Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking

$76 Scrapbook Yard Sale Haul Video

Whoo Hoo !  It was the Scrapbooking Yard Sale at Whim So Doodle Today and I made a HAUL VIDEO!  Here it is:

 

$20 for an art class next Saturday for me and my daughter to take together!

$28 for 5 paper packs (6x6):Heidi Swapp Sugar Chic; Heidi Swapp No Limits; Crate Paper Story Teller; Studio Calico Take Note Collection; & Amy Tangerine Sketchbook.

$26 for 4 organizing bins; 4 mini books; 4 packs of embellishments; 4 packs of Theresa Collins journaling cards;  one pack of metal clock faces; one acrylic stamping block; one Creative Memories paper trimmer; and one piece of 12x12 Studio Calico patterned paper;  PLUS an assortment of Barbie garden pots, presents, shutters and hats for my girl. 

And lots of fun conversations with scrapbookers and art journalers.

What a lovely Saturday Morning.

*

Now we are off for another adventure - more on that soon.

 

 

December Daily: 12/3/11

Busy Day - trying to maintain momentum with my December Daily and Project Life.

 

December Daily: 12/2/11 & Improvisational Comedy as applied to Scrapbooking & Whacking Fiskars Border Punches

December Daily - Day 2:

and more and more pages in December Daily and we're only on December 2nd:

I made some ustream videos while working on Project Life and December Daily - these videos are not how to videos and they are not, probably, particularly interesting.  However, if you enjoy background noise chatter about scrapbooking while you are scrapbooking, then you just might dig them.

Project Life & Time to Get Back on the Weight Loss Wagon:

 

December Daily - Day 2 - Part I:

 

December Daily - Day 2 - Part II - and how the concepts of improvisational comedy can help you find your flow in scrapbooking and any creative process:

 

P.S. My son listened to that last video and got a huge kick out of me whacking the Fiskars Border Punches - he giggled for 15 minutes - which sort of proves my point about being fully committed is what makes you funny  and the mistakes are what make you funny in improvisational comedy or awesome in scrapbooking - its the imperfections that are the awesome part.

Here are some links to some of the supplies and resources I used in these videos:

 

Cub Scout Camping Trip & Two Page Scrapbook Layout with 18 Photos Using Circle Die Cutters

We went primitive tent camping with the Cub Scouts the weekend after Thanksgiving  and I took a zillion photos.  I did this simple two page layout and was able to fit 18 photos on the spread by cutting the photos into circles.

Lately one of my favorite scrapbooking tools is my set of die cut circles.  I have been using my circle dies so much that I have been keeping them in a small lotus bowl on my scrapbooking desk along with my QuicKutz Revolution - I am not sure they are still selling that model, so I have linked the QuicKutz Epic 6 below.  I used the circle dies to cut the photos for the Cub Scout Camping Trip 2 page scrapbook layout.  I recommend QuicKutz Cookie Cutter Dies or Spellbinders Nestabilities since both include several sizes.

 

Another Entry for the Book of Awesome: We Saw Winter The Dolphin!

Yep, we did a family date night last night and saw the movie and today we got to see Winter in real life.  Seriously AWESOME!

 And yes, I took those awesome pictures of Winter - and I haven't even edited them yet!!!

Ella Publishing Boot Camp - No Grammar (Charts) Journaling Drill & Forced Family Fun in Alligator Danger Zones

 

This is a very simple 8.5 x 11 landscape oriented scrapbook page but contains so much information thanks to the first of the exercises at Ella Publishing's Boot Camp - the challenge was to create a page using a chart of some sort.   I made this table in my word processor.  I trimmed some 4x6 photos that had lots of wasted space and came up with a page with very little white space, but I think still an easy to look at page.  I used some old patterened paper with a fun feel as the base and border of the page. 

