Plain Old Scrap booking

Wow, these last couple of days have been great! All I've been doing is scrap booking. For me! My albums!

Usually I am under the gun to design pages for one of my workshops, or I am making cards, or something to sell. The last time I did any  scrap booking for me was in November at my scrap booking retreat. That seems like ages ago. This weekend though, I committed to trying to finalize some of my albums, and I completed over 16 pages! It feels great. I know I won't be able to keep up the momentum, but I hope that it helps to keep me inspired to scrap book my life a little more often. I have a renewed love for my pictures, my pages and my story. I will share with you, as I take pictures and organize them, but for now, here is a before and after of a layout that I quite like. 
 
This is using the Creative Memories Simply Beautiful (I know, shame on me for using retired product still, but it remains to be a favorite with me), with my two favorite colors, grape and green apple (the two best colors ever!).  Tools used were the hexagon custom cutting tool from ages ago, the butterfly punch, corner rounder and the frame chain border cartridge, as well as the scallop stitch border cartridge.

This was my daughters Twelfth birthday. This picture right here, pretty much sums up how she feels about cupcakes!

Thanks so much for checking in. If you like what you see, please consider pinning this to Pinterest, share my blog with a friend, leave me a comment or sign up to get updates from my blog. To do that, just enter your e mail address in the box provided on the right hand side where is says "follow by e mail".

Take care!

Tannis

Scrapbooking with Creative Memories Black and White Paper

I have two scrapbooking groups that are working on an album that I was inspired to help others to do. It's an ``All About You`` memory book. This is an album that we are working on, mostly for ourselves. When we are done, I wonder, will we share our albums with each other? Will we show our kids (they are the ones we ultimately want to share our story with). Will we keep it somewhere private until we are ready to share?
Perhaps you are wondering why we would not put it on display, bursting with pride for all the work we have done. Well, let me explain.
Have you ever looked through your parents old black and white photos, and been totally mesmerized by someones beauty back in the day? Have you looked at all those people and wondered who they were, what was the connection, what was the story? Who was moms first love, Dad`s half brother? What did your Grandmas handwriting look like? Well, my hope is that through this album, our kids won't have those questions!
In taking a writing course, I realized, that more than just my writing, I wanted to combine my love of pictures and working with paper, and have a visual story for my daughter to look back on. I wanted her to know what I looked like as a baby, what my parents looked like, who my childhood pets were.  I also wanted her to read the poems I wrote when I was a teenager, as I learned about love, about deception, and living life! I wanted her to know that I had a first love and a broken heart (yes I still have all of his love letters to me, so I will pull them out one day when she needs to know and she will see, that yes, I was a teenage girl once, who thought I could not live without that one special boy!) I want my daughter to read, in my writing and my words, the tragedy that crushed my world as a young girl, taking away my trust and for a while, my hope. I want her to know my strength, my resilience. I want to showcase my favorite recipes, my favorite photos, my life, seen through my eyes, for her to know!

So I chose a black and white paper palette, with pops of color! We have been having so much fun creating this album. I have found it a bit difficult to work quickly through it, as I take a long time to mull over most decisions I make, and figuring out what pictures to include, what stories to write, I see, that I need way more pages than I thought! Here is a peak at some of the pages we have worked on so far!

 I sure hope that my scrapbooking ladies are enjoying this journey with me, because I am having so much fun creating these pages for them!

Thanks for stopping by!

Tannis