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This Week At Paperclipping

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Stories From Our Vacations

Do you have summer trips to immortalize? If your trips produced a lot of stories and a lot of photos, you may be feeling a mixture of excitement and overwhelm when it comes to putting it all together. This week we will begin a series of posts that will take you step-by-step through the process of gathering and making sense of all those photos and memories.

You will be able to turn the pieces of your trip into an album that tells a complete story. The first steps will begin either Wednesday night or Thursday morning and will continue into the following week.

Paperclipping Live

A wonderful part of my own vacations has been photography practice. I’ve never read the user manual of my camera and I’ve never taken a formal class. Izzy teaches me photography while we are on vacation.

For Paperclipping Live, we’ll pull out our SLR’s and talk about the basics of using the manual settings on a digital camera. Since I’ve never been a professional, and professional terms and assumptions aren’t swimming in my head, I think I’ll be able to put it into terms that the most clueless of us will understand.

We’ll start tonight at 6:30pm PST and are likely to finish by 7:30 or earlier. If you’re unsure of the time zone difference, look for your city on this website and then compare it to my city, which is Phoenix.

Remember to register for Skype (it’s free) if you’d like to call into the show to ask a question.

Scrap Embellishment Marathon

I enjoyed the comment Amy left after watching this week’s episode of Paperclipping, Create Your Own Embellishments:

Noell
loved this idea gave me an idea of my own I am going to do some “embellishment olympics” this week using your tip—–I have a lot of scraps that I am going to “cut out” and make into embellishment so I have a stash of them while I watch the olympics. Needing to give some new life to papers I haven’t used and think it might be nice to have a whole pile of these to go through when I need them. Also an excuse to get some use out of what I have so I can get my hands on some of the new stuff starting to hit the stores!!! thanx for the tip-Amy

I had my own homemade embellishment marathon on Sunday. I wanted to make embellishments for the vacation album I am working on. I had a great time with Aiden, looking for scraps and leftovers with certain characteristics that I could use to make my own Mickey Mouse silhouettes.

Whether you want to make a specific type of embellishment for a vacation album, or play with whatever comes to mind for a new store of goodies, try Amy’s idea some time when you have a chance to play. It will surprise you to realize all the great potential that is sitting in your stuff right now.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments

Paperclipping 52 – Create Your Own Embellishments

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

Paperclipping 52
Would you like to save money by making your own embellishments? Today’s episode for Premium Subscribers should give you some ideas.

If you want to learn more about the premium membership so you can have access to all of the videos, click here.

Posted in Creativity, Embellishments, Instructions, Lesson, Podcast, Scrapbooking, Tutorial, Vidcast, Video Podcast, Vlog, Vodcast | Comments

Share Your Scraps With Your Children

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

No matter how good we are at using our scraps, if we do a lot of layouts, we’ll still end up with too many of them. Periodic purging is a good thing. One way to purge is to collect a pile to share with our children or grandchildren.

For The Artistically Inclined Child

My plan last week was to find some coloring book pages and teach my kids how to do mosaic art, using a coloring book drawing as the template. Since I was running low on time, I gave Trinity a bag of scraps and said, “You can have these. Why don’t you go do some art with them?”

No direction whatsoever.

Trinity came back a while later with the lovely picture above. How creative is that? I had no idea she’d make something so wonderful. This give-and-let-go method is perfect for artistic children who can get creative with almost anything. If your child is not so inclined, you may need to offer a little more guidance, like my mosaic idea.

For The Child Who Needs Direction

For the mosaic, have the child tear the scraps into small pieces. You may want to do it with him or her if that task seems tedious. Draw or choose a lined picture, and then fill in the empty spaces with the torn patterned pieces. Provide the child with some glue and a paint brush for adhering.

For Those With No Kids

You can still share your scraps with children, even if there aren’t any shorties in your own life. Offer your scraps to an elementary or preschool teacher. My son’s preschool artwork last year was often made with scraps of paper.

Yesterday I commented on all those wonderful forgotten patterns we find while looking through our scraps. Aren’t there also other patterns in there that turn you off? Negative vibes during creative time are not a good thing.

If you find yourself cringing at certain scraps in your stash, turn them over to a little person who may have something really cool to do with them. If your pile is so big that it’s hard to look through, share the abundance with your child or grandchild and watch their imagination go to work.

Posted in Art, Creativity, Scrapbooking | Comments

We Have New Forums

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

Huge apologies for having to start over since the old forum’s code got completely corrupted.

The Bad News

We have to get accustomed to the format of the new forums. We have to register again, download our pictures, again, and all that tedious stuff. =)

The Good News

This forum software should be faster and more reliable. Once we’re used to it it should be better. Also, I copied all the topic requests, so unless you made a request during that last week before the forums broke down, your topic should be on my list.

Where To Find Them

To play in the forums, just go to…

forums.paperclipping.com

Posted in Updates | Comments

4 Tips For Loving Your Patterned Scraps

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Do you feel overwhelmed by an ever-growing amount of patterned paper scraps? It comes down to the way you look at them–whether you see those scraps as your partners or your enemies.

