I just wanted to post a quick pic from my iPhone of my favorite layout I created yesterday at the crop. I got 10 layouts done – 9 1-page layouts and one 2-page layout. I’ll be scanning/photographing them and posting them here on my blog over the next while. I was super productive and I came home with 6 layouts left to do. It felt so good to just sit down all day and create as much as I could. My layouts are simple, use lots of white space and clusters/layers of photos and embellishments.
I was totally inspired by THIS layout I found in the BasicGrey gallery. I hand cut the butterfly and some of the flowers out of one of the patterned paper sheets from the BoBunny Sophie collection (all papers and embellishments are from Sophie). This layout took me the longest to create – I had to figure out how to layer to get it to look like the inspiration piece. I have held onto this paper collection for a while now intending to do a layout about my weight loss and I finally knew what to do with it when I saw the inspiration layout. I love how it turned out. I have since finished the journaling (I had to wait for the stickles on the butterfly’s body to dry before I could continue it). ;D I will post more detailed pics of this layout after I have taken proper photos of it. Be back soon! Thanks for looking ;D
This is a 4-part series on preparing for a crop. Make sure you check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 first.
Here is the video for how I pack my materials for the crop I’m attending tomorrow. I shot this video late last night and finally got it edited and up today. One thing I want to note is that I have decided to also bring my clear embossing powder and my heat gun as I will be doing some misting, some resist techniques and a lot of inking.
I can’t wait for tomorrow and get scrapping! Let me know if you have any questions about what I choose to bring and how I prepare for a crop. There’s a sneak in the video too, so watch carefully!
I’m going to be shooting the video of my packed crop bag for Part 4 of my crop preparation series this afternoon and hope to have it up this evening. In the meantime I thought I would share my big announcement.
I am going to be teaching classes at one of the local scrapbooking stores, Precious Memories! I’m very excited ;D My first classes will be in April and I’ll provide links when they are open for registration. This means I will be doing a lot more of my own scrapbooking and trying new techniques to incorporate into my classes.
In the meantime I will have lots to share from the crop this weekend. I have 12 layouts prepped and ready to go. This is a first! I’m usually last minute packing at 10:00 p.m. or later the night before ;D
This is a 4-part series on preparing for a crop. Make sure you check out Part 1 and Part 2 first.
So I did a really quick video showing my craft room and my messy desk (I just finished a couple of mini albums so it’s a total disaster but that’s how I work ;D). I did the video with my iPhone because our other camera is missing in action since my husband was using it for an umpires clinic a couple of weekends ago… Hence the graininess in the video – sorry! Oh, and please, please ignore the terribly dirty blue yoga bag – I think one of my sons spilled hot chocolate or chocolate milk on it and I have to clean it. I keep forgetting! Don’t hold it against me ;D
Basically, to clarify, if I have bought materials for a specific layout I will keep it in the drawer unit until I am ready to use it. Once I have used it, the full sheets get put into my storage system in my Expedit cube from Ikea. My scraps will be sorted into my storage in my filing cabinet by color. For some of my layouts I have collections that I plan to use but some of them I will go through my papers and select them from the papers sorted by color in my Expedit cube. Embellishments like stickers, chipboard, etc. get put into the multi-stepped container shown in the video unless they are 12×12 size and then they are sorted into my paper storage system into a chipboard or sticker slot. Next I go to my ribbons, twine, floss, and then stamps and miscellaneous stuff I might want to add like paper clips, bling, etc. Lastly will be my pens and journaling tools. Once I have everything I want to put onto a layout together I put them into either the page protectors or into the Cropper Hopper paper storage container. One of the things I forgot to mention were my dies. I’ll show you what I do with them in the next video in a couple of days. The next post will be a video showing how I actually pack everything to take to the crop.
I plan to have everything packed by Thursday so that on Friday I can pick up a few last minute things once the exclusive sale starts, and pick up/make the snack that everyone brings to share, and any food bank donations I will make. PE gives out extra door prize tickets for purchases, bringing donations, a snack to share, and if you go “green” and bring your own plate, cup and utensils.
See you on Thursday with the final video and post in this series. I will be sharing some exciting news on Thursday too so be sure to stop by!
Today is the first day of the free class Embrace Imperfection at Big Picture Classes. I also finally broke down and signed up for One Little Word. I kept being directed to the class page almost on a daily basis in one way or another and I figured I should take the cue that I was being given and just take the class. I convinced my husband by telling him that the class is really only $3.00 a month and that at the end of it I will have an entire album about me and my word completed. ;D
I also have some great news but I don’t think I’m ready to share it yet, very soon though! It means you will see a lot more stuff from me on a regular basis ;D
I will be recording the video for Part 3 of my Crop Preparation series this weekend and hope to have it up on Monday.
(Note: The links above are affiliate links and I receive a small commission when you click on them and/or make a purchase.)
This is a 4-part series on preparing for a crop. Make sure you check out Part 1 first. (Note: I am posting this without the video as I am having technical difficulty with uploading a clear quality video. I will try to have it up as soon as possible… I apologize for the delay in posting!)
For years I have been really bad at printing out the photos I’ve taken. Part of it was that once we went digital it was just too easy to take photos. And LOTS of them! And then trying to figure out the software that came with our camera in order to get them printed. And deciding who to use to get them printed, and how to get our photos from our computer to them to be printed. It just went on and on. In the more recent past I have simply been using Photoshop to resize my Photos manually and I have pretty much only printed the photos I want to scrap (and usually only around crop time have I been scrapping).
Lately I have been making sure I print out the best of my photos (or bad ones that speak to me) every few months, and I think I’ll be trying to scrap more 4×6 and 5×7 photos (or larger if certain photos warrant it) to make it easier than trying to manipulate all of my images to certain sizes to fit into a sketch. I find that almost always I can crop a 4×6 into a 2×3, 4×3 or a square to accent a larger picture. That was one of the hindrances I found with my scrapbooking – too many times I took too long deciding on photos, manipulating them, resizing them, etc. and then felt overwhelmed when I got behind in preparing photos for layouts. Then I’d be in a mad rush trying to prepare a whole bunch of kits for a crop and it was so much work. I’ve finally decided on a system that works for me and is simple enough to do and maintain. This way, when I finish the projects I have prepared for the crop, it will be easy to create a new list (remember I like lists ;D), grab the photos I want from the album, grab some papers and embellishments, and I’ll be good to go.
So I’ve created a video showing you the programs I use and the reason I decided to use them. At the moment I use three programs – Adobe Lightroom, Bridge and Photoshop. It sounds like a lot but the three of them each have qualities I like and they play nice together. In the video I show you how I import my photos from my card reader (using Lightroom), review and select the photos I want to print (using Bridge), and then how I edit those photos (using Camera Raw). Once I have edited and saved my photos to .jpg files (since we shoot in raw format with our Nikon), I upload them to our local Photo Express. It’s quick and easy, close by and they give me good quality, archival prints. There are many other online companies that you can use, but I won’t go into them here since that’s not the purpose of this post. For photos that I want to really highlight I will open them in Photoshop and size them to a specific size, or add overlays or brushes to them.
In my next post I’ll show you how I gather the papers and embellishments I plan to use with the photos to have each layout kitted and ready to scrap. For that I will probably have another video (using my video camera as opposed to a computer-based video ;D) for you since I think it will be easiest to physically show you how I do that. See you in a few days ;D
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.lovescrapbooking.ca/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)