Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Tonight's Agenda? Green Scrapbooking!

My story for scrapbooking!

Scrapbooking is a great way for me to save those precious memories while doing something totally fun and enjoyable.  I grew up in a very poor family, and as a result of that, I actually grew up with very few pictures of myself (or my family).  As a result, I am now going through pictorial OCD.  I find it necessary that I take pictures of everyone and everything dealing with my family.  I should probably add a "scrapbook" section to my monthly budget.

Scrapbooking is actually one of the easier crafts I have come across.  Rough counting, I think I am approaching finishing about a thousand pages so far (yes, I said a thousand).  I have also "grown" in my scrapbooking skills as well.  So, in this, I will include an "evolution" of my skills.  Yes, we all begin as newbs, and it takes time to master the skills!  I am still in my scrapbooking infancy, so to speak, so I still have a ton of growing room.

My first "large" scrapbook project was actually of my baby shower with my son.  My girlfriend bought me a scrapbook and gave me the pictures from my baby shower, which I enjoyed putting together.  I mention this story because, as she helped, I noticed that blue teddy bear stickers were strategically placed in many of my pictures.  I had to ask her why and she said because my underwear was showing!  I was mortified that my whole family witnessed that, and not one person even told me!  So, you can even scrapbook to cover up mishaps.  (So, that's what the stickers are for :))

So, moving forward, I started scrapbooking my son's life since the day he was born.  Every cool/fun opportunity I can snap a few pictures, and I'm there camera handy ready to let it roll.  I have literally thousands of pictures, and people wonder why I take so many.  

Have you ever tried taking pictures of children?  You ask them to smile and they smile just enough to make you think you got a good picture, but by the time the shutter snaps, the picture looks like your child is either constipated or an alien or something in between.  So, I have found the more pictures you can just snap, snap, snap, you will eventually find one that's cute and usable.  I keep the good ones for my scrapbook, the funny outtakes go to family and friends.  They appreciate the candidness of the photos.

So, this week's "theme" is "green" scrapbooking.  I don't mean environmentally friendly green (although its great to think about our earth in all things), but the pure color green.  I will be posting some pictures of my most loved "green" pages I have created when I return home.  I have found that my most greens come from Christmas and zoo photos since those types of photos usually include a lot of greenery.  The most successful uses of color is when you find something small in the picture you want to highlight.  Just make sure you aren't highlighting the green complexion obtained from riding the "Intimidator 305" at King's Dominion.

My evolution for scrapbooking.   You can really see where I started and where I'm going......in the theme of GREEN!


Above was my first shots at scrapbooking.  At the time, my son was still just mere weeks old and I wanted to ensure I didn't get "behind".  And I discovered scrapbooking was a great way for me to wind down at the end of a "fussy" day :).  My sweetie when he was just days old.


Caden grows up fast, and so does my skills.  I learned to crop pictures (Ack, you can do that?!?!) and was actually successful at it!  He was pretending to be a bug in case you were wondering.


Other green instance is here, as my son loves to do artwork.  I gave him a crayon and paper as soon as he could sit up in a high-chair.  So, I scrapped him doing his art.  In some cases, I actually incorporated his artwork into the pages as well, so there are definitely some of those in there!


This year, I hit a wild milestone......WILD!  So, you can color the background?!!?!What!?!?!?  The background doesn't have to be white?!?!?!  Yes, I discovered that the 12x12 paper can not only be used for creating different sized papers for other things, but BACKGROUND...OOOOO!  I think my milestone hit because Creative Memories (where I get my scrapbooks) went true 12x12 recently which enabled the 12x12 pages to fit :).  I think that's what happened.

Green and Christmas.  As I said, they usually go hand in hand :).  My son with his bike/helmet he got from Santa.  He actually wore the helmet while opening all of his other presents, that silly goose.



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