Need ideas for using small scrapbooking bits and scraps, AND a jumping off point for layouts?
Posts Tagged ‘scrapbook’
Bits and Pieces In a Versatile Scrapbooking Template – Paperclipping 215
Monday, April 15th, 2013Here are Embellishments to Match Any Scrapbook Paper
Thursday, April 4th, 2013
Ever have a hard time finding the embellishments that match your paper choices AND your story?
Play Along: Did You Finish Your Scrapbook Album?
Monday, April 1st, 2013
If not, how close are you?
I have some questions for you in a minute, so please be sure to look for them below. I thought I’d share with you what I accomplished this month in our journey together to finish a scrapbook album in less than 30 days, and you can share a link to your own blog post or gallery entry to share all you’ve done..
Scrapbooking 12×12 and 6×12 Two Page Layouts – Paperclipping 214
Friday, March 29th, 2013
Can’t have “pretty” and “trendy” pages if you have a fair amount of journaling?
Can’t tell a good story if you want to use lots of fun product and layering?
I was getting tired of always sacrificing form for function to fit my writing. We like to have it all, don’t we? And we can…
How Story Can Make Your Scrapbook a Page-Turner
Friday, March 22nd, 2013
What if you could suck people into your scrapbooks the same way good authors suck people into their novels?
Do Scrapbooking Title Pages Really Matter?
Monday, March 18th, 2013
Do you really need introductions in your scrapbook albums?
Let me just say that before I add title pages to the fronts of my scrapbooks, my experience of opening them feels random and a little perplexing. It can almost feel assaulting to be slammed with that first page without explanation — like when you get up in the morning and all of the kids bombard you with complaints and requests without bothering first to at least say, “Hi, Mom.”
But of course, that doesn’t happen at my house. I’m just speaking hypothetically. ;)
Why not welcome your viewer — and yourself — with a pleasant greeting, a hint of what’s inside your book, and some helpful explanations?
Complete an Everyday Life Scrapbook – Paperclipping 213
Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
Recently someone told me they love it when I make pages about our big life changes, and I joked that I didn’t know how many more big changes we could handle making.
Then I started looking through my Everyday Life scrapbook album last week, and guess what I noticed? Lots and lots of pages about changes we’ve made, both big and small. And I learned something about Izzy and myself that I hadn’t fully realized before.
He and I both thrive on change. But that’s not what matters to you. What matters to you is this…
I would never have made that observation about us had I not separated my albums into topics or stories. By having an album that focuses specifically on everyday life, for example, you break your life down into a digestible section so you can actually see the patterns of your life that you didn’t realize were there.
Fourteen Prompts for Scrapbooking Everyday Life
Here are fourteen page prompts on scrapbooking the every day that come to my mind after working on my own album…
- Schedules
- Routines
- Things you do often
- Lens projects – ie. a focused look at a day or a week
- Meals or foods you eat
- Things you do daily, weekly, or monthly
- Places you visit regularly (coffee, shop, restaurants)
- What you do when you’re lounging around
- “Right Now” pages – what is everyone doing at this moment?
- Stuff you regularly find left out around the house
- Favorite TV shows
- Your exercise routine
- Your personality quirks
- Games you play a lot
- Typical weekends at home
The story of who we are when we’re the most real gets diluted when we surround everyday life layouts with the other types of layouts where our lives tend to be more dressed up.
I like to keep them separate so my scrapbooks can tell clear, defined stories.
But whether you want to do that or not, you might enjoy the video we made related to this topic.
I’m finishing up my Everyday Life album this month and it’s had lots of problems. Basically, the viewing experience of this album was unpleasant for many reasons. On video I share my album with all its pages, along with all its problems and little ugh-lies.
But I also share my solutions and show you how I very quickly modified the album into one I now really enjoy and am excited about. I make an intro page on video, start to finish, as well.
This video is for the Paperclipping Members and is now available in the Member’s Area and on iTunes.
If you’re not a member, please click here for information!
Shine On,
To move forward in the Play Along: Finish an Album, click here: Do Page Titles Really Matter?
Finish a Scrapbook Album in Less Than 30 Days
Thursday, March 7th, 2013
Do you have an album close to completion?
