Guest DT at Cut the Crop!

i am psyched to be able to announce that i am the guest design team member at Cut the crop And i got to work with the most fab kit, containing the new Cosmo cricket blackboard, both in embellies and a minibook. I'll be posting samples in a couple of days after the reveal, so come back and see! Until then, please feel free to check out Cut the Crop a pretty well kept secret in the scrappy world. We have a great intimate but also resource filled message board, Tove the owner provides great personal speedy service and she features periodic sales on her site often.

If you are interested, Tove posted a few sneek peeks on her blog

I'll also be posting a spread the word contest and a new technique or two on the message board so come check it out
Hope you all are having a wonderful week!

Woohoo! a great deal!

i'm so psyched! there's another paypal like service, the main difference being NO FEES! And the best part is that if you sign up by April 15th you get $25 deposited into your account, or you can request a check be mailed to you but it takes longer to do that. Anyway, check out the link below,

A fun technique!

i did a couple layouts using this and i love how it turned out! When you have one great picture that you love and want close up details but also the big picture, modify your photo to be in 3 sizes, like save your original pic, then crop one down a little, save it, crop another down a lot, save it. here's the result

Basic Grey Gallery!!

Wooohoo! i made the BG Gallery

http://www.basicgrey.com/catalog/idea_gallery.php?designer_id=13905

with this layout...

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!!

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!

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