Next up is District 1 Luxury. I'll be working on the scrapbook project for that tonight, watch for the post tomorrow. After that we'll visit the Capitol and District 13, then we'll explore other themes from The Hunger Games. I'm applying a concept from improvisational comedy to scrapbooking here - its called "piling it on" -where you keep with one topic or category until you think you can't think of anything else and then you keep on going. The Improv Games associated with this concept is called "The Minister's Cat" {Click Here to Watch Scrooge Play The Minister's Cat - it is quite ridiculous}. So like Scrooge's peeps and their party games, I'm going to stick with the theme of The Hunger Games until the movie's release. Thankfully, the movie is releasing at the end of this month, I'll be hosting a ustream close to the movie premier, time and date for that to come sometime soon.
In the meantime, if you wish to support this blog and get yourself all decked out in luxurious accessories from The Hunger Games for the big movie premier, check out these affiliate links:
So get your Katniss on and put a dish of milk out for Buttercup because we're staying on The Hunger Games for a while.
As a scrapbooker, I take a lot of photos. Most of the time I use a Canon point and shoot that I keep in my purse. When I want to share something right away, especially like when I am on vacation, I use my iphone. I live tweaking my iPhone photos in instagram and having those photos feed instantly to my Facebook & Twitter accounts.
Yesterday I went skiing while my husband stayed in town and he and our friends followed along with my instagram photos.
I had what I consider to be a life changing day yesterday. I fell in love with Durango, Colorado. I know that someday I will live here, maybe retirement, maybe as a second home , I'm not sure. I was sure of my intense feelings. I knew I had to record them. Instead of journaling my experience for later Scrapbooking, I shot some videos with my iPhone and uploaded them to You Tube. So when my husband came to pick me up after skiing, he was already fully aware that his sometime impulsive and strong willed wife had made an emotional decision about our future. Whether he is on board is still undecided - he's not quite as impulsive as I am, at least he knows what I was feeling when I was feeling it. As a scrapbooker, if I scrapbook that bug moment and decision in the future, I will be able to watch the videos and tap into my intense emotions that I felt at the time and create a page that captures the raw intensity of my feelings yesterday.
I am excited about using video more on my Scrapbooking to connect me back to the time and place and feelings; and to immediately share with my friends and family.
Welcome, Welcome, Scrapbooking Dystopian Fans to Panem District #7 Lumber,
First, you simply MUST watch this silly song about Lumberjacks from Monty Python:
This will get you in the appropriately silly mood to record some lumberjack and lumber related memories just like we did during our stop in District 10 Livestock. So watch the song and then sit down at your computer or with a pen and paper and record at least 10 random memories, which may or may not be funny, about lumberjacks, lumber, the forrest, and/or trees. You have to come up with at least 10. My bet is that you could probably come up with 100, but stop at 10 ok? And then come back for more District 10 Lumber Scrapbooking on the Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking Blog.
Here's my layout with three pages of 11 stories about lumber, trees and lumberjacks:
Ok, so you've got your 10 lumberjack memories in hand right? If you don't, do that now. Really. Do it now. And THEN you can read the rest of the blog entry for today. Trust me, just do it right now if you haven't already, it does not have to be full sentences, it does not have to make sense to anyone except you, but you do have to go through an remember and write down 10 memories about lumber to get the improvisational comedy concept of "piling it on" or the improv game "the minister's cat".
If you wish to support this blog and learn more about scrapbooking and improv and read the The Hunger Games (if you haven't yet); please click on the affiliate links:
P.S. Here are my 11 stories about lumberjacks:
Eleven Real Life Lumberjack Remember When Stories:
1. I went to high school in Bangor Maine where Paul Bunyan, legendary giant woodsman, stands as a symbol of a great era, the 1800s when Bangor, Maine was acclaimed "THE LUMBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!" I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 5 and went to Bangor to the circus; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 15 and used to climb up and sit on the feet with my friend Lizzy Dean; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 25 when I took Charlie to see Maine and we had our picture taken in front of the statue; I remember the Paul Bunyan statue from when I was about 35 (or technically 41) when I brought the entire family to Maine and showed my kids this statue. I have a wooden Paul Bunyan that its in my kitchen as a reminder of my hometown.
2. I not only can sing the Monty Python version of the Lumberjack Song, I also remember a song about Lumberjacks from summer camp - the one about My name is Jan Janson, I come from Wisconsin... and it goes again and again and again, when I sang it for the kids they both begged me to stop - maybe we should start using that one in the morning to get them out of bed! I used to watch Monty Python on Bangor’s PBS station late at night with my BFF Missy Woodbury and I’m pretty sure we used to sing the Lumberjack song and laugh our heads off until we fell asleep.
3. My Grandpi had 600 acres of mostly woods in Calais on River Road and we used to walk through the forrest when I was a kid and there was one tree that had a nail in it with a metal bucket hanging from the nail this was the tree near a natural well and I think maybe there was some sort of old fashioned pump that you could pump and fill the bucket up with water and get a drink, just in case you were a thirsty lumberjack I’m guessing.
