Tschüss!

Good news, though.  I’m finally getting excited about making Christmas season layouts.  Bad news?  That means that I’ve created ten pages for Christmas 2007.  Yes.  I said ten.  Oh well, maybe January will be light on pages.

So, yeah, here’s the latest layouts…

You think I like that paper?  Me too.   

The first four pages are 2-page layouts and the last two are the other page in a 2-pager where I’d already shared the first completed page.  I really do find it difficult to make a single stand-alone page and almost impossible to do a page with only a single photo.  Surprising then that there are two pages today that come close to being single-photo layouts.  Now, here are two layouts that will be side-by-side in my album.  Not a two-pager but I think I’ve coordinated them as well as I can given the disparate subject matter.

The playground layout is one I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  My son got a Fisher-Price camera a couple of years ago and he takes it to school occasionally, bringing home a bunch of hilarious snapshots of his friends (and he even turns it on himself once in a while!)  They’re not the best or clearest shots but the camera has survived even “Captain Destructo” and the images are as good as those he manages with my better cameras. 

In the spirit of tomorrow’s holiday, I’m going to give away one of my favorite templates.  Happy Thanksgiving!  (Okay, I lost my internet before I could post this, so today’s the holiday.)

Click image for link to 4shared.

Be sure to come back and show me what you make with it!

Tschüss!

I’d hoped to have my European album completed and out for printing but I’m having to adjust my goals a bit.  I’ve had too many delays - getting caught up in politics and the election, losing several pages to an EHD accident, missing journaling from my teen, finding additional disks of photos from friends - and I know I’ll never be happy with the results if I rush it and skip the pages that have presented themselves to my imagination.  So, I’m adjusting my expectations and planning - as several ladies have suggested - several volumes chronicling our adventures in Europe.

Also, I just got the e-mail from Adobe about their new student store where you can buy Photoshop CS4 Extended – Student Edition and other pieces of software at a greatly reduced price, if you qualify.  I thought some might be interested since I know many of my readers are either in school or have school-age children at home.  I’ll probably use this to upgrade to CS4 from my current CS2 - after I can afford a new computer.

Despite the imminence of our departure and everything that we’re trying to pack into these last days, I’m still scrapping and here’s a few of the most recent pages.

I dug through so many old folders to find what I needed to complete these pages that I felt I couldn’t even to begin to enumerate the credits.   I’ll try, though, because much of what I used was freebies provided by very generous people on the web. I got that fabulous candy cane from Karah Fredericks (I told her I couldn’t wait to use it!), and background papers came from WaterLO Project, Ellie Lash, Miss Mint and ScrapIdea.  Elements came from Weeds & Wildflowers new JollyHolly, my own Christmas Baking series, Miss Mint, ScrapKut (alpha), Ilona Havenaar and Peta Boardman. Templates are by Mushy, Ditters Design and Pattie Knox.

Tschüss!

So, Americans, have you been scrapping?  Or have you been caught up in the Presidential Election drama?  I confess, I’ve been thoroughly engaged by this year’s campaign and have fallen behind in all my other pursuits.  But I still have managed to complete a few layouts.  I’m still waiting on my teen to finish another three (and could wait until the “cows come home” I suppose) but these 7 pages are done and ready to be included in my project.

So, what do you think?  Can I scrap another year in the next two months?  Yeah, I’ve got my doubts, too.  I may just have to take the advice I’ve gotten to break it up into a few volumes. 

Tschüss!

Tschüss!

This election has stirred people to action in a way that I’ve never seen before and that’s exciting but also dismaying.  I understand the benefit of “going negative” in a campaign because, when done in a truthful manner, it highlights differences between the candidates.  I’m sure you know where that went wrong. 

But now, I’m seeing a wave of hatred for Obama that stems from a very ugly place.  Attacks are hurled, rumors are repeated and embellished and none of those making the charge are staying around to hear a response.  It’s like carpet-bombing.  If you drop enough bombs, they’ll never be able to put out all the fires.

