Dear Photograph,

I stood here on the hotel steps on a house hunting trip to Cheyenne in April 2000, wishing like anything that I could live in one of these beautiful historic old houses (but knowing the two year waiting list made that impossible). I never could have imagined that 12 years later, my home would be the house with the side porch peeking out from behind the cottonwood trees on the most beautiful circle imaginable. Even though it's only temporary until the Air Force sends us somewhere else, I am grateful.

Thank you,

Elizabeth

Happy National Photography Month! Read about Ella's Dear Photograph challenge and join in by linking up your Dear Photograph post here.

Good morning, everyone! It's time to pull out your cameras and keep them handy all day for this special Saturday edition of the Take Twelve photography challenge! Do you have a lazy day planned? Is it full of errands or fun or a little bit of both? We're looking at a crazy day filled with work, gymnastics, birthday parties, and hopefully a little time to squeeze in some laundry. (You know it's busy at my house this month when I am hoping for some laundry time.) Whether you have a wild ride or an ordinary routine ahead of you, have fun capturing it all today.
 

We love to see what you're sharing in the Take Twelve Flickr group pool! Check out Aly Dosdall's great photo collage from Aprill:

Can you spot Aly in the blue cardigan? Have you made an appearance in your own Take Twelve photos yet? No? Get on it. Ahem.
 

We've featured a page by Take Twelve Flickr group user MajiclnOz before, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this page that followed along with April's theme of technology:

What a nifty look it adds to round the photo corners in this way...
 

And how much fun is this Easter-y page by Kathleen Ducharme?

A whole lot of fun, that's how much. It's also a great reminder that you can interpret your twelve photos however you'd like: a photojournalist's approach to the day or a feature photographer's editorial approach to Peeps (or whatever else). Your choice—we love to see it all!

Be sure to regularly check out the Take Twelve Flickr group for inspiration, and if you haven't purchased a copy of the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit you might want to consider that, too—it's filled with ideas and checklists and sketches and more to make the 12th of the month even more fun.
 

This month our prize comes hot off the presses: two lucky winners will receive a brand-new print edition of Everyday Storyteller, a new book from Jennifer Wilson/Create More Media with a slate of amazing contributors. I already have a copy and I can say it's an excellent resource full of beautiful pages and reminders about why we scrapbook.

Hi everyone—it's Elizabeth, here to put some of the fabulous Erin Cobb's practical tips to work from her "What To Do When the Lights Ain't Bright" Spring Training video!

Wouldn't it be great if we always had bright, shadowless light available to us to capture the goings-on of our daily lives? Like this picture I took this week of my daughter, Bridget—straight out of the camera, on the steps before we got in the car to head to her kindergarten screening. I didn't have to think about lighting at all; just point, click, and done.
 

Unfortunately for the light meters in our cameras, a whole lot of the stuff of life happens after optimal lighting hours. It would be a shame to just give up on the hours "when the lights ain't bright" just because it's a little trickier to capture them with our cameras. Luckily, there are some easy ways to improve your lowlight photography—Erin explains a number of fixes so clearly you'll see results immediately, without the need for expensive flash equipment (or the time commitment to learning how to use it!). Let me illustrate the difference between photos taken in the same lighting conditions so you can see what an impact Erin's tips make!

One of the regular routines in our house is the post-gymnastics snack. Two of my girls spend twelve hours a week at gymnastics, and by the time they get home they're ravenous (and I've always heard how it's just boys that eat a family out of house and home!) even though they've already had dinner before AND a snack at the gym. I realized that our current schedule has not yet been documented, mostly because by the time they get home it's dark and the Air Force-issue chandelier in our dining room isn't particularly flattering. Plus I'm often running back and forth from the kitchen bringing more food, leaving no time for photos.
 

Photo 1: I just took a picture based on whatever settings my camera was set on last time I took a picture. It's a little dark, oddly yellow, and you can see a bit of blur in the gobbling of toast. My ISO was inadvertently set high—1200—already.
 

