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. 

Christmas Blog Hop!

Welcome to Celebrating your Beautiful Life! I hope you have enjoyed the wonderful ideas in the blog hop so far, and if you are starting here be sure to check out all of the other blogs for some great inspiration - the links are at the end of my post.

It is that time of year when our minds turn to memories of the past and excitement about the days to come. Scrapbooking is near and dear to my heart as I love to record the details of life so as never to  forget them, and it is something that I do not just during special times such as the holidays, but all year long. While I love my shelves and shelves of Creative Memories 12X12 and 8X8 traditional scrapbooks, I am also in love with the many albums and projects I have created digitally. Needless to say, I was VERY excited to find out that Creative Memories was planning to introduce digital artwork for digital scrapbookers!

Creative Memories has announced that it will soon be offering digital images of its artwork! 

For years people have admired CM for its beautiful watercolor paper and stickers, so it will be exciting for their fans to see what they offer when they step back into the world of digital scrapbooking. It is especially exciting for so many of us who are still using our beloved Artisan 5 software (formerly sold by Creative Memories as Storybook Creator Plus but now supported by Forever!) CM has not announced a formal date yet but we do know the artwork will be in a universal format that will work with most scrapbooking software programs.

While we wait with anticipation, let's talk about digital scrapbooking a bit. This time of year is perfect for taking beautiful photographs and it is also a good time of year to give gifts, and there are many different types of projects you can make using digital artwork. Whether it is a gift for yourself or a gift for someone else, printed projects created digitally are sure to be as cherished as traditional ones, and a little bit of artwork goes a long way in making your creations just a touch more special. Since we can only imagine what types of digital papers and embellishments we have to look forward to, I would like to share a few images of projects I have made using digital art kits within Artisan 5:

Page Prints

One of my favorite ways to use digital art kits is to employ predesigned pages (similar to Creative Memories' Fast2Fabulous line!) Predesigned pages make it easy to quickly create a lovely book or page print with many photos, thus making the most of the space (and limited time) you have. The hard work has already been done for you! The pages shown here are actually the inside of a bound digital book I made with Artisan and Forever's digital artwork, but they could also be ordered as page prints and slid into a high quality Creative Memories album (I mix the two up all of the time!) I also have a canvas of the first one!

A predesigned tree using Forever's digital artwork

A predesigned page made this wreath a breeze to pull together

Hardbound and Softbound Books

It is always so exciting to watch your stories come to life quickly through the power of digital scrapbooking. One of my favorite recent projects was a hardbound Christmas 2014 album - I had it in my hands before the month of January was over! I love the speed and ease of digital album creation - I think I am even more creative digitally than I am in my traditional albums because it is easier to play around with your artwork.

A few of my digital 12X12 hardbound books

Watching the pages come to life in Artisan 5

A project view in Artisan 5

A completed two page spread in my 12X12 digital book

Canvases and Facebook Banners

I am giving canvases as Christmas presents this year - I love how these are high quality yet lightweght and easy to hang on any wall. I used Creative Memories' original "Expressions of Love" vellum verses for my wedding banner, and I used Creative Memories' Dance Additions digital artwork from several years ago to create the banner of our recent performance of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardobe." I can't wait to see how CM's newest designs turn out when they release their digital artwork!

Love my wall art!

FB banner turned into a canvas - what a wonderful gift

A Facebook banner created using the former Creative Memories' Dance Additions digital artwork

Invitations and Christmas Cards


Digital scrapbooking software can be used for a number of things, including invitiations, business cards, letters to Santa and of course Christmas cards! I have even used Artisan to create business cards and gift tags (available for print at the Forever Print Shop.) 

Front of a folded 5X7 card 

Inside of a folded 5X7 card - a project choice within Artisan 5 that can be printed at the Forever Print Shop

As you can see, digital scrapbooking software can open up the doors to many different types of projects, and we are all very excited to have Forever's support of the software we love (Artisan 5) as well as the prospect of Creative Memories offering digital artwork in the future. I have always combined the traditional and digital worlds happily, and this move by Creative Memories is welcomed by many. We will be watching closely for a formal announcement! 

I would love to hear what you think of my projects and CM's announcement so if you would please leave a comment at the end I would be happy to send you a free ebook on photo safety! Be sure to check out the rest of the blogs so you can keep the Christmas spirit going strong - the next stop is Noreen Smith's Organized and Creative Mom!   Thank you for hopping over here, and keep on scrappin'! Fran

Stop 1 KarynCrops
Stop 2 Lisa'sWorkshop
Stop 3 DBrinsley'sMemoryKeepingBlog
Stop 4 CropwithStef
Stop 5 CelebratingYourBeautifulLife YOU ARE HERE!
Stop 6 OrganizedandCreativeMom

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!

Valentine Blog Hop Stop Number 6!

I love Valentine's Day! The colors are gorgeous and the sentiments are warm (plus you can always make pretty scrapbook pages about holidays!) Whether you love Valentine's Day or you hate it, love is something to celebrate, and it can come in many forms. Just to be a bit different, I will focus here on pages that have nothing to do with romance so we can "think outside of the box" with the CM Group's new Watercolor Love collection. Love for a child or a pet, love of a holiday, love of life, love of travel, love of your grandparents, love of a hobby that fills your soul - it's all a part of our life and should be celebrated. Celebrate with me and this beautiful new CM Watercolor Love paper and embellishments collection!

1.) Love of a child!

The floral paper looks gorgeous with black and white prints - this is actually one of my favorite baby pictures of myself (and the reason I chose to have hydrangeas in my wedding!) What black and white photos do you have that could be used with this paper pack?

