Back on the Horse

Well, I'm back on the scrapbooking horse.

It has been months since I've actually done a scrapbook layout with photos from my Storage Binders and I'm feeling pretty excited and creative again.  I'm ready to start creating layouts.

Back in July I joined the Library of Memories Community at Big Picture Classes and have not been active on it at all.  I decided I wanted to start doing some layouts so I went to the Community and started with the weekly challenges.

The first week (7/1/10) was the challenge:  Red, White and You.  It had to be a layout featuring the colors red and white and had to have a photo of myself.  Even though the connotation was to do a patriotic page or at least a red, white and blue page.  I chose to do red, white and green.  I wanted to complete a layout with photos of Tom and I making our traditional Christmas cake.

It's not the greatest layout but it's got me wanting to do more.

Toy Story Fun

I just got my Toy Story Cricut cartridge and am already loving it.  Here is a set of the four main characters. I love them.  Can't wait to make more.

Cricut Halloween Decoration

It is almost Halloween and that means trick-or-treating, costumes, parties and decorations.

While surfing the web for some inspiration for Halloween decorations that I could make with my Cricut I came across a the artist, Lciaccio31, at scrapbook.com.  She made a beautiful centerpiece using her Cricut and I fell in love with it.  I totally "scraplifted" this idea and it is so cute.  It was time consuming but worth it.

I used the cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up for the entire project.  I've included a materials list as well as measurements for each element.  I had to eyeball it from a photo and there was a lot of trial and error so I thought I would share the information to make it easier to make yourself.

MATERIALS:

Paper Doll Dress Up Cricut Cartridge
1 terra cotta pot
1 piece of styrofoam
15 skewers
black paint to paint skewers
coordinating ribbon
cardstock
tape
glue dots
fine tip pens for detailing
colored pencils for detailing

CUT-OUTS:
(page numbers are from Paper Doll Dress Up)
2 bats at 8" (page 50)
1 tree at 11" (page 52)
1 spider at 12" (page 49)
1 spider at 9" (page 49)
1 spiderweb at 5-1/2" (page 49)
2 tombstones at 8" (page 53)
3 ghosts at 5" (page 49)
1 ghost at 7" (page 49)
2 skeletons at 5" (page 53)
1 cat  at 6" (page 49)
1 cat sitting at 8" (page 52)
2 pumpkins at 8" (page 52)
2 pumpkins at 6" (page 52)

Family History

On our most recent trip to Michigan, The Queen Mum, gave me 3 boxes full of old family photographs.  Over the last couple of days I have been going through them.  I have found some amazing photos.  I absolutely cannot wait to start a project using these photos.  Here are just a few of the great ones.


This is a photo of my grandmother (Dorothy) and my great-aunt Sophie.  Dorothy and Sophie were sisters-in-law.  The resemblance that their daughters, Dorothy and Judy, have to them is uncanny.







This photo was taken 6 days before my grandparents, Dorothy and Eddie, got married.  So in love!!








This was taken 2 months after their wedding.  Still newlyweds I love how they are kissing while the other two girls just look at the camera.










I was so excited when I found this military portrait of my grandfather.  I is signed, "To my loving wife, Eddie"  and I can only imagine that he sent this photo to my grandmother while he was in the war.








Another great find was this wartime photo of my grandfather that had a handwritten note to my grandmother, "It's not good, but I hope you like it.  I love you dear."

Halloween Decorations

I love Halloween and it seems like Bug-a-Boo is going to be a Halloween fan as well.  We decorated our house last week and we had so much fun doing it.  A lot of the stuff was given to me by my mom.  Thanks mom!!

Cork Collection

Prince Charming and I love it when for a special occasion or while on vacation we can enjoy a great meal paired with great wine.  Over the seven years we have been married we have enjoyed many of these meals.  Being the scrapbooker that I am I always keep the cork's from the bottles.  You know, to use as memorabilia.

After we would finish a bottle I would write the place, date and occasion (if it would all fit) on the cork and  put it in a ziploc bag in my memorabilia box.

I have corks from anniversary dinners, our Italy trip, our honeymoon and many more.  These corks had been sitting in that bag for years just waiting for me to figure out a way to use them.


