I Love Reading

I had several little notes for this journaling sitting around for probably 2 years or more, just waiting to be made into a page. With some motivation from Lisa Ottosson on Write.Click.Scrapbook. this week to get stories about myself into my albums, I sat down and wrote. I got my husband to take the photo of me with my 32-year-old book, and got the page finished. It felt good to tell this about myself, and I'd like to imagine that some day my sons will enjoy this insight into child-me.

[Yellow heart digital paper from "You Are Awesome" digital kit from Crystal Wilkerson. Fonts: Hobo Std, Bell Gothic Std and Century Schoolbook.]

Since my love of reading has continued all these years, there are probably several other stories I could tell about this obsession of mine -- my current favorite books, how I have re-read those childhood faves as an adult, looking forward to introducing my sons to the Harry Potter book series, my oldest son and I sharing a love of Peter Pan. Okay, so I could write a whole book about my love of books, and that's just books, there's birthday parties, family picnics, family traditions, sports I played and more that I could include. I think that just goes to show how much opportunity there is for telling more about ourselves in our scrapbook pages. There is so much I want to remember about each and every day with my family, but I realize that I want to tell something of my very own story in my albums too.

On a side note, I should really thank the ladies at Write.Click.Scrapbook for so much inspiration lately. I have been making more pages, more regularly, and a large part of that momentum has been due to the challenges and inspiration from Write.Click.Scrapbook this year.

From Paper to Pixels

It seems lately I'm finding more inspiration, and making more time to turn that inspiration into scrapbook pages, than usual. So far, 2011 has been a very productive scrapbooking year (not such a productive keep-the-house-clean year, but the dishes can always wait).

This week, Rebecca Cooper hosted a Beginner Digi Week at Write.Click.Scrapbook with some added help (and free downloads!) from Creativity by Crystal. One of Rebecca's tips for getting started with digital scrapbooking is to use a paper layout for inspiration, something I'd never done. I had a story and photos in mind, and since they were 3 horizontal photos, I knew just the paper layout to copy.

 

I love how the three 4x6 photos works so well in a line, especially to show a sort of progression -- this was the progression of a typical day with my sons. 

The digital one I had in mind was the same idea -- the progression of a snow day at home.

[Digital supplies: kraft background: Creativity by Crystal's "You Are Awesome" kit; striped paper: Crystal's Free December Papers pack; flair buttons: Crystal's Free December Flair; fonts: Century Gothic, Impact Label and Cooper Black]

One of the great things about digital scrapbooking is that aside from never using up your supplies, there are so many great downloads available for free (thank you Crystal for these supplies!). Using free downloads really helps me decide what elements I'm more likely to use on my digital pages, so I can make better purchases -- like I think I love Crystal's happy colors and cute patterns, and probably need to go buy a paper pack today....

Check out more digital inspiration with Crystal's papers and templates in the Write.Click.Scrapbook. Flickr group.