The Indecisive Artist

Photos Around the House

One of the priorities I’ve had since we moved into the ‘new house’ (it’s been nearly 3 years, but it still feels new to us) has been to get some meaningful photographs up on the walls. And by photos, I mean big, space-filling photos – not little 8x10s.

I have this series of 11x14s hanging in my kitchen – just everyday photos of my daughter, my husband, and myself in black and white and framed with a thick black frame.

In my living room, I have a series of prints on standout from our trip to Italy in 2000. These photos may seem small in perspective, but they are actually 20x20 each. My goal is to add 6 or 9 more photos from Italy to this wall and go for a really powerful grouping. I have the photos chosen, but am doing them in groups of 3 until I finish. I’m thinking another group of 3 will be added this summer. With the standout mount at this size, these are a bit of an indulgence/investment.

 

In my dining room, I have started a “Places We’ve Been” wall featuring our favorite photos from our various trips. These are all 10x10 sized (I regret not going 12x12, for the record) and are mounted on a sturdy styrene backing, which allows me to easily place them on the wall with the use of some velcro hanging tabs. No hammers, no nails, minimal frustration. The best part is, it’s easy to rearrange them. Actually, I’m thinking once I have a few more photos added, I might squeeze them together a little more and get another column in there.

Here’s another angle, which shows the photos themselves a little more clearly.

Sonoma, San Francisco, Aruba, Barbados, and Florence are all represented. New Orleans, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Vallarta, Grand Cayman, and Las Vegas have yet to be represented. My hope is to fill this wall as much as possible!

This next set is a little more difficult to show properly. It’s the staircase heading down to the basement. It’s a big wall to fill, and I used a series of 3 20x20s and 3 20x24s to fill it up.

I was a little nervous to undertake this last one – the mathematics of measuring all of these photos out in relation not only to the walls, but also to the stairs themselves… well, it freaked me out a little bit. I told myself that it didn’t have to be perfect, but it did have to look good (in that I couldn’t visibly notice any discrepancy). As luck would have it, the picture-hanging gods were on my side that day. The fuss and the math were about as easy as I could have hoped for, and I had these photos up and on display in no time. Like the photos in the dining room, these two are on a styrene or masonite backing, allowing me to hang them directly on the wall with velcro tabs. Swapping them out and rearranging them should be a piece of cake if I decide to take that on.

This next set was actually the first set I hung in the house. I wanted something big and attention grabbing for the entryway, and I searched through my photo archives for just the right pictures. At the time these were my favorites – if I were to redo things, I might swap out for something different. I do like the grouping, though, and they provide just the right scale for this entryway. Once I can get a console table added below the photos, I think this area will be complete.

Farewell 2011

This is my first, my last, my only blog post for the year 2011. I’m not sure why I never took the time to share anything, but felt that in the last moments of 2011 I would at least attempt a little something to share.

 

 

2011 was a great year for us. Gianna had her first birthday party in which school friends were invited. Jay and I travelled to San Francisco in May. Gianna started first grade in September. As well as the usual dance, gymnastics, tennis, t-ball, skiing, theatre camp, swimming in the pool activities.

We are looking forward to the promise of a new year, and all the possibilities that await us in 2012.

Soap Swap – Goats Milk, Honey, and Oatmeal Soap

I was lucky enough to participate in a soap swap with some online friends recently. The challenge with this particular was was to keep all ingredients natural. I know a lot of soap makers make exclusively natural soap (no artificial colors or scents), but I like using more variety in my scents and colors, so I frequently use synthetic fragrances, as well as oxides and clays as colorants. (There’s some debate about whether micas/oxides/clays are natural or not… for me, they are.. others disagree… so for the sake of the swap, I went without them.) So this swap was going to challenge me for sure!

I’ve always wanted to try using milk in my soaps, but never had the courage. Now, I had a reason to try it. My oatmeal soap (which is one of the few all natural soaps I make) is one of my most requested; my friends with sensitive skin tell me it is one of the few soaps they can use. However, I wanted to spice it up a bit, so I decided to create a goats milk, honey, and oatmeal soap. It wouldn’t have a scent, and it wouldn’t have any coloring ingredients, but it would be filled with lots of good stuff.

