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.

Summer break is a great time to look back through your school-related photos from the previous year so you can scrap them before next year’s school events muddle your memory.

Scrapbooking A Child’s School Project

Journaling to Aiden reads: Today you brought home a dinosaur egg from school. Really, it was a rock in plaster. But not your your mind. For you this was the real thing and you were ecstatic.

You came at this egg very seriously, asking me for tools. I set you up with a screwdriver and hammer. You worked on it forever. So serious about it. My favorite part was the look of sheer unbelief when you first revealed the rock–ahem–dinosaur egg. A favorite day. For both of us.

The canvas:
For this page I used Photoshop to crop most of my photos into 2-inch squares. After print them, I arranged them in a stream, or a long canvas of their own. I love the story-telling quality of the linear progression: 1) Happy Aiden with his tools; 2) Broken pieces of plaster as he pounds with his hammer; 3) A surprised look as he makes his first break-through; 4) More pounding; 5) A look of amazement at his totally exposed egg.

Scrapbooking A Page From College

Journaling reads: It cracked me up to find that both Brandon and Nicole had fallen asleep while they were studying. Is that Gina and I making fun of them later in a sleeping dog pile???

My favorite way to place multiple items on a page (in this case, three photos and a comic strip) is to create their own square-shaped canvas, filling any gaps with patterned paper or journaling boxes. These spaces are a fun place to gather embellishments that support the story. For this story, I chose stickers with words that say:

* Due Date * To Do List * Little By Little the Time Goes By * Friends * Memories *

Note: Because I didn’t write down my roommate-story right away, I am no longer sure of the details. If that happens to you, don’t let that keep you from telling what you think happened. Share a detail as a question if you’re really not sure.

Whether you tell your story as a progression with a photo stream, or in the pockets of a mosaic square, creating a canvas within the canvas of your layout is a fun and interesting way to tell a tale.

A lot of you said after reading Part 1 that you feel better about yourselves having seen my first pages. I was a late bloomer. And just so you know, many of the layouts I’ll be showing you in in this post were the best of their time, or layouts that mark a next-step for me.

Getting It Done Layouts

The next phase of my scrapbooking was a long stagnation. I was busier with a second child and it seems a lot of what I did was an effort to just get it done. Because I didn’t have many supplies I was spending more time hand-writing and hand-cutting designs or letters and most of my pages look like the one above but with even less to them. They were 2-page layouts with lots of photos spread around.

Having a second child spurred me toward more journaling. With two young children developing quickly I realized I had to get those memories recorded. Now you see more stories and pictures on each page, but less decorating.

Time wasn’t the only factor, though. We moved into a house much farther away from the local scrapbook store, we no longer had extra money to spend, and for a long while we shared one car, which Israel took to work. There were a number of years when I was using only leftovers and was missing out on all the changing and development that I would have seen in the stores and magazines if had looked.

Maybe this is why I began to have some moments of rebellion, when I decided to use some of the actual pieces of our lives in place of acid-free industry products…

I love this page, even if I would lay it out differently now and add more colors. Seeing these Einstein images reminds me of a great time when we were going to Einstein Bagels every Sunday morning and then off to the Scottsdale Civic Center to visit the library, read books on the grass, and play by the fountains.

Experimenting With Lumpy Products

One year I got some birthday money and decided to spend it all on scrapbooking products at two of our local stores. Not having been in a scrapbook store in a while, I remember being shocked that the industry had undergone a huge change while I was gone.

I didn’t dare spend my birthday money on magazines so I was ignorant about who initiated the changes and what other people were doing with these new products. And still had no clue about design concepts.

You can see that with after that shopping trip I was back to experimenting with design, colors, and products again, but I had a distinct feeling of dissatisfaction at this time. I wondered if my products were a distraction to the pictures. Understanding design principles would have really helped me.

Learning Through Trial And Error

This surge of new products inspired me to spend more time on my layouts again and I can see where this new attention to details helped me improve my design instinctively. Notice the new use of lines in the last three layouts, including the anchoring line I added to the bottom row of photos in this Thanksgiving layout. They’re still not great but I was learning from my experiences. It’s interesting to see the that I was starting to get an idea of some design elements, even if I didn’t fully get it or know that’s what I was doing.

Scapbooking more sophisticated topics also allowed me to play more with the types of products and colors I like (as opposed to child-themed ones). I can’t help giggling at my tiny dolphins compared to the giant shells and the glue dots visible through the velum. What I do like is that I was starting to find and identify colors I love.

My CM Phase

Most scrapbookers say they started out with Creative Memories and then moved away from it. I didn’t touch CM until I’d already been scrapbooking for six or seven years. I met a consultant who had a fireball personality and she inspired me to start journaling a lot more. For a short time I stopped buying other industry products and purchased mainly from CM.

