2015 Digital Scrapbooking Day

In The Studio

A lot of people, when they hear my blog name or email address, assume that the “scraps” in Scraps of Life refers to scrapbooking. That’s not the case (it actually represents the bits and pieces–aka scraps–of time and experiences that make up our lives) but it’s true that I’ve been into scrapbooking since the late 90s, back when the landscape was wild and the supplies were few. My how things have changed (in, um, 17 years).

If you’ve hung around here long enough, you know I’m the crafty sort and I do love my papers and glue and for the longest time I swore I’d never give them up! I still haven’t, but I did broaden my horizons back around 2006 or so when I started fooling around with digital scrapbooking–turns out, I really liked it!

Even though I have most of my supplies for traditional, paper, scrapbooking I mostly use them for other projects these day. Instead, I’m 99% digital when I do make the time to scrapbook. Why?

  • Digital elements don’t get used up
  • Digital elements don’t take up a lot of space (well, physical space… my external hard drive is another matter, but storage gets cheaper every day!)
  • You never run out of glue
  • You can change the color of a paper or embellishment if it’s not quite right
  • Unfinished layouts are easy to save and come back to

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve held onto a particular piece of patterned paper because it was so pretty and I didn’t want to use it up because it was now discontinued. Or how I once borrowed my mom’s SUV to go to a scrapbook retreat because it meant I could bring more supplies. OR how frustrating it is to have the perfect thing for a layout but it clashes horribly with everything else I want to use. The struggle is real, and the supply bills are high!

Digital kits and elements also tend to be a lot less expensive than their physical counterparts. Add to that the fact that most of our photos these days are digital, you save money by not having to make prints for scrapbooking (not to mention the ease of resizing images to fit just so) and you can still print out your pages and put them into albums.

An unexpected benefit from digital scrapbooking was learning to use Adobe products (I took a course from Scrap Girls back in the day on how to scrapbook with Photoshop Elements 3.0–I think 12 just came out? No, wait, we’re on version 14 now) that made it so much easier when I started my webcomic and needed to do some digital post-processing. I’ve also dabbled in creating my own digital papers and elements, including this little mini kit (from back in 2012) which is kinda perfect for this time of year! In honor of Digital Scrapbooking Day (which is the first Saturday in November, aka tomorrow), I’m putting this little set up for grabs (for free!).

HMD_harvestfruit_preview600Get your free kit here!

More recently I got bit by the Project Life bug. I love that it’s quick and easy and the templates are so much fun to use. I bought a physical kit to put together an album of years of family photos for Mom a couple years ago, then I switched to their digital options for my own stuff. Here’s a smattering of some of my recent layouts

From our wedding album (which I really need to get on the ball with!)

From our wedding album (which I really need to get on the ball with!)

From our honeymoon (I still have a lot to do on this book, too)

From our honeymoon at Disney (I still have a lot to do on this book, too)

Halloween 2015! After all, the everyday is what makes the most memories...

Halloween 2015! After all, the everyday is what makes the most memories…

And one of last year's conventions.

And one of last year’s conventions.

Will you be doing any scrapbooking this weekend, digital or otherwise?

A Different Sort of December Daily

In The Studio

Have you ever heard of the December Daily album? A page-a-day scrapbook for the month of December that usually exists to document all the wonderful, Normal Rockwell-esque moments lovingly captured during the holiday season.

But how much of that is really real? How much of what we put in scrapbooks, Facebook updates, and family photos is the full story? How true is the picture we paint for others, the picture we try to buy into ourselves?

That’s the sort of question some friends posed a couple months ago, while proposing that we all take a hard look at the hectic days of a real December and scrap that, the good, the bad, and the hilarious. The ring leaders have been offering up prompts for each day, for those who are looking for inspiration, in the Jingle Hells facebook group. I’ve made it through the first week of pages and so far haven’t needed the prompts, but I did want to share what I’d done so far, as a counterpoint to those saccharine-sweet albums that might be showing up on blogs around the web.

jvanderbeek_DDcover

jvanderbeek_DDday1

jvanderbeek_DDday2

jvanderbeek_DDday3

jvanderbeek_DDday4

jvanderbeek_DDday5

jvanderbeek_DDday6

jvanderbeek_DDday7

No surprise I choose a digital approach to the album, both to keep it easy as well as keep it quick. For continuity’s sake I opted to use a common background from the Brittish Designs/Sahlin Studio Project Mouse (Days): Cards kit. They were intended to be used in a Pocket-Style album for things like counting down to vacation but I thought they were just too perfect for a project like this. In paper scrapbooking it’s a royal pain to have the black, chalkboard-style cards to journal on but digital makes it a snap.

I kept the rest of the elements simple, using mostly fonts to dress up the page, a few choice elements, and the odd Alpha or two. Physically, these pages would only be 6″x4″, so if I get the urge to print them I could put them 6-up on a 12″ sheet, making putting this into an actual album super-simple, or maybe one of the mini albums that every photo printer offers this time of year for cheap. I see now that I switched tense after Day 2, but I’m not going to lose sleep over that. It’s all a part of keeping it real, I guess!

