be AUDacious

Causes, Contests, & a Cool Giveaway

February is National Heart Month, and Ella Publishing Co. is celebrating with three days of heartfelt stories and projects leading up to National Wear Red Day on Friday, February 3. For the rest of the week (today, Thursday, and Friday), the Ella blog will be featuring stories and projects from team members who have been affected by heart disease. I encourage you to visit the blog and read the incredible stories that Rachel and our other team members have shared. 

I was honored to be asked by Rachel to tell my story; as those of you who've known me for a while know, my dad died of a heart attack at age 44 almost 12 years ago. Each year, in May, I've commemorated this loss with a post here on the blog. Most of those posts end up on scrapbook layouts so that I can keep them, and Rachel's invitation gave me the opportunity to tell the story I posted on the 10-year anniversary of his death. 

To read my story, you can visit the original blog post; the journaling was pulled directly from here.

Credits: papers and elements: LoveLoveLove digital papers and elements by Robyn Meierotto (Design House Digital); frames: Pinned by Audrey Neal (Design House Digital); font: Olivetti Type2

This week, Design House Digital has a SUPER event for you… in celebration of the Super Bowl we have some fun and games of our own – scrappy style!  Here’s what is going on Sunday, January 29th – Monday, February 6th:

• 25% off Everything In the Shop

• Super Bowl-inspired Challenges

• Hosted Chats on Super Bowl Sunday (all times in MST):

Saturday, February 4th
12 PM – Jen Allyson
1 PM – Karen Funk
2 PM – Karla Dudley
3 PM – Shannon Hegarty
4 PM – Erica Coombs

Sunday, February 5th
12 PM – Robyn Meierotto
1 PM – Allison Waken
2 PM – Katherine Hansen
3 PM – Sarah Schmutz
4 PM – Gennifer Bursett

• The Super Gallery Bowl Prizes:

Play along all week long in our Super Bowl-inspired challenges, and you could win a $5 gift certificate to DHD. In addition, one Super Gallery Bowl Grand Prize Winner will receive Photoshop Elements 10! This winner will be chosen from all qualifying* layouts submitted to the Super Gallery Bowl challenges this week. That’s right… the more challenges you complete, the better your chances to win!

*Qualifying layouts must contain 100% DHD product and be inspired by the challenge. Upload layouts to the Super Gallery Bowl 2012 Gallery for entry in the grand prize drawing, and post a link to your layout in the individual challenge threads to be entered for the gift certificate prizes. Layouts must be submitted by 11:59PM MST on February 6th.

I couldn't resist the change to play along with a layout of my own. If you follow college basketball, you might have heard about a small western Kentucky school that's making big headlines: my alma mater (and current place of employment) Murray State University is currently the only undefeated D1 team in the country! That's right! It's an amazing time to be a Racer, that's for sure!

credits: circle tab, white papers, date strip (Jen Allyson, Up to Date Part 1, Design House Digital); gray paper, chevron paper, button, banner and brad (Gennifer Bursett, Up to Date Part 2, Design House Digital);  photo cluster template (Audrey Neal, 2012: Photo Templates Vol. 2, Design House Digital); alphabet -- recolored (Gennifer Bursett, Favorite Things 2, Design House Digital); paint splatters (Gennifer Bursett, Toolbox: Mists, Vol. 7, Design House Digital)

Shelley Haganman has an awesome Etsy store where she sells flair buttons, which are perfect for all kinds of scrapbooking and crafting projects. She's got so many great designs! 

I'm especially excited about her two recent additions, both of which use some elements from my Just My Type digital collection. Shelley was kind enough to send me a couple of sets for a fun little giveaway here on the blog.

I'm giving away 2 blue sets and 2 yellow sets, so that's 4 winners! Just leave a comment here on the blog to enter. For additional chances to win, tweet about the giveaway and post about it on your Facebook page. Just come back here with a link to your tweet and status update. The giveaway ends at midnight CST on Friday. I'll use random.org to select the winners on Saturday.