While I have a lot pages with the older CM look (solid white background with triangles in the corner and from the sides), I usually tried hard for an aesthetically pleasing look. While working on the layout above about Aiden, I distinctly remember my excitement of discovering compartmentalized spaces, using lines, eye direction, and carrying a circular theme from one side to the other.

How Making Cards Made Me Aware of Myself

I also started making cards with my friends using Stampin’ Up products. I wanted to send a homemade card to a friend from high school but none of the cards I’d been making were really me. I couldn’t get myself to send any of them to her. That’s when I first became aware that I was rarely scrapbooking in a way that really reflected me. I wondered if that even was possible. I think you can see that new thought reflected in the last layout and the next few below.

I had so much fun mixing these unlikely pattens together (three different sizes of squares from punched scraps)–something I continue to love doing today.

These muted colors and patterns were so me back then, and still are now.

It was around this time in 2005 that Israel asked me to do something which led to the next big jump in my journey toward personal style. Stay tuned…(But go ahead and leave your observations by commenting).

Below are seven different challenges for National Scrapbook Day. You do not have to do all of them. I wanted to offer a variety of options so you can choose the ones that best suit you. The more you do, the better your chances of winning. You may repeat the same challenge.

You do not have to be present at the live event to participate in the challenges. I will give out some prizes during the live event to those who are present in the chat. I will award other prizes on the blog on Sunday based on the challenges below.

For each layout or project you upload to flickr, which you must base on one of the following challenges, you will be entered in a drawing for prizes. You have until the end of Saturday to upload your layouts. In the description, please tell us which challenge you used. I will choose randomly from these layouts for the final drawings.

Please do not enter layouts you completed before reading this entry. It’s okay to finish a layout or project you already started as long as you implement one of these challenges.

Challenges:

1. Create a layout or other project using a principle from any one of the Paperclipping Video Tutorials (links are at the right). Upload your layout to flickr. In the description, please share which video you used and how.

2. Recycle an item from your life by incorporating it into the design of your layout. Upload your layout to flickr and tell us what the item is in your description.

3. Begin a mini-book. Choose the photos and a theme. Gather papers, then embellishments, that reflect the theme. Put it all in a pile and photograph it. Upload your photo to flickr and in the description tell us how the products reflect the theme of the mini-book you will be putting together.

4. Words aren’t the only way to tell a story. Make a layout that uses something visual to help tell your story on a layout. Upload your layout to flickr and share with us what visual element you used on your page to communicate an idea or emotion.

5. Use your wonderful scraps. Make a layout that uses at least 3 different scraps of patterned paper. Upload the layout to flickr.

6. Design a layout in this order:
a. Choose the photos.
b. Write journaling on some scrap paper or make notes of the emotion or tone.
c. If you have more than one photo, choose a focal point photo (unless it’s a collage where all photos are equal).
d. Decide approximate photo placement. (Don’t freak out here…you’re free to change your mind at any time).
e. Based on where you think you’ll place your photo, choose paper size and pick your background paper.
f. Choose other papers with colors and/or patterns that remind you of the tone of your layout’s story.
g. Design your layout with the photos, papers, journaling, title. Tape everything down.
h. Add your embellishments last.

7. Design a layout where you cluster at least three embellishments around a title, a photo, or a line.

I will come back tomorrow with a link to the new Paperclipping Flickr Group. You can see the schedule for the three different live events here.

Christine Zuccerella, known as “Cricki” in Paperclipping Live, shared a sweet story with me about some internet bonding that happened between herself and a group of close girlfriends.

As we have become more mobile and the internet has become mainstream, there is a new dynamic to relationships, both short and long distance, and I think email and phone-texting conversations are going to become a common subject in scrapbooking.

Here is Christine’s story, along with a request for you and me:

A friend of mine was asked by someone at her job “How would your friends describe you?” So she sent an e-mail to all of us asking us to describe her as a person…well that snowballed into each of us describing our perceptions of the other and what we all mean to one another. It was a very playful, heartfelt, touching outcome to see such love and adoration come from a really wonderful group of women that I have known literally since grade school!

When do you ever really take the time and effort to tell your friends what they truly mean to you? We all have our baggage and personal drama going on at home and I must say, that this was exactly what I needed to hear to lift my spirits….So the big question is how can I take all these e-mails and incorporate them into either a layout or gift of some sort for each of the girls. Maybe something that they can hang on the wall or keep on their desks at work…I just wanted to do something nice with their entire excerpt and pair it with a really nice group picture of all us from this past summer.

I have some relationships I’ve been wanting to capture in a scrapbooking project by printing up our emails. Emails are like grade school note-passing, continued into adulthood, and I love it.

