Holiday Memories Cover

I knew I would need a more substantial cover for my album so I got 2 pieces of chipboard and painted the red. I added a boarder sticker from a K&Company to the right side of the front cover and the hand and ornament sticker came from the same sticker sheet. The Holidays chipboard sticker is from WeR Memory Keepers. I love how the cover turned out.

For the inside of the covers I added a polka dot paper and some stickers from the same sticker sheet above.

And on the back another sticker! I love it! 

Cardstock stickers are amazing by the way. I had no idea!

I would love to see how you are documenting your Christmas Memories. Please leave a comment with a link to your scrapbook page, blog post, or photo album.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Holiday Memories 1 & 2

I finished my first few pages are done and I love how they turned out.

First is  my title page. I added a glitter snowflake sticker that I got at Michaels. I believe it was their recollections brand. I thought it really added! 

I started my Holiday Memories with Thanksgiving. We were with my husband's family this year. I made a 5x7 photo collage for the left side. For the right side I cut a 8.5x11 divided sheet protector down to 4 pockets instead of 9. I put in our place cards and a pics of some food coma nappers.

Next page is more thanksgiving. On the left is the back side of divided page protector from the previous page. Another place card and a few more pics form the day. On the right is my journaling for the day.

The left side of this page is one of my foundation pages and on the left is a pic of my Dad's Christmas Village   that I help him put up.

On the left here I have my journaling about my family Christmas Ornament exchange. On the right our group shot of all the girls at the ornament exchange and a pic of my precious new niece. She was only 5 days old here. And those pics are on top of another foundation page.

On left another pic of my cute little niece and on the right a pic I took of my sister's cute family.

I had so much fun putting this together. It has been a long time since I have worked with paper and glue when I scrapbooked. I can't wait to see how the rest of this book turns out.

So, are you doing a December or Holiday Album. It so I would really like to see it. Feel free to leave a link in the comments.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Did I mention . . .

Did I Mention that I am doing a December Daily Album!?

Well not exactly December Daily. I tried December Daily a couple of years ago and failed. Miserably! I made it half way to Christmas and got sick of doing a scrapbook page every day and finding a story to tell. I didn't do any foundation pages and that definitely contributed to my downfall.

This go round I am taking a very different approach. A couple of weeks ago I saw Nettio Designs' Holiday Favs album from last year and her templates for this year. I saw those templates and knew exactly the approach I was going to take. I bought them that day and download them as soon as I got the links. I made all of the foundation pages and had them printed within 5 days. I also decided to go with an approach that did not require me to have to tell a story every day. That was very overwhelming on the weekdays when we came home from work and just watched TV. Right now I have 13 pages devoted to journaling/story telling and I think I might have a hard time finding stories to fill all of them.

I will be back in a few days with the first few pages of my album! Until then enjoy looking at my foundation pages. You can find them in my flickr stream here.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Been Busy

Its been quite awhile since I have posted. I have been busy with a project. My cousin is getting married in about a month and today we are having a bridal shower today for his fiance. I have spent a good chunk of time in the last month making a cookbook for the bride. I have had fun and I didn't get many pictures before my camera battery died. I am really happy with how it turned out.

I ended up with 77 recipes from Grandma, Aunts, Cousins, and Cousin's Spouses. I scrapped the recipes onto 4x6 cards so that the recipes can be used in book form or taken out and used as individual cards. I also thought it would make it easier to add recipes later. I made the first card and then saved it as a template so that I didn't have to start from scratch every time. I did the same things with the divider pages.

I only used one kit for the entire book (Narrative by One Little Bird Designs).  The font on the dividers is Sketch Rockwell. The recipe names are in a font called Ballpark. The actually recipes are in Bohemian Typewriter.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Save Your Story: What are you watching?

I admit it, I am addicted to TV. I love watching a good show. My list of favorites have gotten a lot longer this fall. I love watching then new fall shows and watching my old fav's come back. So I thought I would write down my current watch list.

Returning favs

1. Once Upon a Time
2. How I Met Your Mother
3. Switched at Birth
4. Bones
5. The New Girl
6. Parenthood
7. Law and Order: SVU
8. The Big Bang Theory
9. Community
10. The Office
11. Glee
12. Person of Interest
13. Parks and Recreation
14. Grim
15. Supernatural
16. Hart of Dixie
17. Supernatural
18. Suburgatory
19. Sons of Guns
20. Franklin and Bash (TNT summer series)
21. Downton Abbey (if you know how to get series 3 before the US airing in January let me know)
22. Doctor Who (We are working through past seasons now. We are in the middle of season 3)

New favs

1. The Mob Doctor
2. Guys With Kids
3. Go On
4. Elementary

WOW! That is a really long list. Kind of pathetic, but I am okay with it. Sadly I feel like I am missing some on this list. 

