crafting

Thinking Cool Thoughts

In The Studio

And I’m not talking about when our downstairs a/c died this weekend…

Since moving into the Dollhouse I’ve had an image in my head of how it needs to look come Chirstmas-time. That image includes a lot of hand-crafted touches, naturally, but what it doesn’t account for is the small window of time to work on everything. Each year I’ve purchased supplies for at least one project only to stash them until the next fall rolls around. And it just snowballs from there (pun unintended, but we’ll go with it).

Not this year.

Maybe.

To catch up on some of my Christmas crafts I’ve decided to take the Christmas in July cliche and use that as my excuse to get a jump on those rollover projects in the hopes that I will be ready and rarin’ to go and decorate once the Thanksgiving dishes are back in the china cabinet.

(Of course, I’d also planned to start on this over the holiday weekend but, well, didn’t. So this might stretch into August at this point.)

I have three main projects I want to accomplish:

  1. Cone trees for dining room “runner” display
  2. Antiqued Christmas village for hall console table
  3. Christmas cards
It's a good start, but needs friends...

It’s a good start, but needs friends…

The cone trees are pretty simple, really. I already have the papier mache cones in different sizes that will flank the flocked tree I decorated last year. I’m going to use the white glue + shaving cream “snow” technique as seen on Learn With Mrs.B’s How to Build a Snowman Video:

Cute and simple. I’m so there.

Next on the list are some papier mache houses we picked up at Hobby Lobby last year that I want to turn into my own holiday village. I was inspired by a set of verdigris, antique, house-looking lanterns we saw in a store at Disney Springs after our cruise last November.

Aren't they just absolutely charming?!

Aren’t they just absolutely charming?!

They weren’t for sale, of course, just display, but I took pictures to maybe create my own. After buying the blank houses I then found the same lanterns in the Acorn Online catalog under Architectural Lanterns. They’re not ridiculously priced or anything, but by now I’ve committed to crafting my own with some faux finishing techniques, etc. Acetate will work well for the windows and I can still add battery-operated tea lights inside for a pretty glow.

A few cards from Christmas 2015 (from the Winter Whimsy card kit)

A few cards from Christmas 2015 (from the Winter Whimsy card kit)

Finally, I’d like to get a head start on my Christmas cards. We don’t usually do photo-cards but if we wanted to, now would be a really good time to decide. And even if not, I’d like to have more time to craft them. Last year I had a great boost because I put together two card kits for The Crafty Branch and I had to make the samples for the kits anyway. We still have those kits in inventory (more on that in a moment) but I don’t want to do the exact same cards as last year, you know?

This is actually one project I have started on, drawing out some images and typesetting some sentiments for a digital stamp kit to complement the card kits at The Crafty Branch. They’re not quite ready to go, yet, but I hope to have the first set in the store by the end of this weekend.

And speaking of the store, this is a good time to mention that we’re having a big Christmas in July sale over at The Crafty Branch…

ChristmasInJuly

So, you know, head on over and pick up some of our kits. You’ll be getting a head start on your own holiday to-do list and supporting a small business, too!

As of today, thinking about Christmas and cooler weather hasn’t had any sort of effect on the summer swelter going on, but it’s at least comforting to know I won’t be starting the holiday season behind!

It’s November 4th, Do You Know Where Your Christmas Cards Are?

In The Studio

What does November 4th have to do with it? Nothing specifically, just that–as various Facebook friends and email lists like to remind me–we’re 7 1/2 weeks or 51 sleeps away from Christmas. I’m already seeing gift guides in my inbox and on some blogs. I shudder to think how early the Black Friday sales are going to start (and I don’t mean on Thanksgiving, I mean I’ve already received one email with that subject line this week).

Makes you want to head for the eggnog, doesn’t it?

While you can shop up until the last few moments of December 24th, if you wait until then to send out your Christmas or Hannukah greetings, you might as well call them New Year’s cards because that’s about when they’ll arrive. The time, my friends, to make plans and take actions for timely holiday happy mail is now.

So what are your options? In relative order of acquisition ease…

  • Pre-Made boxed card sets;
  • Photo cards on a prefab background;
  • Custom-designed cards; and
  • Handmade cards

First of all, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with boxed cards you buy by the dozen: sign, stamp, done. If you want to you can even dress them up a little with some well-chosen embellishments. One of my most popular articles from my eHow days was How to Embellish Store-Bought Cards (I haven’t the foggiest why it’s on that blog and not eHow; I’m guessing Demand Media sold it, as was their right, since I was on a work-for-hire contract back then.)  The only real issue I have with boxed cards are my tendency to buy them and never send them out. Kinda defeats the purpose, right?

