Spring Blog Hop - Final Stop

Greetings and welcome to the final stop on our Spring Blog Hop! Fran Smitherman here, and while this may be our spring blog hop, down here in the South we are ready for summer. School is out and we are beach bound soon - but not before I wrap up the finishing touches on some pictures from our trip last September using the latest and greatest tools, paper and stickers from Creative Memories! Do you have some favorite vacation photos to work with? If so, then read on!

If you love Nautical themes, then Deep Blue Sea is for you, and if you are more of the "outdoorsy" type during the summer, then you will want to check out the Explorer line! I have had the opportunity to use both recently, and I think you will find them both to be very versatile and great enhancements for your photos! Throw in some of the latest tools and your pages will be styling in no time.

Night Swimming! Layout for Beach Pics at Night

For my first layout, I wanted to capture a walk on the beach at night with the light glowing from the condo windows. While I would typically think of the Cityscape punch as being something to use in a strictly urban setting, by adding some yellow cardstock behind in for a glow and snipping off some of the decorative building toppers that didn't quite look like beach condos, I think I achieved the look I was going for. What do you think? 

By the glow of the condos!

On the second side of the layout I kept a cleaner look, like the dunes in the distance, with a Double Wave tearing tool to give the uneven effect and a cloud sticker from the Deep Blue Sea sticker set. Notice that I used the Wave blade from the 12-inch Rotary trimmer system on the photos (three at a time, by the way!) and their mats. I am loving the new trimmer and my customers and I can't wait for them to come back in stock later in June!

The beach at night!

Nighttime at the beach - now it's time to journal this and make the pages complete!

Paper and stickers from Creative Memories' "Deep Blue Sea" line

Cityscape Standalone Punch

Creative Memories' new 12-inch rotary trimmer has a space underneath for 12 blades!

A place to store more blades!

Explorers! Mini Albums for Little Hands

For my next project, I wanted to make some mini albums for my boys to use as journals for an upcoming trip out west to see the National Parks. The Explorer line was exactly what I needed! These albums were very inexpensive and easy to make with a handful of navy and white cardstock sheets, some circle rings, a hole punch, the Explorer stickers, and just two of the decorative sheets of Explorer paper.

Mini 6x6 albums for little hands to record memories of a vacation!

I started with a stack of Navy Blue and White 12X12 carstock. I alternated every other color in the stack before I cut (you will see why in just a moment!) I sliced it down the middle vertically to make two sides that were 12 inch high, 6 inches wide, then I rotated those to do the cut again. I had 6X6 squares and was ready to make the most out of just a handful of supplies!

The new 12 inch Rotary trimmer's straight edge was able to cut several sheets of cardstock at a time for me

I love how you insert the blade and it only "comes out" when you press down on the housing unit as it is cutting - to me that is an excellent safety feature

I cut the 12inch tall/6inch wide strips again to make 6X6 squares

Not wanting to do a lot of decorating, I selected the sheet of designer paper with the borders and basically just cut them all into strips by their design, then used my trimmer to slice those in half, one for each boy's book. I decorated the  pages with these borders and the Explorer stickers, and for the album, I envision one side for journaling, one side for a photo of the day. See how it all came together:

A sheet of borders to cut from the Explorer decorative paper pack

A few extra sheets of cardstock for journaling on the navy side of the album

Once everything was decorated (including using the wood grain paper for the back of the book, and while not necessary, a laminator made a nice touch), I got out the hole puncher and the circle rings to assemble these books.

 I made sure that no two sides were the same color. I wanted white for journaling when possible, and the navy side for a photo to be adhered upon returning home from the trip!

 The boys liked their albums and I can't wait to see what they fill them with!