 

more pages for the Going West photobook

The credits are the same as the ones posted here. Thanks for all the nice comments about the first four pages. I'm loving how quickly this is coming together, and how it's really fitting with the image in my mind. I've been trying to record some information about each place on the pages too -- mostly just some summary info. Luckily, David brought back all the maps and guide papers for me to use. :)

 

the beginning of a big project

The girls took a trip out west with David and Marilee (Chris's parents) a couple of weeks ago, and I've been itching to get the photos (from 4 different cameras, no less) into a photobook. Of course, I've had grand plans to do this with all our trip photos -- the ones from our two trips to DC, our two (soon to be three) trips to San Francisco, our camping photos, my Shaker Hill pictures -- but I've never made the time to do it. I decided that it was finally time to get started, and I'll be honest, it was a set of templates that helped me pull this project together and get it out of my head and onto the screen. Tiffany Tillman's Modern Masters template collection, to be exact. The brushwork works beautifully for large background photos that fade into the paper, and then I can add all kinds of frame clusters and office-type elements on top, while keeping the look very photo- and story-centered.

Here's a look at the first four pages, with a credit list at the end.

credits:
from Design House Digital:

Tiffany Tillman: Modern Master template collection (I am modifying these, but the base begins here) 

Tiffany Tillman: Summer Templates 14, 15, 16

Sarah Schmutz: Travel Log Phrase Stamps

Jen Allyson: Real Simple Clean Frames

Karen Funk: Photo Clusters 1 and 2

Karla Dudley: Digi Essentials 11 (grungy edges)

Celeste Knight: Happy Tape

Robin Mierotto: Tag You're It

 

from Oscraps:

One Little Bird: Vagabond (white paper, compass, car tag, You are Here tag)

Paislee Press: On the Road (word art)

 

in limbo

One quick note of good news: I'm guest posting on the Ella blog today. Look to the left -- see that snazzy orange elephant button? Just click on it and you'll go directly to my post. Hope you'll check it out! Thanks!

In other news, my laptop (which is less than 2 years old) is dead. Looks like either the processor or the motherboard went out on it. Of course, there was a ton of stuff that I hadn't backed up recently, including the wonderful photos of the girls that I took while we were in Gulf Shores. Chris is seeing what he can do to get the files off the hard drive, but so far nothing is working, so it looks like there was some hard drive damage somehow as well. I'm just sick about it.

This is the second time I've lost information when a computer went down, and while I have more stuff backed up this time, I just hate that so much of what I consider important is now lost. I am seriously rethinking technology -- not completely -- but just how I handle it and how much I depend on it. I foresee a number of changes in the future, I think, beginning with much less reliance on a computer system.

ETA: Does anyone know of a software program that lets you take small photos (for example, photos that I saved to Facebook or my blog at 600 pixels, approximately) and restore them to a larger size more suitable for printing? I remember there being a program mentioned in an old issue of Digital Scrapbooking Magazine, but I don't have it anymore. Any help that anyone could provide would be wonderful!!!

Artisan Notebook: Featured Designer

I'm really excited to be featured in the July issue of Artisan Notebook. This month's theme focuses on journaling which, as you know, is the part of scrapbooking that I feel most passionate about. There's a coupon code inside for readers to use in my shop, so head over and grab a copy. It's really a fantastic publication!

guest blogger: May Flaum

May is probably one of the first scrappers that I met in real life, and since then we've worked together on a number of teams and projects. Working with her has always been such an easy process, and her insight and expertise has always improved any project on which we've collaborated. I love May's enthusiasm, her practicality, her sense of humor, and her work ethic. She's a true teacher, in every sense of the word, and she's constantly coming up with great ideas, one of which I'm happy to share with you today. Enjoy.

Once upon a time, there was a crafter named May who loved to play with all kinds of pretty things. When she wasn’t creating up a storm she could be found reading books, her favorites being those that end up with happily ever after. 

Hi everyone! My name is May Flaum, I’m the co-author (with Audrey) of Paper + Pixels, a great guide to hybrid scrapbooking if I do say so myself, and I’ve been happily scrapbooking my life for as long as I could write. One thing I’m guilty of is not telling all my best stories. I’m betting you know what I’m talking about. The stories that are ingrained in our lives, that are part of the lore and legend that is known by every family member, those defining moments that you never ever forget. Things that are so known, often it’s easy to forget to scrapbook them.

We are starting to plan a trip to Disney World, and my husband and I were talking about the start of our honeymoon (in Disney World) where we encountered a family in a restaurant with a kid that literally had too much fun and ‘refunded’ part of her dinner. It was just one of those inside joke/private moments, and has become stuff of legend around here. So why didn’t it make the honeymoon scrapbook? For that matter, why don’t I scrap it now? 

I run into problems with scrapbooking these big stories for a few reasons:

1. No photos to coordinate
2. Don’t think of scrapbooking it/forget to
3. Not sure how to get started

 For the first problem (no photos) I simply find one that will work. Some random photo that ties in loosely – either people involved, subject in general, or just something. Or, if the story is long I simply make a photo-free page. No big deal!