Photo cards are also a good way to go if you have a great family picture from earlier in the year or can organize one pretty soon. I don’t recommend waiting until Thanksgiving for this one, since that’ll be cutting it close by the time prints come back or you’ll be forced to pay exorbitant shipping prices to get them in time to send before the holidays. We did one the year we got married (thanks to a speedy turn-around of our November wedding pictures). I did the layout and design and ordered them as postcards from Overnight Prints (whom I prefer over the more common VistaPrint option, though there’s nothing wrong with VP, I use them for other things without any complaints).

"Wishing you the happiest of holidays and toasting to good fortune in the coming year!"

The picture came from our wine-blending unity ceremony and I thought it was pretty perfect for a holiday “toast.”

Todd and I aren’t generally mug for the camera types, though, so photo cards require planning. Instead, I’m much more likely to put my illustration skills to use and design a custom card for us.

One year I designed and screen-printed (on my Print Gocco) this funky monkey Christmas Card (printed in white on a navy linen background)

monkeycard_web

See, instead of Ho Ho Ho, Santa Monkey says Oh Oh Oh!

And then, the year we ended up moving the week before Christmas (fun times!), we sent out combo At Home/Christmas Cards:

front and inside copy, address omitted

front and inside copy, address omitted (even though we’re not there anymore)

But I don’t just use my artistic talents for myself, I’m available for hire, too! (Just email me!) Last year I was commissioned to create a card with a dragon in a Santa hat, reading a book in front of a fire…

Please note the book title: Fiery Tales

Please note the book title: Fire Side Tails

And earlier this year I was commissioned to create a blog header of caricatures of the author and her family members. While not a Christmas card, I’m sure you can see the possibilities. Plus you could have a large print made up and framed for your gallery wall.

gim_headerart_whitebg_composite72dpi1_cropped-01

This flying high family caricature could be used on a number of printed items, on a Facebook header, and is 100% unique to them.

A few things to keep in mind if you decide to order a custom illustration for your holiday cards (or any other time):

  1. Budget. Truly custom illustrations are going to run you about the same price as a mid-range photo session (at least in my area). I know that there are folks on Etsy offering family “portrait” illustrations for  $50 or less and I honestly don’t know how they can do it for that and pay themselves a living wage. My prices start at $75 for a single subject (aka 1 person or figure) and go up depending on how many people, animals, etc. you want included. A good illustrator will work with you to find a way to work within your budget by giving you options, but don’t expect them to work for free. After all, you’re not just paying them for the time they spend putting together your custom illustration, you’re paying for their unique skill and style, honed over years of practice.
  2. Timeline. The earlier the better is always a good rule of thumb. Depending on the number of “moving parts” to a commission and the number of revision rounds you go through, you want to allow a couple of weeks for a custom illustration. So, for Christmas cards, now is the time to find your illustrator and ask if they have any openings.
  3. Communication. Unlike ordering a card design through a print on demand service, custom illustrations require back and forth communication. The way I work, we start with a consultation where you tell me what you want, show me some samples of things you like from around the web, and I ask a few questions to get a better feel for the project. After that I prepare a round of sketches or mock-ups (usually 3 options, unless we’re dealing with a very specific request) and I ask you to pick the one you like best and for any changes you’d like made. I come back with the revision, you sign off on it, then I create the final art. If you’re going to be out of town or in an Internet dead zone for a few days during the process, send up a flare so I’m not wondering if you’ve changed your mind all of a sudden.
  4. Contracts. You might think a simple thing like a card illustration wouldn’t need anything more than an email agreement, but I urge you to reconsider. A good contract answers the important questions: who, what, where, how much, and–most importantly–by when. It protects both you and I, and I don’t even start sketching on your job until the contract is signed and a deposit is paid. I’d be wary of anyone who starts work without a written agreement in place as you have no recourse should the unthinkable occur and they disappear on you.

