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Scrapbook Improv

Lesson 14 from: Scrapbook Your Story

Lain Ehmann

Scrapbook Improv

Lesson 14 from: Scrapbook Your Story

Lain Ehmann

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Lesson Info

14. Scrapbook Improv

Next Lesson: Story-Based Prompts

Lesson Info

Scrapbook Improv

Ready? All right, let's, get this puppy start and we're going to start spinning. I'm going to start the spinner right now. We're going. All right, so what I do first is the topic, obviously, because we're starting with story and I have number three, which is, say what? So typically what I do from there is I know it's say what? I'm going to go to my most recent grew book I've got several here, and but the whole point of scrapbook improv is limiting the amount of supplies I'm using, so I don't want tio be looking through forty years of pages to find the right picture, so I'm just gonna flip through it's one that's the most recent and find one that that works here, so I'm looking for somebody. This one is pulling me just because that kind of the look on my husband's face almost looks like he's saying say what? And I have a story idea there, but I'm gonna keep flipping here just for a minute to see if there's anything else. Now this is another one I could use my friend jennifer louden amaz...

ing, amazing! One of my favorite people got married on guy was thinking, I could say, say what I dio because they're getting married so that what are they saying? They're saying I do but I kind of am pulled towards this picture of my husband's husband's crazy face there and I'm going to flip through here real close we got the kids all right cheesy faith I already scrapbook that one and I don't have a strong story to go with it all right? So what I might now do is I might say ok, I'm choosing between the wedding pictures and I have several of those say what it would be ideal and this picture of my husband where he's eating ice cream and I actually I'm not a big ice cream fan so I'm thinking this could be a page about how I don't really like ice cream so he thinks say what? You don't like ice cream or the say what I do so I would like to turn to the audience there at home and what I typically do is whatever gets three votes first is what I go with so wedding or ice cream and tell me when we hit three on one or the other and that's what I'll go with you sitting on my screen or do they not care because now they can you know it's coming a bit of a delay waiting nice creo all right, so what that tells me now is if I had done wedding I would have been using probably two or two at least two probably three photos I wouldn't have used all four because these are very similar and I don't need the added one in there if I had had four photos I would have done a twelve by twelve page since I just have the one photo I'm going to be doing in eight and half a left by eleven page so that's something that it has occurred to me already as I'm moving forward here so what I'm going to do next just trim off this in and the next thing we're going to decide is what we're doing with the background if we're going for a pattern paper our card stock background so the group book is great it's got perforated edge is but I don't like the perforations in my on my photos because they distract I like a clean edge so I've turned that off and now I'm in a spin if I get odd it's going to be card stock and if it's even its pattern paper and sometimes I changed it from month to month but I try to keep it consistent so odd is gonna be card stock and I've got seven so I get a card stock background and then oftentimes I'll make a note of what the challenges were just so I don't forget them so we have card stock we've got ice cream and we've got to say what all right so now I'm gonna flip through our our card stock and we have several choices here and I'm looking at the photo, the blue pops really nicely, I actually like the yellow, I think, and then I might go to the audience and say, yellow or blue. So which do you prefer? So they chime in quickly, yellow or blue? I'll show you and on both their looks, like this's, nick, and make again through all right, it's, like you're announcing it. Four straight sister, the traveling stance what's tonight wants to know what is the digital scrapping student in the audience doing doing that place? Did you have a book? Or you could put everything in? Because, yeah, your what? Your digital pages in your regular pages next to each other, some trimming this to eight and a half by eleven now, now, I've got some scraps already going over there, and I never throw anything away from these kids till the very, very end, because because it's all coordinated, I can also build a page on a different background, using these colors and that's really fun, too. So now I'm kind of looking at the design, I'm starting to think about the design where I want t to go and he's looking right at the camera, so that gives me some freedom as to where I place the photo, if you're if your person is looking off toe toe one side, typically, you want to place them on the page so his eyes were going towards this rather than looking off the page, if that makes sense, so if he was looking this direction, I'd put him over here so he's looking towards the