The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I was off all week for Thanksgiving, and I am happy to say that I feel like I got a lot done in the scrapbooking realm. I organized most of my files, even though I still have some more organizing to do. I also got to check out some of the scrapbooking websites more in-depth than I have. I also finished two layouts! One is this pictured one, of last year's Christmas. I had started it sometime over the summer, but hadn't finished it yet. I made my own photo collage, but it wasn't very straight, so I had to use a paintbrush to draw the grid so that it looked straighter. I used the Lights paper template from Brandy Murray, scrapgirls.com as well as the All You Need paper from the All You Need kit by Meredith Fenwick of twopeasinabucket.com. The journaling tag is from the Tied Tags Embellishment template by Paula Wright scrapgirls.com. I had to make three duplicate layers, all of the different colors, and then erase in order to create the multi-colored tag. The font I found on a website, http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/fonts/. I think I mentioned this in my last post, but I love that I have found embellishment templates and paper templates. I know there are a lot of tools out there still for me to discover, but I think that my layouts are already looking better.

I said I completed two layouts. I will not be posting the second one until after Christmas, as it is a gift for someone who sometimes sees this blog. I am very proud of that layout, and I can't wait to give it to the person, or to post it. I have posted it on a scrapping website, but I won't give the link for that either.

I have so many ideas running around in my head for layouts, pictures to scrap, and albums. There seems to be two main types of layouts that I see...one that is more focused on telling the story of an event, and one that is more focused on the artistry of the layout. Those kind usually just have one photo, and lots of fancy, artistic details. I'd like to make some layouts like that, but I haven't quite mastered the artistry of it. But I'm seeing others' layouts, that are inspiring me, so I think that I'll be doing it in no time. For now, it's back to work on Monday, so I won't have as much free time as I did this week, but in three weeks, we'll be off again!

Over this last summer, I started working on scrapping my honeymoon. I only completed this 2-page layout of our wedding night. I did everything myself except for the date embellishment, which came from Jennifer Pebbles' free kit at Two Peas in a Bucket website. It's called the skinny date label. I made the paper myself by texturizing the one I chose for a background. I used the floral brush as a corner border. I think I got those from brusheezy.com. I wanted the pages to coordinate, but not necessarily be symmetrical. It was hard to put embellishments on before, because a lot of the freebies I had didn't go well. And I had no idea how to make my own. But now that I've discovered embellishment templates, I will probably put a lot more of them on my pages. And, looking at these, I'll probably tweak this one a bit, since it's the only honeymoon layout I've completed. When I do all of them, I'd like for it to be a book. So, we'll see if a future post contains a (hopefully improved) variation of this layout.

On our wedding night, we stayed at the Marriott Waterside hotel downtown. We had taken a few pictures of our hotel room, and we had a nice view out our balcony. The journaling piece talks about this, plus the fact that we ate the food that had been packed for us at our reception, since we did not get to eat during it. The next morning we were able to see our ship in port from our hotel room. We walked to the port, which was a little more than we had expected, with the suitcases, but it wasn't too bad.

Having been getting more scrapbooking items this week, I'm realizing that I definitely need to reorganize my computer files. I started to organize them with a folder for papers, one for embellishments, and just take them from the kits I downloaded. I did this because I figured that it would be easier to look through all of my papers at once. This may still be the easiest, but then I have to make sure I know about all of the kit information so I can give the proper credit to the designer. That still may be the way to go, but I have a lot of kits that I downloaded and haven't gone through yet. So, that will be helpful, too, in finding other elements to put on my pages. Anyone out there have some good tips for organizing digital files?

It's Christmas! (And Thanksgiving)

I've heard a lot of people complain about the time change and about hearing Christmas music in stores already. I have to say, I love it. Now, I don't particularly like that it gets dark so early, except for the fact that I associate it with the coming holidays, and have since my childhood. Once Christmas has passed, though, I'm ready for the longer day again, but until then, love it.

And hearing Christmas music so early...I'm fine with it. This is my absolute favorite time of the year. I know there's a lot of talk about the commercialism of Christmas, but for me, I just associate it with all the positives of Christmas, the true meaning of Christmas, so I don't mind even that. Now I don't want to skip right over Thanksgiving, either, just enjoy both at the same time, in a way. I guess for some people that seems ridiculous, but not me. I've heard it said before that Christmas time is probably a taste of what heaven will be like. So don't we want this feeling as long as possible? But, show me almost anything related to Christmas, and I love it. I have so many good childhood memories of Christmas, of the anticipation of it, the Christmas musicals I did in children's choir and at school...as I got older, the Christmas presentations at Idlewild became one of my favorite things to do. I actually find it fitting that this will be the last thing I'm officially involved with at Idlewild.

