Winkflash... and other album thoughts

My Disney World album arrived from winkflash! Overall I'm happy with how it turned out.









The only thing that bugs me is that a *tiny* bit of each page was cut off on the top and bottom, and there is a white border on each edge. Not sure why my perfectly square 8x8 pages didn't fit their 8x8 book... :( But really that is my only complaint, and it's probably not noticeable to anyone but me.







I love the professional look and durability of a hardbound album, and I wish I all my scrapbooks were done this way, but it doesn't really work with how I scrapbook. Since I don't scrapbook chronologically, I can't really upload all of my 2007 pages for a nice book... because I'm still working on 2007 pages all the time! I just scrapbook whatever memory strikes my fancy at the moment, and after they are printed I slide them into a page protector in the right album.

Speaking of albums... for my albums, I was inspired Stacy Julian's "Family Fun Library" system as outlined in her book, "The Big Picture". I took her ideas and tweaked them a bit; I have a set of three albums for each year:

- All About Us: for personality pages. A tab for each person, as well as one for layouts about both boys, and ones for Mom/Dad & me pages.

- Celebrations & Traditions: for those birthday, holiday, graduation pages, as well as other traditions we celebrate.

- Places We Go/Things We Do/People We Love: pretty self-explanatory, with a tab for each of these. Places We Go is for vacations, trips, home, etc., Things We Do reflects our lifestyle from everyday life to hobbies & accomplishments, and People We Love is reserved for layouts about extended family and friends.

So, if I create a page with older pictures from, say, 2006 (which I did recently) I just find the proper 2006 album and slip it in there. I really like how this is working so far.

But in addition to my "Family Fun Library", I think it will be fun to do more mini-albums like this Disney one, and I think I will always do those as hardbound albums. I have plans to start a "Tribute to Philly" album, as well as "A Week In The Life" album (inspired by Ali Edwards) that I'm working on this week and chronicling on my other blog.

I think I'll try some other companies and see who I like best... a few I'm interested in trying are Shutterfly, ArtsCow - they're having a sweet deal, an 8x8 book for $4.99 - , and Viovio.

So, I wanna know... how do your organize your scrapbook layouts? Have you ever had a hardbound book printed and if so where and how did you like it? I'd love to know!

Pages, pages...

... just more random pages!



Made this one for the September quickpage swap at DSM...



... and this one using a lovely new kit from Kelley Mickus.

{Growing Up: everything from Digital Scrapbook Memories "Rough Stuff" kit on the "Oh Boy" CD, "321 Impact" & "Highland Perk" fonts}

{everything from the "Autumn Blooms" kit by Kelley Mickus & Sugarplum Paperie, "Carpenter" font}

Fun Stuff!

All kinds of fun stuff going on over at Peppermint Creative... new website, contests & challenges. I picked up Miss Mint's new "Kindergarten Crafts" kit, as well as an awesome template, both of which I used here:



{template by Cindy Schneider, yellow string by Gunhild Storide, all other paper & elements from "Kindergarten Crafts" kit by Miss Mint}

Speed Scrap?

In an effort to be a little more efficient, I gave myself a time limit of 30 minutes each for these two layouts. (What can I say, my creative process is pretty slow.) I can't say that I stuck to my deadline, but it definitely got me thinking faster and sped things up a little bit. :)





{Poor Miles: background paper by Kim Crothers, notebook frame by Miss Mint clipped to green paper from Digital Scrapbook Memories "Oh Boy" CD, white frame by Fryske, alpha by Kellie Mize, eyelet&string by ScrapKuts, "Typewriter" font}

{Play With Me: background paper by Kelley Mickus, ribbon, tree & owl by Amy Summerall, branch by Tiff Brady, "play" wordart by GG Digital Designs, "Pea Luv Hollywood" & "Burst My Bubble" fonts}

Free Photography Class!

Find more information here. This is so great because you can go at your own pace! I've already been amazed at the material... now if I could just get a DSLR I'd be all set... ;)

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

{papers & balls from Digital Scrapbook Memories "Oh Boy" CD - "Good Sport" kit, alpha from "Funky Nature" kit by Tara Dunstan, "Garamond" font}

FINISHED!

Finally! I started scrapping our Disney World trip back in March, right after we got home. I decided I wanted to do a whole album just about the trip, so I knew it would be a big project. It took me much longer than I had hoped, mostly because I'm terrible at giving myself deadlines and sticking with a big project. But I just uploaded the whole thing to winkflash to have it made into an 8x8 hardbound book. I can't wait for it to arrive, and I'll definitely post pictures of it here, but I wanted to share a few of my favorite layouts I did for this album:









In order to create unity with all my pages, I chose a color scheme based on a kit called "happiest kit on earth" by Britt-ish Designs. I used a lot of the papers and embellishments from that kit, but also added a lot of other designer's stuff that matched color- and style-wise. (I'm not listing all my credits here, as there are a TON! If you're wondering what's what, just ask.)

Get Inspired - Challenge!

I'm hosting a color challenge over at get inspired. Here's my "fall colors" layout (using Kelley Mickus' & Amanda Heimann's new Funky Fall kit). Come play along!



{papers & elements from "Funky Fall" kit by Kelley Mickus & Amanda Heimann, stitching from "Rugged" kit by Kelley Mickus. "Pea Luv Hollywood" & "Jane Austen" fonts}

On a side note... some of my digital olympics layouts are displayed here.
Have a great weekend!

New Layouts

Made this one using Kelley Mickus' new kit, "Moments Like These"(on sale!):



And this one, just for fun:



{papers, candle, blue stitching from My Scrapbook Art's "Birthday" collab kit, ric rac by Daniela Peuss, white stitching by Emily Powers, buttons by ScrapKuts "Star Kids" kit, template by Pattie Knox; "SlabTallX", "Dreamed About You", "Pea Missy", & "Pea Missy Cursive" fonts}

July & August

Got caught up (again) on my Ordinary Life album pages... tonight I did my July and August spreads. Every time I do these I get so excited, I can hardly wait for the year to be over so I can see the final result in a book. :)









{templates by Jessica Sprague, white paper by Leora Sanford, "Century Gothic" font}

Done!

Just finished up the last few challenges for the digital scrapbooking olympics; here are my final entries:

Weightlifting: Use strong, bold colors. You must change the colors of at least three papers or embellishments. (I recolored everything!)


Synchronized Swimming: All about reflective movement and skill... reflect a photo or something on your layout. DSM offered a free class to learn how to do this. Maybe soon I'll type up the instructions, it was a lot of fun to do.


Triathalon: Create a page using the following techniques: 1. extraction of a photo, 2. custom drop shadows, 3. change the color of your background or part of your extracted photo


Wrestling: Create a masculine page


Baseball, Basketball, or Soccer: Create a layout about basketball, baseball or soccer using the "Good Sport" kit from the Oh Boy! CD.