In 2012, I started digital scrapbooking, and took several classes over the winter, and posted my pages to the private gallery owned by the company, digitalscrapper.com, who gave the classes. The first class that really got me going was a story of my life. Most of us are the photographers, so we rarely are in the photo stories. This gave us a way to make a story of our lives so that our families will know us. The pages that the members of the class uploaded to the gallery were absolutely amazing. I started to sign on to the gallery before I even opened my email or FaceBook to see who had uploaded what since the last time, and to read the comments that other people in the class left on our pages. It was quite addicting.
In this blog, I will upload some of the pages I made during some of the classes I took, starting with the "Your Story. Brilliant." class. The class was geared to using PhotoShop, or Photoshop Elements. Each month was a different topic, and we were shown how to use different tools to create our pages. Some people were way ahead of me in their knowledge and their pages were inspiring to say the least.
The topic for the first month, January, was "The People I Love"
February's topic was about "me", my strengths, personality, quirks like things I can't live without, and collections, etc. We were given a variety of background pages and elements to use so the book would have a consistent look. Over the year, we all started to branch out and use different papers.
For March, the topic was about our hobbies and interests.
I'm not going to upload a page for every month, but you get the idea. This page was for the topic of dealing with challenges:
The next class I took was Easy Page Design, again with digitalscrapper.com. The first topic was the "Art of Restraint". We had to use one photo, one element, and just a bit of journaling. These two pages are my efforts for this topic.
The next topic was "On the Edge", placing your photos and elements on the edge of our page. This is a photo I love of my brother, aged about 10 or so, which was taken while he was away at boarding school.
The next lesson was using type as an element... A friend gave me this halter covered in rhinestones for Tristan!
This topic was "Big and Bold". You can see that my comfort zone has changed somewhat from the pages at the beginning of these classes! This photo was taken by a friend, Diana Chandler, from her deck in Nova Scotia, and she very kindly allowed me to use it.
The following four pages were done for a class called "Creative Inspiration". The layout below used papers and elements from AnnaAspnesDesigns , who provided them to digitalscrapper.com for this course. I love her papers and elements!
I love the centre photo in this layout. I was bringing Tristan in, and Chloe and Cheetah came along, too. It is so peaceful!
Some suggestions were made to improve it, and the layout below is the result, which earned me the accolade, "You rocked it!". That sort of made my day, when I read that!
The next pages were done for a class called "Power Scrapbooking", where we learned how to make layouts quickly and simply.
I went on a trail ride around Pass Mountain in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix, AZ, with a friend, and this is part of the trail. The pass from which the mountain gets its name, can be seen in the centre of the page. If you look closely, you can see the trail going through the pass.
The next page is a picture of the two old "ladies" at my friend's house. My horse, Taffy, now 25, is in front. These ladies get special treatment. When I am visiting, I am the only person allowed to ride Taffy - her rules. She will allow me to let someone else ride her, but I get "the eye"!
The next two, I was really pleased with the result. The pictures are so awesome (if I do say so myself!), that all they needed was a title and some journaling. These two layouts generated many favourable comments!
The two layouts below are a couple of pages done for a class called "Soulful Silhouettes". In this class we learned how to extract a part of a picture to use as a silhouette on a page. I found it quite tedious, and although I was pleased with the way these pages turned out, it is not a technique I would use often. I like to get my pages done quickly, and use the pictures they way they represent the reality.
This class also was from digitalscrapper.com, and the papers and wordart were provided for the class.
This first layout is of my first horse, Sylvy. She really did have two ears! The paper had these birds and clouds on it... perfect for this page!
For the layout below, I used a photo of Tristan, but I didn't really make it into a silhouette, but because the light was on the other side of him, he came out really dark, so it sort of looked like one. I like the lighter grass and house beyond him. The word art in both layouts was given to us as a part of the course, from digitalscrapper.com.
I had gone out to ride, but when I was grooming Tristan, it started to rain, so I let him loose in the barn and he went and stood by the door looking out. I was wondering what he was thinking about. I can't remember whether we ever did ride that day!
While I was taking these digital scrapbooking courses, I was also receiving monthly kits from Swirlydoos.com. These are fantastic kits of papers and coordinating embellishments, and along with the kit comes a newsletter and a monthly challenge.
The following two layouts are paper scrapbooking pages I made and photographed to upload to the Swirlydoos.com gallery. The papers are from the Swirlydoos kit, but the little clock element came with a British magazine called Crafts Beautiful, which I subscribe to. The flourishes, I cut from the Art Philosphy cartridge with my Cricket machine, and painted them with the Silks acrylic glaze from one of the Swirlydoos kits.
The next page used the kit called Vintage Chic. When I saw it, I realized I had three photos that would be perfect using this kit. The left hand photo is of my Mom; the middle is of her Mother, my Grandmother; and the right hand photo is of her Mother, my Great-grandmother.
Neither of these two pages is using my regular scrapbooking technique. I usually do much simpler pages. I like the photos to tell the story, and be very visible. I also, usually, add enough journaling to explain the photos, and the event.
The next page was made with a freebie page from ScrapGirls.com, made by Syndee Nuckles. Out of the blue this spring, Tristan has been offering to put his feet on things horses don't normally walk on. The mounting block was one of them, so I took this photo while he was tacked up, as if he is climbing the mounting block and I am on the ground... somewhat backwards to what we are supposed to do! The whole idea made me laugh, so when I saw this page, I used it to frame the photo!
Here is a layout I did for a Power Scrapbooking class. I had used the wrong setting on my camera, so the pictures came out very overexposed. I made an artsy layout from one of the pictures....
