Saturday, August 9, 2014

Picture My Life

I am lucky enough to be a part of an AMAZING group of scrapbookers.  They are a crafty, supportive and collaborative group of women that it has been my absolute pleasure to get to know.  Getting together with them is my one release from the demands of my home life and I cling to it like a shipwrecked victim to a life raft.  We get together 6 times a year and put on the BEST crop in the Memphis area.  Seriously.  If you live here, ever visit the area, or just want to come in and join in the fun, click here to check us out and sign up.  

We use the gymnasium of one of our local churches and we are always blessed when a representative of the church wants to share with us before we start our day-long event.  (Not being overly religious, I usually use this time to commune quietly with my own higher power.)  But at the last crop, we had an elder of the church grace us with his wise words.  He credited us with being the "Memory Keepers" of our prospective families.  (As his wife is a member of our scrapbooking family, he feeds her addiction and happily understands the release for her and the benefits of her passion to their family.)  That one phrase - memory keepers - struck home for me.  That's what scrapbooking is all about.  Keeping the loving memories of my sons' childhoods alive.  And I am an avid picture taker.  Especially now that my camera is so conveniently attached to my phone - and I carry my phone with me everywhere.  My boys see that phone come out and they assume their respective positions, lol.  My now-teenager hides his face or runs and my toddler smiles his biggest smile.  My teenager used to smile big for the camera, so I know one day my toddler will also be hiding his face.  Right now the baby is either sleeping or screaming.  But he'll learn.

Picture My Life is the PERFECT scrapbooking tool for beginning memory keepers, and it fits that it's the current Constant Campaign!




The Picture My Life programs are PERFECT for the beginning Memory Keeper.  The "programs" come with pre-designed cardstock cards that you just slide into the page protectors next to your photos and Voila! In ten seconds, you have fully designed scrapbooking pages that were as easy to assemble, as the pictures you took to put in them!

Picture My Life has 13 different programs to choose from - both current AND retired paper packs.  Each program comes with 122 cards, a cover sheet and 10 page protectors.  Then on top of that, you can get another 10 pack of page protectors for only $3!!  And the cards are ADORABLE!  And fully designed.  And double sided.  And they already have sentiments on them.  Or they have journaling spots where you can write your own sentiments.  And they make beginning scrapbooking a breeze.

And I've come to learn how important scrapbooking is.  It's not just something I do to decompress (although, that IS one of the reasons I do it - in addition to my joy of crafting, the loving fellowship of like-minded women, and the love I get to spread to my friends and family through my hand-crafted cards and paper gifts).  It's also keeping the loving memories of my children's lives alive.  And the memories are very loving.  It's the greatest gift I can give them.




Thursday, August 7, 2014

The benefits of Bling

I have a secret.  I am NOT a girly-girl.  I'm a really simple chick.  A jeans and flip-flops kind of girl.  If you were to see me out, I'd be barefaced, hair up in a claw clip and the only "accessory" I'd be sporting (aside from my impossibly cute kids) would be my wedding ring.

So, when I'm making cards, I can bang 'em out when I'm following the patterns in my Make It From Your Heart booklet.  (Another reason I love CTMH - they put their how-to patterns in the easiest format to follow!)  But once the pattern is complete, I feel like something is missing.  The cards need bling.

Embellishments, to be exact.

Take this card, for example.  


I made this card for my mom and step-dad.  That lucky couple is getting to live out their dream retirement right now.  They bought a travel RV and meandered across this great nation of ours as they packed up their house in the Frozen North and moved down to the desert of Nevada.  This is an exact copy of the pattern I used from our Make It From Your Heart how-to booklet.  And while it is adorable, it feels unfinished to me. 

I like simple, but I like refined simple.  I want the recipients of my cards to feel like I really put thought and effort into personalizing the hand made cards I give them.  I won't give a card that doesn't feel "finished" to me.

So taking the basic card above, I just added a few simple pieces to make it feel more finished.  I added the Twilight cardstock under the sentiments and edged all the pieces in Chocolate ink.  Then, I stamped the RV image on two pieces of patterned paper, cut them out and adhered them over the original stamped image (a technique called "paper piecing").  As a final touch, I added Chocolate pearls (now-retired) to the upper left corner of the card and also over the wheel of the RV. 


It doesn't scream "overly embellished" to me, but those few small, simple touches take it up the few notches it needed to feel complete.