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

 

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

Father's Day Blog Hop

This Father's Day is going to be very different in our home as a month ago my husband's father, my father-in-law, and the boys' Grandaddy Smitherman died at the young age of 65. It was unexpected, and there is definitely a hole in our hearts as we cope with our loss. We honored Jackie at his memorial service with a slideshow, and seeing people's reactions to all of the photos of him at a younger age was priceless. Pictures are powerful and they tell a story of who you are and what you have loved, and they help connect us to the past in happy times and in sad. I was so grateful that as the historian in the family I was able to quickly access all of our precious photographs so that my husband, Chris Smitherman, could put together a beautiful slideshow for his father.

Priceless memories

With these memories fresh, I found it hard to focus on Jackie at this time - instead I am highlighting Chris and the many ways he is a good father and husband himself, just like his own Dad. He deserves more than a Lowe's gift card this year - he has taken on a great deal of additional responsibility with his mother, sister and nieces now that his father has gone, yet he still provides for his own family. I want him to know how much we appreciate him, and to honor what he does for us on a day to day basis! With a busy few weeks ahead, I needed some simple projects that I could knock out in a short amount of time. It doesn't take much to give someone a gift from the heart when you have the right tools and a few printed photographs! I am going to show you a few gift ideas you can pull together before the big day using some of Creative Memories' latest products.

Telling someone you love them as a husband and as a Dad with pictures is easy if you just set aside a few moments to do it

Commemorate a Special Time Together
Before Chris was a father, he was a husband, and while we try to make time for ourselves, it is pretty difficult without formal "date nights." This page layout commemorates one of my favorite trips we took this year - I used the wood grain paper from the "Hello Baby Boy" paper pack, as well as Creative Memories' brown cardstock for mats and decorative touches. The wood grain paper looks perfect with the rustic seafood restaurant as a backdrop - I can never get enough of it! I cannot wait to show my husband these pages. 

I love the way this turned out! The wood grain paper from Creative Memories' Hello Baby Boy paper pack and brown cardstock are perfect for a masculine page for a special man in your life!

 With the wood grain paper from Creative Memories' Hello Baby Boy paper pack it is easy to make a masculine page to highlight a favorite father in your life! I threw in some Brown cardstock for mats and decorative touches and journaled right on the pages as well as in a journaling box created with the Hello Baby Boy Slide In Pack and some numbers from the Year in Review sticker set. 

Not one to waste any space, I journaled everywhere! Stories are so important

The band's logo is actually a photo we took of the screen before the show started - take pictures of signs and logos, they make your pages work so much better! :) 

Hello Baby Boy paper pack (first side)

Hello Baby Boy paper pack (second side)

Creative Memories' brown cardstock

Help Him Celebrate His Children Everywhere He Goes
Now that the school year is over, are you left with stacks of professional photos (school, soccer, basketball, dance, etc...) and nothing to do with them? Don't just put them in a box- cut them up and put them in a little mini album for yourself and for others! Creative Memories is selling these cute little 2X3 Navy Pocket Albums with pages for just $7 and I have always found them to be great gifts for parents and grandparents. I went and looked on Chris' desk and he has the loose photos standing up against his computer monitor - his other mini albums are full already, so I am going to surprise him with this little gem for the newer photos!

Professional photos everywhere?

2X3 Navy Pocket Album with pages holds 16 photos

Fast, easy gift for a Dad

Get those little professional pictures in a book

Wallet sized photos, credit cards, or business cards can easily fit in this affordable little album

Encourage Him to Tell His Own Story! 

Another quick gift is a Fast2Fabulous album. I have talked about these in my blog before, but if you still haven't had the chance to check them out I would definitely do so. I have created some quick pages capturing Chris as a husband and a Dad using the "Stitch in Twine" album pages. Seeing how simple it was to do so, it made me think that a gift of a Fast2Fabulous album, a pen and a tape runner (maybe with a stack of photos) would be an excellent gift for any man this Father's Day. Photos are universal and while men (or busy folks for that matter!) may not care about using elaborate techniques to create pages, they do care about their photos. Why wouldn't they want the best for their memories? Put a pen in their hands and let them tell their own stories!