I have to say I was nervous, but in the end it all worked out great! (Except for the part about it being too stubborn to get out of the mold! I had to both pop it in the freezer and use a knife to loose it up. In retrospect, I realized that I poured it at a much thinner trace than I normally use, and some of the soap seeped behind the paper wrapper… I decidedly poured it thin so that it would be extra smooth on top… but I didn’t anticipate it being so difficult to unmold.)

 

I decided to decorate the tops of the soap with lavender buds, giving a tiny bit of natural scent to the bars.

 

 

These are half size bars. I attached a label with some hemp twine to finish them off. I hope my swap mates like the soap!!

Baby Cards

We had two very special babies join our extended family in February. Before they were born, I saw some totally adorable baby cards featured on etsy. As cute as they were, and as much as I love to support artists by buying their handcrafted work, I could not justify it in this case when I have a whole stamping/scrapping room full of supplies with which to make cards!

I couldn’t recreate it exactly – the original used some sort of die-cut shape to create the elephants. But I could improvise.

I used the elephant stamp from a retired Noah’s Ark set to create the line of elephants marching across the card. What is it about elephants that makes for such a cute baby card?? :)

I think the photo doesn’t do them justice – they seem a little plain. But I promise, in real life they were very cute… I considered putting a ribbon on each one and decided against it because I thought they were just right without a ribbon.

March Layouts

It seems like every year, my scrapbooking slows down from Jan through Feb. I don’t know if it’s that I’m in hibernation mode here in our Minnesota winter and therefore lack the creative desire to scrap… or if I’m preoccupied with other things. Probably a combination of both. However, I have had a very productive March, and think I can declare the scrap doldrums are over! I have done a couple day-long scrap days with some girlfriends at a local place here in St. Cloud (Creative Escapes for those of you local). Mostly I used that time to get myself organized and started planning layouts. It’s amazing how just sitting and organizing your photos and supplies helps to spark creativity. It makes me feel excited to scrap again! Even though I set monthly scrap goals for myself, I give myself permission to ignore those goals if I’m just not feeling the spark. This year, my monthly goals are much lower than they have been before so that I can focus on quality and not quantity. Even so, sometimes I need a break from even the easiest of goals.

I spent the last weekend with some girlfriends at a cabin near Alexandria (about an hour drive from here) at this place: Alexandria Lakes Villa. I was able to get 16 pages completed during my stay… putting me well ahead of my goal for the month.

When I scrap socially, I do traditional scrapbooking. Meaning, I haul my paper supplies and photos I have gotten better about not bringing EVERYTHING with me. :)  So most of those layouts I created are traditional paper ones, and I don’t usually photograph or scan them to share here, just for the sake of being practical.

But what I can share are two recent digital layouts I’ve done. I’ve been focusing much of my effort lately into improving my photography – especially my post-processing skills. Once in awhile I’ll take that time I’ve spent in Photoshop and create a quick digital layout. That’s how these layouts were created.

 

This layout was created by blending the photo with the background paper – thus the resulting texture across the image. I like this look once in awhile – it feels more artsy than scrapbooky. It was a very quick and easy layout to create, but it’s also one of my favorites because it really is just about the photo.

 

Last weekend we got to enjoy not only the first day of daylight savings, but also some BEAUTIFUL spring weather – unusual for so early in March in Minnesota! We were able to get outside and enjoy some time in the sunshine, and Gianna got to ride her new bike outdoors!

Until next time… Happy Scrapping!

Year-in-Review Scrapbooks

One of the things I like to do each year for the grandparents is to create a year-in-review scrapbook, using my favorite scrapbook pages from the past year. Since I’ve already got the pages created and saved for myself, it really is just a matter of choosing my favorites and creating a book and sending it to print!

