How's your summer going so far? Busy? Me too.

I find it ironic that, the busier life gets, the more stories there are to tell… but the less time I have to spend telling them. I try not to stress about it though. I take photos and keep notes (emails sent to friends, blog entries, Facebook updates, tweets on Twitter) with the hope that I'll have time to pull together a few pages once the dust settles. But there never seems to be enough time.

Just this past weekend, though, I rediscovered the joy of speed-scrapping with digital templates. It's a bit like starting a paper layout with a sketch, only it's even easier because the template designer has already pre-cut all the paper and photos to the proper sizes. All I have to do is choose my photos and type out my journalling. Yes, it's really that easy.

I decided to start with a few templates by the ever-so-talented Cathy Zielske, which are available at Designer Digitals, and I simplified the process of choosing digital papers and embellishments by using supplies from several coordinating kits from one of my favourite designers, none other than fabulous Ms. Crystal Wilkerson herself (author of Ella's upcoming August eBook!).


Supplies: CZdesign template no. 84 + Crystal Wilkerson Spring/Summer 2011 Distressed Solids

My first layout is as simple as it gets. Template + photos + words. Once you know how to use clipping masks in Photoshop, then it's a piece of cake. (If you don't know how, I recommend that you watch Cathy's tutorial on vimeo.) The only bit I customized: I changed the colour of the text and the stitched border to match my photos. Easy peasy. Hint: use the eye dropper tool to get a good match.



Supplies: CZdesign template no. 86 + Crystal Wilkerson Spring/Summer 2011 Stripes XS, Distressed Solids, Woodgrain and Colorful Banners

My second layout was a little more complicated. I wanted to play up the birthday theme by adding a pennant banner, but that covered the spot where the title was supposed to be, so I added the title directly on top of the photo. Also, in order to include the non-square horizontal photo of my boys playing chess (in the upper left corner), I merged two squares in the template into one layer and used it to clip my photo. I ran out of photos, so I used a bit of patterned paper in one of the squares and added a text layer (11) to finish it off.




Supplies: CZdesign story guide no. 5a + Crystal Wilkerson Spring/Summer 2011 Woodgrain and Distressed Solids

The third and final layout I did was inspired by Cathy's recent obsession with camera-phone photos. I used photos taken on my iPhone and edited them using the Camera+ app (square crop, special effects and borders). Then all I had to do was plunk the photos straight into this template. I changed the title by deleting the artwork layers from the template and adding my own title as text layers. I used pre-formatted text block to make up my own set of questions and answers, and I typed until I filled the designated space.

There you have it: three layouts in one afternoon. That's more scrapbooking than I've done in the past three months! Super speedy scrapping, all made possible by digital templates. Go me!

.....

Now for the fun part! Cathy is giving away to one lucky blog reader a prize package of any five products from her shop at Designer Digitals. That's right, folks. You get to choose any five of CZ's templates, album sets or word art sets. Just leave a comment on this post, telling me how much (or little) experience you have with digital templates—or anything else you want to tell me about digital scrapbooking for that matter. We'll chose a winner on Friday!

Now go on, and enjoy the rest of your summer!


Click here to see a list of all the digi deals, articles, and more happening this month!

---

And the winning comment is...

A new baby is like the beginning of all things-wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities.

- Eda J. Le Shan (child psychologist & author)

.....

When we, the 2009-2010 crew of Ella Friends, first read Angie's exciting news, we were over-the-moon excited for her and her family and wanted to mark the occasion here on the blog with some baby cards and layouts, plus a few bits of advice for the new mom.

 

Noel says:

1. Live in the sweetness of everyday moments. With each passing year it will be these little things that you cherish. Write them down, it's amazing how quickly you forget these precious bits of sweetness.

2. Take at least one picture of their face each month, especially the first year, and have them printed. I kept an album with just these shots, no extra embellishments (since time if a little short in the baby days) to flip through.

3. Let yourself off the hook. You don't have to have the cleanest house, the most organized kitchen, the perfect child psychology philosophy... you need only to love your little one with all that is in you. The details will always work themselves out.