Photo 2: This time I pushed up the ISO to 1600, steadied myself by anchoring my elbows, and held my breath when I pushed the shutter. My picture is crisper, but more oddly yellow.
 

Photo 3: White balance adjustment to the rescue! I did all the things from photo 2, but this time took my white balance setting from automatic to tungsten (the one that looks like a light bulb). Fixed!



Another important ritual in my week is my Sunday night TV date with Matt to watch Game of Thrones on HBO (though sometimes, our Sunday night TV date happens mid-week, as it did this week). It's such a relaxing hour for us in an otherwise chaotic, overly busy schedule and I've never scrapbooked it because, well, it's dark up in our makeshift attic family room!

Photo 1: It looks like I sneezed when I pushed the shutter. I don't think I did, but this picture is a great illlustration of what many of you might see when taking a picture in lowlight without the lowlight workarounds that Erin suggests.
 

Photo 2: I followed Erin's ISO/white balance/steadying tips, but my photo is a little too bright—the detail of the TV screen is lost.
 

Photo 3: This time, I actually purposefully underexposed my photo; it seems a little counter-intuitive when taking a photo in such a dark place, but it helps to regain the detail in a bright subject framed by a dark setting. I don't mind that my photo has a dark feel to it because it's pretty true to the atmosphere of our attic at night. It's OK to still have a dark-ish photo if that's what it actually looks like—your goal is simply to get the best dark-ish photo you can get!

I didn't make this cool infographic I printed for my page—it's by Magdalena Maslowska, hauteslides.com

Let me add one more tip to working with photos taken in low light: there's a time for enlarging your photos (5 x 7, 8 x 10, even full page size!) and there's a time to stick with good old 4 x 6 (or smaller) prints. The larger you make a photo the more detail (and digital noise) you'll see, so I'd recommend the latter when scrapbooking this type of photo to get the most flattering impact!

 

Interested in Spring Training? Learn more about this live event here. Yes, you can still register.

Already registered? Click here to visit the exclusive Craftnasium. (Must be logged in to your Ella user account for the link to work.)

Spring Training participants get the chance to win great prizes from 13 crafty companies, including today's spotlighted sponsor:

It's April 19, which means it's Take Twelve roundup day—are you ready? We're 1/3 of the way through the project (hard to believe!) and by this point, there's a good chance you're starting to get a feel for how your pages are coming together. As for me, I'm still keeping more detailed notes on my blog about the photos I take on the 12th of the month; my full-size pages have less detail in the journaling, and I'm perfectly OK with that. I'm also realizing that the busier I am, the happier I am creating a very simple page. I'm enjoying the quick turnaround by giving myself permission not to fuss too much over my page. How are you approaching your photos and layouts?

Read more about my photos on my blog.

Let's move on to the featured Take Twelve team members for April! First up is Angie Gutshall's beautiful nod to springtime. It's full of light, it's whimsical, but it also includes a heartwrenching subject, too—the death of her husband's grandfather. It's a well-known fact that scrapbooking can be therapeutic and an important component in healing; I can attest to this personally as my husband's grandfather passed away on April 12, 2010, the first time I participated in Take Twelve. Just like Angie, I figured out a way to incorporate it and two years later, I am so glad I did. Life is about so many things, and it would be a shame to leave out the hard parts.
 

Read more about Angela's layout on her blog.
 

Next, check out Janette Kincaid's spread about signs of spring reaching Canada. She even captured one of my most favorite signs of spring—baseball! (Lucky her, my all-time favorite player—Omar Vizquel—is a Toronto Blue Jay these days, sniff sniff.) Janette let one of Donna Januzzi's sketches from the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit guide her design; a few tweaks to the sketch and it came together seamlessly. Don't forget to refer to those sketches, because they are an amazing resource for your Take Twelve photos—or any page you might make.
 

Read more about Janette's page on her brand new blog, Kit Bits.