Recently, when we decorated our family room I finally got an idea on how to display them.  I had a decorative dish that had been a gift years before from a good friend that had never been unpacked when we moved into our house.   I also had a three wick orange candle that would look perfect on the dish.  I found both in a box in the crawl space and set them on a table in the family room.  Then I grabbed my bag of corks and... VIOLA!

Just another idea on how to "scrapbook" and share your memories in an untraditional way.

Shutterfly Photo Books

You know how at Christmas we get out the camera and we snap one or two pictures of every gift our kids, nieces and nephews open.  When we look back at them and are ready to get them developed we have about a hundred of the same photo.  Packages wrapped, packages in various stages of unwrap and packages unwrapped and tossed aside.

As I starred at all of these photos from the last three Christmases we have had Bug-A-Boo, I agonized over how to scrapbook them in a creative yet simple way.  I realized that it would be difficult and that I would end up with several pages per year and that they most likely would be boring (both to make and look at).

Then one day I was checking my email and I received a message from Shutterfly, the digital photo printing service I use.  It was a coupon code for a free 8 x 8 photo book.  I had an epiphany.  What a perfect way to showcase all of these Christmas photos.

I started the project and it was so easy and fun to do.  I have now decided that this is the way that I will "scrapbook" all of the Christmas present photos.

 The books are high quality, glossy, hard cover, books.  I was extremely impressed by them.  The books have 20 pages that you can either customize or automatically have filled in.

You are able to choose color schemes, fonts (size, type and color) or you can choose a pre-designed theme for your book.


You are also able to choose how many photos you want on a page, as well as adding captions.   I liked the fact that you could also choose to have all text on a page, for journaling, or a full 8 x 8 photo if you wanted.   The flexibility was amazing.  Shutterfly offers several different sizing options for books as well.  You can choose from 5 x 7 , 7 x 9, 8 x 8, 8-1/2 x 11, or 12 x 12.  Regular pricing ranges from $12.99 for a 5 x7 book, $15.99 for 7 x 9, $19.99 for 8 x 8, $29.99 for 8-1/2 x 11 and $54.99 for 12 x 12.  The great thing is that Shutterfly is always having sales on these books.  Right now they are offering 20% off on all photo books.

I still have a lot of photos from Christmas, leaving goodies for Santa, reading the Night Before Christmas, scattering Reindeer food on the front lawn and more.  Because of the stories and feelings that go along with these photos I plan to scrapbook them in a more "traditional" way.

I have to say thought that by using the Shutterfly Photo Books for the "present opening" photos there is such a feeling of relief and accomplishment.  I have preserved some precious and fun memories with out all the stress.

 I love Shutterfly!!

Library of Memories

This spring I signed up for a class at Big Picture Classes.com. (BPC)  The class is Library of Memories and it has changed the way I scrapbook.

A couple years ago I heard about a book called Photo Freedom by Stacy Julian (who is also the founder of BPC).  I bought the book and read it in a few days and decided that her Library of Memories system and concept of Photo Freedom were the way for me.  I then decided to take the class this year to really delve into the process.

The whole system just makes sense and it is completely liberating and has given new life to my feelings about scrapbooking as well as to my actual pages and projects.

I no longer am just scrapbooking photos just to “get them done” and I no longer “feel behind”.  Now I scrapbook our family stories and I do it based on inspiration, feelings and emotions.  Don’t get me wrong I have in no way perfected the system and I still do many pages that are just about everyday things that have no “story” or are just “traditions”.  But the important part is that I am scrapbooking and loving it.

Here is a page I did for class about my dad... 

Stacy Julian has become my Scrapbooking Guru and I highly recommend her website to anyone who wants to improve upon how they tell their family stories through scrapbooking.

Pixie Hollow Playset

A couple of summers ago we got Bug-a-boo a playset for the backyard.  It is pretty big and very cool.  My wonderful husband, Prince Charming, and his father spent days putting it together.  I was so excited because I never had anything like this growing up.

At the time, Bug-a-boo was really into Tinker Bell and her Friends and I just happened to have the Tinker Bell and Friends Cricut cartridge.  I went to the store and bought some of the Cricut self-adhesive vinyl and got to work decorating.  Along with a few other touches I was able to transform her playset into Pixie Hollow.