This month at Paperclipping we’re finishing up a scrapbook that’s almost done (and hiding those unsightly back sides that so many of us have in our books!).
Play along with us! We’re starting now…
Choose the Scrapbook You’re Completing
I’m going to finish an album I titled, Everyday Life. Because I work on lots of albums at once (of different subjects or stories), I’ve been adding to this album for many years now and I’m ready to just finish it all and be done with it!
Look Through Your Scrapbook Album
- Note the empty, problematic, or missing stuff (it’s often the ugly stuff like back sides of pages).
- Find the underlying potential story.
- Identify what’s missing from the album and/or what should be moved.
The second step is optional (but awesome!). If your album is 100% chronological or 100% random — and you want to keep it that way — then step 2 may or may not apply. If it does not, skip step 2 and move onto step 3.
Let’s dig into these steps and I’ll share my own results with you…
Step 1. Note the Empty, Problematic, or Missing Stuff
- If you scrap chronologically, maybe you left a page to be completed later.
- If you vary your page sizes then you probably have backs to fill.
- Is there missing journaling?
I have at least five page backs to fill. Also, my Everyday Life album contains a section of pages I made to document a week of our life and it pops out of nowhere with no explanation. It’s jarring and confusing. So I need to add some explanations. It also involves some unusual style pages that are difficult to turn.
Step 2. Find the Story
My albums start with a general subject. As I go through this process of finishing an album, I tend to find a subtle story underneath all the life snippets of my scrapbook pages. It’s really exciting! If you don’t see a story thread in yours right away, don’t brush off this step immediately. It might take time.
For example, at first I didn’t see anything more in this album than the fact that each pages reveals an aspect of our everyday life. That’s enough of a story. But now that it’s almost done and I’ve been looking more carefully at my pages to see what’s missing, I realized there is a recurring theme throughout this album, which covers a spam of years…
There are lots and lots of pages about big and small changes that we’ve made.
Not every layout in this album is about a big change, but I can take this concept and do something more with my new story theme before it’s totally done.
I love that because it unifies your experience as a viewer of my album, and gives more insight into who we are!
So take a good look at your album. Sit down with it and read your journaling. Is there a story you could develop further? If not, that’s okay. I’ll post more about this next week.
And that leads you to the next step…
Step 4. Identify What’s Missing and/or What Should Be Moved
When you look through your album make a note of anything you’ve left out:
- journaling on some of the pages
- relevant parts of the story that you realize your scrapbook isn’t showing
- photos you want to include in that album
- ephemera that should be a part of the album
I usually find at least one or two pages that will be better at telling a different story in a different album.
Now we’re ready for the next step…
Make a Plan: the remaining scrapbook pages to complete.
You should now have a list of the empty backs of pages you need to fill. You should also have a list of what’s missing in your album. Now match them up.
For example, one story I found missing from my scrapbook is how we reclaimed our home by turning our garage into a studio so we can shoot our videos and the Roundtable in there, instead of in our living room and bedroom. The number of pictures I wanted to use for that works well with one of my empty pocketed page protectors.
I completed that page yesterday…
Make a Scrapbook Layout and Share It!
Ready to get going? After doing any steps above that make sense for your album, choose which layout you want to start with and make a page!
If you post your layouts somewhere online, please link us up to it by leaving a comment!
Paperclipping Members: If you want additional ideas and inspiration, you can watch episodes 175 and 176, where I shared this entire process (and more!) for a scrapbook about the personality of my family.
For next week’s member video tutorial I’m going to take you on a tour through my Everyday Life album so you can see more of the problems, more of the “uglies,” and see my solutions for it. You’ll see this album — which currently looks like a jumbled and confusing mess — come together as a more cohesive story that flows.
Not a member? Click here for info so you get a fuller experience as you play along this month!
To move forward in the Play Along: Finish An Album, click here: Complete an Everyday Life Scrapbook.
Paperclipping Play Along: Finish an Album With Me?
Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
Do you ever cringe while someone looks through one of your scrapbooks because it’s not quite finished?
Do you find yourself making explanations about what is or isn’t in the album?
“Oh — that ugly thing is the back of a page. I still need to put a layout there.”
Would you love to hand someone a finished scrapbook in full smiles and confidence with no explanations or apologies?
