Scrappers' links

A couple more helpful blogs this time.

Sketches and more:
http://www.littlebookofsketches.blogspot.com/

Craft Robo GSDs and more (in German)
http://meinekleinescrapwelt.blogspot.com/

Titles with double meanings

I've been musing on titles that are not quite puns, as they don't have the obvious humour, but nevertheless have more than one meaning:

• It's a walk in the park
• It’s all relative
• What A star! (for someone who's scored well at GCSE)
• Hair today
• Calendar Girl
• Hold the front page!
• Picture perfect
• Hair raising
• Top Gear
• Circle
• Marry together
• Rules of engagement
• Laws

Journalling about people: try a kenning

What's a kenning then?

Here's Wikipedia's definition which is rather heavy on the ancient Scandinavian roots.

Kennings come from Old English and Norse poetry, and they describe something without using its actual name, e.g. 'mouse catcher ' was a cat, a sword was a 'skull-splitter' and a river a 'swan road'.

So a kenning "names something without using its name". They can be like riddle poems - what am I describing?

Kids learn them in school these days: here are lots of kennings from youngsters, on the children's writing website Kids on the Net.


You probably remember a Coke advert which did something similar. The advantage is you can do it to name anything, and it can be different each time. When you don't want to just put the same old word or name on a LO - why not embellish with a kenning instead?

Using up paper scraps: #1

I was having a bit of a sort out, seeing what I had in my paper stash, and I realised that I had a lot of scraps. I LOVE patterned papers, but the scrapbooking style I prefer at the moment is the pared-down lots-of-white-space style. And that doesn't use up a lot of paper! Yet I find it difficult to throw anything away - let's face it, I might find a use for that pretty paper even if it is only 3 inches square. After all, I make cards as well. And a cardmaker can find a use for any paper pieces that are just bigger than my smallest punch... Especially if I make small paper dolls with a selection of tiny clothes...

I have scraps left over from kits and classes from up to three years ago, scraps from paper ranges that I loved, and ranges that I didn't. I even pick up scraps from other people at crops - how could they throw away nearly half a sheet of 12 x 12? So I've been looking in earnest at ways to use up paper scraps.

Here are some that I've found recently:

• Cut out letters for titles - either using a cutting machine, or by using repositionable glue to stick them to computer paper, run them through your printer to print an outline letter on the back and cut out.

• Make paper beads: Cut strips of paper and roll them tightly around a knitting needle or similar. Stick down the ends. Leave to dry, then carefully slide off the knitting needle. Make the beads more substantial by coating the beads with a layer of PVA glue or diamond accents or similar. Stick on a LO or thread them for jewellery!

• Create a 'quilt' page: cut 4 or 5 photos into 3" squares and make up to 9 squares with patterned paper cut into squares the same size.
• Create serendipity squares with scraps of paper and use the squares on a LO.

• Use the scraps to create a mat for your photograph, as in Karen's Conga class from the UKS birthday cybercrop (unfortunately not currently available, but here is my version)

• Use up scraps in Artist at Work, a UKS class from Maria

• Use strips of papers behind a photo as a stripy mat

• Radiate strips of papers like a sun from a central pic
• Create pockets
• Punch, especially squares and circles and create a pattern on cardstock as a background to the LO
• Cover chipboard shapes
• Cut flowers out of papers and use as embellishments

I'm working on a few more ideas and will upload them in a later post :)

Clines - get deeper into your journalling

When you're journalling, especially if you're using just one or two words, it’s important to find the word that accurately describes what you're trying to express. Common words such as "happy", "handsome", "cute", can be over-used: and once you've been scrapbooking longer than a year or so you start to be desperate for more! Here's a technique to explore a few different words to use.

For example: there are many words for degrees of heat in addition to the word ‘hot’. A cline is a graduated list of words to give shades of meaning, for example:

• Whitehot
• Red-hot
• Steaming
• Boiling
• Simmering
• Hot
• Warm
• Tepid
• Luke-warm
• Blood warm
• Body temperature
• Cool
• Chilly
• Cold
• Freezing
• Frozen.