 Now as to getting started, as I searched for inspiration for this guest blog post it hit me. Books. Stories. I’m a certified bookworm, so why not take a cue from that? You can take a serious or funny, light or heavy approach with this. But writing it as if writing a story about others (vs in first person) is a fun way to mix it up and get that tale down. I suggest starting with a clichéd intro like...

• Once upon a time...
• It was a dark and stormy night...
• One bright sunny day...
• In a land far, far, away...
• A long time ago...

 Or try writing from the middle of happily ever after, as a mystery, thriller, or any other genre you like! I have found that my love of books can help my crafting. How? Not only giving me ideas and bringing up memories I’ve yet to scrapbook, but providing inspiration in the form of titles, fonts, and so much more.

 
In this layout I created I went with “Once upon a time...” since I’m writing about our honeymoon eight years ago. I thought putting a photo of my girls instead of us back on our honeymoon was fun – though including both could be fun too. I tried a number of fonts and title treatments before deciding that simple printing on vellum would get the look I was really after. Creative play is fun, but sometimes simple really is best! There were tons of fonts I loved at www.dafont.com where I downloaded this free font (the king and queen font) – it’s such a great resource for fun and unusual fonts.

Supplies: The Girls’ Paperie patterned paper, flower, chipboard button, die cut clock, and metal accent; Kaiser Craft lace; Jillibean-Soup gingham paper; Jenni Bowlin large cream and pink buttons; Tattered Angels chalkboard glimmer mist; Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L crafty power tape and EZ-Runner permanent vellum adhesive; unknown photo corners, thread, and smaller buttons

 I hope that you’ve enjoyed my layout, and if you create a book inspired layout please be sure to share with me! You can find me at my blog www.mayflaum.wordpress.com and also at my new on-line class Camp Scrap http://www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com/campscrap.php

guest blogger: Amy Sorensen

Amy is another of my guest bloggers whom I've never really met. But I've followed her blog for quite some time -- again, because she is someone with whom I share a number of interests: writing, scrapbooking, reading, poetry. (But not running. I am not a fan of running. Well, I admire others, such as my oldest daughter, and their ability to run, but I do not run. No.) Amy's writing is amazing -- it's deep and heartfelt and reflective and very real. And it's that quality that I would love to bring to more of my writing, and I think that other scrappers feel the same way. So that's why I invited Amy here today. Enjoy.

One of the last real conversations I had with my dad, who has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t speak anymore, focused, oddly enough, on scrapbooking. It isn’t a hobby he has any real connection to, other than the fact that he remembered one of his daughters did it. Plus, he was the photographer in our family; he was a reader and a closet writer, and understood, I think, the power of words and photographs combined. He sat on my couch for an entire afternoon, reading my scrapbooks; he’d finish one and ask for another. By that point, reading was a challenge for him, yet he kept at it, commenting now and then about a detail or something funny. 

Until that day, I had occasionally questioned my scrapbooking approach. My layouts are full of words—full of them. I have layouts that are only words. I eliminate pictures or embellishments to have more room for words. Much as I love all the patterned paper and the ribbon and the rub-ons, the painting and the designing and the making that is involved with a layout, what continues to draw me towards scrapbooking (and I’ve been doing it for almost 15 years) is, quite simply, the words. Scrapbooking creates a space where I can to do something with words—stories and ideas and information and epiphanies—rather than leaving them, unseen, to linger in journals.

Watching my dad read my scrapbooks eliminated any doubt. Watching him was nearly like seeing the future, a glimpse of how, perhaps, my scrapbooks might impact someone reading them after I am gone. Watching him, seeing what he noticed (not once was it an embellishment), recognizing the emotional response on his face, my scrapping aesthetic settled firmly into place. Words + images: This is what matters.

Whenever I share this opinion of mine, I am always met with some version of the same question: OK, but how? How do you write well? How do you write something evocative, something that prompts an emotional response? My first gut response is always this one: you have to be a little bit obsessive about it. Read books about writing and books about words. Read books about anything, but pay attention to how the writers use language. Write something every single day. Practice. Read poetry and essays and comic books and newspapers, simply for the sheer joy of discovering a well-wrought phrase. Keep notebooks that you fill with odd snippets of observations. (Today, for example, I wrote about the patient mother robin sitting in her nest in our sycamore tree, waiting out the day's ceaseless rain, waiting out the starving of incubation.)

