Mini Albums

Hi everyone...Lee has asked me to write something for the blog this week as she is busy preparing for the Getaway (I'm so jealous!). I have to say, it is a little daunting but I will give it a shot. Just so you know, I do not at all proclaim to be an expert at scrapbooking. I'm just like everyone else...I love scrapbooking, love telling our family stories and I love photos. I struggle to fit it in to my busy life but I do the best I can!

I have started to get into "Mini Albums" in the last 6-9 months and I love what they offer me. I haven't done a whole heap of mini albums, but I've enjoyed the ones I have done and I thought I'd share them with you. These would never replace actual albums for me, just sometimes it is a better way of sharing an event or thing.

The first one I will share with you is still a bit of a work in progress. Its my "Story of Pandora" Album. I started this one because I (like so many others) have been hit with the craze of the Pandora Charm Bracelet (pic below).

All my charms have been given to me by family and friends and I wanted to keep a record of who gave me what and also the reason behind the gift. If my bracelet becomes a family heirloom one day in the distant future, I'd like there to be a story behind it! So I went super simple for this as it is something that will be added to over the years as I collect more charms. I picked up one of those cute little suitcase like tins with the handle and I have basically created cards to fit inside the tin. I will probably decorate the tin a little at some stage. I haven't decided yet as to whether I will attach the cards with a ring or if I will just leave them loose. On one side of the card is an individual picture of the charm and then the name of it underneath. On the reverse side of the card, is my info section which I created in word. It just has the relevant information... Bead, Date and Why. I then handwrite the info into it and add a cute flower and I'm done. Its as simple as that. I even have a few of the info cards printed off and left blank in the tin so it is easy for me to add a new bead. I also have a pile of the flowers in the tin and a stash of the dotted swiss paper I have used for the photo side of the card.

The next album is one I did about my eldest son's first year of soccer. I take heaps of photos at most of the games and it posed the problem of what do I do with all the soccer photos. The team manager wrote these amazing and very funny match reports each week, so I ended up copying and pasting them into a word document and putting each weeks report with a photo. I didn't care too much about whether the photo was from the game that the manager had written about, I just picked my favourite photos for the season and used them. This was super simple and didn't take long to put together at all once I had the Word format done. I didn't even have to do much journalling as the match report covered it all. I used paterned papers from a co-ordinating range so that I didn't have to think about colour matching etc either. I didn't do much in the way of embellishing - I let the fonts I chose and the patterned paper do the embellishing. I kept the design the same for all the pages, only altering it slightly on the intro page and the end page. All in all a very simple format that is a great keepsake for my son and everyone loves looking at it.

The last album I want to share with you is one that came about after a family holiday. I took several hundred photos on this holiday and I wanted to do something with my favourites - but that totalled around 80 photos. So I decided to combine Scrapbooking with a traditional slip in photo album. I just printed my photos and slipped them in and every now and then I would leave a page blank so that I could do something with embellishments etc to break it up a little. I decorated each page with a strip of scalloped cardstock, a patterned paper strip and an embellishment. On some pages I journalled, but only where necessary. Again, I used a co-ordinating range of patterned paper and this also had co-ordinating epoxy stickers (I think thats what they are called!!). This was quite simple, not overly time consuming and a great way to scrapbook a large amount of photos. I will definitely do this again when the need arises.

Thanks for reading...hope you enjoyed it! And to all those going on the Getaway, have an awesome time! I am looking forward to the July Getaway.

Emma

Determination

It has been an exciting week here for us that started the weekend before last when we went to visit some friends in Port Macquarie. They have 2 boys aged 6 and 4 years and we have our 2 aged 4 1/2 and 18months. The only thing they asked us to make sure we packed was bikes. As we have no bike rack on the car we chose to pack the scooter instead. The first morning we were there we headed to the local cafe (which is also connected to the local cycling shop) and our friends decided to purchase a new bike for their 4 year old. As you can imagine this was very exciting and he wanted to try it out asap. So that afternoon we headed down to the local basketball courts where there was plenty of room for riding bikes, scooters and skateboards. He had no problem transferring from his smaller bike to the new one and no need for training wheels (which he had previously managed without also).

After watching this and taking it all in and hooting around on his scooter Jake silently processed the 4 year old and no training wheels.

