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Happy “Day Before” National-Scrapbook-Day

Friday, April 30th, 2010

I was going to post a Friday Five today, but I didn’t get it done ahead of time and I’m having too much fun with my mom, aunt Shirley, Darci, Kristin and Hillary. It’s our annual girls weekend that we haven’t had for four years (ha!) We are super excited. The only problem is that we’ve had such pretty weather in Spokane and now for the three days that everyone is here it’s going to be cloudy and rainy. Bummer!

But, here’s something fun. I am the guest blogger on the Creating Keepsakes blog today. All week long they’ve been hosting the CK’s Countdown to National Scrapbook Day and get to help!

Head on over (click HERE) and I’ll share my new favorite thing to do (create a scrapbook page and a half.)

Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back Monday!

Posted in Page, Scrapbooking | 12 Comments »

I have always loved yellow + green

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

So, every Friday on the I Love Color blog, I post a color combination to inspire some weekend creativity.
I started this layout last Saturday and finished it Sunday night.
When you take my weekly challenge, you can post your work in the I Love Color Flickr gallery.

One card, page or project posted will receive a happy mail package of FREE cardstock.

Here’s the funny thing.
I took these photos in the spring of 2005. My plan was to use them on a layout for my book, The Big Picture.
I recently found them (again) behind the spring tab in my Things We Do category drawer. We’ve had a particularly warm winter and I’m especially anxious for spring. When I decided to take my own I Love Color challenge to use yellow + green, I wondered what, if anything I had behind the spring tab.

I love my category drawers.

I took the “Even Better” challenge and sewed my buttons on with thread. I love the difference this detail makes.

I also love Core’dinations cardstock and owe them a big shout out (thank YOU) for sponsoring the weekly color combination challenge. By the way, I used the green/sparkle embossed cardstock in the New Jilli-Bean Soup collection. Here’s a link for purchase at Scrapbook.com.

p.s. I am the guest post on Ali Edward’s blog today.
Go read and tell me what you think, here or there!

Posted in Color, Page, Scrapbooking | 5 Comments »

Friday FIVE for March 19th

Friday, March 19th, 2010

FIVE awesome layouts from LOM …

LOM for those who don’t know, stands for Library of Memories, which is a 13 week workshop I’m teaching at Big Picture Scrapbooking right now.
We are about halfway through our 2010 session of LOM and my students are starting to create some wonderful and personal connections on their pages.
This makes me so happy!

With each page I share, I’ll also share some insights from the scrapbooker who created them.

ONE

{Vicki in NE}
Pix of Jeeps in the family from 1948 – present

TWO

{Bree in NM}
Thanks to category drawers I was able to pull a pic of my DD and my DH cuddling at different times in their lives, while also describing what I feel when I lay my head on my own dad’s chest.

THREE

{Sarah in CA}
While pulling photos for my category drawers, I came upon a ton of photos of my daughter with books through the years, and that got me started thinking about how much I love to read and how important it is to me that she does too.

Journaling reads: Journaling reads: As a former Children’s Librarian, I’m a firm believer in reading to children from birth, and I want my children to love reading as much as I do. Laura has always been surrounded by books. We read to her as often as possible, and lots of other people are eager to read to her too. “Book” was one of her first words, and “Dadda read a book” was one of her first sentences. She knew her letters by 18 months. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when, at 3 and a half, she picked up a new book and read it straight through. And now, at 4 and a half, she’s reading Winnie-the-Pooh (the original, of course!). She reads everything she sees, and rarely stumbles over a word. Which can lead to some awkward moments at places like the doctor’s office (there are some things you shouldn’t have to explain to a four year old). And I can’t leave things like Christmas lists lying around anymore. We still read to her. But she loves to read to us too now, and to other people. I hope she continues to love reading this much. I’d say she’s well on her way.

FOUR

{Ann in TN}
Three photos of little cars my toddler son has left in various places over the last 6 months…I keep finding them when I least expect it!

FIVE

{Created by Molly in MN}
This is the first pg I’ve scrapped in about ten months! Never would’ve put these two photos together (different seasons, no major event) – but I love that this is just SO Mathias – this is my son how I want to remember his life right now.

