2012...Be Inspired, Get Organized, LEARN

Wow, it's sure been a while since I've blogged...maybe it's about a lack of time or maybe it's about a lack of inspiration...maybe it's a bit of both.

But, as I attempt my first Roundup (I'm inspired by Katie Nelson, just took a class from her at Big Picture Classes, check out the Roundup section on her blog for more info.), of January 2012, I took a few minutes to read through some emails I've been meaning to get to.  I had 5 emails from the Ali Edwards series 52 Creative Lifts that I had been waiting to read.  While my January photos uploaded to Costco, seemed like the perfect time to get to them.  Reading through these weekly emails, inspired me to head over here and write a post about what I'm up to this year.

First, I began January thinking about my One Little Word for 2012.  WAY back in 2010, I decided on BELIEVE and ACHIEVE for my word(s) :).  I set goals for myself that had to do with blogging, losing weight and working on my finances.  I have to say that, as is usually my habit, I began with a strong focus on my goals and LIFE got in the way.  When it was time for 2011, I had helped my finances by taking a 2nd part time job, but doing so had squeezed out time to concentrate on blogging or anything else.  It seems to take me quite a while to "right my ship" when I encounter a big change like this, so here I am in 2012, forcing myself to make time to be creative (that might even include some blogging here & there).  With Jake in preschool, even for only 2 mornings a week, I can do some of my second job (transcription) during the mornings and not just into the wee hours of the night.  Getting just a little more sleep sure helps with the creativity and motivation!

So back to that 2012 word....mine is LEARN!

One of my huge goals is to learn Photoshop!  I purchased two online classes at Jessica Sprague .com and now I have to make the time to go through them so I feel like I have a better handle on Photoshop.  I would LOVE to use it in my regular scrapbooking AND to get started with some digi scrapbooking (I bought a subscription to The Digi Game over at The Daily Digi last year and I'm SO excited about all the great digi items I get for only $7.50 a month).  I have used a few of my digi elements to create invitations and some other fun little projects, but I have yet to complete a real scrapbook layout!  So I really need to get to those PS classes! (I did make my LEARN tag with PS and a kit from the Digi Game, but it took me forever and I can't figure out how to just use the part I want and not a rectangle background...time for the classes!)

As a part of my effort to create enough time to LEARN in 2012, I thought I'd better get organized!  I have read Katie's blog for a few years and have always admired how she rounds up each month at the beginning of the next month and then moves on.  (Read how Katie explains Roundups HERE on her blog!)I took her Roundup Class in January, over at Big Picture Classes and it inspired me to design a Monthly Roundup Workshop at Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio, where I'm in charge of all the marketing, while also teaching & designing.  I wanted to share Katie's basic technique and help the participants form a sort of support group that will meet each month to create a Roundup layout and also discuss the different ways that we can incorporate Katie's technique in regular paper scrapbooking in many different forms.  I want to share the ideas I am finding on creativity, inspiration and organizing with the group.  So, I guess, here I am using my LEARN to teach and share too!

In the first couple days of 2012, LEARNing Photoshop was a major goal of mine, and then it was pushed slightly aside when I was the LUCKY winner of a Silhouette Cameo die cutting machine on The Today's Creative Blog!  I was SO excited to win, that organizing my scrapbook studio and making a space for my new toy on my crowded tables became a more urgent goal!  And, now that the Silhouette has arrived, LEARNing it's software has become my most pressing creative goal!  I am SO happy that the software is easy to use (I have previously used the Pazzles Pro software, so it may have come quicker to me that it might to others).  I LOVE being able to download cool designs right from the Silhouette website for only 99 cents!  I have used the $10 download card included with my machine to grab a few die cuts for my Roundup workshop and I'm excited to share them with everyone who attends!

Now that my studio is more organized, I find it's easier to run up here and cut a few shapes or finish a project.  (Another goal of mine is to finish some projects that are half finished and filling a box under my table...having that box empty at the end of 2012, would be an amazing accomplishment!)  I am also hoping that having things more organized will allow me to get started on a project I have been procrastinating since November.  I am creating a custom album for a friend, I think I my reasons for procrastinating are both emotional and then just plain procrastination.  This album is very personal to me, being a celebration of a close friend's life.  Brent died in 2003 and thinking about creating this album gives me feelings of joy, being able to honor someone who is so important to my family and feelings of sadness at the memories being in the past.  But now that I have the perfect space, I will press on and find joy in remembering someone so special.

I'm confident the book will turn out beautiful and hope that it will be the beginning of a new chapter for me, creating custom albums at home in my studio.

In order to keep my word, LEARN, foremost in my mind during 2012, I have signed up for the One Little Word class, taught by Ali Edwards, over at Big Picture Classes.  I signed up a bit late, so I'm still getting my book started, but I think that the little exercises aimed at getting to know my word and making it part of my life will be perfect lessons for this year!  I am excited at the idea of exploring my word a little bit each month!  I promise to share what I'm "learning" about my word this year.  I'd love to know what your word is for 2012 too!  So leave me a comment & we can chat! ;)

I've also decided that I need to LEARN to knit this year!  During January, I have been able to learn one stitch...the knit stitch.  I'm not pushing myself and I'm not sure how far I will get on this journey this year, but I'll keep you updated!

