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

Themed Albums Part 3: Holiday Albums

It's the most wonderful time of the year (in more ways than one!) Family, food and fond memories are in the forefront in December and most of us take more pictures than usual as we celebrate the holidays. Welcome to the third blog post in a series that has been focusing on the concept of a "themed" album! I've expressed my love for this concept in previous posts on Travel albums and Halloween albums, and that love is amplified when it comes to Holiday albums! They are fun, festive, and best of all you can finish each spread quickly and put them on the shelf with a sense of accomplishment each year!

Ideas for holiday albums are varied - some people love the idea of showing off all of their Christmas cards from family and friends, others like to devote a few pages a year to their favorite photos from the month of December, and some of us can't help but have an entire album devoted to each year's festivities, haha! No matter where you fall in the spectrum of holiday albums, I am hopeful that this blog post will give you some ideas about taking photos this month and how to start your own holiday album tradition.

The Annual Album

I am going to focus here today on the annual album, one that devotes a few pages to each year. So how do you get started on an annual album? Make sure to keep it manageable so as not to become overwhelmed. With three packs of refill pages a Creative Memories 12X12 album holds about 40 pages, or 80 sides, so if you want the album to span 20 years you can allow yourself 4 sides a year. This means you have to choose your very best pictures. Since about 5-6 photos fit on a page on average, you will need to narrow your selection down to about 20 or so best images per year (not easy but if I can do it you can too!) To fit more pictures on a page you can always crop them. If you send out an annual family card it is always good to save one for yourself to include, and of course you always want to make note of the year (I like to use ABC/123 letters to do that.) Here is an example of a layout from my annual Christmas album:

A two page spread in my annual Christmas album

Journaling on the page or in boxes is a great thing to do while the memories are fresh in your mind, and I like to adhere my cards to the page in a way that they can be opened (line them up flush with the edges of the jeeping then slide the page protectors over the open card before you fold the flap down.)

That didn't take any time at all! I am choosing the "blank canvas" route with a red coverset and white refill pages, but if you want to go even faster check out CM's Fast2Fabulous albums - predesigned, preloaded and page protectors are included

Which Pictures to Take?

Before you start to think about what supplies you need, it is important to think about which memories are best to capture in the month. Pictures with Santa and your family card are always great, but there are other things to think of as the month goes on. Be sure not to forget pictures of all the family, not just the children - through the years you will be grateful that you captured the grownups (and so will the kids!). Take pictures or favorite decorations, don't forget pets, and I even like to take a picture of the TV screen when we are watching an annual favorite! Did it snow? Did you buy a real tree? Did you go to the Nutcracker? Did you bake? These are all things that make fantastic pictures for your pages so keep them in mind as the month progresses. No tradition is too little to capture! While the focus is often on children and their spread from Santa, don't forget to capture the adults' gifts too - these memories are special too.

Supplies

To make a holiday album I would recommend the following at a minimum:

* A 12X12 CM coverset  in a festive color (or a holiday Fast2Fabulous Album - see the Christmas Joy below!)
* 3 packs of refill pages (white, natural or Spargo) with the page protectors (or two additional packs if you purchased a Fast22Fabulous album which comes with your first set preloaded)
* A tape runner with a few packs of refills
* A CM dual tipped pen

CM's Christmas Joy Fast2Fabulous album!

Beautiful predesigned pages in this year's Christmas Joy Fast2Fabulous album

If you want to do some enhancements on your pages, Creative Memories has some beautiful paper, stickers and slide in packs that are perfect for the holidays! If you have the Border Maker System, the new Evergreen cartridge makes great borders or decorative tags for gifts!

Fun with the CM Group's Border Making System and the Evergreen cartridge

Love the CM Group's Christmas Joy paper, stickers and slide in pack

An annual holiday album is easy if you just set aside a little bit of time each year to work on it! So in conclusion, take great pictures, save your cards, pick your best 20 photos and take the time to tell your stories. This is a fun and manageable project and one that your family will cherish for years to come. For even more fun ideas don't forget to check out our CM Holiday Blog Hop, happy holidays and as always, keep scrappin! Fran

  

Predesigned page in the CM Group's Christmas Joy Fast2Fabulous album

Making Time for Scrapbooking

"I don't have time to scrapbook!"

"I will work on my children's photo albums when they go off to college."

"I wish I could find someone that would just make my scrapbooks for me."

"Where do you find the time?"

As a Creative Memories consultant for 13 years, I have heard these phrases more than a few times in my life. I am sure exercise instructors, nutritionists and school program directors in search of volunteers hear similar stories when they are trying to find people to join their programs or take leadership positions in their organizations. The truth of the matter is that life is busy, but whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the CEO of your own household, there are ways to prioritize and simplify, and your health and your memories will thank you for it! To find the time to make scrapbooks, you have to make a conscious effort to MAKE the time, and this takes a little bit of planning and goal setting. I would like to talk a little bit about what I mean and I hope that I can help you to shorten your list of excuses and lengthen your list of accomplishments. Whether your goal is to get those pictures off of your phone or camera and into a scrapbook or to make healthier choices with regard to physical activity or items in your grocery cart, I KNOW you can do it!

