National Scrapbook Day - the recap

So this past Saturday was National Scrapbook Day.  Yes, for those non scrappers this is a real thing. It's usually a fun filled day where people gather together and scrap together and eat together and shop together, you get the idea. This year Studio Calico had quite the line up of challenges to get members scrapping and since I wasn't going to be with friends this year I signed up to be part of one of them. I even got Simone to come and play with me for a bit. She said National Scrapbooking Day was the best ever!

The challenge I signed up for was the Sketch Challenge. Three different sketches were presented and six of the Creative Team members picked a sketch and then interpreted it anyway they wanted to. The last sketch was actually from a Project Life® insert that I made and I didn't even realize it until after I had picked a different one.

I picked the first sketch and this is what I made. It's been awhile since I did full sized layouts so having a sketch to give me a jump start sure helped. I used a some previous Studio Calico kits to make this, Rock Candy and Gum Drop and the digital file I used was from Bluegrass Farms. I also used these adorable glittery vellum bags, gold stars, and a gold doily.

I even cut a little circle to cover the brown part of the shipping tag, I love how it matches the rest of the layout now.

I cut the digital element from the Silhouette Double Sided adhesive using my Cameo and added the glitter on top. Love how well it holds glitter down.

Because I was feeling extra ambitious I also made this layout to showcase some of my favorite Instagrams from 2013. I have not been able to get this layout out of my head since I saw it. Not because she used my cut file, but because of the tiny photos she used. I love how small and impactful they are so I thought about ways I could make something small and impactful.

Books, tiny books is what popped into my head so I made these little albums on my Cameo and cut the pages from 36lb. white vellum that I purchased here. When I made the cut file I added some dashed lines down the middle to help the vellum fold a bit better and it totally helped. I layered three of the cut vellum pages on top of the grey backgrounds and stitched with my sewing machine down the middle of each set. I also cut the tags after I used a Black Glitter Sketch Pen to write out the months.

The next big hurdle was the photos. I went thru all of my Instagram's from 2013 and picked my favorite 12 from each month. I set up a template in Photoshop Elements so that I could shrink the photos down to 3/4" it was set up to print on 4x6 sheets so I ended up getting two months worth of photos on each sheet. Then I had to cut them all apart. Oh boy! Because of the vellum pages I made sure to line them up on top of each other so the adhesive wouldn't show. I'm not going to lie, this part took awhile. I cut the perimeter off of the templates and then cut each row apart, then I had to cut down the middle of each photo. You can see a bit of that in this photo. I went one month at a time and by August I was having issues keeping it together!

I kept the title work fairly simple, the flair I used came in an older Studio Calico Kit but I can't remember which one. I made the circle piece under it with my Cameo as well. The alpha was from this kit and the yellow striped paper for the base of the layout is from this kit.

I'm pretty sure that this is my new favorite layout and will be pretty hard to top. I don't think this will go in an album just yet. I'm thinking of framing it without glass and hanging it up so people can flip thru the pages if they want to see all the pictures. Or maybe I'll mount it to foam core and lean it on an easel. We'll see, for now its just fun to turn the little pages and look back at all the photos.

I hope you all had a lovely National Scrapbook Day too. Remember there is still time to complete and enter the Challenges over at Studio Calico, you can find them all on the blog here. The special stamp set and kit they made for the day are also still available. You can find them here.

See you soon!

2012 Instagram Mini Album

It's always fun finishing a project, especially one that's been hanging around a bit longer than it should have. I started this Instagram Mini album back in January and just finished it on Wednesday. I'm happy it's done and happy its found its place on the shelf of all my other albums.

I decided to make this album because I wanted some sort of record of my first full year of sharing photos on Instagram. Sure some, if not many are in my Project Life album but I wanted a place to see some of my favorites all in one place.

I really didn't like the idea of hunting and pecking through my icloud feed to pull the photos so I opted to use this utility that Persnickety Prints has on their website.  It grabs all of your photos from Instagram, (you can even specify a date range if you like) and sends it to you in a nice .zip file. The beauty of this utility is it also gives you the date you uploaded the photo to Instagram. Because I planned to date each of my photos this bit of info was key for me

Once I got the .zip file and extracted all the data I decided to divide my photos into folders by month so it would be easier to weed out the photos I wasn't going to use. I limited myself to 16 shots from each month because that's what would fit nicely on the page size I had planned.  I went thru each folder deleting what I knew I wasn't going to use and kept editing down until I had 16 photos. Some months were definitely harder to edit than others.  I did save the original zip folder so I wouldn't actually loose any of the deleted photos so if that's of concern to you, you may want to do the same.