A Creative Memories Stitch in Twine refill page with a banner strip cut from the Fresh Picks paper pack

Hand that guy a pen!

Stitch in Twine Fast 2 Fabulous Album

For more ideas on ways to honor the fathers in our lives, please continue to Diana Brinsley's blog - the full list of the Blog Hop is below so enjoy getting inspired and have a wonderful June!

Home Creative Memories' Blog

Stop1 Fran Smitherman's CelebratingYourBeautifulLife YOU ARE HERE!

Stop 2 Diana Brinsley's DBrinsely'sMemoryKeepingBlog

Stop 3 Stefani Jones' CropwithStef

Stop 4 Sarah Fitzgerald's ClickWriteShare

Stop 5 Lisa Graham Brown's Lisa's Workshop

Stop 6 Noreen Smith's Organized and Creative Mom

What keeps you up at night?

What keeps you up at night? Are your memories as safe and organized as you would like them to be?

I have 90 Creative Memories scrapbooks and 97,000 digital photos on my computer. So yes, I basically panic every time I even THINK ABOUT anything happening to my house or computer. This has been a huge fear of mine for a while - all those memories are PRICELESS and IRREPLACEABLE. Enter Forever.

Forever is your one stop shop for your photos and the company's premiere offering is online storage for your photos. Unlike so many other providers out there, your memories are backed by the Forever Guarantee Fund and three servers strategically located throughout the U.S. Your account is fully encrypted like a bank's system and completely private other than the folks you decide to share it with. Your memories are guaranteed to be safe for your life plus 100 years - they will never shrink your resolution or share your info with advertisers. It is truly like photo insurance.

 The deeper I get into Forever, the more I love what I have been able to do to have fun with my pictures and to get that precious peace of mind I have been seeking for years! I want to share some images with you of what my accounts and projects look like:

My Home page where I can see all of my albums

What pictures look like as they come in from your phone or your PC (you can later drag them to your albums to get them out of this view!) The phone App is great - I have mine set to "auto upload" whenever I am on wifi. 

The inside of one of my albums, "Baby Andrew" - these are obviously pictures I would never want to lose to a hard drive crash of a photo vendor's tricky terms.

Whether you have a PC or a Mac, you can access your Forever account online, edit, organize and even create projects in Forever Projects (like "Artisan Lite".) I have created Storybooks and canvases already - I am about to try some cards because they are on sale this month.You can upload pictures from your phone and PC either automatically or manually (I love the phone app - it's free for your Smartphone or iPad!)

Forever also scans all types of media (photos, scrapbooks, videos, slides and negatives) and stores those high resolution images in your account. 

Forever Services has now scanned 7 of my traditional scrapbooks - I love seeing the images pop into my account. I can have them turned into page prints, into storybooks, share them with the people who are in the pages, or just sleep better knowing that if my house burned down all those pictures and  JOURNALING would be saved! Some things are irreplaceable- my 90 scrapbooks definitely fall into that category.

Personalized service - they call to let you know your digitization boxes have arrived safely before they start to scan them

Another album, home safe and scanned into my Forever account

In addition to curating my Forever account online, I also use desktop based Historian (formerly Memory Manager) and Artisan (formerly Storybook Creator) for more detailed editing and project creation. I love how I can create projects and work with my photos without the internet in these programs if necessary (some hotel rooms and scrapbook retreat venues don't always have the best wifi!) 

Want to create digital storybooks and have them preserved in the cloud (and printed as many times as you'd like!?) Here is how my pages are coming along in Artisan

A different view of a project coming together in Artisan

Now I can order my books any time I want!

If you haven't already, check out Forever - you will not be sorry! Please respond in the comments with any questions you might have - I am here to answer them! Here's to sleeping better at night! Fran