Finally, handmade cards are a way to get the custom treatment without any art or computer skills required. I put it last on the list only because it takes more of a time investment on your part compared to the other options, but can be the most rewarding knowing that you made them with your own two hands! But time investment is relative–there are lots of ways to make handmade cards that can be done in just a few hours. I’m a fan of the assembly line method for making holiday cards: do all the cutting at once, do all the stamping or stenciling in one go, put everything together, then add final embellishments. But just because you’re approaching them like an assembly line, doesn’t mean you have to make them all the same, either.

Winter Whimsy Cards

Winter Whimsy Cards (we also have a set that’s red & green, our Classic Christmas option)

Above are just four examples of the twenty cards you can make with one of my CPR Holiday Creative Mischief Kits from The Crafty Branch. (CPR stands for Cards Prepared and Ready, by the way.) For $40 you get everything you need to make 20 cards, that’s only $2 per card, including cutting diagrams and card “recipes” to get you started putting everything together. It’s up to you how you use the included stencil to embellish the cards (dry embossing, stamping, or texture paste supplies are included). Plus you’ll have paper left over to make gift tags, scrapbook layouts, or even more cards. Order your kit here and it’ll be on its way to you the next day.

So again I ask… it’s November 4th, do you know where your Christmas cards are?

Read, Watched, and Crafted: January 2015

Everyday Adventures

How about a round-up?

January Reads

januarybooks

The Fracking King by James Browning

I’m trying to read through the various books saved on my Kindle and I’m pretty sure this is one I selected from the Kindle First program. If you’re not familiar, Amazon Prime members get to download one book a month (from a group of 4 that won’t be released until the following month) for free and even if I don’t have time right then to read it, I try to remember to check them out so I’m getting my Prime money’s worth.

ANYWAY! The Fracking King revolves around a boys school, the effects of fracking on local communities, and scrabble. There’s a lot of talk about how the main character knows a lot of obscure words and their point values on a Scrabble board, but doesn’t know the meaning of the words, connotations and subtleties escaping him. I sort of felt that way about the book as a whole: lots of words, lots of odd characters, lots of scenes, not a whole heck of a lot of meaning. I didn’t get a sense of resolution from the book, or that anything important had been said. It just didn’t resonate with me.

The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, and Mort (Discworld books 2-4) by Terry Pratchett 

For more than a decade I’ve been hearing really awesome things about the Discworld books from people I generally trust and respect. So when I found the first several books on sale I snapped them up, read the first one (The Color of Magic) and promptly wondered what my collective friend-base had been smoking. It wasn’t that I disliked the writing (not at all, Pratchett is fabulous at turning phrases) but I could not connect with (I’d even go so far as to say I loathed) the main character, Rincewind. It just didn’t work for me. So I ignored the other books for a good long while.

I’d been assured that Rincewind does not take center stage for the rest of the series, and since the Discworld books were the next-oldest in my reader’s unread list, I figured it was time to go back in. I’m so glad I did!

Rincewind’s story wraps up in The Light Fantastic, but it’s not all about him–we get to see a lot more of the rest of the Disc and Rincewind even develops a bit–he’s still not my favorite, but I can deal with him as he continues to pop up throughout the rest of the series. Equal Rites, though, was awesome. A story about the 8th son of an 8th son (go directly to wizard, do not pass go status on the Disc) that happens to be a daughter, and girls cannot be wizards. Granny Weatherwax is a trip, their journey across the Disc, and everything that happens in and around Unseen University is a good standalone read if you just want a taste of the Discworld without committing to the full series. Finally, Mort reminded me a lot of On a Pale Horse (the “death” installment of Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series, a long-time favorite of mine). The similarities are pretty obvious (Death being the central character, a new office holder vs an apprentice, learning the ropes, etc.) and I just had fun reading it.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

That this is a book club selection should tell you a lot: it’s that erudite, supposedly-deep and pithy story. The fact that it appends it title with “:A Novel” tells you a lot more. I’m sorry, but a book that has to clarify that it’s a novel (as opposed to what?! It’s fiction, it’s not poetry, what the hell else is it? A pony?) usually tells me it’s pretentious beyond belief, but it was a book club selection and I’m trying to stick with this one, so here goes.

The story is set during WWII–an era I enjoy reading about in that morbidly curious way a lot of us have–and involves two young people over the course of a couple of years. One is Marie-Laure, a blind daughter of a locksmith at the National Museum of Paris, the other is Werner, a Polish orphan who is a whiz with radios, and is recruited into the Reich. The book flips between each characters experiences (with a few secondary characters getting their own chapters as necessary) and keeps parallel timelines but isn’t exactly linear. We start at the not-quite end, then flash back to the beginning, getting a bit more of each timeline as we go until we finally meet up with the “present” in the books narrative and approach the end. It’s an interesting tactic and one that works well for this sort of story.

