CLS Fall Blog Hop Stop 6

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, but have you scrapped your Halloween photos yet? Halloween is one of my FAVORITE holidays, and going back to childhood I have had a LONG tradition of dressing up (with many of mine and my boys' costumes thanks to my Mom who is a wonderful seamstress.) This year we had to change things up a bit so instead of going out to find the fun, we kept it in our own home. Instead of trick or treating in various neighborhoods around town, we made spooky food, ordered a fog machine and decorated our house to the nines for a fun night with my parents! Here is what I came up with to celebrate these special memories - instruction sheets are at the end of the post. Enjoy! 

A Spooky House with Doors and Windows!

How Did I Do It?

I hope you can use these ideas in your own books and know that this is just one of many WONDERFUL fall-themed ideas on our blog hop today!  Hop along with us and follow these links to see all of the blogs of the Creative Life Scrapbooking team members:

 Stop 1: Krista French

 Stop 2: Meggan Jacks

 Stop 3: Karyn McDermaid - Rolfe

 Stop 4: Diana Brinsley

 Stop 5:  Tessa Chapple

 Stop 6 : YOU ARE HERE!  Fran Allen Smitherman

 Stop 7:  Noreen Smith

 Stop 8:  Lisa Brown Graham

 

Spring Blog Hop - Stop Number 2

Spring Break Memories!

Ahh, Spring Break - that magical time so needed by students everywhere as they attempt to make it through the long stretch between the Christmas holidays and summertime! Whether you have a sanctioned "spring break" or not, I hope you have chosen to do SOMETHING special to celebrate the change in the seasons. Our blog hop today is focusing on all things spring, and while chronologically I am nowhere near caught up with my photos and should not even be THINKING about these pictures yet, I'm cheating (and giving you permission to do the same!) I always tell those who are overwhelmed with the volume of photos and projects they are "behind on" to start with something current, so I am following my own advice.  I am definitely "guilty" of scrapping what I am in the mood for, and many times vacation photos take priority because they are just so darn fun (right?) 

Once the day is done, there's really nothing like loading your pictures onto your computer and looking at a full screen version of your memories. I encourage you to set aside some time to take a seat at your laptop with a beverage of choice and start the process of recording YOUR Spring Break  memories. Once you have completed and printed your digital book, the entire family will be able to easily enjoy and relive the trip over and over again - memories preserved for a lifetime are the reason we take these pictures in the first place. I've already started my Spring Break 2017 book and I can't wait to share a few pages from our recent trip to Orlando with you here! 

Grab some coffee and your laptop loaded with Artisan 5 digital scrapbooking software so you can start your own digital photo book while the memories are still fresh!
Photo credits: Yamilette Platero at The Boss Latina

Our Spring Break was last week, and this year we took my parents with us down to Orlando to have some fun at Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and the Kennedy Space Center. As you can guess, I took LOTS of pictures - I mean it's not every week you get to meet Marilyn Monroe, Lucy and Sponge Bob AND watch a SpaceX rocket take off!

My little guy turned down a kiss on the cheek from Marilyn Monroe - at least he said "no thank you!" She sure was a good listener to all of his concerns about the day :) 

A SpaceX rocket launching with a great view from the Kennedy Space Center

I am determined to get these stories told and photos shared so the family can relive the memories through the pages of my photo albums. With over 1,500 pictures and lots of stories to tell, I want this project done quickly while the memories are fresh, so as I do with so many trips, I am choosing to make a digital scrapbook in Artisan and have it printed as a hardbound 12X12 book at the Forever Print Shop. 

A few of my digital vacation books from the past few years - so easy to travel with and the whole family loves looking through them!

You might remember how excited I was during our Christmas Blog Hop when I found out that Creative Memories was introducing digital art to match their fabulous paper and stickers, and I am happy to show off a few pages here using some of those kits. Due to a few "down days" where we were able to relax away from the parks, I was actually able to carve out some time while on vacation to start on my book. I am already having so much fun with my digital photos and thanks to my Artisan software program and some super fun Creative Memories digital art kits my pages are really popping! I don't claim to have the most elaborate pages because I am more interested in getting my books done and the stories told, but it is nice to have a pop of color and some fancy fonts here and there. Let me show you what  I mean.

Beleaf It or Not! 

