Things you'd see if you were me!

Have you ever noticed how the closer you get to summer the faster the time speeds by? I am falling so far behind on my once a week blog goal.

It has been cooler the last week or so, but still beautiful! We have been getting out for a walk every day and it's amazing how much changes daily! The poplar trees were the first to leaf out and now the maples are well on their way. Another week or so and I think all the trees will be green! There are trees that grow some sort of red berry (I have no idea what they are) that have been flowering for the last two weeks, and the apple blossoms are just starting to bud. A lot of my early spring flowers are finished blooming and my bleeding hearts are getting started.

We have seen a lot of wildlife on our walks too. Groundhogs (which I think are cute, even though I know they are a pest and have to go), pheasants, birds of all shapes and colours, a hawk, a group of three bald eagles, and wild turkeys! This is the first time I have ever seen wild turkeys and I keep hoping to get a picture of them. It seems like they know when I'm coming with a camera and they hide.

We finished putting our garden in this week. With a little luck, the blackbirds will leave the seeds alone and the deer will stay out of the plants and we'll have lots of veggies this summer!

I completed a few scrapbook layouts this week. I am still working away at Disney pages, but I took a break and scrapped some pictures I snapped during a walk this week. I usually use a lot of neutral colours when I scrap, but I left my comfort zone and went with some bright colours that were found in the pictures. I have to admit that this is one of my favourite pages to date. To the scrapbookers out there: I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone this week and just see what happens!

Bottle Cap Necklaces!

Wow! I can hardly believe it is May already. It is supposed to reach 24 degrees today (74 for those of you in the US!) and I believe it. It must be 20 already! It has been such a beautiful spring! We have had record breaking temperatures since March and just enough rain to keep the air fresh. When I see all of the wild weather phenomenons happening around the world recently, it reminds me how blessed I am to live in Eastern Canada.

The last few weeks I have been tinkering away at completing our Disney scrapbook. Although I haven't been scrapping a lot, I am keeping busy creatively! My daughter (T) and I have been making bottle cap necklaces. Her class is attending French Immersion camp in June and she has been selling the necklaces at school to earn money for the registration fee. It is a fairly simple craft that we can work on together, and she really enjoys being able to earn her own money.

I have had a lot of people ask me how we made the bottle cap necklaces, so instead of a scrapbook page, I'll leave you with instructions for making our version of a bottle cap necklace!

Supplies needed: Bottle caps (we purchased ours from a beer & wine making store, but if you know someone who drinks beer you could get them for free!), Steel wool or fine sandpaper, Aleene's Tacky Glue (or another good quality strong glue), Clear varnish, 1 inch circle punch, hammer, small nail, old paint brushes, little rings (kind of like tiny key chain rings - I got them in the craft section at Walmart) shoe laces or ribbon, and images you would like to put on your bottle cap charm!

Step 1: Find images you would like to use for your charms on the internet, in magazines or from your own photographs. (I used Adobe Photoshop to crop the images into a square and resize them to 1"x1". I then put 15 images into a 4"x6" image and printed them like I would any other photo.) Use the 1" circle punch to punch out your images.

Step 2: Slightly flatten the bottle caps with the hammer (be sure to do this on a surface that you don't mind getting scratched up a bit!). I found it better to hammer lightly all around the edges so that the middle of the bottle cap doesn't get pushed in too far.

Step 3: Lightly scuff the surface of the bottle caps with sandpaper or steel wool so the glue will adhere better.

Step 4: Evenly cover the surface of the bottle cap with glue & center your image onto the bottle cap. I find using a small paintbrush to apply the glue helps get an even coat. Allow the glue to dry at least a few hours.

Step 5: Apply 2 or 3 coats of clear varnish following the manufacturer's instructions. Allow to dry for at least 24 hours.

Step 6: Using a hammer and a small nail, make a small hole at the top of the bottlecap. You might have to use some pliers or something to bend down any pointy edges on the back.

Step 7: Insert the little metal rings into the holes. String your charm onto the shoelace or ribbon & you're done!

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!

Why Digital?

Today I thought I would try to explain my addiction to digital scrapbooking and maybe convert a few of you paper scrappers in the process!

Convenience: All of my papers, ribbons, clips, brads, stickers, scissors, etc are conveniently located on my hard drive (with a back-up copy on CD of course!). When I am in the mood to scrap, I simply go to my computer & get to it! When I am done, I walk away! No mess to drag out or to clean up. Also, if I decide I need something while in the middle of designing a page, I can hop on line, purchase & download the item I need, and be back to my page in a few minutes.

Logic: In this digital camera age all of your photos are on the computer. Why not take that one extra step before you print them? You're likely doing some edits anyway!

Cost: Anyone who has met my husband knows this is a major factor in anything I do! He is very.... frugal. His favourite thing about digi-scrapping is how much money we have saved since I stopped paper scrapping! When you purchase a digital scrapbooking kit, you can use the items over and over again unlike paper kits you can use just once. There is also a ton of freebies offered by digital scrapbooking designers. If you are selective, you can find a lot of great items without spending a dime!

Sharing: When I complete my scrapbook pages I am able to share them with anyone in the world! I post them on facebook for my friends and family to enjoy. Sometimes I print multiples of pages that I use in gift scrapbooks for relatives.

Damage Control: I make a lot of scrapbook pages. Sometimes I love the finished page - sometimes not so much! With paper scrapping once you cut your picture or your paper you're pretty much committed. If you want to change anything, you have to start all over with new products. Undo and delete are my best friends!

Laziness: When I get a page perfect (it happens!) I like to set it up as a template. Then I can use the same layout again and again by changing the papers or simply rotating or flipping the page!

Neatness: When I print my completed scrapbook pages, I put them in regular 8x8 scrapbooks. I love how all of the pages lay flat and the book fits nicely on the shelf. Nothing sticking out and no bulging page protectors!

Okay. That's it for today. It's snowing outside and I think I'll make myself a mocha and get back to reading Little Women!