Who What When Where Wednesday #3

This series of challenges will help you record a little bit of your past for future generations.  Answer the questions about the topic each week!
Tell about your best friend.
Who is she/he?
Where did you meet?
How long have you been friends?
What is a favorite memory together?

Who What When Where Wednesday #1

This series of challenges will help you record a little bit of your past for future generations.  Answer the questions about the topic each week!

Tell about your birth.
Who was present?
When were you born?
Where were you born?
What’s your mother’s favorite memory of your birth?

If you want to show off your pages - upload them to our Facebook page.

My Memories Suite Tutorial: Using other people’s papers/embellishments in MMS

Have you found beautiful kits on the internet that you would like to use in My Memories Suite?  This class will review simple methods to add these kits to MMS and will also review the pros and cons of adding the kits to the software and using the kits through the Browse Feature in MMS. 

During this class we will also review ways to organize your scrapbooking supplies to optimize use of kits and to optimize the speed of the software.  Tips will vary for MMS Version 1 and 2.

My Memories Suite Tutorial: One of these things is not like the other – Personalizing Scrapbooks

Scrapbooking is an art.  Adding interest to your pages can be done by using some basic artistic methods in your layouts.  This class will review simple techniques such as identifying a focal point, using contrast, triangulation of embellishments and color selections to make your layouts more interesting.
At the conclusion of this class you will know how to:

• identify the focal point of your layout in ten seconds
• use simple techniques to add contrast to your layouts
• be able to use triangulation of embellishments to lead readers through your pages
• be equipped with several resources to create color schemes for your pages

My Memories Suite Tutorial: Creative Juices Get Flowing - Creating A Page From Scratch

Are you ready to start creating pages on your own? Are you a traditional scrapbooker and would rather scrap from scratch? Are you a hybrid scrapbooker and want to learn how to use this program in your scrapbooking?

This one hour class will explore using My Memories Suite for creating pages from scratch. Learn how to select backgrounds, choose embellishments, add text, create titles and add pictures to a layout. In addition we will review adding shadows to embellishments, adding music to your layout and viewing your album as a slide show.

My Memories Suite Tutorial: Easy-Peasy Books - Creating A Book From Templates

Creating a scrapbook doesn't have to take a lot of time. My Memories Suite has created great templates to help you quickly make full scrapbooks.

This one hour course will explore ways to complete scrapbooks using the Quick Fill Method and the Pick A Picture Method. These quick books are completely customizable, from the embellishments, background and journaling. Simple techniques such as changing the background, moving embellishments, and customizing text and fonts make each of these books unique.

My Memories Suite Tutorial: What are all these toolbars?

The first time you open your My Memories Suite software, you might intimidated by all the options you have to begin scrapping.
Don’t fret! We will review all of the options available on the toolbar’s drop down menus.  This will give you a simple over view of how to get started in MMS.

• File
• Edit
• Arrange
• Insert
• View
• Check Album
• Share Album – Briefly
• Window
• Help

Tell your story....

As I have been immersed into the scrapping world over the past nine months I have seen a reoccurring theme over and over...TELL YOUR STORY.  Scrapbooking is an art of telling your story to future generations, to your children, your grandchildren and your great grandchildren.  But a question that seems to arise as often as the theme is mentioned is, "Where should I start?"

There are some great resources available on the web to help you tell your story. You can find tons of journaling prompts, digidares that inspire you to tell stories in a creative manner, or blogs all about telling your story like Baby Love Letters.  If you want to get off the computer and hand write some of your story before you scrap it, you can also find books of all sizes about the topic of writing your memoirs.  Check out these books:  Your Words, Your Story or That's Life:Finding Scrapbook Inspiration in the Everyday.  Another great way to find inspiration is weekly challenges.  Here are two excellent challenge sites that will inspire you to tell your story: My Story Matters and the Book of Me Challenge. 

I try to tell the story of our family in my scrapbooks, but I do have some difficulty telling about myself.  Lately, however, I have been inspired to do this more from visiting with my grandmother who lost her mother at the age of six.  If something were to happen to me, I want my children to have something to remember me by, rather then making them rely on their young memories.  So, I was thrilled when I found StoryRock's Chic to chic template which is perfect for helping me tell my story.  Here are a few of the pages from my book of me. I just changed the backgrounds on the templates provided to match my color scheme and filled in the journaling.

Can you think of someone who might like to have a book about you?  Consider grabbing Chic to chic this week and whipping one up for them.  You may also consider making one of these about someone else.  Help tell their stories so they can be remembered.

