Posts from — August 2009

Essentially scrapbooking is all about telling a story, right? Whether that’s a story about your family, your friends, your dog or your work – it’s a story. But photo’s cannot tell a whole story. You need names of people and dates at least. The rest is up to you.

Journalling can be list form, essay form, from a sentence to a paragraph; it’s up to you how much information, how much of the story you include.

I remember an excellent group of blog posts by the talented Ali Edwards; Words + photos week. These series of posts explore the essence of memory keeping, Ali explored the question, What if I used all my creative energy towards the words + the photos and forgot about the rest of the stuff for one week?

From this question I decided to ask Fran Tynan how she created sahbby chic layouts with just the right amount of embellishments added to highlight her photos and her words…

Here’s what Fran had to say,

“A lot of my photos have a story – or at the very least based on an ‘event’.  As a ‘simple’ scrapper I like to have my pages pretty uncluttered and having a lot of journaling makes me have to think up ways to keep it there without it taking over the page.”

“In my “Serious Talk” LO (below) using the Duchess Range the whole point of taking these photos was to show how brave my son had become with my Dad (who he doesn’t see very often) by going and sitting up at the table with him and having a chat. I wanted to make sure I wrote this on the page so I measured where I wanted my text on the page and made my text box at those measurements in my word processing program and put the page through the printer.

TIP: If you want to do this same thing with a 12”x12” page (and you don’t have a printer that big – I certainly don’t!) you most definitely can . Just cut the background page across where I have put my brown strip – print your journaling (set your page up to “landscape” in your printing program) and then use the brown strip across the page to hide the join. You get the exact same effect.

“In my “Person in the Tree” LO the journaling was really the whole point of the LO, and the photo is just there to help convey the story. (If you can’t read the journaling it’s basically about my daughter thinking that a persimmon tree was a “person in the tree” and she was confused as she couldn’t see the personJ). The Loire Valley papers were the perfect choice for this as they had the whole “birdhouse/tree thing” going on.”

“To make a feature of the journaling, and also to not have whole big blocks of journaling, I chose to use strips going down the page and across the photo. It just makes it easier and more fun to read that way – and still doesn’t ruin the clean lines of the page.”

TIP: “Often we have a photo without a story, and also we have the opposite – a story without a photo. So next time you have a story without a photo – it could be a certain conversation, or a memory, or an everyday thing that you can’t capture with a photo – use one of your current photos that doesn’t have a story and combine the two.”

“For example, you have a gorgeous photo of your daughter for no reason at all – and also a funny quirk of theirs you’d like to document. Just add the quirk to the journaling on that page – it makes for much more interesting album viewing later!”

Lastly, I wanted to showcase Christine’s gorgeous layout featuring Christine’s gorgeous son. The layout includes a simple title down the side of the page, a little journalling describing the meaning behind the photo and the date.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas and link to more journalling resources! Have you got a layout to share featuring words + photos?

Mini albums we’ve got stacks of em!

So why not pick yourself up one from your local LSS (find it here using our store locator)?

Today we’re featuring our NEW Mini album stand (SB2051) and Mini Girl Albums (SB2049) and Mini albums Ticket (SB2050) – they’re a great way to display family photos in your home or give as a gift!

With the albums coming in a pack of three, and interchangable pages – why not mix it up? Create one for youself, and two for friends?

Here are just a couple of the ways our Contributing Design Team have made these cute lil’ albums!

First “cab off the rank” is Sam Hauzer’s gorgeous family albums. Team with duchess and inked wooden flourishes; we think they look delightful!

And how about Nancy’s cute Loire Valley ones?

And Rona Baily’s family album in Duchess! How gorgeous, and such a fantastic way to record memories from a family Sunday!

A little drumroll please………………………

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The winner of the of the $60 card making pack goes to …………………………………………………..

Janet Obrien!!

Janet can you please send us the three paper collections you’d like, along with your delivery address and ph number to competitions@kaisercraft<dot>com<dot>au

We absolutely adored your card! Your take on the ‘ribbon’ and turning the rectangle frame into a circle = awesome! Oh and we loved how you made the little butterflies hang by threading jump rings through eyelets! Just gorgeous!

We recieved an amazing number of submissions and thank you all for giving it ago! Here are a few honorable mentions, we loved your interpretations of the sketch!

Above: Melinda Spinks – Isn’t her card lovely with its clever shadow box?

Above: JJ Sobey – how cute is her robots little arms and legs made out of wire and cute ‘screw’ looking brads!

Above: Anthea McConachy – we loved Anthea’s cute little paper windmill.

If you want to make your own, check out some easy-peasy instructions we found to make your own card!

We’re acutally considering adding a card sketch to our weekly ‘Saturday sketches’ posts each week. Is this something you would be interested in? Please, let us know!

This week’s tip comes from the talented Renee Ludlow!

Here’s what she had to say about making your own embellishments, “It is really easy to turn a simple paperclip into a cute embellishment for your scrapbooks or cards.  Just place a small amount of glue at the top of the paper clip and adhere a flower with embroidered badge as the centre. Alternatively apply a rub-on to acetate and glue this to the paperclip, just make sure you use a glue that dries clear.  Quick and easy.”

Have you made your own kind of embellishment lately? We’d love to see it!

Don’t forget to check back here this afternoon for the winner of our Creative Card Competition! Thanks to all who entered….. we’ve got our work cut out for us choosing a winner from the fabulous bunch of cards we’ve received!

So we’ve got a bunch of exciting contests coming up….

Starting on the 1st September…

30 days = 30 contests = 30 prizes.

We’re holding a month long celebration to celebrate our second quarterly release (sneak peek’s coming soon)!

Make sure you and your friends join in the fun, visit the Kaisercrafties blog during the month of September and you’ll find daily contests and prizes, industry news, daily inspiration, guest blog posts and much more!

We’ve also got exclusive photos, discussions and news on our facebook page and be the first to hear any news from kaisercraft via our twitter feed!

Make sure you tell all your friends!

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