Scrapbook Layout: NFL/49ers Game

Tags

football scrapbook, nfl, san francisco 49ers, scrapbook, scrapbook layout, scrapbooking, sports scrapbook, ticket scrapbook

I sat with this layout for a long time trying to get it right.

Most of the items on the layout itself were fine, I was just struggling with the headline.  Normally, I would have cut a simple headline out of one font and glued it down horizontally above the program.

Inspired by type that looks cool and awesome from other scrapbookers and on Pinterest, I decided to try something new.

And I tried and tried and tried and tried to get it to look right.  It took quite a while.

Finally, I found the fonts and figured it out.  I love how it turned out!

One key thing I learned here is that if something doesn’t seem quite right, I shouldn’t rush things.  The better idea will come to me eventually and I just need to be patient.  It’s hard sometimes when I want to just get a page finished.

Fonts: Arial, Blanch Condensed | Tools: Silhouette SD (headlines), Epson Stylus R2000 (photos) | Supplies: Epson Semigloss Photo Paper (photos) | Keepsakes Included: Game tickets and program.

I Only Make What I Need

Tags

photo printing, scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking supplies

I often wonder how other scrapbookers can put together layouts so quickly when it takes me days to finish one.

I finally realized my process is very different and part of it has to do with the way I handle supplies and photos:

I only print and cut what I need at the time I need it.

It’s interesting to see how others work.  It clicked for me when I saw this post about cutting lots of letters out on the Silhouette.  Scrapbookers will often spend time putting together embellishments to access later.

The same goes for printing photos.  Other scrapbookers will often send large sets of photos to print, will store them, and then will go through the printed photos and select which ones to use for a layout.  This is a great post from Simple Scrapper about scrapbooking roadtrips.  I noticed that it suggests printing the photos first and then figuring out the layouts second.

I only print photos after I decide to use them on a layout.  I only print what I need.  There’s an argument to be made that printing at home is more expensive than ordering prints.  However, I don’t print excessively and only print when I’m sure the photo is exactly what I want.

I don’t like having extra things around.  I like the feeling that I’m only cutting up what I need, only printing what I need.  It may take me longer to make an individual page, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time acquiring or refining supplies.  I wait for the page and the supplies to speak to me.

My way isn’t necessarily better, it’s just different.

I sometimes think when reading Danielle’s blog that I’m not that Eco friendly.  Maybe I am and I just don’t know it!

A Wedding with My Cell Phone

Tags

cell phone pictures, wedding, wedding pictures, wedding with cell phone

I went to a wedding recently and decided to take only my cell phone.  The truth is I didn’t want to carry a big purse for the DSLR, I wanted to carry a small clutch.

I see tons of people get great phone pictures and figured, what the hell, phone pictures it is!

The verdict?  Meh.  I got a couple of good photos but a bunch of them weren’t great quality as the phone doesn’t shoot well in low light.  Still, I don’t want to be that-person-who-isn’t-the-wedding-photographer running around to get pictures.  I also only really need/like a handful of pictures, not the jillion I’d take with a DSLR.  It makes me wonder whether I should carry a point-and-shoot to these things?

Ha, I can only imagine the look Mr. P would give me if I said I needed another camera.  I may have to carry around my old one.  Now to go see if it fits in my clutch . . .

Scrapbook Layout: Birthdays

Tags

birthday scrapbook, scrapbook, scrapbook layout, scrapbooking, single photo scrapbook layout

I put together bits and pieces from our birthdays in this layout.  I didn’t have much for each birthday to get it’s own page.  This is an example of my first rule of scrapbooking winning out: I had these keepsakes and wanted to capture the memory, so I needed to come up with a creative way to do it.

Now I’m realizing that for many subsequent years, I didn’t collect any birthday bits at all.  Funny how that works.

I put together the baseball stuff from Mr. P’s birthday and the card that came with the flowers I got.

I experimented with using negative space and cut little squares showing each of our ages and then added a headline.

Fonts: Cafe Rojo (numbers) ClementePDam (headline)| Tools: Silhouette SD (headlines), Epson Stylus R2000 (photo).

I Own a Gocco Machine!

Tags

gocco, gocco machine

This is so freaking exciting.  I’ve been sitting on this for a week without telling you guys.

I managed to buy a Gocco machine!

For the uninitiated, a Gocco machine is a screen printing machine for paper.  Goccos were made by a Japanese company but were discontinued a few years ago.  I first read about them on Elise’s blog here and here.

Though they were discontinued, Gocco machines have a bit of a cult following in the craft community.  There are lots of Gocco-made items for sale on Etsy and there are websites that still sell Gocco inks and other supplies.

Gocco sets go for around $200 on eBay, give or take.  I’ve always wanted to try Gocco, but, ummmm, I’m not paying that much for something I’ve never tried.

Last week, my local store, the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, posted that they were selling a Gocco machine for $12.  Twelve. Dollars.  It came in the original box with the manuals and all the parts.  For twelve dollars.

I work about an hour from the store and wouldn’t be able to get there until right before it closed.*  Surely, I thought, there’s no way that the Gocco will still be there by the time I get there.  Someone will totally snap this up.

Thanks to a lot of traffic and parking karma, I got to the store 30 minutes before it closed.  I walked in and there it was.  Still for sale.  I couldn’t believe it.