So, all this to say I’m supporting Senator Barack Obama in his bid for the Presidency.  I appreciate the thoughtful consideration he gives to each question he’s asked and I applaud his grace under pressure.  I admire his brilliant mind and can’t wait to see him put it to the task of making positive change in our country.

I’m not going to lay out his platform - there are better sources than me for learning about the details - but I assure you I’ve done the research and I’m not making this decision blindly.  So now, for a fun take on “Getting Out the Vote”, I show you Big Hit Buda performing “Elect Obama.” 

And, just to prove that I haven’t fallen into a deep pit of political discourse and forgotten my project - I’ve broken 100!

It’s true.  I’ve completed - all the way down to the journaling - 100 pages of my album project.  Sadly, with very few exceptions, I’m only up to July 2007.  And those darn kids just keep doing things and growing and saying stuff that makes me want to write it down for a layout.

My 9-year-old daughter asked the other night if she could make pages, too, and it broke my heart to tell her that I couldn’t teach her yet.  Her computer isn’t capable of running Photoshop and I can’t keep up my pace while teaching her the basics.  I’m happy that she’s interested, though.  She loves the pages about her and her friends and never seems to tire of my incessant picture-taking.  Sometimes I think she’s destined for fame.

The left page of the Baltic Sea layout is just a revamped page that I used in my daughter’s album but I included it because of how it now coordinates with the right page.  Like how I reused that template?  That one’s getting a real workout.  I think I’ve used it on 4 pages in this album, already.  Also, the cluster on the second page accounts for about five of the designers listed in credits.  I had to pull from all over the place!

Credits:  ON Designs, Seni, Amanda Rockwell, GinaMaria, Ztampf, Elegant Wordart, BrenTBoone, Yin, Jofia Devoe, Terri Martin, Raspberry Road and TSD.

A few mornings ago we awoke to a heavy fog and I was so excited.  I’d been wanting to get out and photograph the local flora at the Grosser Garten just a short walk away from the kids’ school and fog just added a little something “extra.”  I grabbed my camera and, after a quick stop for a kafee and croissant, headed into the gloom of the fog. 

It was magical.  I mean it.  I could see the breeze nudging the fog about as the sun vainly tried to burn it off.  Joggers and cyclists - some heading to work - appeared and disappeared like phantoms.  I’m not perfectly satisfied with my photos because I don’t think they quite captured the mystery but they’re my best work with fog to date and I’m hopeful that I’ll only get better.

In other news, I’ve been scrapping.  I’ve got three pages done that are awaiting the journaling. My daughter is helping me recover it because my EHD loss included many layouts for my in-law’s album that I intended to just re-work a bit before adding to our book.  Instead, I’m starting over and I’ve lost all the research I did for some of the more historical journaling.  So, I won’t be sharing those pages today but I’ve still got a few ready to go:

Like I said, some are pretty much a “scraplift” of my previous layouts, though I did have to do all the work again and it’s almost harder the second time around.  One thing that helped, though, is that I’ve gotten so much more familiar with Photoshop since I first scrapped these subjects so I had a few shortcuts up my sleeve.

Tschüss!

Credits: TADA, DTope, Sue Cummings, Meredith Fenwick, Lindsey Jane, GinaMaria, Carla Gibson, DittersDoodles and MCO.

I’m a big fan of ScanCafe’s service even though I haven’t been able to take advantage of it as of yet.  I’ve done all the research and a couple of my readers commented on a previous post about the company that they’d been completely thrilled with the outcome when they’d used it.  Thrilled.  Not just satisfied.

I’m not a negative-scanning rookie, either.  I took a little over 100 negative images to a local photo store to have them scanned to disk and the final bill was 150 Euro.  I almost gagged at the cost and decided to find a more cost-effective method before doing that again.

I considered the possibility of scanning myself but the really great negative scanners are incredibly expensive and it would require that I scan for everyone I know (and charge them) in order to make the purchase cost-effective.

Enter ScanCafe.