Margie put a spin on the neighborhood photo walk by capturing small details that make her life in China so unique. It can be difficult when your "home" is so far from your home, and as Margie says, sometimes the novelty of the adventure can wear off. "The Take 12 challenge helps me step back and make more of an effort to pay attention to things I take for granted now but will want to remember after we are long gone. Especially because Beijing is changing so rapidly it makes my head spin!" You might not live in China, but the benefit is still there—you can see things differently when you point your camera at them.
 

Read more about Margie's life in China and her "Small Details Big Differences" page on her blog.


Spring fever struck Monica Bradford this month, too—she captured a glorious collection of subjects and colors, including a tiny little nest with eggs inside! She let the photos speak for themselves on the page; it's OK not to agonize over journaling when the photos say it all! The darling washi banner was a snap to make, and provided a fun spot to include the title.
 

Read more about Monica's page on her blog.

Want to check out how other Take Twelve members approached their pages this month? Go look—we'll wait!
 

Aliza Deutsch

Lisa Ottosson

Jennie McGarvey

Van Nguyen

Stephanie Medley-Rath

Finally, we don't want to forget our winner of this month's Take Twelve giveaway! Muvazi Renewal Skin Care generously donated a package of skin care products valued at $149.95 this month; the lucky girl who gets to take it home is entry #14, Jennifer S! She earned that prize, too—check out all the work that went into her collections page:
 

You can look more closely at Jennifer's page in the Take Twelve Flickr group.

Keep adding those pages and photos to the Take Twelve Flickr group all month long and we'll see you back here on May 12 for round #5 of the Take Twelve photography challenge!

Happy April, everyone! Believe it or not we're almost 1/3 of the way through with the Take Twelve photography challenge. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done—that's 36 moments captured with another 12 on the way! Whether you focused on a theme like Take Twelve Flickr group member Danielle Hunter did last month...

...or took the opportunity to freeze time through photos and journaling like group member Joscelyne Cutchens did...

...there's one thing you should know: there is no right or wrong way to participate. The important thing is to keep at it. Even if you forget to take your photos until the end of the day (the sun'll come out... tomorrow!) or your photos maddeningly disappear from your memory card, find a way. And then scrapbook it.
 

If you're following along with the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit (on sale today at a 12% discount) you'll find the special theme project is all about the technology in your life. If you've never scrapbooked about technology, consider this: the majority of what you use during the course of an ordinary day didn't exist in 1912. Can you imagine how quaint we'll seem to our descendants 100 years from now?
 

No matter what you see through your lens today, be sure to blog and/or scrapbook it this week and come back here to link us to your photos/layout for a chance to receive this month's Take Twelve giveaway! We have something a little different on hand:
 

A Muvazi Renewal Skin Care Set (retail price $149.95), which includes 5.5 oz Foaming Cleanser Toner, 15 mL Oxygenic Eye Cream, 50 mL Intra-Cellular Moisturizer, and 1 oz Hydrating Face Serum. And a reminder that with code PAMPERYOURSELF, you can save $80 off the retail price and get this skin-care set for $69.95. Want to learn more? Check out reviews from Angie Lucas, Ashley Harris, and Audrey Neal over at The Daily Trumpet. I'll be back in a week to announce the lucky recipient! 

Welcome to the March Monday morning edition of the Take Twelve photography challenge! March is a wild time of year in my house—the weather is completely unpredictable (snow! 75º and sunshine! gale force winds! grilling weather!) and we all have one eye on our NCAA brackets at all times. Add some extra events to our already full calendar and we can easily slip into running-around-like-chickens-with-our-heads-cut-off mode. It was such a good idea to focus on "luck and fortune" for my collection of twelve photos this month, because my camera (as usual) helped me put a wild and crazy life in perspective. My journaling is written on the tiny gift enclosure card that fills up one of my squares—those cards are a great way to include journaling when you have a lot already going on a page!
 

click on the image to read more about my photos
 

Take Twelve team member Valerie Bishop pointed her camera at signs of spring everywhere on March 12! Her vibrant, fresh photos and sweet, vintage embellishments make for a page that just screams spring. Spring colors can be a little on the wild side, but she chose a muted color of cardstock to balance it all out. I'm a little jealous of this early spring; we're having an abnormally warm month so far in Wyoming too, but that translates to one inch of tiger lily shoots in my yard... everything else is brown and dead. I am happy to live vicariously through Valerie!


