Is “Scrapbooking” Too Scary For You?

  I have been talking to some ladies about the new Creative Memories company. And it has come to my attention that the word scrapboking is actually a scary word for some people that associate it with long hours, too costly, and too messy. I have introduced the new Ahni & Zoe product as being faster, easier, and more cost effective. It can be used in so many ways making it the best all-in-one product for scrappers of all degrees of interest and skills. I even found a way to use it with digital scrapbooking. As this new company continues to grow itself I am finding more and more possibilities for Scrap Happy Girls and Ahni & Zoe products. But I am also finding that I may need to update my approach to the subject. It is the goal of Ahni & Zoe to bring our photos off of our devices and into our life to be celebrated. I adore this concept! In truth the purpose of a scrapbook, even before the age of photographs, was to tell the story of its owner and to preserve those things most treasured by its creator. These could have been trinkets of affection, letters, notes, bits of papers or pictures the musings of the owner herself. Even men kept a scrapbook. It was seen as a way of recording your family history. For woman it was the only way they could preserve their own identities and history.

  Scrap Happy Girls has built itself on these foundational principles. I tell people that we all have a story to tell and that each one is unique. We may all be wives, mothers, and daughters, but our personal experience as such is different from any one else’s it is unique to only ourself. I once heard it said that you can have 20 people all looking at the same picture and everyone of them will walk away with his or her own take on it and no two will ever agree. It’s the same with a photo. You can have a box full of beautiful pictures but they will only be truly significant to you. This is why we include journaling in our album so we can tell the viewer exactly what that moment was about for you.  You are telling your story and telling those who come after you who you are and what you want to be remembered for. I want one made for me later in life so that it can be shown at my memorial service and people can remember me for who I really was.

  Scrapbooking has evolved over the years with all the extras that come with it. You can  walk into any craft store and quickly be overtaken with the multitudes of choices. There are stickers of every kind. Papers of every fiber, color, size and texture. Blank ones and patterned ones. Glitters and sparkles. Embossing tools and so much more. It is easy to see how one can be scared of scrapbooking. But I have also always told my groups to keep it simple. Decide on the story you are trying to convey and pick just a few embellishments to compliment your photos and help tell your story. I have explained the importance of a good layout or page composition so that the eye of the reader is not confused but gently led through the pages of your album as the pictures primarily tell the story. Remember from one of my earliest post, Your pictures are the stars of the show and your embellishments are the supporting actors. Perhaps we have been too caught up in the many options and newest latest gadget to appreciate the art of scrapbooking. What Ahni & Zoe has done is to give us a quality all-in-one product that returns us to this organic simplistic beginning of scrapbooking. I was trying to explain how I don’t want to sell another scrapbook tool. I want to be able to return to simplicity and the teaching of scrapbooking as an art form. I want to connect with people on a more personal level by experiencing their photos and hearing their stories. There are people who walk past us on the sidewalk daily that we have our presupposed ideas and opinions of without ever actually hearing their stories. I feel privileged when one of those people steps in from the sidewalk and shares their story at one of our crops and then even better, they see their own life in a different way than before.

  So going forward I will resolve to sharing more of these types of posts And less about the selling of product. I want to make this craft more accessible and less intimidating to people. You may have noticed that the blog now looks more like a website. I have done this to separate the blog about scrapbooking, photo tips, and story telling from the products. If you are interested in the shop associated with this site you can find it under the product tabs. Also for those who are local to the Nashville area, you will find a place for our classes and events posted on the homepage. I hope that you will continue to enjoy this site and find it helpful in whatever season of life you are in!

A look at Ahni & Zoe Fast to Fabulous Albums

The front cover of the Good Vibes Album

Sneak peak at some of the pre-designed pages

Sneak peak of some of the pages

Sneak Peak

Sneak Peak

Strap hinge to add extra pages

I thought I would share a look at the Fast to Fabulous Album I will be using in my video. I want to show you how much fun these albums really are. You Know that old saying “Never judge a book by it’s cover”? Well I’m afraid there is a lot of that going around about these albums. People are looking at them and jumping to conclusions. “I can’t be creative. I can’t add as many pictures as I want or where. I can’t journal anymore. My album will look like everyone else’s. I don’t like to wallpaper my pages.” Now, before you all start thinking I’m being a little harsh, I too was a skeptic in the beginning. Then I ordered one and realized how much fun these albums are. If you are someone who has never made an album before and are not sure how to get started then you will appreciate this album style. You can easily follow the layout and add your extras and easily have your first complete album to share or give as a gift. Perhaps you are one who simply does not have the time, space, or finances to get into scrapbooking. Ah, then these are the solution for you too, my friend! You can use the predesigned pages as are and add just the right extras to your pages. Or you may be like me. I love to get crazy with my albums. That means that if it can fit in a page protector and still close… it will find its way into my albums!  For people like us we can add to the  pages add our own cleverly designed pages, remove the ones we don’t want to use, mix and match with other albums and so much more. I will go into more about this in my video on the 23rd but I really hope you are maybe looking at these in a different light and perhaps getting a little excited as well.