 

Linda says:

1. Make alone time for yourself on a daily basis.

2. It's ok to let the baby cry. A little bit.

3. Too much love never spoiled anyone.

 

Katrina says:

1. Sleep when the baby sleeps. For reals.

2. The 5 Second Rule is a really important, sanity-saving rule.

3. TRUST yourself - you'll know what's best for that beautiful baby!

Barb says:

1. Don't fret over the small stuff. Babies are pretty easy-going and resilient - as long as you love them, there's no "wrong way" of doing things.

2. Keep a journal of everyday things - just a little notebook to jot down the ordinary details. Life will change quickly, and you'll cherish the bits of life you manage to capture in that notebook. Later on, when you go to create baby layouts, you'll have some very authentic journalling ready to go.

3. Take care of yourself. Eat well, drink enough fluids, sleep when the baby sleeps, and don't be afraid to ask for help.

.....

From all of us, congratulations to Angie, Travis and Jeremy on the arrival of baby Keira in your family! We wish you all the best.

Summer vacation 2010: 15 days: 1241 photos

We've been home from that trip for more than five weeks now, and I haven't even looked at 50% of the photos I took while we were away. Quite frankly, I am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of photos I take when we travel as a family.

Thank goodness for my friends who offered to help me tackle my virtual piles of vacation photos that sit on my external hard drive, waiting to be scrapped! This is week 2 of my sketch-and-scraplift challenge in which I turn my friend's original double-page vacation layout into a sketch and then use it create my own two-pager.

This week, I want to introduce you to my good friend, Nathalie, the gal whose family we visited at the end of that 1241-photo vacation I mentioned above. She created this beautiful two-pager to help me jumpstart my creativity.



In case your French is as rusty as mine, here's Nathalie's explanation of the title and journalling:

"Every year, there are a few activities and outings that we absolutely need to do at least once during our summer vacation. Summer would just not be the same and wouldn't be complete without them."

She was able to choose photos taken of their favourite summertime activities from different years and combined them all one one page. What a brilliant way to showcase some favourite photos and memories without the pressure of creating a layout for each and every trip to the amusement park or beach!

I love the vibrant colours Nathalie used on her layout - they definitely help emphasize the summery theme. The title across the width of the two pages helps tie the two sides of the layout together, and visual triangle of orange elements (the big sun, the sunflower squares, and the photo of the campfire) help lead the viewer's eye across from one page to the next.

Before I started my own page, I turned Nath's page into a sketch.



I wanted to use some photos of our trip to San Diego two summers ago. Following Nathalie's lead, I decided to combine two SeaWorld outings onto one layout. Since my photos were a lot more detailed than hers, I chose to declutter my canvas by moving my title up into the corner and skipping the patterned paper accents. As I started to stick things down, I couldn't believe how full the page looked with just a touch of yellow paint, the ribbon and the chipboard letters. I added a few simple red embellishments, just to give the layout a punch of colour.



Thanks to Nathalie for sharing her creative efforts with Ella! I hope this peek into her creative process will inspire you to get scrapping your vacation pictures too.

Check out last week's post on 2 page spreads.

I started scrapbooking in June 2004, but I didn't really hit my story-telling groove until early 2005 when I read Clean&Simple by Cathy Zielske.



This book changed the way I scrapped. I started telling meaningful stories about people and relationships and just general observations about life; I stopped scrapbooking every single photo I loved; and I started scrapping out of chronological order. I found my groove and haven't looked back ever since.

These days, I don't have much difficulty journaling on my pages, especially when I'm writing about things that happened recently. It's easy to remember how excited the boys were about the Olympics last month or how proud my older son was when a friend phoned him to ask for help with his math homework, but ask me about something that happened last year or the year before, and my memories are a lot fuzzier. Even worse, ask me what my son's favourite book or song or video was in 2003, back in my pre-scrapbooking days, and I might not be able to tell you. I often find myself stumped for meaningful stories to tell about my pre-2004 photos.



It's a bit sad, isn't it? My boys are now 7 and 9, and they don't have baby albums. I have scrapper's block when it comes to my boys' baby and toddler photos. Thousands of digital files, chock full of chubby-cheeked cuteness, are sitting on my external hard drive, just waiting to be scrapped. Where do I even begin? I had no idea.

