORDS. Write them in your own hand. And this thanksgiving, nag your family members to do the same. Do it for you. Nine years from now, I promise… you’ll thank me.

It’s that time again! I’ve been making my own Christmas Cards since 1997. Every year, I remind myself to get ‘em done early. And every year, Thanksgiving happens and I remember that I haven’t gotten ‘em done early! Most years, I at least have a plan in my head. I always have the photo. This year, I have neither. HELP!

Here are a couple of my favorites from years’ past:

From Sharon in Jenks, OK:
I LOVE your hand-lettering.
Have you ever just totally messed something up? If so, how did you fix it? Can you show us some of your worst examples?

————————————————————–

Yes, I HAVE totally messed things up! If it’s a really bad mess up, I’ll likely start over. If it’s something small, I’m more likely to cover it up and move on. If it can be salvaged without starting over, I’ll salvage it.

Here are some examples:
When trying to journal at a recent crop, I kept messing up because I was distracted by fun conversation. Twice, I had to cover my mistakes with pieces of paper. After that, I decided to save the rest of the journaling for when I got home. (Still need to finish that!) Under my Ott lite, you can see the small slips of paper that cover my mistakes. But under regular lighting, they’re hardly noticeable. Also… another trick to help disguise a coverup box is to draw a box around the word, close to the edge of the cover-up. I did that on the word ‘presents’ in this layout, and then to further disguise it, I drew boxes around other words on the page so it would look intentional.

Here’s another example of the same trick. The box with our names and “15″ in it is actually a cover-up box, covering up a mistake I made underneath.

But I’m not a perfectionist. For example, in the LibraryFest layout below, it drives me NUTS that my journaling on the left-hand side goes up, and that the title on the right-hand side goes down. ARGH!!

But I’m not going to redo it. It’s not that big of a deal, and besides, as my scrapbooking hero Ali Edwards says, “It is OKAY.”

Have you ever had a story you wanted to scrap about, but since you had no photos to go along with it, you just skipped it? You know… that time your friends surprised you on your birthday and took you to eat at Texas Roadhouse, then secretly told the server it was your birthday, who then made you sit up on this big saddle, IN A DRESS, whipping your napkin around like a lasso, while they sang a mind-numbingly bad rendition of Happy Birthday. My friend Sue and I witnessed that very thing happen to a lady last week, and no one took a photo. NO ONE! If I’d had my camera, I’d've said, “Lady, I just took photos of that most embarrassing but hilarious moment, in case you want to scrapbook it. Give me your email address.” Word to MY friends. If you ever EVER embarrass me like that, there had BETTER be photos!

But really, now. Surely you’ve had moments in your life that were scrapbook worthy, but you have no photos. Maybe there are traditions you have that you don’t even bother taking photos of anymore. Maybe you’ve saved a whole bunch of ticket stubs, or receipts, or gift cards, or newspaper clippings, or fabric swatches. SURELY you have stories to tell and only memorabilia to tell them with.

Here’s your challenge. This week, create a layout that features NO PHOTOS. Use only memorabilia and THE STORY. Type it out, write it out. Just tell it.

Email a photo of your completed page to me. NEW layout, people. No fair sending me a page you’ve done in the past. This is a challenge, see? I’ll post the layouts on this blog, along with whatever I come up with.

There’s a prize in it for you.

I read Heidi Swapp’s “Love your Handwriting” book last night. WOW! How cool that she emphasizes using your own handwriting just as I do. Someone commented that I must’ve read her book when I wrote about hand lettering last week, but in fact, I hadn’t. (The copy I have is recently borrowed from a friend.) It’s a VERY USEFUL tool, though, if you aren’t comfortable with your own handwriting. My sister, who has always hated her handwriting, looked through the book last night and thought it was cool. I think I know what she’s getting for Christmas! The book comes with the tools you need AND a workbook, complete with fun, creative excersizes to get your comfortable with and even LOVING your own handwriting. I highly recommend it for those of you who don’t like your handwriting, and even for those of you who do.

Last week, I issued a challenge (Why Do You Scrap?), and Veronica in Aus is the winner!
She created a page about friendship that is stunning. Her journaling was so heartfelt and personal that it made the friend who she wrote about cry! That’s what can happen when you scrapbook for YOU. You’re more true to yourself, to your memories and to your audience. Do it consistently. SCRAP FOR YOU!

Congratulations, Veronica!
You win a copy of either Cherish or Big Picture Scrapbooking - your choice!

I recently created a photo timeline for my church’s 10th anniversary. The timeline focuses mainly on the building we use, from its original use in the early 1900s as a boarding house, to its current home of the Fortress Youth Development Center.

