Friday, March 28, 2008

Crop this weekend!!

At Cut the Crop! http://www.cutthecrop.com/phpBB/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=45

I will be teaching a ROCKING make and take class, i'll post it on saturday AM. Also don't forget to check out the great challenges and SALES and raks... its going to be an awesome weekend!!

Monday, March 17, 2008

What i did this weekend...

Ok, so i've been in a funk if the truth be told! and we scrappers are all about truth, right? so many changes going on, so much chaos, and wow, i do not do well with chaos. but it was an awesome weekend, and i got a fair amount done, as well as....



GETTING a HAIRCUT!!! Wanna see??? i had them chop like 9 inches... it feels so LIGHT! and she recommended a bottle of extremely expensive mousse called.. get this... BIG SEXY HAIR, LOL! sounds good to me! No one has ever accused me of having big hair or sexy hair for that matter.. anyway.. before and after...

Before




After



What do you think?? i LOVE it!!!

Ok, so the girls and i got haircuts, and then we went to Fedex family day which was a BLAST!!! i won alex the 20 Q game, and i'm KICKING myself for not getting the fedex monopoly instead! there was only 1 20Q left and lots of monopoly and since we had 7 raffle tickets, one for each of us, i thought we'd have another chance before the games were gone but it was not to be.. oh well! it was an awesome fun day. Then we came home, i scrapped some and sunday everyone but Leif and i went to church as he's teething BADLY and i was up nursing him every hour or so, ugg! and my friend Sarah stopped by and brought us a table and bench set, wahoo!! the benches we are using in our dining room with our existing table and the new table we will be using in the school room, if it fits well, or else trading it out with my scrap table which is slightly smaller and in my bedroom. anyway, it was a wonderful gift, as it freed up chairs, and condensed the children's spots so it will be much easier to entertain, as well as clean up!! SO GREAT!

So anyway, made a few layouts this weekend.. thought i'd share... the first is definately my new favorite... how did my kidlets end up so cute anyway????



this one is a HORRIBLE picture of me, but i like the layout





This one is Alex, my now 12 year old, when he was 3 :-)






I did a few more but i'm totally sick of uploading! so i'll call it a day and get back to my regularly scheduled responsibilities!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Scrap YOU!

No, i've not gone postal, cursing you all off. Today's topic is indeed scrapping yourself. I chose this topic today, actually after seeing some comments on a message board talking about how hard it was to scrap pictures of yourself on a layout. Now, i immediately replied, "What?? i scrap myself constantly!" but upon further thought, I do acknowledge there was a time when i'd not even considered including myself in my pages. It wasn't until a wise woman shared a thought with me that changed my point of view on this topic. She said something along the lines of, wouldn't you like to know what your grandmother or great grandmother's biggest struggle was, what her family like was like. What her favorite ice cream flavor was?? And indeed as one who struggles now with Genealogy, i could reply to that question with a resounding YES! I'd love to know that, and more! I'd gladly devour whatever information i could get about my relatives. I think for me i'm at a time in my life where i'd really like to know where i came from. But i'm sure others who don't share that concern could relate as well. Generations from now, i can say with surety, MY descendants will have all the info they'd ever want to know about me, (and them some!) and i think that's awesome!

I hope you are convinced that you NEED to include yourself in your scrapping! IF so, what are some ways you can do that? First, start by making sure your husband, or friend or children or parents or whomever are taking pictures of you! its unpleasant, especially to those of us who are especially self conscious, but its worth it!
Scrap yourself in your family pics! Someday your children will be just as excited to see YOU in the pages as they will themselves. The thing is, many of us, myself included have issues with our looks, our weight (ME!) various bodily features, etc. But is that reason enough to deny our loved ones the chance to see their wife, mother, sister, etc. in print? NO way! I may be overweight, getting old, not nearly as cute as i used to be but SO WHAT??? I'm a valuable person! i'm raising 5 children, i have a husband who loves me! My life is an amazing success and its WORTH celebrating, and i'm not willing to let extra fat or wrinkles get in the way of that! What if you died tomorrow. Have you left behind happy memories for your children INCLUDING you? have you left behind a peice of YOU for posterity? I hope so!

Once you become comfortable with being in family pics, the next step is to make a book just about you! Some things you could include are pictures of you from childhoood, how you felt at that time, what you enjoyed doing, what your family was like. Include special times in your life like graduation, marraige, having children, but also more basic mundane things too, like what music you listened to, what movies you watched, etc.

When i reached that point of wanting to start scrapping myself, i started with a simple "book of me" i cut 2 peices of pink cardstock down to 9x8 and punched 3 holes in the sides, measuring to make them even, I added 3 loose rings and voila! a book of me. (just a note about the images in this post. Since i am using so many i made them medium instead of large. You can click on the pictures for more detail if you'd like!)



