Layouts by the numbers

Room sign

Jake's old room sign was Thomas the Train themed, and his poor door has stood blank for years at this point.  When I asked him which friends he wanted pictures of for his new door sign (one that I was DETERMINED to make during Christmas vacation!), he said "Just Milo."

Milo is Jake's cat who lives with Nana.  And actually, having JUST Milo to deal with made the endeavor a lot easier for me.  He was actually excited when I showed him the finished product (which is nice, since most of what I get from his 10 year old self is rolled eyes.)

Christmas 2012

Every year, my mom wants me to throw together something in Photoshop that we can print as a 4x6 picture and stick in with her Christmas cards.  This is our card addition this year:

Then I figured - ok, it took me a long time to decide on those elements and paper combo, I'm going to stick with this theme.  (I LOVE the Santa and friends elements from Tracey Monette / Clever Monkey Graphics, they totally crack me up.  I used them in Christmas gifts last year, too.)  I happened to have some other pictures from the same day that I LOVED and want to jazz up for Facebook (because just posting a picture when I have so much fun digi stuff on my computer?  How silly!)

*sigh* My boyfriend is SO CUTE.

Wait, where was I?

This one I made at a 5x7 dimension so I could print it out as such and throw it on a 8.5x11 paper scrapbooking page later.  :)

So then I thought: self? I love these photos.  And I'm quite fond of this element / paper combo.  Let's go with this.  I need a new Facebook banner anyway.  So then I made this:

And THEN.  Well my laptop needed a new desktop wallpaper, as the current one had a summer theme.  A SUMMER theme?  Just weeks before Christmas?  I don't think so.

This one was more complicated, because I had a hard time finding the pixel dimensions of my laptop screen.  (Hint: look in the control panel next time, Jen.)

Oh, and one last thing.  My iPhone needed a new lock screen.  Here's the image I made (this took a LOT of trial and error), and how it looks on the phone:

 

Doing all this with one set of images / elements is only hard the first time, as you're trying to figure out which dimensions a particular image requires.  After that, it's just a matter of rearranging the stuff you've already picked out.  TIPS: (1) save your original layered file and then each time you start a project with a different goal, open it and "save as" a new file so you don't lose your original work! and (2) save your results in one place to use as templates for next time you want to create for a particular reason.

Another school year!

If I could only have one type of paper for crafting, it would be patterned cardstock.  Why?  Because you can turn that stuff into so many things!  In this case, quick labels for school supply bags, and quick cards for the teacher.  I sat and did this in 10-15 minutes on my way to drop off supplies.

This is all KiMemories paper. (Love those cute strips of backpacks! :D)  To make the tags, I pretty much just eye-balled a height, cut the cardstock, then folded the paper for how long I wanted the width of a card to be, and trimmed THAT. So ridiculously easy.

Hole-punches, Sharpies, and ribbons to finish - the steady stand-bys of the 10 minute crafter :D

Graduation Cards

Ok, this is another post based on a "my mom said" story.  :)

My mom told me last month that she needed me to make her two graduation cards - one for my cousin (who I think is my fourth cousin), and one for the grandson of an old friend of hers.  I unfortunately put this task off until she finally called me and said I WANT TO MAIL THESE, WHERE ARE THEY.  So I sat on the floor and pulled these together in about 20 minutes.

The boy card, I put a cool tag in the card's inside for my mom to write on and to give a little visual interest.  The card below, I decided that the inside of the card looked lonely after all the color on the outside - so I used a flower from my rub-on stash to brighten it up.

 

My approach to Project Life

Ok, so pretty much everyone knows what Project Life is at this point, right?  If you don't, here's an introduction.  I'll wait while you go read about it.

Moving along.  ;)

I think the great thing about Project Life is that you can start with the materials and the general concept, and make it into something that works for you.  I decided that I was going to approach Project Life as a month by month look back on our lives.  Rather than creating the pages in the moment as life happens, I decided to go back over the last couple years when I haven't been keeping a scrapbook (but have been Facebooking faithfully.)

At first I thought I wanted to do one month per single page side, but as I started looking back over the first two months - Dec. and Oct. 2011 (what, I don't have my mom's Thanksgiving pictures yet), I realized I needed a full spread to tell the story.

Since I got my materials at the beginning of January 2012, I started by reviewing the month of Dec. 2011 on Facebook - everything I had posted.  The Timeline feature actually makes this really easy.  First I clicked on "Activity Log" on my profile.

Once in the Activity Log section, I adjusted the settings so I was only looking at my own posts.

Once you do this, if you look to the right, the chronological timeline (2012, 2011, 2010) opens up, and you can skip to a particular month.  This is going to be handy when I get further back (like December 2010.)