They do way more than most of their competitor’s do and they do it at a lower cost.  Low enough that I’m preparing my thousands of negatives for transport to them as soon as I land on U.S. soil.  (Okay, not immediately, because we land in Los Angeles before flying to Phoenix.)

Here’s the best part.  They’ll scan everything you send but you get to preview the scans and reject up to 50% of the images.  They do the work first and then let you decide you don’t want them.  That makes their exceptionally low prices worth even more, in my opinion.

So, here’s the point of my posting about ScanCafe today.  They’ve got a rare sale going on and it’s for a very short time so you need to get over there right away and get your order started before the 30th of this month.  Don’t miss out on this opportunity to save time and money.

To take advantage of this savings special, just enter this code during checkout: September2008

Tschüss!

So, what do you do when this happens to you?  Do you just move on to another folder?  Pick a layout from your favorite gallery and “lift” it? Or trudge through and make the page even if you don’t “feel” it?

Since I’m putting together a chronological album and I like to see the immediate results of the expansion and organization, I’ve been doing the latter - trudging through - and it’s made it a little harder to keep going.  In fact, I find myself returning to some of those uninspired layouts and changing background papers, adding, subtracting or changing elements and even editing the journaling.  I’ve also found that some of those pages that I’d already completed (the ones that grabbed my attention and inspired me to create) have to be adjusted because I don’t want them to “clash” with their companion pages in the album.  I can’t stand the idea of having a “girly” page next to a “grunge” page and have gone to great lengths to coordinate pages that will lay side-by-side in my album.

Anyway, all this thinking got me to wondering why it matters to me at all.  I mean, growing up, we never had much in the way of photo albums.  There was my baby album - kept in a dresser drawer in my mother’s room and rarely taken out - and one other magnetic album with a few random shots per year scattered through the pages.  All the rest of our photos (not many, sadly) lay haphazardly stacked in a built-in cabinet in our living room alongside archived bank statements, check registers and utility bills. 

And yet, when I got my first Kodak Instamatic camera, I started creating the first of my “scrapbooks.”  These were put together using cheap, magnetic albums that almost immediately began the work of yellowing my photos and degrading the ticket stubs and other bits of memorabilia but they still did the job of documenting my life as I saw it. Unfortunately, they were all lost during my college years - a large box of albums and keepsakes was left in the truck of a girl I didn’t know who gave me a ride home at the end of the summer (Wow! I remembered the bag of geodes but forgot to get the box filled with precious memories. DOH!)

Gone are the school photos of friends from grade school and blurry shots of my pals goofing off for the camera.  Gone also are the notes I wrote, the addresses I kept, the notes from my friends.

So, knowing how fragile those keepsakes and memories were, I want to make sure my kids don’t end up with the same legacy.  If that means “trudging” through layouts that I don’t feel like making, then that’s what I’ll do because it’s my job as a mom.  I’m the keeper of the memories - the Memory Keeper.

And just to show that I’ve still been plugging away, despite the ennui…

Tschüss!

Credits:  Gina Miller, Michelle Coleman, Meredith Fenwick, Vickie Stegall, Kelly Mize, GinaMaria, Vicki Parker, MissTiina, SDesigns, Digitreats, Natali, Katie Pertiet, Lalalime, Terri Martin, Sue Cummings, MissVivi, Misty Cato and inspiration from Anna Aspnes.

P.S.  Don’t forget to check out Donnie Hoyle in “You Suck at Photoshop”  Episodes #16 and #17 are up now.  (Yeah, I’ve been slacking in my reminder duties…)

I’m going to blame the head cold because I honestly tried.  I opened an appropriately-sized page, added some photos, browsed my supplies and nodded off to sleep.  I tried that for about 12 hours and never got far enough to call it a page.  So I’m feeling better and this is the result:

Nothing too special.  I dug deep into my stash to finish these and found stuff I forgot I had (and stuff that wasn’t identified, either.)  I’ve decided that I’m not going to stress over credits because I’m not on a CT, I’m not selling this stuff and I’m just too forgetful to keep track - especially when I throw something on the page, take it off, put it back on then replace it with something by another designer.  I just can’t get it straight.  So my bare-bones credits are all I can manage and I won’t apologize for it.