Once you have your list of words, you can pick one that's perhaps more meaningful than the obvious!

Maze book instructions

I've been looking for instructions for maze books - that is a tiny album created from one sheet of 12 x 12 paper. I was think of using it for a little inspiration book - to add pictures of loved ones and inspirational quotes and sayings.

Here are some links to instructions:

Scrapbook Crazy maze book (cut in a spiral)

Anso's maze book on Glitter Adventures, with photos - fabulous instructions.

Scrapbook Lounge Video Tricia Morris makes a maze book

Another maze book

Karen Scrapdolly's instructions

Write it on Wednesday - Journalling pens

Most people have a favourite pen that they like to use for journalling with.

I'm a bit fickle, personally, I'm always looking for a really good pen and I change my allegiance often.

Here are some of the pens I've used myself and been recommended:

Sharpie pens
Zig writer (I have a blue one of these and as it has two different widths it's really useful)
Gel pens are often popular
Sakura gel pens - I've had some great Sakura pens including a white one, glaze one, glitter ones, etc., but they seem variable as to how smoothly they run and how long they last.
Fountain pen - if you're not fussed about using ordinary ink, a lot of people enjoy using a favourite (often old) fountain pen for journalling - perhaps best where you're journalling on a separate piece of paper such as a journalling block, rather than all over the layout
Uniball signo - white particularly recommended

So - the challenge for today - doesn't matter what you write (did I say that??), but have a go at writing with the pens that yo have to hand. Try out a title, a saying, some journalling. Get the feel of the pens you have. You might surprise yourself!

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Titles for summer holiday Los

I know it's an odd time of year to be thinking of it, but I've been thinking up some summer and holiday themes titles for layouts:

• Just add water
• Splash!
• Water, water, everywhere
• Sun, sea and sand
• An English Summer
• Beachcomber
• The Shell Seekers
• Splish Splash
• Life’s a beach
• Seaside frolics
• Beach babes
• Beach boys

The perfect set of embellishments

What would be the perfect set of embellishments?

I love co-ordinating ranges of paper - at the moment I'm keen on Basic Grey Periphery, Basic Grey Fusion, K'ology Addison, and DCWV Once Upon a Time. These ranges make it so much easier to choose elements for layouts by being able to use matching papers and embellishments.

I used to get a Club Scrap kit every month. It came with a selection of co-ordinating papers - well, all at cardstock-weight in fact, beautiful quality - plus a matching alpha sticker set, photo mats and cut-outs or stencils. That was just the Junior kit - there are extra embellishments available such as fibres and buttons.

I'm packing for a weekend crop, and I don't want to have to make up page kits - or alternatively take everything I own! - so I thought of taking a selection of matching paper, cardstock and embellishments. Now I have some embellishments to go with the paper ranges I mention. But what would be the ideal collection? I can even create some with my Craft Robo before I go (the ones marked ** in the list below), if I have time. Can you add anything to my list of suggestions?

• Prima flowers
• Ribbons & fibres
• Buttons
• Gems
• Paper frills **
• Brads
• Large flowers **
• Alphabets **
• Frames **
• Photo turns **
• Flourishes and corners **
• Quotation marks, brackets, washers, arrows **
• Tags **
• Journalling blocks **
• Circles (to layer and add words or journalling) **
• Autumn leaves flourish stamps!!!
• Rubons

Write it on Wednesday: Journalling babies

No, that doesn't mean get the babies to do the journalling!

Even if you haven't had babies of your own, you will have had babies in your family, and with luck you'll even have some pictures of yourself when an infant. Babies are very photogenic and photos generally make satisfying pages that everyone enjoys looking at.

So: how to scrap babies?

The cute things they say and do

If you have a baby or young child now - I know it's difficult when you're so busy - but for heaven's sake write down those cute things they say or the funny things they do. You WILL forget them later! I wish I'd been a scrapbooker when my babies were young. Luckily I was keeping a journal, so putting the text together with the photos isn't too hard.

And she toddled for two miles along the beach before we found her...

