Hello Old Friend

Hello all,

wow its been a long time since I wrote here. Sorry to my followeing readers. Last August I started a 9 to 5 job that included a very long commute. End of story after job, commute, and family time there was no real time to design and blog. Well. That job is not over so I am back, and hopefully here to stay for the time being.

So I hope you all had a great holiday season, and a spectacular new years. Given that its a new year, its time to reflect on what we did last year, and what we want to do differently this year. As scrapbookers and paper crafters, we tend to focus on framing and packaging memories to remember those special moments. So for me this time of year has two agendas; review and plan.

Review what you did last year. Yes we want to make sure we have all our photos, and all the materials of what happened last year, but more importantly I am talking about take stock of what worked for you. what made it hard to do these projects. What do you think you need to improve. Reason I say this is even though we work hard on our layouts, card, and projects, the bottom line is this is suppose to be fun, and relaxing, and give you something special to look forwrd to doing. So lets review ad see what are the snags, disappointments, frustrations, and al out yucky things we dont like. You can do this by makinga list, or just doing a brain dump and fill a page or word document with all the things that you could do with out when making a project.

Next lets take that bad list and look at how do we improve it. Let plan for the coming year, and no i am not saying out list out per month what projects you are going to do. Think of this as more a self evaluation of ok here are the things that make my special time crafting frustrating, and look at how you can spin it around. Would organizing help, do you need better tools, do you need to find a way to take notes on the go when you take photos. Think of what you have in your day to day life whether it be the cell phone or pda in your purse, and how you can use it to help your scrap, or maybe its the local store which has crops that could teach you a new skill.

The bottom line is take stock of hat worked lat year, and how we can make it work this year =)

well have a great January everyone

JEff

Remembering our Furry Friends

Hi all,

well today is a sad day at the Werner house. Today we said goodbye to our loyal protector Bubba. Bubba was a 12 year old 80lb white boxer. He was patient with our son, and would eagerly spring to defend my wife and son if he felt there was danger. So now that our furry friend is gone, I sit here thinking what can I do to scrap his story. How I had already planned on doing a my dog page in my sons baby book, but Bubba like so many pets is a family member who has quirks, and history. So given this I decided to figure out some projects and resources to help preserve the memory of this guy. So here are some ideas for creating your pet's project.

A great scrapbook theme is "A Day In The Life of ..." which would include pages about your pet's morning routines, nap time, meal time, play time and favorite toys, and outdoor time. Did you do a regular walk. If so include a map. The key is to flesh out that memory, or activity so you can embrace it down the road.

Another idea is to approach it as you would a baby book. and focus on "the firsts". If you are fortunate enough to get your pet while he or she is still a baby, then create a scrapbook album around the "firsts". Even if you adopted your pet when it was older you can still create some great "first" scrapbook pages. Create a scrapbook page or album around your pet's first bath, coming home, first holidays, first visit to the park, first car ride, etc.

A theme around "pet favorites" is also a fun idea. Take photos and create pages around your pet's favorite activities. For a cat you might include pages on favorite toys and favorite nap places. For a dog, choose photos of favorite outdoor play or playtime with favorite toys.

Lastly try making a word book using their name. Now you can either do a leltter page album, or just design your regular layout pages. Whatever format you choose, the idea will be to build out the book using their name. Now take each letter of their name, and use that letter to define the topic/theme of the layout. For example we have Bubba. We could plan out the pages as follows:

B = Brother to our Boy
U = Unconditional Love
B = Beloved
B = Beautiful
A = Affectionate

Whatever kind of pet you have, you can enjoy creating special scrapbook pages that you will enjoy for years to come!

Thanks for your time

Jeff

What makes it a scrapbook

The other day I was reading one of the many scrapbooking forums (sorry could not find the forum) and a person started arguing with another poster that her digital scrapbooking layout collection couldnt be considered a scrapbook. After rolling my eyes at a person who was just making a mountain out of a mole hill, or is just closed minded to other possibilities, I started to think. What really is it that makes our collection of cherished memories a scrapbook. Now some dictionaries define a scrapbook as a book, similar to a notebook or journal, in which personal or family memorabilia and photos are collected and arrange. But really if you look at the history of the craft way before Utah, you will see that scrapbooks were products of the current technology

Now some historians say beginning in the 15th century, commonplace books, popular in England, emerged as a way to compile information that included recipes, quotes, letters, poems and more. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests. Friendship albums became popular in the 16th century. These albums were used much like modern day yearbooks, where friends or patrons would enter their names, titles and short texts or illustrations at the request of the album's owner. These albums were often created as souvenirs of European tours and would contain local memorabilia including coats of arms or works of art commissioned by local artisans. Then in 1570, it became fashionable to add colored elements depicting popular scenes such as Venetian costumes or Carnival scenes. These provided affordable options as compared to original works and, as such, these items were not sold to commemorate or document a specific event but specifically as embellishments for albums. Later in 1826 with the development of modern photography created by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, came what was seen as the first permanent photograph . Photography became available to an ever-widening population with the invention of George Eastman's paper photographs in the late 1880s and the mass production of the Kodak Brownie, a camera designed to be simple (and inexpensive) enough for a child, in 1900. This allowed the average person to begin to incorporate photographs into their scrapbooks.

So as you can start to see what we now see as scrapbooks, photo books, and even photo albums, were just results of the technology that was made available to the average person. Now look around today at the average household. More and more people are moving away from paper items (books, newspapers, magazines, etc..) for several reason. Paper is getting more and more expensive, it takes up room, if not properly stored and treated it can fade or even deteriorate. So it stands to reason that people will move to a more technical solution to collect their sacred memories and mementos. In the 20th century and before paper was the gold standard there was nothing better, but now there is a choice, and as more people become better aquinted with technology, I see more people storing their scrapbooks electronically. Whether its a electronic frame, a slide show on their media PC, or its a online slide show, I really see this new presentation medium as an extension of what has come before for hundreds of years.

Now personally I prefer the idea of having a paper album with memories that you can thumb through, but really with my available time, and my skills with computer graphics, I have decided to do my layouts digitally. Does this mean all paper scrappers need to go digi? Heavens no. Its just there are many of us that are comfortable doing digital, just like there are many who only do paper. I think the future of the craft is a bridging of the two ideas Whether thats making designs digitally and printing it out using services like craftsassy.com or Photo Books {etc}. Or designing your projects with paper, verious tools and glues and scannig them, or maybe it will be a interactive technology we have only dreamed of. The bottom line is like any creative medium there are many variations out there, and we can all appreciate each others work and collectively say we all make scrapbooks.

Thanks for yor time

Jeff