I love my scraps. I even love them more than my stash of brand new untouched patterned paper. It’s true! If you’d like to rekindle the romance between yourself and your discarded patterns, read on for a few tips.

1. Make the Scraps Your First Priority

Except when it’s important to use patterned paper as a 12×12 background, go to your patterned paper stash before looking at your full-sized sheets. Every time I dig through my scraps they surprise me with all their wonderful patterned potential–so many designs I forget about.

You’ll avoid unnecessary growth in scraps by using what’s already there, rather than add to the pile every time you make a layout.

2. Set Your Scraps Up For Easy Access

I used to separate my scraps in hanging file folders by color or holiday. That was back when I hated those scraps. It was a pain to put them away and it was a pain to pick them out. Then I read that Ali Edwards mixes her patterns together. Trying her method forever changed my relationship with those fun leftover pieces.

I now keep my larger scraps in a wooden serving tray and my tiny or narrow pieces in a long rectangular block candle holder. Both sit on my table, right next to me, within reach and eye-sight. I used to keep my cutting tool there, but I found it much more useful to have my scraps in reach instead.

3. Ignite New Enthusiasm With Unusual Mixing

It really is fun to dig through a pile of scraps. It’s like running into old friends. Seeing them next to other patterns you’ve never matched together will give you a new way of looking at them. You’ll discover combinations you would never have paired on purpose.

Just seeing my patterns mixed this way makes me want to make layouts. My pile of scraps is one of my actual sources for ideas and scrapbooking motivation.

4. Have Some Simple Go-To Templates

The layout at the top of this post is from one of my go-to templates. With this template I support a single photo with a group of square patterns from my scraps, and then I bridge them with a ribbon or line of some kind. Last, I add a title, a trio of embellishments (in this case, three word strips) and journal around the edge of the page. Easy but attractive.

Look through your favorite layouts and identify the ones that use smaller pieces of patterned paper. These can be templates for future layouts that you can go to again and again.

If you’ve seen your scraps as your enemy instead of your partners, try these tips. Not only will you save money and reduce waste and stress, you’ll also find a new muse full of unending inspiration.

Posted in Ali Edwards, Creativity, Scrapbook-Layout, Scrapbooking | Comments

Using A Scrap-Friendly Template

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Since so many of you like to watch the recorded videos of Paperclipping Live, I decided to embed them right into the Paperclipping blog so you don’t have to go hunting for them.

Here is last night’s show, where we used a previous scrapbook page that was great for using scraps as a template for a new one.

Posted in Design, Embellishments, Journaling, Lesson, Live Show, Live Streaming, Scrapbook-Layout, Scrapbooking | Comments

This Week At Paperclipping

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Scrap Your Scraps

This week we will focus on the subject we were going to enjoy last week but couldn’t…

Are you swimming in scraps? Some of us hate them. Some of us love ‘em. This week is all about those leftover pieces, large and small–how to store them; how to share them; how to use them.

Paperclipping Live

For our show tonight, I will share with you a template of a layout that is great for using up scraps. I’ll base tonight’s layout on that template.

You can follow along with me by creating your own with the same template. What you’ll need:

1. Two 4×6 photos.
2. One piece of 8.5×11 cardstock for your background.
3. Scraps that will work with your photos.

Note: I recommend you pin-point your story ahead of time so you can choose patterns and colors that support it. If you follow my template exactly, there is only room for a relatively small amount of journaling, so be sure to photos and a story that won’t require multiple paragraphs.

Paperclipping Live is Tuesday night at 6:30pm, PST.

If you’re unsure of the time zone difference, look for your city on this website and then compare it to my city, which is Phoenix.

Remember to register for Skype (it’s free) if you’d like to call into the show to ask a question or share something cool.

Next Week

While those in my town are returning to school, many of you still have a few more weeks and a vacation to go. We will spend next week and the following focusing on vacations–vacation layouts, minibooks, and albums. Can’t wait!

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments

Interview With Ali Edwards

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

Have you been waiting to hear about Ali Edwards newest book, due to release any day now?

Listen to this week’s podcast (audio only) as I interview Ali and she shares all the secrets…

Interview With Ali Edwards on Sharing Your Story

Posted in Ali Edwards, Books, Interviews, Podcast, Scrapbooking | Comments

All the Premium Files Have Moved: Premium Subscribers, Please Re-Subscribe to the New RSS Feed

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

After struggling through many hours of technical difficulties caused by a conflict between Wordpress and Amember (the software that we use to manage the subscriptions), we finally moved all the premium files. This should prevent further conflicts in the future. The downside was that we had to move the subscription feed for the premium subscribers.

This is an easy enough thing to fix though. Simply log into the membership area and follow the instructions to subscribe (in iTunes preferably). Testing has shown this to work problem-free.

Thanks again for watching!

Posted in Updates | Comments

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