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What Is a Journey?

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Keri Bradford has the most amazing YouTube video of a Louis Vuitton commercial on her site this morning. I am rarely impressed with a commercial, but this one is wonderful. Go watch it!

Here are the words from it:

What is a journey?
A journey is not a trip.
It’s not a vacation.
It’s a process. A discovery.
It’s a process of self-discovery.
A journey brings us face to face
with ourselves.
A journey shows us not only the
world,
  but how we fit in it.
Does the person create the journey
  or does the journey create
the person?
The journey is life itself.
Where will life take you?

Design Your Life: Week 9 & The Christmas Journal

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This week's design focus was Elements with a focus on line. I was done early again this week, and it's a good thing because I'm also starting Year 3 of the Christmas Journal with Shimelle. I love that once you've enrolled in the class, you are included in each subsequent class. It was probably the best money I've ever spent on an online class. My two Christmas albums are among my favorites. I'm trying to combine Ali E's December Daily project with the Christmas Journal, but I'm determined to be flexible and create pages as they come to me. I started working on the journal last week, but wasn't very happy with it, so today I started all over. I'm using an acrylic album which is much different than the standard 8 X 8 I've used the past two years.

SnapshotLO
None of these 12 X 12 layouts photographed particularly well, but I finally gave up and went with the best I had.

ThanksgivingLO

This is a two-page spread, but it doesn't look much like it here on the blog. I'll be glad to be back to the 
8 1/2 X 11 layouts I can scan!

ColorInspiration
 Cathy's color inspiration came from this site. I didn't have any papers that matched her choice, so I went to the site and found this lovely butterfly–much more my colors.

SmileLO

ChristmasJournalCover

The cover is actually three pages–the snowflake and border are on the acrylic cover, the title and date are on a Hambly transparency, followed by a piece of Basic Grey paper.

CJInteriorPgs

I created a few pages ahead and cut more 6 X 6 sheets to be used in the journal, but wanted to wait to see what kind of photos I had.

Dec1
I'm hoping to have a one or two page spread for each day, depending on the amount of journaling I want to do. This is one of my favorite times of year, and it's a great way to record the journey.

Happy Thanksgiving

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Turkeys2w

Thanksgiving project from my time in Sandy's classroom. One of my many blessings is the time I spend in this classroom each week.

Truly there is not a day when I am not consciously grateful for all I have. Stacy Julian posted a list she wrote yesterday on her blog, and I took a few minutes to quickly brainstorm some of my many blessings:

family·a lasting marriage with my best friend·friends·time
to think·love·good health·retirement·faith·comfortable home·time to
create·good (cheap) wine·gym membership·cell phone·Subaru Forester·my own craft
space·Sandy’s classroom·Starbuck’s coffee·Wegmans·hot water·warm house·having
options·happy, productive children·internet classes and
friendships·opportunities to learn·time to write·a beautiful neighborhood·walks
in the park·MacBook·iPod Touch·cameras·books·travel·good
food·time with family·holidays to celebrate

Enjoy your day!

Design Your Life: Week 8

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This week's focus was a continuation of Emphasis and Contrast. Since we had received an enlargement alert from Cathy ahead of time, the photos were already to go. This layouts came together a lot quicker this week, with the exception of the Real World Color which I frequently find challenging. Here are Week 8's layouts:

SanFranciscoLO

KiawahLOWk8

CA Wildflowers

Design Your Life: Weeks 6 & 7

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Tomorrow we'll receive Week 8's lesson and assignments. I thought I ought to get my Week 6 (Design Principle: Unity) and Week 7 (Design Principle: Emphasis) uploaded. Finding photos that work well with the templates we receive, tell a story I want to tell, and are decent enough to scrap is getting harder. It's certainly not that I don't have hundreds of photos to scrap, but many are in piles for theme albums (Disney, birthdays, a family Christmas album–over multiple years, trips), and many are old 3X5 photos. And, truthfully, a lot of our old photos are simply not very good. With both kids living away from home, there aren't a lot of photo events happening any more. Once I finally find the photos, though, I'm generally pretty happy with the layouts. So here they are.

Week 6:

NovemberHikew
Another layout that was 90% digital, thanks to a lovely woman in class who provides templates for all of Cathy's designs.

MattDrummerw
This was fun, and prompted by Stacy Julian's Photo Freedom book where she encourages you to scrap photos from a variety of years.

Halloweenw
The Real World Color assignment.

Week 7:

TreeHunt2page
I love these photos from last year's trip to the tree farm, so I was happy to do another layout. I had previously done a one page layout, but it is quite different.

Tough 
These photos were taken LONG before I even knew about scrapbooking, but it's a story I don't want to forget.

RWC7
The Real World Color assignment, which I almost didn't do, but I'm glad I did.

Stories in Hand

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I signed up for Jessica Sprague's free course "Stories in Hand" a little reluctantly since Cathy Z's Design course is pretty time-consuming. But I knew all Jessica's videos are available to you forever once you're enrolled so I went ahead. I'm certainly glad I did, and I've been able to keep up with both classes. Jessica's class is all about collecting–collecting the stories of your past and your present. She provided digital papers, tabs, titles, and over 1,000 journaling prompts to download and print. Here's the finished binder and a little notebook to record current stories as they happen:

Binder

OpenBinder

This week we've been looking through the prompts and making checklists of stories we remember as we read the prompts. I've been amazed at all I've remembered! Compared to most of my friends I have always felt my memory of growing up has been pretty poor. Reading through these prompts and talking about them with Tracy has created three pages of possible story topics.

