The Scrapgals Podcast

 Hey everyone!

Last Monday I was so happy to jump over my fear and be a guest on the Scrapgals podcast! Yay for being brave! Right?!

If you want to listen to the episode you'll have to register for the podcast and you can do so right here.

The episode is called Marie's dilemma and was prompted when I talked about having not scrapbooked in 3 years and being kind of lost as of where to start again.

After looking at all my already created albums/layouts, and after making some switches of some layouts that should live in different albums, I came up with the list of what I have, which is always a good starting point:

My Childhood (birth to 20 years old - right before I met my husband) | 2 albums full

Vancouver/Meeting my husband | Some layouts

Switzerland (1999 to 2010) | Some layouts

Travels (occurred while living in Switzerland + after kids) | 1 album full

Our wedding | Some layouts

Our honeymoon | Some layouts

My oldest daughter | 3 albums

My youngest daughter | 2 albums

Project Life/Day to day life | 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 (half the year)

Prague and Paris | some layouts (more than I thought)

From there, I decided to write down what I wanted to have in my library of memories, in other words, what I want to add to my collection:

Childhood

Teenage years - jobs, cars, brother, synchronized skating, Highschool - 3 schools, prom, graduation, summers with brother and friends 

Vancouver - friends, family, school, private classes, activities

Wedding - civil

Wedding - religious Guests, flowers, music, colors, invitation, menu, photograph, ceremony, reception

Honeymoon - Camping trip through USA

Honeymoon - Cruise

Honeymoon - Canada with the inlaws

Honeymoon - Canada with the friends

Travel - one layout per place visited

Switzerland - moving to... German classes, friends, outings with the boys, job

Bachelor degree in Canada (4 years)

Back to Switzerland (before having my baby)

Young mom - 2 babies away from home, expat life but not really

Travel after kids (take out of family album and gather as travel instead)

Moving to USA - life in USA (other than Project Life) - moves to Farmington, Avon, NC

Prague - special stories: house, villae, school, friends, concerts/dance, city, visits, special events and visits

Paris

Travel while living again in Europe (2016-2019)

Move to Cleveland/summer (2019)

Everyday life - Covid

Since the podcast appearance and talk with the two hosts (Tiffany and Tracie), I have much more clarity as you can see by my "want-to-do list" and with clarity comes Mojo and motivation! Woohoo! I have to say that I have had Tiffany watching over my shoulder and steering me in the right direction every day of the week! lol 

Here's the first layout I made and that will go into my Prague album:

    

Some comments in this layout: 

- I had so many photos that I had to use 2 pages. 

- Some photos didn't make it on the layout

- I liked playing with different size photos. I print at home and resize my photo with Photoshop.

- I was overwhelmed by the products because I haven't used any in a very long while! So I opened an armoire, grabbed a pile of stickers, chipboards, letters and just started! My intuition did the rest and knew how to guide me to the right products. I had been a 24/7 scrapbooker for 9 years after all. Can't really lose that experience it seems like!

- Starting with a white background is ALWAYS a good idea. It's a neutral canvas and you can always add more colors to it with embellishments and photos!

- When stuck, just continue. 

- Sometimes, more is more ;) Trust the process. And a story told is always better than one untold! <3 

Now a little bonus, coming directly from the podcast: 

I talked about a layout I made about my childhood. My neighborhood and the different places making it up. Here it is with some close-ups.

I've cut out my address in black paper with my Silhouette! 

I took these pictures one summer, when visiting my parents in Canada, I went back to my childhood neighborhood, 2 hours drive away!) and snapped pictures of my school, grandma's house, babysitter, etc... But you could do the same using Google Earth and screen shoting the different places of your childhood.

Stitching on a layout makes everything better!! Take your sewing machine out of the wardrobe and try it! :) 

The map was screenshotted from Google maps. You can see here the starting point.... A.

On the right page I added more photos of the street, the inside of the house, the backyard, the schoolyard... places where I played and hung out! I wrote the name of the place or street and added some childhood stories as the description of the photos. 

Hope this can inspire and motivate some of you to scrapbook, no matter how long you have been stuck! If I could, you can totally do it too. Assess what you have, find out what you want, and start!! :)

Have fun memory keeping!

Marie 

Inspiration | Wilna Furstenberg

Hello everyone!!

Today I was reminded that I made a mini album for my dad for our Christmas gift exchange and I never showed it to you. The story of last December is this: I was leaving for Canada mid-month and before I left i have 16 DT layouts to finish and post online or schedule (!!!) + I was working on my December Daily, I made my Christmas cards one by one, I helped in my daughter's classes...I was just in a big big rush!! So when I decided to do the album for our gift exchange, I knew it had to come together quickly, like, in one evening!! The obvious to me was to take something I had seen done my one of my biggest inspiration, if not MY BIGGEST inspiration: Wilna Furstenberg and to just do the same! I had all the material since over a year I just had to find the purpose of the album and to assemble and journal. Easy enough!

So for my dad I wanted to make a kind of walk back memory lane with him. I used pictures and stories from when my brother and I were between 3 and 14 and I shared stories and said thank you. :)

Here it is:

So the base is a mini chalkboard that stands on it own. Just like Wilna, I stamped and embossed "with all my love" (stamps from Heidi Swapp), I added a large camera jewelry paint drops and chipboard pieces. And a little bit of journaling to introduce the content of the album.

Each page consist of a photo on top and the journaling inside of the little file folder.