But, like I said, I don't want to skip over Thanksgiving. For the first time ever, Hillsborough County school district is off for the whole week of Thanksgiving. I remember when I was a kid, we just got Thanksgiving Day and the next day off. Some time while I was teaching, they added the day before as a conference day (which we worked on another night in exchange for that day off), so that was always nice. You just had a 2-day week. The last couple of years, I've known people who worked in other counties, and they had the whole week off. I thought it was odd, but I was a little jealous. Now, our county is doing that, and I am so excited! It's like another spring break, then we go back for 3 weeks and get 2 weeks off at Christmas.

I look forward to Thanksgiving day, not just my week off. Of course watching some of the Macy's parade, doing the family thing, and eating. A lot of people on facebook have been posting things that they are thankful for. It's a good practice, and I wouldn't want to ignore the whole purpose for the holiday. I am thankful for my husband, my family, my home, my job, and that God has provided what I need. What things are you thankful for? Make sure you take time out to think of this and thank God for what He's given you.

In The Meantime

I finally bit the bullet and actually spent some money on scrapbooking. Well, I've paid bought a magazine subscription and a couple of issues of a Photoshop magazine that includes a CD of brushes, gradients, textures, and fonts for Photoshop. But I actually have tried to download only free kits and elements from the different websites. There are really so many free things you can get. But the really good stuff, I think you have to pay for. So, I had some extra money (I get reimbursed for my mileage when I have to go to meetings and stuff, and that's mine to do what I want with), so I decided to buy some different digital kits. I just downloaded them all, so I haven't been able to play with them yet, but I plan to this week and next week when I'm off. So hopefully, I'll post some new layouts on here soon!

In the mean time, here are a couple of pictures that I played around with on Photoshop. I will probably use them in a layout one day, but I decided to go ahead and post them here. For this picture of me and  Jason, I applied a gradient, and I played around with the opacity until I liked it.

This other picture of me is one of those where only one element in the picture is colored. I've always liked those pictures. This won't be a technical how-to, but in Photoshop, you duplicate your layer, make the new layer black & white, then create a clipping mask. You then erase the part of the picture that you want colored. Again, I'll probably scrap this one day. I originally was going to use it in the template that I used for My Love (my first layout), but I didn't want the layout to focus only on me, so I chose a picture of me and Jason.

Just an extra tidbit...here are some of my favorite scrapbooking websites: scrapgirls.com, twopeasinabucket.com, and scrapbooksetc.com. I also go to peppermintcreative.com, but I sometimes forget about that one. The things I just bought were from scrapgirls.com. That site has a daily newsletter where they give a free download. They also have what they call a scrap club, with two options, paying either $7 or $10 each month, and getting a good amount of materials in return. I'm thinking about doing that, too. So, check it out if you haven't before. And stay tuned for a new layout soon.

Feed the Birds

When Jason and I got married, we scanned a lot of our pictures in the computer to use for a slideshow. This picture of him at the beach when he was a little kid is so precious. One day we were at Busch Gardens, and a bunch of sea gulls flew near, and he almost reenacted this. It was funny, but it reminded me of this picture and inspired me to scrap it. It was very simple, just lowering the opacity of the big picture so it blended with the background color I chose. I was experimenting with the different types of paintbrushes for the edge. I still may add something else to it. I see similar layouts in the magazines and websites, I just don't always know how to do them. So, maybe when I've figured it out, I'll add to this one. (I didn't flatten the image, so I'll be able to go back to the layers and change things if needed.) I finished this one in July 2009.

Fall Fun

This year, we sort of got into the festivities for Halloween by getting a costume for Desmond. We were at PetSmart at the beginning of September, and saw the cutest little dragon costume. We thought that would be so great, but we weren't sure how much he would grow by the end of October, so we didn't buy it. Of course, when we did go to buy something, it wasn't there in his size. So I picked a Tigger costume, which was the cutest thing they had left. It only cost $5 by that point, so that was good. We didn't take him anywhere with it on, because he didn't really love it, and the hood didn't stay on well. But we got cute pictures.

