Tahoe

We just got back from five days in Tahoe with my family...so now I'm in the midst of mega laundry! It was well worth it though :)

I was smart this trip & brough three scrapbook kits for me to do in the evenings. I still need to finish up the journaling on one (on the computer), but otherwise I finished three layouts. Yay! Okay, not one of them was "my" design, but hey, I got them done :)

Before I get back to the laundry pile, here are a few pics from our trip:

I took all of my photos in RAW this time, so I have to edit them before I can print or share them. But the colors came out great this time! I usually shoot & JPEG + RAW, a great feature on my camera. However, that takes up a LOT more room on my memory card. It makes it take a bit longer to share anything, but well worth it when you take way too many pictures :)

Three years later...

These photos were taken in Sept 2006...when Brandon was a year & a half (same age as Abbie right now...wow!). He would go around with the goggles--well, he still wears those--and the hammer, and say, "hammer hammer."

(Hmmm....that should've been the title of my layout, but too late now!)

I used more goodies from my September kit. The rub-ons are from Prima & super cool (the grunge edge & stars). However...they were horrible to use! The rub-on was stuck to the "liner" sheet a ton, so I had to toss a bunch. Which was super annoying since I had already put some of the edging down. I was able to make it work, but...I was not happy. I don't know if they got overheated or what, since it wasn't all of the rub-ons that were affected.

What I do love in that kit: the Sassafras letter stickers. They are the multi-colored ones ("our own little"). There is a ton of each letter, and a few colors too. I really like that "mis-matched but matched" look that I have a hard time doing on my own!

Hybrid Scrapping

At one time, I printed only 4x6 photos & did my best to cut them down to fit. The problem? I took too many pictures & would have multiple layouts of a single thing just to fit all the pictures in.

Then, at some point after I switched from film to digital, I realized I could crop my photos in Photoshop Elements prior to printing. Now I could get any size photo I wanted & fit 13 photos (or more!) in a single layout.

Recently, I've started doing a bit more digital. I wouldn't call myself a digital scrapper by any means. But I do incorporate a lot of digital techniques. I am a hybrid scrapper.

Like on this new layout:

I've used lots of paper goodies from my July kit. But my photo section is a collage all done in photoshop & printed up that way. I even have "photo" under my title block. I just put the paper & stickers on top.

How simple was that? Seriously, no cropping. I just plunked the whole photo collage onto the paper, and basically was done.

July

So my last layout "fit" with the weather. This layout does not :)

I finally finished the July layout for Abbie's first year album. I think I only have a couple more months to go! As long as I finish it by the time she's two, right?

As usual, I worked from a Becky Higgins sketch. This time, after I got my photos resized, I added a little text in photoshop. It saves me from having to write a lot. Which was a very good thing this time, since it took me a couple of weeks staring at this to figure out how I was going to work in my journaling!

For the layout itself, I used a bunch of goodies from my July kit. There was some October Afternoon in there, so I added some of my journaling cards of theirs that I purchased over the summer. The cool border I did was Kristen's awesome idea on one of her layouts. I love how it adds a punch of color & lots of fun patterned paper without being overwhelming. I just punched out a bunch of circles, adhered them to the edge, & then trimmed it down. Like Kristen, I added some fun dots for a little "extra".

rain rain go away

Rather appropriate to be scrapping this now, right?

I know we need it, but my kids get SO restless! And frankly, so do I!

When we had our supersoaking of 3" in one day this last October, I was at work & then stuck in mega-traffic on my way home. My kids were at my parents' house, where my mom decided that it would be okay for them to play outside. At least they got to come into to a hot shower, dry clothes, and hot chocolate!

This layout is another scraplift, this time from Creating Keepsakes. I needed an easy layout for the pictures my mom took while my crazy kids were getting drenched! Both pictures & the journaling are an 8x8 block, so I did it all in Photoshop & printed it on an 8x10. All I had to do was trim it back down to 8x8. I used my Oct/Nov kit, including one of the custom tags that I wasn't sure to do with!

create

Brandon *loves* to play Legos, like most other 4 1/2 year old boys. Left to his own devices, will come up with the most amazing Lego creations. And I finally got a picture of him with them! Of course I had to scrap it :)

I was inspired by a very similar layout design in Scrapbook's Etc. I happened to have some of the same paper from Jillibean Soup, along with some other fun goodies from my stash of October Afternoon stickers and the August kit from Green Tangerines.

Olivia's first day of preschool

Another day, another layout :)

This was a simple one too! All 4x6 photos. I just got one of Creating Keepsakes "special issues" of quick pages with 4x6 photos at JoAnn's a couple weeks ago. I like that I don't have to spend hours resizing photos & figuring out layouts. I can just do a few photoshop tweaks, decide how many photos to use, and print them. For 13 cents each! Nice!