StoriesChecklist

I've typed up two of the stories on Google Docs.com. That's another benefit of Jessica's classes–I always learn about some new website or technological trick I didn't know about before. It's already been a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to doing more of this on my own once the class is over at the end of the week.

Design Your Life: Week 5

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Cathy's class is half over, and I already know I'm going to miss it. This week's focus was White Space, and here are my layouts.

July4w

I managed to do the whole photo square in PSE 6.0. I think about doing this a lot, but rarely does it work out so well. And so quickly.

DiRosaw

MonthOfw

Cathy suggested using this format every month. I once started a monthly scrapbook recap. I think I did six or seven months, but didn't keep it up. This would be much easier to do.

Yes, it was.

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It felt historic.  And it was.

Barackw
(Photo from the Obama website.)

VOTE!

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I have voted in every presidential election since I was old enough to vote, but today felt different. It felt historic. We were at our polling place at 6:25 am along with two of our neighbors. We were driving out of the polling place at 6:35 am, so no wait for us. Go vote, even if you have to wait. I do believe every vote makes a difference. Especially this year.

IVoted1w

Happy Halloween

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I had a much better than average Halloween as I helped with my friend Sandy's field trip today. We took her kindergarten students to a local nursing home where they knocked on residents' doors for treats and sang to the residents at the end of their "tour." They all wore crowns of colored leaves, and brought the pumpkins we painted last week as gifts to the residents.

PaintedPumpkinsw

Here at home, we gave up carving pumpkins after the kids left home. I found these cute metal jack-0-lantern bags at Michaels several years ago, and they do a good job of greeting our sparse collection of treat or treaters.

PumpkinsattheDoorw

Hope your Halloween was a good one!

Design Your Life: Week 4

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Week 4 continues the study of repetition in design. For scrapbookers that might be repetition of color, embellishments, photo size, or page design. For our first assignment, the repetition of the black photo mats is the most obvious, but also the two fish stickers. I'm not much a fan of stickers, but I liked them here. I used quite a few "old" photos from previous years this week. In the Real World Color assignment, the photos were taken 16 years ago! 

Assignment 1:

Rememberw

Assignment 2 was a mini-book:

Titlew

Adamw
Sarahw
Mattw
Tracyw
Karenw
Summaryw

Real World Color Assignment:

Gettysburgw

Design Your Life: Week 3

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Once again, I'm finishing up at the last minute. Tomorrow we'll get new assignments for Week 4. I am loving this class. This week the layouts came together a little more easily, but I'm spending a lot of time trying to find the right photos and get them printed in the right sizes as well as taking care of color choices and other elements. But the end result has been worth the time.

Graduatesw

Perfectw

The first two layouts were for this week's focus on repetition–color in both of mine.

PointReyesw∂

This was the Real World Color assignment that Cathy posted: gray, white, red, and green.

Reflect

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Today's prompt at HS, MS, HS is reflect:  A process in which light is thrown back after impinging on a surface, or to think, meditate or ponder.  Find 'Reflect' in your space. My favorite of the following three is the first one which I took as I got back into the van after taking photos at the Southern Vermont Art Center. The second photo is a reservoir in Vermont that we pass each year on our way to Manchester. And the leaf in the puddle was taken just a block from our house in Highland Park.


Vanw

ReservoirReflectionw

Leafpuddlew

Design Your Life: Week 2

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We’re on to week 3 in Cathy Zielske’s Design Your Life class, and I have just finished the week 2 assignments. I’ve taken a lot of online courses but this rates in the top 2. Barbara Carroll’s Photo 101 class on BPS was another fabulous class where I learned so much. Cathy’s class is on graphic design principles. We’re working from sketches which is really pretty unusual for me. Getting the measurements just right is proving to be a time consumer, but I’m happy with the results. The first two are based on asymmetrical design principles, and the third one is the weekly Real World Color assignment.

Fallbeautyw

I’ve never cut photos in the gutter before. We’re using 3-ring binders and I’m not sure I like it as much once it’s in the album.

Youw_3

I’m learning a lot from the message board as well. Cathy provides pdf. files for the journaling boxes (as well as other goodies.) This week I learned that I can drag the pdf. file into Photoshop Elements and change it, write on it, whatever . . .

Sjw

I got this assignment just before we left last weekend to spend some time with my brother and nieces. They were great about letting me take their pictures, and helping me with the journaling. I doubt that my own two children would be as cooperative, although in fairness, they are more tolerant now that they are older.

Baked

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Today’s prompt at HS, MS, HS is baked: To cook with a dry heat without exposure to a flame. I am not baking today. We’re off to Niagara-on-the-Lake with good friends for a weekend of theater, good food, and wine tasting. But I do have a new toaster/convection oven which I love. It has a huge interior but takes up very little of my scarce counter space.

Bakedw