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.

8 months old!!!

Yesterday Levi turned eight months old!!! Can you believe it? Guess what he did on his 8 month birthday...Anyone? He pulled himself to standing!!!! AND he dropped like a rock as soon as it happened. Poor baby cried like a baby for ten minutes after that thug. He did a lot last month...first rolling over, first sitting, first getting into sitting be himself, and some standing on the side of the bed. He also started getting into crawl stance. Won't be long until he's mobile.

On to the twins. I finally decided (this Monday) that I didn't want them foing to school. Checked with the school and found out they HAVE to go to kindergarten at their age unless they are tested for an IEP. So public school was out...CRUD. So we started looking at private options. I talked to mom and then she gave me the greatest solution. She agreed to home school them...for a some sum of money. AWESOME!! I will tell them tonight. They are going to be SO excited. hope it works well. So, that's my big news for today. More later....Maybe.

So much has happened.

Well let's start with this week. The lil' bug is almost crawling and started going from laying to sitting this week. He gets that devilish grin when he does...Simply adorable.

The twins are exhausted. They spent last weekend with Jonathan's kids at my mom's house and haven't recovered yet. They ate sugar like it was going extinct, played late into the naights and hard all day. They are really beat.

I took them bowling today. We had a balast. Their first real bowling experience. It was really awesome to spend time with just them. i got 108---with bumper pads. The kids had highs of 72 and 86!! I love bumper pads though...think I should get them every time.

Work's been crazy. Gearing up for registration. Think it should go well. Been busy all around, it seems. More later. I am beat.