4. My Dad had about 1000 acres of woodland just outside of Bangor and he won all sorts of Tree Forestry awards for being a very environmentally sound tree farmer, I have the plaques in my law office now. Sometimes I make a lame joke to clients that we waste a lot of paper because my law school professor J.J. Brown always used to say "paper’s cheap and time is short" - I think he was trying to convince us L1s of the brilliance of only writing on one side of the paper because it would be easier to read later on; so my story to clients is that even through our law office has been paperless since 2002, we still have and use a lot of paper - but karma wise I’m OK since my dad was an environmentally sound tree farmer. I don’t really think anyone gets this story, but my mind always goes there when the client comments about how gigantic their files have gotten - we are paperless in that everything gets scanned in and we have a fantastic client profiles software management system that I completely love and allows me to work from anywhere including from home and vacation and even my iphone!; but we still keep paper files and I usually have the staff put the physical files on my desk for client meetings and generally they are huge, like at least a foot or two tall of paper. Seriously, so it just kind of seems funny that we consider ourselves to be paperless with all that paper.
5. When we lived in Calais, Maine when I was little, the town next to ours had a paper mill and the whole town smelled really, really bad and I was always so happy that we didn’t live there and I only had to hold my breath for about 2 minutes while we drove through that town on the old Airline road on our trips to Bangor.
6. When I was a teenager and living with my Dad and he owned all that land, he insisted we go out to the land to cut down our Christmas tree; we always ended up with a very Charlie Brown tree and we didn’t axe it down as you might imagine, he’d bring a hand saw. Once, when I was about 16 and was dating David Q, he said he could solve my Christmas tree problem and we drove out into the woods and found a giant tree - just like the Griswolds did in Christmas vacation and we chopped it down with an axe and then realized it was about 4 or 5 times longer than his little Subaru so we chopped off the top of it and tied it to the roof and hauled it home. My first Christmas in our house with Charlie, we had a real live tree and I decorated it with spray painted and glittered sea shells and pine cones, it was also when our black lab was a puppy and he kept trying to eat and/or hump the tree and it was a mess and at about 2 pm on Christmas Day that year, I hauled the tree, ornaments and lights and all, out to the curb in front of our house and vowed to never, ever have a real live tree again. We’ve had a fake tree ever since and I’m totally OK with that; someone usually sends us a Maine wreath as a Christmas present so I still get the smell of home without the giant mess or driving out to the woods.
7. My family came to America in 1706 from Scotland; Wallace Finlayson was in shipping and he landed in Portsmouth, NH on my birthday, June 6th in the year 1706 and he quickly moved up to Maine but continued in shipping, he or maybe his son is rumored to have been captured by Pirates and never seen again. His son or grandson, William Penn Fenderson and/or Nathanial Fenderson had a farm in Maine and one of them went into town one year with the harvest and was never to be seen again, it is rumored that he sold his crop, left his wife and kids high and dry, and he went out to California for the Gold Rush and that his descendants got into the wine business and now have some connection with Reunite and Mad Dog or Thunder something rott-gutt wine. Even though our family has been in Maine for over 300 years and it was once the lumber capital of the world, I don’t think any of my ancestors were lumberjacks, but the men in the Fenderson family always wore plaid shirts on the weekends - which maybe a lumberjack thing but could also have been a Scottish thing, anyway, they looked like lumberjacks and spent lots of time in the woods.
8. When I was a teenager and lived with my Dad and he was single, he used to date a lot of different women. His favorite kind of date would be to take the lady to dinner - one time he brought a lady to 7 or 8 McDonalds around the Bangor Area to get a free Chicken McNugget when the nuggets finally came to Maine, and afterwards, he brought her out to the land which he was very proud of; I remember distinctly him telling me about this date afterwards and telling me that he couldn’t figure out why she would never take his calls afterwards. And then he’d add the bit about how he "clubbed 7 porcupines to death with a stick" while he was on this woodland date; and then he’d add how it was environmentally sound to kill the cute little porcupines because they liked to eat a ring around the bark of the trees which would kill the trees and he was trying to grow the trees. I’m sure whoever that lucky lady was still tells this story about that weird guy who brought her on a date to McDonalds and topped it off with killing porcupines. Weird.
9. When I was dating Charlie and his parents had a house in Georgia, they used to have to cut down the Georgia pines since they’d blow over easily in a storm so my husband and father in law know their way around a chain saw. Charlie also has a song that has something to do with lumberjacks and is played on chainsaws, he relayed that song to the kids this morning but I’m guessing he’ll play it for them tonight so they get the full effect.
10. I grew up with Pine Trees and since I moved to Florida its been Palm Trees. I get nostalgic when I walk through a forest with lots of pine trees, it reminds me of my Dad and childhood and funny stories about trees and lumberjacks and home.- Katie 2/29/12 (leap day)
IMPROV CONCEPT OF EMBRACING YOUR MISTAKES: I forgot to include an 11th story on the computer journaling so I wrote the 11th story on the layout.
Here's the text from #11 which is included on the front of the page as though spoken by that nervous little skunk - hoping my dad wouldn't mistake him for a porcupine:
#11. Hey Psst. If you see Bob Fenderson "tromping around" in the woods up there in Heaven, make sure NOT to point out the porcupines, better to ask him about the SECOND LARGEST BAROQUE TREE IN MAINE, that will get him going for at least 2 hours; just ask my Tom K., the dad of my highschool sweetheart who remembered the STORY about the BAAARRROOKE tree when I paid a surprise visit to Jefferson St. while I was in Bangor, Maine for my 20th High School Reunion - it was so funny to me that he remembered. K 2/29/12
Howdy Partners and Welcome to Day 4 of the Scrapbooking Challenge based on The Hunger Games! We are visiting District 10 of Panem today, it is cow country and the primary industry is livestock.