I have never been one who worried about having an exact paper or sticker to match my theme. Licensing gets tricky and I always like to think outside of the box when I scrap anyway. So when I didn't have a Jurassic Park kit to scrapbook this hilarious "raptor encounter" moment, did I sweat it? Not a bit! I just reached for my Creative Memories Better Beleaf It digital scrapbooking paper and a free Jurassic Park font from Dafont.com and went to town. I liked it so much that I decided to make this moment the front of my book. I loved how the leaf paper wrapped around the back of the book for me to add more photos to it for a consistent design. What a great feeling knowing my entire cover is finished already!

The front of my Spring Break digital 12X12 book. This Jurassic moment brought to you by a free font and Creative Memories' leafy "You Better Beleaf It" digital paper pack! 

The back of my 12X12 book captures a fun moment for each of us, with a "thankful" phrase from Creative Memories' Painted Harvest Digital Mat Pack

The front and back of my cover as seen in my Artisan software (CM digital artwork displayed in the Content panel on the right.)

Cool and Serene! 

One of the prettiest collections Creative Memories has introduced in recent times has been the Cool Serenity collection! I love it traditionally (there is paper, a Fast2Fabulous album and embellishments) but I REALLY love it digitally because I can stretch and shrink the elements to my liking! Again, I didn't have a Moana scrapbooking kit, but boy I love how this Cool Serenity digital art kit worked so perfectly on my pages to create this tropical feeling. I foresee a lot more use out of it for trips to the beach and aquariums in my future. "You're welcome!" (uhh, inside joke - you must see the movie!)

Who needs a "Moana" kit when you have Creative Memories' Cool Serenity papers and embellishments?

Did Someone Say DONUTS? 

Okay, I am a sucker for images of food, and I just loved these pictures of my son with a donut that was literally bigger than his head. Hey, he deserved it - we had just ridden the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror*, haha (note - these pictures are actually from a trip we took back in February. Yes, I have a "Disney" problem, I can't seem to stay away and I have several books going right now!) If you love images of sweets like I do, then the Soiree collection has you covered, with cupcakes and donuts and everything you would need for fun celebratory cards and scrapbook pages! As much as I love the Soiree collection on paper, for this blog I am showcasing the fun of it digitally (and yes the word "fun" is one of the embellishments that comes with it.) 

*For another idea for your Tower of Terror pictures, check out my post in our February Blog Hop. 

A little fun with the digital Soiree art kit from Creative Memories

More fun with Soiree digital paper and embellishments! 

While this particular blog post is primarily about digital pages, I am definitely an "ambiscrapper" who loves traditional and digital scrapbooking, so I have also had fun with the paper versions of this kit. The cool thing for my readers is that you can get the Soiree sticker set  (an $8 value) for FREE throughout the entire month of April if you set up a new account at Creative Memories and place an order for traditional product. Get it now while it lasts - CM has been great about introducing new products but that often means "out with the old, in with the new!"  

Free stickers in April for new orders at Creative Memories!  

Have you had a chance to use Creative Memories' digital artwork yet? If so, we would love to see what you have done - feel free to share your work on the Creative Life Scrapbooking team's Facebook page! And what vacation scrapbook would you like to work on this week? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Please do enjoy the rest of the "hop" and until next time, keep scrappin' :)  

Next stop - Organized and Creative Mom with Noreen, enjoy! Fran

Here is a list of today's participants: 

Stop 1 Stefani Jones Crop with Stef

YOU ARE HERE! Stop 2 Fran Allen Smitherman CelebratingYourBeautifulLife

Stop 3 Noreen Smith Organized and Creative Mom

Stop 4 Candace Bouldin ScrapinJPEGs

Stop 5 Karyn McDermaid-Rolfe Karyn Crops

Stop 6 Lisa Brown Graham Lisa's Workshop

Stop 7 Diana Miller Brinsley D Brinsley's Blog

February Blog Hop

Wow - I cannot believe it's been a year since the Creative Life Scrapbooking team (formerly known as the CM Content Contributors) did a February blog hop, but such is life and time does move on doesn't it? Love is in the air and I LOVE the new products I am going to be featuring today - I hope you will too! Today I will show off pages I made using the newest tools from Creative Memories, a few "unexpected" ways to use the new Mi Amour and Cake My Day CM paper packs, and the fastest way to get your favorite photos into your hands from the Forever phone app. As always, I enjoy your comments so let me know what you think and once you have finished with my blog, be sure to check out all of the other posts (links are listed at the bottom.) Let's crop!

Button, Button, Who Has the Button? 