Then play along with me and finish an album this month! I’m not talking about starting a whole new one and finishing it within a month. I’m talking about taking one that is pretty darn close, and completing it so it is totally viewer-ready.
Three Reasons You Should Play Along with Me and Finish a Scrapbook
- Accomplishing something is more fun with other people.
- You’ll have a complete scrapbook album in four weeks!
- You’ll have an audience-ready scrapbook to share that requires no apologies or explanations.
I have a month of blog articles and video tutorials planned to help us along. You’ll see my own album ugghlies and what I do to pretty them up and make my scrapbook complete!
But I don’t want to do it by myself. I hope you’ll join me!
We start tomorrow with our first tasks. Be sure to come back so we can get going. If you work on multiple albums at once and you’re feeling motivated right now, you can choose which album you’ll focus on completing to be ready to start with the first tasks tomorrow.
See you then!
ETA: Our month is done, but you can still join us as your own page. Start at the first link and I’ll lead you from post to post to the end of our adventure:
Finish a Scrapbook Album in Less than 30 Days
Complete an Everyday Life Scrapbook
Do Scrapbooking Page Titles Really Matter?
How Story Can Make Your Scrapbook a Page-Turner
Scrapbooking 12×12 and 6×12 Two Page Layouts
Paperclipping Play Along: Did you Finish Your Scrapbook Album?
Shine On,
P.S.> Thanks for playing along! We’re going to have so much fun paperclipping this month!
How Izzy’s 4 Easy Tweaks Make Project Life a Truly Simple Approach to Scrapbooking
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
Is your experience with Project Life as simple and easy as you thought?
Becky Higgins created Project Life as a simple solution to scrapbooking, but many of us online have complicated it with daily and weekly approaches and a focus on lots of additions and embellishments. For some, those approaches are perfect, but for others of us (me! me!) these daily/weekly/highly embellished pages are more demanding than our original scrapbooking process.
We’ve talked on the Roundtable about how we, as women, often place unnecessary expectations on ourselves. Now that Izzy is doing Project Life, that idea has become more real to me. He blew me away with his simple approach, and let me tell you, I LOVE looking through his Project Life scrapbook!
So if you’re someone who need to simplify your approach to Project Life, (or if you just want to see a male version of the project!) take a look at Izzy’s process…
4 Ways to Have Super Easy Scrapbooking with Project Life
1. Use Project Life Like a Journal.
Izzy sees PL as a way to journal, but it’s more awesome because it includes photos!
Journaling Approaches:
- journal about a topic
- record what you did
- record what you’re learning
He doesn’t make it harder than necessary by forcing each spread into a week, or forcing each week into a spread.
2. Design a Spread Around a Topic.
So far, Izzy mostly picks a topic, usually related to what’s going on in his life. He prints related photos and creates a spread on that topic, regardless of whether it filled a week, a day, or a few hours.
For this spread he wanted to talk about working on the editing of his short film so he added in some pictures during the film shoot last year.
Izzy has left the right side of this spread blank because he wants to fill it in with photos from another, future, bike trip. See how you don’t have to tie yourself down with time constraints?
Only once has he done random photos from a specific week.
He also does pages about some things he’s learning.
3. Share A Sampling of Your Photos.
Izzy is really good at just picking the 3 or 7 photos that fit into a 4×6 pocket. He knows that our other photos are easily viewable for us on the computer, on Facebook, and streaming on our television screen. We don’t even need all of the good photos in an album because they’re viewable these other places.
So his picks a few favorites and they represent.
Click here for help on how to choose fewer photos.
4. Use Repetition for Easy — But Good — Design.
We love using embellishments to make our pages more visually pleasing but Izzy did something I’ve never seen before! He repeats the same decorative card across the spread. This repetition…
- creates bold contrast between the cards and the photos
- leads the eye across the page
- gives a sense of unity to the spread
It’s a simple way to get good design without having to break out lots of products, tape, etc. And it has great impact, don’t you think?
There’s no right or wrong, and there are other simple approaches you can take for Project Life or scrapbooking. But if you’re finding it difficult to keep up with your current method, these are a few possibilities you might consider if you want to make it easier on yourself.
And by the way, isn’t it cool to see how a male might go about it?