I frequently use MyPicTales to create my bound books. They are the most affordable out there, and they offer a variety of sizes and cover options. I like MyPicTales because I can upload my scrapbook layouts and have them printed with a full bleed rather than using photos and assembling them into a predefined layout. MyPicTales also offers the ability to create a custom cover for your books, which is a really nice option. (I’m not compensated by MPT in any way, shape, or form… I just like their product offerings!!)

When I create these year-in-review books, I make sure to include a layout from each month of the year, and I usually try to pick a layout that is one of my favorites – a layout with a bit of a wow factor to it – if at all possible. That way, the book is really highlighting the best images and layouts. Since photobooks are a minimum of 20 pages, some months will have more than one layout, and that’s perfectly fine with me. Some months like October lend themselves to more than one layout. (Pumpkin picking AND Halloween!) I also like to do a single year-in-review page… one that shows a photo from each month on a single page. Also, because these are gift book to grandparents, I have them done in 8x8 size instead of my traditional 12x12. And quite honestly, these layouts look better at 8x8 size. Because I’m printing them at a smaller size then what they are created at, I don’t have to do anything special to resize them. If I wanted to get super picky, I could resample them to the smaller size, and it’s easy enough to do… but for this purpose, there was no need to do that.

Since I was running short on time to get them ordered (and they didn’t actually arrive until AFTER Christmas), I didn’t want to take the time to design a custom cover, so I chose to do a chocolate brown linen cover instead. Then, I took some stamps and acrylic paint and did a handmade custom cover for them. Technically, you could use craft/pigment ink to stamp on the fabric, but the color would not be so vivid, and I’d worry it wouldn’t really hold up as long as the paint will. To stamp with paint, I just used a small foam brush and brushed the paint right onto the stamp. Worked like a charm. Cleanup is a little bit of a pain, but it’s worth it.

This is what the pages on the inside look like.  My only regret as that some of my pages had ‘stuff’ too close to the margin that got sorta sucked into the binding. It’s not a huge deal, but something I’ll try to be more aware of next time I create a book like this.

I tend to be a nonchronological scrapper, so it doesn’t always make sense for me to have my layouts printed as bound books, but every once in awhile it makes sense for a project to be printed this way. It’s nice to see a completed project, too, rather than stacks of individual pages that need to be reorganized/reshuffled whenever I need to insert something. I don’t scrap chronologically, but I put them in albums chronologically. Because they are loose pages, I can swap them around. When they are bound in a book, they are there for good. In some cases the thought of committing them permanently doesn’t sit well with my preferred scrap style… but sometimes, it’s just the thing I need to do to create a specific book. I definitely plan to create more books in the future!

Wrapping up 2009, Looking into 2010

Wow, what a year! I have been a horrible blogger. So much has gone on and yet so little of it has been recorded in this blog. I started the year with the goal of doing a photo a day (project 365). I mostly succeeded on that one, but failed miserably at keeping the blog up-to-date with photos. I will keep that blog open and hopefully catch up! I have not yet decided whether I will do a project 365 in 2010. In fact, I’ve been thinking about my “word” for the year of 2010. In 2008 it was ‘create’ and in 2009 it was “explore.” I’m thinking that for 2010 my word will be “quality.” Part of my rationale for that word has to do with a certain level of frustration I felt this year in thinking I had to get so much done in terms of quantity. Like project 365… I had to take a photo a day, even if I didn’t feel like taking a photo or the resulting photo was total garbage. It didn’t matter if it was garbage, only that I took one. Late in the year I eased up a bit on that expectation because honestly it felt as though I were forcing things, and that was definitely NOT what I had intended. I intended to take on the project in an effort to improve my skills… but when it felt forced and created only garbage, it was hard to feel that my skills were improving. It only felt like a chore.