In LOM, we talk a lot about using our photos to draw connections between the people, places and things in our life. Life unfolds so quickly, that even as an avid scrapbookers, it is possible to completely miss rituals in daily life or patterns in personalities and relationships that become (over time) our most cherish memories. Students in my class learn how to spend more time with their photos and how to look for a few pictures, that taken out of context that were captured in, can help them illustrate a more authentic memory.

I’m excited about the changes to my I Love Color blog. If you’ve not yet taken advantage of my weekly color combinations, now’s the time. I just posted a delightful daisy-inspired combination and you could get FREE Core’dinations cardstock.

Also … Jill over at A Matter of Memories posted a review of my latest e-book, UR2Cre8tive. This book is primarily content repurposed from the very first class I ever taught at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I’m hopeful that we (BPS) can continue to partner on ebooks that will help BPS content live on in a new form.

Be Happy.

Posted in Library of Memories, Page, Scrapbooking | 8 Comments »

Reason 14,963

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

There are countless reasons that I love scrapbooking.

No. 14,963
I can drop what I’m doing, take a photo and capture a thrilling emotion.

Can you ever have enough American Crafts Thickers and Flair buttons? What about Coredinations cardstock? I think not.

Last Friday, while busy at work, my phone rang. I looked down at the caller ID to see “Miss Riddle.” Miss Riddle is Chase’s language arts teacher. My heart sank a little assuming she needed to talk to me about a late assignment or some other concern. I said “Hello, this is Stacy” and she said, “This is Miss Riddle, I’m calling just to say what a great kid Chase is. I really enjoy having him in class and he is doing so well!”

“Thanks” I said. I hung up and started bawling as the most amazing emotion swelled inside of me. I cannot even say what it meant to hear from a teacher in this way — wow!

When Chase got home, I ran upstairs with my camera and snapped this photo while he was playing the piano.

Earlier that day I discovered that Sarah Milne (creative genius behind Scenic Route Paper Co.) has a blog. I took her post titled WORDS to heart and found inspiration for my page.

I absolutely love that as a scrapbooker I can freeze moments of time and add to them important sentiments that cannot be expressed often enough!

For years the most popular column in Creating Keepsakes magazine has been Tips & Tricks. The concept of bringing readers snippets of helpful ideas and solutions is NOW a special issue.
Jennafer Martin and I collaborated on a short article about non-chronological scrapbooking — if you’ve taken Library of Memories or read Photo Freedom. It will be very familiar.

Learn more about Tips & Tricks.

Posted in Magazines, Page, Parenting, Scrapbooking | 12 Comments »

Creative Therapy.

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

I get to be a guest on the Creative Therapy blog this week.
Thanks Karen!

More information on how LOM is embracing digital technology on Kayla’s blog today.

Posted in Creativity, Interviews, Page, Scrapbooking | 4 Comments »

how to use color to inspire a layout.

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

I hope you’ve had a chance to click on the ‘i love color’ tab on my home page. It takes you to a blog that I update weekly with color combinations to inspire your creativity. Last Friday, I encouraged you to find your own color combination in a piece of ribbon you have in your stash.
Click HERE to read my post.

Here’s the very simple layout I created on Friday night.

I started by randomly pulling a piece of ribbon from my multi-colored ribbon jar and then pulled cardstock in royal blue, yellow-green and pink. I then went to my drawers where I keep 5×7 enlargements that I have printed. I have a separate drawer for people, places and things. I was looking for a photo that felt like these colors. Read that again! I was looking for a photo that FELT like these colors. Ahhh — that’s the key, right there.

Individual colors elicit almost universal emotions in a wide variety of people (ie. orange feels bold, original and happy) In my opinion, colors in combination are wide open for personal interpretation. Blue, green and pink — NOT colors in my photo, but colors that feel like my northwest home. Please note that I didn’t really “feel” this until I was flipping through photos in my places drawer. I came upon this photo and thought, yeah … I like that. It feels right.

This is one of the reasons I’m such an advocate for printing (at least a small percentage of our vast collection of) photos. I sincerely believe you can ‘feel’ a photo better when it’s printed–weird as that might sound.

