National Scrapbook Day

Katie and I did a bit of scrapbooking and card making today. I've been trying to use up my stash a bit so I used a lot of paper scraps in these projects.

Layout for Creating Keepsakes Paper Scraps challenge, Recipe Challenge on Paper Lovers Studio and the Color challenge by Basic Grey.

 Card for card challenge by Basic Grey

Card for  Stamped Background Challenge at Studio Calico

Card for the  5 Patterned Papers Challenge by Studio Calico

Happy National Scrapbook day! Challenges are super inspiring to me and there were a ton to choose from today. :)

-Taylor

Scrapbooking on a Bright White Background

Hello everyone!

It's been awhile. It's the end of the semester, a drop-dead-exhaustion kind of week. The end is in sight, but I've got to put my glasses on to see it. Okay not really, but you get the idea. I have managed to squeeze in a little bit of scrapbooking time here and there. I've been really inspired by the new Paper Lovers Studio blog lately. They've got some awesome challenges and freebies are always nice.

I've decided that for the time being, while I try and rediscover what I liked about scrapbooking and why I want to continue doing it, I'm going to make white my signature background color. It keeps things minimal, focuses on the photos and the journaling. I'm a big fan of white in scrapbooking these days. It's so clean and focused. So here are the layouts I've been doing.

This one was for the Paper Lover's "tough supply" challenge. I love transparencies but I find them so hard to use. When I made this layout, I discovered how easy it is to attach a full page transparency to a background using washi tape! If you look closely on the edges of the page, I used washi tape to adhere my transparency sheet.

2. I love how this layout turned out. It's exactly what I've been feeling in my minimalist-scrapbooker vibe. It's clean and calming, rather than overwhelming and stressful. The beach photo evokes calming, cool colors so I tried to mimic that in my page design.

3. Scrapbooking Jamaica! Even though Jamaica was my least favorite stop on the cruise the boyfriend and I took last year, I still wanted to scrapbook a few of the nicer photos. My journaling talks about how colorful everything was, even though Ochos Rios itself was disappointing and not very clean. 

I'm happy to be getting back into scrapbooking. I think it's the crafting I'll stick to for awhile. It's very personal and I don't feel tied down to any tedious projects. 

Reentering the scrapbooking world

I've been doing a lot of blog reading this week and I discovered I'm not alone out there in thinking scrapbooking has just gone crazy. It's become something it was never supposed to be. But still, I want to scrapbook because telling a story is beautiful. So that's what I will do with my supplies. Here's my first layout, my first jump back into scrapbooking. This is inspired by the sketch challenge at Paper Lovers Studio, an awesome new scrapbooking challenge blog.

I'm really into mint, peach, and salmon, so I tried to incorporate those colors in my layout. Since my scrapbooking is about storytelling, I've decided to share some stories here as well. My boyfriend and I went to Flamingo Gardens in Davie, FL, over spring break. It's this crazy botanical garden gone wild, mixed with swamp, mixed with animal sanctuary. In addition, it's got this island vibe (which really just means everything smells moist and on one is in a hurry to do anything!) that seems to say its glory days are long gone. Anyway, it was a fun, if not quirky place to visit.

I would say my venture back into papercrafting has gotten off to a good start. Any tips to take photos of scrapbook layouts with getting a glare on the photos?

Scrapbooking: Finding a new perspective

Sometimes we get discouraged as bloggers. I've been feeling this way recently and haven't blogged for a couple of weeks as a result. Sometimes it's hard to judge the response that you will get for publishing a post, or whether you will get any response at all. I apologize in advance if this post seems somewhat gloomy, but I'll try to end on a positive note. Lately, I've been feeling overwhelmed by craft things. There's just so much. Pinterest, social media, product shopping- all of these are online just to start with- and then when you actually craft something, the amount of supplies is just unfathomable. 

Why can't we simplify? The variety in craft products available is in a way, crossing the line from memory-making to cold consumerism. Why do we really need a million different letter stickers to tell a story? Granted, I love scrapbooking and craft supplies just as much as the next crafter/blogger, but at the moment it's rather overwhelming. It's not fun anymore. I need to find a new perspective, a new way to create, one without that doesn't leave me feeling stressed that I didn't use enough supplies, or the "right" ones, or just that I didn't complete enough. This being said, I'm going to try and find a simplified approach to scrapbooking.

I decided to just order some of my photos from Snapfish, rather than spending hours editing them on the computer and printing them in varying sizes at home. 4 x 6 prints will still tell my story. Katie has been telling me about Project Life and while I like the idea, even it requires MORE supplies, more consumption. I want to use what I have without stress. So, here's to trying a minimalist approach. One where I scrapbook just to tell a story. I'm no longer going to be so concerned with creating a "trendy piece of art." I'm going to try and find the purpose of scrapbooking again.

Has anyone else felt this way recently or at some other point? What's your stress-free scrapbook style?

Scrapbooking Instax photos

Today, I thought I would share with you a pretty scrapbook page I whipped up. I've been having loads of fun taking photos with my Fuji Instax Mini camera, which takes instant photos. Now, the thing about instant photos is that they aren't digital and there is no editing them, which is both good and bad. So it's taken some practice for me to get good photos. But I also love how fast I can have photos directly at my fingertips and ready to scrapbook with. 

This page features photos I have taken of flowers that my boyfriend has given me on various occasions. Flowers are so bright and colorful, it's a great way to practice taking photos with a point and shoot instant camera.

What are your favorite things to take photos of? I also take a lot of pictures of my cat.

Want to see another great idea for using your instant photos? Check out this DIY.

-Taylor