You can just as easily have people camp on sofas, pillows on the floor, whatever – another month or two we might have gone outside (though I have a wonderful western exposure in my backyard, so we might have had to wait until a little later to get started.)

It’s hard to take pictures when you are busy making sure your guests are comfortable AND listening to the music, but I snagged a few and created a couple of digital scrapbook pages (I’m printing those and putting them in my family scrapbook photo album.)

Go to the post on the Turnstile Art and Music site to see a nice group shot of the crowd in my living room. Wouldn’t you like to host a House Concert?

Scanned Memorabilia

End of school year is a good time to get control of your children’s artwork and school memorabilia, like certificates, report cards or notes they got from friends.

My favorite scrapbooking tool for this is my scanner. Whether you do traditional scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking, or hybrid scrapbooking, you can benefit from the use of a scanner (or someone who can scan for you.) Why should you scan?

• Having memorabilia AND photos in a digital format is a backup option that takes little room.
• Once you scan, you can re-size, crop and either print out to put in a traditional scrapbook (as I did in the sample page above) or use on a digital scrapbook page that you have printed individually, or in a photobook. All those 8.5×11 certificates your kid receives can be reduced in size and all put on a single page – preserving the idea and feeling of pride, without taking too much room.
• Dimensional art is now easier to display and save (I also photograph some dimensional art.)

What do you do with the originals once you’ve digitized them (and backed them up)? This will depend on you and your comfort level. Personally, I have archival boxes that I store SOME of my daughter’s artwork and writing (she’s a talented writer.) The rest then goes to, gasp, either the recycle or garbage bin.

Do you have a lot of artwork or memorabilia?

Mia

I’m a pretty intelligent person with a reasonable IQ, but when I was a kid, I did some really not-so-bright things – kind of wish there were some pictures for the scrapbook…

Here’s one: I got this doll with hair that grows. Her name was Mia; she was in a family of dolls called Crissy. The instructions said that if you put baby oil on her hair it would stay soft and smooth – which I did. Then, I got the bright idea that if it worked on the doll, how much better would it be on my hair?! It wasn’t…it was just greasy looking and it took about 5 washings to remove it all – I was not a cool kid in school…

She’s kind of rare – I found one on eBay that was in pretty good condition, but it was already gone by the time I got there…

So for you nostalgic doll lovers, here’s a vintage commercial for the Crissy doll:

Do you remember these dolls? Did you have one? Do you have fond memories of other toys from your childhood?

What am I making?

I often find inspiration in unlikely places. However, others, it’s pretty obvious. If you watch the Food Network or Cooking Channel often enough, you are bound to either eat yourself into oblivion and/or cook something…

Today I was watching Bobby Flay make brunch. I just like Bobby Flay – he never annoys me. He wasn’t making a tangerine cinnamon latte, but it was “coffee time” and he had just made some cocktail with citrus juice. I looked over at the kitchen table and there were some tangerines…hmmm, I wondered how good a tangerine cinnamon latte would be.

I also realized I hadn’t scrapbooked our new little toy: a Nespresso machine – fool proof enough even for me to make a beautiful espresso. (It also came with this cool device that warms and froths the milk – which in my case is soy or cashew or almond – when that breaks I’ll probably go back to more tea instead of coffee ) So, I created this digital scrapbook page for our family photo album.

Life belongs in a photo album – today life included a good cup of coffee. What happened in your life today?

Custom Phone Case

So, this week I “Superhero’d” my iPhone with a custom phone case. I chose to go fully custom, by using my digital scrapbook software to design my inserts (you can change out the inserts in this cover – match your outfit or your mood or the season!) You can also use some the pre-designs online and just drag and drop your own photos in.

Coming up on Mother’s Day, Graduations and Father’s Day – these make great gifts. Here’s a few more of the inserts I made:

Wine Glass ID

Sometimes when you are entertaining, it comes in handy that you are a scrapbooker. I recently hosted a house concert for Turnstile Art & Music for their 1st event. The artist: Bryan Harrell – I happen to be a fan (a good reason to be the host.)