And write down too those apocryphal stories that you have been told all your life about things you did. There's a story about me when I was about two - the family had got lost on a trip out to the contry and we stopped the car to get out and see where we were. Apparently I got fed up and said "I'll find the way" and set off along the road determinedly, all by myself. They were laughing too much to stop me at first, and then they helpfully got the camera out.

Baby books

If you have a friend or relative about to give birth, a baby book is a lovely gift - not one of those that records weight and height and so on, although that might be part of it, but a themed scrapbook readymade for the mother to slot in the pics and the journalling as she goes along. A big space for hidden journalling may be best, so mum can write as much or as little as she chooses, but doesn't run out of space.

Possible themes for baby books:

• My first year: 12 pages, a pic for each month and plenty of journalling space (a great theme to remind mum)

• Nursery rhyme theme

• Animals theme

• Alphabet theme

• Colours theme: every page a different colour

• Definitions theme: baby, love, cute, motherhood, family, growing up etc.

• Play theme: teddies, bricks, dolls etc.

You could even make a book for the baby itself, with spaces for pictures and names of all the relatives - especially welcome if family are far away and the little one won't see relatives often enough to recognise them otherwise.

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Write it on Wednesday: Writing about Home

What does the word "home" mean to you?

Home might be a place we have not visited for a long time, or perhaps never at all. For some of us, it's just part of a personal history we create for ourselves, but for others there really is somewhere like that described by Robert Frost:

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

But even though its meaning is strongly rooted in a physical place which we can visit, in these days of frequent re-location the real power of Home is often defined more in our heads than by buildings, countries or landscapes. Of the several meanings given in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, perhaps the most germane for the global village is a definition from as far back as 1548:

"A place, region or state to which one properly belongs, in which one’s
affections centre, or where one finds rest, refuge, or satisfaction."

So, Home can frequently be found more in memory than in geography or more in imagination than in reality, and a song, a flower, a word, or a mouthful of food can be all it takes to bring to life a whole theatre of recollection.

What photographs do you have that say "home" to you? Alternatively - start with the journalling.

When journalling to create a layout ask the questions:

• What does the word ‘home’ mean to you?
• Describe the home of your childhood.
• Describe the scent, taste or feel of home.
• Which object most evokes home for you?
• Where do you feel you ‘properly belong’ now?

Home mosaic

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Using similes as titles

The simile is a way to create a picture in the reader's mind. It can add an extra dimension to a piece of writing, a poem - or a scrapbook layout. It asks us to picture one thing as being similar to another; it does this by using the word 'like', 'as' or 'than'.

Let's look at some examples:

• Dance like an angel/princess
• Shine brightly like the star you are!
• You sparkle like a diamond
• Your words are like eyes burning deep in my soul
• 2 peas in a pod
• A face without freckles is like a sky without stars
• Life is like a Bubble Bath... a few splashes, but generally good, clean fun!
• Spring came that year like magic, and like music, and like song. -- Thomas Wolfe
• Our love is like a song that never ends

Some similies are cliché - something we have heard so often that it has lost its original power to surprise or amuse us, such as: Cool as a cucumber; like chalk and cheese; softer than silk. The same is true of many scrapbook titles. But if you haven't used them yet - they may be new to you!

• Sweet like chocolate
• Sleeping like a baby
• Blooming like a garden/weeds
• Swing like a monkey

Can you come up with some more creative similes to be titles for your layouts?
Jot down the name, the event, or a feeling that the photo immediately evokes, then "is like" and see where you go...

Jenny is like a butterfly, always flitting, never settling for long...

Hopping crazy as a cricket

As changeable as the British weather...

Your smile is like a thousand suns

Write it on Wednesday: Mondegreens

There's a name for misheard song lyrics - they are mondegreens.
There's a lovely story behind this name:

The word mondegreen, meaning a mishearing of a popular phrase or song lyric , was coined by the writer Sylvia Wright.

