Good Decemeber

I finished my December Daily.  I don't have layouts for everyday, but I'm happy with what I have, so I took this video of my finished album this afternoon:

The video ended up being longer than I wanted to, but now it's all documented and I can finally put away all my holiday craft supplies.   

I don't have photos of every page, but here are some:

  the cover   xmas boxes everywhere

 a favorite photo from last year  my son's band concert

 random thoughts of my lack of xmas spirit

a collage of our decorated house 

a collage of favorite ornaments

  me at work, making our xmas cards

our family room xmas tree

our favorite xmas movies

the Donny & Marie Concert

xmas day photos

  

For most of us, December is the last month to give our selves another project, but honestly this album is one I enjoy looking at months after December has passed.  If you haven't tried you hand at making a December Daily album you should give it a try.  

This year I found being a member of School Of Scrap to be very helpful and encouraging, because we were all working on My December albums and we were all facing similar issues... and talking to each other on Facebook was a great de-stresser.    

Lots of photos on the blog today :)  I hope they have inspired you to make a MY album... if you are interested, School Of Scrap members will be making a few more My albums this year.  I think the next one is My March.    Until next time... keep crafting.

Lets Talk Storage

Thin metal die storage to be exact.

I have always loved dies for their ease of use and the impact they give a project.  I still have my first Sizzix, you know the one w/the handle that pressed down and I have a cabinet full of thick Sizzix dies.  But I'm not going to talk about those today, because honestly they don't see the light of day that offend this days.

Since joining the Die-Versions' design team, I only have eyes for thin metal dies and my collection has grown a LOT.   I'm currently storing my dies in three different ways.  This Artbin cabinet is my first method... here's a photo of it:  

It's a good system.  The cabinets were super cheap and several can be stacked if you have the space.  It fits most of my dies and the drawers allow me to sort them into categories like spanish dies, medium fonts, small fonts (large fonts don't fit), animals, flowers, etc.  

Since the large fonts sheets didn't fit in the drawers,  my second method of storage is on an adhesive back magnetic sheet that I put on the side of a bookcase.  Here's a photo:

I LOVE that I can see all my large fonts in one quick look.  I would love to display more dies this way, but I don't have the wall space.

My third and final way of storing dies are in these StampinUp clear stamp cases.   I'm using them to store my holiday dies.  In this photo you see my birthday dies all in one case.  I LOVE this method for how little space the case takes up.  I also like that I can add any coordinating clear stamps in the case.  

Just so you know, these cases are not tall enough to hold the Die-Versions 4x8 font dies... the case is only 7.5 inches long. 

Well... that's how I'm currently storing my thin dies.   How do you store your thin dies?

New design team and new blog

Hello Craft Friends, 

Die-Versions has a brand new blog and a brand new design team.  I'm on the team and I'm super excited to start making cards, scrapbook layouts and more to show you in the months to come. 

Come join us in our new blog for a chance to win some free goodies.  We will be giving away 20 gift certificates to our store valued at $10 each.  Participating is easy and simple:  

1. Leave a comment in our blog found at www.die-versions-blog.com 
2. Become a follower of our blog
3. Like our Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/DieVersions

We will announce the lucky winners Sunday, Jan. 12th.  

GOOD LUCK!

I made the team... The Die-Versions' Design Team that is

I'm so very excited to be on Die-Versions' Design Team for a second term.  I truly love their dies. 

I love to play with my dies. Do you?

I made two very different cards using one die for my Die-Versions' Blog post today...

Holiday Tags...

I posted these 8 holiday tags over on the Die-Versions' blog today.   They were all created with the newly released Winter Wonderland dies.    Go check out the blog and pick your favorite.    Here's a link... 

http://www.die-versionsblog.com/blog/wutiwhq0x508cv5t4wk5enr36zcf0i 

Did you know...

That when scrapbooking, the NUMBER ONE thing that takes me the longest is getting my pictures ready.  Why you ask... well, using the photos shown on the photo below as examples, here's why:

Step 1...  Select the photos I want to scrapbook.  With a topic like my hubby's Lemon Garlic Shrimp I only had 10 photos to choose from, so it was easy to select a few that told the story and would fit a one page layout.  For a topic like my son's 13th bday party, I had 179 photos to choose from, so this was a far more time consuming task and honestly because of the subject matter the photos selection was more important in my mind.   I knew his bday party was going to be a two page layout, so I selected 15 to 20 photos.

Tip... I copy all the photos from their appointed folder (20130830 lp's 13th bday party) to a sub folder named "print".  I view the photos one at a time in the Windows Photo Gallery and delete the photos I don't want.  Remember this folder has copies, so I'm not deleting the original photos.  Sometimes I loop though the photos several times in order to end up w/the least amount of MUST scrapbook photos in my "print" folder.

Step 2... Edit selected photos.  This covers cropping pictures, adjusting colors and lighting, adjusting image size, etc.   I do this step in PS Elements.

Step 3... Planning the individual photos' printed sizes, keeping in mind how many photos I can fit on my layout.   It's during this process that I sometimes decide to collage some of the photos.   For collages I used Picasa.

Step 4... Creating print sheets in FotoSlate, so I don't waste any of my 8.5x11 photo paper sheet.  In most cases, a print sheet will have photos for different layouts.  This step is all about maximizing my photo paper, so I spend a lot of time manually arranging my photos.  This step is also for photos that are not 4x6, since those I just print directly onto 4x6 photo paper.

Step 5... Printing the FotoSlate print sheets and collaged 4x6 prints.

I hope now you understand why photo selection is my NUMBER ONE time sucker when it comes to scrapbooking and honestly certain parts of the process are not my favorite part of scrapbooking.   I try to do layout photo selections in batches, so that when I feel in a scrapbooking mood I can just get my printed photos and start having FUN.