Still At It

While it may appear that my creative gene has left the building

or that my blogging hat has been retired, I am still at it.

Wouldn't it be grand if we could truly spend each day as we desire

and not in the way that is sometimes pressed upon us.

I know we have choices and choices I do make,

but unfortunately for me, my choices these days have been limited to circumstances

that I can not control.

Control. . . there's a thought, an idea, a word I've long since had to let go of.

For those of us OCD types (yes, I am one), control is what we often seek, but never get

-- and rightfully so. Control is not what life is about -- choice is.

Which brings me right back to the beginning.

Choices.

Well, lets just say that I am making them, just not necessarily the ones I would like to.

Creativity is a necessity only second to choice in my world.

I live to create and thankfully, occasionally, I am blessed with the opportunity.

Thanks to my dedicated Scrap Gals

I once again eeked out some time and put together another class.

Loosely based on the Topstich CTMH Workshop on the Go,

I better get these posted so my gals can get their photos on them. Hope you enjoy.

Fun is Fundamental - We just love the zoo. Don't these show how much fun we have?

Determination Jessica - ;} Jessica's middle name should be Determination.

Behold Wonder - Walker was lost at the zoo for a time and when we found him this is where he was. Beholding Wonder. We spent a good 30 minutes just watching in wonder at this calf (only 2 days old) and her mother. I think they were just as curious as the boys were!

Remember you can click on each photo individually to see the image larger! Until next time!

Twitterpated with Twitterpated!

I am just twitter-pated with Twitterpated! Who knew mushrooms could make such cute page accents?!?! I love how the layouts for my scrap club turned out this month! All the moving and unpacking has me still way behind on life and creating. . . it's the creating part I miss the most! So glad to have people who WANT me to be creative so I can share my time with them. Thanks to my 9 club gals for keeping me going!

When I revamped my class I took it from "Get-it-Done" to making 3-2 page layouts from the same kit, but it's not necessarily about getting as much scrapped as possible, but more about just making beautiful pages. It's loosely based on CTMH's Workshop on the Go, but I just prefer to make the class my own. You can buy the workshop on the go and make it on your own at home, so that makes it nice, but I like to have hands on classes too! It was a nice change of pace and the class loved the different looks we achieved with the same paper pack.

2 Page Layout One - Just SMILE!

2nd 2 Page Layout - Family and Friends

2 Page Layout - Oh This Face! (Wyatt)

- and once again I proved my old theory that you don't have to have boy themed paper to make boy pages. . . or maybe my boys just exude so much testosterone they can actually wear pink and make it look masculine!

CTMH Products and Supplies Used: Twitterpated Level 2, Twitterpated Workshop on the Go Exclusive Stamp Set, Ribbon Rounds in Chocolate, Basic Brad Assortment, Dimensional Elements Organic, Ink in Chocolate, Crystal Blue, Sweet Leaf and Sorbet

Studio J is coming soon and I've been using it during the preview period. I LOVE that my pictures can be any size and fit perfectly in the layouts and I don't have to print my photos! I LOVE that with the right photographs I can pick ANY paper pack CTMH has offered in the past 5 years and have a layout done in literally a few minutes. . . I don't love that there is no dimension, which is what keeps me from going all digital in the first place! This is an example of one of the things I will always love about traditional scrapbooking;

You just don't get this kind of dimension in digital scrapbooking. . . Now you can always do the layout and place the embelishments on at home and I'm going to try this next, but then the price (which is the other case made for digital/traditional scrapbooking) goes way up and I'm not sure the value is there. . . You'll have to take this journey with me to see what I decide. Hope you'll stay tuned!

Christmas Paper Piecing

Everyone is looking for ways to get more out of their supplies and save money too! I think paper piecing is a great way to do this! It's a great way to use paper you think you would never use AND it's a great way to use scraps too! I found this link to 30 paper piecing templates (free-you may have to register, but that's what your hotmail email address is for), and hopefully you can find one you will use!

The link is HERE!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!

Am I the only one old enough to remember Mickey Mouse Club? I can't think of the big cheese without singing that silly song!