Mini-book Idea

My idea for Christine is to turn this into a mini-book and make copies for each friend. I would dedicate a two-page spread to each person, putting a photo on one side and the emails that describe her on the other. Then a photo (or multiple photos) of the group on the last page (and perhaps, on the front, as well).

Layout Ideas

If you want to do a layout, I think the design really depends on the amount of text in the emails. Perhaps you could put one group picture in the center of a one-page layout and then add the journaling in printed strips in sections around the picture. Each person would have her own section of journaling.

Or you could do an interactive two-page layout with a photo of each friend and put the email descriptions of each person behind the photos.

In Sunday’s podcast I will offer a tip for how to make a one-page layout extra special as a gift. It will be an extension off of this entry; a sort of “Part II.”

Christine is open to all kinds of ideas, so if you have something else to suggest, please leave a comment and share with us.

This is my rainbow-after-the-storm layout, which describes my birthday that began pitifully, but ended well.

Blocks Of Color

I decided to punch old unloved papers into shapes to create the curved strips of color for my rainbow. I found old papers that I can’t believe I still have. Since the papers are chopped up, it doesn’t matter that I don’t love them anymore because what you see is mainly the color. The patterns that don’t excite me barely show.

For the green, I used leftovers from letter stickers. You know all those extra X’s and Z’s that you just can’t get rid of? The next time you need to create a block of color, consider punching your older patterned paper into shapes and using old extra letters to fill up the space.

Anchoring The Memorabilia

When I started working on the layout, the rainbow was not part of the concept. I began by writing out my journaling. Then I picked pieces that I had saved from that day and cropped them down. I also made a clock to show what time my day started (2am).

As I moved all the stuff around the paper, it occurred to me to arrange some of it in an arch at the top. Lately I have been thinking about the rainbow trend from my childhood in the 70’s. With rainbows floating at the forefront of my mind, it was an easy solution to my need for something to anchor my memorabilia to the page, add color, and also provide a bit of symbolism that demonstrates how I feel about my 35th birthday.

* * *

My Birthday 2007
2-page 12×12 Layout

The funnest birthday surprise happened when Israel put a birthday post on my website and then “twittered” a host of people, inviting them to wish me a happy birthday. We came home from dinner and I found this fun surprise! (the surprise is shown in the lower right picture of my website entry page).

Identifying The Little Everyday Things

Today at breakfast the kids started reminiscing about a time when I used to take them to “the gym.” I realized immediately that they must have been referring to the exercise room of our old apartment. That was so long ago and I only have a very vague memory of taking them with me.

I said, “I wonder why I can’t really remember that.”

And Israel answered, “It’s because you didn’t scrapbook it.”

What’s missing from your scrapbooks? Lately I have been trying to identify those little things that are so much a part of our daily lives that I don’t even really think about them. One that I thought of recently was the fact that Fridays are Aiden’s and my favorite day right now. He gets to take a toy for Show-and-Tell and then stay an extra hour at school for Lunch Bunch. And that’s the reason it’s my favorite day, too!

Today’s Everyday Observation

This morning I made biscuits. We love homemade biscuits that are so fat they almost split in the middle. Israel encouraged me to start making biscuits a long time ago because it was one of his regular breakfasts he enjoyed while growing up. Weekend mornings seem to feel a little happier when I make biscuits.

What are some of the little things you haven’t thought much about before? What are those things that don’t seem significant at first thought, but in actuality bring little bits of joy into your everyday life?

* * *

Pals
2-Page 12z12 Layout

Supplies: Cardstock (Bazzill) * Patterned paper (Daisy D’s, other unknown) * Wordstrip, metal tab (7 Gypsies) * Chipboard (Scenic Route) * Brads (Making Memories) * Pen (American Crafts) * “Pals” clothing tag and ccircular running icon (re-purposed “found” item).

How do you plan to keep track of and evaluate your goals for 2008? I made this minibook. On the front cover is my one-word theme for the year, BUILD. Last year I laid a strong foundation for the areas I on which I want to focus and this year I look forward to building on that foundation.

I also journaled statements for my four focus areas around three of the edges.

You know how I love to reuse and re-purpose items rather than dispose of them. I often keep things that are in good condition, even if I don’t yet have an idea for them, like the negative envelopes in the photo below.

I had about fifty of these that I no longer needed since we switched to digital. Last year I pulled them out of my photo storage box and, unwilling to throw away (or even recycle) something that is in perfect condition, I saved them with the idea that I’d find a good use for them someday.

I just trimmed away the top of the backside of the envelope and recovered them with patterned paper. Each envelope has its own month. At the start of each new month I will adhere my goals for that month. Over the next thirty days, or at the end of them, I will write my thoughts and evaluations on a note card (unless I find something else to salvage). I may or may not decorate the note cards.