I found a great site by Scholastic Publishing with videos of The Hunger Games' author, Suzanne Collins, and one of them describes her classical inspiration for the story of The Hunger Games, click here for the link to the story from Ancient Greece about Crete and the Minotaur. Sidebar: I spent a semester in Greece while I was in college and we went to Crete and I've read Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology several times cover to cover, but that was about 20 years ago so the story was vaguely familiar. Seems Collins mashed up the story about the Minotaur with the modern day tv realities shows like Survivor and The Bachelor and came up with completely enthralling literature for young and old alike. I have convinced people of all ages to read this series which I was initially skeptical about, it is seriously a must read I think. Read it, it is good stuff and extremely well written so that the characters all are shades of grey instead of black and white, the characters all have an arch, and all the loose ends get tied up in the end; and the story stays with you making you think about several different but important themes like government, family, survival, excess vs. minimalism, war, the economy, family dynamics, group dynamics.... lots and lots of themes in this series.
Speaking of "Piling It On", during the video presentation I describe an Intro to Improvisational Comedy Game in which the group stands in a circle and says words starting with a particular letter. The circle will go around a few times with everyone coming up with a word, but the trick is that you can't say a word twice, so at some point, someone will be a bit stumped and/or it will seem like the group has said all of the words that start with that letter. Until someone says a word with that same letter but maybe in a different topic, for example maybe the group was going P words and saying words like "place" "paradise" "paris" "parks" "panem" ... and then someone says "people" and then the group is opened up to words like "peter" "principle" "principal" "playwright" "poet" "peeta"... and on and on. Ok, just remembered, in improv class, we played it like "The minister's cat is a ________ cat" so each person had to say, rhythmically and maybe there was also clapping involved, the sentence and fill in the blank with a word starting with a particular letter. So say we picked "A" then we'd go around and say "The minister's cat is an ANGRY cat." and the next person would say "The minister's cat is an AVERAGE cat." and so on until someone felt stumped but then the doors would open back up and we'd have a slew of words when we thought we were all tapped out. This game is fun to play with kids if you have any handy, they love it and I guarantee you will all laugh yourselves silly. It is fun good stuff that will get your brain thinking in a new creative way. I promise.
If you apply the concept of "piling it on" to scrapbooking and story telling, you can come up with the same kind of creative result. Its a way to get your brain to come up with stories and memories that you might not normally think of. For example, without this Hunger Games Scrapbooking Series and the particular stop at District 10 Livestock - which seems pretty random and also seems like it has nothing to do with my life - I don't live on a farm, I don't have cows, I don't even like to eat mammals if I can help it. But with this one prompt of "livestock" and the concept of including 10 stories about cows on one scrapbooking page, I quickly came up with over 20 funny stories about cows, and I'm fairly sure I could come up with another 20 if I gave myself another 5 or 10 minutes. Seriously, this kind of improv scrapbooking works to open up your brain to a place where you can get more creative, have more fun, and come up with ideas more quickly.
Here's my scrapbook layout about Cows:
But, you may be saying, "Katie, I don't really want to scrapbook about cows." I say to you, my fine Scrapbooking virtual friend, "Give it a try!" If Kid Rock can come up with a complete song about being a cowboy, surely you can think of some memories about cows. You don't have to pick cows or livestock as your prompt. You could try Goats or Farms or Cowboys or Pets or anything really - the key is to just pick something - anything - but once you've picked, don't go back, you've got to fully commit to whatever it is and then start to think of stories about that topic and just start writing. Don't worry if you get to a place where you think you don't have any more stories about that topic, just keep going, because just like in that improv game with the Angry Cat, you'll think you've exhausted "A" words for cats and then you'll think of a new one and the doors of creativity - or in the scrapbooking case, of stories related to a particular topic will open wide like barn doors blowing open right before a storm rolls in and you'll have a hard time shutting off the story switch because your mind will be full of stories and memories you haven't thought about in years. It is magic.
If you would like to play along, please join the Facebook Event "The Hunger Games Scrapbook Challenge" or the Flickr Group and please leave a comment with a link to a page you've made and/or what you think of my crazy scrapbooking improv dystopia mash up. In other words, tell me: "Is this too far out there or are you digging it?"
If you'd like to explore some of this randomness and support my blog at the very same time, please click on the affiliate links:
P.S. This is the cow photo collage that I created in Picasa (and yes that bull right over the number "10" is doing something to prove his dominance over the girl cows - he was mad when I moo-ed at them and wanted to show me who was boss immediately - fortunately the kids didn't really notice that part - that will be a story for when they are a bit older maybe - it was so funny), here it is :
Here are the corresponding stories in the hidden journaling for my 10 Cow Stories Scrapbook Page (the part in the pocket) and it goes a little like this:
"We saw those cows on the side of the road in North Carolina and slowed down to Moo at them like Charlie and I did when we were four wheeling in the Georgia mountains when we were dating. That is always a funny and happy story to tell. It then occurred to me that I have lots of funny stories about cows and farm animals - here are 10 that srping to mind:
1. Charlie loves to wear his leather jacket on Friday nights when he goes to "Band Camp" because the thinks it make him look cool.