I also had set a monthly goal of creating 20 scrapbook layouts. Some months I failed horribly. (Like the month we moved!!) Other months were uber productive. But as the year went on, it started to feel like it was more about the number and not so much about the quality of what I was creating. True, I set a number as a goal, thinking that by doing more, I’d be more likely to strike gold once in awhile. However, I think that for the next year my goal will be not about volume or quantity but instead about taking the time to think through what I’m creating and approaching each work as though it were a masterpiece – whether it’s a scrapbook layout or a photo shoot. No need to take 100 pictures in hopes of getting one good one. Instead, I want to focus on doing more with less. (OK, I really dislike that phrase in the way it’s used in corporate America…) Which really means that I want to make sure that whatever effort I’m putting forth, I’m doing so from the perspective that I’m setting out to create quality instead of creating volume in hopes of finding something worthwhile in the heap. Basically, I want to improve my quality to crap ratio. :)

I thought I’d share some of my most recent scrapbook layouts. This was a self-portrait I set up one day when I was working from home. I’m sitting in the sunroom in my house. I am terrible about getting myself in photos, so this was an attempt to record part of my day-to-day life.

 

This next layout contains an image of Gianna I took one night while photographing some friends. Gianna wanted to have photos taken, too, so I snapped a couple of her. This one was a keeper. :) I wanted to try a technique of blending the photo into the paper.

 

At Thanksgiving, Gianna thought it would be appropriate to bake a cherry pie instead of traditional pumpkin or pecan. She was very insistent that we try a cherry pie. So I let her tackle the making of the pie! She rolled out the dough and poured the cherries in. She actually did quite a good job! Unfortunately, she realized she didn’t actually LIKE cherry pie, and she refused to eat any of it on Thanksgiving day!

 

I was busy wrapping up a year-in-review scrapbook to give to the grandparents, when I quickly took some snapshots of Jay and Gianna in Santa hats sitting by the Christmas tree. I thought this was a fun, seasonal layout to include here.

 

 

And finally, the year-in-review layout of Gianna. Each photo represents a month of the year… from her birthday in January to sitting by the Christmas tree in December.

 

 

Christmas has been very good here. I’m just amazed at how quickly this year has passed. So much has happened… the move to our new house, the sale of our old house. Gianna participating in soccer, t-ball, gymnastics, and dance. And so much more everyday stuff that has made this year so rewarding and exciting.

I’m busy refocusing my energies on new things for the coming year, too!

Just Keep Scrapping…

Some more layouts to share with you all…

The one was inspired by a challenge I hosted on SCS for Virtual Scrapbook Night. My challenge was to use the song “Everlong” by Foo Fighters as inspiration for a page. If you look closely, you’ll see some of the lyrics blended into the background paper. This is hubby and I 10 years ago!! This was one of our engagement photos.

 

Took this photo of Gianna one afternoon while I was photographing some friends. She was all dressed up in her fairy wings and tutu. Template was by Biograffiti, available at ScrapArtist.

Another Biografitti template… Since this template uses lots of photos (I’m normally a photo-per-page type of scrapbooker), I decided rather than try to use a bunch of photos from a single event, it made more sense to show a series of photos of my little girl from Day 1 up thru her 4 year photos. Can’t believe how fast she’s grown!!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!  

CT – Biograffiti – 3 New Fall Layouts

I’m happy to announce that I have joined the creative team for Biograffiti, the fabulous template artist who sells digital designs at www.daydreamerdesignworks.com.

I have created 3 layouts using her latest Fresh Start 3 template kit, found here.

This first layout was inspired by a recent trip to a local winery. I love doing scrapbook pages about the every day things that don’t necessarily involve photos of people – but rather, photos of the every day things we do. A trip to a winery is definitely scrapbook worthy!!

Template by Biograffiti. Papers and elements from Shabby Princess and Weeds and Wildflowers. Shadows by Flergs.

 

This next layout was inspired, NOT KIDDING, by a photo I found listed on etsy. One of my favorite things to do is search etsy for our names. LOL. Just to see what products out there might be named after us. I found this ADORABLE photo called “Gianna’s Ruby Slippers” listed there and fell in love with the idea. Being a photographer myself, I just had to give it a try! So when I saw these adorable ruby slippers at my favorite store (Target!), they went into my shopping cart without hesitation. Spending $14 on a pair of shoes JUST to take photos of them… totally impulsive, and yet, sooo worth it! Luckily, Gianna LOVES the shoes, so getting her to model them for me was a piece of cake. This is the resulting scrapbook layout.