title or the journaling, and if he was looking this way, I put him over here, but since he's looking right at the camera, I can put him anywhere I want, and you see that hat that I was telling you about he's wearing the hat, all right, so we have yellow background and let's spin and see what technique I'm going to use, and the reason I do technique next is that if I have to do some scrap, some stamping or something like that, I want to make sure I'm leaving room for that. With this size photo and this size page, I know I'm going to have plenty of room to tell a story because it's not a huge story, it's just about most my family really likes ice cream. I could take it or leave it not a huge story, but it's kind of fun. It shows something about me, so I got a five there for the technique and that's going to be some doodling. So I'm not necessarily going to do that right now but I know I'm going to be incorporating that into my page and that by making that choice up front I know to leave room or if I choose a tag teo teo work on that I'm gonna be doodling on the tag all right and let's take a look at our journaling and embellishments too and then we can start building the page so for our journaling because journaling oftentimes with this can be a little more challenging because if I have to find song lyrics or something like that it can be harder so for that's a liner it's a four so I have to use song lyrics so well that's an easy one I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream because I'm going to say except for me something like that so I'm going to use song like that's kind of a song and I give myself some some wiggle room here some people might say that's not a song and I might say I scream you will make it into a song so I can you that I am not legalistic about this if I wanted to change a word in the title or something like that I'm going to do what I'm doing this in thirty minutes already so um I have to give myself a little room to do do some to make it work if I need tio so we're going to do song lyrics unless anybody well while I'm playing with that ice cream you scream but if anybody at home who's watching has a better ice cream song and they want to submit it to the to the chat area I will definitely entertain other ideas okay? So our embellishments that's another line or to get a lot of those five that's going to be the wood veneer okay so this could be a little challenging because it is their their places their travel based but we're going to make it work that's what this is all about so I'm gonna pull these out and see oh we've got some arrows and things that'll be easy oh yeah yeah sunshine and what I would probably do is put something in the middle because again sunshine doesn't really fit with story of the page but I like the little wood veneers so we'll play with those we've got arrows that I could turn over and use in a different way so I'll leave those out as well ok our vacation I'm just looking through them to make sure there's nothing else that I might want to because sometimes things that are themed for one purpose might fit perfectly with something else adventure awaits places will go okay so I'm gonna leave out the sun shines and I'm leaving out all three and I believe that the arrows to because I like those as well so I know I'm doing some doodling, I know I'm using some song lyrics, and I know what the title of my pages, so what I'm going to do now is I like to use pattern paper on my pages, so I'm actually going to go to the pattern paper and see what might work working here, but first I want to do a time check and just see where we are. She swears it been right along. We've got twenty minutes and forty eight seconds left, so we're doing good, so now I'm gonna play with the pattern paper and just see what ties and I like this would green a lot because it kind of gives the feel of going out to get ice cream there's a place near a house where we go way said it, you know, it's kind of picnic vinci, things like that. So that's, when I like cityscapes aren't calling to amy as much, and I just absolutely adore this paper so I might pull in these two somehow, and I'm actually gonna go ahead and put these photos up to get him out of the way. I like tio kind of clean up as they go along some not distracted by extraneous stuff on the table, all right? So now I'm going to play with this way talked about those different designs that I go to again and again obviously I'm not going to use a ducks in a row here because I only have one photo collage I could use the inside out if I wanted to do some color blocking with blocks of pattern paper but obviously to me this this page is going to be a big photo page and I might put in some strips here of different pattern paper just to play with and to give it some background in teo get that strong horizontal line that I like so much I also like this would because it gives a more masculine field to the page obviously I could use this on a page for my daughters as well but just because it is my husband and you know he's among the men I like the wood and I'm actually I could turn this into a twelve by twelve just by mounting my eight and a half by eleven on top of the twelve by twelve and I actually quite like that look so I think I'm going to do that. We've got a nice