Anyway.  After scrolling through the whole month and taking notes (you could copy/paste into a Word document, but I was taking notes by hand because I think better that way), I went in search of photos.  I organize my photos by month (camera as well as cell phone photos) and I created a new folder on my desktop to work with.  I copied the groups of pictures to choose from, then sorted them within the new folder (deleting the ones I didn't want to use, and winnowing them down to a workable number. Be sure you COPY pictures over, don't DRAG them - because then they're gone from their original location.)

At right is one set of dividers I ordered, while the other is just a regular 6 to a page divider, so I drew two charts as a guide and planned out where to put each photo or set of text.  Planning it out like this made it easy to move to sizing the images in Photoshop.

What I've descibed thus far was the hardest part: looking at a month of my life and deciding which pictures and commentary to include in the layout.  After that it was just a matter of sizing the pictures in Photoshop and throwing them together with the Clementine core kit I bought.  :)

You'll notice that I often decide to divide a 4x6 (or 6x4) photo spot into two smaller spots.  Photoshop makes this super easy.  I also deliberately leave a little room to include some scrapbook paper, because I think the addition of the paper elements really brings the photos together for the two-page spread.

I occasionally used a corner rounder punch where I thought it made the pictures look better, and I used digital stiching a few times to pull together a group of photos like the one above on the bottom right.  Oh and I used digital elements to create the month labels.  I also tuck journaling cards behind the photos here and there when I have more to say than will fit on the layout.  :)

Happy Scrapping, friends!

Card for a friend

A friend of mine lost her mother last week, quite unexpectedly.  Such a heart-breaking thing to happen . . . I can tell you from my own experience that the death of a close family member renders you numb for quite a while - but I do remember being very touched by the cards that friends took time to send.  So I wanted to send her *something*, even though it didn't seem like much.

I didn't have much time to make the card, so I just grabbed some cardstock weight double-sided paper - it's very easy to just cut and fold a piece of that to make a card.  Instead of an envelope, I tied it up with string and attached it to a box of cookies.

I took a picture of the inside of the card before I wrote in it, since given the subject matter it was rather personal.

A take-away thought: always, always send a card (or better yet, something good to eat) when a friend of yours loses someone they love.  Even when things get busy with planning and arrangements and visitors, a card that shows up unexpectedly with a personal note is a bright spot amidst the pain.  Another extremely touching gesture is to make a donation to a charitable cause in the loved one's name - someone from my church donated some books to the church library in my sister's name, and I still tear up when I think of it.

Christmas party album

Last month I was able to go to Jake's 3rd grade Christmas party and take lots of pictures (which made me VERY happy.)  I asked the teacher if we could take a class picture before they dismissed, and she said
"You'll make a copy for me, right?"

Little did she know.

Jenny the scrapbook nerd doesn't just print copies of pictures.  Oh no.  She gets out a needle and thread and assembles an album.  

Corralling the Remotes

When I rearranged my living room earlier in the year (we went from a couch to two armchairs and a loveseat), keeping the remotes in once place became a huge problem.  There just wasn't a place for them anymore.  After living with this configuration for a while, I realized that I need a place not just for the remotes, but for my phone and for the pencils I'm always reaching for (and losing) while I'm reading.  I spend a lot of time in my comfy reading chair.

Quick Gift :)

Ok, I'm back with a super-easy gift.

The ladies who I buy coffee from every morning at my university mentioned this morning about not getting to attend the yearly staff Christmas breakfast -they're not technically university staff since they work for our food contractor.  And the food contractor didn't do anything for them for Christmas, so I wanted to make them feel loved.

My mom saves plastic food packaging, and these originally had turkey in them.  (We washed them in the dishwasher, don't worry LOL.)  They now each have bakery treats inside, which I know these two ladies love.  I grabbed some double-sided Christmas scrapbooking cardstock, and I eyeballed the size I would need to make a card (don't underestimate pencil hashmarks!  Hold the paper up to find the size, mark it and make a cut, see how close you are.  Just make it twice as tall as needed and fold it in half for a card.)  

Since the inside of the paper I liked was dark green, I grabbed an index card for a message surface (I have index cards sitting around EVERYWHERE) and just marked with a pencil where I should cut it for the inside.  Then double-sided taped the cards to the plastic lids, and tied with a ribbon.  I think this took me 10 minutes total.  

It's a small gesture, and so easy.  Who in your life needs to know that YOU appreciate THEM?  Get them something simple and make it pretty :)

Christmas teacher gifts :)

When I was in 6th or 7th grade, my mom sent me to school with some cross-stitched Christmas ornaments for my teachers.  I was in the library all the time, so I had one for the librarian, too - when I gave it to her, she got tears in her eyes.  She said she'd never gotten a present from a student before!  This made me kind of sad, since she dealt with hundreds of students!  So when I do Christmas gifts, I include the front office ladies, the librarian, the music and art teachers, etc.  I made 10 of these bags - I bought 5 different kinds of Christmas candy - like York Peppermint Patties, Nestle Crunch Bells, etc - and divided them into 10 piles.  Then I threw them into paper lunch bags, folded them down, and stapled these tops to them.