Some Recent Layouts

Here are some recent scrapbook layouts. Having just printed my 2011 and 2012 books, I'm itching to print another. I'm trying to make sure 2013 does not fall behind.

These are some pictures of inside play. Sea creatures are well represented in my scrapping this year. I copied the title from a past layout called "boy + spider." My "girl + story" series that I wrote in 2012 for The Artisan Notebook was also inspired by that same title.

When You Smile Templates by Scrapping with Liz;Wild Child by Jen Barrette;
Good Harvest by CD Muckosky; Blessings Ribbons by Gina Miller

I've been playing with the Lighting Effects filter in Photoshop a bit lately, and tried to use it on this page. I thought the lighting effect here gave the page an underwater vibe - a little dark and hazy. I've had trouble getting just the look I want. I can get the edges to darken, but it tends to wash out the center.

Some pictures from back in January. The motion blur is fun. It wasn't due to my skill, though. It was serendipitous use of my old camera's Auto mode.

Double Monthly Challenge Templates 10 by Scrapping with Liz; Just Go With It Kit, Foiled No. 2 Papers,
3 Minutes Kit and You Sliders by creashens; Glitter Paper by Two Shutter Sisters; Life365 Hodge Podge 7 by
Gina Marie Huff; That's Life kit by Etc. by Danyale

Christmas pictures...... So, these should have gone in my 2012 book, but the photos were misplaced and I didn't find them until after I had sent my book off to print. What a dilema, huh? I'm sure this exact problem is why some people refuse to print books and choose single prints instead. Most likely I'll just stick it at the beginning of my 2013 book. That's the way it goes.

Wondrous by creashens; Cardstock Essentials 3 by Karla Dudley; Capturing Fall template by Amy Martin

And another really old Christmas picture. Prior to 2010 I did single prints in page protectors, so I can just add this one in. Back in 2007 I had just discovered digital scrapbooking. I was blown away by the pages that could be made, and I scrapped almost exclusively with quick pages. A quick page is a page that someone else has already put together for you, and there are "holes" where you can drop in your own pictures. And you can add journaling to top if you like as well. It was kinda fun to go back and scrap a page from scratch from those baby years.

Tomte by creashens; Jump For Joy template by Amy Martin

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for stopping by!

My Printed 2012 Scrapbook

I'm back to share the other book that I had printed. I thought that for this post I'd focus on some of the details about the book and my printing choices. Here are the basics:

• Ordered book through Blurb
• Large Square Book (12x12 inches)
• Hardcover with ImageWrap
• Premium Paper - matte finish
• 136 pages
• Used online Bookify tool
• Arrived in one week (I chose the least expensive shipping option)

The 2011 book had the Premium lustre paper, while this one had the Premium matte paper. I prefer the matte, although honestly, it was hard to tell the difference side by side.

I made a colorful cover for this one. Most of my other books have predominantly white covers, but this was a really nice change.

I even put color on the back.

In Bookify you can customize the color of the spine, and they offer several different fonts for the text. I always choose a white spine.

The solid background of the spine wraps slightly onto the front and back covers by about 2mm. Some people might not like this, but I think it is fine.

The overall size of the book is just under 12x12 inches. The width is about 11 and 7/8 inch.

The height is about the same.

The papers inside are a little bit smaller.

The height of the paper is about 11 and 3/4 inches. I didn't measure the width because that's hard with the binding seam.

I chose a page layout with a large square image and approximately 1/2 inch white borders. The actual image is about 10.5 inches wide.

I don't print full bleed for two reasons. When you print full bleed (your image goes right up to the edges of the paper), the very edges of your image will be trimmed off. Creatively, I want to be able to work right up to the edge if I so please. I don't want to worry about anything getting trimmed off, so I choose a printing method that eliminates that problem.

NOTE:  Within Bookify, when I dropped my images into the pages, the images were being slightly cropped. The "Fill Photo" option was selected by default. On every page I hovered over the image and selected "Fit Photo" instead. I think the reason is that the image size in Bookify is not exactly square. This was a very small adjustment and would probably only be important if you truly had text right up to the edge of the image.

