On to scrapbooking related manners. I have been on a scrapping frenzy this past week. My dad’s birthday is coming up and I decided to make him a book. (He is so tough to by presents for because he has everything that he wants and if he wants something, he goes out and buys it.) So this year I decided to put my scrapping talents to use.  Each May, in NYC there is an International Foods Festival held on 9th Avenue. They close the street down from 42nd street to 57th street and there are tons of vendors with all different nationalities of foods. And the prices are reasonable so you can try a variety of things.  THe food is good. It’s fun to try cuisines that you normally wouldn’t get a chance to try. We (the kids and I) have been lucky to go the last two years (2009 and 2010) and I of course, took a ton of pictures. So I decided to make a book about our trips to NYC. (I’ll share pictures next week since technology and I aren’t co-operating at the moment.)

My pick of the week is word art by Sue Cummings at www.oscraps.com.

I loved the inspirationalness (ok, I know it’s not a word but descibes how I feel about the product) of these word arts. I think it’s a nice way to start out the school year.

So, until next Friday, What Stories Are You Going to Tell?

Mary

Elmo

and this one is called Funny Faces:

I love the vibrancy and wow factor she has here.  Sometimes you look at a page and go that is neat, but I can see these would be even WOW WOW WOW when printed out at 12×12!  These are wonderful memories….I saw she used templates by Cindy Schneider-okay I’m sold, I am headed over to buy some now!! Sweet Shoppe Designs, be nice to my Paypal!

These weeks sure come around fast!  I work outside the home on Mondays, I watched my granddaughter on Tuesdays — this week I rode with my daughter and granddaughter to have lunch with my grandson; it was his 21st birthday.  Thursday my granddaughter began Kindergarten.  My dryer broke, so I hung clothes on the line — they do smell good!  Then I spent many hours sorting files on my computer — I like to create directories to keep my kits, templates, and digital photos organized.

Hard drives and external hard drives are so enormous these days that it’s quite easy to forget what you have saved — unless you take the time to organize your files.  It’s easiest to do if you keep it up.  I got my first digital camera in 2000, so I have folders for each year.  Inside those folders, I have folders for each month (201001, 201002, etc.) - by placing the year first, then the month, the computer sorts them in the correct order.

My digital scrapbooking files are kept in folders, too.  I have a folder for kits, then subfolders of designers, and then subfolders for each kit.  I do the same with templates, quick pages, and wordart.  Organization helps immensely when working on a project.  Backup is essential, also — I know there are online backup services, but I prefer my “handy-dandy” external hard drives (yup, I don’t trust one so I have two).

Along with the advantages of digital comes the reality that there are no negatives.  I immediately save my digital photos to the computer and the external hard drives.  I also keep a copy of each digital layout I’ve created - even though I’ve had them printed.  Digital is such a special concept; so is protecting your photos by backing them up (CDs, DVDs, external hard drives kept in a safe place).

Well, I still haven’t ordered my wire bound book for my granddaughter’s birthday party — I want to make sure that I’ve spelled her friends names correctly.  And now that she’s in school, I will have extra time to work on preserving the memories of her first five years.  I still appreciate templates for placing photos on a page — the Taleweaver software at MyPicTales is wonderful for helping you place photos on your pages (but also allows you to import pages you’ve created outside the software).

May I suggest TaylorMade at Oscraps-dot-com.  She has awesome templates for single-page layouts, and for complete photobooks.

I may be back with additions (I often do that); so check back!  Now, get to organizing your files — and do back them up!

As Ever,
Pam

So I went looking for some fall kits, and found Shades of Autumn by Ziggle Designs at www.scraporchard.com.

I love the subtle colors and design of the kit.  This would also be a perfect kit to design some pages with, maybe a picture a day for the month of October? The possibilities are endless.

So, until next Friday What Stories Are You Going to Tell?

Mary

The number one thing that was stopping them, was the cost of printing. I explained to them, the prices here at MyPicTales:

6X6 $0.50 per page	8X8 $0.50 per page
8.5X11 $0.50 per page	10X10 $0.50 per page
12X12 $1.00 per page

Much of this week was spent helping my daughter’s family move.  Hurray — for the sale of the home; hurray — for the building if the new home; hurray — the move!  But in real life there are setbacks (created by weather, created by conflicts, created by gaps in communication).  I did take photos and am making notes to preserve the joy and hardship of what just happened.