Lately, I've been trying to make 8.5 x 11 pages instead of 12x12 pages when I can - those 12x12 scrapbooks are so big & I scrapbook at a rapid rate, so the smaller sized album is more space friendly.  On a related note, I've been reorganizing my scrapbooking albums; my Brother P-Touch is smoking! - I'll post photos of that project sometime soon.

The subject of the page was inspired by Angie Lucas's repeated reference to the personality trait of being stubborn - and this reminded me of how my family can be a bit stubborn in their preferences for family fun and how this past weekend I invoked my FFF rule - Forced Family Fun - and took the family for a geocaching adventure in an alligator infested lake - look at the chart & take some guesses about who was on board with this idea.  Thankfully, no one got eaten by an alligator and I did live to tell and get these photos:

 
And in case that top left hand picture with the sign about the alligators is too small - here it is again:

 

 

Scrapworthy Lives August Blog Hop: Buy Some Happiness: Saturday Night Date Night!

Welcome Scrapbookers and Blog Hoppers!

You should have arrived here on the August Happiness Blog Hop sponsored by Stephanie Medley-Rath's Scrapworthy Lives: Because your Life Is Worth Scrapbooking Blog  {click here for the link to Scrapworthy Lives}.  More specifically, the stop before mine on the hop was { Tammy's Blog: Your Memory Connection }.

August's Theme is "Buy Some Happiness" inspired by Gretchen Rubin's book: "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent A Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun."  On the subject of money buying happiness, Gretchen Rubin explains:  "money, spent wisely, can support happiness goals of strengthening relationships, promoting health, having fun, and all the rest." 

Can Money Buy You Love? - the Beatles didn't think so - and neither do I, but can money infuse a little happiness into your relationship?  I think so.  This layout was inspired by a recent "Modest Splurge" when my husband and I re-instituted our long standing tradition of Saturday Night Date Night.  We didn't go crazy, but we did go on a bit of a geek spree at Best Buy and then downtown to the restaurant of our choice and indulged in good food and quality time together - without the kids.

 

The Page:  The page I made for this blog hop seems simple enough, I didn't use any embellishments or even any letter stickers - just a piece of colored cardstock and a few strips of patterened paper.  To the casual observer, this is a frugal page.  But to me, it represents a splurge.  I try to keep my spending on scrapbooking supplies to a bare minimum - I try to limit my purchases to adhesives and page protectors because I have enough scrapbooking supplies to last a lifetime.  Most of the time, I am happy using older supplies and papers in my scrapbooking, but occasionally, I find myself in a rut and when that happens I allow myself to indulge in a "Modest Splurge" and that Basic Grey Lauderdale Paper represents just such a splurge that I recently made on a trip to my local scrapbooking shop Whim-So-Doodle in Downtown St. Pete.  I bought $30 of patterened papers that I didn't need but I really wanted - it was all impulse shopping - buying whatever I thought was attractive, but I kept a dollar limit for myself and paid in cash - not with a credit card.  I didn't know what I'd use this paper for when I bought it but it seemed perfect for the mood I wanted to create with this page.

Here's our story:  Charlie and I met in 1995 and quickly fell in love, we were both recent law school graduates with lots of potential and lots of law school loan debt.  We had a long courtship and it was four years before we got married, but during our dating years, we took a giant leap of faith by starting a law practice together in 1997.   In 1999, as newlyweds, we had lots of time and love - but not much money - just a lot of law school loan debt, a new business, and a home mortgage.  We worked hard to get to a financially OK place.  In 2002, we started a family and when the children were small, we indulged in a live-in nanny, babysitters, and a housekeeper.   We kept up our Saturday Date Night Tradition even when the kids were small and we were seriously busy. 

But somewhere around 2008 or 2009, when the bad economy hit, we decided to tighten up the bootstraps and stopped having a housekeeper and started cleaning our house ourselves again; and since the children were getting a little older, we no longer needed all the babysitting.  So our new-found frugality led to the End of our Saturday Date Night Tradition.  Looking back, I think our marriage suffered a little bit because we stopped taking this time out together, we lost a connection that we once had and our connection then centered only around the house, the kids and work - there was little to no time spent on just us. 

