For Crying Out Loud!

I like that title! Ha!

So tonight I had a revelation about why I was in the scrapbooking slump. Basically what I think happened was that I felt like I was trapped in some scrapbooking "box". The box that has labels on the side such as:

You must put more than one picture on each page!

You must conserve your paper and supplies!

Be careful what pictures you scrapbook, because you may run out of pictures! (Ha!)

I felt this way when doing "Fun In the Sun". I felt like I had to shove as many pictures of that moment in time onto one page.

There is nothing wrong with scrapbooking just one picture. And there's also nothing wrong with scrapbooking a collage of pictures. I want to encourage all who read this and even myself to do what YOU like! If you don't do what you like, you will not be satisfied. That goes with any hobby and a lot of things in life.

So what am I going to do?

*I'm going to scrapbook one picture on a page whenever I feel like it, even if I end up with 20 albums each year.

*I'm going to waste paper (ha!).

*I'm going to use up all of my supplies and buy more (with money saved of course).

*I'm going to use glitter and LOTS of it! (that's just an extra--just for fun!)

Come on, go scrapbook the way YOU like to!

March Class (in February)

The 3rd scrapbooking class at the local scrapbooking store was last weekend, in the middle of a winter storm, nonetheless. I guess you know you are a dedicated scrapbooker (or crazy!) when you walk in the middle of a storm, just to scrapbook. I love it!

I admit, I am not very fond of the color of the background paper. But that's ok because I like how it turned out and I like the color combination. It helps me get out of my color box! I think I'll end up adding more to this page later, but for now this is what I have.

Nettie did a great job instructing the class! Go Nettie! She provided the quote printed on a white strip of paper.


This is a page of my sister in law, Jessica.

100% ME

I started this page a few days ago and finally finished it today. The pictures are darker than they are supposed to be because of our printer running out of certain ink colors. Ooops!

Here's an upclose picture of the flower. I put little rhinestones on the flower center.

Fun in the sun

Ok, so this is not my most favorite page in the world. I think it's way too busy. I loved the paper with all of the "circles", but I think I needed to use it differently. But you know what? Scrapbooking is something I allow myself to relax in (yes, I have to allow myself sometimes--ha!). I don't have to do everything perfectly. I'm going to have days where I really like what I make and then days where I frown and think, "What was I thinking?" I'm going to enjoy this hobby thoroughly...no matter what comes out of it.


I have some pretty funny siblings. Click on page to see more silly detail. Ha!

Because I love glitter, I *love* two-way glue pens. I drew this flourish myself with the pen and poured glitter over it. Honestly, glitter made this page better for me! Haha! (Glitter makes everything better...well, not for everyone) Haha!

These are some epoxy embellishments. I put them over white paper and trimmed to get a better view of it since it wouldn't have been very eye-catching if I would have put it directly on the page.

Slump

I know, I know... I haven't posted anything for a few days. I'm in a slump. I scrapbooked a page the other day, but I didn't think it turned out that great, so I decided it was time for a break. I didn't want to scrapbook just for the sake of scrapbooking. I would rather scrapbook when I am feeling creative and excited about it. Now, don't get me wrong, I am ALWAYS excited about scrapbooking, but what I am talking about is that my mind is filled with lots of ideas and this craving to sit down and scrap, scrap, scrap. It's ok to take a break! In the meantime I am enjoying knitting and preparing for a stamp workshop this weekend.

P.S. Check out the March issue of Creating Keepsakes. There aren't a lot of ideas, but there is a lot of information about different products. I think it's full of great information!

Scrapbooking changes

I thought it would be neat to show how changes take place in scrapbooking over the years. These are some pages from around February of the last 4 years. I know my style and way of scrapbooking has changed over the years. It even changes monthly, weekly, and daily sometimes. I say, "Go with the flow!"


2003:
Layering, stamping on background

2004:
Layer, stamping on background, coloring

2005:
stamping, layering, more embellishments

2006:
No layering, flowers, ribbon, patterned paper, stamping around photos

More Love, More Flowers!

Some of you know of my flower obsession...

These are all Prima flowers.

When there is something you like to use for scrapbooking (or making cards), then go for it!


There's a flower missing from this pack. It found a home on a page.

The same for this missing flower.

I really liked these felt flowers!

These are felt flowers too!

Brown and black flowers--who would have known? Ha!

New stuff

These are a few things I recently purchased.


Rhinestones are super fun! I was happy to find a pack with a lot of them, since I like to use them a lot.

These are interesting flowers. They are glossy coated. I was excited to find orange flowers!