Of course, you’re also going to want some actual real advice, some “do this” sort of ideas. Steinbeck said that the way to find the magic in writing “seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader.” Write what is aching to be written, rather than what comes next chronologically. What I know about writing journaling I have learned by writing journaling. While I am, like my dad, a closet writer who fills up notebooks and backup hard drives with unpublished poetry and essays and stabs at novels—not yet, in other words, a “real” writer—these things that I know about writing journaling will help everyone write better.

1. Be honest. Trying to fake an emotion is a sure way to sap any feeling from your journaling. Say, for example, your last family holiday was awful. You had an argument with your husband, the potato salad made everyone sick, all of the gifts were wrong sizes and had to be returned. Aiming for a “this was the best Arbor Day ever” feeling in your journaling won’t work well because your writing is based on the ideal rather than the real. Be honest. Write what you feel, even if it isn’t the prettiest emotion. Work from the bad stuff—what did you learn from the experience? How did it impact or change those involved? This doesn’t mean you have to only focus on the negative. It does mean you must be authentic, even if you aren’t perfect.

2. Be fearless. I’ve written about this on my blog before; almost any writing book you read will confront the idea of confronting your writing fears. If you stop to think about it too long, journaling is a little bit scary. You’re putting yourself down on paper—what if someone laughs? Or rolls their eyes? What if you sound stupid, or cheesy, or boring? What if you spell a word wrong or make an enormously embarrassing grammar mistake? I obsess and worry over those things, too. Sometimes they stop my writing completely, and I have to take a little break. (Chocolate is generally involved.) But what drives me to keep going is a deeper fear: what if I didn't write it? What if what I journal is something someone will need? The fear of not-writing influences me more than fear of the grammar police.

3. Be specific and concrete. Emotions are abstract. You can’t hold love in your hand, you can’t take a big whiff of joy. (Except metaphorically, of course.) Especially when you’re writing about emotion, specificities and concrete details relay meaning. For example, say you’re journaling about your newborn, and you want to convey how much you love her. You can just say it: I love you. Or add some modifiers: I love you so much. Or get even more modified: I love you so, so, so very much! But you’re still not saying much because all of those words are worn out and overused. Try getting specific and concrete instead: The rosebud of your hand curls free from the swaddling blanket and then, as you sleep, it opens and closes as if you are welcoming the world. You can convey emotion by using specific, concrete details and with your word choice. (If I had written something like The baby's sticky, sour hand creeps out of the swaddling blanket, convulsing open and shut as if to beckon something dark into the world you feel something completely different, even though the structure of the sentence is nearly identical.) You can write “I love you” without ever saying the words. The things we can sense—touch, hear, smell, taste, see—are what our hearts respond to.

4. Be a rule breaker. Nothing stifles creativity like a “should.” Someone telling you that you should write journaling will make you want to never write it again. Break the rules; ignore the shoulds.  You don't have to write down every detail of what happened at your son's thirteenth birthday party; you can just write the way it made you feel to have a teenaged boy. You can write journaling about today and pair it with a photo you took ten years ago. Write a paragraph in second person, then write the next one in first. Write your journaling from the perspective of your Christmas tree or your lilac bush. Don't let yourself get bound by “shoulds”; don't let expectations hold you to a course you don't want to take. Write exactly what you want to write—how you want to write it.

5.  Be yourself. Sometimes, when I am reading a particularly good book, I want to fling the tome across the room in sheer frustrated envy that I will never write so well. I feel that way about other people’s blogs and scrapbook journaling, too. Am I alone here? I hope not! Still, there is something to be praised about your own writing. You might not manage words like your favorite author or blogger, but you do manage words like you. And that is all you need to do. Try, as you write, to find your voice, to speak with your words and word patterns and rhythms.

Here’s a layout with journaling that I think embodies those five suggestions:

In a sense, this could have been a throw-away photo. I wasn’t really thinking very much when I took it, sort of snapped it just because. But I managed to capture that look, the one that moms of teenage girls will recognize. Then I had to ask myself: do I really want to document this emotion? But it was aching to be told, and so I told it. I suppose I could have written about her running instead. But I want to be honest, so I told the honest reaction. I think the result is something worth keeping, even if it’s not rainbows and ponies.

 

Amy Sorensen is a long-time scrapper and lover of words. Four kids call her Mom; she's also a librarian and teaches scrapbooking classes at www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com. When she's not scrapping or reading or thinking about scrapping or reading, you'll find her writing or quilting or working in her flowerbeds. She's also a fan of running and hiking and anything that gets her outdoors.

