Pocket Scrapping | March 2015

Hello sweet friends! It has been way too long! I feel like we have been sick around here FOREVER! I am hoping it's over now and we will be all tip top from here on out so we can enjoy the beautiful Spring! I *think* I am finally used to the new computer but some days I still get frustrated. I'm getting there though! 

I thought I would share with you my March pages! I am still completely in love with working on last year in this digital style! It's amazing!! 

For this month I ended up doing 2 double page spreads. It just worked better with the photos I had! It has been a bit bitter sweet going through last years photos and seeing my sweet boy this small. He is already so much bigger! Individual pages are linked for full credits. 

Pocket Scrapping | February 2015

Hello lovelies! I so hope you are all doing well! I wanted to pop in and share a couple more pages from my 2015 album pocket style! I am still really really loving this process. It is so fun and works so well for me! It has made me realize that I think working with digital cards for 2016 is going to be easiest for me. A printer will be coming home to me within the next week or two so I can get caught up and current! For now, I am still plugging away at last year and loving it so much!! 

Here are my February pages. Individual pages are linked to my gallery at The Lilypad for full linked credits.

Click for credits

Click for credits

I am still super in love with the black and whites against the colored cards and elements. I feel like it makes them stand out even more and gives them such a timeless look! February is another super cold and boring month here, so it is just another 2 page spread. March is already bigger so I am sure that throughout the Summer months when we are hiking and things, I am going to have to use 8 pages (4, 2 page spreads) so much more!

I hope you feel inspired! I used to be so scared of pocket scrapping and now I pretty much love it. I am for sure going to get these printed into a photo book. I have looked around at what would be the best, most cost effective way to do it and that is going to be the easiest and will be a lot of fun to look at I think. I will see you again soon! Get out there and create some more memories!

Photo Fun | Double Exposures

I am absolutely not a professional photographer. I wish that I was! I wish that I had the equipment of one as well. I am just a lowly stay at home mom, but thanks to my love of digital scrapbooking and memory keeping, taking better photos and having fun with photo editing has become a little hobby of mine. I thought maybe every now and again I would share some photo fun tips, techniques or tutorials. Sometimes these will be small things like a photo idea. Other times they might be an editing technique (like today!). All in all, I hope you enjoy them or they are a little bit helpful or inspire you to try some new things! I really want to encourage everyone who might come across this to take some time and document your memories with photos or stories or even both!

During the Month of Challenges @ The Lilypad in January, one of the challenges was to create a double exposure photograph and create a page with that. I had never thought about, tried or even really noticed this technique before then. HERE is the link to the challenge. I do not know how long it will be up but it has some super great info from my fellow Polly Farrah about doing double exposures! I thought that I would walk you through how I did my own. Which layer styles I used and all that jazz.

January Freebie

I am cutting it pretty close with this one, but I wanted to bring back the monthly freebies and I have January's all ready in the Freebies page! Be sure to check there regularly because I will get the freebies put there before I can get to blog posts about them.

If you are new around these parts, you might not know that I used to design templates for digital scrapbooking and sold them. These templates were almost always based after my own pages. I have always always always considered myself a scrapbooker and not a designer. I just never wanted to lose my momentum with pages and memory keeping. That's the kind of templates I offer as my freebies here on my blog as well. They are freebies based after my own pages and here is the first one for this year. I hope you like it!

Click for full credits

Making a Template Your Own | Vol 4

Today is the last day I will be talking about this one page. Are you all sick of seeing it yet?! I wanted to feature one page for the whole month, so that I could show you all how you really can take a template and change it so much! It didn't even take me a long time! The page came together in about 45 min. (not including photo editing). that's what I love about templates. They really do make my scrapbooking so much faster, even with a lot of modifications!

Making a Template Your own | Vol 3

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a great January so far! January is by far my least favorite month. It is so cold and dreary here in Indiana. I am trying my very hardest to stay positive and uplifting though!

As you know, I am going through tutorials on how to make a template your own and we are ready for Volume 3. In case you have forgotten, I am working with Circular Templates by Cornelia Designs.