Page

The sun was shining today! That can be a rare occurence, so I printed some pictures and ran up to the loft. Some items I ordered from twopeasinabucket.com came yesterday and I really wanted to put them to good use.



Looking at this page (which I scanned in instead of taking a picture of) I think it needs a title in pink or white at the bottom left corner.

I wanted to scrapbook today, but for some reason I wasn't feeling very creative. So I just put together some plans to work on later.

Turquoise

This digital page was fun. One thing I appreciate about digital scrapbooking is that you can create any title you want. I love letters and titles and sometimes I get stuck in that area with traditional scrapbooking. With this title I used the water bottle for the letters. My second choice would be making the letters solid black. It's fun to do different things. I didn't check my journaling for typos. Oops! I hope there aren't any mistakes...but if so, I can always fix them.

This Moment

I guess I was in a green mood today. Ha!

My scanner is becoming a good friend of mine. *smile* The background on the left is fabric I scanned. The buttons and flowers were also scanned.

Mine

These embellishments are fun! This digi paper is also from Scrap Girls.



I like all of these colors together. At the last scrapbooking class, Nettie shared with all of us something Ali Edwards (Creating Keepsakes) shared with her. It's about color: everyone has different color combinations that they like. What colors look good to you are good! What are your favorite scrapbooking color combinations, or with anything in life? Mine are orange, brown, red, pink, green, black, and turquoise.

Happy V-day (early)

Needed to let out some stress...so I scrapbooked. Ha!



Most of this is from a free kit from Scrap Girls through Creating Keepsakes (http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/mag/article.ihtml?index_field=2084).

Grand Canyon

Hubby and I went on a trip to the Grand Canyon and other places in Arizona/Utah this past summer. I am in the beginning stages of creating a scrapbook with the pictures. It's a bit of a challenge with about 2,000 pictures to choose from. It's hard to pick and choose. The album I have for it is by Scrapworks and it's called An-tho-lo-gie. (spelling?) It's a special album with pages that you can just slide pictures like 4x6's into the page protectors. So I'm not going to be scrapbooking every picture. Whew!


This is a pretty simple page, which my hubby loves. He likes the simple pages; I do too, but with the crazy scrapbooking mood I have been in lately, it's hard to pull back the reigns of complexity. I decided to try to put in both of what we like. He really liked this one!

Turning some of the photos into black & white helps change things up a bit.

This is the first page of the album. One thing I really appreciate about digital scrapbooking is taking a photo and blowing it up big for the background.

First Page!

This was the very VERY first page I scrapbooked! I started out with Creative Memories, but even then I had a hard time staying in the "box". I think I may scan some older pages to show how our scrapbooking changes over time.



This page is dated December of 1998. I think I actually made the page around February of 1999.
Pictured from left to right is: my friend Calun, my friend/sister-in-law Mikaela, Me, and my friend Sarah.

Another hmmm...

This is the page I was working on previous to the one below. This one isn't complete either.

Hmmm...

I'm not totally sure what to think of this one. I'm having one of those moments of not feeling very creative. This page isn't complete, nor do I know if this is the one I will stick with, but I wanted to share just because.

Amanda's Page

Can I (for a moment) say how proud I am of my little sister Amanda? I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this. I was just too excited to keep this all to myself. I'm a proud sister! I believe this is the first page she's ever created! Way to go Amanda!

Free

I had to laugh when Quent walked by and only saw the one word I had put on the page so far. It was "FREE". But now it's a finished product. (I had to close this the first time I tried to post this since I realized I forgot to add the drop shadows.)

And again, I must give credit to where credit is due (http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/pg.asp?set=recent&gallery=1&cmd=display&layout_id=1292582). This would be called "Scrap-lifting". And it's legal! Sometimes we all need a little inspiration and when I do I look through Creating Keepsakes magazines, go to twopeaseinabucket.com, or look at my friend's blogs or pages. There are days when I just scrapbook and I don't need anything to get my creative juices going. There are also days when I just need a little spark of inspiration. Today was one of those days when I needed major inspiration!



Even though this is scrap-lifting, I made my own digi-paper. I found a new blog on Jessica's links called Obsidian Dawn (http://www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com). There are a lot of free brushes on there. Most of these brushes are from there.

I also used scanned paper and ribbon.

Swing

This page was so much fun! There are quite a few things on this page that I scanned in, such as a pin, a button, butterfly stamp, and paper for the arrow. The butterfly stamp is something I've held onto for years. Scanning brings a whole new world of opportunities!



Here is my little sister Katie making some silly faces while she was swinging. I just love her!

I need to give credit where credit is due: http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/pg.asp?set=recent&gallery=1&cmd=display&layout_id=1292243