Until last week - we brought back Saturday Date Night and it was worth every penny!

 Journaling: "Saturday Night - July 23, 2011: The first night in our house alone since Mac was born in 2002 and we had a long over-due date night at Moon Under Water in Downtown St. Pete - Of course it rained!  With both kids at a friend's house overnight - we got a little preview of the next stage in life."

 

Ok, Scrapbookers and Happiness Seekers: Now go check out the last stop on the Blog Hop!  { Click Here for Melissa's Blog }

:) Katie.

 

Scrapbook Improv: Confessions of a Seasoned Scrapbooker Turned Improv Student

Scrapbooking Confession #1:  I go into my scrapbooking room and surf the internet for scrapbooking inspiration instead of actually scrapbooking.

Scrapbooking Confession #2:  I still scraplift after over 10 years of scrapbooking.

Scrapbooking Confession #3:  My inner critic sometimes prevents me from putting my authentic self down in my journaling on scrapbook pages.

Do these problems prevent me from scrapbooking? No. Actually I am an avid scrapbooker and may be over-stating these problems, but they still exist for me.  “Hello, My name is Katie and I’m a scrap-a-holic.”

I recently took an improv class and the principles I learned have helped me improve (get it – improv / improve) my scrapbooking skills and I’m having more fun than ever before scrapbooking.  Did the improv class make me funnier?  Not according to my kids.  But the lessons I learned in improv class have opened my creative brain like never before and I’m so exciting about sharing the concepts and how I am applying to them to scrapbooking and a whole lot more!

This blog post series is dedicated to the lessons I’ve learned in improv class as they can be applied to scrapbooking.

This is lesson Number 1! “Yes, And… !”

One of the first exercises we did in improv class was to play “Yes, And…” but we didn’t start with this game, we started in pairs with the game of “No, But…” Our instructor told us to suggest to our partner that we go to lunch at a particular restaurant and then the partner would say “no, but” and explain why they didn’t want to go to that one but wanted to go to a different restaurant, then we would go back and forth with the “No, buts.” The “No, but” conversation was frustrating and we didn’t end up deciding on going anywhere. This exercise reminded me of when I am scrapbooking and I pick some photos but then decide “no, but” I think I maybe have some better photos somewhere, which leads to a long hunt for the right photos or paper or embellishment or journaling spot or story to tell or you name it. If you are a scrapbooker, you probably have done this frustrating “No, but” exercise with yourself more than once. I would like to say goodbye to “No, but” scrapbooking forever.

I would like to be a “Yes, And…” Scrapbooker. In improv class, after the “No, But” exercise, we did the “Yes, And…” exercise we were told to start the same way by suggesting that we go to a restaurant and then our partner would respond by saying “Yes, And…” then the partner would suggest something else to do. When we played this game everyone got more creative and had more fun, instead of just going to lunch the teams ended up going scuba diving, on treasure hunts and to outer space, so much more fun and interesting than the first exercise.

The “Yes, And…” game is one of the basic principles of improv comedy. The moral of the this principle is to accept what others have to offer, to try something new, to be open to new possibilities; and it is also about taking something and running with it – putting an end to all that deliberation of if you should do this or that – it’s a quick decision so the fun can begin!

So how can you apply the “Yes, And” principle from improv to scrapbooking?  Here are 5 fun ways:

1. Say “Yes, And” to someone’s imagination or plan in real life and then scrapbook about the experience. I let my daughter plan an adventure for the two of us and she took us on a “hike” all the way from our house to a busy part of town – I never imagined she would want to walk to far from home and luckily my husband came to rescue us once we got to her intended destination, but it was a little peek at her independent view of the world and her desire to explore it.