As a child she had heard the Scottish ballad " The Bonny Earl ofMurray" and had believed that one stanza went like this:

Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands
Oh where hae you been?
They hae slay the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

Poor Lady Mondegreen, thought Sylvia Wright . A tragic heroine dying with her liege; how poetic. When it turned out, some years later, that what they had actually done was ‘ slay the Earl of Murray and lay him on the green’ , Wright was so distraught by the sudden disappearance of her heroine that she memorialized her with a neologism.

An Aussie friend's son’s class at school used to sing the first line of the Australian national anthem as:

Australia’s sunset ostriches.

(Australia’s sons let us rejoice – now amended to ‘Australians all let us rejoice’)

I remember a few from prayers and hymns at school as well...
More recently, I thought for some time that the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "The Zephyr Song" had the lyrics - "Fly away on my cellphone..." I thought it was somewhat fanciful to describe a mobile phone call in such terms!

Have you a mondegreen to share? (Can you find one on the Web?) Is there a mondegreen that could inspire a LO for you? Could you use it as the title?

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Never be afraid to see...

I created this layout on the day that my mother-in-law was in hospital having a cataract operation.

She has led a quiet and sheltered life in a small town in the north of England, and is one of the nicest and sweetest people I've ever met. Whenever she comes out for a trip or a holiday with us, it seems that we do something that she has never done before, whether it's having a milkshake in McDonald's or seeing a peacock for the first time.

I loved this photograph in which she was looking out to sea from the lantern room at the top of the Souter Lighthouse. There are so many things I would like to show her. On the day I scrapped it my feelings were quite strong because we needed the operation to be a success. So all the feelings were summed up in one longer-than-usual title...

Never be afraid to see...

Write it on Wednesday: why do you blog?

There was an interesting thread on UKScrappers recently when someone asked "Why do you blog?"

Answers ranged from the simple
"I blog for me"
to the casual
"It's a bit of fun"
"Because people told me I should"
to the purposeful
"To have a record of what I've made"
"As an online gallery"
"to share my latest layouts and projects"

I particularly liked Susan(scoobiesue)'s comment that she "wanted to remember when I had done what (also makes journalling on LOs easier!)"

And that's the crux of the matter - if you blog, then you should have a head start on journalling. You can even post the photos along with the writing and you've got a scrapbook-within-a-blog as a backup for if you never get around to scrapping the photos for real.

As you may have noticed in this blog, I often alter a photo to make a very plain mock-up - not really a digi page, but something that approximates what I might do when I get the chance to scrap for real.

And why do I blog?

I write a lot, and teach writing, and while I'm not a good scrapper I thought that by sharing tips and techniques for journalling I could give something back to the community that has given me so much inspiration in the visual sense!
Thanks so much, scrappers!

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No Write it on Wednesday this week?

OK, I hold up my hands. I am guilty. I have not blogged enough this week! That's because I've been at a conference with work and while I've had a little time to blog, I have been writing about the conference on my work blog so no time for scrapping. I had some great ideas for this week too... expect a storm of blog entries on here soon!

I've been trying live blogging - that's when you blog as you go - while you're listening to a lecture, or I suppose for scrappers, while you're in the middle of a crop... People were live blogging from CHA weren't they? It often includes pics...

me blogging...

Write it on Wednesday: inspiration from quotes

One of my favourite quotes is something like:

"It's not the days in your life that count, but the life in your days."

I've seen it attributed to Brian White and, as
"Don't seek more days in your life but more life in your days", to Charles Swindoll

Inspirational quotes can inspire titles and journalling. It's one of the simplest ways to journal - you hardly have to write anything yourself there are so many great quotes to choose from. (See my post here for some great sites for quotes and sayings.)

Here's today's starter for ten...

"It's not what you do in life ..."

Decide on your own ending to the quote: choose one of these or make up your own to suit your picture and the story you want to scrap! e.g.

... that matters - it's who you are.
... it's what you finish! (Katherine Hepburn)
... that counts, it's what you bring to what you do that counts.
... it's the way that you do it.
... that counts, it's where you left your mark in things you tried to do that counts.
... that makes you who you are, it's who you are that makes you do what you do. (Cirek Brecy)
... that counts, but how much you enjoy doing whatever you do.

photo by monceau

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No longer around (step by step)

When I saw Becky Fleck’s August RoundMaps I knew I wanted to try out the round format for a LO.

