Getting There - 2011 Layouts

I finished a hand full of layouts last week but was unable to take the photos because of the weather - the natural light just was not there. 

So while I was cleaning up since Kaela went back to school yesterday and kiddo's have a way of leaving a trail.... I noticed that the light was great in the crop area and decided today is the day to get the photos of the layouts. 

There is a sister layout to go along with the one above but the camera took a really bad photo or it could be human error so I am not going to post that one. 

The layouts are fairly simple but sometimes simple is just the ticket.  Oh and if you are wondering - yes I am trying to use up long retired paper.  I am taking my own advice and using what I have even if I do still think it is too pretty to cut.

Family Album 2015

Last night Kaela and I stayed up way too late and while she was working on designs for her blog I was working on some layouts in Studio J.  

Remember in my last post telling you that the Family 2015 photos uploaded kinda weird - well on my big screen desk top machine I could see the images better to be able to pluck out some layouts.  

All of the Norway layouts from my last post are part of the Family 2015 album as well as duplicate graduation and party layouts, why recreate the graduation layouts when I can just order two copies.   Last night I worked on these:

I am really bad about not making a cover page for my albums, in fact I am embarrassed to say that many of my albums have a blank first page when you open them just because I never know what to use as the starting page.  Studio J is making that problem go away.  I simply take a couple of cute photos from the year or subject I am working with and make a front and back page from one layout combo. 

 (note to self:  go back and made cover pages for all of those albums)

The page on the right is the first page of the album and the page on the left will be the last page.  I love Mikes silly face in this one and since it does not go with any layout to speak of it will work perfectly has a closing page.  Add a bit of overview journalling and things are off to a great start.

I will not be making Kaela a "college album" so I thought I would pop a few layouts to document her "moving out" and her dorm.   She is a little overwhelmed that she has 12 very full albums that document her childhood starting from kindergarten - 12th grade and a Girl Scout album.  

Ah... Josh Groban 

Ok I just told a fib... these are going into my CTMH business album.  I planned on ordering 2 copies and forgot during the check out process so I will need to do that.  One set for my business album and one set for the family album.

I know that I have photos from when Kaela went to Paris but for the life of me I can not find them.  So for now the photos of her in the airport ready to go will have to work.

Our puppies are getting up there in age so the cold makes them head for the blankets.  I found some cute random photos that will make me smile every time I see them so I scrapped them.

Our last road trip before Kaela left for school.

You may recognize this layout.  It is from Kaela's 12th grade album.  I was working with the same photos to add to the family album and did not like the layout I was coming up with.  So I went back into my "purchased layouts" and found this one.   I liked it so much I am going to use it again.

These are not all of the photos from 2015 but I have a good start.  As I find photos from FB, phones, Instagram ect. I will print or upload to Studio J and work on the layouts.  I want this album to be a mix of traditional paper layouts and digital layouts. 

Not a bad beginning if I do say so myself.

How To Use Thin Cuts

Have Studio J - Will Travel

Mike was speaking at the Code Mash 2016 Developers Conference last week and I was on board to travel with him.  While he plays with his friends and teaches about Math or Software I check out the shops, spa and what not from the hotel. Sometimes I even get to see him speak depending on if the organizers are ok with me sitting in on his talk.

I have no idea what is talk is about other than math (it goes over my head) but all of these people did!

For this trip I wanted to try something different.  Mike said that they WiFi would be great because of all of the geeks in the building so I wanted to try and take Studio - J with me.   I spent the Saturday before we left uploading my photos into Studio J from my desktop machine, facebook, Twitter and our phones and while doing this I realized that I have not been very good at photo organization this year.  Once the photos were uploaded I was ready to go.

I worked in the convention area, the hotel lobby, our room in front of the fire place but the best and fastest speed for the WiFi was the hotel restaurant.    I just picked the slow times to sit in there and the wait staff got a kick out of me "scrapbooking at the table".  All I needed was internet, my laptop and a plug.

My CTMH 10 Year Pin

Making Connections - Dallas 

Making Connections is a meeting that CTMH presented locally and it was a blast.  I am putting these pages in my CTMH business album.

 These pages are the 12 x 12 layouts.  I needed the for sale sign for a scrapbooking garage sale in February so this works out perfect. 

Graduation and Party

These are the very last pages for Kaela's high school albums.  I am now completely done with all of them (K-12).  

12 Grade (corrected pages)

I made a HUGE mistake on the original pages - the year (s) were wrong.  So I fixed it and will replace them in the 12 grade album.

Norway

This past summer I was able to join Mike on a business trip to Norway.

I uploaded photos for the Family 2015 album also but was not able to finish those pages.  We had a fantastic trip and now that I know I can scrap where ever I go the world is my oyster.

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I have a couple of retreat weekends coming up so I am going to concentrate on packing for those.  I am currently working on traditional scrapping my 2011 Family Album so I need to get cracking on making kits for these retreats.

Layering with the Cricut® Artistry Cartridge

Happy New Year

Years ago Ali Edwards started the "One little Word".  She picks one word a year that will be her center (like create or fun) you get the point.  I always start out gun ho about keeping my "word" in the forefront of my life but then life gets in the way.

This year she has started selling Acrylic words that hang on the wall and I not only found my word but I ordered it and will hang it on my wall in my scraproom.

FOCUS

Along with my word I have changed my desktop screen saver to the above quote.  

I am beyond blessed that I have the life that I have and get to play in a field I love (scrapbooking). I have amazing friends and family so what more could a girl want?  Not much! 

So if my world is beyond blessed then why is my word "focus"? 

Because I let my daily life take over and forget to enjoy the creative side.  In 2015 I almost lost my love of scrapbooking - oh I was teaching the classes and holding the crops but I was doing very little of the personal scrapbooking that I love.  I even shut the door to my scraproom for a bit.  But I missed being able to escape into my scraproom and play with pretty papers while listening to a good book - so I opened the door again. 

Today my room looks like it exploded because I have paper everywhere and have completed two layouts so far for my family 2011 album.  I will post those layouts soon.

So this year I am going to stay focused on the creative while trying to balance the daily life. 

This is my resolution!

January Stamp of the Month - Beloved Bouquet

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