Once you have a photo and a color combination, study your inspiration for clues regarding proportion. My ribbon is mostly blue, a little less green and a small but central stripe of pink. I mimicked these proportions of color on my page and then grabbed my green and pink embellishment bins for a final touch in the word, button and felt flower. I inked the edges of the chipboard cut-out for some added depth.

The photo itself isn’t eye-catching — in other words, it means more to me than it looks like it should. What I wanted to emphasize with this layout isn’t so much the welcome sign that sits outside our airport, but the feeling of being “home again” after being away. The pink in this color combination pops and helps create emphasis for those simple words. If I had chosen to “scrapbook” the photo, the colors would be earthly/muted hues found in the stones and sky. What I scrapbooked on this page is a feeling — a very happy, relieved and grateful feeling that I experience when I have arrived safely home again.

I hope you’ll give yourself permission to understand what you really want to scrapbook and then trust yourself to find colors that will communicate that.

It was until last night driving home from the mall that my journaling came to me. I grabbed my iPhone and recorded some thoughts that I typed up this morning.

Journaling
In 1999, our family moved to the “Inland Northwest.” Shortly after making this move, I began working and traveling in the scrapbooking industry. At first I traveled only to Utah for meetings and to the Midwest to film segments for a PBS show. Now ten years later I look back on experiences that have taken me all across the United States and to far away places that I never dreamed I would see. I’ve been to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, England and even Japan. Each time I travel to a new destination, I come home more able to see and appreciate the beautiful place in which we live.

Several years ago as I returned home and as I drove out of our airport in Spokane, I noticed this Welcome to the Inland Northwest sign. My heart swelled with gratitude and I had that undeniable feeling that I was home. It took me another several years to pull over on the side of the road and take this picture.

I definitely have a spirit of adventure; I love to go and experience new places. But, I’ve gone away enough and experienced enough that I now anticipate and treasure the amazing feeling of coming home again.

The creative process for each page is unique, but I’ve had several questions about translating color inspiration to an actual page — I hope this example helps?

Be sure to visit the i love color page Friday, for a new color combination. As with all three of my blogs, you can add stacyjulian.com/ilovecolor to any blog reader. You can also scroll down and enter your email address to have these posts sent directly to you via email.

Tags: Color
Posted in Page | 9 Comments »

today, half way around the world

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

but right here on my computer, I am participating in an event called the …

Charity:Extravaganza

Amanda Jones and the designers and team at The Studio are hosting.

While Amanda is based in London, anyone can participate. This is of course the beauty of our global scrapbooking connection. I adore Amanda’s philosophy behind the blog challenges and classroom tutorials she offers. It is basically that everyone needs to feel welcome in the world of paper crafting and she wants to simply provide inspiration that can be tailored to your particular resources, experience and style.

“It’s about making the challenges suit you, and taking them where you want to go!”

So … here’s the scoop: Starting at 7pm (GMT) on Friday 13th November we will be hosting a BIG scrapbooking event. It will last for 48 hours and there will be games, challenges, special guests and PRIZES! A new challenge will be posted every 2 hours for the whole weekend! It wouldn’t be much of an event without a grand finale and we certainly have one of those lined up. Cathy Zielske herself will be setting the final challenge …

Addie helped me photograph my challenge, but the rest is …

a secret and you’ll have to register for the event to see more.

The BEST part of all is that all proceeds benefit Charity:Water

Thanks to Amanda and The Studio for inviting me to participate.

Posted in Page, Scrapbooking, Today ... | 2 Comments »

Treats and a Trick or Two.

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Oops — I think I set this post to publish at 6:00 this morning and then never finished it.
Story of my life — it’s done now. This is essentially my weekend report — which flew by so FAST — can’t believe it’s already Tuesday.

First up, four adorable children all decked out for Halloween — what a TREAT it is to be a mom and help a young person create the “visual” piece of their imaginary story!

Halloween was a success, from the smallest Bumble Bee to the teen who can leap the tallest buildings (in a single bound)

BZZZZZZZZZZZZAp!

That, btw is what this variety of Bumble Bee says (over and over and over again)

and that is NOT a bzzzz, but a high-pitched scream warning you that you are about to be bitten. Wait … is that blood on his shirt, or raspberry jam? We may never know.