2. Allison recently declared herself to be a vegetarian - although lately she’s been the kind of vegetarian that I am - we try not to eat cows and pigs and instead stick to fish and feathers.
3. Charlie’s cousin Penni is a large animal vet and one year a horse or cow kicked her in the hand and she broke her finger and there was a strange fixation for the broken bone with metal prongs coming right out of her skin and a big ugly putty looking thing that held the metal prongs together; she made the best of things andpainted the big ugly thing with lots of glitter and when she came to visit she told us that she had a brand new big diamond ring! Everyone had to look two or three times to process the sparkly contraption on her hand.
4. My dad had lots of land and one year he was so impressed with himself because he got a tax refund for being a farmer since he bought a cow, had it eat his field grass for a season, and then sold the cow earning him $2,000 and qualifying him for a tax refund! He was thrilled to be able to combine two of his favorite things: his land and saving money.
5. The children’s museum in St. Pete has a plastic cow that you can actually milk.
6. Allison calls milk "cow’s milk" and when she says it she draws out the o sound in cow so it takes her about three times as long to say the word cow; and I don’t like cow’s milk at all but when the kids were little I felt like a cow and even once made a scrapbook layout with lots of sticker sneeze of colorful cows all over it and the subject matter was how I was the children’s food source, what was I thinking? I think that while you are a nursing mom, the babies kind of suck your brains out along with the milk.
7. When my mom first moved to Florida she lived next door to a cow farm and she had an orange tree in her back yard and one year we went to her house for Thanksgiving so her husband Bob could cook and while we were waiting for dinner, we all went into the backyard to feed oranges to the cows.
8. My aunt Carolyn, who when I was little had a herd of about 9 cats that she brought with her everywhere including on her road trips from Rhode Island all the way to Calais, Maine on the border of Canada when she came to visit us and my Nana and Grandpi; and now she has an actual herd of goats and she has a business called Goats and Greens and she sells organic herbs and salad greens to fancy restaurants and health food stores and she makes goat’s milk soap and lotions that she sells at farmer’s markets and on the internet. Allison and I went to her goat farm when Allison was only 4 months old and she had me bottle feed her baby goats before I went to the airport and I don’t think it was to be cute - I think she actually needed help with all those adorable baby goats.
9. When Mac was little our babysitter Donna called him Mackey Moo Moo and sometimes we still call him this or, for short, we call Mac just "moo moo".
10. When I was in Bangor High School I can remember the jock type guys talking about how they went out cow tipping, I think even my old boyfriend, David, said he did this sort of thing. But Katie and Nancy and I always sort of thought that was Bull. :) Katie and my cow memories - ok one more - when I was a kid everyone used to sing me the WWII song: Ka-Ka-Ka Katie, Oh Beautiful Katie, you’re the only, only girl that I adore; when the ma-moon shines over the COW shed, I’ll be waiting at your ka-ka-ka kitchen door. I must have heard that one about a million times before I turned ten. :) KATIE’S COW STORIES 2/28/12."
Again, just to highlight, we are not cow people, but I do have a lot of stories I could tell around a cowboy campfire about cows. Scrapbookers, try this yourselves! Take one topic and you will amaze yourself at how many stories you can think up and remember. And then report back, leave a comment or a link, I would love to see your project or scrapbook page.
Now Playing: The Hunger Games on the Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking Blog:
I posted The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge for District 11 this morning but used layouts that I already created in the video and blog post. So I was feeling a bit like I didn't get to play enough. So, after work, I came home and had to bust out a layout quick about agriculture. We've been working on our herb garden. I went to Two Peas in a Bucket for a little layout inspiration and found a Memory Keeping Monday with Jen Gallacher challenge to alter a sticker, check it out:
So I connected dystopia with gardening and scrapbooking with stickers and stamps, totally logical right? Want more randomness? Watch me explain my layout and herb garden but please don't tell Charlie that I brought his iPad outside!
Here's how I alterned the stickers:
And here is my Spring Hunger Games District 11 Agriculture scrapbooking layout:
Ta-Da! All these random things mixed up on one page makes me so happy and I had lots of fun making the page and the dorky video.
And I didn't even get into how "Improv Scrapbooking" helps me to get to the mental place where I can bring all this stuff together while having fun, more on that soon. Plus you can search this blog for related "scrapbook improv" posts if you are at all interested in the concept of merging scrapbooking with techniques from improvisational comedy to get productive, playful, present moment, positive, perfectly authentic scrapbooking fun.
If you'd like to get in touch with your inner child and get creative juices flowing and if you'd like to simultaneously support this blog, check out the following affiliate links:
Also, be sure to check out the Flickr Group and Facebook Event called "The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge Series."
This Scrapbooking Video is about my old school magnetic scrapbook wedding scrapbook and my modern scrapbook albums and photo books. It is in response to Noell Hymann's Paperclipping Roundtable #103 "Too Precious to Scrapbook" and the connection between what kind of scrapbooker you are in relation to how you planned your wedding.