 

2. Say “Yes, And” when someone offers you free tickets or a chance to do something you don’t normally do and scrapbook the experience.  My husband is one of those rare men who doesn’t watch sports of any kind and while I’m quite happy about this fact, I do enjoy actually going to live games, he does not.  So when a business friend gave us free tickets to the Tampa Bay Rays Game, he normally says “No, But” we don’t go to games, but I overheard the exchange and quickly said “Yes, And” I’ll take our son and that’s just what I did. 

 

3.  Take what others have to offer:  Kid’s Artwork.  My kids bring home a lot of artwork and I keep lots of it, but the artwork doesn’t always end up in my scrapbooks, more often it ends up in a specially dedicated book to that school year.  I do think kids’ artwork can make an awesome embellishment or background to a page because it gives a personal touch and can further the story you are trying to tell.  This page is about how I usually think my son favors me over his Dad and how happy his Dad was when he brought home a Valentine that highlighted Dad instead of me!  This page makes both of us smile, since we now each think we are his favorite!

 

And, just to be fair, I made another scrapbook page that featured our son’s portrait of me:

 

4.  Take what others have to offer:  Photos.   My husband’s nephew has a distinct sense of humor, one year for Christmas he sent 8×10 glossy photos of himself – but he had done things like shaved his head into a comb-over.   I knew this photo needed to go into a scrapbook (and not on display in the house) and I though the Single White Male Ad would be a funny twist – it was my “Yes, And” to his weird self portrait.  Oh, And Yes, Ladies, he is still single just in case you are wondering.

 

5. Say Yes, And!  to the Embellishments and Letters that you have on hand:  The letters in this layout don’t match, chances are that if you are a paper scrapbooker you have left over letters from several different alphabets, this trick is an oldie but a goodie – use different letters to make a title – ransom style. 

 

I made all of the above pages before taking the improv classes, actually several are a few  years old, but in retrospect I can see that “Yes, And…” attitude on these pages.

Now for a Fun Scrapbook Improv Challenge:    Create a page incorporating one of the five tips from this post and/or  answering a question with “Yes, And” so that those words are in your title.  I’ll make a new scrapbook page too and post it here and in Scrapbook Improv Flickr Gallery ( http://www.flickr.com/groups/1715443@N20/ ), come PLAY ALONG!   I would love to see what you create with this “Yes, And” improv concept!

P.S. I was thinking about starting a whole new blog on the concept of Improv Scrapbooking - let me know what you think.  Here's the link:  http://scrapbookimprov.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/confessions-of-a-seasoned-scrapbooker-turned-improv-student/

Sent from my iPhone

:) Katie.

Lucky to Live Near the Beach & What to do with Iphone and Camera Videos & "Motion Scrapbooking"

I made this video this past weekend at sunset at beautiful Pass-A-Grille Beach - and as the saying goes "If you are lucky enough to live by the sea, then you are lucky enough."  We are very lucky indeed.  Check it out:

 

Here is the link if that doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ss98n0WTiY

It occurs to me that my children's voices are so completely adorable and scrapbooks don't capture that.  And I want to capture what they say and how cute they are saying it and I don't want to lose this stuff - meaning my videos - but I don't have a system in place for backing them up and saving them.

Izzy Hyman on the Paperclipping Roundtable Podcast talks a lot about "motion scrapbooking" and I would love to learn more - actually, I would love to just be spoon fed an easy way to deal with my videos.  I don't really want to know the intracacies of video editing.  My husband actually has some professional video editing software and he knows how to use it but has so far just used it for work, not for home videos, and for whatever reason, I can't get "making home videos into movies we could play on tv" on his "Honey Do" list. 

Over the years, though, I have taken a lot of videos with my camera and iphone but I haven't dont' much with them and I don't want to lose them.  I thought I'd start uploading them to You Tube and linking them here  as a way to back them up in the clouds. 

