Right Here, Right Now 1.24.14

If you've read my blog before, you know I think it's important to scrapbook about yourself.  My husband and kids show up on my pages most of the time, but I do make an appearance on layouts as well.  Sometimes, it's because I feel I can express what I want to say best on a page.  At others, I make layouts about myself so my kids see that I'm not just this person who washes dirty socks and makes them brush their teeth.  I kind of like them seeing me as a person with my own interests, goals, and ideas.

I've noticed lately, when my children look at my scrapbooks, it prompts them to ask more questions about our family, our history, and my husband and I.  All of this got me thinking that it might be fun to do some layouts a few times this year using a prompt of "Right Here, Right Now."  I'd like to create a page or two about myself (either something I'm going through, or feelings I want to express), or maybe about things that I'm into at the moment.  Or maybe there will be some random topic I feel like putting down either on an art journaling page or a digital scrapbooking page.   The title of the layouts will not necessarily be "Right Here, Right Now," but I think my ideas will still come across.   

So for today, I have two "Right Here, Right Now" types of layouts to show you.  The first one shows a small snapshot my life as it was just last month:



I like pages that come together fast like this one.  I just did a quick summary of the things that were making me happy (including finding and fitting into a pair of cute skinny jeans).  Sometimes, you don't have to have paragraphs of journaling to capture the happiness of the moment.  I used Kim Jensen's Me Right Now kit, which is such a fun one for doing pages about yourself.

Something I've recently discovered the joys of is make up.  Granted, I've always worn a little here and there, but it's been hit and miss so much over the last few years.  The make up I've had on hand was getting old and needed to be replaced so I hit the mall and some of the make up counters, and used this page to document my experience:




It was a little intimidating to walk into Sephora for the first time (I know...it's crazy that I've not been in before now), but it was fun at the same time.  Just a year ago, I wouldn't have ever thought I'd visit stores like that.  I'd been watching YouTube videos on products and application, as well as doing research on the web, so I figured it was time to bite bullet and go shopping.  I was actually able to apply it myself the next day and like how it looked...which I cannot say happened before now when I bought make up.   This is a small thing, of course, but it's been fun for me to play with make up and understand why so many other women love it.  I think pages about these little things we are interested in make our scrapbooks more fun and real to look at.  My tween daughter has been especially inrigued by all of this and was actually shocked to find out that I carry lip gloss just like she does...;)
If you like the kits I used, they are also from Kim Jensen: Frame-O-Mania-2 kit and Rhyme and Reason kit.

Thanks for spending time here today, and I'm curious:  What are you liking right now?  What things are you doing right here, right now?
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Some Hybrid and Digital Goodness




 

It's been way too long since I did a hybrid project, so I thought I'd take one on.  I made this cute altered tissue box cover using some digital papers that I had printed up on a laser printer.  Previously, I had done this project using traditional scrapbooking paper, so I wanted to give it a go with digital papers.  You can see this tutorial on the Sweet Caroline Studio blog.

I learned a couple of things along the way, and thought I would pass them along to you.  While technically I think you can use inkjet paper, I liked getting laser prints done at my local office supply store because I just wanted to slather on the Mod Podge without worrying about the ink smearing.  My office supply store offered both 8.5 x 11 and 12 x 12 prints, but I chose the letter-sized prints because they were less expensive. The very helpful gals at The DigiChick gave me some great pointers on using ink jet paper for hybrid projects.  They told me that using Epson Presentation Paper for ink jet printers works pretty well for hybrid projects.  I will have to try that out later and see if it works.  For now, I'm sticking with laser prints.

Additionally, I went with the matte finish Mod Podge, which doesn't dry sticky, unlike the gloss finish.  Using Mod Podge does create a bit of bubbling and buckling, but don't let that freak you out.  For the most part, everything dries flat and the bubbling that remains is hardly noticeable.  

I was happy with the way the project turned out, and wished I had done up a few before the end of the school year.  These would make a fun teacher gift!  

If you get the chance, I encourage you to make a hybrid project of some sort with your digital papers.  I admit I feel a bit intimidated by hybrid projects, but once I get started and let go of the idea that it has to look "perfect," I actually have a lot of fun.  I will have to do more hybrid in the future. 

Also, I made a layout of my youngest using Celeste Knight's Sweet Briar Kit.  He had the cutest little facial expressions when he was a baby.  I just love looking at these photos...sigh....







Thanks for stopping by!


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A Silly Photo and Some Fun News

Hey everyone!  I hope you are enjoying life wherever you are.  I wanted to share with you a photo that pretty much sums up how things go whenever we take family photos.  Like many of you, we celebrated Mother's Day a couple of weeks ago.  I like to try and get a photo with all of my kids on that day.  While we were getting set up to get pictures taken, a couple of our neighbors were out walking their dog and offered to snap a few shots for us.