So, let's take some steps to prioritize and simplify - sounds easy enough. Where do you start?

First, ask yourself if you are overcommitted. Are you shouldering too many responsibilities? Do you feel like you have more to do than there are hours in the day? Do you wish you had more help? Well, join the club. WE ALL DO! While no one's life is identical to that of their neighbor, we really are not that different from one another, and we all have different stressors in our lives. Maybe you have sporting events/practices EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK. Maybe it is a 60 hour a week career that keeps you hopping. Maybe it is being a single parent. Life is hard but we MUST make the time for what matters.

When it comes down to priorities, God and my family come first with me, but preserving memories is a close third because I know that I take these pictures for a reason. I want to remember this life, and I want my children to remember all the things we've done together. Even before I had children I treasured my memories because this was MY LIFE!  Picture albums made me happy when I felt sad and made me happier when I felt glad. They are therapeutic in longer lasting ways than a visit to a spa or a shopping excursion could ever be, and it also makes people feel good when you show them their place in your life's story! Photo albums aren't just for the past or the future, they also enhance the PRESENT! Can the laundry wait one more day? Can you simplify dinner plans for the week? Could you sign the kids up for fewer activities and choose instead to have an extra night at home? All of these are MAJOR decisions that you may not be okay with, but I bet if you thought about it you could come up with at least ONE way to simplify.

Jessica N. Turner wrote a book this year entitled The Fringe Hours: Making Time for You.  Chances are, no matter how crazy we think our own lives are, there is some "fringe hour" in our day that we could use in some way or another. Ms. Turner brings a devotional with her to read - she said she often arrives 5 minutes early to an appointment so she can sit in her car and read just a little bit of it. The point is, you don't need large blocks of time to make time for yourself. Similar to the author, I bring a journal and journal cards with me in my purse and from time to time I will write in them during my lunch break, or while waiting for an appointment. While I am not scrapbooking, I am setting myself up TO scrapbook. Activities like these are what I like to call "pre-scrapbooking!" I also have a Forever app on my phone that with a touch of a button I can click on to upload my phone photos. I have done this in the elevator on the way up to my office. It's those minutes to ourselves that we didn't even realize we had. Use your "fringe hours" wisely and you will be surprised.

The second thing to think about is our "guilty pleasures." I am a  nightowl who stays up late because I have a VERY full time job and I desperately need the evenings to get things done, but no matter how efficiently I try to use my "fringe" hours (that is, the tiny slivers of time when I am not at work and my children are sleeping) I still feel very frustrated some days. I try to use my time well, but I always feel as if there is more that I want or need to do. So what happened? Well, we all have our "guilty pleasures." In this case, I am referring to time wasters. We all have them. Ask yourself what is yours? Mine is definitely scrolling through Facebook. I just love it, I have to say it! I love to post my own photos, see other people's photos, read their stories, learn new scrapbooking techniques, communicate with other individuals with Creative Memories businesses such as my own, etc...But I bet if I made a conscious effort to step away from the computer I would get a LOT more done in an evening.

What is your "time waster?" Is it reality TV shows? Watching hour after hour of recorded movies? Magazines? Is there anything you might put away for an hour to instead devote to organizing your pictures, uploading them to a photo developing service, or even starting that album you've always dreamed of?

Let's make a promise that at least one, maybe two, or (gasp!) three nights this week we are going to try to step away from whatever it is that's frittering away our fringe hours. Instead, find a table, grab a stack of photos, a pen, a tape runner, and a Creative Memories Fast2Fabulous album and see what you can accomplish in that hour instead! It works for me! I have two busy boys, a high pressure career, and a thriving scrapbooking business of my own with customers to take care of, but I don't let that get in my way of telling my life's stories with love! Am I completely caught up? No way! But every day I am making progress towards that goal.

Remember those quotes at the beginning of my post? Let's draw a line through those and make this our new motto:

"An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox" - Lao Tzu

Remember scrapbooks don't have to be fancy, they just need to be finished! Your own handwriting and stories are the best because they will mean the most over time, and the sooner the better while the memories are fresh in your mind. Whether you do them on your own at your dining room table or set one day a month aside to attend a workshop with other "scrapbookers" I believe that you can DO THIS!

Hope you will reach out to me or your own Creative Memories consultant to ask for help in finding the tools and the events to help you reach your goals. It's so important and we are here for you!

Preserving the past, but also enhancing the present!

Fun with my customers!

Years of scrapbooks - my pride and joy! 

Memories over the years, always fun to take down and peruse

Quality Matters (and dudes scrap, too!)

When I went to my first Creative Memories class 15 years ago, I was convinced that I knew everything there was to know about making albums and there was nothing this person was going to teach me. In other words, I was being a good sport by going along with my friends who were "novices" - after all, I had been making photo albums all throughout grammar school, high school and college. I knew EVERYTHING.