Click on the image to learn more about Valerie's layout

Take Twelve team member Stephanie Medley-Rath created a slice of life page detailing the little moments she experiences in her world of academic work as a sociologist and the world of family work as a mama. Stephanie decided to really focus on herself this month, which is a rare approach in her scrapbooks—but what a worthwhile effort! She opted to use the black-and-white filter on Instagram to take her photos this month, which made coordinating everything easy.
 

click on the image to learn more about Stephanie's layout

Curious what other members of the Take Twelve team did with their March 12th photos? Check them out here:

Margie Scarpignato

Aliza Deutsch

Angela Gutshall

Lisa Ottosson

Jennie McGarvey

Monica Bradford

Lisa Day

And here are some approaches from the Ella Friends:
 

Grace Tolman

Bobbi-Jo Grunewald

Audrey Neal

And now for the moment many have you been waiting for... the winner of a $50 gift certificate to Persnickety Prints! Random.org provided us with its magic services once again, and lucky #24 was drawn:

which translates into lucky girl Kirsten, aka One Tough Mother. Check out her Lucky 12 page:
 

Congratulations, Kirsten! Thanks to everyone who participated by linking their photos and layouts! It's not too late to scrapbook your Take Twelve photos, of course... keep plugging away and add your creations to our Take Twelve Flickr group anytime. We'll see you back here on April 12 for another round!

I don't mean to alarm you, but guess what? It's already March 12!! I know. Please forgive us for not warning you about the one small negative side effect of participating in the 2012 Take Twelve photography challenge... this year is going to fly by. Only 287 days until Christmas! Ha ha. 
 

Just in case you're joining us for the first time today, here's a speedy review of the basics (we're a pretty low-key, fun-loving bunch of photo challengers here at Ella Publishing):
 

+ Use whatever camera you want!

+ Have fun!

+ Share your photos/layouts with us in the 2012 Take Twelve Challenge Flickr Group!

+ use the hashtag #take 12 on Twitter and Instagram to quickly connect with other participants!

+ Don't forget to check out the March photo list and themed project contained in the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit (and if you don't have it yet, what are you waiting for? Snag it for a 12% discount today!)
 

We love to spot beautiful additions to the Flickr group, by the way. Like this one, from group member Ellie Augustin:

from Flickr group member Ellie Augustin

And this collage of photos from Flight 714:

from Flickr group member Flight 714

I don't know where you live, Flight 714, but if you've already got flowers blooming I'd sure like to visit.
 

Finally, check out how Monica Bradford scrapbooked her February photos:

page by Take Twelve Team Member Monica Bradford; click image to read more details

Stunning. Are you inspired? I'm inspired. As an additional enticement to play along with us this month, we've got a super-fantastic prize for one lucky participant! This month's Take Twelve sponsor is Persnickety Prints! Link your Take Twelve efforts on this post before Sunday night at midnight ET and you'll be eligible to receive a $50 gift certificate. $50! To Persnickety Prints! If you aren't familiar with the services Persnickety Prints offers, you're in for a treat. Their know-how, printing methods, value, and reputation for customer service are stellar. May the luck of the Irish be with you.... and see you back here in a week for the March Take Twelve roundup!
 

Happy February 19th! It's a nice little by-product of the Take Twelve project that the 19th gets a little extra attention each month, isn't it? Welcome to this month's February Take Twelve round-up, where I feature some of our Take Twelve team member pages and encourage you to take some time to visit the pages/photos that our creative participants have posted all week long through InLinkz. What amazing moments and memories you're capturing! 