Page 1:

So here's the photo decorated. (Papers and embellishments are from Heidi Swapp)

And when you open the little page, there's the journaling. I started each block of journaling by the prompt I remember and I went to town with my memories. :)

Page 2:

And the inside:

Page 3:

the inside:

Page 4:

The inside:

Page 5:

Page 5 has no inside. I wrote the journaling directly on the first page with the photo.

Page 6:

The inside:

Page 7:

And the inside:

Even though i didn't come up with the concept, I was really happy with my mini album. With all the pages I have to create for my design teams each month, it was a nice break for my brain. I still got to be creative, I still got a nice final result, and I had so much fun creating it!!!

If you would like to make this mini album too, I can direct you to Wilna's website where you can buy the tutorial. It's right here. 

Have a great day!!! Thanks for stopping by. :)

Marie

Get it Scrapped - Important teacher

Hi everyone!
Salut tout le monde!!

Today I would like to show you a page I made for Get it Scrapped about an important teacher in my life. Everybody has one. I have 2 and I had already made a page on one of them for the class I worked on with Celine Navarro "once upon a time Me"...
Aujourd'hui j'aimerais vous présenter une page que j'ai faite pour Get it Scrapped. Il fallait faire une page à propos d'un prof qui a fait une différence dans ma vie. Tout le monde a un prof comme ça dans sa vie. :) Moi j'en ai deux. J'avais déjà fait une page sur une d'elles pour le cours "il était une fois moi" sur lequel j'avais travaillé avec Céline Navarro ...

 (here's just a little part on that page / voici juste un petit bout de la page)

and I was very happy to have to take the time to make a page on my 2nd teacher this month. Because often, I have to have to do something in order to do it! :)
et j'étais super heureuse de pouvoir prendre le temps de faire une page sur ma 2e prof importante. Parce que souvent, il faut que je sois "obligée" de faire une page pour prendre le temps de la faire. :) 

There are lots of things happening on this page to I decided it in 3 sections. First, in the right column, I have the picture of my teacher (I had it in my stash of photos of my youth) and I wrote down her name and the journaling. While writing about her, I was thinking about so many other things that I want to journal about!!
Il y a beaucoup de choses sur cette page alors pour qu'on s'y retrouve plus facilement, je l'ai divisé en 3 parties distinctes.  D'abord, dans la colonne de droite, j'ai placée la photo de ma prof (la seule que j'avais dans mon album de jeunesse) et j'ai écris son nom. En dessous, j'ai mis mon texte. J'ai essayé d'incorporé les éléments qui font que c'était ma prof préférée. En pensant à ça, pleins de souvenirs me sont revenus et il va me falloir d'autres pages pour compléter ma série de pages sur cette école. :) 

I played a bit with stamps and my color pencils (I love the effect of the color pencils on kraft card stock).
J'ai joué un peu avec mes étampes et mes crayons de couleur (l'effet crayons de couleur sur du carton kraft est super!)

For the journaling I first drew some lines. No ruler needed. I love the "imperfect" look.
Pour mon texte, je me suis fait des lignes à main levées et j'ai écris dessus par la suite. J'aime le look imparfait que ça donne.

Another section of the page is the school itself. I thought it was an important part of the page to give some context to the other parts.
Une autre section de ma page est consacrée à l'école même. Je trouvais ça important pour mettre l'histoire en contexte.  

I used a patterned paper from Amy Tangerine and a picture of the school. I took that picture about 2 years ago when I knew I wanted to document that time of my life. If you want to do the same but can't get to the place to take pictures, you can use google maps. The "street view" function let you make some really cool print screen and it's like you were there. Here, look by yourself. I just made that with "street view":
J'ai utilisé un papier à motif de Amy Tangerine et une photo de l'école que je suis allée prendre il y a 2 ans environ. Si vous ne pouvez pas retourner sur place pour prendre des photos des lieux que vous voulez scraper, un bon truc est d'utiliser google maps. La fonction "street view" vous permet de prendre en photo des lieux en faisant des captures d'écran. Regardez, je viens juste de faire ça: 

I added a small tab to the picture to add some details.
J'ai ajouté une petite étiquette pour ajouter des détails comme la ville par exemple.

The third section of the page in the inside of the class on an ordinary school day. I am very lucky to be still in touch with my teacher and last year she sent me a bunch of pictures just like this one showing the everyday life at school. Yay for Facebook!!!!
La 3e section c'est une photo de l'intérieur de l'école. J'ai été vraiment gâtée car je suis encore en contact avec ma prof (vive Facebook!!!) et elle m'a envoyé plein de photos hyper précieuses comme celle-ci l'année passée! 

Behind the picture I slipped a card where i added some more details that didn't have to do with my teacher.
Sous la photo j'ai inséré une carte que l'on peut retirer et j'ai ajouté plein d'infos qui n'ont pas nécessairement rapport avec ma prof, mais plutôt avec mon école. 

When I added my page to my album, I noticed that I had already made a page on that school, and I noticed that many things I documented were the same. The photo of the school for instance. I thought it was really cool because I did those 2 pages 2 years apart!! Even the style and the color scheme are similar. Isn't it cool!!!?! :)

Quand j'ai mis ma page dans mon album, je me suis rendue compte que j'avais déjà fait une page sur cette école et en la regardant j'ai vu que plusieurs informations se répétait. Même la photo de l'école est exactement la même!! Mais c'est pas grave. :) 

I can't wait to take the time to add even more pages to that story! I still have so much to say!!

Ce que j'aime c'est que sans l'avoir planifié, mes feux pages vont super bien ensemble!! Pourtant je les ai faites à 2 ans d'intervalle!! :) J'ai hâte de prendre le temps d'ajouter encore plus de détails à cette histoire. :)

Talk to you later!
À bientôt!!

Marie-Pierre