I appreciated the insight that Werner’s story gave us into the side of WWII we don’t often see: the German soldiers that aren’t the higher-ups. WWII narratives usually focus on the prisoners of the work camps, the different community being persecuted by the Reich, or the soldiers on the winning side. Seeing the deprivations of the lower-rung soldiers is a bit more humanizing, and (of course) Werner is sympathetic as he’s not exactly drinking the Kool-Aid, he’s just doing what he has to, but not without realizing the gravity of the situation and the unfortunate part he plays.

The two teenagers stories are intertwined in wonderful ways and Doerr does a great job of putting those puzzle piece out there without being heavy-handed, even though it takes 3/4 of the story before they actually interact. It was after that point, the last quarter of the book, where Doerr starts to lose me. Without giving anything away (this isn’t alternate history, the war ends as we know it did), once the plot of our two main characters intersects and reaches the climax, the story could have ended. It would have felt complete, resolved, and given the reader a sense of satisfaction.

But no, Doerr draws out a prolonged epilogue that includes more than we really need to know. While I love a good wrap-up and appreciate knowing what happens to the characters I’ve just spent many, many hours becoming invested in, I want that epilogue to be snappy and succinct. Not 15% of the book. I don’t need to read a chapter about a secondary character undergoing a horror of war (while realistic, it really serves no purpose to the story, it’s just for shock or to take a jab at the other side). I don’t need the hop-skip, I just want the jump to the end. Instead of moving on I was still reading, wondering what was really left to tell.

It was that last 15% of the book that put a bad taste in my mouth and took it from a thoughtful story to a pretentious doorstop. If it weren’t on my Kindle, of course.

Thankfully the next book club selection is Yes, Please. Even though I’ve heard so-so things about it, I’m sure it’ll at least be a bit more lighthearted and entertaining in it’s own way.

January Binge-Watches

I finished my multi-month marathon of Criminal Minds this month, started back in November, I think, when I was on the hunt for classic CSI but came up empty on the streaming front (well, aside from pay-per-episode/season on Amazon). I have long suspected CBS of being stingy with their shows and recently learned about CBS All Access subscriptions, confirming the suspected motive.

Next I watched Twin Peaks. The talk of more coming from that well in the near future made me curious about the show. I know I watched some of it, but since it originally aired when I was 14, I’m not sure how much I really kept up with. I also didn’t realize that the first seasons was only a handful of episodes: they packed a lot of crazy in 8 or so hours! Turns out I remembered bits and pieces of season 1, but none of season 2. So when I got to the answer to “who killed Laura Palmer” I thought we were done! Nope, instead they tacked on a whole extra storyline that really could have been its own season. But, hey, cross-dressing David Duchovny makes it all worthwhile.

I remembered I had an Acorn TV subscription going to waste (British TV service, great for all sorts of fun shows if you’re a fan of the BBC and Australian programming). I found the 2008 show The Palace about a fictitious royal family where the king dies unexpectedly and his 24 year old son is suddenly king. Back-biting, squabbles, and scandals ensue and I’m more than a little sad there wasn’t a second series (what we call seasons). Then I switched over to a family drama, Drop Dead Gorgeous. Middle class girl scouted by a modeling agency and a social-climbing stage mom is born in the process. Fun show with a bit of culture shock as a bonus.

Finally. I wandered over to Amazon and saw they had The White Queen (Starz miniseries) available as part of Prime Instant Video. Back to the royals, this time pre-Tudor. It got very good reviews from another blogger, and it’s definitely worth the watch. I love costume drama and this one is populated by incredibly strong women. It was a little more like The Tudors than Reign, but not a bad addition to the collection. Only 10 episodes, it can easily be binged in a weekend (as I did).

Handmade in January

I completed one scarf,

This is the Scallop scarf from One Skein Wonders... and I now know how to knit a decent fishing net... life skills!

This is the Scallop scarf from One Skein Wonders… and I now know how to knit a decent fishing net… life skills!

technically completed a cross-stitch stitch-a-long with some online friends (I’m adding to the pattern, so it’s not quiet done to my liking just yet, but close!),

The pattern is from etsy seller ___ but I changed the color scheme and the top element from a sun to a moon.

