Random Musings & My First Freebie (I Hope)!

The last week or so around here would seem pretty quiet to an outside observer. We put down new laminate flooring in our livingroom and there was a birthday party to attend, but that was about it. Inside my head is a different story all together!

I hope to start scrapbooking for others as a way to supplement our household income and my sister has convinced me that a web page is the way to go. My husband is very frugal and is disinclined to pay a lot of money up front for web space if he is not guaranteed a return on his investment. I have been considering a few of the free web hosting services, but many of them have advertising or very limited space. I have left the majority of the research to my husband as he is the one who will be funding this project (for now) and he is also a computer/networking/programming genious!

Another avenue I have been exploring is joining a creative team for an established scrapbooking designer. I believe this is something I would enjoy immensely! Most of the designers require a link to a gallery of your work. I have been trying to figure out where and how to start a gallery. I have my Facebook page of course, but am unsure if it would meet the requirements. I guess I should email them to find out!

I am reading every tutorial I can find about Adobe Photoshop. I really like a lot of the digital scrapbooking supplies available, but sometimes find myself wishing I could design my own. I have challenged myself to design my own scrapbooking kit and, depending on how it turns out, hope to offer it as a freebie to others who are just getting started in the digital scrapbooking world. I seem to have a knack for word art, it's just the papers and elements that frustrate me!

So here is my first attempt at offering a freebie! It is a little Twilight inspired word art that I did upon request. It is in PNG format, so I really hope it keeps the transparent background. Please don't hate me if it doesn't work! I think you'll have to click on the image to bring it up full size and then file, save as.... I promise to try to figure this stuff out!

Unperfect (Not Imperfect - You'll See!)

I thought I would write about photography skills today. Or rather, my lack thereof. I have a few friends who have told me that they would love to scrapbook, but they feel as though the pictures they take are not 'scrapbook worthy'. Well, why aren't they?

I am not a photographer. I have never been, nor will ever be a photographer. I have a regular old point and shoot style digital camera, and I couldn't tell you anything about any of the settings. I turn the dial to "Auto" and let the camera take care of things. I like to read websites about photography, but I really don't understand a lot of the terms and I'm unsure if my camera has the abilities to do what they're talking about anyway.

When I first started scrapbooking, I was always a little embarrassed of my photos. They were just snapshots. Sometimes blurry, very often red eyed snapshots. (I still had a film camera at the time) Whenever I looked through a scrapbooking magazine, all of the layouts contained beautiful, professional quality photographs! I felt like my pictures weren't worth scrapbooking. I told myself, "Your layouts could never look like the ones in the magazines!"

I liked to crop my pictures, which helped with centering and with removing objects that were included in the shot in error. I even used one of those red eye remover markers a bit!

Since I have gone digital it is so much easier to tidy up pictures before they are printed. Red eye is removed with the click of a button, and it is so easy to crop a picture! Since I have been using Photoshop, I have even learned how to blur the background so it is less distracting and how to adjust colours! My pictures are still just snapshots and still very amature compared to the ones in the magazines. But you know what? I don't care.

I can't remember where I heard or read this, but it basically went something like: You are not scrapbooking pictures, you are recording memories. This isn't something you are doing to win a contest, it is something you are doing for yourself and your family. Fifty or a hundred years from now, nobody will care that the picture is blurry or off center or that the colour isn't perfect. They will appreciate the fact that you did it at all.

So please don't let your pictures hold you back. If you think you would enjoy scrapbooking, then go ahead!

Enjoy this page! It is simply a photo my daughter took of herself and a little verse I found on line. I loved the "I'm so cool" expression on her face so much, that I wanted to scrap the picture even though it was "Unperfect!"

Month in Review

As promised in my last post - a Month in Review page as inspired by the Two Peas challenge. The layout is a scraplift but I can't remember what gallery I saw the original layout in. If anyone knows, please tell me so I can give credit where credit is due!

Creative Block?

Have you ever heard of writer's block? You know - when you have to try to write something and it's like every thought in your head just up and moved out? Yup! That's me today! I have also been suffering what I call "Creative Block" as well. I have a ton of great pictures and no clue what to do with them.

I have spent the last few days surfing some of my favourite scrapping websites and blogs but not much has jumped out at me. I did find one scrapping challenge on the Two Peas site that I think I will try this afternoon:

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/cg_display.asp?cmd=display&seed_id=31248

You will likely have to copy and paste that - I'm still technologically challenged!

In a nutshell the challenge is to create a "Month in Review" in one layout. Seems pretty simple. Much more manageable than the project 365 that a lot of scrappers seem to be doing this year! (One page for every day of the year! Yikes!) I guess I better get to it! I'll post my page when I'm finished!