I've been off the grid for a bit...not really, I've been in my apartment, just not writing in my blog. I was doing pretty well for a bit about regular posting, but not so much anymore. December is one of my busiest months of the year.
I'm not sure if I'll continue this blog next year. I feel pretty good about actually keeping up with a blog for a year, but maybe that's all I need. I don't know, I'll see how I feel as the month comes to an end.
I do have a few updates to my Smash book though, so I thought I'd post them tonight.
I haven't written in a while because life happened, a hurricane happened. I was lucky to live in a neighborhood that gets minimally affected by wind/floods. My hometown was devastated. My parents were lucky because our house is slightly elevated..we only had basement damage, but even a week later they are still without power, heat and water.
During the hurricane I was able to catch up on my smashbook. I scrapped a few halloween parties. After the hurricane I decided to do a 3 page spread on the hurricane. It is strange to scrapbook a bad memory, but I think if you are making a scrapbook of a year in your life (or in this case a season), it's necessary to talk about the bad and the good. The bad moments shape our lives, and shape our future. I can't just skip over it and pretend it didn't happen.
Tonight I took out the sewing machine - well I didn't really take it out, it's been sitting on my dining room table collecting dust since I brought it home from my mom's. I know how to use a sewing machine, but I don't know how to set up a sewing machine. I've never threaded the sewing machine myself. So my first goal is to learn how to do that.
I have a fantastic book to work with S.E.W. Sew Everything Workshop by Diana Rupp. Tonight I took scotch tape and labeled parts of my sewing machine. I decided to stop after that because I was too distracted by the TV. I think this weekend I'm going to put aside a few hours on Saturday to really sit down, learn how to thread the machine and do a few sample stitches.
It's also possible that I'll get distracted by something else and the sewing machine will sit on the dining room table for a few more weeks. That's just who I am.
As you can deduce from the title of this entry, I finally finished my Alaskan scrapbook. I added in a last collage page using my leftover materials and did a little trim along the edge of the front and back covered.
The last photo page of the book is our white water rafting trip in Denali. I feel that was really the completion of the trip. It was the last adventurous thing we did and even though we did the oar boat, it still felt pretty hard core going through category 4 rapids. These photos were taken by a photographer, so they are the best photos I have of the entire trip.
The last page, I did a final collage using my leftover scraps. I threw this collage together in 15 minutes. I did not think too much about placement, I just started gluing. I actually really like it.
The back cover has a little envelope that says "good finds". This holds the business cards I took from various businesses in Alaska.
Overall, I'm very happy with this scrapbook. When I look through it all as a whole, it is very different from any other book I've done and I feel like the collages added a different touch.
So I completed my goal (kind of): I finished my Alaska scrapbook......ish. I did the final page tonight, but I decided I have still have so many guides, business cards, leaflets, etc. left that I want to make a few more collage pages to complete it. For the most part though, I'm done and I feel satisfied.
I'll show the Alaska pages later in the week, but tonight I want to go back to my Smash book. I am a bit behind on it. Tonight, I scrapped our apple picking trip from a few weeks ago. The patterns in the smash book weren't ideal so I did some reupholstering. I bought Halloween paper on sale last year after Halloween and used the apple pages for the background.
I think the patterned scissor I used behind the fall festival picture was a bit corny for the page. It felt maybe a bit elementary for my taste. I want my scrapbooking to evolve over the years and these two pages don't give me that feeling. Maybe I'm just too hard on myself.
Nothing sparks creativity like watching the presidential debates. It's like having white noise or static in the background while I work on finishing my Alaska scrapbook by the end of the week.
Tonight was a quick page again at our campsite in Denali. We bought marshmallows to roast but the marshmallows were so large. My travel buddy Risa and I each tried to stuff a whole one into our mouth and eat it.
Tonight I learned how hard it is to glue pictures with a bandaid on your finger. My finger probably didn't need to be bandaged, but I had a hangnail that was bleeding a bit. Then I had a vision of glue and other scrapbook related chemicals getting into the cut and giving me some sort of rare glue poisoning and on my tombstone it would read DIed of Hangnail. Better to be safe than sorry.
I actually really love the page I did tonight. This page is about when we made it to the visitor center in Denali. There was a bear nearby and everyone stopped to take pictures of it since it was so close. I took the time to sneak off to the bathroom. When I came out, I couldn't find anyone and momentarily panicked that the bus left without me. Then I heard my friends calling, apparently the bear started coming towards them and they all ran into the bus. We were then told to go to the roof of the visitor center and we watched the forest ranger clear the trails as the bear headed in that direction. As the ranger was leading people off the trail, we saw a man walking on the trail above the bear, and the bear was slowly headed in that direction. We tried getting the ranger's attention, but suddenly a woman ran forward screaming BRENT! BRENT! Turns out that guy was her fiance. We all screamed at him until he finally looked over and saw us pointing. It took a while but he finally understood and turned around. The ranger also realized what was going on. Life: saved.