The pattern is from etsy seller TinyBoxesDesigns but I changed the color scheme to one that would work better on the blue background fabric I already had in my stash, and changed the top element from a sun to a moon to make more visual sense (to me).

 

and two design team projects: one for Helmar (that went up on their blog yesterday)

 

I puffy heart love these puffy hearts :)

I puffy heart love these puffy hearts 🙂

and one for the revived Gauche Alchemy (which will post tomorrow). There was also work done on the beds for the dolly-dorm (a lot of little snips with my wire-cutters, not a lot to actually show for the blister it earned me) and some bits and pieces of other projects that aren’t quite ready for prime time just yet.

One other fun thing of note from last month was our Cloak and Banner craft day. We were planning to go to a Renn Faire in Gainesville at the end of the month (preempted by me getting sick, boo!) which led to Mary proposing we make banners/standards that could, supposedly, be worn as a small cape. We all went with the banner theme in our own way and I, of course, decided a house banner was most appropriate for me.

The Gingerbread Dollhouse. Still very much a work in progress, but not bad so far!

The Gingerbread Dollhouse standard. Still very much a work in progress (and with admittedly questionable perspective going on there), but not bad so far!

Work on the store plans continue (more on that in another post) and we’re finally working on house stuff again (posts forthcoming).

Got any achievements to share from last month?

I Made the Team! The Helmar Team!

In The Studio

Yes, the tiny hint I dropped a few weeks ago about some big new for me that I can finally share is that I made the Helmar Design Team. So, for the next 6 months (or maybe longer), you’ll be seeing more projects showcasing their fabulous adhesives around here.

I was first introduced to Helmar after getting involved with the girls over at Gauche Alchemy–some of my fellow Alchemists were on the team, then, and later we did a swap between the two teams. You may recall my decorated wine bottle using Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots and Quick Dry 450?

jwalker_helmar_scrapdots_grapes_decorated_bottle

The grape clusters and vines on this bottle are made of Helmar adhesives.

My first project is on the Design Team blog today, and it’s worth checking out if you want to see how I used Liquid Scrap Dots (seriously, one of my favorite adhesives) to create the Halloween ribbon wrapping around my banister.

IMG_20141006_205247101

 

And here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this project. Please excuse the messiness of the Abyss, I’m still working on getting it set up, but having the space to stretch out like this is one of the big pluses to moving into the Dollhouse!

DSCN4527

Gotta love the space!

"Queen Bee" digital art journal layout

In Defense of Digital

Everyday Adventures

I have a confession to make, my friends: I’ve been slacking.

Not on the must-do stuff. No calling in “sick” to work or skipping blog updates, nothing like that. But my personal to-do list, the one that usually governs my evenings and weekends (especially the weekends) has seen a bit of a shake-up the past few weeks as I’ve renewed an old hobby.

Renewed maybe isn’t the best word, maybe re-obsessed?

Contrary to what many people assume, scrapsoflife.com was not named for my scrapbooking interests, that just happened to be a coincidence, really. But I was a rather avid scrapbooker back in 2003 (technically since the late-90s, and before that if you count the “old fashioned” journal-with-pressed-flowers-and-other-mementos-inside days–you know, before certain companies made it the largest segment of paper crafting ever), amassing quite the collection of tools, supplies, and techniques. Then, in 2007, I picked up a freelance writing gig and a lot of my extra interests took a backseat (unless I could write an article about it, of course).

Over the last 5 years I haven’t done much memory-keeping of the album-and-paper sort. I always intended to get back to it, but never quite got there. A couple years ago I had a brief relapse, but then I got to work on the cookbook and, again, other things took a backseat.

Until 2 weeks ago, when a newsletter from Divine Digital announced a week-long art journal challenge, and I was more than intrigued.