background with some strong lines here it serves to pull out everything more and I just like the way that blends in and I love this paper so much the only thing that makes me sad is that I'm not going to be using the rear side of that because I like the rear is well one thing you can do if you love the reverse I'm not going to do it today but it's a little trick that kelly crows showed me and what you do is you see where the paper is going to be and then you go in and actually cut out that spot and the goal in the papers then covered by the other sheet of paper and you can use this piece for other things later but I'm not going to do that today just because we're under the time constraint if I were scrapple can my own I probably would do that just to have that to say that piece of paper I'm not I don't put tons of adhesive on usually it's just a little bit of the top of the bottom lots of the little tricks I've learned I've learned from other scrap bookers and one that I think it was nicole make work taught me and I know jennifer gallagher does this too because they're both so great at layering they keep the adhesive away from the edges so you could tuck things under later on if you decide you want to add another layer to the page somebody cut off this bottom strip here to make it twelve by twelve and then I keep this because I could easily use that for journaling or adding location and things like that later. And during scrapbook and probably don't do a ton of measuring. I really, really usually eyeball and see how it's going, and that looks pretty good to me if somebody ever comes to look at your scrapbooks and brings a level starts figuring out if your things are perfectly straight, then send them home because, ok, I'm gonna put him a little bit at an angle here, and I'm going to do some doodling I'm thinking, even though I didn't draw, I didn't spin for the tag. I love to use tags on my page, I actually might cut a tag out of something tio use use for the the the story and one and I'll talk about where I place that in a minute. So right now I'm just again building from big to small. I've got the background I've got this, I'm keeping in mind I want to use these cute little, um, these cute little wood veneer shapes and feel free to flip these things over you could die them, we can color them with the in fact, this might look pretty cool if I if I think to them up and made them a darker brown, I don't feel like you have to use premade embellishments exactly the way they are. Um, you can personalize your page by mixing things up and these air also great. If there was something distracting here, I could put this over it like there's somebody photo bombing or something is actually a little guy by expect there I don't know who he is. He's, not part of our family could put something over it and cover it up. So if it's a distracting element of the page so just revisiting what I'm doing card stock background ice cream say, what is the name of the title? Uh, we got the elder dude in song lyrics ok, we're all good there, so I'm gonna work on the title, which I think is going to go right here and the title of haywood's did we get any good the lyrics from nice man, they love they love your ice cream, you scream that's kind of one that came to my other people were talking about milkshakes. We have milkshakes on three that's the multi hydration yeah, the little people, you know, people sharing what they like the music they like to sarah mclachlan came up people like that there's a song I scream and scream and that they've all been covered yeah, I think every ice cream and a topic for a lot of songs out there, but people are enjoying this way have a lot of people who are just kind of sitting back watching you stress free it is trying to take it all in and they may do this at a later time great, great that's what it's all about I really just wanted to be inspiration for people to see that it is possible to create a page that that I like using this method and when I start with that story again it's been making the product choices really easy and I know for instance, that I'm not going to use something that says adventure awaits I could use that but it doesn't make sense for my page, so I just zip right by it and it's totally okay, I think great I hear you guys over there just giggling away and so many different possibilities could create here oh yeah oh yeah and when you see it go to the galleries and you see what other people have made and it'll be stuff that I never thought of creating and and it's just inspiring it really is and knowing everything is going to match makes it so much easier. I mean, oftentimes you might find the things that you want, but they're from different online stores or you have to run around to get them and then you're paying double shipping and things like that I just in such a huge believer and finding a kit who who the kit designer is somebody whose style you resonate with and letting them do the hard work for you. So you'll see here that I went with a variety of not all caps, not all lower case, and I did that for a couple reasons, one because to go through here and find all the lower case or upper case would have taken longer and two it's a fund page, so using an eclectic look really works. We also have strong lines going