Grasp the concept (when our grandchildren wonder at their ancestors, we’ll have provided some history with our photobooks and scrapbook layouts).  I chose this page as layout-of-the-day.

After completing notes for the photos I took this week, I plan to go to the MyPicTales site and order some “We’ve Moved” cards.  Have a wonderful week!

As Ever,
Pam

On to a little bit happier subjects :).  Do you ever find yourself in a rut?  Need some inspiration?  Not sure where to go with a layout?  I found a site that can help you with these challenges.  Introducing www.thecolorroom.ning.com.  Every week they post a new color pallette with a sketch. You can submit to their galleries or just do it for yourself.  They also have a gallery of the past palletes so you can have more inspiration if you are just joining in the fun.

This is this weeks pallete and sketch:

I love these colors! The neat part about the site is that they also provide the RGB codes for us digi scrappers. So you can be a traditional, digi or hybrid scrapper and still enjoy this site.  I think this might be what I need for some pool pictures that I took this week…. Hmm….Off to scrap!

So, until next Friday, What Stories Are You Going to Tell?

Mary

We are a homeschooling family, and new clothes and fun supplies happen here, but not with the same urgency!  The beginning of school is a huge milestone, and one that needs to be scrapped!! There are so many new kits out there, I don’t even have to name one, you can go to almost any store and find a kit!  What I did find you, was some inspiring ways to highlight that precious moment of school:

Fist chbranch’s BACK to SCHOOL captured that ride…oh the bus! The journaling is fun and will be read over and over!

I was hooked now, looking at all the school layouts pop up around digiland, and Becca1976 with School Again?

Okay one more, cause I am having fun.  I have to admit to once being on Carolyn Rose Kite’s CT, and part of the awesome JABA girls, so this layout jumped out at me, because Julie aka MotherBear can scrap like no other.  But look at this face, it is beyond cute in First DAY

oh, oops, one for the homeschooler:

davidandchell - 5th grade home school lessons just made my day! GO MOM!!!

Even if you don’t have kids in school, be careful they are out there, on bikes and walking to school.  Traffic is a bit nuts before and after school!  A helpful hint, shopping at 2pm is like a ghost town!  Enjoy the school year!

Anne of Alamo

FYI - I’ve been making pages since before the term for digital scrapbooking — back then it was desktop publishing.  And in my early days of creating pages (layouts), I didn’t know anything about dots per inch (pixels per inch) - the number of pixels on your monitor is much different than the number of pixels per inch required to create a nice print.  I scanned many of my MIL’s photos at 72 ppi — they look great on the monitor, but will never be great for printing.

Hours upon hours are spent when scanning — make sure you scan at 300 ppi or better.  Read about MyPicTales for scrapbooking and so much more HERE!  You must also know about pixels per inch when sending your digital prints and scrapbook layouts to have prints made.

There are many tutorials at MyPicTales — read them.  Then ask questions — I’ll tell you that you’ll get personal replies!  There was a question with a recent order I placed — I received an email.  I replied; MPT wrote back, I replied again.  How cool to spend my money at a place who verifies what I want before printing.  I received my order on Thursday and I’m delighted with it!

Life doesn’t wait for us to get it right.  But MyPicTales gets it right, even if they have to ask questions.  What a concept!  You wouldn’t believe the array of prints I had done — and each is just as I’d seen on my monitor.

Do you have some layouts you created at a lower resolution?  Try adjusting them - make sure you give them a chance against the delightful team at MPT!

Losing a family member and going through old pictures (ok, digital files ) brings it home to me how important this hobby is and how important it is to take pictures and to document lives, because the people in those pictures can be gone in an instant. This has awoken a renewed desire to scrap, and to document everything that I can. Because It Does Matter. Alot.

So this week, take a picture, do a page or two, and most importantly, tell  your loved ones, that you love them.

Until next week.

Mary