Last month, in a seemingly unrelated part of my life (in my office at work), I was cleaning out the old messages from my sent email folder. The IT guys were cracking down on our email storage limits, and I was at risk of having my old messages archived onto an inaccessible drive somewhere in some dark, dank dungeon if I didn't clean up my files. Okay, I made up the part about the dungeon, but the rest of the story is true.

During this email clean-up exercise, I deleted thousands of sent messages about meetings, presentations, missing data, and other unimportant details of projects long since completed. What a dreary, time-consuming task!

But hold on… what was this?! It was a short, two-liner email I'd sent to my sister about the funny face my son made when he tried peas for the first time. Oh, look at this one… a message I sent to my husband about the cute little conversation I had with our then two-year old as we walked to daycare that particular morning. It turns out that I'd discovered a treasure trove of scrapbooking material hidden amongst the trash in my sent box.

With this discovery, I was inspired to create an email-related page, and I challenged two of my talented scrappy friends to do the same.

Lisa Kisch found an email that she'd sent to her friends and family when her daughter, Lily, was just a wee babe. She paired the text from her email message with an adorable photo from the same time period, and the results are beautiful and meaningful.



If you can't see the journalling on the layout, here's what the email said:

Lily is 8 weeks old now, and such a precious baby. She just loves to be cuddled and kissed, and she's a wonderful eater and sleeper. The other night she slept 7 hours in a row! (We won't talk about last night, though, ha ha!) She is about 13 lbs., and is already wearing some 3 month clothing. She is smiling, and following things with her eyes. She loves her mobile and Mr. Panda on the bouncy chair. She is very strong and can hold her head up like a champ! Audrey adores "baby sistah" and is a very big help. Here are photos of Lily, taken today, and one of Audrey, too. I am such a lucky Mommy to have two such sweet and lovely girls!

Stephanie Howell  took my challenge in a different direction and created a page about how her husband's emails from abroad help sustain her when he's deployed. The raw emotion she captured on this page gave me goosebumps.



This page must mean a lot to Stephanie personally, but it also serves to remind the rest of us of the sacrifices that military families around the world make so that all of us may continue to live the blessed lives we're accustomed to living. So to Steph and her family and to all the other military families out there, thank you!

Finally, I'll leave you with my project, created from the emails that started this journey of discovery. I transcribed a few conversations between my precocious toddler and me from email messages to journalling bubbles in Photoshop Elements and printed them out include on this page.

 
Can you read the journaling? I didn't think so. It says:

J: Mommy, look at all the clouds!
M: Oh, wow... what colour are the clouds?
J: Pink!
M: Ummm, I think they are mostly white. Maybe a little bit pink.
J: Oh, they are mostly white.
J: Mommy, I hear a bird.
M: Yes, I hear a bird too.
J: (pointing) Mommy, look there's a bird over there!
M: Yes, I see it.
J: Oh, another bird! He's flapping his arms.
M: (laughing) No, those are his wings. The bird is flapping its wings.
J: Oh, he's flapping his wades.
M: His wings...
J: Oh... wings!
M: James, look! A kitty is crossing the street.
J: I don't see him.
M: Over there, by the blue car.
J: Oh... hi, Kitty! (big smile)
M: He looks like our kitty.
(Cat rubs up against our legs.)
M: Okay, we have to go now. Bye, Kitty!
J: Bye, Kitty! See you a-morrow!

I had a lot of fun creating this page. It's one of my favourite pages with photos from my pre-scrapping days. I plan to search through the sent mail folders on several other email accounts I have, in hopes of finding the next meaningful story to tell.

How about you? Does your email account hold any undiscovered gems? I challenge you to do a quick search through your old messages and find a meaningful story to tell.

Psssst, it’s me. Barb. Sssssh... don’t tell Lain or Angie, but I have no idea why they asked me to host a challenge during this week’s Digi Days celebration. I mean, I’m the last person I’d go to for advice on digital scrapbooking. Seriously. My digital skills are limited, to say the least. I know how to edit (crop and color-correct) my photos in Photoshop Elements, but that’s about it.