on, so if I go with the more eclectic look on here, it gives it a more playful feel, and it doesn't feel too scattered because we do have strong line supporting the page. All right? So I think these air not self, that he is a piece of stickers, so I'm going to go ahead and put somebody heats up on back to tape runners are great because they will you can use them on the back of things like this to hold them down. If I were, if I were at home and I had more time, I might go for a liquid adhesive or send them through is iran, which is like a sticker maker, it puts the adhesive on through a little crank process, but I'm just going to use this right now, and I'm also going toe do a time check. Okay, we've got twelve minutes and forty seven seconds left which might send fear through some people's hearts but I'm like gosh that's ages looking room and when I make things for scrapbook improv, sometimes people say what do you ever go back and change anything? The only thing that I do do it sometimes I'll go back and add some more adhesive or something to keep the page from falling apart because there's nothing worse than putting a page together putting your time and energy in it putting it in your album and then you come back a month or two months later and then you see all the letters of the embellishment sitting at the bottom of the page protector it's really just disheartening so it he said is to be used and used frequently early and often okay when I do something like this with the smaller eight and a half by eleven overlapping that are sitting on top of the twelve by twelve I like to overlap elements onto the background paper because it pulls it all together and it doesn't it makes it it keeps it from feeling like it's just floating instead of it being yellow on this it's all together as one and it's just something as simple as overlapping these pieces onto it onto the other the one underneath otherwise if everything was on here it just looks like it's two distinct um separate entities versus one cohesive page teo teo uh sounds like do you remember anybody when brad's were really in and you had the hammer in the thing and it was so darn loud? Oh, my gosh should be controlled could talk took it like you couldn't scrapbook a late at night because they make up everybody is all right, so now I'm thinking about where my journaling might storytelling is going to be I want it to be in a prominent place on the page I'm thinking of possibly mounting a tag on something that's tags shape just a little bit larger like this right here, or maybe running a piece across the page and putting the tag there and playing with that idea that this is just what's going through my brain right now and then I'm also thinking about what I'm going to do with these wood veneer putsch pieces to make them to make them in support of the story just so they're not thrown on the page, but they're actually doing something and these air cute, too. I'm thinking of maybe putting like this one that says evidence that sort of cute because it could be like evidence that moms crazy because she's don't like ice cream or something like that I feel like that one ties in a bit to the story something like daily or photo love that doesn't really work for me here so I know I need to do some doodling and I'm going to see if I have my white pen because what I'd like to do if I have my white ten with me is to do some doodling on the letters, but I'm not sure I have it with me if I don't, I'll just go on to something else, it doesn't look like I have it I have a favorite white pen that showed that pretty much on everything, although maybe I'll use my black sharpie pulling out a couple different pens here and I might just do some dots and stitching on there, so I'm thinking about that right now I'm not going to commit to that yet, but instead I'm going to do is go down and work on this right here and and play with these pattern papers because they're still beautiful and I'd like to add a little bit more color to the page here because right now we have yellow and we have green and we have the brown, but we don't have anything that kind of pulls all that together and I think this she pulls in the green and blue on gives us a nice a nice binding or ah, I don't know what you called continuity maybe so something like this I could put behind here and again it pulls it all together and then um put the tag like right here with some journaling or even up and down like that I'm not liking that as much I'm liking this much more, but I'm not sure about the tag it but I do like this, so I'm going to go ahead and commit to that keeps on getting addicted to buying more and more embellishment wait a while ago and that I was like white waves coming teo you just like all of them so much the place for that only because you know you're going to come up with a perfect place to use yeah, yeah ok, I think I'll go with this and, um there's kind of two there's like a title and a subtitle how I feel there's a say what ice family you scream, we all scream for ice cream except for mom and, uh maybe I'll play with that right here and then we have some space down here and that's okay? I don't have to fill every a portion of the page, so I'm thinking about going with this right now and what I like to do when I do my hand writing