A Sample of a Digital Scrapbook Wedding Album

This is a sample of digital scrapbooking in a wedding album I made for my brother. He has opened up shop as a photographer and the photos are from a wedding he photographed. Hope you enjoy. I had a lot of fun putting it together for him.

 

Scrapbooking for School

My America Notebook 1st Grade

  We have had problems with our internet so could not post anything new for you but it has given us time to work on pages for our notebooks to share with you. We have started several books but here are some ideas for history to help get your own creative juices flowing. The kids are learning so much this year in history and we have had a lot of fun making our notebooks. They have learned about the flag and it’s creation, American symbols, What it means to be a free country, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, and our first president. Here are the pages and some study ideas for the flag.

  We cut out our background paper to fit the cover of  our folder. Then cut out a printed field of blue with the fifty stars, and six white and seven red strips to glue down as the stripes on the flag. We didn’t use the white ones in this version because Kalob wanted to make the stripes look like the flag was waiving in the wind. It worked for us because he used a white background. To make the flag have that blowing in the air look we glued only the ends of our red stripes on the paper so that the middles are bowed out as if being blown. By the time we had made the cover of the book Kalob knew  what the colors of the flag represented, how many stars are on it and what they represent, and the number of each of the colored stripes and what they represent. How is that for simple fun fast study!

  Moving on here are some sample pages of his studies thus far. I will add to these as we go along with some lesson plans so you can best use the pages yourself or make up your own pages that fit in with your studies. First we read of course from his text-book and then we watched this great video and got to hear all about Miss Betsy Ross and the making of our nations first flag from who else but Betsy Ross herself. You can watch it here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jlx10Pla8Xw . If the link does not work you can search youtube under Betsy

Ross House. Another great video you may like is a virtual tour of her actual house and shop in Philadelphia today. You can watch it at http://www.historicphiladelphia.org . For this page I let him get all hands on by drawing Miss Ross and tracing a five-pointed cookie cutter with glue and sprinkling glitter over the glue. Next I had him tell me what he could remember about the key points in the story and wrote them in for him. For the thirteen stars in a circle we used the shiny sticker stars and wrote about their meaning inside the circle.

  This photo is not helping, but we used card stock to create a Pledge Allegiance page. The word tiles, though it will not show up in my pictures, breaks down each of the statements into bite size snippets that we then discussed the meaning of. After reading and discussing, I jumbled up the tiles and had him reconstruct and glue down from memory the Pledge Allegiance. He found these great Uncle Sam hat stamps in a closet and wanted to use them to decorate his page. So how did we break down the Pledge and explain them? I took it from his history text-book and it goes like this:

I pledge allegiance – I promise to stand up and be true.

to the flag of the United States of America – to my flag and my country

And to the Republic for which it stands, – and to the people that this country was created for,

one nation under God, – one country blessed by God,

indivisible, – which should not be divided,

with liberty – with freedom

and justice – and fairness

for all. – for every person.

  Next time, and I promise not to make you wait as long, I will show you what we did for the symbols of America. We covered the Washington Memorial, the Great Seal, the American eagle, the Liberty Bell, Uncle Sam, and the Statue of Liberty.

 

What Do Scrapbooking, Kids, and School Have in Common… Notebooking.

  I have done this with my kids since preschool but recently a neighbor noticed one of the books my kids had made and thought it would be good for her kids. Well, her kids loved it and she couldn’t drag them away from the table. So I thought I would share this here with you. No matter what grade your kids are in they are going to love this concept! They will have so much fun doing this they will forget they were learning. They will actually retain the information from their science and social studies better and faster because they are employing each of the seven learning styles. They are not just hearing or reading a lot of dry facts and dates. They are recreating those stories in their albums.

 So how does this work? Well, kids have a harder time remembering something that is unappealing to them or seemingly  irrelevant to their life now. Who wants to study a list of dates and names that sound as ancient as the dates they are associated with? But what if you could take a picture of said person, put it on your intro page, and then using your dates, pictures, and short captions, arrange them on coordinating scrapbook papers and stickers and those stories come alive. You can also use colored pencils, crayons, markers, and rubber stamps to add extra details or bring out important facts. Now here is the great part! Your kids may take an hour or two to put their album pages together, but when they are finished they will be able to recite dates, names, and places effortlessly without ever having to sit in front of a book reciting dry facts. Why is this so easy; because the kids are using all the learning styles in their album. They are hearing it, seeing it, talking about it, writing it , touching it, organizing and analyzing their subject into an album. They are immersing themselves and their senses fully into the subject. Then when it comes time to review their lessons they can easily pull out the album and look through the pages. When I ask my kids a question about a lesson they had done they excitedly remark that they remember working on that page and can describe it in detail and in doing so they were able to also retell the event and recite the names, places, and dates with ease. This is studying without pain!

 For the next few weeks I am going to share some of our notebooking projects with you so you can see how to put these together. Here is a list of things you will need to get started. Keep in mind that it is a partial list.The possibilities are endless and depend upon the age of your child age and their creative minds.