What do these circles look like to you? They looked like cake pops to me, so I actually cut a few out to make some homemade cake pops to help tell the story here. Being an older brother is tough and sometimes it's hard to share Mom and Dad's attention. Little C had been having a rough week so I made the spontaneous decision to pick him up after school while his brother had another engagement and take him to Starbucks for some "one on one time." I love this memory, and the Watercolor Love paper combined with CM's brown cardstock look really sharp together! The hearts on the journal box are actually "scraps" from the new Heart Chain Border Maker cartridge - aren't they the cutest?  

2.) Love of a holiday or of a time of year!

I have my own "girly" tree in the dining room, full of pink Victorian bows and ballet dancers - it is my pride and joy and a leftover from my "single days" before my house was outnumbered by fellas! I thought the red plaid paper combined with the new Heart Chain cartridge worked well together. Who knew you could highlight Christmas pictures with Valentine's paper? :) 

3.) Love of a time of year

I am excited about our new Year in Review stickers and embellishments, and I used those here to make a nice "almost summertime" page with lemon and watermelon slices cut using our recently-introduced circle patterns. It is so nice to have such great tools at our disposal. Brotherly love and the beginning of summer, all in one page with our lovely new paper and our cardstock.

4.) Love of your pets! 

Before the children, our pets are our babies (and in many cases they still are!) Tom and Socks actually got a mention at our wedding  (a funny surprise to us and something we will always remember.) They deserve scrapbook pages of their own (actually, I think they deserve entire SCRAPBOOKS, don't you agree?) The pink Watercolor Love paper and border strips are nicely offset by the green punch at the bottom (reminiscent of grass to highlight the pictures of Tom and Socks outside.)

5.) Love of a hobby!

Okay, I cheated here - this isn't Watercolor Love (but it does feature CM's "Shades of Pastel" cardstock, our new Music Notes Border Maker Cartridge, and a title cut from the new Fresh Picks collection's Slide In Pack!) Before my husband, before my children, my love was and still is ballet. Our dreams and our hobbies are what makes us who we are, and love is a state of mind. And I love these black and white photos!

What do you love? Document it and keep celebrating that wonderful life of yours!  

There's still  one more stop in this blog hop but if you are loving what you are seeing so far then plan on tuning into Facebook and joining the Creative Memories Virtual Crop on Saturday, February 6, 2016 where we will be giving out even more ideas (and prizes!) For more great ideas today please hop on over to Noreen's blog for the final stop of today's Valentine Blog Hop (and I have included the links to the other blogs below in case you started here with mine and want to see what you may have missed!) Hope you've been inspired and as always,  keep scrappin'! Fran

Creative Memories Valentine's Blog Hop Kickoff

Stop 1: Sarah Fitzgerald at ClickWriteShare
Stop 2: Candace Bouldin's Scrappin'JPEGs
Stop 3: Julie Tambrini's CM Blog
Stop 4: Diana Miller Brinsley's DBrinsleysBlogspot
Stop 5: Lisa Graham Brown's Lisa's Workshop
Stop 6: YOU ARE HERE!Fran Smitherman at CelebratingYourBeautifulLife
Stop 7: Noreen Smith's Organized and Creative Mom

Fun New Papers and Tools from the CM Group

 Now that the "cat is out of the bag", so to speak, with the new July products, I can share freely my enthusiasm and joy over the new catalog. While CM is staying true to their promise to keep the product line simple, they have been consistent in adding new things in a measured fashion, and consultants and customers have a lot to work with!

The re-introduction of the Border Making System has been greeted with enthusiasm. The system comes with the picket fence cartridge, and the bubble, film strip and star cartridges have recently been added to the product line as well. I am willing to bet we will see more in the months ahead, but for now take a look at some of the fun designs I have made so far with our new paper packs and these new cartridges:

You don't need Disney stickers to make a nice vacation layout! I made this page with the CM Group's border making system, the film strip cartridge, the star cartridge, the new Corner Rounder, and the Shades of Red and Shades of Bright paper packs

Fellow CM advisor Lisa Graham designed this firecracker using the new film strip and star cartridges - I love a card! The papers used here came from the Red White and Blue paper pack and the Shades of Neutral cardstock pack

I am a sucker for blue gingham (now found in the Red White and Blue paper pack)  and I love the way this unexpected color combination came together. The peachy floral print is from the CM group's new be Bold and Flourish paper pack,.

There are so many possible uses for a bubble maker - beach, babies, and weddings come immediately to mind!

I love bringing unexpected color combinations together and this new shipment made it very easy for me! All you need is the Red White and Blue paper pack, the Be Bold and Flourish paper pack, and the new Shades of Pastel, Bright and Neutral cardstock packs to have borders and mats and backgrounds for days! The cardstock does very well with Cricut machines, and CM's paper is double sided so you are getting two pages in one.

Be Bold and Flourish with the pink from the Shades of Pastel cardstock pack - mothers, daughters, grandmothers, baby girls, the page ideas are endless

Red gingham and the brown from the Shades of neutral paper pack - gingerbread men and warm holiday memories in the making here

The Red White and Blue paper pack has 6 sheets of designer prints and 6 sheets of Tone on Tone prints. 12 sheets of double sided paper for $9.50, gingham and stars,I'm sold!

Be Bold and Flourish is the newest design and it comes in a Fast2Fabulous album, a paper pack and a slide in pack. Also shown are the CM group's new Gold and Black ABC/123s and the newest cartridges for the Border making System, Stars and Film Strip

Cardstock packs come with 5 colors, 2 sheets each. The newest ones are Shades of bright, Shades of Neutral, and Shades of  Pastel.

Check out these tools and papers and more at my website http://www.creativememories.com/user/fransmitherman and as always, keep scrappin'! Fran