Welcome to Day 3 of The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge on Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking, today we are visiting District 11:
The Hunger Games: Today we are visiting Rue's District 11 Agriculture. Rue reminded Katniss Everdeen of her little sister, they relaxed together in the woods and Katniss sang to Rue as she tragically died. We are going to use this part of the story as a jumping off point for themes for possible scrapbooking layouts or projects; think of them as story prompts. Our themes for today are agriculture; siblings; relaxing in the great outdoors; and music. Here are some (previously created) pages I made in each of these theme categories:
1. DISTRICT 11 AGRICULTURE: Themes could include growing a garden, layouts about flowers or trees, tree climbing, nature, etc.
2. KATNISS & RUE: The SIBLING CONNECTION: Katniss Everdeen was the older sister and wanted to protect her little sister Primrose from having to participate in The Hunger Games; Katniss volunteers to take her place as tribute and once in the games, finds a connection to Rue from District 11 since she reminds Katniss of her little sister. Pages in this theme could include actual siblings or friends who seem like siblings:
Here's another page that I made about my sister and on the backside in the page protector I keep letters from her and her son:
3. REST AND RELAXATION IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS: I picked some camping layouts and a layout about relaxing in our backyard hammock with a Story People quote that I love:
4. MUSIC: This is the title page for my Music Section of my Library of Memories Scrapbooking Albums and several of the filler pages.
P.S. Check out Taylor Swift's song from The Hunger Games and Ben Fold's song Rockin the Suburbs - I highly recommend both.
Want to play along?
1. Please leave a comment with a link to your layout.
Welcome to Day #2 of The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge Series!
Part 1 of The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge Day 2:
(Psst - Hey Scrapbookers: The videos overlap a bit so you can fast forward a bit through the second one. Improv and scrapbooking and making videos about these concepts are not perfect - and that is OK! I'm not letting technical difficulties keep me from having a bit of fun.)
Part 2 of the video:
SCRAPBOOKING IMPROV TIP: TAKING IT THE WRONG WAY: Think of a word and use it in the wrong way. For example, if some one is talking about dinner reservations you could misinterpret them to mean the kind of reservations or hesitation you might have about bungee jumping. This improvisational comedy technique is known as "taking it the wrong way" and it is a fun exercise to try especially with your kids.
The improv principle of "taking it the wrong way" was the inspiration for today's Hunger Games Challenge. The improv principle of listening and reacting to what your scene partners are saying and the principle of staying in the present moment were also at play when I created this page, as was the improv principle that you don't keep your own ideas "too precious" you go with the flow of the group:
For example: I had a "precious" idea. This morning, I thought I'd start each day with one of the Districts starting with #12 descending down to #1. Each District in The Hunger Games had an industry and I thought I could take inspiration from those industries like fishing, textiles, war, lumber etc. The main character, Katniss Everdeen's home district is #12 and the industry is coal since, in this dystopian post apocalyptic world, it is located in what was once Appalachia in North America. I was sort of deciding about whether to start in at District #1 and work out to #12 or vice versa so I asked my family at breakfast "Should I scrapbook about Lumber or Coal? " just to see if they had any thoughts. {Here's where I went "improv" and discarded my "precious idea" and listened to what my "scene partners" were saying and I reacted to that instead.} To my surprise, they did. They each had different thoughts - my son thought I was talking about Lego's Ninjago named Cole and he brought out the minifig to show me; my daugther thought I was talking about our friend's daughter Nicole; and Charlie, playing along I think, suggested I might be talking about his cousin, Penni Cole. Then I suggested that maybe I was talking about the kind of coal that Santa brings when children are naughty. Here is the collage with text I made in Picasa demonstrating this morning's conversation:
STEP 1: Think of a word you can "take the wrong way" and use it in a layout. You can use a word in its incorrect form. Yesterday I talked about high school English Class with Mrs. Rideout and she did this exercise with us, we had vocabulary words each week and we'd have to write definition appropriate sentences for all of them except one; we'd each have to take a word and use it incorrectly in a sentence. I remember a couple of the sentences quite specificially:
"Hey! Stop that! European all over my shoe."
"The figure skater finished her routine and looked at the judges and whispered to herself hopefully: Benign! Benign!"
It is a fun and silly exercise that is easily applied to scrapbooking. Seriously, try it.
STEP 2: Find Photos that Support Your Wrong Way Word. I think that you are most likely not going to have a photo displaying a word used in the wrong context - although if you do - then kudos to you - use that. More likely, you'll have to get a bit creative with your photo interpretation of how you are using a word incorrectly. This is the time to play, think out side of the box of what you originally took the photo about and use it in a different way. So improv. So fun.
I used all the different definitions of the word coal and found a head shot of each member of my family and created a grid photo collage and then wrote each family member's definition over the photo. Otherwise, all these photos would never had ended up on the same page. To add some consistency, I converted most of the photo collage to black and white but kept a pop of color on a photo of my family at Appalachian Ski Mountain - the original thought behind the word of the day: Coal.
STEP 3: Put your Page Together and Try to Use Embellishments that Support Your Theme. I used a map from our trip to Appalachian Ski Mountain. I also used a bit of patterned paper with a picture of a bird since that refers to the Mockingjays in The Hunger Games books.
STEP 4: SHARE! Post a comment with a link to your page, I would love to see it and hear about how you used a word incorrectly! There is a flickr group called "The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenges" so you can post your layout there if you don't have a blog. Can't wait to see what you make!