Outdoor Play Area

click for YouTube video

Laundry time

Like most people, I sometimes forget to check pockets before doing laundry.  This results in disaster, kleenex, crayons, food, etc.

I decided to make a sign to hang up above the washing machine.  It is an 8x8 sign and I used a page protector and hung it from a pipe in the laundry room above the washing machine.

I used the Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridge to make Goofy and Goofy's name.  I used the Mickey font for the rest of the letters.  I then cut a small piece of fabric and attached it to Goofy's pocket.

So far having this fun little reminder as helped avoid any mishaps.

If you would like to have a customized sign like this for your laundry room for $4.00 you can message me the colors you would like and PayPal the money to kellyldriver@yahoo.com.

Dishes are done, man!

It has happened to all of us...before going to bed our dear husbands will run the dishwasher.  In the morning, not realizing that the dishes are clean we will run it again.  Well, after several weeks of this happening in our house I decided it was time to do something about it.

Using a chipboard coaster I made us a Clean/Dirty sign for the dishwasher.  I wanted it to be a magnet but our dishwasher does not accept magnets.

Using my Cricut with the cartridge George and Basic Shapes I cut out the two large circles out of patterned paper from S.E.I.'s Granny's Kitchen line and adhered them to the coaster.  I then used brown ink and inked the edges of the coaster.

Using letter stickers from S.E.I.'s Granny's Kitchen I used a "D" and a "U" turned sideways to make a "C".  I then used the Cricut Opposites Attract font for the other letters.  I punched two holes in the top and attached some ribbon from the Granny's Kitchen line.  

The sign now hangs off the handle on our dishwasher and we haven't had a wasteful load since.

Inspiration

In 2009, I purchased the book "Photo Freedom" by Stacy Julian and it completely blew my mind!

Up until reading that book I was a chronological scrapbooker and always felt behind.  I was also beginning to freak out about how I was going to organize layouts that I finished of Bug-a-boo.

Before Bug-a-boo was born the only scrapbooking I did was of our travels.  Those were theme books and pretty easy to figure out.  But, what was I going to do about all of the "everyday" photos I was now taking of Bug-a-boo and our little family?

That's where Photo Freedom and Library of Memories came in.  It changed the way I scrapbooked and helped me to love it again!

This book was inspired by the book and the class that I took in 2010.  I found the idea for this notebook in Photo Freedom and scraplifted the cover design from Narelle Jurss who was a contributer to the book as a scrapbooker who adopted the system.

My notebook is one of my new favorite tools.  I open with one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite movies..."invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple." Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka.

I bought a 3 subject notebook and created 3 tabs, Pages, Disney and Other.  Under the Pages tab I have sketches of my title page, dedication page, section pages and sub-section pages for my Library of Memories albums.  I include samples of the cardstock I use as well as the ribbon I use.

I am a Disney fanatic and we travel to Disney World about once a year so I do a lot of Disney themed projects.  I knew I had to have a Disney tab to include all of the ideas that I have that include Disney characters, etc.  One such idea is a Disney ABC Book for Bug-a-boo.  I took an idea from Stacy Julian to use a brag book style book to make a scrapbook.  This would have been unheard of for me before Photo Freedom.

The last tab I have is the Other tab.  This is where I record any other project that comes into my mind as well as lists of supplies I need and Cricut cartridges I want.

To quote my Scrapbooking Guru, Stacy Julian, "This Is BIG!"

Blogging

I love the idea of a blog.  I have a blog.  Actually, I have two blogs.  The only problem I have is making the time to update them.  The blog I currently use, The Driver's Manual, is done using iWeb on my Mac and it just seems so labor intensive.

I love this blog but I often wonder if I've just made it TOO MUCH, you know?  Right now it has seven tabs that I originally updated at least on a monthly basis.  I have the Chief Executive Mom, The Kitchen (recipes and party photos), My Office (scrapbooking projects), The Library (book reviews), Vacation Time (vacation photos and journals), a tab all about my daughter and Kelly's Blog (random stuff).

I think maybe I just need to pick one and go with it.

I think I choose Scrapbooking!

There are several blogs out there that inspire me and that I would love to emulate.   In the meantime I'm just going to think about what I want this blog to be and go from there.