And this cute boy doesn’t make any sounds … but he did dance around a bit on his floppy legs. We watched the quintessential Ray Bolger on YouTube. He wasn’t sure of the hat when I brought it home from Value Village, but once we had the hair and makeup in place — it all came together nicely.

Lastly, the boy who wanted to wear the spandex suit that he had worn for his inside party. I said “I don’t think so … but what if you were Clark Kent with some additional clothes?” Reluctant at first, but happy in the end. Apparently he got a good response on the doorstep.

My biggest boy chose NOT to call his mother on Friday night when he came home late, so I had to get up and re-read some of my Love and Logic for Teens book and reground myself in the sound philosophy that as parents we need to take care of ourselves first. When he asked about going out on Saturday, I was able to say “Not tonight, I really need to get some good sleep.” He ended up having a few friends over to watch a movie — which was perfect, because I went to bed! He is such a good kid, but was not in the mood for a costume this year.

The theme for the November gallery over at Write.Click.Scrapbook is family stories. I have wanted to record the famed “Cougar Jackson” story for quite a while, So I loved making this an “assignment” — I still managed to procrastinate until the 11th hour, but I got er done on Saturday afternoon.

Trick

Slip memorabilia like newspaper clippings, maps and tickets into a glassine envelope. This allows you to remove the memorabilia for reading, etc.. and provides a barrier between potentially acidic paper and your photos. It’s of course always a good idea to spray newspaper with a deacidification spray.

I also made a layout JUST FOR FUN, using the “sweet” color combination posted on October 23rd. I’ve posted the full image in the newly formed I Love Color Flickr group. I hope you’ll share your color-inspired work with us from time to time. I know I really need MORE unnecessary creating in my scrapbooking routine. I’m working on that!

Trick

My trick for this page is two-fold …
1. Keep lots of Un-Do on hand. I got up Saturday with the idea of putting Addie’s photo underneath the title because it wasn’t obvious who the mail was for. My AC stickers came right up and went right back down thanks to my handy bottle of Un-Do.
2. Attach a square or circle punch photo to the outside of a card or letter before tucking it in a scrapbook page pocket. I had fun playing with circles on this layout and I love the look of the circular photos that so easily indicate who those two letters to Addie came from.

And … I got all the great homecoming pictures back from my friend Keri Barham and was able to uploaded them to a Shutterfly share site. I LOVE these sites—they are so dang easy to create and are a major solution for sharing photos in a fun and visual way.

If you live in the greater Spokane area and need a photographer (Christmas cards are just around the corner) give Keri a call — she took Allison Tyler Jones’ class at BPS and her skills have just taken off. It’s so exciting to see so many doing amazing things with photography these days. I LOVE it.

Here’s the link, to my little share site, you want to take a peek.

OK, back to meetings and email.

Posted in FUN, Family, Page, Parenting, Scrapbooking, holiday, iLoveColor | 8 Comments »

Friday FIVE for October 30th

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Friday Five today is a completely random collection of what’s on my mind …

ONE.

Addie needs new shoes (finally.) Trust me when I say my little princess does not grow very quickly — the sweatpants I bought for her to wear under her Halloween costume are a size 18mos and they fit perfectly. Anyway … If there is a little girl (or boy) you LOVE that you buy shoes for, click HERE now and be prepared to squeal with delight. I have no relationship whatsoever (yet) with Puddle Jumper Shoes, so I’m sharing out of pure enthusiasm. There are two pairs on there way in Spokane and I’ll keep you posted!

TWO.

My friend and fellow BPS teacher, Donna Kert has started a new feature on her blog, called In Focus Friday. I LOVE it, just as I love any effort to help us NOT miss the stuff that matters most.

Here’s a snippet from Donna’s entry today: I believe that armed with a camera, we see differently. With this tool in hand, we have the ability to notice, focus on, and capture what we might normally take for granted. This in mind, I created In Focus Friday as a sort of project and experiment all rolled into one. On In Focus Fridays, I’ll post a single image that captures my life in focus from the previous week and observe over time, a gallery full of grateful details.