 

two of my favorite things

If you've spent much time on this blog, you know that I love to read, and that I read a lot. I am not exaggerating when I say that I can not remember a time when I was not a reader. It's just something that has always been a part of my life.

So whenever I get a chance to combine reading with other things that I enjoy...well, I jump on it. Rewind to a couple of months ago, when Wendy Smedley contacted me and wanted to know if I would like to participate in a book-themed scrapbooking project. I didn't even have to read the details...um, HECK YEAH!

Each of the participants created a two-page spread (multiplied times the number of participants in the project) and then Wendy bound them all into albums. Each spread had to contain a photo of the participant, as well as something reading-related. Some people wrote about their reading habits; others included their reading lists for the year, reading stats, top 10s, and more. Here's what I came up with:

I just got my bound album this week, and I have enjoyed looking through it so much. It's a great mix of traditional, digital, and hybrid layouts; plus, I've really enjoyed getting the new book recommendations and finding out more about the reading habits of my friends.

I thought I'd give you guys a look at the album. Make sure to keep on reading, because I've got a great idea I want to share with you at the end of this post. Here's the front of the album:

Angie: blog | Goodreads
I love how Angie's layout was numbers-driven; the stats were a fun and interesting approach.

Beth: blog

Beth's picture was great (I want bigger bookshelves) and her design was simple and graphic. Really eye-catching text.

Elizabeth: blog | Goodreads

I am not playing favorites (really, I'm not!) but I ADORED the pennants Elizabeth put on her layout (made from scanned book covers -- I think I might have squealed when I saw them) and her journaling is really my favorite. 

Jill: blog | Goodreads

I love Jill's layout very much too -- the star theme is a perfect choice, her photo is ADORABLE(!!!!! -- which means more squealing might have been involved at this point), and I covet her handwriting.

Kelly:

Kelly's page had a great collage feel to it, and her colors were awesome. Plus, I found some new must-reads on her 2009 list.

Lisa: blog | Goodreads

Lisa did a GORGEOUS digi page, and I'm going to admit, her journaling really makes me want to give e-readers a chance...my curiousity is definitely piqued.

Wendy: blog | Goodreads

Wendy decorated both the front and back of her pages (why didn't I think of that?). I love how she used three different categories to break down some of her favorite reads; I'm definitely going to check out some of her dystopic fiction choices.

This was a great project to participate in, and ever since Wendy approached me with the idea, I've been mullling over a couple of additional ideas that combine books and scrapbooking.

I would like to start a series of scrapbooking challenges here on the blog that are inspired by the books I love. It could be a book that I'm currently reading, or one of my all-time favorites. It might be a mystery or thrilled, a children's picture book, a YA fantasy novel, or a nonfiction book. Each blog post would talk a little bit about the things you love about the book, and then you'd list 3-5 challenges inspired by the book. One might be a journaling challenge, inspired by a scene in the story. Another might be a text challenge or a color challenge, based on the book cover. There are so many different ways to use books as scrapbooking inspiration.

But I don't want it to be all about me -- I want YOU to be involved as well. I can't do all these challenges myself, and I don't want to do them all myself. So if you LOVE to read and you'd like to come up with a challenge to contribute, leave me a comment and let me know. You can leave your email address in the comments and I'll contact you with more details, OR you can email me at audneal at gmail dot com to find out more. I'm excited about this project, and I hope you are too!

guest blogger: Lee Currie

One of the things that I love about blogging is that it gives me a chance to interact with people that I otherwise would never have met. I've been inspired by photos and words from so many different people, and Lee is one of them. I asked for camera advice one day, and Lee sent me this fantastic email that contained so much great information. From there, I checked out her blog and started reading on a daily basis, commenting when possible and just getting to know her. What draws me to Lee's blog is the way she captures her daily life with photos and words; it's the same goal I have, and she's always a source of inspiration and ideas for me. More than anything, though, I like getting to know her in this way, through our similarities and our differences.

It was such a thrill to receive the e-mail from Audrey inviting me to participate here on Fortune favors the AUDACIOUS as a guest blogger! I’m such a huge fan, and thrilled to be in such tremendous guest blogger company! It’s such a thrill to have this opportunity to share some of my interests with you.

Like everyone, I am busy. As a result of my lifestyle, I have become a big believer in the idea that you do not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to blogging, scrapbooking and creating and still end up with a fun, creative and meaningful result. 