Boy was I wrong! Those "cheap" albums I'd been putting my photos in were actually accelerating the aging of my photos with acidic PVC plastics, bad adhesives and pulpy lignin - my life was changed that night. I had never before given any thought into WHAT I put my albums in, what I used to stick them to the pages or even the kinds of pens (gasp - I was using SHARPIES!) I was using to label my pages. I was even writing on the backs of photos...thank goodness for that class.

Creative Memories' albums are the top of the line when it comes to permanence and photo safety - if you are going to do something, do it right and do it once.My favorite example is my grandfather's fabulous album he made in law school. The photos, the stories and the memorabilia are amazing, but the scrapbook he put them in was yellowing and literally falling apart (I keep the crumbled pages in a plastic bag now.) I asked him if I could restore it in a Creative Memories album (acid free, lignin free and buffered to repel acid from things such as concert tickets and invitations) and he said yes. Look at the difference:

From crumbling to lifetime guarantee - preserving PawPaw's hard work and the character of his stories and his handwriting using a Creative Memories album

So as you see, dudes do scrapbook!! My husband loves trains, and I asked him if he would like to do a Fast2Fabulous album (neutral colors of course!) of his recent trip to Virginia with his father. He was finished in no time and now I can appreciate the stories and the significance of his photos so much more than if they were in one of the old polyvinyl chloride slide in albums. 

From cheap slide in PVC albums to a high quality Creative Memories Fast2Fabulous album - looks good, finished quickly, photo safe, stories told.

I believe in quality and I also believe that ANYONE can make a scrapbook - why shouldn't they? We have these cameras for a reason - let's tell our stories!

I will leave you with Creative Memories' quality commitment - to learn more go to http://www.creativememories.com/user/fransmitherman and until next time, keep scrappin'! Fran

Creative Memories' Commitment to Quality

We’re committed to helping people enjoy the special moments in their lives by making world-class memory keeping products.  We promise to offer unique, easy-to-use, high quality and long-lasting products you can trust. 

We're proud to say our core products, like albums, refill pages and page protectors are made in the U.S.A. (in St. Cloud, MN) by the same experienced manufacturing team who have brought you world-class products for many years.

Product and Process Testing

Because the photo and scrapbooking industries aren't regulated, many companies make claims about their albums, papers, pens, adhesives and other supplies that can’t be substantiated. At CM, we stand behind our quality and test accordingly.

Here are a few examples of the rigor we apply as we develop products:

Adhesives: Designed to be photo safe and permanent so your photos and memorabilia won't drop off the page.

Specific tests we conduct include:

• Extreme temperature testing. The product must remain functional after being exposed to 6 weeks of 140°F (60°C), and 7 days of 0°F (-18°C).
• Bleed tests. Product must not bleed through material it has been adhered to after being exposed to 6 weeks of 140°F (60°C).
• Permanent bond quality
• Functionality and Cartridge Replacement tests to ensure: adhesive releases from the liner, tension is minimal from start to finish, take-up roll properly winds, minimal looping at nose and easy installation of the refill. 

Pens: Designed and tested to be permanent, fade-proof, bleed-resistant and waterproof so they won't ever run and ruin your photos or surrounding pages. Our pens are perfect for left handers – they won’t smear.

Specific tests we conduct include:

• Writeability and bleed testing to ensure inks don’t smear or transfer after 20 seconds.

Papers & Pages: Buffered with calcium carbonate to combat the acids found in memorabilia and normal air pollution. We monitor papers’ brightness and ensure our paper stock does not contain post-consumer waste.  All of our paper products are lignin-free to stop them from turning yellow and brittle over time.

Specific tests we conduct include:

• Bleed testing
• Sutherland rub test for printed papers and poly pocket pages. A weight is rubbed back and forth 100 times to ensure minimal color transfer and abrasion.
• Seam strength tests for the page protectors and poly pages to ensure they do not tear
• Stitch strength to ensure the album pages stay intact.

Albums & Coversets:  Built to last for years of enjoyment. We’ve filled albums to the max and tested them in real-use situations for thousands of page turns.

Specific tests we conduct include:

• Slot strength on the basecard, so your straps don’t tear your album
• Stain resistance. Spilling real-life substances (cola, coffee, peanut butter, etc.) on albums. (One wipe and it’s clean.)
• The Page Turning machine cycles an album page 5000 times and then visual assessment is made on the page stitches, coverholder stitches and slots, integrity of the spine and that the strap slip is less than 1/8.” 
• Crocking test to ensure negligible-to-no color transfer on the album material.

Tools: Developed to be high quality, durable and long-lasting.  We push the limit when it comes to testing our tools because we take great pride that they are the best on the market.

Specific tests we conduct include:

• Cutting lifecycle
• Material identification
• Functionality/User testing
• Drop tests

We're vigilant about safety standards, always on the watch for sharp edges, choke hazards, lead or magnets.  Our products are PVC and Cellulose Nitrate-free to ensure your photos remain safe. 

We also conduct shipping simulation tests to ensure the products reach your doorstep in great condition.