 I also put it on Benji, just for a picture. He looks thrilled. I thought it was cute, though.

We didn't make Desmond wear the costume for long, though. Maybe next year.

I also went to the pumpkin patch with my sister-in-law and my nephews. I probably take more pictures of my nieces and nephews than any other aunt. Kid pictures are just so cute, and since I don't have any of my own, that's what I have to do. Besides, I love my nephews and nieces so much--they're so cute!

So, this was the beginning of the fall festivities this year. I love this time of year. Especially once November gets here, and we have Thanksgiving and, of course, the Christmas season. Love it.

Easter Outtakes

I have a subscription to Scrapbooks, Etc. magazine, which I have found to be pretty inspiring for my layouts. Their website also has lots of digital downloads, like templates for collages and kits. In one of their issues, I saw a layout that had an idea for using the "outtakes" of pictures of kids that weren't usable for the project they were meant for. (Like Christmas cards or whatever). So, of course, I thought about all of these pictures that I have with me and Jason where he takes all these goofy pictures with me. I have them from a lot of different situations, but this one in particular was from Easter 2008, which also was my birthday. I remember I had sung on praise team, so I was singing the last service, and Jason had already gone to my parents' house. When I called, on my way over, he said my family had been taking pictures with the kids. When I said I wanted to take pictures, he said he had already changed. When I got there, he was persuaded to change clothes, even though he didn't really want to. So I think that's part of why we got all of these pictures. My sister, Amy, was taking them, and she kept laughing. I posted this on facebook and one of my friends was laughing that my expression was the same in all of these pictures, no matter what look Jason had. Anyway, we finally got a good one of the both of us.

This is another layout that was done before I thought to figure out how big the journaling print would look on the layouts when I do them. So I really could have fit more on there, but this is a good lesson for me to not be such a perfectionist. These papers were from the Scrapbooks, Etc. website (Graphic Pops and Cool Basics kits), and I recolored them to correlate with our pictures. The ribbons were from Mary Ann Wise's Party Hats kits, that I got on twopeasinabucket.com. I finished this layout also in February 2009.

As for a current update, I was able to work on a couple of layouts last week. One is from last Christmas, just family stuff, and the other is one from this last Halloween, since I dressed my dog in a Tigger costume. It was so cute! So, even though I'm working on blogging all of my completed layouts, hopefully I'll have new stuff up soon.

Aunt Claire

I started this layout about being an aunt in December 2008. This layout went through so many different changes, starting with the colors. I started with more primary colors, but I didn't like how the colors went together. My method right now is to put elements up, and if I'm not completely sure about how it looks, I'll hide it and try something else until I find what looks like I want. Which I guess contributes to how long my process is, and why I think I am perfectionistic about it.

When I first started, I also tried to use a lot of free material that I get from different websites. I tried to recolor a lot of elements so that they would match my pictures. Now, I make a lot of my own paper and create palettes based on my pictures. The website bighugelabs.com has a great color palette generator. That's how I chose which colors to use on this layout, which looked better than the direction I was originally going for. I did create the striped piece in the middle. This was before I realized that since I'm viewing everything at a low percentage on my monitor, I need to consider the size when it's actually printed, not just what I see on the monitor. I don't think I would make those stripes so big anymore. But, I can't change it, because I flattened the image and then saved it, and I don't know if I can work on it as layers again.

I thought of this layout because I had pictures of me holding each of my nephews and niece in the hospital when they were babies, and I liked that as the tie-in. Since I don't have my own children yet, I love taking pictures of them. So my journaling focused on how spending time with them makes me wonder what my future children will be like, but for now I love being known as Aunt Claire. I made their current pictures black and white, then applied a layer mask and erased the background around their faces with a soft paintbrush. I finished the journaling and finalized the layout in February 2009. Of course, since then, I have had another niece, but she was born in Germany, so I was not able to go to the hospital, so there will not be another layout exactly like that one, but that's okay.

My Love

This was my first completed layout, done in December 2008. I had the help of a template from the website twopeasinabucket.com. Templates are very easy to use. I really ought to use them more. I started the layout because it was a contest. You could submit a layout made with the template and win free stuff from the designer's website. So this layout begged for a great big picture, and what better one to use than one from our wedding? I made it black and white, but I wanted to use lavendar for the background. It looked funny to me unless I added a lavendar tint to the picture. (I think that's what I did, it's been so long that I forgot exactly how I did it). The journaling was just inspired by the thought that when you get married, you really don't know what lies ahead, good or tough times, but everything has a purpose. Anyway, it's probably the nicest looking layout that I've done, hence the reason I think I should use more templates.