I hope you have enjoyed the "hop" and don't forget to follow Creative Life Scrapbooking on Facebook for more great ideas every week! Follow me personally at Celebrating Your Beautiful Life to stay up to date on all things digital and traditional, and if you started with my blog, be sure to check out all of the rest of the ideas here:


Noreen Smith Organized and Creative Mom

Karyn McDermaid-Rolfe Karyn Crops

Julie Tambrini Julie's CM Blogspot

Diana Miller Brinsley D Brinsley's Blog

Stefani Jones Crop with Stef

Lisa Brown Graham Lisa's Workshop

Fran Smitherman YOU ARE HERE Celebrating Your Beautiful Life

Summer Scrapbook Ideas You Can Use Now! June Blog Hop Stop Number One

Summer is a great time for taking pictures, and it is also a great time to do something special WITH those pictures! Everything slows down just a little bit in the summertime, and it is so wonderful here in the South to kick off the end of the school year with a family get together to commemorate Memorial Day. Where there is family, there is food, and where there is food there are often photos. That is exactly why I was so excited about the newest collection from Creative Memories appropriately titled Made with Love (oh yeah, and I do sort of have this obsession with gingham!) The collection features beautiful food themed papers, stickers and mats, and it is truly stunning for your scrapbook pages. 

The Creative Memories Made with Love Collection  is perfect for your delicious "foodie" pages

While there are even newer paper packs and sticker sets that just came out this week such as the limited edition Americana and Adventure collections, I was still very excited to work on some recipe pages using "Made with Love." You will see I was fortunate to have a little help from three very special women in my life. I hope I will inspire you to do the same with some of your summer food photos! 

Let's Start with A Very Special Wedding Gift 

When I was engaged to be married, my mother's sister gave me the greatest gift a girl could imagine. It was a collection of recipe cards in the handwriting of my beloved aunts, cousins and grandmothers, and it is irreplaceable. I have naturally scanned them all and stored them in my Forever account in an album called "Recipes" because these are documents I want to keep for generations. I treasure this gift so much and can almost imagine my Nana and my Italian aunts sitting at the table writing them out, and I can practically taste and smell the dishes as I am reading the cards.

Treasured family recipes collected for me by my aunt for a wedding present

My Nana's and my mother's handwriting in one place

Adding Pictures to the Recipe Card Concept

My Mom and my two aunts are such amazing cooks and I always love getting recipes from them, but this Memorial Day I asked a special favor of them. I knew they would be bringing delicious dishes to our get together so I asked them in advance if they would mind if I brought them some Made with Love mats to transcribe their recipes on while we were visiting. They of course said yes, so I brought my camera and made sure to get a picture of them writing down their recipes for me. Seeing who lovingly prepared the dish is just one more element that makes these memories and family treasures even more special. 

"Skinny" sweet potato fries prepared by my Aunt Sherry

An Irish Cream Cake prepared by my own Mom with the recipe written in her handwriting 

A delicious butter bean Greek salad with the recipe written in my Aunt Donna's handwriting (it was a long recipe so I will most likely be using a 4X6 sleeve to include the third card!)

I am so happy with the way this two page spread turned out!

So the next time you are getting together with family or friends, bring your camera and some slide in cards and ask if them if they wouldn't mind taking just a moment to share their recipe with you in their own writing. Do take a picture of the dish as well as the cook!  Preserving memories can happen anywhere at any time ,and they will surely be flattered that you thought of them and want to celebrating their cooking. Can you think of any other way to document family recipes? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below! 

For more ideas on ways you can create scrapbook pages this summer, please enjoy the rest of the "Blog Hop!"

• Stop 1 with Fran Allen Smitherman CelebratingYourBeautifulLife YOU ARE HERE!
• Stop 2  with Sarah Fitzgerald ClickWriteShare
• Stop 3 with Noreen Smith OrganizedandCreativeMom
• Stop 4 with Karyn McDermaid-Rolfe Karyn Crops
• Stop 5 with Lisa Brown Graham Lisa's Workshop
• Stop 6 with Julie Tambrini Julie's CM Blog
• Stop 7 with Stefani Jones CropwithStef

This blog contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated should you make a purchase. Thank you as always for your support of Celebrating Your Beautiful Life and I am always happy to help in any way with your traditional or digital photo preservation projects. 

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