when I use hand writing for my pages is I actually draw lines and I write write on them, not lines to then go back in a race later, but lines if you look at any of my scrapbooking typically I draw lines I just feel like it gives it grounds it it pulls it onto the page it gives it some place tio like this one has lines going the other way it gives your your journaling somewhere toe live so that's something that I do over and over again it's really become part of my style and people often ask how do you know how many lines to draw to fit what you're going to say and say I don't know I just write till there's no more life and I just eyeball this as well a lot of giggling going there a lot of giggling it isthe so the other day my daughter kept my little one kept leaving her shoes at the bottom of our bed like we have a little pile of her shoes I think how you know you really need to move your shoes out of here and stop leave them in a room and she does mom it's part of my creative process like like ok, I can't argue with that I was like a win for you see that will go on a scrap of page I'll take a picture of the pile and all right about that ok no I still do my my doodling and timewise let's see how we're doing here I've got about six minutes left that should work out well ok some doing my ice cream you screen I don't know if you can see with my big hair in the way so I'll go back a little bit well that's interesting tenure day is wondering if there is such thing as a twelve by twelve or twelve by twenty four magnetic met and roll a sense so that you don't have to use lies about you can things I think there used to be and had a funny name I can't remember what it was called and I don't know if they make it anymore it was a big twelve by it was bigger than twelve by twelve and you could stick things on it with magnets and design your page before sticking things down I bet somebody the chat room will know what that was called no well hyman has one and it had like a funny name like the huey year they it was it was really free yes the fred thank check wow you could make your own though by getting a sheet sheet of sheet metal and kind of binding the edges so it's not sharp and then just getting some strong magnets okay things get quiet I know contend it's like the deputy impression you take I don't want to interrupt anyone all right? And I kind of like the idea of using some washing on the tag there I'm thinking about that I'm gonna grab somebody's scissors real quick can I borrow your scissors here thank you you'll notice I didn't use I'm not going to use every embellishment or you ever even every embellishment pack and that it's totally okay I've got other pages to scrap book and I'll use some stuff there and this is just gonna be like a little ribbon on the mike my tag like that I heard a snort networks there and then I'm gonna stick these on and add some little you did I would usually use a glue dot for these and I probably will go back and reinforce the's later with lou dobbs oh, and I got to do my doodling let's do that it's used quick time check about we're down to like yep two and a half minutes tons of time so I would typically do this with a white pen but we're going with it card they're also a great way to use up the scraps if you have extra little embellishments from your pack and you want to use them and you're thinking ok if I am to the page and kind of overdoing it, you got everything it's already coordinated it's super simple thatjust pop out of pay a carter a tag that you can attach to a birthday president or something like that so that's something I do often tio when I get down to the dregs of the kit and I still have little pieces I will end up using those for cards and things this would be funny to used to you are crazy, but I'm not going to just, you know, they don't like it, I'm gonna stick with that evidence when I'm actually gonna move it down a little bit more and then take a look sometimes here if I've got time at the end, I'll go in and I've got a minute, so I might grab some other embellishments or the the enamel dots are always fun to add other little paid they're so easy to use, and sometimes I'll use them to bring in the colors that aren't like the visual triangle's a common design rule you'll hear, and it just basically means using three of something in a triangle formation, too guide the eye and so in this case, I'm using the color blue here as well as the wood veneers the circles to guide your eye towards the centre of the page. It helps direct the the eye and let people know what you want them to look at. So couple things, if I had my my stuff at home, I might have created this into a border with a punch just to add a little bit more texture to the page um, last thing I'm going to do, I like to do this to help ground the front to the back these make it look like brad, so there it looks like this paper is actually attached to the paper behind it and there we go there's our timer there it is my daughter must have changed it they also also changed my name on my iphone so it now says boom boom girl so every time you get an email from boom boom girl that's me and several times they've scheduled colonoscopies and siri says lay a boom boom girl you have a colonoscopy today so there it is there's my thirty minute page