If you wish to support this blog and learn more about scrapbooking and improvisational comedy and how they can work together and/or catch up on The Hunger Games, then check out these affiliate links:
Welcome Scrapbookers to The Hunger Games Kiss and Tell Scrapbooking Challenge #1: Main Characters. Let the Games Begin!
Over the past week, I've been fully immersed into the dystopian world of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games. I couldn't help but notice that there were so many similarities between the main character, Katniss Everdeen, and myself. Our nuclear family units growing up were identical, even the personalities of the family members, like our late fathers were hunters, our mothers worked in healthcare, and our little sisters had a fondness for stray cats. The similarities didn't stop there, we went from a small town to the big city all by ourselves, we are claustrophobic, and we both love scrapbooking. Yes, scrapbooking. Apparently there is a little hope in dystopian District 12 in the form of some post traumatic scrapbooking and gratitude journaling. I had to create something that showed the commonalities I noticed while I was engrossed in this trilogy. Then I started thinking of all sorts of scrapbooking themes and ideas related to The Hunger Games and I thought it might be fun to host some scrapbooking challenges. I don't have any prizes to offer but I do think you will have a lot of fun playing along with me. {Pssst. If you know of any scrapbooking companies that might like to sponsor some prize give-aways on my blog for this series, please leave a comment and send them my way.} With or without prizes, I can't wait to get started.
Let me explain my dystopian-scrapbooking concept, first watch The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge #1 Video:
Want to play along? Here's how:
Step 1. CHOOSE A FICTIONAL CHARACTER AND COMPARE WITH A REAL LIFE PERSON. I chose myself and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. You could choose yourself or another person you love and pair them up with a fictional character,it doesn't have to be from The Hunger Games. For example, if I were to do this for members of my family, I might compare my son Mac with the No, David books by David Shannon; I might compare my daughter Allison with the ever creative and social Olivia; and I might compare my husband Charlie to (hmmmmm) I'm not sure, maybe Jimmy Buffet or Alec Baldwin or I'm not sure; I know those aren't fictional characters - but I think celebrity personalities could count. If you are having a hard time figuring out who to choose, probably start with yourself - you know yourself best and think back to a character from a book, movie, or tv show, or even celebritiy personality, with whom you really identified with or felt a connection to, or even someone you aspire to be like.
STEP 2. CHOOSE COMPARISON PHOTOS: I found some photos of The Hunger Games' main character, Katniss Everdeen, on the internet and some photos of myself at about her age from the 80s. I picked one full body shot with weapons and one head shot with a more serious face for each of us. I scanned in my old photos. Then I created a photo collage in Picasa. I would have put Katniss all on the left and me all on the right except that I wanted our faces to be facing in and I don't think Picasa has the mirror flip feature so I mixed them up, I actually think it is a bit more interesting this way. If you are playing along, find some photos of yourself or the real life person you are using for this comparison challenge and then do a google search for the fictional character you are comparing with your real life person.
Step 3: COMPARE AND CONTRAST: This part of the process sort of reminds me of high school English class when we had to write an essay comparing and contrasting something, anything, my senior English teacher Mrs. Rideout was always giving us these types of assignments. I remember creating a yearbook where we used characters from the stories we'd read and fit them into senior superlatives like "most likely to succeed" and "most popular" etc. I created a table in word perfect listing the similarities between the main character of The Hunger Games and myself, it really was funny to see our common threads. If you have a computer available, create a table to compare your real life and your fictional character; if you don't have a computer handy, just hand draw a table and handwrite in the blanks; in the alternative, you could go the high school "compare and contrast" essay route,but trust me, making a table with bullet points is much quicker and easier {and you are less likely to get all those red marks on the page when some persnicketly grammar policeman sees it} .
STEP 4: CHOOSE SCRAPBOOKING PRODUCTS TO SUPPORT YOUR THEME. Once I had my table and photos printed, I knew I wanted to create a 8.5x11 page rather than a 12x12 page. Because my table and photos were 7x7.75, I knew I didn't have a lot of space for embellishments or even the title. I wanted the photos and the table to shine and for the rest to support my theme. I looked through my black patterened paper and found some patterns that I otherwise thought were ugly but seemed to work for these theme. Then I went about finding letters to create a title with, the main focus there was that I needed smaller letters. I couldn't find my white or black smaller letters, so I used bright blue and green mostly because they fit, but also because they were a bit discordant with the rest of the layout, which in this case supports the theme, and I used alternating colors mainly because that's all I had left, but I think that the use of two colors also supports my comparison of two people. I didn't want to use a big flower or arrow or butterfly or other typical scrapbooking embellishment, so instead I chose to "jazz up" my page with some machine stitching. That game me the idea for the title: "Common Threads" so I stitched over my title letters as well and along the bottom of the photos with the zig zag stitch under the head shot photos. Not every scrapbooking paper, embellishment, or letters have to have a meaning, but it is sort of awesome when they can support your theme visually. Don't over-think this process, use what you have. Often times, the real meaning of the embellishments or design of the page that I have used doesn't really hit me until after I have made the page; That's OK, because I really believe that at some gut level, my subconscious was making connections that my thinking brain hadn't caught up with yet. Just go with it. Don't fret over the embellishment part of the page, if you've already done the thinking about the story of the comparison, the rest of the page is going to come together easily. Remember, this part is supposed to be the fun part, so have fun!