There is something about scrapbooking that's hard to explain unless you do it. Many people never try it because it can be so intimidating; especially when the magazines mostly show pages that the scrapbooker spent hours perfecting and frequently show only one or two photos on a page. I don't know about you but I have 8+ photo boxes from the old 35mm days and going on 25000 images on my external hard-drive (which I do back up, but I'll post more about that another day!) If I only scrapbook 1 or 2 photos per page I'll be 978 years old before I get caught up. Oh, but wait! If I live that long I'll have and average of 1.25 million photos left to scrap! You get the point. You will never be caught up. Sometimes, when you get a really great photo a one page layout is a must. Sometimes a close topic or subject is worth one really great page, but other times that would be plain overkill. Today I'm showing you the latest installment of my Get It Done Scrapbooking class results. I encouraged my class to bring ALL of their Disney photos, not just their latest trip or their favorite trip or the trip with the best photos. I went to Disneyland the first time when I was 12. I went again on a High School Acapella Choir Tour. I didn't go again until my now 11 year old was 2 and we've been a total of 3 times as a family. I chose the 3 family trips and scrapped all of them in one evening on 8 pages. I'm only going to show you the main 5 pages here, but the last page uses a CTMH True Fit Folio. You can see the remaining pages here. My boys had such a good time on the rides we took almost no photos of their first trip to Disney, but with so many of the "extra" photos being the same for each trip, it doesn't really feel that way at all!










Hidden Pockets and the True Fit Folio allowed for almost 100 pictures to be featured on 8 pages! All but 10 photos were taken in the 35mm era, so no photo editing, no re-do shots, just plain old family photos taken from a box. Another side benefit to this kind of scrapbooking is the gratitude you feel when looking back on these memories. My kids have had a blast looking at and talking about their Disney memories and even having a glimpse at moments they don't remember. While these pages won't end up on the pages of a magazine, they will be treasured by family for what I hope to be many generations to come.

P.S. I use CTMH LEVEL 1 Scrapbooking Kits plus a little extra for all my Get It Done Scrapbooking Classes. IF you haven't ever given those fab kits a look, you really should!

Just 5 Things

This is my 2nd post for today, so if you want to see the other, please scroll down. :)

For a long time I've been concerned about what posterity might know of me if I didn't leave anything behind for them. I love to scrapbook, but scrapbook pages can often be superficial in natural. By this I mean that we don't often tell about our real self -- our true thoughts and feelings. They usually cover life events of our children and families and I know that the pictures I haven't scrapped by far out weigh the ones I have. I know I also tend to scrapbook the joyous times in life of which there are many, but life isn't always joyous. Sometimes life is painful and hard. What have I learned? What do I wish I'd done? For this though I felt photographs were secondary. I wanted to show a picture of myself from the inside out. Where is my heart? What do I value? What hurts? To this end I began working on a list for myself titled Just 5Things. There are 50 topics on my list. This is some of them;

5 people important to me
5 friends I have known
5 things I would do if I had no limitations
5 things I live for
5 things I don't want to forget
5 things I don't want to live without
5 pieces of advice I wish I could have given myself at 18
5 things I'm passionate about
5 things I wish I could change
5 things I do every day
5 challenges that have changed me
5 things I wish I didn't care about
5 days I'll never forget
5 things I spend too much time on
5 reasons I cry
5 things that might surprise you

The list goes on and on. Like I said, I've worked on this list since last March. I also teach a Pictures In Art Class and this is what my list has become:









There are 6 dividers (shown on my class blog) and the 2nd class will be the pages. The class has been instructed to choose 10 things and I've provided worksheets with questions so that they can journal their true thoughts and feelings. This is to be about them. Even if they choose to tell about 5 people they love, it must be what this has done for them, not just a tribute to the someone else. We will be making scrapbook pages (5X7) for the main 5 things x 5 items (which I've instructed them on how to choose) and then the last divider will hold 5 pages bullet style of the remaining 5 things x 5 items. They have photo instructions to help illustrate the first 5 things. My hope is that the class (me included) will continue to complete the list of 50 things and stuff our boxes so that once we are no longer here to tell our stories our posterity will know us. They won't just have our memories, but our thoughts and feelings in a way I know without this I would never explore. I've told them that I hope they won't even share the boxes with their families now. I think it will be of much more value as a treasure later.

Here's my question for you. What 5 things would you want your posterity to know about you and how are you going to tell them?

Getting It Done - Sarsaparilla

These are the pages my Get it Done Class made on June 13th. We had such a great time and although they were worried about making their photos work with the class everyone's pages turned out fantastic! We had one class member use these layouts to do a "Being Joel" through the years display. Another used her Wyoming vacation pictures. Cindy used Sedona Red Rock pictures and even though the layouts were the same each went home with their own treasured memories! Shar and Laurel still need to show me their finished pages. . . they promised!!! My photos, as you can see, are of a field trip Mikensee took when she was barely 8 to the Pioneer Living History Museum and what was the very last Laura Ingals Wilder day. The class this month focused on a collage page to help deal with the "left over" pictures you have once you've basically scrapbooked your event. Sometimes as scrapbookers we feel we have to do a 2 page layout for every photo we ever take. The collage technique helps you overcome this by allowing you to feature many, many pictures (many of the not so good ones) and keep the flow of the event without just trashing it!