Simple Studio

When the words fail you, just sing a song!

Do you remember those high-school tapes we carefully mixed—hopefully I'm not dating myself too bad here—with all of our favorite songs on them? Songs that spoke the words that our conflicted high-school souls just couldn't get out, ha! :) Well, I've noticed that when words fail me, I can often turn to music for inspiration. In some instances, I'll even let the lyrics of a song be my actual journaling. Now don't get me wrong, I think journaling is one of the more important aspects of scrapbooking. For me, at least. I'm all about getting the stories down. But every once in a while, music can speak to me on a layout in a way that just plain words cannot. Usually this sort of thing happens when I have a special picture—or pictures, as in the case of the third layout—that I just like for some unknown reason.

For example, here's an older layout I did for the magazine sometime last year. It's a picture of Hoonie when he was just seven days old. It's actually one of many (thousands of, in fact!) pictures I took of him in those first few days of life. But for some reason, this one was the one that melted my heart, so to speak. So along with just a few embellishments and a sheet of patterned paper, I added my "journaling" which was basically just the first line of a favorite Raffi song. In case it's too faint to read in the scan, the journaling reads, "Baby Dear...blessed be your shining light."

Now I know it's not the perfect baby picture by any means, but something about it really touched me. And when I paired it with the lyrics to the Raffi song, I knew I had done the picture justice. :)

Another older baby layout that I did uses both lyrics from an old Earth, Wind and Fire song along with a few of my own.

I love this picture of Hoonie because he looks so bright and happy here...full of endless possibilities. And something about it just made me naturally think of this song. I also added a few of my own words after the lyrics because I thought it helped tie the layout together nicely.

My last example of music-inspired journaling was inspired by a group of pictures. One of my favorite ways to document the sights of a special holiday or season is to make a photo collage of it. Here's one I made just recently of Christmas decor found around our home right now.

After printing it out in 4x6 (it's easy to resize a collage in Photoshop), I mounted it onto cardstock that I had pre-printed with the lyrics to one of my favorite Christmas songs. I then put that on some patterned paper, added some ribbon and stickers and ended up with a simple and easy layout that captures one of my favorite parts about this time of year...the decorating, of course! :)

So hopefully I've been able to inspire you with some examples of how you can incorporate music into your journaling. I know it has come to my rescue more than once. And if you get the chance to try it yourself, please don't forget to share with all of us by posting it in the Simple gallery (and adding a link here in the comments). I'd love to see what you come up with!

Now who wants to join me in an impromptu Christmas sing-along? ;)

The write stuff...

So a bunch of my friends went to a "New Kids on the Block" reunion concert here in Utah a couple of weeks ago. The whole thing just made me laugh and now look how it has affected me with my title spin. :)

Today I want to share a few suggestions for simplifying your journaling. When I talk to my friends about scrapbooking the thing they say is the most intimidating is getting meaningful journaling down on their pages.

A few of my favorite journaling shortcuts are:

• the notebook. Keep a notebook or small journal handy to jot funny comments or journaling ideas down in a hurry. I have been known to write my kids' sayings on a grocery receipt or a napkin and get it in their notebook later. When someone makes a memorable comment, try to write it down immediately. I love to record it just as it was said, so promptness is helpful.

• quizzes. Beth mentioned this during her blog week and I couldn't agree more. If the idea of writing a lengthy piece of journaling stresses you out, get out a little quiz and ask the questions to whomever your page is about. Every time I've used quiz journaling, I've learned something new about the person I was interviewing.

• cut & paste. Raise you hand if you have a blog! Cutting and pasting my blog entries has become my new favorite trick for getting easy journaling onto my scrapbook pages. If you wrote an entry in your blog all about that trip to the pumpkin patch, lucky you! All you need to do is copy the text from your blog entry, print it out, and create a scrapbook page about it.

Here's an example from my very own blog. I wrote this sentimental post the day my oldest son turned nine. To create my layout, I simply copied the journaling from my blog, pasted it into a text box in Word, printed it out, ordered prints of the corresponding photos, and created a simple scrapbook page. It was great to have those feelings expressed on my blog and even better to have them documented in Sam's album.

Enjoy your Wednesday! It'll be pretty much a bakery all day at my house with all the rolls and pies I need to make. Wish me luck! :)
 

step away from the keyboard...(aka Friday Fun Tutorial)

is what I keep looking over my shoulder and expecting to hear from the "Simple Scrapbooks Committee Appointed to Making Sure our Guest Bloggers Don't Barrage Their Fine Readers with Copious Amounts of Blogging Stuff"

In other words, this is my last post for the week and I'm going out with a doozy!

