February Take 12

I did it! I finished my second "Take Twelve" layout and did it in less than a week after taking the photos, just in time for Ella Publishing Co.'s deadline for sharing.

Papers, tab label and heart are all from "A New Day" by Sweet Shoppe Designs,
offered as a free download from the Ella Publishing Co. blog two years ago.

It was helpful to work on this with a deadline. I may not be 100% sure about this layout, but it's done now, and it makes me happy to see a second set of 12 photos capturing our life in 2012.

(Hmm, just noticed that download was offered on February 17, 2010 -- exactly two years ago. Thank you Ella for the inspiration to "take twelve" and the previous download to make the layout easier!)

Take 12 - Better Late Than Never!

I took 12 photos on January 12, and now I have finally made my layout with the photos! Good thing, since February 12 is right around the corner, and the Ella Publishing Co.'s "2012 Take 12 Project" is one of the projects I have decided I want to stick with this year.

I started out with Cathy Zielske's "InstaLove" free template, which had six square photo spaces, and I doubled the spaces. I like how this "take 12" photo challenge helped me to capture a snapshot of an ordinary day, and doing this challenge 11 more times will add some great layers to my collection of pages this year.

For the February "take 12," I'm planning to focus on 12 Valentine-y things around our house. I'm also going to take one photo of the four of us together every month. I did our family photo every month in 2011, but this year I'd like to get more creative with our group shots -- maybe our shadows or our feet -- just generally more thought-out poses than the many squish-our-heads-together-and-hold-out-the-camera shots we took.

I'm so happy to have my January page completed, and am looking forward to joining Ella for the 2012 Take 12 Project! 

You can learn more about Take 12 here:

How Many?

In our family, we do a lot of travel by car. My husband and I are also map geeks who like to tally how many states we have visited, with a bit of friendly competition thrown in for good measure. I am proud of the fact that at 5 and 3, our sons have each visited 26 states, and I love the fact that they are learning to be excited about visiting a new state and finding them on maps.

This layout has long been on my list to create. Hopefully we'll have at least one more to add this summer. (And I now realize I need to add the "as of" date to this page. Back to Photoshop!)

Paper: Katie Pertiet's Color Challenge 4-25-10 Paper Pack at DesignerDigitals.com; Fonts: Impact and American Typewriter

A Weekend Captured in Photos

As I played with the Instagram app over the weekend, a page started forming in my mind, something like this collage page from Ali Edwards that I had marked in my Tumblr site last week.

The square Instagram photos lend themselves to a grid layout easily, and the filtered effect ties them all together. I wanted to keep everything else very simple, but did find the gray flourishes in a free kit I downloaded from Persnickety Prints over the weekend.

I really like having a whole weekend summarized like this in a series of photos on a page. It's my tiny take on projects like a Photo a Day for a Year. I know I could never keep up with recording a year, but I like to have little random samples sprinkled into my albums.

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.

Lego + Star Wars = Obsessed Boys

Cleaning up during Wedneday's snow day, I thought about how life with two boys involves A LOT of Star Wars and Lego pieces (I step on them all the time and even found them in the laundry recently). Then I happened to come across this layout from Candice Palmer about her sons' interest in the very same topics and I knew I wanted to document this moment in the boys' childhood where everything is about Lego, Star Wars and Lego Star Wars.

I have some other layouts and projects that I'm eager to finish up, but need to switch gears this weekend to get ready for and then enjoy our Super Bowl Party!

Summer Memories 2010

Summer Memories 2010
Originally uploaded by Lisa_CT

Last June I wrote up a list of activities for our family to do during the summer. My sons are fans of the Disney show, "Phineas & Ferb," so we called it the "Robby & Joey Whole Lot of Stuff to Do Before School Starts this Fall" list. I had more than 70 activities on the list ranging from big things like a weekend at Hershey Park to smaller activities like a snack-time picnic in the backyard. We checked them off with the date and in most cases I captured them with a photograph too. But I hadn't figured out a way to document it in my scrapbook.

Then last week, Autumn Baldwin got me to jumpstart my scrapbooking with her posts over at Write. Click. Scrapbook. She created a text-only layout to capture activities from her family's summer list, which gave me the perfect jumpstart for getting this layout done. Thanks Autumn and WCS!