O Let Us Give Thanks

Even when times are hard, there is always so much for which to be grateful. I would be ungrateful indeed if I didn't list all of my many blessings on this special day.
My wonderful husband Bruce. He's truly my best friend.
My great kids. Each of them unique and amazing in their own terrible ways!
My dear little grandson. I wish I could be with him today.
My Mom. What can I say? She's the most wonderful Mom in the universe, and every day I thank God that she's healthy and feisty!
My sisters and brother and inlaws, and all their kids & grandkids. I love my family!
My faith. It sustains me through everything.
My talents... they make my life rich and interesting.
My burdens. They keep me humble.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Focus

Every month, I participate on the blog 'It Takes All Kinds'. It's an inspirational creative blog, and I enjoy trying to come up with something different to share every four weeks. So, for this month, I decided to celebrate the art of focus. I'm trying to focus my life by turning my little internal camera lens outward instead of inward. I hope it works! My circular journaling says: "When you realize that the center of your life is out of focus, strive to turn your heart outward. As your focal point shifts, you will realize that you have created a work of art in your life. No longer will your heart seem empty and void, It is beautiful."(Heather: I wish I were a poet like you, my words are rather sappy!)

Weekly Bright Idea!

As I look through my digital galleries, I've come to the conclusion that some of my best layouts are done for a 'Challenge'. If you are not familiar with challenges, many websites feature various types of scrapbooking or creative challenges: for example, they could ask participants to create a layout, photo, card or whatever based on a theme, a technique, a color combination, a previously published design, or even song lyrics or poetry. I'm sure there are tons more challenge ideas out there. I participate regularly in the Two Peas in a Bucket Digital Challenge, but there are many more available on various websites.

I think it's a great idea to participate in these challenges! It can stretch you creatively, it can help you learn a new technical skill, or use a technique in a new way, it can help you approach your layouts or projects from a new perspective, and kick start your thought processes! Sometimes these challenges involve prizes and goodies, so if you are on a budget, it's a good way to acquire 'stuff'!

Here are a few of my favorite challenge layouts, and what the challenge was:


The challenge on this one was to use a quote for the journaling.


This one was to create a layout based on a work of art. I based this design on the art of Henri Rousseau.


The challenge on this one was to create text in a shape.

I really look forward to the weekly challenges, and love to find new ones. I tend to get stuck in a scrapping rut sometimes, these challenges really pull me out of it, and help me stretch and have fun, too.

Great Grandma Encounters 'Fists of Fury' Brady!

On Monday 'the Girls' (me, my two sisters, and Mom) trekked over to Beverly Hills to visit my niece Emmie & husband Ben, and little Nikki & newest grandnephew Brady. Also included in the visit was my nephew Jesse & his wife Julia, who work there at the house, in their family business. They have a Louis Vuitton resale business, I'm working on a layout about it, so stick around, and I'll post it in a few days! But, Monday's visit was all fun! Mom had a little run-in with Brady and his fists of fury- he kept punching her in the face, but it was so cute!

More Blue & Gray

I am trying valiantly to scrap that Civil War reenactment, there are so many photos, I just don't know where to start. I'd like to do at least 4 double page layouts, so I got started with these two. I decided to take advantage of the 2Ps weekly digital challenge- it was a shadow challenge, so I created a new shadow layer for the foreground photos, then 'cut out' the window section of the shadow so it would look like the figures are standing next to the wooden window, but the window image would not have the shadow on it. Not very technical, but hopefully, fairly realistic. I hope to have 2 more layouts done in the next couple of days.

Seventeen is a Magical Number

My youngest turns 17 on Monday, and I've been working on a layout for her for a gift... good thing she never looks at my blog! Annie is a very creative young lady... she loves all things magical- glitter, stars, Asian art, robots, outer space, fanciful animals, and did I mention glitter? I wanted to create a fantasy world for her... the girl in the window is her best friend, and the young man with the centaur-like body is her boyfriend. Other than the picture of her in the sky, there are 17 different elements in the layout (not including the landscape background) There are about 50 layers in this layout. Happy Birthday, Annie!

Weekly Bright Idea!

I write 2 monthly articles, and a tutorial over at SNR, and I try to share some of my bright ideas there. Since not everyone has a subscription to Scrapbook News & Review (see the link in the post below the post below!) I'd like to share a bright idea from one of my previous articles. Here it is: When you take photos of an event, vacation, or specific location, take at least one photo that I call the 'Establishing Shot'. That is, a photo that establishes the big picture of the place you are: the front of a restaurant, that big "Disneyland" sign, an overview photo of the pumpkin field, the entrance to the museum, etc. You can often use these photos not only as part of your layout, but as a background, or a focal point of your layout. I'm such a photo nut, I take dozens (Ok, thousands) of photos that I'll never use. But I'd rather have too many, than not enough). Occasionally I miss taking an 'establishing shot', and invariably, I wish I'd thought to photograph the front of the house, or big view of the farm.
Here are a couple of examples: The first one was when I was a guest speaker at a school recently, I was able to take a photo of the school, and used it as a sort of frame for my layout. The other was a visit to a nursery. I took a photo of the front of the building, and although it's hard to see details, the entire pink background is the building.

Old Friends

This is my Mom (on the left) and her dear friend Bella. They have such a sweet friendship- it's hard to believe that Bella is from Russia, and was an MD there- what an interesting and hard life she has led. But she's so happy to be an American now, and who better to celebrate all things American than my Mom?

Why Wouldn't You Want to Create an Old Photo?