Anyhoo – among other things, wine was being served. You know how awkward it is when people don’t know which wine glass is theirs? I was planning on running to BBB and getting some sort of identifiers – but I don’t really like the charms because I either need to leave them on or I have to go through the laborious task of removing them from each glass. (On top of that, people have that “monopoly moment” – was I the car or the top hat?) I’d seen paper ones that people write their names on and thought I would find them. However, (since I left it ’til that day), we ran out of time in our preparations so I figured I could use my Photo Solutions Superhero powers to work…

Tools of the trade

Using the large circle of the Shape Maker System, I quickly punched a buttload of circles. Then I grabbed, what I thought was a smaller circle punch, but turned out to be a hexagon punch – cool, no?!, I punched out the center (or offset center since that’s what fit, but looked like it was intentional , then grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped from outside to the center so that the disks could be slipped over the stem of the

Finished Wine Glass ID

wine glasses. I then supplied a sharpie and voila – do it yourself wine glass identifiers!

Now, I should mention, that I did this about 2 hours before the concert started…unfortunately, it is my M.O. to make jobs for myself at the last minute…

What else could you do with your scrapbooking supplies?

Scanned Original Scrapbook Page

I prefer the term “album making” to “scrapbooking”. Seems weird that someone who teaches and does this for a living has a problem with the word: Scrapbooking…(aside from the fact that it’s not really a word)

You have to go back to the beginning (at least the beginning for me.) When I created a scrapbook as a child, I glued in all my mementos and pictures…napkins from restaurants, the few precious pictures I obtained, letters, news clippings, squashed flowers…I even drew some pictures. You see, that’s what scrapbooking is to me – collecting the most important memories.

In modern times it has come to be looked on as a craft or a hobby rather than a tradition that connects us to our pasts and helps to cement our relationships. What is the problem with it being a craft or hobby? Crafts and hobbies tend to gain and lose popularity over time – some might come back into vogue (I notice a lot of hand knitting and crocheting going on again), while others will go away never to be seen again.

Can we afford to lose a tradition that helps us remember where we came from, develop self-esteem, deepen our realtionships and mark our places in history?

Piglet Spots

Do you include the things your kid(s) say in your scrapbooks, photo albums, or photo books?

When my daughter was little she had an interesting way of saying things and picking up on what she heard. She had a fondness for small stuffed animals – not unique, I know, but she came up with an interesting way to refer to them. One day we were at the mall and she said she would like to see some “Piglet Spots.” I honestly don’t know how I figured out what she meant but it became apparent she was referring to stuffed toys. We, of course, adopted that term and used it for quite awhile, not actually knowing how she came up with it.

Then one day, I was watching one of her Spot (the dog) videos with her; the one where he goes to the farm. Now, I had seen this particular video a number of times, but this time, I “heard” it. When Spot sees the mama pig and her piglets, Spot’s mom (I think) says, “Look at the Piglets-comma-Spot!” That’s where my daughter got the term – she heard, “Look at the Piglet Spots.” Of course, this is included in one of our photo albums.

Life Belongs in a Photo Album – Do you include the “Darnedest Things” that the children in your life say?

I came across this TED talk by Amanda Palmer the other day via a facebook post. It caught my eye, because my daughter is a fan of her music. Her topic was “The art of asking.” I highly recommend you give it a listen.

It got me thinking about a related topic and that is “Receiving Graciously.” Here’s the thing: when you don’t accept a gift, whether it is tangible (you know, like it comes in a box with a bow,) or it is intangible (like, “your hair looks fabulous,”) you are diminishing the gift and sort of dissing the giver.

So, smile…and say Thank You!

Over-Cropping?!

It’s time…time to talk about Over-Cropping in your scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking and general album-making. It’s a mistake we all make, once we get over the fear of cutting our photos in the first place (a little easier with digital scrapbooking because we know that we can go back to the original easily.) Thoughts about cropping video:

So, now you know…take a moment to look at the background of your photos and see what part of the story they might be telling.

Have you been guilty of over-cropping?