Day 24 – School Spirit

When Lain gave us the prompt “School Spirit”, I could have easily reverted back to working on my son’s Texas A&M scrapbook, or I could even have done something from my high school years.  But when I was flipping through my supplies, I found this little “Aggie Mom” pennant that I bought when Steven first started school there, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to create a page about my own Texas A&M experience. 

Luckily, I have quite a stash of Texas Aggie scrapbook paper, so coming up with a quick page was not difficult at all.  Part of the journaling is my own story; the rest was compiled form information found on the internet.

You Make Me Happy

Today is the 26th Anniversary of my wedding to Mark, the most amazing man I know.  We have been through so much together, and today we are as committed as ever to building the best possible relationship with each other.  I won’t deny…there’s been some struggle, but there’s been a lot of fun and happiness, too.  A LOT.  More than I deserve.  Last year, I made a really elegant card to celebrate our 25th Anniversary.  It seemed only fitting to have something sophisticated and lovely to represent such a momentous occasion.  This year, I wanted to focus on the love, the fun, and the togetherness that is at the core of our every-day lives.  So, this one’s for you, sweetie, and I hope it helps you remember all the wonderful, happy, good times we’ve had and all the silly, fun, and exciting times still in our future.  I love you!

Products used: Stampin' Up {On Film, Hearts a Flutter, and Banners Framelits dies, Perfect
Pennants stamp set, "&" stamp (r), Chevron border punch, Real Red, Summer Sun (r), and Island
 Indigo inks, white craft ink, Early Espresso Core'dinations cardstock, Woodgrain embossing folder,
Tea Lace Paper Doily, red Glimmer Paper, assorted paper scraps including Pool Party, Real Red,
Island Indigo, Basic Black, Whisper White}, Frost Dazzle Versamark ink, clear embossing powder,
Simple Stories enamel dots,  and Copic Marker BG18 "Teal Blue" (to alter the blue dot).

Day 23 – Playground

The title, embellishments, and merry-go-round were all part of a rub-on sticker set.

Lain’s prompt for Day 23 is another page that has no photos.  I’ve been wanting to tell this story for a long time…ever since I found this awesome merry-go-round rub-on sticker for sale on a Facebook scrapbook group.  The page is simple, and features muted colors.  The focus is the merry-go-round and the story, as it should be.

Day 22 – Sign of the Times

For Day 22, Lain gave us the prompt, “Sign of the Times.”  This made me think about a common sight in many cities during the first Gulf War.  My mother and I felt very strongly about supporting our troops serving overseas, so we marched in several rallies.  I didn’t have any photographs from those events, but these newspaper clippings (and photocopies of clippings) were perfect for a page like this.

I wanted this page to have an old-fashioned scrapbook feel – something more akin to what the Smashbooks have become.

Whenever I teach a scrapbooking class, I like to stress that scrapbooks aren’t just about the school pictures, the birthdays, or the Christmas tree.  Our scrapbooks should include pages that tell the stories of our life, who we are, what we did, and what was important to us.  Sometimes those things are not captured in photos, but there are many other ways to share them in our scrapbooks.  My challenge to you is to find a story of your own that can’t be told with photos, and then go tell it.  I’m sure you’ll find some clever way to make your story come to life!

Day 21 – Whoops!

If you’ve been following along with my blog while we explore LOAD 514, you may have noted a wide range of styles and embellishments.  I’ve done a few pages with a lot of bling, flowers, or other embellishments, but I’ve done quite a few with almost no embellishments at all, too.  I know that one of the trends is to use a lot of different embellishments all stacked up in clusters, but for me, that style doesn’t always work.  I like my embellishments to have a purpose.  I feel like they should be a part of the story, not just something pretty to look at.  

Today’s “Whoops” page has almost no embellishments at all, and I don't think it really needs any.  The paper, the title, and the “splash” of bling all help accentuate the story of how I got my phone wet.  And since the focus of the story was the phone, I decided the best way to use this out-of-focus photo was to give it a little perspective and pop it up.

I popped up the phone in the photo by printing a second copy of the photo,
cutting it out, and adhering it over the original photo with foam squares.
To give it perspective, I only put the foam under the top 3 corners, and I
tucked the bottom corner into a slit in the photo underneath.

What is your embellishment style?  Are you the “many embellishments of all kinds” type, the “barely any embellishments at all” type, or something in between?

Day 20 – On a Sunday

As scrapbookers, most of us are very fortunate to have lots of photos of our children to scrapbook.  Digital cameras (and cellphones) are compact, affordable, and just about everybody has one.  Where once our families only took one or two pictures on very special occasions, now we all take pictures of everything.  We take pictures of our pets, our cars, our yards, the new flowers we just planted, the food we ate for dinner, even the bugs crawling on our back fence.  Having all these pictures makes it easy to share the stories of our every day lives, and sometimes we go out and take pictures specifically with our scrapbooks in mind.

But what happens when you don’t have photos of the subjects you want to scrapbook about?  It wasn’t all that long ago that there were no cell phones, cameras were expensive, and the cost of film and processing meant that we were a lot more careful to make sure it was a picture that we really wanted before we took it.  Sometimes the only photo of Johnny’s 5^th birthday might get lost or destroyed -- assuming there was a photo to begin with.  What do we do then?  All I can say is, “Thank goodness for Google and the internet!” 

I had just one such dilemma when I was trying to decide what to do for my Day 20 page.  Lain gave us the prompt, “On a Sunday,” and I wanted to focus on the church I attended when I was just nine or ten years old.  The only problem is, I had no pictures of the church or of me from that time period, and the little church itself is more than 350 miles away, so I can’t go take a new one. But a quick Google search turned up this photo on the internet, and that was all I needed to make my story come to life.

Have you ever used a photo from the internet to complete one of your pages?  What other ways can someone who has no photos document an important story?