One of my favourite short-cuts to creativity is to participate in memes and challenges – more often than not, they are the same thing: challenging memes.

The result of my participating in these challenges over a period of time? They give me oodles of creative content: photos + words which I can use to create collections.  I find the consistency; routine and similarity in form appealing. They can be done with a partner, within a group or as a stand-alone project within a larger group. They make awesome, simple and meaningful scrapbook pages!

* * *

I suppose the best way to explain is to show you what I mean. To varying degrees, I participate in:

TEAM-UP THURSDAY

Challenge: Few Words + Photos

This is a new team photography meme my friend Shirley invited me to participate in with her.  The brainchild of Melody and Megan in which we have been participating for a little more than a month and I’m enjoying the collaborative effort required. We have been taking turns selecting the theme and, lucky for me, I send my photo to Shirley and she magically creates a diptych and posts it over on the Flickr Group: All of our submissions can be found here: Team-up Thursday. A couple of weeks ago the challenge was “pastel” and this is the diptych result:

 

SOOC SATURDAY

Challenge: Few Words + Photos

This is a perfect photography meme for me! Why? I never “fix” my photos, I have no idea how to use actions and a histogram gives me a headache. Melody has a nice little, and growing, group of participants who have interesting perspectives to offer. I am all about learning visually and I really enjoy looking through photos and learning from others. I’ve got a pretty nice little collection of SOOC photos  I’ve submitted for this meme here. The most recent:

 

MY BEST SHOT MONDAY

Challenge: Few Words + Photos

This challenge is hosted by the multi-talented and energetic Tracy Clark over on her blog, Mother May I. Tracy may be best recognized as a founding member of Shutter Sisters and a current member of the teaching roster over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. The idea is for you to go through your photos from the week and select your best shot and post it on Monday. Over the months of doing this project, I’ve come to realize that “best” is subjective and often my best shot is not my most technically accurate shot, but the one that evokes the most emotion. My current shots can be found on http://thelinarstudio.typepad.com/embracelife/my-best-shot-monday/ and the older ones can be found on my now defunct blog: Lemons2Lemonade  After looking at all of my shots again, I can’t even select a FAVOURITE of the Best Shots, but, boy, I do take a lot of floral pics, but my favourite topic:

 

WISHCASTING WEDNESDAY

 Challenge: Words 

Jamie Ridler, a creative self-development coach and fellow Canadian, asks: what would happen if every week you made a wish? What magic might start to stir? I enjoy this meme so much as I often get lost in the day-to-day of my life. Raising four active kids can keep me from focusing some time on myself, so first thing Wednesday mornings, Jamie proposes a question, if it strikes a chord, I write a post; if not, I don’t. Jamie strikes many chords! I hope to collect all of my wishcasting and make a quick mini-album of her questions and my answers. You can find my Wishcasting Wednesday on my Embrace Life blog. Jamie has amassed a lovely community who, if you leave your link, will visit you and support your wish.

 

12 of 12

Challenge: Words + Photos (and a layout!)

If it’s true that my children will remember the every day occurrences of their childhoods more than the special occasions then they will certainly have vivid memories of the12^th of every month! Susan Keuter started this challenge a while ago and it has recently been moved onto Facebook where there are quite a number of participants. The idea is to go through your day, the 12^th of each month, and take 12 pictures that best represent your day. Now, inevitably I take about 100 photos, but over time it’s become easy to narrow things down and give a good representation of what our day and life routine is all about. Of course, adding the journaling definitely helps! I’ve been participating in this project the most consistently, and the longest, of all the challenges. I just love it. And ta-da, while typing up this entry, I finally figured out how best to put it in scrapbook form! So far, every 12^th has been posted on my blogs: new and old  but I’ve never settled on a scrapbook layout format. Since this project is for my kids, I’d best get at it. This is my plan, what do you think:

 

*8 THINGS

 Challenge: Words

The way Rachelle (Magpie Girl) put it, *8 Things was a game she made up to quiet her “monkey mind”. I could relate and I found her challenge appealing. Though, I have to admit, I’ve fallen off a bit recently. Too many other things to do! But, I have very much enjoyed this meme. Again, easy to transfer to layout or even simple digi-book form the thoughts and ideas expressed. I have about 20 entries sitting in draft form ready to be finished off and published. Like Rachelle, I’m filled with countless half-formed ideas and creative passions; this has proven to be a wonderful “catch all”.  On her blog, my friend, Jill, participates in a similar meme called Thursday Thirteen, I don’t because it just means I would have to come up with five more ideas, so I’ll stick with my *8 Things!