  
                                  YOU Will Want:   

•              Pencils: Regular writing ones and colored
•               Markers and Crayons
•               Rubber Stamps and Ink Pads
•              Scrapbook papers to match your subject
•              Stickers; any kind,Scissors, glue stick, and a Ruler

 You will also need a book to use as your album. You can use a drawing book, a notebook, or a paper file folder with paper fasteners in it to add pages. I like to let the kids design their own cover page to introduce their subject for these. You can find these things at Micheal’s Arts & Crafts, Wal-mart, Office Max, Hobby Lobby and anywhere else that sells arts and crafts or office/school supplies. Now hurry, go shopping and I will get our first project ready in my next post and see you back here shortly!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

What Was the First Scrapbook You Ever Made?

  I remember the first time I sat down to create a scrapbook. I was nineteen and panic-stricken. I was the new event coördinator for Michael’s Arts & Crafts and I had to give a scrapbook workshop. What did I know about scrapbooking? Why in God’s name would anyone want to sit around cutting scraps of paper and gluing odds and ends to their photos. Or worse yet, cut the photos up and glue them to the scraps of paper. The whole Idea was very absurd to me. I did not know anything about the subject and yet I was the event coördinator. It was my responsibility to learn as much as I could about the subject, produce a sample, and at least sound like I knew what I was talking about in the next forty-eight hours. Did I mention I was panicked? I Studied every resource I could find, played with the various tools we had on the shelf, compared albums and page protectors, and then glue vs tape runner vs glue stick vs mounting spray. Then it was time to cut up scraps of paper and a few photos and figure out how to glue them to the paper in a sensible way. After an hour or so I had produced my first page. The panic was replaced by tears of joy! I had done it! I could scrapbook and I made it with two hours to spare before the wave of eager students arrived to cut up their photos.

   By the end of the evening I found that not only could I scrapbook , but that I rather enjoyed it. What could be more relaxing and gratifying than cutting up scraps of paper and chit chatting with other woman who all had great stories to tell about their photos. Photos that  were now sliced and glued and embellished into  pretty little albums forever. Well, At the end of the evening I felt that I  knew these woman on a more  personal level than I could have ever  of achieved teaching any other art form. I realized that scrapbooking truly is a personal form of story telling. in those few short hours in what was to become the first of many scrapbook events, we had shared our proudest moments, laughed together at some of the funnier things in life, and cried over the memories of loved ones who had gone on to better things. All these and more tied this group of former strangers together as life long companions, all because of a few snipped photos some tape runners and lots of scraps of paper. This run in with a project I never would have picked up on my own has become a passion for me and has developed into Scrap Happy Girls. I hope you will be inspired to share your stories with the people around you and for the future generations to come. Every life has a story to tell, what’s yours? I love to hear from my readers so leave a comment or message me on our Facebook pg. What was your first scrapbook that you ever made?

Why We Scrapbook part 2

  A lot of time and thought goes into creating a scrapbook. It is important to set the stage for your story just right. Unlike a novel, which has the entire English language at its disposal, we have only a few prized photos and props to lead our reader into the scene and to the small piece of journaling highlighting key points. One misplaced photo could ruin the whole album and the reader will be left with a few nice, but meaningless photos. So how do you  create an album you will be proud to show off and pass down? Well first we need to decide what your story will be. A birthday, wedding, summer vacation, whatever it is we need to decide what we want to convey to the reader. The next thing you must decide is the length of the album you wish to make. Will you devote an entire album to a single subject or will a page or two touching off those key moments suffice. Once you have decided on your topic and it’s length you will want to lay your photos out in front of you and choose the ones that best get your message across. Organize them so that they are arranged in the order they will appear on the page and have each page separated so you have your story in the order it will be seen by your reader. Now with the organizing finished its time to play! 

  To really tell your story well you need to set your stage with purposeful intent. Your choice of papers will set your backdrop and there are many to choose from. Just walk into any craft supply store and you will be blown away by the many options available. Two things to keep in mind here are will you use themed papers or a solid papers to just set off the photo. The next thing you will want to look at are your stage props. These would be boarders, stickers, page accents, overlays, and anything else you want to place in your album to help your story come alive. I like to use the napkins and birthday cards in my albums and the little extras from the party that helped make it memorable. Be sure however if you choose to use something not specifically made for scrapbooking that you spray it with an acid free archival spray. These items have chemicals that can actually cause damage to your photos over time.Now you can go home to your table and lay everything in front of you and really get down to business.

   Once home and ready to work take out your photos which should already be organized for you and decide on paper background and props that work best for each group. Secure them to the page where you want them. I like to use re positional tape runners so if I don’t quite get my placement right I can remove it and try again. Think of your photos as the players on the stage. Remember, your eye should travel from the intro photo through the page from one photo to the next so the story flows. Just remember to have fun and enjoy your project you don’t have to complete the whole album in a day. If you are choosing to highlight special moments in time like a child’s book of firsts then your  story is still unfolding and these take more time to put together.