Tschüss!

Credits: (I did all the real work!) FeiFei, KHadfield, CRD, Yin, MBennet, TADA, Shabby Princess, Katie Pertiet, Ztampf!, Redju, GinaMaria.

I sat down and counted this morning and I’ve got 71 events in my external hard drive to document.  Seventy-one.  And that’s not counting about 10 disks of pictures of trips and activities they’ve participated in without me, given to me by my kids’ schools and friends.  It also doesn’t account for the upcoming events like the circus that both of my younger kids will be performing in at the end of September - a real circus!

So, I’ve been busy and wanted to share.  Three of my layouts were just quick-pages because I found it incredibly difficult to get in the Christmas spirit in August.

That makes 29 pages in less than a month.  A pace I’ll have to more than double if I’m to complete my family album before the end of the year.  Any suggestions?

Also, does anyone know which photobook printers accommodate more than 100 pages?  I’ve already completed about 66 pages and, with over 70 more to come, this is shaping up to be a really big book.

I look forward to your suggestions!

Tschüss!

Credits:  I’m not sure of everything because I was in a frenzy of activity but I used  GinaMaria (my own stuff), SMJ, MBennet, Mrs. Wresh, Weeds & Wildflowers, Shabby Princess, TADA, Debra Tope and JHD.

As I mentioned last time, my youngest is officially in school now so I commemorated the milestone with a page.  I also covered the opening of our local park’s new playground, our visit this summer to the Saurier Park and a recent incident between my girls.

The craziest part?  Everything, with the exception of tools for wearing and tearing the papers, was made from freebies or inexpensive grab bags.  Really.

Tschüss!

Credits:  TMartin & NComelab, DTope & KChristensen, Anna Aspnes, SBS worn overlays, Micheline Martin, GinaMaria, LuvFromIndia, Marcie Reckinger, VBrown & LBratcher, Tracey Ann Designs, Fernlili, Raspberry Road, PKnox.  Charm and cadre are not identified but both were freebies downloaded over a year ago.

Anyway, the kids started school on Monday and it was Mitchell’s first day.  In Germany, entering the First Grade is a BIG.DEAL.  There are festivals.  There are parties.  There are gifts.  He received zuckertuten from our neighbors, friends, his kindergarten, his school and, of course, us.  A zuckertute is a cardboard cone filled with treats and school supplies (zucker means sugar, so you probably get the idea) and it’s like Halloween without the begging.

So Monday was the first day and he came home excited and ready to return the next day.  It’s Friday and he’s already saying he wants to drop out.  It’s not the all-day party he was expecting.  He has to learn stuff.  He spelled “monkey” the first day (in German, of course, not English but I didn’t think all of you would understand “Affe“) and the teacher’s name the second day.  He’s all dried up and can’t learn another thing.

So, while I left my kids in this dungeon of torture, I scrapped my most recent trip to Berlin.  You know.  The one where I got to hear Barack Obama speak and shake his hand.  It was a surprisingly hard layout to get right.  The day was split into two distinct activities but I wanted them to blend into a cohesive layout.  I don’t know if I captured exactly what I wanted to but the journaling should make up for any design flaws.

I also scrapped a visit to Buchenwald.  I’ve visited twice, once in 2007 and again last June.  It’s a concentration camp but not one that bombards visitors with explicit visual displays so we were able to bring Mitchell along on our second visit.  I was amazed at how much he understood about the camp without being told - and a little scared.  I explained the prisoner concept and told him about the work crews but he explained the ovens and wall hooks.  It was chilling, to say the least.

So, my Family/Europe album is a little bit closer to being complete (not by half, I’m sure but I’ve got to keep plugging along) and I’m off on another Friday Tour this afternoon.  More to scrap…

Tschüss!

Credits: Krys Hart, Shabby Princess, TADA, Marcie Reckinger and GinaMaria.