  

WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Challenge: Words + Occasional Photos

I’m sure somewhere this exists as a challenge, but this has been my thing. On occasion, I’ve put together a post on wellness: spiritual, health, children … if it falls into the category of my own personal well being then I write about it. Eventually this will translate into something. A scrapbook? A digi-book? Or *gasp* a book! All of my recent posts can be found on Embrace Life. 

 

PROJECT 365

Challenge: Photos

This project is being done EVERYWHERE! It is quite an undertaking. I’m in the first half of my second year and I’m really enjoying it - though I still occasionally forget to bring my camera with me when I leave the house. There are countless blogs and Flickr groups dedicated to this idea. I am in the process of moving my project onto my Embrace Life blog.

 

WEEKLY GRATITUDE

Challenge: Words + Photos

Hosted by Karen Grünberg and Lori Gentile at this is a wonderful opportunity to express your appreciation for the little things in life. After all, it’s the little things that make everything so lovely, right? They provide a monthly theme (so far topics covered include: Work, Soul, Home and Nature) and they have offered a few communities in which to participate: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and the Willow Traders Gratitude Forum. I started when they started, at the beginning of 2010 and, with help from Karen (and the lovely Audrey), I managed to figure out how to use the digital template created and freely shared by Karen. You can find my contributions here in my Weekly Gratitude Gallery (http://thelinarstudio.typepad.com/photos/weekly_gratitude/index.html).

This manner of expressing gratitude replaced:

TGIF

Challenge: Words

Brené Brown is such an incredibly inspiring woman, I have learned so much from her this past 18 months or so. I’ve participated in her read-alongs and her blog is in my reader. Her TGIF meme, which stands for Trust, Gratitude, Inspiration Friday is set up to make you more aware of those things in your life you are trusting, for which you are grateful and what inspires you. I stopped participating after a time. I felt my posts were becoming redundant and I felt self-imposed pressure to be original, creative and heart-felt when I find it hard to express in this format. It certainly isn’t because I’m not grateful or mindful, just that I would rather live my gratitude than express it. My last posts were here: http://thelinarstudio.typepad.com/embracelife/tgif/

 

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There are oodles of memes and challenges that can be found all over the Internet. Some have McLinky applications where you can add your link when your entry is completed – and you can visit others participating in the same challenge. I’m terrible at adding my link but have added many of my fellow contributors to my google reader so I don’t miss out on theirs! Some have branched out to Facebook and Flickr. There is so much inspiration out there that requires consistency and routine rather than creativity and originality. This doesn’t mean I’m not original or creative, but these memes and challenges give me a chance to be productive. In the end, to me, it’s about collecting those consistent bits of goodness and creating something that best represents me and still gives time for me to be original, creative and free with my other endeavours.

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 I am:

mother | photographer | writer | friend | artist | student | wife | designer | laundress | volunteer | entrepreneur

 

I can be found writing, reading, talking or taking photos:

hockey rink | grocery store | football field | school blacktop | parking lot | rugby pitch | waiting room | auditorium

 

I enjoy:

laundry | laughter | a clean house | california rolls | white wine | hugs | scrapbooking | blogging

 

I avoid:

cooking | grocery shopping | talking on the phone | drama | the dentist

 

 

guest blogger: Elizabeth Dillow

Elizabeth is one of those people that I wish I knew in person. One of these days I'll get a chance to meet up with her and talk scrapbooking, books, teaching, music, and all the other things we have in common. She's a phenomenal storyteller, and her scrapbook pages get right to what matters most: telling a story with pictures and words. Her blog is proof of that same incredible voice; spending time in her pages or on her blog is much like I'm sure spending time with her in real life would be: full of humor, intelligence, and great stories.

 

 

When Audrey invited me to be a part of this guest blogger series, she asked if I would talk about using timelines to build pages and guide journaling. Absolutely! I love a good timeline. When I was teaching high school history before my children were born, I always started a new unit with one; it was fun to see my students measuring off years, decades, even centuries of history and arranging stories in the right order. Sometimes if a unit end coincided on a Thursday leaving Friday open for something new, we would take a break and play one of my favorite history games called Chronology, a game where the objective is to build timelines and place events in the right order—always easy at first (which comes first on the timeline: the fall of Rome or the invention of the Model T?) but increasingly difficult as the game went on. Even the most reluctant of my students played along, clearly enjoying themselves despite their best anti-history class instincts. There is something comforting about a timeline when so much of the world is painted in grey; a timeline is black and white. It’s only the first part of the equating to truly understanding history, though; making the jump to filling in the details of events and interpreting their impact is the real work of history, and the work we do in scrapbooking.

