Even a month after the hub -bub of the holidays has passed, my crafting table still hasn't quite come out of hiding. It's almost hilarious how quickly any cleared area becomes covered again... there is plenty of making going on in my living room however, and, as Albert Einstein once said,
Today my dearly loved daughter is 5... for me, this birthday has been the most shocking- perhaps because my memories are so vivid from after this age. Meaning, now everything I do can and will be used against me hahaha.
Someone's excited to be Five!
Your Name goes here ^
We decided to have a tea party on Monday, despite her birthday being on Tuesday, because school was out. Mom app'd up some invites and sent them to a few friends that we don't get to see all that often but mean the world to us.
Everyone arrived in Tea Time finery, and after much beveraging, healthy snacks that looked not so yummy to some, a photo scavenger hunt, and some good old fashioned chicken chasing (a tradition now), we had to say adieu. What a fun day, full of sunshine and the children's laughter.
After five years and nine months together, I know what a blessing, and example, God sent me in her unconditional love. Her observations make me take notice of life from a new perspective. Those bright blue eyes continue to captivate my attention, and as the strength of her hugs increases, so does my adoration of her growth.
Here it is! My latest flick, and the first of 2016! Did you know, I published a total of 22 videos on YouTube last year? If you're hooked into the google, be sure to subscribe to my CraftWithAnna channel, or to this blog, so you don't miss any of the inspiration coming out of my neck of the Key Peninsula woods.
This month's show has a lot on show; featuring kits I've come to the end of, or were from the end of previous years :-
I've got a mini album for my cousin on the East coast who got married this summer- it used up some of those left over bits and pieces from Simple Stories and the Story of Us. Using the smaller 6x6 paper patterns makes it easy to fill a small project like this with appropriately sized items. One of my favorite pages is the one where I fussy cut around little frames and adhered them around a photo collage...gonna have to make idea come into a 12x12 page (and yes, I did just give myself permission to scrapbook)!
Then we move into documenting the more recent affair of Thanksgiving. I love that picture of my grandma, beaming from a still shot within my share video. There isn't anything I don't feel I can share with this gracious gal- in Norwegian, we call our grandmother's "Bestemor" and she really is the best! Every year we have her at the table is a blessing in itself. I only wish we could include ALL our long distance relatives in the festivities!
Check out my previous posts to see how the accompanying layouts turned out, and let me know- what are you scrappin about this week? Are you already onto week two in your Project Life? Still getting over the mountain of Christmas pics hurdle? Or maybe you're dreaming of an upcoming retreat to catch up at... leave a comment below or in the video, I always love to hear from you.
Tonight my two assistants will be accompanying me to the Red Barn for a painted lettering class I'm teaching the teens. Here is a version of the quick watercolor I did this morning to prepare- it's actually not this color at all, I was playing with my phone's photo editing apps again. I think it's so cool to see how an image would look if you had chosen completely different images or colors... a trick I hope you'll notice I'm embracing in my scrapbooking too. I would have never guessed I'd become that woman who creates an awesome visual and then clears it all away to start over. Call me Ms. Etch-A-Sketch, because I've done it twice already this year!
Now, are you feeling the need for shop retail therapy? Click these links to EmbellishKits.com or EmbellishOnline.com for all your paper crafting "needs-" and tell 'em Anna sent you!
And here's that stop motion card making video I referenced in this month's release:
Some people clean out their closets, set weight loss goals, maybe even get themselves a new planner to stay organized with at the beginning of the year. I'm one of those people (minus the weight loss, I'd just like to regain some muscles), but another of my tasks this first week into 2016 is to get my Christmas photos printed and housed.
As I've mentioned in previous blog postings, my Winter series of albums don't seem to ever get "finished." After pondering the pertinent questions of, does that matter?, why don't they? and oh, I forgot I was going to scrapbook that moment- how can I still fit it in? I've come to some conclusions:
No, to me it doesn't matter too much that my Christmas album from 2014 is just as incomplete as last year's. I'm always tucking photos away to go to crops- and then I print photos on the way to the event and buy papers to use with them there. And I know myself well enough to know THAT's not likely to change! But it's inevitable that I will always have gaps in my chronologically housed pages. I enjoy revisiting empty page protectors that sometimes have a few photos tucked inside- they are like treasures; scrap worthy time justifiably waiting to be used.
Why don't my albums get finished? Because Life Happens. New photos are taken. I'm also starting to wonder if the January, CHA spring and summer themed releases aren't moving me out of holiday move at more a rapid pace than my shopping habits of yesteryear did. I'm grateful to have the amount of time and space to dedicate to preserving the highlights of our life together. I love seeing all those smiling faces every time I go looking for where to put in another page that has finally seen it's way to completion.
Now, the fitting into previously deemed "completed" albums all those additional printed memories can be a bit more painful. Take this year's fall- 2016 run of albums... there are now five of them. FIVE, PEOPLE! Thank goodness for pocket pages, where I can slip in the photos I've printed, theatre tickets, embellishments, etc and keep them in the album they'll hopefully stay in until I can stick them all together on pretty cardstock. I say hopefullystay, because as my album clean ups have been showing me, I drastically underestimate the amount of space my photo documenting will take up.
