Our theme this month is Winter Pastimes. We don’t get snow or very cold weather where I live so I don’t do the typical sledding, ice skating, building snow men… What I DO do a lot of is remember. Holiday traditions and holiday recipes bring me near so many memories so I’ve decided to share some of those memories with you through past scrapbook pages.Â
I’m going to fudge a bit and include some Autumn memories, after all November is still Autumn.Â
This first page commemorates our next door neighbor’s zoo birthday party. The photos on these pages are from 2007 but the page was made several years later.Â
This page is one I made when I was in a Scrapbook Club. The pages were designed by Adina Godin. I assembled them at a club meeting. It was several years later that I adde my photos and made them my own.Â
The first thing I’d like to point out is how I adapted to the photo sizes and orientation. This is a trick you can use when adapting a sketch or digital template. I wanted to use a LOT of photos and not all my photos fit the orientation of the photo spots so I printed two horizontal photos stacked so that I could place them on a portrait oriented space on my page. I also placed portrait pictures side-by-side to fill a landscape photo space. I give a lot of attention to which photos are used where on a layout in order to balance, move the eye around the page and give weight to the photos which are more important. I do a lot of re-printing to get it right but it is something I need to do to be happy with my completed page.
The original page had the title FALL and the pumpkins. Since this was a birthday party at Zoo Boo at Houston Zoo I added (Cricut machine cut) die cuts to add purple and give the page a more halloween feel. I added a haunted mansion and bats. I added a tab with the word memories on it to re-balance the title strip after the addition of the haunted house. To the original journaling spot I added the die cut BOO and a stack of presents in Halloween colors. I also added the die cut word Birthday. I experimented with adding a spooky iron fence border but it was a step too far, it detracted rather than enhancing the page.
The other partygoers were not known to us, but I took the opportunity to label this photo with the names of my son and our two neighbors for future reference.
I would also like to call out this (in my opinion) amazing photo. I try to repeat it every time I return to our zoo (alas, 23-year-old Ethan is no longer game for crawling through the tunnel 😉). What you are looking is This is a clear plexi tunnel which the children can crawl through to view the fish from inside the aquarium. Most parents photograph it from the size and get a very distorted photo of green tinted children. If you ever find a feature like this, it’s worth getting down on the ground and photographing from the opening of the tunnel – if you can get the kids to all look at you when you do it, that’s even better!Â
The next page is a memory from Thanksgiving day 2006. In Houston we get our best weather in the fall and this year the weather was so beautiful that the kids ended up playing out in the yard which is pretty typical so I wanted to included in in my Thanksgiving page.
If there is any scrapbook supply that I love to buy more than patterned paper it’s Autumn Themed pattern paper. I took this opportunity to use a whole lot of it. I also did some tone-on-tone stamping on solid orange cardstock to make my own subtle patterned paper. The title thanks GIVING was cut with my Cricut machine as was the basket embellishment. This page also has a hidden feature.
I call your attention to the tab in the lower right corner. That is the tab of a (retired) Close To My Heart product called a True-Fit-Folio. Basically it’s a file folder made from white archival cardstock. It’s 12×12 closed, 12×24 when it’s open. This allowed me to make an interactive page where the right hand page of my layout opened up to reveal a whole additional page underneath. If you wanted you could even include an additional page on the underside of the folder. The beauty of this method is that if you use top loading page protectors you just insert the bottom page into the page protector and let the top flap sit outside the page protector so it can open.
Here is is the layout with the flap lifted.
Here’s a photo which also shows the open flap. Even though you can no longer get this Folio product it would be easy to make your own by adhering your pages to a regular sized file folder, the main thing you need is the hinge part. You could use a punch or tab sticker to add your own tab.
The next page I’d like to share is a Project Life Pocket Page layout from January 2013. I’m sharing this page because while I didn’t love pocket scrapbooking I do wish I was still documenting some of these little everyday things that would otherwise be forgotten. This photo includes exercises I was doing as part of a photography class, thinking about composition and some photographic light studies. I included the Class logos from the classes. I also included snippets Facebook from that week.Â
The other feature of note is, this is a hybrid page. The cards are physical Project Life cards that I purchased as a kit, but the Facebook Quotes card was created to match in Photoshop Elements. I purchased the digital version of the kit and the physical product. I do this periodically with my very favorite kits or if I plan to use one product suite for a whole album.
In order to be able to have cards for the year match I left myself a note in one of the pockets of the title page.Â
In it I wrote down all the style settings for Photoshop Elements so that the Social Media Quote boxes would look uniform throughout the album.
I scrap in a variety of sizes both paper and digital and I thought it would be nice to represent that here, but mainly I’m sharing this layout because it’s a favorite. I made it for the LOAD challenge (Layout A Day) the pages are 6×8 size.
The left page was made Feb 3, 2017 to answer the prompt “What is a symbol that represents you?” The right page was made a few days later when I found I had more to say on the subject.
The kit that I used to create this page was Believe In Magic Princess Fair by Studio Flergs and Amber Shaw at Sweet Shoppe Designs. There is an updated version of the kit which includes artwork by Studio Flergs only. The current kit is called Remember the Magic – Fair Beauty I’ve linked the kits here, it can be tricky to find it in the shop. Full Collection. Main Kit.Â
Probably the winter activity I do most consistently is reading. I read a lot. Typically I read between 70-85 books in a calendar year. So far in 2022 I have read 61 books. I am always reading, but my reading amps up during the Fall and Winter months because of the cozy factor. The final page I’ll share this month is about reading.
This page documents the books I read in January 2019. It was also created for a LOAD Layout A Day Challenge in February 2019.
This is a digital page. With this pair of pages it was my intention to eventually print and place them in a traveler’s notebook – but I included the 12×12 paper underneath so that it ALSO could go into a 12×12 album or photobook if I didn’t end up creating a traveler’s notebook layout for every month (which I did not).
When choosing a template for a monthly book page I count up the number of books for the month, then I choose one of the traveler’s notebook style pages that has the same number of photo spots. For this page I needed to include 9 books, this template had 8 but I planned to convert a word art tag to hold one more book. For the journaling I listed the titles of all the books and indicated my favorite.Â
Template: Documenting Life Notebook Weekly Layered Template No. 06 by Katie Pertiet at KatiePertietDesigns.com (formerly Designer Digitals)
Book Paper (retired) Bibliophile by Kristin Cronin-Barrow Sweet Shoppe Designs
Font: Pea Olson
While I’m on the subject of books I thought I’d share one more page. It’s very similar to the one above but I figured out how include star ratings and a symbol to indicate that one book was an audiobook.
I escape into books
Books read February 2019
Digital Scrapbook Page
Template: Documenting Life Notebook Weekly Template No. 05 by Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals
Background Paper Ldrag designs from Just Sail Away kit at The digi Chick (She is now at gingerscraps)Â
Font: Pea Olson
Layout A Day LOAD is included with the Scrap Happy Membership – it is also available for purchase as a stand alone event. Our next Layout A Day Challenge will be in the month of February – it’s too early for all the details but Information when it’s available, will be found on the Scrap Happy blog under the LOAD tab – or watch your Scrap Happy emails for announcements. Or just ask us!
I hope you’ve enjoyed remembering with me this month.Â
What are YOUR favorite activities this time of year?Â