just to run through the promise we had the say what? We had a card stock background um the audience voted for the ice cream ice cream picture as well as the yellow I was told to do some doodling on the page you song lyrics in the journaling and um doodling we talked about and use the wood veneers so we did it and you know what is it is it the most amazing page I've ever made in my entire life? It's pretty darn good you know and I'm happy with it I feel like it tells the story it's got a fun photo that ties in with the title and it was a lot of fun to make in thirty minutes so there's the page so how about you all jennifer? Where did you end up? Um well I've you followed along pretty carefully I really was listening way video you've got to say what I love it. I did a lot for me. This is a lot in a really small amount of ty and I even cut some journaling in there, which is speech for me. So and I just kept it simple, and the doodling is not as dark as I would like to be. Normally, I have nicer pins, you know, yet that it would stand out a little. We're limited. We've got ballpoint exactly that they work. Yeah, yeah. Beneath what about you? Okay, I combine my doodling and my song lyrics as me and my shadow. Ok, perfecto to say what I mean. Really? I mean again, back to my pictures of me taking myself. And I've got your your ducks in a row. They're going to know that sorrow and, uh, let's see the wood veneer. Go see, do because that's obviously what I'm doing with this and got kind of lost down here. Okay. That's. Great that's been passed. How did it feel? It's done it's wonderful! Great it's, just it's going right in that it's going to my twelve by twelve soon it's the camera's. Not on perfect. Tracy, what about you? What did you do? Show me what you have I finished beautiful. I think I got everything on there I don't have the song lyrics on there yet but the story is about how my boy stuck his head they all start their head through the cut outs and just I ended up putting his head through a girl and so he goes why am I the girl and this one bust out laughing that's when I took the picture so that's what it's about and so I'm gonna put dude looks like a lady I e o that's perfect that's great cindy I finished his well which is a small miracle for me thank you. I think this picture of my son that the dentist my son is the most cooperative child ever you can ask him to do anything and he will do it. But you can tell by his body language that he has never been more tortured in his whole life. And then when the dentist asked himto open live when I pulled out the letters to do say what I put them down on the table and they actually said they all just took back the w and the tea and I thought that really fits I doodled around I am not a dimensional scrapper I like my way out to be very flat so the wood veneers rural stretch for me because I like tio conserve space so just by putting some stickers on there I'm really happy with that. It looks great. Thank you. Angela had todo well, I didn't get doodling or lyrics but I did pretty much finished reminder to text exchanges that were really funny, so I had them printed and, um let's they yeah, I'm similar I don't use a lot of dimension so I actually got three wood veneers on there which is big, so yeah, it's done. It wasn't it wasn't as I thought it was going to be like yeah and not hate it and I don't hate it that's great that's great. You know what? Sometimes we have layout that we adore and sometimes we have layouts that are coming and we have masses like okay, yeah that's good and that's ok, not every layout needs to be your absolute favorite and sometimes it's just about getting the story down and then you feel like relief because you got that story down, you knew you wanted to get it down and it's just it's like again the dinner analogy, some dinners everybody loves some dinners, we say ok, well, nobody died when I could. So a jane I recently got sent to cleveland on and of course all the lyrics, of course going to cleveland rocks and so just a few pictures from there like I say, what was it cleveland, really, I love it, that's, great, that's, wonderful. Now, how about you, how did you do? We went. Now we have really taken the message of this workshop, the hotline, and by doing that, what we've done, we didn't have fun eyes because we didn't have the group book, and we didn't have a pin because we didn't want to have a lot of ways, like scrap stealing gold, really outside. So instead, what we decided to do is tell the story ofthe out journey and describing were fairly nervous. Way. As you can see, we are way styling into uncharted waters, guided. Clearly, we're very happy because I got it by line buttons you lane on day, because we had no pen, we signed up on the bottom. Chris has a mark on appa sand and just down a little, but I love it that's, a wonderful and everybody.

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I have so many old photos and articles and concert tickets and... STUFF... just sitting in boxes. I love this class because it not only inspired me to finally compile those pieces of my history into a lovely story to look back on, but gave me the permission to start without the pressure of "perfection." LOVE.

Student Work

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