It is so so fun playing with new cutting tools, and Creative Memories continues to come up with new standalone cartridges such as the new Embossed Trio Button Punch and the Garden Vine Paper Punch. With some pink cardstock and the precious Soiree paper pack I was able to make this eye-catching but simple page to celebrate a precious little girl - I called it "Cute as a Button!" I used the Border Maker System's Button Chain cartridge down the side to finish it off, and the letters came from the "Storybook" Cricut cartridge.  CM's Mini Tape Runner refill cartridges really come in handy with delicate letters such as these.

Buttons and polka dots, it doesn't get much sweeter than that!

Creative Memories' Embossed Trio Button punch is a fun stand-alone tool that can be used to create pretty designs such as this one. 

Creative Memories continues to add to its line of cartridges for its Border Maker System 

Another new favorite tool of mine is the Garden Vine Border Paper Punch. I love how it works its way up the side of this page here like a true climbing vine, perfect for pictures of a Bed and Breakfast in Maine and a bit of splurge on myself during an anniversary trip (yes, I found a Crabtree and Evelyn store!) 

Creative Memories' Garden Vine Punch was perfect for these Primrose Inn pictures!

Mi Amour and Cake My Day Used in the Most Unexpected Ways

Creative Memories outdid itself with the gorgeous Cake My Day and Mi Amour collections. They are available digitally as well! 

At first glance, the Cake My Day collection looked decidedly fun and feminine with its bright pinks and yellows, and Mi Amour looked very much like something one would choose for Valentine's Day and anniversary pages with its rich reds and blacks. As the Mom of two little boys I love the challenge of finding a way to use paper packs in unexpected ways, and I was able to come up with a few good ones I think! :) 

Look closely in Cake My Day - do those darker pages remind you of tracks? PERFECT! We just held the Cub Scouts' Annual Pinewood Derby Races! With a little help from the Chevron cartridge  I have begun to lay out the beginnings of some cute race pages. Again, I will be VERY grateful for the mini tape runner refill! 

Cake My Day paper for Pinewood Derby - who would've thought it?

I also could not help but notice the very distinct HOUNDSTOOTH paper in the Mi Amour paper pack. As a graduate of the University of Alabama, my first thought was that this paper pack would make some BEAUTIFUL Crimson Tide pages! 

Roll Tide! Red cardstock, a homemade football and the Mi Amour paper and stickers are all you need to make your Alabama pages come to life!

And I CERTAINLY don't want to leave out the DIGITAL versions of CM's art kits! It is VERY exciting for those of us who also like to scrapbook digitally to have the ability to purchase and download DIGITAL VERSIONS of Creative Memories' papers, mats, letters and other embellishments. This digital paper from Mi Amour truly looked like something from "another dimension", perfect for our most recent ride on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror! I used Forever's Artisan software to make this page - I used a "fractured" mat for the photos and, believe it or not, Creative Memories' "Christmas Past" digital embellishments to give it an "antique look" in the corners! Christmas embellishments on a Tower of Terror page? You bet!

Photo Developing Comes to Forever! 

Do you have the free Forever photo app yet? If not then now is a great time to check it out! The most recent version of the app offers the ability to print your photos at your closest Walgreen's store. I was very excited to have these Pinewood Derby pictures in my hands on Sunday morning (the race was Friday night!) I had uploaded pictures from my phone and my camera into my Forever account after the event and created a "Pinewood Derby" album - it took a few clicks on my Smartphone late Saturday night to pick out my favorites, and by Sunday morning I had an email from Walgreen's to let me know my pictures were waiting on me. Talk about fast!

Thanks to the new "print" feature on my Forever app, these pictures were in my hands within hours of ordering them

I am happy with the quality of the images and there are definitely times when I don't want to wait for my pictures to arrive in the mail. I love what Forever offers and this feature is definitely just one more reason for me to want to share Forever with the world!

I hope you have been inspired to celebrate your memories and remember to leave a comment and let me know how I can help you! I love to encourage others to do something meaningful and safe with their photos, no matter where they are in their journey (no idea where to start or a seasoned scrapbooking/digital pro!) Creative Memories and Forever both have something for everyone so if you haven't already, be sure to check them out today.

Thanks for reading my blog and now it's time to head to the next stop on this blog hop which is Sarah Fitzgerald's blog, ClickWriteShare!


Stop 1 D Brimsley's Blog
Stop 2 CropwithStef
Stop 3 Fran Smitherman's Celebrating Your Beautiful Life
Stop 4 Sarah Fitzgerald's Click Write Share
Stop 5 Julie'sCMBlog
Stop 6 Noreen Smith's Organized and Creative Mom
Stop 7 KarynCrops

Mother's Day Blog Hop Stop Number 1

Welcome to the first stop of our Creative Memories Mother's Day Blog Hop! I am excited to celebrate my own mother today in this blog hop and to spend a little time thinking about how honored I am to be a mother myself. I will start you off with some simple ideas for scrapbook pages to honor the special women in your life, and along the way you will also be able to get inspired by some fun card and gift projects the rest of the team has created! 

