Baby Announcements

One of my favorite gifts for expecting mothers is personalized baby announcements.  Right now I am waiting to hear from one of my friends that she had her baby girl so I can finish this baby announcement made with StoryRock's Hush kit.  This kit has some adorable baby embellishments.

I made this announcement for one of my friend a few months ago using Ettes and Comany's My ABC Book.  I love this kit because it is so versatile.

While I was making these, I palyed around with a framed poem/picture gift.  This one is a simple layout using the pink orleans paper from MMS and the dotted brown ribbon and brown bow.  I like the idea, even though I'm not sure this is the layout I like.

The next time one fo your friends has an exciting event coming up, consider making a personalized card for the occasion.  It makes a great gift!

Happy Scraping!
Sarah

Do you have a backup plan?

Recently a number of articles have tickled my mind regarding back-up plans.  The first article I read discussed creating an emergency plan for your family in the event cell phones do not work and the second article was about this generation being "the lost generation" because we have so little printed material about our current day and age (i.e. everything is electronic).  Both article addressed two very different things, and yet both were focused on the dependecy our society has on eletronic recording keeping and coorespondence.  The articles have really brought to my attention though that I want to have a backup plan that is not reliant on technology -- and when it comes to my photos--I want to have some printed material to leave my children.  So I've created a back up paln for my scrapbooks and photos.  I back up photos onto an external harddrive regularly, I also upload photos to flickr for an offsite backup and I print my scrapbook pages regularl, so that I can share with others my photos and memories and they aren't just stored electronically.  So far--it's working...Do you have a back-up plan?

Been Behind in posting

I'm not sure what took me down, but a bug got me in a big way.  I've been down for about ten days...Really down for the past five.  Not only did it make me sniffly, achey, stuffy, and shakey -- it zapped every ounce of energy I had.  I really wanted to share some pages out of my scrapbook that I made using some of the StoryRock's Back to School Kit.  These pages include my first scanned art pages.  I love the way they turned out and can't wait to scan more of my kids work.  I really like the simplicity of the Back to School Kit.   The lined pages are perfect to highlight school aged children, but not so busy that your pictures get lost in the pattern.

Just a little background--My mom is homeschooling my children this year.  They went to "grandma school" this summer, but when they started Kindergarten, the school switched to KinderSchool.  LOL--just symantics.

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.