Life, organizing and the pursuit of designing...

Where have I been? What have I been doing?

Resizing 200 layouts to be printed so I could take advantage of the special offer from MyPicTales...yes it was a bit of work to resize my layouts to have the bleed required by the site. But I got 200 layouts printed for free...nada....zich...zilch! But if you missed the special don't despair. 8x8 layouts are fifty cents ($.50) and 12x12 layouts are seventy-five cents ($.75) So at that price you have no excuse not to get your layouts printed and into albums so your family and friends can actually see them.

Speaking of albums, after reading Stacy Julian's book Photo Freedom, I have been in the throes of reorganizing all my albums, in addition to printing hundreds of digital photos, and basically rethinking my whole scrapbooking/photo storage process. Oh yeah, I jumped right into the whole shebang...I got the Pioneer Storage Binders, the category drawers, the 12x12 albums, some 8x8 albums, the circle tags, papers to match the 12x12 albums, matching ribbons, etc. When I decide to do something I take off...I only hope that I continue and do not run out of motivation.

Oh my gosh I have spent days, hours, up until the wee hours of the morning working on some of the initial organization. It will probably take six months to get everything fully implemented and sunk into my brain. But what I have so far is now a system that I can work at in small increments. (you know the good ole 15 minute routine) And it is set up enough that I will be able to start my next project...

I am enrolled in Cathy Zielske's Design Your Life class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. In fact the class starts today. Now you know I am a digital scrapbooker. But I have decided to TRY and do my layouts in paper. You may think this is like taking a step backwards. Maybe it is. But I am such a paper klutz I really want to force myself to work in this area. You say "oh no you are not a klutz". Well let me tell you it took me like an hour just to tie a little ribbon on the clasp of my album. Seriously....how can tying a little ribbon be so darned hard??? First you cut the ribbon too big...then you cut the ribbon too small...then when you tie the ribbon the pretty part is inside out...was I not standing in line when God passed out craft skills???

Oh and then there is the inking the edges thing. On the computer, I can grab a brush ink my edges and it is done. In real life????? Just rub the edge of your paper on the ink pad. You rub it the first time and no ink appears on the edge. Rub it a few more times...oh look the edge you don't see has ink. I want to be able to see the ink when the paper is adhered to the background. Ok so angle the paper...oh look I have a nice neat line of ink. I don't want a nice neat line. It is supposed to look grungy. Keep angling and be a little jerky. Now I have ink on my fingers, on the middle of the paper not just on the edges. Ok so throw that away and try again.

Well, I at least got my Pre Work assignment done. It is in paper and there are some inked edges. It took me forever. And Stacy Julian says to just create a title or section page in one of your 15 minute sessions. I don't think so!

Note the journaling in the bottom square. It looks a little too neat doesn't it? That is because Darcy Baldwin created a font from my handwriting. I think it is really cool even if it is much neater than my regular printing. I have pretty much been using it for the journaling on my digital layouts to give a bit of personal touch. So I typed it up and printed it out for the paper layout.