I hope you don't mind :)

I made this a few weeks ago before our Thanksgiving - I thought it would make a nice little hostess gift to thank whoever it was that wanted to feed me and my family turkey. 

Turns out I am enjoying those little cards immensely. 

I decided to make a Christmas version in hopes that if it turned out cute enough any friends or family that came over and saw it would covet it badly enough to get me a free ride for Christmas dinner.

So here is the how to:

Here is my list of materials:

• 2 pieces of double sided patterned paper (I used the Heidi Grace winter line - it's gorgeous!)

• threading water punch (I am going through a romance with this tool, not unlike the fling I had with my Bind-It-All last year)
• 2 inch scalloped circle from EK Success (I'm kind of having a tiny affair on the threading water punch with this bad boy)
• 1.5 inch circle punch from EK Success
• acrylic stamps from Inkadinkadoooooooooo (I am always tempted to add ooooo's onto this name when I say it, unfortunately for you I often hold myself back when speaking and let it all hang out when typing)
• cardstock
• little blingy snowflakes and gems from Hero Arts

Box Instructions:

Take medium blue cardstock which has been cut into a 7 1/2" square and score 2 inches in on all four sides.

Using scissors, make vertical cuts (following the scored line) on all four sides to create a flap in each corner of the 7 1/2" square cardstock piece. Add adhesive to the top side of each “flap” and assemble box.

Take white cardstock which has been cut into a 5 3/4” square and score 1 inch in on all four sides. Adhere 4 3/4x 4 3/4 inch square of patterned paper in centre of white cardstock (I sanded all the edges of any patterned paper I used in this projects - an emery board works great!)

DON’T CUT IT YET or you will be forced to redo this. Don’t ask me how I know ;)

Take 1x6” inch piece of light blue paper  and adhere lightly across the center of the lid - trim ends.

Using the threading water scallop punch, punch scallops all the way around the white piece.  I then added a piece of 3/4 inch organza ribbon (which I didn’t get a picture of) to finish it nicely, I laid it across the piece of light blue paper, marked it with a pencil and then at the crease on either side cut a small slit to poke the ribbon through - flip the lid over and tape the ends down.

Assemble top decoration, including tag and pop dot to the top of the box.

Then repeat the cutting and folding as we did on the bottom piece. 

 

 

 

Cards:

3 1/4 x 6 1/2 pieces of cardstock in 3 shades of blue

Score in center and cut coordinating paper for the front and inside embellishment - sand all these pieces. 

Punch scallops out of white cardstock and 1.5" circles out of the different blues (2 of each) and stamp/embellish them.

Assemble punched pieces and pop dot scalloped/stamped circles to the front over decorative strip on each card.

Add sanded decorative strip to 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 pieces of cardstock and stamp and emboss with “thanks” if so desired.

BONUS TUTORIAL:

Hahaaaa - you thought I was done, didn't you?

I had a couple of people email/ask how I did the embroidery hoop project I posted on Monday so last night I made a quick one and took pics of the process so I could share them here.  This really is a project you can get done in WAY less than an hour - and I think this size would make a really cute tree ornament.

This one is a smaller than the first one I posted - I think the hoop is a 5" one - but you can do any size that will fit within a 12x12 piece of paper.

Stuff I used:

• My Mind's Eye patterned paper - their new Christmas line is so cute!  And totally my "go to" colours
• circle cutter
• embroidery hoop
• ribbon
• MME die cut sheet
• Stampin' Up slot punch
• pop dots

Figure out which circle is just slightly - about 3/8 of an inch - larger than the INSIDE of your hoop and cut out of patterned paper.

Use the inside of the hoop to mark with a pencil a circle on the back of your patterned paper circle.

Use your scissors to fringe the entire way around the circle - only up to the circle you've marked.  This will allow the paper to bend back without ripping or bending when you put the hoop together.

Tie ribbon around the ugly part of the hoop at the top.  You know, the metal part that squeezes it together. 

Figure out what embellishments/photos you want to use and adhere to the front.  I usually use a stronger tape for home decor items because regular tape seems to not hold up under gravity.

I hope you enjoy these - I've had a great time here this week!

It's true what they say

about your kids growing up too fast. This is a picture of my oldest son who is 16. Somedays I can hardly believe he is so old. Other days I can. Hard to describe how I feel about it.

I just did this layout of him as a baby- time does indeed fly!