 

Template by Biograffiti. Papers and elements by Gina Cabrera and Creations by Rachel.Stitching by Traci Reed. Shadows by Flergs.

 

This next layout is my sweet little pumpkin picking pumpkins at Grandma’s house.

Template by Biograffiti. Papers and elements by Shabby Princess, Shabby Miss Jen, and Creations by Rachel. Shadows by Flergs.

Family Layouts

After the marathon session of cranking out layouts for my California book (which should arrive in the mail this week! woohoo!) I really wanted to create something completely non-California. :) I recently did a family portrait session for ourselves. It started out just as an attempt to take photos of Gianna, but since Jay and I were both available, we got in on the photos as well. I gave Gianna the wireless remote to snap this photo of us and knew I had to create a layout.

I’m also on a mission to create some printed layouts to put in frames to hang on my office wall. I bought some adorable 8x8 frames recently, and they are just waiting for some layouts to fill them. I plan on using these two layouts for sure!

 

 

This next layout features a photo I took of Gianna while on a trip to Duluth. My sister, Gianna, and I took a recent road trip ‘up north’ and spent a day in Duluth. We took tons of photos!!! This one is from the afternoon, when we walked along the shore of Lake Superior, near the lift bridge, and stopped to throw rocks into the lake. I tried teaching her to skip stones, but it seems I’ve lost my touch. Still, we had fun throwing stones and watching the ripples across the water.

I am loving this time of year! Fall is definitely my favorite season (with summer a close second), and for me, fall means scrapbook time. I have some lofty goals of completing a number of layouts over the coming months, including another attempt at a photobook chronicling our girls’ trip up north. Wish me luck!

 

PS – just a few more days left on the Hoorray photobook free shipping offer!

California Photo Book

Remember when Jay and I took a trip to California? It was Memorial Day weekend, 2008. Yeah… 16 months ago. Well, I finally finished up the photo book I made to highlight some of the 1100 photos I took. If I haven’t been sharing scrapbook layouts here on my blog it’s because I have been entirely focused on completing this photo book by Sept 15th. I didn’t want to share any of the individual layouts until I had the entire thing complete so that I could show the book in its entirety.

Well, here it is. :)

It ended up being 84 pages total, and I’m really proud of how it all came together and how I was able to see a project like this through to completion. Now I’m just getting ready to order it. I can’t wait to see it in a bound book!

Feel free to take a peek at the book. After all, I’ve been waiting to share it for a long time!

Normally when I scrap, I scrap whatever I’m in the mood for. I could never be a chronological scrapper – I’d never be caught up. Instead, I prefer to scrap whatever inspires me. The benefit to this is that I always have a little bit of something from multiple time periods. Because I use post-bound albums, I can rearrange the pages when I need to. (It’s usually a yearly task as it takes time to rearrange everything.) The drawback with wanting to do a photobook is that I have to commit to having the entire set of layouts complete before the photobook can be put together because there is no inserting more pages later one when I get a whim and decide to add something, you know? For that reason, a photobook is big commitment for me to make. :) However, it was worth the effort. I love the idea of a complete book telling the story of a trip start to finish.

I have to admit, though, that I had no idea how long this process would be for me. I did make an effort to retouch most of the photos before putting them on the page, which always adds time to the process. I intentionally kept the pages simple – it was to be all about the photos and not necessarily look like a scrapbook. Just a base paper, some photo frames filled with photos, and text and/or alphabets to tell the story. I’m so glad I went with a simple approach – it helped me both keep the focus on the photo and the story without distracting elements, and it also helped streamline the process so that I was able to create 84 pages for the book without getting tired of the task. :)

Photobooks Available! Free Shipping, too!

I’m pleased to announce the launch of my first photobook with Hoorray.

I’ve been busy working on my designs since spring, and am happy to say my first design went live a few weeks ago. Now there’s a promotion for free shipping for my blog readers, so I wanted to post a big announcement here!