Have you thought about what you’re life looks like in status updates and picture-perfect moments?
How often do you preserve the other side of the story?

 

 

What’s the Buzz??? 5 Months and Counting!

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

150 days, to be exact. And that makes things feel really close. Especially since our countdown officially started in the 800s!

Didn’t mean to leave this blog hanging for 2 months, but some exciting things have been happening and that’s what I’m here to update you on.

See, as I was finishing up my Disney posts I finally got the word and it was good: I was picked to be a Bee!

Weddingbee the wedding blog | wedding vendor reviews |DIY wedding invitations | DIY save the dates | wedding resale

Yup, as of early April I’ve been hanging out on Weddingbee known under the name Miss Road Trip!

roadtrip

So while I haven’t been creating new posts, I’ve been retooling a lot of the old posts to fit the customs over at our new digs. Going forward (starting in a couple weeks I’ll be back to posting new stuff, once the archives are caught up) you’ll see instead of Jenn & Todd it’ll by Miss and Mr Road Trip (or RT, or Mr Trips as I sometimes refer to Todd). It’s been wonderful getting to know the other Bees “in person” and we even have another Bee right here in Tallahassee.

Not that it’s been a champagne and roses. To tell the truth, some of the comments my posts have received haven’t all been kind. Sure, it’s something you expect when you post your inner rambling for the outer world to read, but it doesn’t make the rude ones any easier to take when they land in your inbox. Still, you take the little bit of bad and compare it to the whole heaps of good and the scales definitely tip more in favor of that.

Our plans are picking up speed–we finally had a meeting at our venue and now a lot of little things are falling into place–and things will keep happening at a breakneck pace for the next 5 months. To continue the to-do list tradition, here’s what is on the docket for 5 months out:

  • Rehearsal dinner: make plans, reservations, and decide who all’s going to be there
  • Wedding Invitations: confirm your order or start/continue the DIY
  • Cake time! Tastings or test recipes
  • Showers: if you’re having one, get your guest list to the hostess
  • Wedding shoes and dress fittings
  • Hair and make-up: if you’re outsourcing, make your choice and schedule your trials, otherwise brush up on your supplies and try out some things at home
  • Music: decide what’s playing when

So where are we? Not too bad off. I have the plan for our invitations, have my shoes and need no fittings, nor am I encouraging any showers in our honor. Just doesn’t seem fitting. I do need to come up with a guest list for the “bachelorette” party (though I prefer to adopt the term Hen Night from our friends across the pond; just sounds better, like the “hen parties” Mom used to call the gossips who’d congregate up the road when I was a kid).

All in all, we’re good on the broad strokes, now I just need to get cracking on the long list of DIY decorations, especially now that I know exactly what we need!

In the mean time, I’ve been keeping up with the Wedding Year Scrapbook. Here are the January and February pages–I’m getting caught up 🙂

PW_week9_spread

Happy New Year!PW_week10_spread

A low-photo week (silly SD card crapped out on me) leading up to our e-shoot.PW_week11_spread

And then a surfeit of photos thanks to our fabulous photographer.PW_week12_spread

Gaming and fun with foodie things. A common thread throughout out life.PW_week13_spread

I won tickets to HAIR so we had a double date night this week!PW_week14_spread

Actual work on actual wedding-related crafty things.PW_week15_spread

Geek love just in time for Valentine’s Day.PW_week16_spread

We’ve got rings–one more step taken toward being ready for the wedding.
PW_week17_spread

Monkey shines! Todd (I can still call him that, since this post won’t be going up on the ‘bee!) frequently arranges the monkeys cutely to surprise me when I get out of the shower.

And that’s us for now. I expect us to be back to our regular scheduled planning sometime this month.

Until then…

Project Wedding Album | December 2012

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

So back on our anniversary I decided to scrapbook this last year before the wedding. I did pretty well with putting November together, but then got totally sidetracked with the holidays and never got around to the December pages until just recently. Unfortunately, sometime in early January, my computer decided to “fix” some files on my memory card.

Apparently “fix” means delete the entire December folder from the SD card, and do it so well that no recovery program I tried could resurrect it. Bye-bye December photos!

Thankfully I had some photos from my cell phone and the few I’d copied from the card for blog posts, though those aren’t usually the ones I’d scrapbook. Still, we make do, right?

Week 5 of 52

Week 5 of 52

Week 6 of 52

Week 6 of 52

Week 7 of 52

Week 7 of 52

Week 8 of 52

Week 8 of 52

Eight weeks into a year of 52 doesn’t seem like all that much, but then I realize I’m up to Week 18 in my notebook and that feels like quite a ways along.

And yes I’m being much more conscientious about backing up my photos to multiple places on a much more regular basis. And I’ve ditched the one SD card that seemed to be the source of all the issues (this was not the first such incident–I have maybe 4 pictures from our Halloween party when originally there were close to 100… sigh). Learn from my mistake, folks.

At least I know we have PLENTY of pictures to choose from in January 😉