It's deadline time at SNR (Scrapbook News + Review) and I wracked my brain for a good tutorial this month. It seems that there are tutorials on EVERYTHING these days: clipping masks, making brushes, text on a path, yada yada. I do try to come up with something different or challenging, so since I was obsessed with my photos of the Civil War, I decided to challenge myself to create a tutorial on how to make a NEW photo look OLD, unlike last month, when I did a tut on colorizing old photos. In other words, making OLD photos look NEW. Not content to just add a sepia tone to the picture, I looked into replicating an ambrotype, one of the common photographic techniques of the mid-19th century. I only studied the actual photos, not the chemistry or technical aspects. I am not sure exactly how they are done, but they have a distictive look. The tutorial should be available in a few days, here's the link: http://www.scrapbooknewsandreview.com/joomla44/index.php?option=com_news_portal&Itemid=254
Go to 'Magazine', then 'Digital Delights', November. Subscription required. I hope you have a chance to stop by, and check out my articles and tutorials. I write 2 articles, and one tut each month. If you get a subscription, you have access to all the back issues too.

First photos are of authentic ambrotypes, then my modern photo, then the ambrotype look I gave my modern picture.

The Blue and the Gray

I went to a Civil War Reenactment today with Alec & Alicia and Alicia's mom Gail.  Fantastic!  It was held right here in Moorpark, at Underwood Family Farms (Walnut Grove). I spent most of my time by myself taking pictures.  I found that I was one of only a few people hanging around where the soldiers were waiting to go into battle.  They were totally in character- resting on the ground, talking in small groups, even smoking cigars.  There were so many very young boys too- drummers, fifers. I'm sure it was pretty representative of the real thing.  It's fascinating how seriously the Civil War reenactors take their roles- everything is so authentic. I was also impressed by the number of African-American soldiers and citizens. I took nearly 500 photos in about 2 hours.  The telephoto saved the day... I got so many amazing shots, I can't wait to scrap it!

The Blue and the Gray Slideshow

Weekly Bright Idea!

I love kids, I have 4 of 'em, plus one adorable grandchild. But I have to admit, many of my favorite layouts that I see online and in magazines, are not those with children in them. Well, it's hard to resist an adorable face, and I've done my share of layouts with my kids, grandson, grandniece and grandnephew in them. But in the nearly 2 1/2 years that I've been digital scrapbooking, I've seen thousands of layouts. I'd guess 80% of them involve children in some way. Maybe because of the sheer numbers of them, I love to rest my eyes on a beautiful landscape photo, someone's vacation layout (Ooooh! Look at this layout about PARIS!) something clever like a layout about favorite shoes, a garden, pets, household objects. Genealogy nut that I am, I gravitate to heritage layouts, and pages about the designer's childhood. If I were the Queen of Challenges, I'd challenge scrappers to maybe pull their cameras away from those adorable faces, and point it another direction: even toward themselves! Most of us are terribly camera shy, and hate to do layouts about ourselves. So what do you say? Try a non-child layout. Give the poor kids a break.

Grandpa

I accidentally did this layout. Ok, well, not really accidentally, but this was totally NOT what I had in mind when I started. I was just playing around with this photo of me and my Grandpa, taken in about 1975, right after I graduated from college. My Grandpa lived in Hollywood, in a little bungalow where he and my Grandma had lived for over 30 years. I loved to visit my Grandparents, but after Grandma died when I was 18, my Grandpa was even more special. Partly because he was alone, and my visits meant so much to him. I used to stop by after work, and we would sit on his front porch and visit for hours. I took notes when he would tell me about our ancestors, I still have those tiny little pieces of paper with names and family details. Grandpa passed away just 4 months before our wedding. It was sad to say goodbye, but Grandpa had lived to ninety- his goal. He was so lonely without Grandma, we knew he was happier with her. When Bruce and I married, we were fortunate enough to move into that little bungalow, and brought 3 children into the world there. Grandpa would have been proud.
The layout is accidental because as I was contemplating how I was going to compose the layout, I happened to read a notice that the Garden Girls on 2Ps were having a Challenge that would end in a couple of hours.. to "Write a Note of Gratitude". I decided I would write a note of gratitude to my sweet Grandpa, and thank him for all he has meant to me for my entire life. I miss him.

Overall Dismay

I really wasn't a very rebellious kid- for the most part I made my parents happy and proud. (As far as I know). But the height of my non-conformity happened when I went away to college. I was very tame compared to many of my Sixties contemporaries. Many of my high school friends joined the counterculture, got heavily into drugs, and became campus radicals and protesters. On the other hand, my rebellion consisted of joining the fifty or so BYU Vietnam War protesters... complete with black arm bands. We gathered after the Kent State tragedy and voiced our outrage. Oh, and I was constantly in violation of the dress standards of the university. Horrors! I wore too-short skirts, and although I was allowed to wear jeans to my art classes, I was not allowed to wear them in the Student Center. I was caught so many times, I was placed on disciplinary probation. But the Dean of Women was my Dad's cousin, and so she let me off the hook pretty easily. I sailed through my teenage years pretty smoothly with my parents. In high school I was a good student, a campus leader, and had great friends. They were proud of me, and happily sent me off to Utah for college when the time came. But, my big radical moment finally came- when I came home from school at the end of my freshman year with HIPPIE OVERALLS! Dad freaked out! He hated them, and told me, not asked me, to NEVER wear them again! I was stunned at his reaction! You would have thought I was smoking pot or dropping acid! So, rebel that I was, I totally ignored him. I'm pretty sure I had those overalls for at least ten more years. Dad got over it.

Happy Digital Scrapbooking Day!