So now I want to know what you are watching right now. Do we have any shows in common? I wish I had this list from last year. It would be really interesting to see how my tastes have evolved over the years. I am going to try and remember to write this list next year too. As always I would love to see your list. I encourage you to link up in the comments. 

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Curating My Photos

A few week ago I signed up for Kayla Lamoreaux's Finding Photo Flow Class. I have been curating my photo library for the last few weeks and have tagged about 55% of my photos so far. I can't believe how well I have been doing. I learned so much about Lightroom. I had no idea half the stuff I am able to do in Lightroom. I will share my organizing system once I am finished tagging and rating. I am so excited to share.

While tagging my photos I found some pictures from a few years ago when I went to the air show with my husband and father-in-law. I just had to scrap them! It has been a while since I have scrapped. I missed it. I am going to schedule time for scrapping every week.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Why BackUp is Important

I was attempting to update my screencasting software to make a new tutorial for you and I download a virus on my good computer. Seriously! Didn't I have issues last time I attempted to make a video? At least I was able to get MalwareBytes running on my computer.

So in honor of my dumb downloading mistake, here is the best advice you will get this week: download MalwareBytes, at least the free version, NOW. Did you know some viruses are programmed not to let you download anti-virus software. I am quite confident that if I did not already have MalwareBytes installed, I would not have been able to use my Internet browser to download anti-malware software. Download some anti-malware software today, so you can be proactive about your future computer issues.

The second part of the advice. Before you start downloading from unknown sources BACKUP YOUR FILES. By pure coincidence, I actually backed up my entire computer the night before I accidentally downloaded this virus. I guess I had good timing on my back up.

Please learn from my mistake. As always thanks for joining me today and remember that tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Rule of Thirds

Last night I had the opportunity to teach my Husband's scout troop for their photography merit badge. It made me feel really old. The merit badge book needs some serious updating. Under of the film vs. digital pros and cons it had "familiarity of use" under the film side. We asked the boys if we handed them a film camera and a roll of film if they would know how to load it. They all just stared at us. It was like we were talking a different language. My Husband, his Assistant Scoutmaster, and I all agreed that we felt old. It was then that I realized that the technology may change, but the things that make a good photo haven't. I thought I would share a basic composition technique this week that the scouts found rather interesting: the rule of thirds.

It is simple really. Imagine a tic-tac-toe grid on your photo. The focus of your photo should land on one the crosses. Or at least close to it.

Try not to lead the viewers eye out of the frame with the rule of thirds,

But lead the eye into the frame instead.

If your subject is too big to sit on one of the crosses, try putting a prominent line on one of the "thirds" lines instead.

I hope you found this bit of information helpful and interesting today. Please post links to your "Rule of Thirds" photos in the comments. I would love to see them. And as always feel free to ask any questions you would like.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Tutorial: Photoshop Photo Collage

This post has been a long time coming. Over a month actually. I am really sorry it has been so long. I got frustrated with some audio/visual sync issues. I finally worked through it and finished the video.

My Aunt Rebecca asked me to do this tutorial. She really likes scrapbook pages that use photo collages, but had no idea how to create them. So I made her a collage for use in her latest scrapbook page. You can see how she used my finished product on her blog My Kitchen Table Studio. You could make these photo collages to use on a scrapbook page, for a half page insert, or even a whole page addition to you album

You can also view the tutorial here.

As promised here are all the dimensions I used for the collage I created in the video.

Left Side: 3 1/4 x 4 3/4

Middle Top: 4 x 3

Middle Bottom: 1 1/4 x 1 5/8

Right Top: 1 9/16 x 1 5/8

Right Bottom: 3 1/4 x 3

I would love to see the collages that you create. You are free to link up or ask questions in the comments.

Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.

Sneek Peek!

So I was having some audio issues, and I didn't get my video tutorial posted to YouTube. Hopefully I can get my audio synced up on my video and get it posted soon. For now enjoy this sneek peek of what I am teaching in the video. Hopefully it is intriguing enough to get you to come back sometime in the next few days. Thanks for joining me today. Tomorrow today will be the past, so start saving your story today.