So obviously – “round” became a theme. What pictures did I have with something round in them? I was immediately reminded of my guinea pig, Button, now no longer around (!), but whom I miss when I’m chopping (usually round!) vegetables. He had a round white crest on the top of his head.

I haven’t got very good pictures of him – the rest of him was black so contrast was always a problem – and guinea pigs aren’t good at keeping still for the camera! But nonetheless I wanted to scrap my feelings about how surprisingly much I miss him and his brother Blaze.

So this time – I just started with “I miss …” and continued to write down how I felt.

I miss our guinea pigs Blaze and Button most when I am chopping up vegetables for cooking. I used to put the cauliflower leaves and the broccoli stalks to one side for the piggies. They did love their veg. We even bought organic carrots so the pesticides wouldn’t harm them. I miss their squeaks in the morning too. They used to recognize the noise of the kettle going on and start squeaking madly for their breakfast vegetables.

For the second LO I used the same sketch, but I used my experience from the first one. Firstly I chose less brightly coloured papers because in the Piggie LO I thought the colours distracted attention from the photo. I also picked papers that continued the circle theme.

This time I used a photograph of arches – again that circular motif. And in my journalling I asked the question: what was significant about those arches?

Andy Goldsworthy’s Arches were a feature at his exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. J and I have been interested in Goldsworthy’s work for some time and Easter Monday 2007 was an opportunity to actually see many pieces (although we couldn’t photograph most of them because photos of the pieces are also his art). The [others in our party] enjoyed it too.

Write it on Wednesday: Adapting layout designs for journalling

How fabulous are these layouts?
Luzinha
Most inspiring! Love 'em.

I'm not sure why I am so attracted to LOs that have just one picture and little or no journalling, when what I want to do is try to scrap more multi-photo pics and tell stories. I ask myself how do I follow inspiration like this and still remain true to the journalling imperative. What if the LO you want to scraplift, or the sketch you want to follow doesn't have journalling on it?

Here are some ideas for adapting LOs or sketches:

1. Hidden journalling: a tag slipped behind a large photo
2. Hidden journalling: the main pic is hinged and lifts like a flap for journalling underneath
3. Hidden extra photos: as above - but put extra photos as well as journalling
4. Minibook: use a minibook with a big photo on the front instead of a single pic
5. Journal on the back of the LO!
6. Journal around the picture or around the edge of the LO (creating journalling that forms part of the design is a whole other story - but look back at Luzinha's Relax for a brilliant example)
7. Replace one of the embellishments with a journalling block
8. Journal on a small piece of paper or cardstock folded concertina-wise and tucked under an embellishment

Today's journalling prompt:

I love this photo because...

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Write it on Wednesday - Journalling the moment

Sometimes you're there and you know that something is important and should be remembered, and as a scrapper - you know how. But don't forget the journalling ...

My daughter went out and bought a new summer dress with money her grandmother had given her "to buy something pretty". It is a very pretty dress indeed and very different from the teenage black and muddy colours she often wears.

So out we went in the garden to take a photo to send to her grandmother so she could she what DD had bought. DD said that she could see in my eyes as she was posing - there's a scrapbook page coming up!

Indeed before the end of the day I'd printed the best pic, and scrapped the page. It had a great title - It Must be Summer! (if even DD is buying strappy dresses...) At first it lacked journalling - but that ignores some of the most important parts of the memory...

The question(s) to ask...

• Why did I scrap this page?
• What is the most significant thing about it?

The title and subtitle are important - who, when and where are important but the main answer is: All in one day

So I've journalled discreetly in the "white space" of this LO.

Name & Date
Subtitle
Journalling: All in one day: A bought this dress with money from Nana C for "something pretty". we took the photo in the garden and I scrapped this page. Too pretty to miss!

So take a look at your page and ask yourself

• Why did I scrap this page?
• What is the most significant thing about it?
• Who, what and where?

And make sure you find somewhere to add these details - even if the journalling is hidden.

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