Welcome to a day in my life. I can't guarantee that this will be an exciting read for anyone. My life is filled with all the mundane activities of a stay-at-home-mom just trying to raise her three sons to be the best men they can be.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Scrapbook Nerd DT Reveal - with Paige


This week, I've enjoyed using some Autumn products, and doing layouts about subjects other than my kids.

Project One: Fall For You!

I used a free cut file from Scrapbook and Cards Today and the papers from Cedar Lane document my gratitude for my husband at Thanksgiving.







Project Two: Bloom and Grow

I still have a lot of papers and embellishments from Crate Paper's Bloom collection and this was perfect for telling the story of my new house plants and my hope that I can develop even a little bit of a green thumb to care for them.








Project Three: Papa's Tree

I wanted to tell the story of the tree we planted in honour of my Dad after he passed away. I kept the design simple, layering papers from the Cedar Lane collection and bits of Maggie Holmes ephemera. I wanted the focus to be on the photo and the journaling.








Thanks for looking!
Paige



Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Scrapbook Nerd Academy

Hello Everyone.
The Scrapbook Nerd Blog is still down, so I will be hosting the blog posts on my blog this week.

Today is Tutorial Tuesday and Design Team Member, Paige, is showing us how to combin 12x12 layouts with pocket pages.

"I am primarily a 12x12 scrapbooker. I have chosen not to do project life as I didn't feel I could make the commitment to doing weekly, or even monthly spreads. That said I have enjoyed using pocket pages on certain projects such as December Daily, and Week in the Life.

More recently, I began combining 12x12 layouts with pocket pages. I find this model particularly helpful in vacation albums, or with holiday or events, where I have more than the usual number of photos that I want to include in an album.

Here are a few tips I have learned from this hybrid approach:

1.Establish some sort of pattern to give your album structure. For example, in my album documenting our trip down east, I used a 12x12 spread to mark the beginning of each new city on our road trip. For my Disney album I am using the front 12x12 to mark the start of each new day and different park.


2. This method of combining takes some planning. When you insert a 12x12 you have to plan to do two of these layouts, the front and back side. Similarly the pocket page requires both sides to be filled. To help guide me as I lay out the photos and cards, I created an outline of the most common formats of 12x12 pocket pages and use that to arrange my photos and cards before finalizing the spread.



3. When there is a 12x12 layout beside a pocket page, I do my best to ensure that they flow together Sometimes that means the two pages are telling a similar story and I am pulling out the best photos for the larger layout. Other times I try to match up colours or patterns across the two pages so that they are pleasing to the eye.






4. When you are comfortable with this approach, you can use it well to document daily life. I have decided that I will incorporate pocket pages into my regular 12x12 albums, therefore allowing me to use the hybrid method without creating a separate project life album.




How many of you use pocket pages in your scrapbooking? What method do you like best?


Saturday, October 08, 2016

My Scrapbook Nerd Design Team Reveal

Hi there everyone. 
This week I've been playing along with Shimelle's Go Now Go collection.  I have a lot of travel photos and I've been buying tons of different travel collections as I'm working on a big trip album.  I have to say that the Go Now Go collection has been a refreshing change to work with.  I love the brighter colours, and the inclusion of some of the primary colours. It really makes it more versatile for a variety of pictures, and seasons.

Project One: Off the Beaten Track

For this project I stuck with the more primary colours of the collection. Most of my travel photos are not of sunny Caribbean-type colours, so I'm loving the versatility of Go Now Go. Even though it's travel, it is also great for other types of projects as well.


Project Two : Mackinac Island

This project was used in the tutorial for this week on how to make twine flowers as an embellishment.
The rest of the page came together very quickly by just sticking with the embellishments from the collection.



Project Three: Let's Go Explore

My final project is also from our travels this summer in Thunder Bay. I'm a fairly simple scrapbooker and I like to let the photos shine.  I found that all I needed to do was add a few of the ephemera bits and chipboard pieces and I was done.



Thanks for stopping by and checking out my projects.  Be sure to stop by the Scrapbook Nerd Store to have a look at this collection!