But anyone who knows me knows I am not the type to go turning down a good challenge. After all, I was the kid who chose to play oboe because the music teacher told the class it was the hardest instrument to master. Without giving it too much thought, I said yes to Lain and Angie.

Fast forward a week, and here I am, writing this blog post about a topic on which I cannot claim to be an expert. Bear with me, okay? ;) I challenged the Ella Friends to create a scrapbook layout using one of Ella's awesome new digital frames, plus at least one other digital element. The page could either be 100% digital or a hybrid of digital and paper. As my inbox started to fill with these wonderful creations, I was in awe of all that was possible in the digital and hybrid scrapping world.

First up is Noel Culbertson’s page, which is 100 percent digital (you go, girl!). Check out the kraft paper and the beautiful white space. I love that it looks so very real, even though it’s a digital page. I’m going to beg Noel for some pointers on how to achieve this look.

Supplies: paper and elements (Sociology by Paislee Press) + photo frames (Ella Publishing Co.) + font (Helvetica) + digital layout by Noel Culbertson

The next layout that appeared in my inbox was this one by Moon Ko. She tells me she’s a digital newbie, but I wouldn’t have guessed by looking at her page. I love the simple elegance of the design, just like her paper and glue pages.

Supplies: paper and elements (Photogenic by Paislee Press and Audacious Designs) + photo frames (Ella Publishing Co.) + fonts (Lapland Light, Peajay and Impact) + digital layout by Moon Ko

Our fearless leader, Lain, created this page for my challenge. She’s a girl after my own heart, with her use of bright colours and her mixing of digital and “real” scrapbooking supplies. The background paper, embellishments and photo were printed out from a digital file, and then she trimmed it down, adhered it to the yellow patterned paper, stamped the zig zag stitching around the edge and added the trim and bling. A great way to cross over between digi and your paper supplies!

Supplies: patterned paper (October Afternoon) + ribbon (Rusty Pickle) + bling (Heidi Swapp) + zig-zag stamp (Kelly Panacci for SandyLion) + "Family" stamp (Katie Pertiet for Autumn Leaves) + ink (VersaMark) + digital patterned papers and elephant stamp (Jodie McNally for Ella Publishing Co. -- coming soon!) + digital frame (Ella Publishing Co.) + 8½ x 11 hybrid page by Lain Ehmann

Next, the ever-talented Monica McNeill sent me this eye-catching hybrid page. She showcased photos from two different eras and made the connection between them. I love how the vintage Polaroid frames help tell the story on this layout. By the way -- digital is a great way to incorporate precious heritage photos into your pages. You don't have to worry about cutting up the only copy of an old picture... you can scan it in and crop away!

Supplies: paper and embellishments (Studio Calico, Cotillion kit) + digital frame (Ella Publishing Co.) + font (Traveling Typewriter) + 8 x 8 hybrid page by Monica McNeill 

Finally, I’ll leave you the hybrid page I created with the very cool masking tape frame that’s part of the awesome prize package we're giving away on Friday. I added a bit of dimension to my digital elements by printing the framed photo twice and hand-cutting the tape from the second print-out and sticking it on top of the tape on the framed photo, just so it looks like it’s popping off the page a bit. I printed the circular star tag the exact size of one of my circle punches so I could punch it out quickly, stick it on top of another punched cardstock circle and ink the edges to give it that finished look.

Supplies: patterned paper (BasicGrey, Scenic Route) + letter stickers, staples, brads (Making Memories) + spiral notebook punch (Stampin’ Up!) + digital frame (Ella Publishing Co.) + digital embellishment (Sande Krieger for 2Peas in a Bucket) + 8½ x 11 hybrid page by Barb Wong

So there you have it! One challenge taken up by five scrapbookers, resulting in five very different pages. I hope you’ll find a bit of inspiration here and take us up on the Digi Days challenge posted on Monday. I love learning from and being inspired by you.

NOTE: Ella thinks Barb did quite a satisfactory job... in fact, we think she's Digi-delightful! :) Thanks, Barb!