One of the first things You will notice about the template I use (Top left corner) is that it has 3 circle photo spots. For some reason, I struggle with circle photos. The angle of my pictures makes them hard sometimes. There really is no reason or excuse. Sometimes I just don't like the photo placements, sizes or shapes on a template. 

Making a Template Your Own | Vol 2

Welcome back for another tip on how to make a template your own! I am so glad you are here!

As you saw last week, I am working the Circular Templates by Cornelia Designs this month. I so love Cornelia's templates because her style is similar to mine, but not exact. I still have a lot of freedom and wiggle room with her templates which is super fun!

Pocket Scrapping | February 2015

Hey guys! I am back with another share of my Pocket scrapping catch up of last years. If you don't remember, I am just scrapping monthly for my pocket pages. It is the easiest most stress free way for me to do it. This means that some months might be just a regular old two page spread and others might be 6-8 pages today (2 for every week). It just depends on how much we do and if there are any big events, etc. I also think I will add in some special pages for birthday's, big trips, etc. It is working really well for me so far and I am really excited about it!

You can find my Project Life pages up top under "My Work". I will be working on my 2016 Project Life very very soon! I am super excited about getting a new printer so I can work hybrid again finally! HERE are my 2015 pages all in one spot if you would like to see them together.

On to February! January and February are seriously the slowest months ever here in Indiana. It's just so cold and I get so depressed in the Winter. I bought those sunlight light bulbs and things and this year has been a bit better, so hopefully my 2016 pages will have more photos! Here are my February spreads. The individual pages are linked for full credits!

Click for full credits

Click for full credits

Jasper is seriously the cutest ever right?! I can't handle how adorable he is! All of my kids are cuties. I am one super lucky mama! Also, we had watched Big Hero 6 and that is still one of my favorite Pixar movies!! All the feels!!!! I loved it so much and nee a Baymax of my very own!

I hope you like them! If you are on the fence about pocket scrapping or think it looks time consuming, it is so not! It is amazing and I am LOVING it! Never hesitate to hit me up if you need help or product recommendations or any questions about my process! I would be happy to help! I will see you soon!

Tuesday Tip: Blend Modes

I got off to a bit slower of a start with my blogging this year than I originally intended, but I do have some exciting new posts!

One of the things I am most excited about with my new year of blogging adventures is the Tuesday Tips. These will be little tips or tricks for the most part. There will be in depth tutorials sometimes too though. I have found when I am working on my digital scrapbooking pages I sometimes do a little thing that someone new to scrapbooking digitally might not think of! These will not be every single Tuesday quite yet, but there are a few scheduled so they will be semi-regular!

Today I am going to talk to you about blend modes. A really fun way to add an extra special touch to your pages is playing with blending papers or blending other fun things into your background. I do this A LOT when I want a hit of a pattern on my page but nothing too overwhelming to detract from my photo/story. Check out this fun page of my gorgeous niece Elizabeth. (Full credits found here)

I played around with a lot of different backgrounds before settling on a solid blue. However it was still not quite what I wanted. It was just lacking something. With all my added sparkle and things I felt like my background needed a punch as well. Katie Pertiet over at my favorite Designer Digitals has awesome products like these Monochromatic Overlays No. 5. I put one down on top of my solid background but it totally didn't look right just placed there. 

It doesn't look bad at all. That's the awesome thing about the overlays! You really can just plop them down! It isn't as subtle as I wanted though. I decided to have a play with the blend modes on the overlay layer. You can find your blend modes where my yellow arrow is pointing. Select the layer you want to blend in your layers palette and then click on your blend mode. It is always set to "Normal" by default.

I almost always use "Overlay" or "Soft Light" but those just weren't quite right for this page. The awesome thing is, you can click on each one to see how it looks and then click Ctrl + Z to undo it until you find one you like the best. In the end I used "Color Burn" and I am super duper happy with how it turned out!

So I challenge you to try this on your next page! I do this with papers all the time too! I place a patterned paper on top of a solid and desaturate it (by selecting the patterned paper in my layers palette and clicking Ctrl + Shift + U) and then play with the blend modes to make a more subtle pattern for my pages!