Way to go Donna!

THREE.

Here’s a cute idea you still have time to execute for Halloween …

Buy enough little sugar pumpkins for everyone. Cut around the stem, scoop out the guts (there aren’t many guts) and drop in a teaspoon of butter, a teaspoon of brown sugar and 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon. Bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes (or until soft)

Serve warm with whipped cream and *sprinkles* OK, seriously … these were so easy and so dang cute. The texture is a little funky, but it tastes just like a mini pumpkin pie.

My photo doesn’t do it justice, but I promise you’ll feel like your channeling your inner Martha.

FOUR.

Two pages in response to the challenge I issued this year on October 1st. This one is from Heather — love Everyday Happiness.

And, this one is Christi’s “A Look Back” page …

Christi made this comment in our gallery: At this time in my life, just getting a page finished is an accomplishment, so they tend to be more basic. Most important to me is keeping precious memories alive, and this challenge did that (for me too!)

Thanks Heather and Christi. Don’t forget I have set up a FLICKR group + gallery where you can also post your PRESENT layout. There are MORE to enjoy, so I hope you’ll go take a peek.

FIVE.

I, Stacy, the very silly Witch of the northWEST … have my own handwriting font. In fact, I used my font on a page in the ebook, 20 Simple Secrets of Happy Scrapbookers. Guess what?

You can download it here on my website. Visit the Stacy tab and then click on “About Stacy” and then on “Stacy’s font” to automatically download it. Or, you can simply click HERE.

Posted in Books, FUN, Friends, Page, Present Living, Scrapbooking, Shoes, holiday | 22 Comments »

hold on tight …

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

because here we go!

Welcome to my brand new website!

I’m so excited for you to poke around and explore. I’m also excited to show you around, so don’t think you have to take it in all at once. I’ll be highlighting the various pages and features over the next week or two. While this new site is still a work-in-progress (and I wouldn’t want it any other way) it is something I’ve been nudging forward for well over a year. And if you know me at all, you know I don’t (can’t) do these kinds of things by myself — stacyjulian.com is the collaborative effort of my sweet friend and partner, Kayce at Big Picture Scrapbooking and Shelly at Toolbox Media. John and Allison Barnes are also helping me with the day-to-day management and Dani Frederick has been a huge help in a number of ways. To each and all of them, a big fat THANK YOU!!

So, I’m no longer blogging at typepad and a GENEROUS scoop of gratitude goes to Karen Grunberg (Creative Therapy) for her help in migrating the vast majority of my archived content to this new home.

But, enough about me today …

Today is about YOU and ALL of us that took the “Give Yourself a Present” challenge ONE YEAR AGO.
Can you even believe it is already October 1st? I has been 365 days — I cannot believe this.

Here’s what I need you to do. Retrieve your mini “present” and use the photos inside to create a layout that records your reflections of the past year and the images captured. I explain it a bit more in this video.

Here’s my layout.

If you don’t want to use the actual photos in your “present” album (in other words you want to keep your album intact) then simply reprint the photos you used to use again on a layout. I’ve set up a Flickr gallery where we can post our original “present” projects and the layout we create in the next week or two. If you started reading my blog since last October or you need a refresher as to what I referring to, click on the “My Present (2008 + 2009)” under Experience More on the right sidebar.

I’ve been a little busy getting this site launched, so I was not able to contact ALL the other bloggers that participated in the challenge last year. If you blog about the challenge or something related to it, email allison@stacyjulian.com and we’ll add a link to your blog here (thanks for understanding!)

Kolette Hall

Tamara Morrison

Michelle Hedstrom

Monica McNeill

Suzanne McQuade

Stephenie Hamen

Heather Clements

Noreen Smith

When I was in Japan last week, Margie reminded me that she has been very faithful in carrying her “present” with her — in fact, she’s taken a “Flat Stanley” twist and photographed her mini book in various places where she’s been …

here we are in St. Louis, MO and in Osaka, Japan

and look … is that Margie in an orange tree?

and … there you have it. My present project, some thoughts on another year whizzing by and an official invitation for YOU to recognize the “gift” you created last year and document it for your scrapbooks.