Looking good - it runs in the family
Original "done" pic of album pages
Case in point- this year I plotted out two albums to fill with this time span of Thanksgiving through New Years. Yesterday, as I sorted pics into pockets and included all those holiday papers and embellishments I keep finding I've purchased- strange... I have no recollection of doing so- I realized I really needed an in-between album to lead me from the last weeks of November, maybe even into the first weeks of activity filled December, and another for all those fun family pictures taken during the week of Christmas, and then another album just for Christmas Eve and Day themselves! Oh, and then another album for the papers I had to have and the pictures from our trip to Long Beach over New Years. WHEW!
But then, to relieve some of the stress of sorting without creation, create I did. I started with a layout inspired by the EmbellishKits.com January scrapbooking kit. I'm hoping to have a video up with that process, but that's another post's content. Having quite a few Thanksgiving pictures, I figured I'd finish up those layouts and that would help me transition fully into the documentation of all things Holiday related. Took my photos and collaged them as you see above.
Except, then I realized that my story would fit into my album better if my pocket pages were located before my two page spread, not after. So I changed that all around and then figured I'd slip the rest of my photos into place, making a total of 4 layouts completed. I really like the kid-colored Native American who looks like she's walking from our house to my mom's, where we took all our food to celebrate with due to her having surgery earlier in the week. And when I rearranged all the photos from my "done" pocket page photo above, it was really easy because I didn't have to cut and past or anything like that.
Custom colored embellishments go here ^
Thanksgiving at our house pics on this page
Flip the page to go to my moms house
Redone and just as easy to put together
Spoiler Alert! Next video's layout above!
Now, I've got plenty of yard chores to do and that video I mentioned to edit and upload, but a crop of golden embellishments awaits me- this evening my happy, scrappy friends and I are getting together to indulge in a bit of cut and paste (with a side of chocolate). I've already submitted three orders to Walgreen's, so I'll be right back in the now where can I fit these photos boat by night's end.
And for that, as well as the readership of people just like YOU, I'm very thankful.
I have a few friends who like to get together for a few hours (or days) to "crop." As in, "crop it like it's hot." As in, "What happens at the crop stays at the crop!" Okay, so what is a crop?!
The term crop came into my vocabulary when I started scrapbooking. I had never imagined cutting into a photo before introduced to this sometimes-strange world of cutting and pasting people with papers. So one of the first tricks I was taught was to focus my photos by cropping off parts that detracted from what I wanted to be the focal point, i.e. white space or foreign objects or a blurry finger over the lens. There are even tools to organize your stash that are called Cropper Hoppers. See, when you get together with a lot of scrapbookers, you are at a crop. And those organizers do make it a lot easier to tote a massive amount of paper and stickers along with you to those events!
Well the point of this post was to admit that a month or so ago, my scrappy friend Ms. B and I decided we needed to have a crop soon. And that it should be at my mom's house, because she has this incredible space in her basement that will accommodate a large number of ladies and their stuff. Did we mention our plan to her? oh no, not until today, when we decided we should have our crop this Saturday.
I wasn't raised to cut pictures, and I wasn't raised to invite a bunch of people over to someone else's house without first asking their permission...whoops!
Lucky for me, my momma loves to party and to scrapbook so she was excited, and I put up an event on facebook this afternoon. Since she also generously offered us the use of her supplies as long as we bring adhesives, I thought this meme was appropriate:
Every time I see it, I smile really big inside. Because, hello, manners matter, people!
Thanks for sharing a little learning and a little laughing with me tonight ~Anna
Tonight my two assistants will be accompanying me to the Red Barn for a painted lettering class I'm teaching the teens. Here is a version of the quick watercolor I did this morning to prepare- it's actually not this color at all, I was playing with my phone's photo editing apps again. I think it's so cool to see how an image would look if you had chosen completely different images or colors... a trick I hope you'll notice I'm embracing in my scrapbooking too. I would have never guessed I'd become that woman who creates an awesome visual and then clears it all away to start over. Call me Ms. Etch-A-Sketch, because I've done it twice already this year! 
Case in point- this year I plotted out two albums to fill with this time span of Thanksgiving through New Years. Yesterday, as I sorted pics into pockets and included all those holiday papers and embellishments I keep finding I've purchased- strange... I have no recollection of doing so- I realized I really needed an in-between album to lead me from the last weeks of November, maybe even into the first weeks of activity filled December, and another for all those fun family pictures taken during the week of Christmas, and then another album just for Christmas Eve and Day themselves! Oh, and then another album for the papers I had to have and the pictures from our trip to Long Beach over New Years. WHEW! 
There are even tools to organize your stash that are called Cropper Hoppers. See, when you get together with a lot of scrapbookers, you are at a crop. And those organizers do make it a lot easier to tote a massive amount of paper and stickers along with you to those events! 