If you're following along with the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit, this month suggested to look around for color as you took your twelve photos. Take Twelve team members Aliza Deutsch and Lisa Ottosson both used this challenge on Sunday; you might think their results would be similar, but you couldn't be further from the truth. Check out their photos, first:

Lisa's take on colors

Aliza's take on colors

I absolutely love the contrast of their results. There are so many factors that influence our photography; our personalities, our preferences, our geography... Lisa took her photos within her home in Sweden, while Aliza headed outside in her New York City neighborhood. They both turned their photos into stunning pages:

8 x 11.5 spread by Lisa Ottosson; click to read more about this layout

12 x 12 spread by Aliza Deutsch; click to read more about this layout

They might have very different results, but one thing holds true: no matter where you live or what your color preference, kraft cardstock is awesome!

Team member Jennie McGarvey focused her camera on the slow, easy pace of a cold, February day. Doesn't her color scheme just scream cheerful? Her page is a great reminder to capture what you love about family life—sometimes the weeks get so busy and the pace gets so wild that a scrapbook page about a relaxed Sunday is not just a nice addition, but essential to our mental health!

12 x 12 page by Lisa Day; click to read more about this layout

Lisa captured 12 "moments of love" for her Feburary page, and captures the feel of Valentine's Day without being overly Valentine-y with her product choices. Check out how she mixed a wood grain pattern with a chevron pattern—it works so well because of her uniform photo size! Don't feel like you have to journal full sentences and paragraphs every month; notes are a perfect way to convey what's going on in each photo so you won't forget years down the line.

Click image for larger view

And, coming in at the last minute, Ella owner Angie Lucas finished, photographed, and uploaded her February layout late at night on the 18th. Her page features a traditional Valentine's Day palette, with two color photos taken on her SLR camera and nine black and white photos taken via the Instagram iPhone app.

Like Lisa Day, Angie opted for short-and-sweet journaling this month. And she couldn't resist including stamping techniques in her design, since February is Stamping Month at Ella Publishing Co.!
 

All of the stamps on Angie's page are by Fiskars, and she used Close to My Heart Ink with Top Boss clear embossing powder.
 

Check out what some of our other Take Twelve team members have been up to this week:

Angela

Valerie

Stephanie

Janette

Van

Margie

Monica

Janette

And finally, let's all give a cheer for DebB, #26 in the fantastic collection of pages you all submitted for this month's giveaway from Stampin' Up! Deb will receive My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up (and the rest of you can try it out for free!).

Congratulations! Just because our roundup is finished for this month doesn't mean the scrapbooking is over... keep working on those February Take Twelve pages and add them to our Take Twelve Flickr group so we can continue to be inspired until March 12 rolls around!

It's hard to believe it's been an entire month since we kicked off the Take Twelve photography challenge! If you're new to the concept, take a minute to read about it all here. It's definitely not to late to join in—a calendar year is a calendar year whether you start in January, February, or July!

A few reminders as you pick up your cameras:

+ There are no rules! Use whatever camera—or combination of cameras—you like.

+ Stop in to check out what beautiful photographs and scrapbook pages are filling up the 2012 Take Twelve Flickr Group! Better yet, why not become a member yourself and share your Take Twelve photography challenge results, too? Check out two beautiful pages that were added after the January round:

from Flickr member KTnestingspot

from Flickr member MajiclnOz

+ Want to quickly connect with other Take Twelve photography challenge participants? Use the hashtag #take12 on Twitter or Instagram to see what others are up to on February 12.

+ If you bought the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit don't forget to check the February list of fun photo ideas! You'll never be at risk of taking the same photos over and over every month with your photo checklists in hand... unless you want to, of course. It might be fun to include a photo each month in the same location! If you didn't buy the kit, what are you waiting for? Go ahead, go grab it—we'll wait!

+ Do you have a little more time or creative energy to pour into your photos today? Try this month's themed project, found in the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit. (Of course, you can always take twelve everyday photos and complete the themed project—remember, no rules!) Check out what an amazing job Ella Friend Audrey Neal did with January's themed project, all about collections:

You can see Audrey's photos in more detail in the Take Twelve Flickr group. They're fantastic! I already warned her to lock up those globes and cameras, ha!