The template is Scrap Canvas 8 from the Queen of Quirk at twopeasinabucket.com. My background paper is from Cherie Mask's All Twitterpated kit, also from twopeasinabucket. I just changed the color of the background paper.

Let's get this blog re-started

I originally intended this to be a blog where I could post my digital layouts. But, so far, I've written 1 post, only putting 2 of my layouts. I currently have done maybe 5 or 6 layouts, it was just tedious the day I was writing my post, so I stopped. Of course, I planned to come back to it, but obviously, that hasn't happened yet.

So, I know that a lot of people blog about scrapbooking, explaining how they do things, and so forth. I'm not quite at that point, yet, so my blog will not contain those types of posts. For now, I plan to do a mix of posting my own layouts, as well as just record my thoughts about the process, my frustrations, and my joys.

I actually haven't worked on a layout in a while. I was doing a lot of work on them over the summer, when I didn't have to work. Then I had a mishap with my computer--got a virus--and that kind of overtook my time. Since school has started, I haven't taken the time to do any layouts when I've had time to myself. Except, I did a little today when I was home sick from work.

So here are some of my frustrations...I get so many ideas of things to scrap. I worked on scrapping my honeymoon over the summer. I decided to do them in 2-page layouts, with corresponding themes/layouts. I finished one 2-page layout, and started on another. And that's it. Either I am too much of a perfectionist, or I just am still on the learning curve, but it takes so long to do things sometimes, so then I feel like I haven't gotten as much done as I would like. Or I feel like I need all this time to do all of the themes I want to do. I thought about doing layouts from past Christmases, particularly the ones since my husband and I have been together. I would like to scrap the trip to Disney we took for our 1st anniversary. I want to scrap other times we were at Disney, when we had our annual passes. There are lots of birthday parties and other family get-togethers with my nephews and niece that I would like to do. So, again, I have all these things I'd like to do, but when I sit down to do them, I either don't know how to start or I get so bogged down with the details.

Another thing that frustrates me is that things don't look as good as I'd like. I think I am relatively creative, I've just never had much experience or training in art, so I think that I could be more creative. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, which leads to the perfectionism that takes so much time. So, I'm realizing I just need to relax and enjoy this hobby. I do enjoy the creative process, and that's what it's about. I don't know if it's the holidays, but I've had a big urge to get back into scrapping lately. I think it will be a good thing, and maybe the learning curve will start to get smaller.

Car Trouble

I had a pretty scary experience the other day on my way to work--my car completely shut off while I was driving. Now, I had some warning signs, even though I didn't realize it. First, my battery light was on. Jason had said we'd take it to Autozone to check it out that afternoon. But as I was driving, I noticed the lights on my dashboard were dimmer than normal. I also ran the windshield wipers, and they went really slow. Then my radio started going in and out, and my airbag light and seatbelt lights started flashing. At that point, I should've known to pull over, but I called Jason. It seemed to be driving fine, but I figured I wouldn't be able to start it once I got to school. As I was talking to Jason, all of a sudden, I could feel that the car was starting to go slower, even though I was pushing the gas pedal. I said, "I think my car's about to die!" Jason urged me to pull over, but I was in the left lane and couldn't. I got to a left turn lane, planning to turn into an empty parking lot. Now, if I had had full power, I would've been able to make this turn in front of these cars. As I was starting to turn, I realized since I didn't have full power, I may stop right in the middle of the street, in front of these approaching cars. So I stopped my turn, and right then, dead. I was a little freaked out, and I couldn't even find my hazard lights for about 5 minutes. AAA came and towed my car, and Jason sent his father to take me to work since he couldn't and my parents are in Germany. It was just my alternator, and it was easily fixed. The funny thing is, I had missed the street I needed to turn on and didn't even realize it. Guess I was so preoccupied telling Jason and figuring out what was going on. I kept thinking, how did I pass Hanley and not even realize it? But, I figure if I had turned there, I would have been right in the intersection when my car died, and that would really have been bad. So, thank you, Jesus, that everything turned out OK.