Scrap Dreams: April 2013

Monday, April 29, 2013

Clean & Simple #4

This week's assignment involved converting a photo to black and white and converting digi elements to color for use in a hybrid layout. I went strictly digi again but did get to use all the techniques.

I don't use black and white photos much, but that simple change allows so much more freedom in your color choices and really allows the photo to shine without the competing busyness of the colors. Once I had this photo converted to black and white, I chose soft calm colors to complement it. Can you imagine how different this layout would look had I gone with the purple and navy colors in Sarah's sweater?

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Clean & Simple # 3

These photos of Becca are ten years old, but the story hasn't changed. The layout came together super quick, but the journaling took me awhile. And when all was said & done, I couldn't even fill up the available journaling space. Just not enough to say about Becca and her love of our cats. But I'm sure I'll use this template again when I have more to say about a single subject!

Friday, April 19, 2013

Just A Quote For Friday

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Clean & Simple #2

The week 2 assignment was an 8.5x11 page highlighting our blessings.

The Photoshop Elements lessons included wrapping the text around the numbers (which were png files) and learning how to break apart a word art element (the page title) into separate layers so that you can recolor different parts of it. I also learned about the color swatch feature of PSE that allows you to save swatches for reuse on a layout (nice when you are recoloring multiple items and don't want to keep trying to "find" the same color each time or jot down the RGB numbers).

For those of you who find the above paragraph to be greek, no worries, ignore it!

I just took Cathy's 8.5x11 template, stuck it on a piece of 12x12 paper and added some embellishments for fun! For most of the class the template was a white background. I just can't seem to bring myself to leave it alone!

Monday, April 15, 2013

A Simple Moment in April

I missed out on Alexa's "Simply A Moment" in March and found myself wishing I'd made the time. I've decided to keep these layouts at 8.5 x 11 and keep them altogether in a single binder (as opposed to filing them away in my Library of Memories albums), along with my layouts from Sian's "Pick Your Precious" Story Telling Sundays in a binder. They end up being short essays about life and love and the little things that matter most. I think it will someday be a very interesting book to read through!

For more Simple Moment stories, check out the links on Alexa's page!

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Clean & Simple

I'm taking Cathy Zielski's "Clean and Simple" class over at Big Picture Classes. For those of you familiar with her style, it is graphic design based, minimal (if any) embellishment, and generally a white background. She has awesome ideas about where we can go with scrapbooking!

Here is my assignment for Week 1:

Of course, I couldn't leave Cathy's design alone. I had to change the white background to a pretty patterned paper, a script font for "Me" and the initials, and add a butterfly. But then, that's what makes me Me!

Friday, April 12, 2013

Just A Quote for Friday

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Story Telling Sunday - My Precious 4

For more Precious Stories visit Sian's Story Telling Sunday.

Monday, April 1, 2013

One Little Word Blog Hop - April

Whether you arrived here from Lee's Blog as part of the One Little Word Blog Hop, or you are here because you love me and drop by regularly... Welcome! I love visitors! The One Little Word Blog Hop is a monthly hop run by Lee for members of Ali Edwards' One Little Word class over at Big Picture Classes. The hop goes live on Friday at 6:00 a.m. You can always check back later if someone's post isn't live yet.

The March assignment for One Little Word was to choose a specific action for March and put it on the calendar.

Since my word is DARE, I phrased the specific action in terms of a dare. For March I "dared" myself to finish one unfinished project, to clean and organize my office, and to keep up with the Finding Photo Freedom class.

For my UFO, I chose an album I started back in 2008 from a BPC class called "Perpetual Happiness". I had done most of the exercises for the class, but had never finished all the layouts that went with it. I finished this album! I shared some of the digi layouts I created HERE. And here are the paper layouts I created during March:

This isn't actually a picture of my office.
The goal of this layout was to create a story
"as if" you already had exactly what you wanted.

It is so great to have that project done!

The office clean-up also went great. Here's the proof:

My office space looking from the left. Lots of misc. stuff piled on the desk in the "before" photo.

My office space looking from the right. You'd be surprised how much "stuff" I took out of that space!!

Under the desk area.

On the opposite wall from the desks are the cabinets and printers. I didn't just clear the counter, I went through every drawer and cabinet, sorted, purged, and re-organized. Did all the filing. Took three grocery bags of paper out of this room! I spent nearly a week working on it, but I'm so happy to have so much less clutter in this space now. Makes working in here so much nicer!

I did move a large box of stuff back to the "studio" (living room turned craft room) and that will be my next project. But I'm giving myself the entire month of April for that one! ;)

And to close, here is my Tracker for March. I'm very happy with the way this month went and can't wait to see what I can accomplish in April!