I had a lot of fun sorting through the 100s of photos from years past and selecting ones that help tell the story of our building. It’s a local cultural and historic landmark, so this timeline is a neat thing to look at.

I chose a neutral colored background paper, because I knew that having so many photographs would make it busy enough. I used black to mat photos that I wanted to stand out. Overall, it’s a simple design that will stand the test of time. It’s not trendy, but it still looks current. I need to go buy more sheets of the background paper, because I already envision a fourth installment.

Working with 12″ paper made this job a cinch. I bought 6 sheets of paper for each 24×36 frame, and taped them together on the back to make one 24×36 sheet. Then I arranged the photos and journal boxes to cover most of the seams.

I kept embellishments to a minimum, mostly due to time constraints and budget. I might go back and add some eventually, but again, I might elect to leave it as it is. I think I’ll definitely go back and add more journaling and dates, though.

For this project, I sorted and chose the photographs on Thursday, picked them up from Costco on Friday, laid the photos out Friday night, and put the whole thing together Saturday. All told, including sorting, choosing, scanning and uploading the photos, I only spent about 16 hours on it.

It’s neat hanging on the wall…. 9 feet of history and photos. I love to see people standing there, pointing at photos and reminiscing about the stories behind them!

To see the photos in a larger format, follow these links:
Frame #1
Frame #2
Frame #3

I do a lot of hand lettering for titles. I have die cuts machines and rub ons and foam stamps and rubber stamps and paint and ink and and and… but sometimes, it’s just so nice to be able to whip out a hand-lettered title and move on. No paint to clean up, no stamps to wipe off, no die cut letters to adhere.

My number one piece of advice for those who are timid about hand lettering is this: Stop thinking so hard! Let your wrist relax, loosen up your grip on your pen, and write fast. Seriously, when you try to be slow and precise, it never looks as good. Just stop thinking about it and WRITE.

One of my favorite lettering styles is what I call Stretch. (Clever name, ain’t it? LOL!) Use your regular cursive (that’s important. YOUR regular cursive. Don’t try to imitate anyone else’s.), but instead of going immediately from letter to letter, stretch that connecting stroke out a ways. It’ll be difficult to train your brain at first, because your hand automatically loops up for the next letter. Pay attention (just this once, I’m asking you to think about it), and remember to streeeetttttttccccchhhhhh out that last stroke. Exaggerate it all you want. But you don’t have too; even a little stretch goes a long way.

My second piece of advice? Practice, practice, practice.
I did. Still do.

I love it when my scraproom is clean. My paints are all lined up on the wall in their little spice rack. My ribbons are all wound neatly and hanging from the spice tins on my magnet board. My pens are organized, my paper is filed, and everything’s in easy reach. It’s lovely to look at… all the colors and textures.

Only problem is, it only looks that way when I’m not working. When I’m between jobs or when I’m having company. My scraproom sits between the kitchen and the family room. When we have a dinner party, it makes a natural traffic flow solution. I should entertain more so that my scraproom will get cleaned regularly!

‘Cause what happens when I scrap is, I pile. I never file paper away when I’m finished with it. I pull out stacks of it, paw through it, then pile it next to me. I pile stamps and punches and stickers… rub ons and embellishments and photos. It’s a precarious pile, too. Whoa to the child who brushes against it on his way into my studio!

And there again is THAT question. What to call this mess I spend most of my time in? Sometimes I refer to is as my office. Sometimes my studio. But most often, The Scraproom.

Methinks I should just call it Messy.

Below is an example of one of the pages I “scrapped for ME” last weekend.

I was shopping at my local scrapbook store (LSS), completely minding my own business, when this paper starting calling my name.

“Staaaaaaacy. Staaaaaaaacy.” The exhilarating ripple of its voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone, before any words came through. Okay, so those last two sentences are a complete plagiarism of F. Scott Fitzgerald. But I SWEAR, it was almost like that. I saw the paper from across the store, and it called to me, beckoning me to come closer. I did. I was in love. But I knew I had no photos that would match it.

So I moved along. And still, the paper called to me. I went back. I fondled it. I moved along again.

At last, I thought of an excuse to buy it! There was this photo I took of the boys last winter. It was blurry, and had already been delegated to the reject pile. I decided that if I printed it in sepia, and pretended not to notice the blurriness, it would be FABULOUS with these papers.

And so it is. You’d think I’d picked it out specifically for this purpose! I’m in love with this page, because I’m so in love with the papers. I scrapped it for ME, and it makes me happy. Blurry photo and all.

12×12 papers and title blocks, Bohemia by MME.

TIP:
When you see paper or embellishments that speak to you, don’t be held back by your photos. Print them in sepia or black and white, and use that paper!