I need help figuring out what to do with my videos - please leave a comment letting me know what you do with your  home videos?

Go Fly A Kite - Scrapbooking by Numbers: 6 Photos & a Scrapbooking Challenge!

March in Florida is blissful. Looking back through my pictures from other years during March I notice how often we fly kites and go to the beach in March.  I might have included some of those old photos if my Library of Memories storage binders were in better shape, but I decided to just scrapbook what I had available and ready right now and used these photos I took a couple weekends ago on this layout.

 

Products:  Dear Lizzy by American Crafts & October Afternoon.

Go join the Scrapbooking by Numbers Flickr Group for more inspiration and ideas for getting 6 photos on a scrapbook layout.  Here's the link:  Click Here for the Scrapbooking by Numbers Flickr Group: 6 Photos.  Here's a little preview of what you will see at Flickr:

 

Here's the link to the Scrapbooking by Numbers - 6 photos Slide Show: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1356158@N21/pool/show/.

Scrapbooking Challenge:  Scrapbook 6 photos on one layout feature photos showing what you love to do in the Spring.  Upload your layout to the Flickr Group and leave a link in the comments here on my blog. 

Scrapbooking Places We Love: Pass-a-Grille Beach

Its March and the weather is absolutely beautiful here in Florida.  It seems wrong to be inside when it is this lovely outside.  I've been spending as much time as possible outdoors - and have been taking the kids to the beach and to our local favorite places to go.  We live minutes from St. Pete Beach and one of our favorite beach places to go is Pass-a-grille; we went there last weekend but this page features pictures from March 2009.  I'm planning to do several pages about Pass-a-grille since I have a ton of pictures and several stories to tell about this adorable tiny beach town.  I'm thinking of this page as a section opener in my album. 

 
I made this while listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable's Podcast Episode #51 Location, Location, Location with Julie Fei-Fan Balzer & Liz Ness & Noell Hyman.  The funny thing was that the panelists on the show were saying how they don't take photos out and about around town where they live, I love to play tourist and don't feel at all inhibited about taking a zillion photos in my town.  This one is going into my "Places We Love" Album in my Stacy Julian style Library of Memories.

 

Scrapbooking by Numbers: 10+ Photos & Scrapbooking in the Present

I flipped through the Becky Higgins Sketches Book over the weekend while floating in my little row boat and found a great scrapbook sketch for  two page layouts with lots of photos. Here are three of my interpretations of that one multi-photo scrapbook sketch:

1. My cousin Catherine's wedding:

 
I had a ton of photos from a film camera - the wedding was in 1999 or 2000, so I cropped some of them and got 11 on one two page scrapbook layout.  I trimmed it up with odds and ends embellishments including chipboard words, rubons, transparency butterflies, patterned paper, and dimensional tag stickers.  I didn't do a ton of journaling but did write down how I am related to my cousin - so that my kids would know in case they ever wondered when they saw this layout.

2.  This doesn't exactly follow the sketch but its pretty close and I fit 10 photos onto 2 pages with this layout.  I was on a roll with the older photos - so I pulled out some from the summer of 2008 and found a bunch of my husband and daugther - neither of them were available when I was doing the journaling - if they were I probably would have asked them about the photos to get the story, but I told the story I knew - that I had just gotten back from my 20 year high school reunion and they showed me their silly tricks when I returned:

 

3. This next is very similar to the one in the Becky Higgins Sketch book - I even found the exact same brown paper with the little green flowers that she used back in 2006 - those scrapbooking yardsales keep me well stocked in premium paper that's out of date; I think this one was Crate Paper and I don't care that its old - it is a very nice heavy weight, it is pretty and doesn't look too dated to me, and the best part is I probably got it for ten cents.  