STEP 5: SHARE YOUR WORK! I would love to see what you create with this challenge, please leave a comment with a link to your page. I have set up a Flickr Group called The Hunger Games Scrapbooking Challenge. Please feel free to join and upload your project and/or leave a link in the comments to your blog or online gallery.
If you wish to support this blog, then please click on one of the following links for cool scrapbooking and The Hunger Games related products at Amazon:
This layout is about how we used to go to the portrait studios at the mall to get our family photos and now we just set the self timer and get real life family photos:
A while back I got a pack of Echo Park's basics patterned paper, it has stripes and dots and basic designs in several colors and I love it. This kind of patterned paper is the best since it is timeless.
This week's Paperclipping Roundtable Podcast is about SYSTEMS. I love the concept of systems and creating systems to solve problems that come up again and again. Lately I've been making scrapbooking videos and I definately need to work on my systems associated with that process and I'm working on that, for example, I need to work on my system of making them shorter!
Here are some great resources for creating systems for your creative process:
I've made a video related to the concept of using the principles from improvisational comedy as applied to scrapbooking and the creative process, here it is:
In the meantime, here are links to lists of Improvisational Comedy Principles:
There are many other lists, but they all start to look similar.
One resource that I absolutely love is Kevin Mullaney's Improv Resource Center Podcast. Kevin interviews improv teachers and they discuss improv workshop exercises and the creative process.
I finished my SNL (Saturday Night Live) Mini Book last night. That means I concepted it, put it together and finished it in one day. Short deadlines are good in the world of improvisational comedy and can be a useful tool in the creative process of scrapbooking. Here is the finished album:
I'm uploading the wrap-up video to You Tube now and should have a link up shortly. Ok, got it and here it is, Ta-Da!
I'll post another blog entry with link ups for lists of the principles of Improvisational Comedy.
I took an intro to Improvisational Comedy class last summer with Toby Martini and while taking the six week class, I had a spark of creativity that went beyond the class, learning the principles of improvisational comedy didn't necessarily make me funny, but it gave me a new way to think about my creative process and applying these principles to my process of scrapbooking has been a revolution for me. I am more prolific than ever, in October I made 40 layouts in 7 days and last month I made 60 layouts. Making a million scrapbook layouts is not the goal. Being more present and authentic in my creative process and product is. Telling better stories is the goal. Spending less time on stuff that doesn't matter is the goal. Spending more time on what makes my heart and soul sing is the goal. I'm there and I want to share.
In Improvisational Comedy, one of the first principles you learn is to be present. To listen to what your scene partner is saying and to respond to that, not to be thinking about what you are going to say next, but to be listening and then just opening your mouth and saying whatever pops into your head. Improv Business Consultant Marcia McGilley of Limelight Presentations says "I've also been a stage actor in plays, infomercials and 'improv' comedy shows. Improv is short for 'improvisational.' That's a fancy word which means thinking on your feet. No scripts or lines to memorize, you just say whatever pops into your head in a given situation. Improv was great training for real-life situations in business and consulting. I know how valuable it is as one of your communication skills."
This principle of being present, listening and saying whatever pops into your head can be applied to the process of scrapbooking. Think of what that little voice in your head is saying or what is on your mind or heart right now. What has you worried or excited or experiencing any heightened emotion right now. Listen. It is there. Scrapbook about that. Don't pre-plan it. Don't write it down in a list of things to scrapbook later. Just scrapbook it right now with what you have available to you right now. Even if that means it won't be as awesome as you think it would be / could be with better photos, better embellishments, or better more thought out writing. Chuck all that planning out the window. Remember the Nike ads? Just do it. Right Now. You have 15 minutes to spill your guts on the page. Don't edit. Be real. Say it (write it down) before you think much about it. Don't worry about grammar. Don't worry about anything that you think it should be, just go with what it is, what is in you that wants to get out. Listen. Listen and then Go!