I have to remind my kids that I'd like to actually get some good pictures each year (or else everyone in the photos will have rabbit ears and tongues will be sticking out of all their mouths).  Our neighbors got what we hoped would be some great pictures of our family.  I guess you can tell where this is going.  The three older kids listened well, but my youngest apparently had other ideas:


Little stinker!  My hubby was so mad I thought steam was going to start coming out of his ears.  But oh well...LOL!  I figure I can use this picture or blackmail later.  Somewhere during his high school years, I'm sure some teacher or classmate will request funny pictures from his childhood and I will be happy to hand over this one! 

In any event, I'm still going to scrapbook this photo, because this is how life really is for us on a regular basis.  I'm hoping that this will get you thinking about the everyday photos you take and how you scrapbook them.  I'm kicking around the idea of a weekly blog post centering around snapshots.  I will elaborate more on this in a few more weeks.  

In the meantime, here's something I'm excited to share with you:  I'm fortunate to be a part of Celeste Knight's Sweet Caroline Studio creative team.  Celeste designs for Pixels and Company, and you can see her digital kits here.  Her work is gorgeous, and if you get a chance, you should definitely check it out.  Here are a couple of my pages my with her kits:



Right now, I'm really having fun using her darling journaling cards.  I'm not a Project Life enthusiast, so I haven't played with these cards much.  However, since I do favor clean, simple design, these cards are a perfect little parking spot for journaling and even photos.  

And, last but not least, I want to send a heartfelt thank you to the three designers who were kind enough to allow me to be a part of their creative teams during the last two and half to three years.  Kerry, Jen, and Janet, I had so much fun and appreciated the opportunity you gave me to work with your amazing designs.  I know you've all moved onto other adventures and wish you the best.  


And now, if you've read this far, I was hoping you'd answer a question.  Are regular, everyday photos mostly what you scrap?  If not, what do you use in your scrapbooks? What do you do if you have a photo you want to scrap, but you don't like something about it (whether it's blurry, a boring shot, someone makes a face, the room is messy, the lighting is bad, etc.).  I'd love to hear your thoughts!







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I Drew a Face!

I've been working some lately in my paper art journal (I still like doing the digital pages, too...you'll see me kind of jump back and forth between digital and paper projects).  As I've been browsing work by other art journalers, I've admired how they can draw faces, and wanted to try it myself.  I know this isn't going to win me any art contests.  But seriously...I haven't drawn a face probably since elementary school.  It's so true that we all, at some point, notice that others are better at a certain skill than we are, and often stop doing it.  This was true for me with drawing.

Even though it was scary, I looked around for a beginner's class, and found Jane Davenport's Draw Happy online workshop.  This is a mini-class to kind of jumpstart a beginner and get them going.  I'm not going to lie --- it was intimidating at first, and just doing some of the exercises took me awhile.  My first few attempts, I just sat there, trying to turn off all the negative talk in my head.  I didn't necessarily like the first few things I drew, but it got me over the fear of trying.  And, since I did my drawings in my art journal, I figured that the only one who would see them would be me.  This was my third or fourth attempt, and wanted to just go for it using the supplies I had.  And guess what?  I didn't hate it when I was all finished!

The cool thing about drawing faces in an art journal is that it's OK if something on your face is out of proportion or even not a typical flesh tone.  I purposely gave mine pink and green hues.  Even if  something is drawn out of proportion, it makes for a really cool page.

So what do you do if you aren't ready to draw your own faces by hand?  The Crafter's Workshop has awesome templates for scrapbooking and art journaling, and there are several face templates.  This is a fun and easy way to put a face on a project.  In the page below, I used the "Edith and Maude" template:


 You can see that I just used the face on the right to create my image.  I outlined the face very lightly with a regular pencil, then went over it with some Derwent Inktense pencils.  I then went back and erased my gray pencil lines, and activated the ink from the Inktense pencils with some water.  I then went over some areas with bit of watercolor paint, and outlined the face with a couple of Gelly Roll pens.   It was pretty fun --- the great thing about an art journal is that you can always cover your mistakes, or leave them be.

So tell me --- how do you feel about drawing?  When was the last time you did any? Are there some of you who do it everyday?  Would you rather do housework than draw?  Does anyone draw using some type of software and a pen tablet? 
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Some Favorite Layouts and Some Construction Dust...

Hey everyone! I'm getting back to blogging and thought I would share a few of my favorite scrapbook pages that I meant to share here, but never did. Most of these were published in the last year, and couple of them are just random favorites that I made even earlier. Hope you like them all:

   

   


 I also wanted to let you know that I'll be giving my blog a facelift over the next few weeks. If things change or look weird for a bit, don't fret. I'm sticking around and will continue to blog. Pardon my dust as I do a little revamping to things around here.

Have a great day!

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