Reason to scrapbook.....

I was at home this weekend and my mom showed me a photo....and she asked me if I remembered us taking it....but I didn't remember. This is a prime example of why scrapbooking is so important. If she had scrapbooked the event and this photo maybe I would recall the occasion.

I'm starting to scrapbook more of everyday moments and not just the big ones and special events. Some of those little moments are rare and I want to remember all of them. I took pictures of my nephew Tyler opening new transformers this weekend and some photos of his bedroom with transformers all over the place so I can scrapbook a layout in his book. He is absolutely obsessed with transformers....as is my fiance but that's another story!

So the lesson for today is to scrap scrap scrap!

Life

Life certainly does get busy doesn't it? I've been extremely busy with scrapbooking, working on a customer baby album and working on all my marketing ideas!

I'm also making a 2006 planner so I can stay organized this year. It came in handy because I got a call from a customer about hostessing a Leaving Prints scrapbook party!

One of my marketing techniques for this year is to market my scrapbooking services to people in wedding/engagement/new baby announcements from my local newspaper.

Well those are a few things I've been working on. I'll be posting photos soon of new scrapbook pages I did recently. I ended up getting 16 pages done for January.

How many pages have you gotten done for 2006? I challenge you to beat me this month!

-Jamie

Photo Organization

So are you thinking of doing your own scrapbooks or having one made? I know - I was there once too. Have you seen the adorable, acid free paper in your local craft store. How can you NOT want to start this hobby! Or maybe you have zillions of photos sitting in shoeboxes - never being "ooohed" and "aaahed" over by anyone, just knowing that there must be a better way. No matter who you are, if you have considered trying out this hobby called scrapbooking - welcome!

I had been taking photos off and on and then when my first nephew was born I started taking alot more photos! My sister had started scrapbooking and then I decided I wanted to give this a whirl so I started buying stuff and before I knew it I had enough for an entire room! I just love scrapbooking and I love the results that come with my hobby.

One of the very first steps in beginning scrapbooking is organizing your photos. This is a big task - actually the more photos you have stored, the bigger the job. I didn't have that many so it didn't too long. Also, there are different methods to organizing your photos. Over time, you may find a method that you prefer. However, to get you started, I will share with you how I did it in three steps.

Step #1. To start, I collected all of my photos. Every single one! I went through my home and brought every photo album and every shoebox to my work space. I knew that I needed decent size work space, so for my sorting, I went to my living room floor.

Step #2. Now that I had all of my photos together, I began sorting. I started with a pile and sorted it by catagory such as family, vacations, extended family, friends, college, my nephews and so on. I kept working my way through every single photo until they were all in their appropriate piles. You can also do this by year instead which is a better way if you have a large amount of photos.

Step #3. After the sorting into catagories or years, sort each pile chronologically - January, February, and on through December. I used one of my shoeboxes to make a sort of index with my newly sorted photos. At the beginning I had my earliest photos indexed with the first year. Every year after that was labeled also. When I was done sorting, I had boxes of perfectly sorted photos -- all ready for my new hobby!

Now it's your turn - start organizing those photos of yours and begin your new hobby!

New Year brings new projects

One of my goals for this year is to try new projects and with all my new scrapbook tools and toys that shouldn't be a problem! My favorite things are my sizzix sidekick and the new alphabet set I got. I plan on creating some mini albums this week using them. And ofcourse I will be posting the new projects here for all to see!

Stay tuned....

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

A new year has arrived and I'm sure everyone is busy making their new years resolutions. I prefer to make "intentions" rather than goals. I feel like this makes it more manageable and that I'm more likely to follow my list.

One of my intentions are to keep my scrapbooks updated and take more photos of daily life behaviors. These can be the little things such as someone reading a book or children playing with their favorite toy or siblings spending time together. These are some of the most precious moments that we can remember and cherish. So make sure you are taking lots of photo to scrapbook. Cherishing memories in a scrapbook is the best gift you can give your children and your family.

Jamie's intentions page 2

This is page 2 of my intentions for 2006.

This page details what my intentions are for 2006. Some of them are more vague than others.
I really like how this layout came out and that I went outside my norm with the way I cut the striped pattern paper.