Happy scrapping!  Sarah

The perfect page

As a scrapper I have learned that the perfect picture is what makes the perfect page.  Unfortunately, I often find that I don't have the perfect picture to scrap after events liek birthday parties, reunions, etc. because the photographer (often my hubby) doesn't focus on a single person or have people pose for a picture together.  He often just shoots from a distance, hoping to get the most people in the picture possible. So what can you do in this situation?  Zoom in on a single subject within the picture!! 

My Memories Suite makes this super simple. Add your photo to the page.  Zoom in on it until you think the subject in your photo will be able to be the "focus" of your picture.  Once you have zoomed in on the picture, double click on it to make sure your cropping is in the right place.  After you have double clicked on your picture, you will see the crop box on the photo.  Just drag it around until you have the "perfect shot."

Here's a page where I really had to doctor some of the pictures...They aren't perfect, but they are an improvement from my beginning pictures.  One of these days I will convince my hubby that we can get good pictures at parties, too.

BEFORE                                                    AFTER                                              

Need a page idea?

Have you ever been stumped on ideas for layouts(LO)?   I have and PageMaps has been a life saver.  This valuable resource posts LO ideas each month that are easily reproducible in My Memories Suite.  Check out their huge stock of scrap booking sketches.  I have printed off several of these and flip through them  when I need a good idea.  They offer MiniMaps, CardMaps, TagMaps and more!!  This month they are having a sale on their PageMaps book.  Check them out!!

New CT Member!

Okay...if you know me, you know I love digital scrapbooking.  If you talk to me you know I use My Memories Suite to scrapbook.  And you probably know I LOVE the product!!!  So, it is an honor for me to accept a new position as a Creative Team Member for the software!!!

This is super exciting to me.  It is another opportunity for me to continue to share with others what a great product Polaroid has made for the digi-scrapping world.  I can make beautiful pages and it took me absolutely no time learn.  Let me show you a few of my pages.

This is my very FIRST digipage.  I scrapped it using a designer's work that I found during the week I was waiting for my software to arrive. Summer Times Designs has some beautiful free packages, this is from her Courage package.  I also used a wordart from ElegantWordart2--You'll see lots of her stuff on my pages.  What do you think of my first page---Awesome for a newbie in my opinion.

After that, I decided I wanted to make an ABC book for my baby, Levi.  Thankfully MMS had the perfect package for this project. I bought My ABC Book by Ettes & Company.  It was done in a jiffy.  Here's a few pages.  Aren't they great for a first timer:-)  And this was just week one!  Wait til you see what else I've designed since then.

Reflections

I recently downloaded the Reflections freebie from My Memories Suite.  I LOVE the texture of the backgrounds provided in that kit.  I played with them a little on these LOs.

This first picture uses the blue paper from Reflections.  I matted the picture and put it on a white SHAPE circle, then added the dotted frame from the WHAT'S COOKIN' pack.  The text has two layers and a drop shadow.

The second picture uses the brown paper from Reflections.  When I added it to this LO, it was too dark to see the text, so I changed the opacity and it works great!  I believe the word art is from Bethany at ElegantWordart2.  It's from one of her memories packs at ScrapOrchard.

The third paper uses the black paper from Reflections.  I had previously done this LO and was trying to modify it with papers from reflections.  I didn't like the look of the black alone, so I added a full page shape, dark blue and then changes the opacity of the shape until I could see the texture of the page.  It looks pretty good. I had also used some embellishments on the original page that I didn't want to post online because I can't remember the designer or which pack I got it from (not an MMS designer).  So I added stars behind the pictures and edited them to have the max number of points available.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, add a star to your page from SHAPES, double click on it to edit the shape and you can adjust the number of points and the depth of the star.  It's a neat trick.

Speed scrapping

I love speed scrapping. I started doing it last Tuesday and have done about four of them. They make you think outside of the box and you get great layouts. The only drawback is their attraction. It's like a drug...Every night I want to at least check on it. LOL---The evils of scrapbooking.

My first digital scrapbook--All from scratch

I love My Memories Suite. It is the easiest thing to scrap with since they (whoever that may be) thought up scrap booking. Check out my video of my first book. A big thanks to all the designers that make the materials I use. Summer Driggs, Bethany at Elegant Wordart, Calilly and others. Sorry I can't give kudos to all personally. Please remember this is my first. Thanks!!