I happily carried it home.  It came with a bunch of ink but no bulbs or screens.  I can get those online, so no worries.

I really have no idea where to start with it and will think hard about a project before I purchase any supplies.

For more information about Gocco, visit this awesome Save Gocco page.

*wherein I told Mr. P he was going to have to take the bus home because I was on a mission and couldn’t pick him up at the train station.  He had no idea what a Gocco was but knew better than to ask questions.  Priorities.

Scrapook Layout: Nurse Pinning Ceremony

Tags

scrapbook, scrapbooking, single photo scrapbook layout

This super duper simple layout is from my sister’s first nurse pinning ceremony.

I actually had the invitation and a copy of the program.  I thought about it for a long time and decided to pick one thing.  Yes, including keepsakes is my priority but it doesn’t mean I have to glue down every last thing I save.

I included a small single photo.  My pictures from this event were few and they were not good.  The event was in a dark theater and it was many moons 3 or 4 cameras ago (can’t remember exactly).

I added a headline and then hand wrote my thoughts on the day and my sister’s achievement.

I know, we’re rocketing back and forth from layouts chock full of stuff to painfully simple!

Font: Lavanderia | Tools: Silhouette SD (headlines), Epson Stylus R2000 (photo)

Remembering My Priorities

Tags

scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking priorities

I was chatting with commenters last week about my page designs and it got me thinking about what’s important to me as a scrapbooker.

These are my priorities, in order:

1. Getting the Memories on the Page and Showcasing Them.  Above all, my scrapbook is about the memories.  The subject dictates how the page is designed.  I don’t start a design because I want to use a new product, I start a design in order to capture a memory.  Everything must work around that.

2. Coming Up with a Cool Design.  Yes, getting the memories on the page is the most important, but coming up with a design is one of the reasons why this is a hobby. I really like playing with paper and gluing it down.  It’s one of the reasons why I’m not a digital scrapbooker – I love playing with paper.

3. Getting it Done / Time.  I want to get more stuff scrapbooked as quickly as I can.  But, I won’t skip scrapbooking something because it’s a huge set of memories that will take forever (like my Wedding Scrapbook!).  I won’t hurriedly glue stuff to a page if the design isn’t working.

4. Everything else.  All the other fun stuff goes here.  I love looking at new papers and using them in my layouts, but only if rules 1-3 are satisfied first.  If the item doesn’t work with the memory or design, I’m not using it no matter how much I want to.

Example: if I’m scrapbooking something and I can’t figure out how to get the design to work with the keepsakes, such as ticket stubs or a program, I will change the design or wait for a good idea to come to me.  The keepsakes stay, they are the priority.  I should not remove them from the page for the sake of the design.  If it takes me a while to get it right, that’s okay.

So this is a blueprint of sorts of how my mind works when scrapbooking   I can’t say that I will stick to the rules 100% of the time, but I will use this as a guide for myself.

Speaking of “sticking to the rules,” I just found out while writing this post that What Not to Wear is ending after 10 seasons.  Sad face.  I’m going to have to stick with Stitch Fix to retool my wardrobe then.

Baseball Layouts

Tags

baseball scrapbook, multi-photo scrapbook layout, san francisco giants, scrapbook, scrapbooking, sports scrapbook

Ah, my favorite boys of summer, the San Francisco Giants.

I took all my Giants-related stuff for that year and put it together on two pages.

It’s a mix of tickets, other keepsakes and photos together to make one unit.

The left page has tickets and keepsakes from Until There’s a Cure day at the ballpark.  The Giants were the first professional sports team to host an AIDS benefit game and have been doing so annually since 1994.

Also on the left is a picture of the front of the ballpark.  The park has been through many name changes, so I wanted to capture what the name of the park was at that time.

The right page has tickets and items from when Barry Bonds hit his 700th home run (hint: we were there!).  I added some text on the bottom right of the page to tell the story of that game.

I love sports layouts, it’s so easy to pick a color scheme!

Fonts: Chunk Five (headlines), Calibri (body text) | Tools: Silhouette SD (headlines), Epson Stylus R2000 (photos)

San Francisco Skyline Layout

Tags

san francisco scrapbook, scrapbook, scrapbooking, single photo scrapbook layout

I’m starting to get more practice with single-photo layouts and I really love them.  It gives me a chance to keep the design really simple!

I printed the picture 4×6, added some printed text beneath, then capped it on each end with some dark green cardstock.

I experimented with putting the headline directly on the photo like Cathy Zielske tends to do, but I couldn’t get it to look right to me.

What do you think?  I love it!

Font: Century Gothic

The Value of Information

Tags

library science, memory keeping, mlis, scrapbook, scrapbooking

In my ever-abundant spare time, I moonlight as a master’s student.

Yep, I’m getting a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science.  I’m focusing on archives and information organization.  I’m a little over halfway done with  my coursework.

What does this have to do with memory keeping?  Everything, actually.

It’s really interesting to see how my experience as a memory keeper affects my opinions on information management issues.  Conversely, I’m learning a lot of concepts that really apply to scrapbooking.

Here is something I learned in my Records Management class this semester:

The value of information is directly related to its accessibility. 

I couldn’t agree more.  Consider photos locked away on your phone or hard drive.  Keepsakes in a closet.  They mean so much more if people can look at them.

On that note, I just finished my finals for this semester.  I can’t wait to have more time to scrapbook!