Because I was pressed for time and heading to a crop in two days to start working on this album I opted to print my photos at Costco. I made myself a 12 x 12 template and sized the photos to 2.5" square. This allowed me to easily fit all 16 on one sheet for each month. It might have been more cost effective to have 4x6 prints done but I didn't want to risk any cropping issues so that's why I did the large size. I had them printed on the glossy paper and I was really pleased with how they turned out. The template I made is available for download here.

I also created a small 4x6 contact sheet of each folder by using the print screen function. This way I had all the date information for each shot in one spot. Here's a picture so you can see what I mean.

For the actual album I used a really old 8x8 chipboard album that I had on hand. I have no idea who's it is or where I got it but you could certainly use any album for this project.  I opted to keep the album in its natural chipboard state and just decorated the spine of the album. I cut little strips of colored paper to mimic the color strips on the Instagram Logo and attached a 2012 piece of flair I had in my stash, nice and simple.

 

I made the title page using a piece of Dear Lizzy 5th and Frolic paper, I loved the aqua colored arrows. I laid down two rows of pink striped washi tape, this tape came in a set of four from Target. I cut the Instagram on my Cameo, using the free font Billabong which is the same font they use based on my Internet search. The 2012 is Studio Calico Darling Dear wood veneer alpha's, and the arrow is from Freckled Fawn. I embossed the 2012 veneer pieces with Zing Neon Pink embossing powder and the arrow was embossed with Zing White Opaque embossing powder.  The 'my year in' alpha is Jillibean Soup Alphabeans in Tart Teal.

On the back of the title page I added a cute saying I had seen online, I just typed it up using a typewriter font and added the IG logo. I printed this out at home on a piece of 36 lb. white vellum.  I also decided it would be fun to include the number of photos I uploaded each month so before I deleted any I got a count.  On a PC you can do this by selecting the first photo, right clicking with your mouse and then select the last photo making sure all of them are highlighted and if you look down at the bottom of your screen in the detail window it should give you a count.  I made myself another template and listed all of that info and printed it on the same 36 lb. white vellum and I left the back of this page is blank.

I opted to make this album the same throughout simply to make the process easier.  I went with 8x8" square pages and cut tabs out on my cameo using a aqua triangle printed paper. I stamped each tab with the month and a little dashed line using this set of Cocoa Daisy stamps. The pink dashed line was stamped using the Hero Arts Neon Pink ink pad. I attached all of the tabs and then decided to mist my pages. I used Heidi Swapp's Mint Green color shine spray and misted both sides of every page, masking off the tab each time so they didn't get misted. I spritzed about 3 pumps on each page and didn't worry much about any sort of uniformity.

 

For the date labels of each photo I cut cream textured cardstock into strips and then cut each piece down to roughly 2.5'x1.5'.  I rounded two of the corners and inked the edge of each card using the Hero Arts Neon Pink ink. I stamped each date with a rolling date stamp and black ink.

I laid down strips of the same washi that I used on the title page along the middle of each page and attached my photo and date cards in a grid pattern overlapping on to the washi tape strip.

The most time consuming part of this project was misting each page, and making the date cards. I ended up cutting one piece of the 12 x 12 cream paper at a time and making all the date cards that I could.  I rounded the corners, inked the edges, stamped the dates and laid it all down. When I ran out I cut another sheet of paper and did all the steps again. I found if I worked this way it kind of broke up the nasty parts a bit.

I won't show the inside of the whole album but at least wanted to give you and idea of how the whole thing looks. 2 pages front and back for each month and two extra pages at the beginning and it filled up the album nicely.

All in all it was a fun project to do and its fun to look back on the photos from that year. I'm sure I'll do something similar for my 2013 photos, I'm just not sure yet if it will be the same idea. I might try a photo book or something digital, who knows.

Note: I just want to add that all the links I shared above are for informational purposes only, they are not affiliate links.

Oh Saturday, I didn't want you to end...

I had the best day ever on Saturday.  I woke up early, packed my bag and was out the door by 8:20am headed to Berkeley for some scrapbooking classes.  When I heard a few months ago that Kelly Purkey was going to be teaching classes at Scrapbook Territory I knew I had to go.  I really miss that store and used to go there a lot when I still lived in the Bay Area.  Being 90 miles away now makes frequent trips a bit difficult. 

Fortunately the weather cleared and the day was crystal clear and blue, the best kind of days in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I took this shot at a pit stop at the top of the hill just before you hit Vallejo.