Layout of the Week - Family with Graphic 45 Papers & A Special Annoucement!

This week, as the sun shines outside here in Oregon, I want to share my family with you.  Dave, my wonderful husband,  is a sports fanatic who loves to play with his kids.  He managed to combine those this week...he got Delaney to fill out an NCAA bracket and then had Jake do one too.  Dave used blocks with the first letter of each team and had Jake pick his favorite of the two.  Yes, it took quite a while and Jake's bracket is full of M-named teams (his current favorite letter).  Poor Jake didn't fare well with Montana last night, but he still has a chance to beat his Daddy.  I keep telling Dave that knowing about sports really has nothing to do with winning with these tourney brackets.  On to Delaney, my beautiful, talented, creative daughter, will be 9 on Sunday.  Delaney is so well-rounded, she loves participating in all sorts of sports (those talents come from Dad), creating original, eye-catching art pieces and she's a "bit" of a perfectionist (that, I'm sorry, comes from me!).  She is thoughtful and loving, especially to her little brother.  So that makes Jake last.  Mr. Jake is now two and FULL of ENERGY!  He loves the movie "Cars," any every character in it.  We're missing Sally right now and he asks for "Yaddy" every chance he gets...I'm sure she's around somewhere, probably in one of Delaney's shoes.  We all love to hang out together and are very excited that the weather's warming up here!

So that's a bit of our story!  On to my layout...this design idea came to me a bit backwards.  Usually I have a photo and then come up with a layout.  OK, sometimes I have a paper collection that I love and take photos to go with it.  This time, I was inspired by a pile of mismatched Graphic 45 papers laying all over my counter while I was creating projects for the Graphic 45 design team call.  Seeing these papers, most are the backsides, reminded me of a patchwork quilt.  I thought & thought about how to combine them and came up with using a brown background and my favorite sepia tone photos.  I didn't shoot a new photo for this page, I remembered that my mother-in-law shot some photos of us when she was visiting in early December.  This one was almost our Christmas card photo, but it didn't quite make the cut.  We were very excited at the time, being huge Duck fans and having just attended one of our most exciting games ever...the Civil War win over the dreaded Beavers!  So we decided to have a Duck theme Christmas card.  Even though we didn't use this photo, we found some even more fun Duck photos of all of us.  My trusty sepia tone came into play because dark green and almost neon yellow don't exactly match the Graphic 45 color scheme.

Since I had been thinking of this project as a patchwork quilt, I searched the internet for patchwork quotes.  I found a few that combined the quilt idea with the family idea.  I didn't find one that fit my thoughts exactly so I made up my own.  I didn't want a big wordy journal box or title on this one, so I used photoshop to print my quote right on top of my photo.

For the patches, I cut my papers to 2 1/2" square and then used a ruler to gently fold the edges in 1/4" on each side.  I tore upward along these folds so the white would show on the edges.  Next I inked the edges with brown ink.  I used one little Hermafix square on the back of each square and placed them on the brown background, leaving an area in the bottom right corner for the photo.

This was my very first attempt at machine stitching on a layout.  I'm pretty excited with the results.  I had been planning to give it a try.  Dave put a table in the laundry room for my sewing machine and I dug the poor thing out of one of the "holes" or storage closets in the bonus room.  It had been in there more than 5 years.  I was surprised it worked at all.  I searched the internet for ideas on machine stitching and found tons of them.  So I experimented with an extra sheet of my background paper and extra little squares.  I adjusted the tension, stitch width and lenght, writing each of the number combinations next to that particular stitch on my sample sheet.  When I found one I liked, I used it.  I chose ivory thread for this project.

After sewing around the page twice, I decided to create my own embellishment for my title.  I cut a piece of patterned paper twice as long as my photo, tore it leaving a white edge, inked it with the brown and folded it into pleats.  I used the same straight stitch I used on the whole page to stitch my pleats together.  I went over the pleats twice.  Next I stitched down my brown ball fringe ribbon.  For the title, I inked the edges of the Graphic 45 letters with black and adhered them with pop dots.  To attach my homemade embellishments, I used glue dots.

I was very happy with how this layout turned out.  I loved machine stitching and can't wait to use it again!  Next time you're together with your family, shot a photo and remember to create a layout to celebrate these special people!

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

I want to share some exciting news with my readers!  I am now a featured writer on the Oregon Women's Report website.  I am writing a series of fun, anecdotal stories about scrapbooking.  I'd love it if you'd stop by over there and read my first one!  I'm planning to post each article here also.  I'll post one in both places every two weeks or so.  If you're from Oregon or just interested in all the cool women writers on the site, sign up to receive updates from OWR in your inbox.  Thanks! :)

Don't Forget!  Join me at Ann's tonight for Virtual Girl's Night Out!  Stop by to join in the fun, meet lot's of great women bloggers (and sometimes some male bloggers too!), hop around the internet leaving comments and getting some for yourself too!