On the back of the envelope for the previous month, I’ll adhere pictures that go along with my goals and projects…which, again, I may or may not decorate. The pictures will face their own month.

If you’re interested in making a journal like this one, you’re not likely to have the same stack of negative envelopes waiting for transformation. But what do you have? You could do something similar with the envelopes that arrive in your mail box everyday. Just cut the flap off (or keep it and use it) and recover.

If you created something else to hold your New Year’s Resolutions, share it with us by leaving a comment and a link.

Are you planning goals or resolutions for the new year? How about making a mini-book where you can evaluate your progress, share your thoughts, and even add photos?

The picture above is a sneak-peek of my own book, still in progress. I will have it ready to share with you later in the week. So if you think you’d like to make your own, you might want to begin preparing your goals.

The mini-book is in a format that works with my own method for a year’s worth of goals, so I’ll share that with you now.

2008 Focus

I chose four areas that need my focus this year. They are:
1. Health & Fitness
2. My Home
3. Scrapbooking & Paperclipping
4. My One-on-one Relationships with my Children

Ali’s One-Word Challenge

Last year Ali Edwards chose one word to describe what she wanted for the coming year rather than making resolutions. I did this as well, and really liked the direction it gave me. This time I’m returning to resolutions, but I also chose a word that illustrates how I see my focus for 2008. The word I chose this year is BUILD.

I made “build” statements for each of my areas of focus:
1. I am building a healthy and fit body.
2. I am building a home that inspires and celebrates creativity.
3. I am building a scrapbooking resource that provides constant and regular inspiration to others.
4. I am building deep one-on-one relationships with each of my growing, evolving children.

Steps For Accomplishing My Goals

Once I chose my areas of focus, I made a list of things to accomplish or evaluate throughout the year so that I can progress in those focus areas.

Make A Schedule

You know how I am about schedules. Schedules are vital for accomplishment. I also believe that a person only has the capacity to focus on one or two big things at a time. So I assigned a month (or two months) to each of my bigger goals.

I also have smaller things I want to evaluate. For example, for one month I will focus on drinking water every hour. Hopefully one month of doing this will make it a habit. But in my experience, it probably won’t be enough to stick. So I’ve made that a side focus for some of the other months throughout the year. Most months have a big project to complete plus some smaller side things to evaluate.

Evaluate

Because some of the goals are subjective and require on-going reflective evaluation, I am designing my mini-book to allow me to write down my reflections, evaluations, and adjusted plans for improvement.

I will also be able to add photos if I want. In all, this book will be a reminder of all my goals, a place to reflect and track progress, and will eventually become a visual record of my direction and accomplishments for the year.

If you’re interested in joining me, you can begin formulating your goals, too.

12×12 album with an 8×8 layout on the left and an 8.5×11 on the right.

* * *

In a previous article I shared tips on scrapbooking the stories we write down and then forget about. I made a recommendation that I felt more significant than all the other tips in that post. That recommendation was to knock out a good chunk of your stories in a faster amount of time by doing them in a smaller size.

Most of us have a favorite size, typically 12×12 or 8.5×11. My size for years has been 12×12. Experimenting with other sizes seemed completely inconvenient. What would I do with them?

What To Do With Smaller Sized Layouts

Over the last couple years scrapbookers have seen some amazing minibooks with pages that vary in size. I love minibooks like that and wondered if I could do that with a standard-size album: multiple sizes in one large 12×12.

Thankfully, Lisa McGarvey answered that question for me when she posted a tutorial and slideshow of her album containing pages in three different sizes. I loved how it looked! This is something you can do with the popular American Crafts D-ring binder albums (Modern style). Their 8×8, 8.5×11, and 12×12 page protectors all fit the rings of the 12×12 album.

This allows for a great amount of flexibility and experimentation.

It also means we can pull out those notebooks where we’ve been scribbling stories for future scrapbooking and quickly turn a bunch of those stories into layouts by doing them on small pages and then storing them right along with our regular ones.

Other Options

What if you already use a different type of album that won’t hold smaller pages? How about dedicating an entire smaller album just to the stories?

Or, you could adapt Samantha Walker’s postcard idea and create a box full of stories on altered notecards. This way, you don’t even have to bother hunting down photos to compliment the story, although you can if you’d like. I think this is a fabulous idea if you are overwhelmed with so many stories and you can’t possibly imagine ever scrapbooking them all.

The point is, most of us don’t keep up with all the stories we write down. I outlined three easy ways to do it and do it quickly. If you like to keep all of your scrapbooking in one place instead of multiple albums, the American Crafts albums are a great way to do fast scrapbook pages of varying sizes.