The classes didn't start until 10:30am but I was early so I was lucky enough to find a great legal street parking spot with no meter!  Woo Hoo!  If you know the 4th Street Berkeley area parking is tough as this is a super busy shopping area on the weekends. 

When I arrived at the store and checked in I found out that because I signed up early I got a 20% off coupon!  Yay me!

Here's Kelly showing us one of the layouts we would make during the first class.  She's even cuter in person and was such a lovely person.  It was super fun picking her brain and hearing what she has coing up soon for Studio Calico.

Here is some misting we played with and a phrase from one of her stamp sets that I love.  I've never misted before so by the time the second class rolled around I told her she had turned me into a misting machine and I left with 4 new bottles of mist.

Here's a picture of she and I.  Everyone was taking pictures with her and I felt so bad asking but come on when would I ever get the chance again right.

For lunch I walked down to an old favorite spot Manhattan Bagel and picked up a Chicken Salad bagel sandwich.  So yummy.  I used to work on 4th Street a few years ago and miss being walking distance from their yummy bagels.  I wish they had the Spinach and Asiago bagels but they were out.

For the second class we made a super cute album and don't be surprised if Oh Snap! Starts appearing regularly on the blog, love this so much!  How cute is that "that's what she said" stamp, dying!

After the class was over I met up with a dear friend for dinner and some catch up time.  I cannot believe I did not take one photo with her.  I had my phone put away so we could talk so it just never happened.  The only time I took my phone out was to teach her about Instagram, she has an Android so she's officially on board.

One of the coolest things about Saturday was being able to meet a few Instagram friends that I only knew through their photos.  It was just so awesome, you really feel like you know them and when you meet them in person you realize you totally do!  I was telling my friend last night that as I've gotten older I feel its been harder for me to put myself out there and meet knew people.  Sharing myself and my life with people online has been a wonderful way to meet folks that have common interests.  I also had a chance to meet two super sweet girls from the Studio Calico board and happily we live near each other so hopefully we'll be able to get together soon. 

I hope you have a chance one day to take a class from Kelly or anyone else that you admire for that matter.  It really is inspiring to be around people that make a living doing what they love.  Learning from them is so empowering, it makes me feel that I can do anything and enourages me to try new things and never to stop learning.

Photo A Day via Instagram

While I hadn't planned on sticking to the whole photo a day approach this year I still find that its a very hard habit to break especially with the really awesome photo a day challenge that got started over on Instagram.  It's been a blast following along with this challenge and I've had just as much fun seeing everyone else's take on the prompts too.

One of the best things about it is how you interpret the prompts, sometimes I take it literally and sometimes I don't.  It's also caused me to really open my eyes and look for things that will work for the prompt that I may not have thought about.  It's easy to get stuck in a rut with photo a day and this makes it fun, like a scavenger hunt each day.  Instead of a bunch of photos of what you had for breakfast everyday which can get repetitive it gives you something to focus on each day and I can certainly benefit from a bit of focus every now and again.

Here were the prompts for February

And here are some of my favorites from this past month

 02.04 A Stranger

 02.10 A Self Portrait

02.12 Inside your closet 

02.15 Phone 

02.20 Handwriting

02.21 A Fave photo of You

 02.22 Where you work

02.24 Inside your bathroom cabinet 

02.25 Green

02.29 Something you are listening too 

Here is the lists of prompts for March, a lot of good ones coming up.  I have my Instagram feed showing on the blog so if you don't have the app on your iPhone you can always follow along with what I'm uploading.  My last 6 shots are always on the feed on the right side. 

If you have an iPhone I strongly suggest you download the app and play along.  It's a ton of fun and I've met some really great people along the way that follow me and that I follow too.  If nothing else, expand your horizons and put yourself out there.  The love and friendship you receive back is really heartwarming and so very appreciated at least for me it is.

There have been a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon and sadly stealing @fatmumslim's ideas, graphics, lists and hashtag.  She did a really great blog post recently about people not being able to come up with their own ideas and I applaud her for standing up for her idea and concept.  I especially like at the end how she says "If you're going to steal, make a hot-diggity, brand spankin' new version with your flavour on it. Make it better. Make it bigger. Be proud of what you create."

That being said this new take on a photo a day challenge just started this month and I really like it.  I'm familiar with the company Paper Coterie and have ordered products from them in the past.  I applaud them for coming up with their own list, their own name, and their own hastag.  Their prompts are super fun and I may jump on this one too, we shall see.

If you do join Instagram, please follow me I'm listed as @Babz510.

Now go take some photos!