The other reason that I don't print full bleed is that I frequently make 2-page spreads. Anything along those meeting sides is going to be "eaten up" in the seam of the book. Since my books are 100+ pages, that seam can be pretty deep. They way I print my books (with the border all the way around), the white border is getting "eaten up" in the seam and the images themselves are completely visible.  In fact, some white border does show down the middle of my books. I could probably get away with only a quarter inch white border, but Bookify doesn't offer that option.

When I make my 2-page spreads I generally try not to put anything too important in the very center, especially a person's face. Here are some examples.

I will place elements across the seam.

I will place pictures across the seam, but not so that a person's face gets cut in half.

I'll place title work across the seam, but I try to line up the letters so that the cut comes between two of the letters.

 

Sometimes text falls across the seam, and I just let it be. I have (although rarely) even placed journaling across the center.

So, printing with borders satisfies my desire to print double page spreads and lets me be freely creative when I design my pages. There are some printing companies that print Lay-Flat books that do not have the seam in the middle. For example, the AdoramaPix book I printed was in that format. Those books are much more expensive, and they probably have a page limit that would be too low for me. My yearly books are averaging 135 pages, and I'm pretty sure lay flat books can't have that many pages.

Hopefully it won't be too long before my 2013 book is complete. I think I might try Blurb's Book Smart software instead of Bookify next time. Since I have so many posts now about my printed books, I added a tab up across the top so you can easily find all the posts. Thanks for stopping by!

My Printed 2011 Scrapbook

I had two albums printed by Blurb, and here I will show you the first one. The fun thing was that since I was ordering two books, I chose a different paper for each one so I could see the difference.

Here is the run down on the first book.

• Large Square book (12x12 inch)
• Hardcover with ImageWrap
• Premium Paper - lustre finish
• 148 pages
• Used Bookify to create the book
• Arrived in my hands in exactly one week.

I'm very happy with the book. It's beautiful. In the past my Blurb books have had a slight warp to them, but these two books were very flat. The Lustre premium paper had a very subtle sheen to it. It is definitely NOT glossy. I normally order the Matte finish premium paper. I think I like the Matte better, but it is really hard to tell the difference between the two. Visually, I can't tell any difference. But the Matte seems to have a smoother feel to my hand.

I was a little frustrated with the Bookify tool. The page layouts were very restrictive. Most of my pages just had a single large image on them (11x11 inches on the 12x12 inch page), but sometimes as I added additional pages to the book, that particular page layout just disappeared from my choices. I would have to go back to the page and delete the photo and then suddenly the large square page layout would be back. It was frustrating, but I always eventually got the layout I wanted.

I had one page that I wanted to just drop in an invitation and thank you note I had made - just place them side by side on the page. But Bookify wouldn't let me make my own page layout. I was completely restricted to their preformatted layouts, which really didn't make sense for the two images I wanted to put on the page. I actually had to go into Photoshop and place my 2 images on a white background, save the jpg and then upload that into Bookify.

Which reminds me of the third concern I had with Bookify. As I built my book, I would upload all of the layouts for a month at once and then arrange them in the order I wanted. But Bookify seemed to let the upload progress in the background without any indication of the progress. They were showing up in the book making tool, but I found myself wondering if it was really uploading the full resolution images. In the end I guess it all turned out OK.

Here are pictures.

I love everything about it! I'll share pictures of my 2012 book next week. Thanks for stopping by.

Another 1 Photo + 6 Words

I recently shared some layouts and observed that three of them had pictures from 2012. I wondered if I was close to having 2012 finished. So I looked through all of my my 2012 photographs and only found two more stories that I wanted to scrapbook.

For one of them I used a six word story. Miller had a period of time where he kept layering on band-aids because they were starting to un-stick. He would place a new band-aid across the lifting end of an old band-aid. Both his shins were covered in a patchwork of band-aids. And I don't think there were any cuts under any of them!