That worked for a while but soon it started to get really really PACKED! i then decided to cut the excess off the pages and put them in a regular 8x11 album, more easily expandable that way. Now, i'm doing my "me" pages in 12x12 format and including them in my heritage album, which is my book about individual times that don't fit well into a Chronological album, about our family's philosophies, etc. Its definately a work in progress!!

Here's some pages i've done through the years....















RESOURCES:

http://www.scrapyourstories.com/
http://www.scrapjazz.com/topics/Themes/About_Me/108.php
http://angiepedersen.typepad.com/book_of_me_shop/
http://angiepedersen.typepad.com/
http://www.scrapbook.com/tips/tech/224.html

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Inspiration

The next class is focusing on inspiration... this is timely for me, because lately i've been in a FUNK!!! I've been in a Big old capital F FUNK! I've been busy, sick, sick kids, BROKE, discouraged, ovwerwhelmed and all that goes with it. and to make matters worse, my stress relief, art, has been out of reach to me due to the funk issue!

Now, not all is bad, i've been doing a lot of soul searching, i've been learning and growing, i've been making better choices... ie. not blowing off an entire weekend with my family in order to win a crop. I would have chosen otherwise before. But when it all comes down to it, what is really important?? I've been working through those kind of issues. Anyway, this is neither here nor there, because the issue at hand is INSPIRATION!

Where do you find it? how can you work your way out of a funk? Below i've listed a few possibilities and later i'll focus on one in particular. So keep reading! And if i didn't list something that YOU find inspirational, please comment!

1. clean out stash! making your stash more manageable not only makes it easier for you to find stuff to use, it also helps you REMEMBER stuff you bought and forgot about!!
2. cruise online galleries for technique ideas.
3. look through a stack of pictures.
4. find challenges and online crops in which to participate.
5. see how many layouts/cards/projects you can get out of one kit.
6. print out some online sketches to follow.
7. take an online class
8. chat with other scrappers at messageboards like www.willowtraders.com
9. check out some of the AMAZING newsletters out there from kit clubs!
10. look at ads in non scrappy mags and just keep an eye out all around you for things in everyday life that inspire you!
11. SCRAPLIFT.

Today i'm focusing on the fine art of scraplifting, and all it can do for your mojo!
I'm going to list my favorite sources of scraplifting inspiration but everyone's style is unique, so if mine doesn't match yours, check out kit club galleries, blogs, etc!!

My new favorite site https://twelvefridays.com/demo.aspx They were featured on Willow Traders anniversary celebration and i actually had to sub! I, with the maxed out CC's who should NOT be buying ANYTHING, had to sub! ug! anyway, they have the BEST designers... i find so much great stuff to copy there! here's a couple of examples
These come from the twelve fridays blogs http://twelvefridays.typepad.com/ and http://blog.twelvefridays.com/

This first one was found on the second blog listed above. I'm not sure who deserves credit for creating this one.


From that, i lifted and created this.


And i did this one too, Heather Preckel is the designer of this layout, its from the first blog i listed.
http://blog.twelvefridays.com/


And from that amazing layout, i created this.



These i made yesterday. Some more recent ones i created a while ago. My second favorite source of inspiration is Tessa Ann Watte's blog. http://tessaann.blogspot.com/ She's my hero! our styles are so similar, except hers is way nicer, LOL! anyway, there's a lot of great new layouts on her blog, here's one from last summer (Tessa Ann's)




and here's my lift



There are SO MANY awesome places i get inspiration, but for time and space limitations i'm going to limit mine to 3. The final favorite of mine i'm listing here is the scrapdango kit club http://scrapdango.net/index.html check out their forum and gallery!! their designers are AWESOME and Carrie offers such great customer service and is right there on the board, hangin with the girls! in particular i enjoy one designer's work, Debbie Gaydos. Her blog is here- http://scrappydeb.blogspot.com/ AMAZING work... here's one of hers that i scraplifted from the Scrapdango gallery. This also utilized a scrapdango KIT! which by the way, ROCK!


here's Debbie's


and here's mine




Looking at these, did you notice how the first ones i did above were very exactly lifted, and Tessa's was fairly exact but flipped and some embellies were changed, and Debbie's i cahnged a lot more keeping only the title and the basic form? you can lift to different degrees. Usually, i like to lift only loosely, but when i'm in a funk or find a special technique or layout i like especially much, i'll copy it closely, as a means of learning the technique.

So, i hope you enjoyed and benefitted from this class! please take some time this week to find something to lift! post links to both examples in the comments and be eligible to win a rak!!

Blessings,
Rebecca

The winner is....

Nebraskaparkfan!

AWESOME! please email me your address to kvenvolden@comcast.net and i'll get your prize out to you!!

Next class is coming up!