 

Free shipping is available through the end of September only, so don’t delay!

My book can be accessed directly via the link below. I’m proud of my first book, a photobook designed to highlight the little girl in your life. Inspired by my own little princess, this book features pinks, browns, and greens on simple, classic page designs to allow your photos be the focus.

When you create your book, feel free to mix and match the background pages and page layouts to your liking. Don’t like the blue pages? No worries! Just replace them with another available background.

I’ll post announcements here when additional photobooks are available.

Now, I’m off to create my own copy of my photobook. I plan to do a quick tutorial for my readers to show how easy it is to create these long-lasting treasures! I recently did Gianna’s 4-year photoshoot, so I plan to put those photos in my photobook. Can’t wait!

I hope you enjoy my books!

Catching Up: A Couple Gianna Layouts

I have been really bad about blogging these last few months. I think I may have overextended myself with things I want to accomplish. I have a monthly goal to scrapbook 20 pages each month. My average so far? 6. Last year I completed 15 pages a month. I haven’t updated my Project 365 blog for months (though I am still going strong taking a photo each and every day.) I don’t know what it is… I thought that once we moved to the new house, I’d have more time to scrap and do my thing, because, after all, I now have my very own scrap room to use. The truth is that sometimes weeks go by without me stepping foot into that room! Work (my real job) has been busy and challenging as well. And now that Gianna is 4, there are lots of activities to participate in: Soccer, T-Ball, Swimming Pool. It’s all going by so quickly.

I have also been very busy creating scrapbook designs for sale as photobooks… and once the designs go live, I will make a big announcement here! Hopefully I can encourage a few people to make some photobooks with my designs!

I do want to share a couple of layouts I’ve done recently. I really wanted to share one of Gianna’s dance recital last May, but I already moved the layout to my external hard drive. (I fight a CONSTANT battle with finding space on the laptop’s hard drive… but I just bought myself a new, portable external drive and soon ALL my photos and scrapbook stuff will reside on that instead of on the laptop drive and leave me some room on this computer for insanely large disk space requirements of Photoshop… and maybe even Illustrator if I can get the courage – er, time – to try to learn another program.)

Instead I will share a couple very recent layouts.

This is of Gianna at soccer practice. Yes, we bought her a special pink soccer ball. :) Soccer didn’t actually go so well for us. She liked the idea of playing with the ball and kicking it around the field… but when it came time to compete and play tag games with the other kids… the idea of other kids kicking HER BALL away from her was a bit too much at time. Luckily in TBall, no one steals your ball, and it’s going much better for her! She ADORES TBall.  Still, I love this layout of her with her soccer ball because you can see her really making an effort. She looks so cute as a soccer player!

 

This layout is about the night I took Gianna to the hair salon for a quick cut with the intention of taking her out and taking portraits of her afterwards. She ended up with her hair braided, which, while it was totally cute, is not something she normally wears, and wasn’t the look I wanted for her formal photos. So loved them so much that I couldn’t bear asking her to take them out either. I still took some informal photos of it and made them into this layout.

Exciting News!

I’ve been wanting to share this for awhile.

I’m proud to announce my next venture: I’m designing photo book pages for an online photo retailer! That means you can order custom photo books with themed photo book pages and covers I have designed! The site is not live yet, but it is coming soon! Keep watching for the official announcement!

Digital Scrap Page – Dad and G

I’ve been trying to find the time to scrap an occasional page here and there. Now that it’s (supposedly) summer here, the time to do fun creative stuff has been replaced with spending time outdoors. When I do find the time to be creative, I find myself going for fast and simple creations. I whipped up this page one evening in a short amount of time. It’s very simple, but I like it.

The  photo was one I took for Project 365 back in April. Dad and Gigi were being silly one day and I snapped some photos of them together. I gave the photo an antiqued overlay when I retouched it. And when I used it on the layout here, I blended it into the background paper to make it even more subtle. Just a very simple ribbon, tag, and wordart to complete the layout.