 

As long as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in chronology. Understanding how events unfold in history is inextricably tied to my love of scrapbooking, because I love a good story—and everyone knows scrapbooking is really about telling small stories that add up to one really big story, which eventually connect to another generation’s really big story, creating connections that transcend life expectancies and geography.

 

I really like playing with pretty paper just for fun, too. But sometimes I like to think about the real significance of what it is we’re doing in our respective scrapbook spaces.

 

So, timelines. They really are a terrific technique to try in scrapbooking, because they serve two very distinct purposes:

 

1.)    to help the people viewing our pages understand specific details about our lives and

2.)    to help us organize events in our own minds.

 

Sounds easy? It definitely is. So easy that we forget how useful it can be, actually. Here are a few examples to get you started.

 

I created this timeline page for an assignment at Ella Publishing Co. as a way to sum up an entire decade on one layout. It was fun to create; obviously there is no way I could fit every single thing that happened to me between 2000-2009, but I definitely documented some of the things that defined much of those years. It’s a very traditional way to incorporate information, and came together quickly. It would be very easy to include twelve boxes and sum up each month of a year the same way!

 

 

Because we move so much due to my husband’s career in the Air Force, I wanted to capture a quick list of places we’ve lived in the first 15 years of our marriage. My daughters love to see a visual representation like this, and I wanted to interpret all those moves for them in a simple way—that wherever we go, having each other is the most important part. I’m sure one day I’ll be using lists like these to remember where exactly we were living in any given year, too!

 

Tip: to perfectly space your years as I did, simply create a timeline and include every year; then use your software’s method of distributing the space evenly, and go back and delete the years you don’t need. Or, if imperfect measurements don’t keep you up at night, just eyeball it. That works, too!

 

 

When you think in terms of events and timelines, you’ll no doubt recognize the pivotal “before and after” events quickly—sometimes, they’re even announced from your refrigerator. I’ll never forget how I opened my refrigerator three years ago and was stopped in my tracks by this orange juice container, which was dated three days past the due date of my third daughter. Suddenly, my life was defined by a timeline of everything that still needed to be done before the date on the orange juice container and everything that would change forever after the orange juice expired. If I actually plotted it out, it might look something like this:

 

 

Silly, perhaps. But it made a huge impact on me.

 

I used this same kind of before/after thinking to make this page that appeared in my book The Scrapbooker’s Almanac:

 

 

I know very little about my grandma’s life before she was married, and even though this page doesn’t provide any new facts, it does inspire me to imagine what her life might have been like, and to consider how my own has changed over the years. It’s definitely an abstract way of using a timeline, but thinking about her life as a series of unfolding events helped me organize this page. You don’t have to use a traditional timeline to think of things in a… timeline-esque way.

 

 

Timelines don’t have to be actual lines and hatch marks, either! I consider this series of time-lapse photographs to fit into the category of timeline scrapbooking. You can choose any subject matter to recreate your own photographic timeline of events; it’s a fun way to see them unfold.

 

 

I recently saw a family tree featured in an article in Ohdeedoh and instantly fell in love with the creative method the artist used to present a family’s basic information. It got me thinking in terms of timelines, too—since each ring inside a tree represents a year, I decided to make my own and create a family tree that doubled as a visual representation of the years my husband and I have been together (six years of dating, and almost fifteen years of marriage). I drew the circles freehand in pencil, then carefully painted over them with a paintbrush in acrylic paint. The result is a unique addition to our family album!

 

Note: you can find the original, far more professional version here. Spread the word and support her unique Etsy shop!

 

Whether you’re documenting the events leading to the birth of a child, a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, or even how your own life fits in with historical events, using a timeline can organize the details and theme of a page in a fun and functional way!

 

Elizabeth Dillow currently lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming with her husband and three daughters. She is the author of The Scrapbooker’s Almanac, an instructor for Big Picture Scrapbooking, and the co-founder and content editor for Write. Click. Scrapbook. She loves her iMac, Canon 5D, Pilot pens, and sports teams from Cleveland.

 

www.elizabethdillow.typepad.com

www.writeclickscrapbook.com

www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com