This layout that I made which features my son at age 6 in the summer of 2008 broke my heart just a little because he's so much bigger now that he is 9 and, well, he used to love hanging out with me and while he still does, he does less now than he did then.   Plus I realized that I had little in the way of journaling from that summer; I probably have a notebook or something somwhere, but it wasn't handy when I made the layout and I looked at my blog archives from the Summer of 2008 and it was all about scrapbooking instead of about what my kids were up to.  So I'm thinking I'm going to start blogging a little more about the current events of my life for future scrapbooking reference for myself.  

After I made this layout this morning, I created a Florida Scavenger Hunt, told both kids that we were going on an adventure, and we spent the day out in the world until sunset finding treasure and making memories. 

 

That's 11 photos on that 2 page layout - I'm thinking that maybe I'll do more 2 page layouts; I used to do a lot of them but have been doing 1 pagers for the last couple years.  I'm feeling the 2 page thing coming back - not as a trend in the world of scrapbooking - but in my own little world of scrapbooking.

Ok, I'm filing these under the Scrapbooking by Numbers: 10+ Photos and I'm going to make better efforts towards my Becky Higgins style Project Life Album and writing down more everyday about what is going on in the present - so when I scrapbook the pictures I took today someday in the future, then I'll remember all the fun stuff we did and what we talked about.  And I'm sure someday, my big kids of 7 and 9 will look tiny to my future self.

Here we were today in pictures on our Scavenger Hunt Adventure:

And I didn't write down a whole lot other than what I found on our scavenger hunt, but Ally & I did make this little video which I'm sure will jog my memory if it needs a reminder someday in the future when I try to scrapbook a few of these pictures.   I tried to upload the video here but ran into some problems, I did upload it to my picasa web album, I really need to do more video - the kids are so completely cute - especially their voices.

Time to Spring Ahead :)

 

 

Enter Now! Last Day for the Ella Publishing "Journaling That Matters" Giveaway on my Blog!

 

If you Can't See The Video Above, Here's the Link: Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking Ustream Videos.

I'm off to the Whim So Doodle Scrapbooking Yardsale!

If you have any ideas of what you'd like to see me up to in the Ustream Videos, please let me know by leaving a comment.

Scrap Your Scraps Class at Scrapbooking In Paradise! August 22, 2008

GO HERE to get all the details about my great new class "Scrap Your Scraps"  It will be from 6-8 on Friday Night and we're going to have FUN!  Bring your Orange and Blue scraps and photos and plan to make 6 layouts!  It will be Fast, Fabulous and FUN!

Scrapbooking in Paradise

We had a design team crop last night at Scrapbooking in Paradise & we made give aways for National Scrapbooking Day.  Mine was done at 2 hours - an entire book - but Rhonda told me to fluff it up a bit - so I added ribbons and flowers and brads for another hour.  Its cute but I didn't even take a picture, she might have one up on their blog.

Had tons of fun talking with Rhonda and listening to the "unapproved" music (peppy dancy stuff).  I stand while I scrap and apparently I dance too (never really thought about it) but yes I do.  And I break out a few lines (even though I'm a really bad singer).

The other Katie S. always makes me laugh.  And Sweet Caroline is also taking Library of Memories and she just lost 85 pounds on Nutrisystem and has 15 more to go - WAY TO GO Caroline!  (She is really beautiful & I never noticed that she needed to lose any weight btw).  I was a little scared when I saw the size of the Nutrisystem pizza - mine is arriving this week, I'll keep you posted on that.  And love talking to the dental assistant (sorry I can't remember your name), she is planning to take Library of Memories next year so I told her all about how totally scrap life changing it is.  (Take the class - its worth it).

And I took home these which I did a few months ago for them using Karen Foster Paper:

And I completed this layout with new Daisy Buckets Playlist Paper that I won (in a random drawing) on the Simple Studio blog (thanks again!):

I went home with some Sultry Basic Grey & Bo Bunny stuff so I'll be working on projects using those beautiful papers, they should be in the store later this week and probably on the Scrapbooking in Paradise blog - go check them out.