Whether you plan to add your pages to already established albums or to create a special album or mini-album for your Take Twelve pages, why not create a cover page to tie them all together like 2011 Ella Friend Valerie Mangan did? What a great idea!

cover page by Valerie Mangan

Get clicking then come back for your chance to receive a treat from this month's Take Twelve sponsor, Stampin' Up! One lucky recipient will receive the acclaimed My Digital Studio software from Stampin' Up, a $79.95 value. It's simple and easy to navigate, allowing users of all levels to create beautiful, professional looking digital pages with trendy page templates and digital products. Ordering photo books through the software is a snap, and all colors are guaranteed to match Stampin' Up's physical products for hybrid scrapbooking. You can create some pretty cool results using My Digital Studio software!

Enter This Month's Giveaway

Happy January 19, everyone! Can you believe it's been a week since we all embarked on the Take Twelve photography challenge? Each month on the 19th I'll feature some completed Take Twelve layouts from our team and draw names of lucky recipients of the month's giveaway.

Speaking of the monthly giveaway... you'll find the link submission information at the end of each 12th-of-the-month post (see January's here); from now on, we'll extend the entry deadline to midnight EST on the evening of the 18th. That's an extra day to turn those twelve photos into something magical (a blog post, a layout, or whatever your heart desires!). We also encourage you to continue adding your photos and layouts to the Ella Publishing Co. 2012 Take Twelve Project Flickr Group (whew! Say that five times fast!) all month long—we'll feature a few photos/layouts here at The Daily Trumpet on February 12!

Let's get to it, shall we?

I decided to use one of Donna Jannuzzi's fantastic sketches from the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit for my photos—while I'm going to make an honest effort to use some of the less linear sketches she created, I couldn't resist beginning with the clean lines of this one. My photos weren't all landscape orientation; I just resized and cropped them so they'd fit the sketch measurements. I added a few simple details (including that super-fun letterpress camera I cut out of a card—there are four more on the card so I might use a different one next month!) and summarized my notes that I wrote up for my blog on January 12.

Next up: Take Twelve Team member Margie Scarpignato. I wanted to include her digital layout today to prove a point: you can fit in twelve photos and a layout even if you're really, really busy. Margie did—on a flight with her boys from California to China. Amazing!! She simply focused on one event (albeit a GIANT event for most of us) and snapped away. Her journaling takes the form of a descriptive list—not complicated at all.

I absolutely loved the spin Take Twelve Team member Van Nguyen put on her twelve photos: her resolution for 2012 is to work on finding balance in her life, so she's going to use her involvement with the Take Twelve Project to check in with how that's going. Whether you approach your photos in a random, haphazard way (ahem—like me, this month) or in a reflective way as Van did, you're still on your way to capturing 144 unique memories through your camera's lens. Make this project your own!

Take Twelve Team member Angela Gutshall's page is bright and happy—and the perfect blend of order (square photos) and whimsy (embellishments). She lopped her List-It in half (printed from the Take Twelve Guided Inspiration Kit) for a unique look that saves space and provides balance.

Last up for today is team member Monica Bradford. Look familiar? Look closely—we used the same sketch to create our layouts! The beauty of sketches is that they are infinitely customizable; no two layouts based on the same sketch will ever turn out exactly alike. Our layouts are both focused on the everyday moments that occurred on January 12, but she took an hourly approach to capturing them.

Want even more ideas? Be sure to visit the following Take Twelve Team members' blogs to see how they approached the challenge!

Valerie

Jennie

Stephanie

Aliza

Lisa D.

Check out some great ideas from some of our staff and Ella Friends, too:

Bobbi-Jo

Christa

Missy

Angie

Now... how about that giveaway? Up for grabs: a seat in Cathy Zielske's Ten Tips for Better Type and a seat in May Flaum's The Curious Scrapbooker's Field Guide. Thanks to Big Picture Classes for their generous sponsorship of this month's Take Twelve Project giveaway!

[drumroll please][the accidental latecomers to the link party were included in the integer spread]

Congratulations to #11 (Fay) and #35 (Michelle Evans). We'll have our people contact your people very soon to work out the details!

Thanks to everyone who participated this month. And for those of you who haven't jumped in yet... it's not too late!