When we arrived home he headed straight for his bike and asked for the training wheels to be removed. He spent the next few days determined to ride without them. This is not an easy feat at our house. We have no driveway, no garage, and the street is on a hill. So there is no adequate flat space to practise. Nevertheless determination set in and out on our back deck Jake persisted. At first with help, and then when I had to cook dinner he chose not to wait, instead he used the railing and the wall, mastered getting started and wobbled his way down the deck on his own.

Watching him master something he was so determined to achieve and seeing the smile and pride he had in himself made me grin from ear to ear. Below are some of the photos I took and we then headed down to the park (where we have pretty much lived ever since) to keep practising in a much bigger space :)

It is amazing what children achieve when they watch other children. I could have explained the no training wheels over and over, but watching another child makes all the difference.

As I was thinking about my post for this week. I thought back to a layout I did when Jake was 8 months old, also about determination. The motivation for him was different, but the effort and persistence was the same. Nothing has changed and I hope it never does. I love this quality in Jake and hope I scrap a lot more pages titled the same over the years. I will turn the pictures above into a page about determination.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great week.

simple lasercuts

Well, another week has flown by and if you dropped in last night to read the blog, my apologies for being a day late. I was simply too tired last night to do anything but sleep :). I hope you have all had a great week and maybe you could take this moment to grab a coffee and then admire the two layouts I have to share with you. I can speak so highly of them, because I did not scrap them :) I was so excited when Emma emailed me 2 layouts she created during the week using the February Patterned paper subscription and a couple of lasercuts. They are very simple layouts but beautiful, I think she has done a wonderful job of telling her stories to go with the photos, embellishing slightly and keeping the pictures as the focal point.

The second of these two layouts Emma created for Kathy Zeilske's design your life class.

I frequently leave my lasercuts raw and so when Emma sent her layouts through to me and she had also left them raw it made me smile. I know that Annie who blogged for Remember When under the previous owner used to paint hers beautifully and one day I plan to try this. If you have any lasercuts that you have decorated or painted and love how they have turned out on your layouts please email me a photo - lee@rememberwhen.com.au I pack so many orders of paper and lasercuts I often wonder how people use them on their layouts. I would also love to share some with the people who read the blog each week.

On a different note, the getaway is sneaking up very quickly and I am so excited. Excited to have some time to scrap with no distractions and excited to meet some new people. Last year was such a great time for relaxing, sharing ideas and generally just having a great time. I plan to have lots to share with you after the weekend.

Lastly for this week I am excited to say that it's birthday month. The 1st March was the 1st anniversary for me as the new owner of Remember When. It has been a great 12 months and I have loved taking over the business and starting shape it to my own. My fingers are crossed that by the end of the month (or very shortly after) the new website will be up and running and there will be no more ordering problems. I have been busy uploading all the products on to the new site and can't wait to share this with you shortly. Also included in the new site will be the full range of Bazzill colours that we have in 8.5 x 11 inch and A4 - too exciting! :)

Have a great week and please remember to email me any layouts using lasercuts that you just love. See you next week.

Blue Skies

This week I sent out the February patterned paper pack to our subscription customers and I was able to send them some of the latest releases from American Crafts Blue Skies range. It is a gorgeous range that while on the girly side, it has enough stripes and colours other than pink to be used for the boys.

Having said that the layout I did tonight is of my daughter when she was first born. I used the Blue Skies - I'm like a bird paper for the background and then cut out one of the flowery shapes from the Oh Happy Day page as an embellishment. The letters for the title are RW classic font laser cut letters which are available individually or as an alphabet set.


I didn't want to say anything else on this page so I didn't include a journalling block. I arranged the photos in a collage so that I could incorporate different sized photos while still maintaining an ordered look to the page. This is great when you have lots of photos that you don't want to crop to the same size or sometimes you can't crop to the same size. By making them into a collage block you add order to the page, it looks attractive and purposeful. You can use as many photos as you like to do this and it also works well over a two page spread.



Apologies for the colours in the photo of my layout. I will retake the photo tomorrow in the light so it reflects the gorgeous colours in the papers better.

All the papers and letters I have used today are available through the website. If you are enjoying the patterned papers I have been using lately, make sure you check out the patterned paper subscription - a great way to keep your patterned paper stash fresh.

Have a great week and I will see you next Thursday.