Because that’s the other confession: what little scrapbooking I have been doing in the past 5 years has been digital.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still love paper crafting and traditional scrapbooking. I still have scads of supplies I will use up, eventually, but any busy scrapper will tell you that it’s tough to sit down and get a page done when you’ve only got a few minutes here and there, everything takes up space and little things can get lost, and then you run out of adhesive or can’t find a ribbon to match just that right shade of blue to keep from clashing…

But with digital, a lot of those obstacles fall away. If you’ve never considered digital scrapbooking, think about this:

  • All our pictures are digital these days. Obviously we still have printed photos and memorabilia that could stand organization, but these days most cameras are digital, and scrapbooking digitally means you don’t have to worry about which photos to print and at what size. You size them on the fly in whatever program you’re using and keep on creating.
  • Digital scrapbook supplies are super-portable. I can’t even count the number of times I loaded up a craft tote (or 2) to go to a friends house for a crop. And out of town weekend retreats took a trunk-full! Even when I moved from totes to specialty organizers with handles and rollers and started pre-kitting my photos to make crops more productive, there were still bags and whellies and oh so much stuff to bring. Now? All I need is my laptop.
  • No hoarding that one perfect paper. Digital scrapbook supplies don’t get used up. I know so many crafters who hold onto a piece of paper because it’s so pretty, they don’t want to cut it up and use it because it’s discontinued or might be hard to find again. You buy an awesome digital paper set and you can use it over and over and over again. Same with embellishments, templates, everything! You buy it, you own it.
  • No more searching for just the right shade. Another perk of digital supplies is if this embellishment and that paper aren’t quite right for each other, you tweak the color or hue or contrast to make it match.
  • Freebies galore! Many digi-scrap websites offer freebies on a regular basis, so you can start to build your collection of supplies with very little risk. My 2 go-to sites fall into this category: Scrap Girls puts out a newsletter 6 days a week and there’s some sort of freebie download available every day. Divine Digital, on the other hand, puts out 2 free digi-kits a month, downloadable in daily chunks (you do have to be a registered member of their site, but that’s hardly a down-side since membership is free). Plus you can usually find out what other designers are offering extra downloads if you pay attention to digi-scrap forums.
  • Much less mess. When you’re having to search, pull out, layout, and fiddle you need space and room to get a little messy. Yes, that’s part of the fun, but it can also be frustrating if you craft in a high-traffic area of your home and have to pick everything up to clear the table, etc. Again, just fire up your computer and load your files and you’re on your way to layouts in no time.

Of course, it does help to have good tech at your fingertips. For a while I was keeping my digital crafting supplies on an external harddrive to keep from using up my computer’s harddrive–the files do take up a certain amount of space. But when I got my new laptop last month (with its Terabyte drive), I was able to copy all those files over (redundancy!) as well as download a whole bunch of new files without making a dent in my harddrive’s capacity.

Which program you use is also a factor. I actually learned how to digi-scrap in PhotoShop Elements 3.0 (hint: the current version is 10). It was a series of tutorials from ScrapGirls that showed me how to use the program, and I was able to use that knowledge when I upgraded to PhotoShop CS4 a while back (only because I needed CMYK capabilities, something the consumer-grade PSE doesn’t support). You can download a 30-day trial of any Adobe product to see what you think about it, plus there are a lot more digital scrapbook program options than back when I started (when it was either the aforementioned PSE or Paint Shop Pro!). Heck, you can even digi-scrap in Paint if you really had to (maybe I’ll tell that store/share that layout one day… maybe).

Anyway, back to the point, I signed up for the Art Journal challenge and did my best to keep up with a digital layout a day. It was great getting back into the swing of things, and I’ve since picked up an old album I was working on back in 2007 and completed another 4 pages for on Saturday. I decided I’d share the 7 art journal pages I completed as part of the challenge, today.

"Inner Circle" digital art journal layout

"Super Hero" digital art journal layout

"Inspired Eye" digital art journal layout

"Take Flight" digital art journal layout

"In Joy" digital art journal layout

"Laugh out Loud" digital art journal layout

"Queen Bee" digital art journal layout

Each day’s challenge came with a piece of word art, a theme, some questions to ponder, and then some specific components to include in the layout. Since this was an art journal challenge, for all but the last layout pictures were optional. My goal was more to refresh my memory of how to construct the layouts, how to use the tools available to me, and find out what’s new in the world of digital scrapbooking. I must have done okay, since Day 7 (my Queen Bee or “accomplished” layout) was picked as Member Layout of the Day. Not to shabby for one seriously out of practice scrapper, no?

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep up with scrapbooking this go-round, before something else demands my full attention and it sits and waits again. I’m hoping for a good, long stretch, but I’ll ride this wave of creativity as long as I can.

What have you been getting your hands and heart into, lately? Revive any past passions over the holiday weekend? Or do you have any questions about digital scrapbooking that I might be able to answer?