Here is an example of what I mean by Listening to What Your Heart is Telling You, Being Present, and Being Improv about how you respond to that in a scrapbooking kind of way: (Hey - ppssst - blog reader - You can skip over this part or skim it - as I am a bit "improv" in my description - in other words, I am long winded - I'll highlight some important stuff). Today is Valentine's Day, I intended to make a scrapbook page about Valentine's Day or at least the theme of love. I started the page yesterday in anticipation of today being Valentine's Day - check yesterday's posts for the videos in which I made that and other projects. But, this morning when I woke up, I was thinking about Saturday Night Live and about the Grammy's Music Award Show, about Whitney Houston's death and about how Paul McCartney did the last number at the Grammy's; about how music and certain songs can instantly take us to a time and place and bring back memories; and about how the show Saturday Night Live also does that for me. When I see or think about an SNL sketch, I am also reminded of the time in my life when I first saw it. For example, the Coneheads and Gilda Radner bring me back to the 70s when I used to spend Saturday Nights at my Grandma's house watching the Barbara Mandrell Show, Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and then if I was still awake and Grandma would let us, we'd watch some Saturday Night Live, I don't remember it too specifically, but I knew it was cool. In the 80s I can remember my friends in AP Calculus Class (my most hated class), imitating Dana Carvey as the Church Lady - "Now isn't THAT special?" In college I used to spend the weekends with friends who were married with very young kids and we loved Kevin Nealon "I'll Pump (clap) You Up" and Mike Meyers in Wayne's World - I'm pretty sure Dana Carvey was in both of those sketches too (without googling it I think I'm getting his name right). When I first met my husband and we were dating, we'd often watch SNL after dates and that one night in August 1997 or 1998(?) when we turned to NBC at approximately 11:43 (so we knew SNL had started and we were on the right channel) and we were horrified that they were trying to do a sketch about Princess Diana being in a car accident and then slowly realizing it wasn't SNL, it was real. And now, my kids and I love Andy Samberg and his SNL shorts like Lazer Cats and Space Olympics. The show has been a constant in my life. It is like an old friend who knew me way back when. I am reminded of the different people I watched the show with depending on the sketch and when it aired. There are Deep Thoughts, like the ones Jack Handy used to do (miss those): 1. How powerful it was when Paul Simon sang The Boxer with the FDNY behind him right after 9/11 - I still get a little teary just thinking about how deep the emotion was at that moment; 2. How tender Chris Farley was when he did the awkward interview of Paul McCartney and he asked about whether it was true when McCartney sang "The love you take is equal to the love you make" and how Paul McCartney closed last weekend's Grammy Awards with that line and how the Beatles and Rolling Stones and U2 and Madonna have been musical constants and all have been on SNL (well at least members of the Beatles have been on the show). Music and this long running show of Saturday Night Live have been a constant in my life as I was born in the 70s and that show started in 1975 when my parents got divorced and that show has been the backdrop to my Saturday nights for as long as I can remember. If I never scrapbooked about something as random as seemingly random as Saturday Night Live, my story would be incomplete; but more importantly, if today, when I took time to scrapbook, if I didn't scrapbook about Saturday Night Live because it was on my heart and mind, whatever else I did would have been forced and not as real, it would not make an impression on me; whereas if I scrapbook what I am passionate about right now, chances are in 20 years when I look back at that page, I'll be taken back to today and that page will be a better memory trigger for me of time and place, like when you hear an old song, than if I hadn't been present and listened and then scrapbooked using these improv principles. Improv will make the memories more authentic and real. There will be more of me in what I create. I think this goes beyond scrapbooking; improvisational comedy principles can be applied to any creative process.
Here are 3.5 videos that you can find on YouTube about the process of applying improvisational comedy principles to scrapbooking and my actual process:
1. Watch as I use improvisational comedy principles in my scrapbooking creative process:
I use the principles of improvisational comedy for my video making too - I just press record and talk, there is no preparation and I say what is on my heart and mind, I am in the present moment, not thinking about the next thing I'm going to say - this is improv - it isn't always funny or interesting - but it is real and the more real you are, the better it is in an improv way.
1.5 Here's my improv fix for the 20 minute video that wouldn't upload to YouTube - This is The Middle (which is also a great show by the way) - I tried to get it to a point where there isn't too much overlap - but it is not perfect - it is improv! And just ask Seth Godin about how he feels about shipping when it is not completely perfect - I'm pretty sure he'd say ship it. So here's the fix:
2. Here is part 2: (Darn it! There is a gap between #1 and #2 so I'm going to upload a 1.5 to bridge the gap).
3. SNL Mini Book Cover & Applying the Improv Concept of Using What You Have and Getting It Done Now:
If you are interested in learning more about applying the concepts from improvisational comedy to scrapbooking or to any other part of your creative process, please leave a comment and/or email me. I am working on some projects that will expand on this concept and I need some guinea pigs.
Meantime, if you wish to support my blog through the Amazon Affiliate Program, you can check out these books and Paul McCartney's new album, Kisses on the Bottom (which sounds like an improv concept of "taking it the wrong way") that dropped today:
Sing it Paul: "And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make. "
I think you you can substitute the word love for memory keeping or the creative process; in other words, what you get out of your scrapbooking or memory keeping hobby is what you put in to it - so put good stuff in OK?
I actually made this layout while making the video.
If you've visited my blog before, you might know that I've been developing a concept of applying the concepts of improvisational comedy to the creative process in scrapbooking. Here's a video of my process (you might want to do something while you are watching and think of it more of as a podcast with video attached).
Bear with me, I'll have better videos up this week, stay tuned OK?
Here is the Sunshine Snow Days layout:
The Story: Improv Scrapbooking + The story of a disappointing snow day and then two awesome ski trips.
Journaling: "Sunshine Snow Days. Back in December, Allison and I went to downtown St. Pete for the snow fest, but got there just as the bulldozer was getting rid of all that exciting snow. It could have ruined the day, but instead we found a small pile of white stuff and had a snow ball fight. Then, in January we all went up to Ober Gatlinburg and even though there was no actual snow, Allison was thrilled to experience the man made stuff and learned to ski and we even made a snow man. " Journaling stickers: "Happiness is not having what you want, its wanting what you have." and "Life Is Good. Today was ... the best. Ally got a 2nd trip to see snow & go skiing in Boone, NC."
Scrapbooking Supplies: DCWV, Echo Park, Fiskars Border Punch & stickers.
Want to learn more about Improvisational Comedy Concepts? Check out these books:
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