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?

It’s OK to be a little out of order

I’ve been scrapbooking/photo album making for a lot of years. When I first started I had some “rigid” ideas about what you had to do – not so much from a creative standpoint, but about what should be included and in what order.

Rigid Rule #1: Everything needs to be in chronological order.

I DO have the sort of brain that likes to do this…and if the story you are trying to tell needs to be in order, then it does need to be chronological. Once I accidentally put some photos out of order and it was too difficult to fix it, so I left it – but felt compelled to put a note in the album…egads, I needed to lighten up!

Flash forward a few years and I’m able to use a photo of me from a different time to help tell the story. In the digital scrapbook page above, I wanted to share some of my personality – my organized self – I had pictures of my organized and labeled cabinet and spice rack, but wanted to add a picture of me. So, (hold on to your hats), I used a picture from December 2009, on my page for March 2010.

There are times when you have no way of knowing the dates/times a photo was taken. Or, maybe you don’t have the time to take your mountains of photos and get them into order – even if you are hiring someone like me to help you sort, it still takes time and you might be better served by pulling out a pile of photos from your stack and seeing what story they tell you.

Does this give you some relief?

Stay tuned for Breaking the Rules: Rigid Rule #2…

Bye, bye Bug…

I know, I know, I keep harping on this point – Life Belongs in a Photo Album, whether it is a scrapbook, photobook, easy breezy pocket style album. So, when it came time for my husband to give up his little bug (decided the repairs were too much for the value of the car), I had to, of course scrapbook it. (In my case, I created a 12×12 digital scrapbook page, had it printed, then place it in a standard scrapbook photo album – keeps my options open.)

I still don’t get why he was so sentimental about this car. His first car was a brand new Pickup – every teenage boy’s dream back in the day; mine was a used Toyota Corona (which I loved and called Chuckie.) I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it is impractical and his high school friend had one – there must be some story there that he’s not sharing with me…

So, the reason this belongs in our photo album, is not just the historical fact that we owned a Volkswagen Beetle, but the fact that my husband was attached to that car.

Have you ever been attached to a car?

What inspires you?