At the Moment by One Little Bird; Cardstock Essentials 3 by Karla Dudley; Sparkle Confetti by Sarah Gleason;
That's Life Template by Amy Martin; Life is Good by Gina Marie Huff; Bountiful Buttons 2 by Karah Fredricks

And here was the other last story from 2012 - not much of a story, just some cute pictures really. I applied a lighting effect in Photoshop on this one.

Double Monthly Challenge Templates 10 by Scrapping with Liz; The Good Stuff by Valorie Wibbens and Karla
Dudley; You Sliders and Be kit by creashens; Bountiful Buttons 2 by Karah Fredricks

So ... 2012 is finished, and I also recently decided that 2011 is finished. And .... I ordered both books from Blurb! I can't wait to get them. In fact ... by the time this post publishes to my blog, I might even have them in my hands! Stay tuned.

Mini Shutterfly Book

Technically this isn't my first Shutterfly book. A few months ago I ordered a little 8x8 book as a gift, but I shipped it directly to the recipient. I never saw it, but I was told that it was beautiful. This book is also a gift, but because I am ahead of the game this time, I was able to ship it to myself.

I got a coupon for a free 20 page 8x8 inch Shuttefly book through my Ikea Family account. I didn't choose anything fancy. I used standard paper which has the look and feel of cardstock. The online book software was nice and easy. I chose full bleed pages for layouts that didn't have anything too close to the edges, but for most pages I chose a single large photo with border all the way around.

Because I printed most pages with a border, I was worried that the images would be too small. The pages are 8 inch square, but with the border, it makes the image only 6.5 inches. But they turned out to be fine.

The colors came out very nice - as far as I could tell, they looked just like on my computer screen. I think the book is very nice. The only thing I would complain about is a funny smell. But hopefully that will dissipate.

Here are some pictures.

I think it will make a very nice gift. Miller says he wants me to make more copies so he and the scientist can have their own too. I think he really liked the 8x8 size (I usually print 12x12) And he likes my scrapbooking! Yay!

Recent Layouts

Here is what I've been scrapping.

This is a game the scientist and Miller play called Camping Veterinarians.

My Happy Place Templates by Scrapping with Liz; One Year Older by Chelle's Creations; Basics Storytelling by
Forever Joy Stamped Alpha 4 by mle Card County Bounty by Dream Big Designs Enjoy Life Scrap Orchard Collab

More special fun that can only be experienced in the month of October. Yes, that is a huge pool of corn kernels.

Hei Hei Elements, Papers and Button It by creashens; Wordart by Karla Dudley
Oh Snap Template 3 by Scrapping with Liz

Some pictures from kindergarten.

Cowboys Chase the Chowgirls and Nature's Kraft by Etc. by Danyale; Template 60 by MandaGirl

And the gingerbread house we made last year. I don't particularly want to make a gingerbread house ever again. They never turn out the way you think they will (ie cute).

Keepin' It Real Double Templates 2 by Scrapping with Liz; Gingerbread {reloaded} and CU Leaves 2 by
Chelle's Creations Merry; and Bright Alpha Sampler by Kristin Aagard

And finally, Christmas portraits from last year. Another tradition that I find increasingly questionable because of the stress factor due to the mismatch between reality and my expectations.

Brrr Papers by Valorie Wibbens; Merriment Papers by Lauren Reid; Winter Love by Designs by Lili; Cardstock
Essentials 3 by Karla Dudley; Sparkly Holiday by Jenna Desai; CU Satin Flowers 2 by Megan Turnridge;
Bountiful Buttons by Karah Fredricks; Swirly Strings 5 by Chelle's Creations; Double It Up Template
by Scrapping with Liz; Christmas wordart by Studio Rosey Posey

Those last three pages were all form 2012 ... oh, I wonder how close I am to being done? Really close I think! Thanks for stopping by.