So blessed by my parents and the love they have for my own family!

I can think of endless pages I could do to honor my own mother - pictures of her taking care of me when I was a baby, pictures of her when SHE was a baby, pictures of her beautiful holiday preparations, pictures of her with my sons. For the sake of time I decided to narrow it down to my gratitude for one specific act of service she has done for me my entire life - the gift of her sewing skills!

Celebrating a Special Talent

Does your own mother have a special talent you hold dear in your heart? My mother is a wonderful seamstress, and with the new Button Chain cartridge and a simple hand-drawn needle, I was able to make a few beautiful pages about the many projects she has created for us. This is just the beginning of many more scrapbook layouts about her sewing creations I am sure! 

Using the Button Chain cartridge, the Shades of Pastel cardstock pack and the Fresh Picks paper pack, I was able to complement the color of the dress she wore to my wedding. She made it herself, as well as my veil and my "money bag" for the reception!

The button chain cartridge came in handy again here, except this time instead of a long border I actually cut out "buttons." I  drew a simple black line to serve as thread connected to a hand-drawn "needle" made with the black and silver fine tip pens.

Borders from the Fresh Picks paper pack looks really pretty with this shade of purple, and I wanted the journaling and the button chain borders to be symmetrical on each side of this layout. 

How Far We've Come

In my twenties, I had no idea what my future would bring. I studied and worked constantly and prayed that one day I would find the right man and have children, but of course you never know what the future is going to hold. I think the 20-year old version of me would be happy to see that my fears were for nothing, and while I have two boys instead of the two girls I originally envisioned, I am one lucky boy mama! 

Sometimes it's good to just step back and think about how far we've come in our lives. What would the 20 year old version of yourself think if she saw you now? Have you ever had dreams that came true? Don't take those things for granted - they deserve a page or two to tell your own story, don't they? 

Used stickers from the Hello Baby Boy collection to create "ruled lines" for journaling! 

While I no longer have "babies", I was pleasantly surprised to see how flexible the new Hello Baby Boy papers and stickers were. I haven't yet purchased the Hello Baby Girl paper pack but I am willing to bet I will because with these pretty color palettes I can see so many uses outside of a baby album!

:

I also love how Creative Memories' paper packs have a couple of pages with strips you can cut into borders. I used one of them here to start off my journaling (and you might have noticed in the previous layout I did the same with the Fresh Picks border pages.)

Creative journaling down the side of the page with a border from the Hello Baby Boy paper pack to start it off - "Once Upon a Time" is just one of several cute phrases found in the pack

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is coming up on Sunday, May 8th and even if you don't have any big plans, take a picture of whatever you are doing (even if it is just picking honeysuckle and enjoying the sunshine!) I created this layout for a Creative Titles post for the CM Blog but just in case you didn't see it, the point of it was not to waste good photo backgrounds! 

I created a title out of shapes cut from the excess background space of photos that might have otherwise ended up in the garbage. The grass would be monotonous if each 4X6 picture was included in my layout, but when punched out using the Blossom Punch, it becomes a lot more fun!

Creative Titles using ABC stickers and shapes punched out from photos

Don't waste those backgrounds :) 

If you have cards and special keepsakes, don't forget you can incorporate those into your scrapbooks as well using Creative Memories' Pocket Pages - they are perfect for holding on to these special items!

I love all of these sweet treasures!

Creative Memories offers Large Single Pocket Pages for displaying your special memorabilia

Whether you are thinking of your own mother, contemplating your role as a mother yourself, or celebrating other special women in your life, I truly hope you enjoy this blog hop and that it will inspire you to do something special with your photos. As always feel free to leave comments - I love hearing from you! Here is the complete list of sites to visit on today's blog hop - enjoy! 


Stop #1 - YOUAREHERE! Fran Smitherman's CelebratingYourBeautifulLife
Stop #2 - Noreen Smith's OrganizedandCreativeMom
Stop #3 - Sarah Fitzgerald's ClickWriteShare
Stop #4 - Candace Bouldin's Scrappin JPEGs
Stop #5   JulieTambrini'sJuliesCMBlog
Stop #6 - Diana Miller's DBrinsleysBlog
Stop #7 - LisaGrahamBrown's Lisa'sWorkshop
Stop #8 - Creative Memories' Blog!