Tips

Of course, use sepia tone or black & white to help your photos blend with your chosen papers.

If you're looking for a new way to include journaling in your layouts, give photoshop a try!

Look at the backsides of your papers, they might inspire a layout all by themselves.

Think about creating your own embellishments.

If you've got a sewing machine, try machine stitching!

Supplies

Graphic 45 papers...from all different collections, most are the backsides.

Graphic 45 alphabet letters

Bazzill brown ball fringe ribbon

Dark Brown Ink - Cat's Eye ink pad

Ivory thread for machine stitching

Layout of the Week - Believe Achieve (my words for 2010)

I just have to say, I love this layout.  It isn't very often as scrapbookers that we create layouts about themselves.  At the beginning of this year, I read a lot of different blog posts about finding a word for yourself for the year.  The word would be your theme word, giving you something to focus on throughout the year.  I started to think about myself and all the things I've done in my life and the things I'd like to do in the future.  Being the mom of a two year old, it has been a while since I've thought about my own goals or even thought much about myself at all.  I was just starting to get back to thinking about me when Delaney turned 6 and was at the end of her year of 1/2 day kindergarten.  It was nice to look ahead at the things I could start to do for me once she started school full time in September of 2007.  And then suddenly my world was turned upside down.  I found out I was pregnant with Jake in June of 2007, just a week before Delaney was done with kindergarten.  It was quite a shock after about 5 years trying to conceive and then coming to terms with our being a 3 person family.  I still can picture the look on Dave's face when Delaney & I told him we'd be having a baby.  I'll tell you more of this story another time, but suffice it to say, shock doesn't even come close.  So my thoughts took an about face, away from what I wanted to do with the "rest of my life" and toward raising another little one.

As I was reading these "word of the year" blog posts in January, I thought maybe I should think about me a little sooner this time and not wait until Jake was going to be in first grade...for goodness sake, I'll be 43 by then.  Here's my first Believe Achieve blog post.  And the thought of turning 40 this year also added to my eagerness to make plans that were mine alone.  For years, I've been involved in scrapbooking in some way, working on albums at home, helping my friend with projects, working at Whimzee's, writing my blog.  I also began another of my efforts at being healthier and losing weight this year.

Being someone who isn't short on words, I couldn't narrow my choices down to just one.  For my 2010 words of the year, I chose Believe and Achieve.  I chose them even before I walked into Jake's room to get him up from his nap and saw those exact words stenciled on a plaque on the wall in his room.  Dave chose it at a baby boutique when we were shopping for bedding & decorations for his room.  It hangs over his crib and someday we'll explain to him what they mean...right now, he just enjoys pointing out that there is an "A" on the sign.

These words are important for me to remember this year, because I have a few goals for myself.  I want to expand my blog and find a sponsor or two (if anyone has any suggestions, bring 'em on!) and I hope to be chosen for a Design Team of some sort in 2010.  I also want to continue with my efforts to work out, eat healthier and by doing those things, lose some weight.  One more important goal, for the whole family really, is to make smart money choices.

I think that I am moving toward all these goals, but I do have to remind myself everyday, that I have to Believe in myself and make efforts in order to Achieve them this year.  I created this layout to highlight my words and remind myself everyday of what I am working toward.  I challenge you to find a theme word or two, even three or four, who's counting.

In creating a layout that highlights my words, I wanted to use some of my favorite products.  The papers are from Lily Bee and the embellishments are from all sorts of places.  I wanted to show contrast in this layout.  Not only am I a mom and wife, I also have personal and professional goals outside of my family.  These goals will benefit my family in many ways, but they are my goals.  I chose to create contrast in my layout by placing the rhinestone "BELIEVE" on a distressed piece of corrogated cardboard.  The rhinestone title also contrasts nicely with the slick orange "ACHIEVE."  I created depth by using a cardboard circle covered with word filled paper.  I used pop dots to raise my photo above the background.  Again highlighting my words, I used Photoshop to print them on my photo.

I love this photo of me.  I asked my friend, Pandra, to shoot a photo of me to send in with a design team application.  I was planning on changing & doing my hair first, but she just got out her camera one night when we were hanging out with friends.  They started telling jokes & I couldn't keep a straight face.  It just all went downhill from the very beginning....  This first photo was the best of the bunch!  Thanks P! :)

Tips

Think of a theme word for the year & remind yourself of it everyday!

Create a layout or project highlighting your word and place it somewhere you will see it everyday!

Don't be afraid to create contrast with by using totally different embellishments in your layouts.  Rhinestone & cardboard...glitter & slick plastic.

Have a friend shoot some photos of you and create a layout that shows your personality or how you felt that day!

Supplies

Patterned Paper - Lily Bee
Rhinestone Title - Kaisercraft
ACHIEVE & 2010 - THICKERS by American Crafts
Paint - a variety of craft paints

This post shared on Today's Creative!  Be sure to check them out for links to all things creative and the best features of creative blogs on the internet!