This is the page about the event. I don't generally do journaling because I find it a bit corny and forced, but this story needed to be told. So I took a design I actually used earlier in this album and made it better. The captions and title of the page are all typed using "felt marker" font. I also had this "wild bear: danger" sticker that worked perfectly with the page. I really like it.
I didn't make my Alaska scrapbook deadline because I pretend I'm still 21 and go out 5 nights in a row. I did do two pages in it today though and I only have a few more left so I think DEFINITELY by this weekend. Then I can finally get around to learning to slow. So much to do, so little time. Damn having a job.
These scrapbook pages are a little plain but I think they work. It is a double spread with all the bears we saw while on our trip. The rangers told us ahead of time that it was really rare to see bears, especially up close...but we ended up seeing a ton of bears, one of which we had to run away from.
I also did a smashbook page tonight but I'll save that for later in the week.
I took the day off from work today. I like to say its because I'm Italian and today is Columbus Day so I should celebrate my Italian heritage. Really, it's because I had so many errands I needed to do and I've been too busy to do them. I thought I'd get more crafting done today but I only did one scrapbook page. I need to clear my head and get the ideas flowing. There's only a few more pages left in this scrapbook, so new goal: I will finish this scrapbook by Sunday.
I opened up a scrapbooking idea book today and on the first page was a layout that immediately inspired me to do this page. I loved the layout of the photos. For the background, I used the back of the map that had a great page title on it, then a piece of the map at the bottom.
I wasn't sure if I'd ever get around to using this moose embellishment. We saw moose only 1 time on the trip and I didn't have my camera with me since we were riding back from white water rafting. The embellishment ended up working perfectly in the corner of this page.
I felt a little more inspired this afternoon so I made both a scrapbook page and a smashbook page. I love the smash book page that I made, I'm eh on the Alaska page. It looked different in my head. Oh well. I took the day off tomorrow and along with a bit of shopping, I'm also planning on doing a lot of crafting. Maybe I'll even start exploring my sewing machine.
The scrapbook page is the beginning of our bus trip through Denali National Park. I used the map as the background but I think I needed a bit more embellishment.
The smash book page is my night out Friday. When I went to Michael's the other day I bought a few kits that have complimentary papers. Makes it a lot easier to scrap quickly.
Another page that feels slightly empty but I'm leaving for fear of overdoing. I've been extremely tired the last 2 nights but I'm forcing myself to work on this album. Tonight I'm going to bed early..although I'm going out tomorrow so I won't even be using the extra sleep for a good creativity moment.
Anyway, I don't feel like typing much. Here is the page:
My goal for the Alaska scrapbook was to finish it before October. Well, it's October 1st and there's still quite a few more pages left. Unfortunately the last week or so I've been lazy and down on myself and just a big old grouch face. Scrapbooking doesn't happen when I'm a big grouch face.
Back on track this week though, pushing myself to do at least one Alaska page - even though I'm exhausted. Staying up late for football is a killer (but I love it - except when the Giants lose, then I get sad).
I'm stretching out the Denali pages out as much as possible. It was the biggest part of our trip and I still have lots of album to fill. This page is us roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. It's pretty simple. I feel like there's something missing to it but at the same time I didn't want to overdo it.
Apologies, I've been absent for the past week. I was feeling very down on myself, grouchy and grumpy last week and I couldn't motivate to work on anything. Half the week I was also staying at my parent's house with no crafts to partake in. Tonight I ordered Chinese food and my fortune said "turn negativity into creativity". I was like, "thanks fortune cookie" and started working on my much neglected Smash book.
I admit it is not my best work but I needed something to get me started. Tomorrow is October and October is my favorite month, so I feel a lot of creative and positive energy starting to flow into my body for this week. Man I love the sound this keyboard makes when I type on it. Random thoughts.
Anyway, I did 4 pages in the Smashbook, 3 being from birthday celebrations. One is just a simple cut out of things I want to do + the fortune.
If football was on every night, I would get so much scrapbooking done. There's something about watching the game that just gets me crafting. I think it's because crafting eases my nerves, and I get really anxious watching the Giants--even more anxious now that I started Fantasy Football.
Tonight I did two pages. I seriously could've done more pages but I'm getting a bit tired and I feel like the pages just would've gotten progressively worse. I like both of these pages though. They incorporate some scrapbooking techniques with the simplicity of this album.
The first page shows our camp set up in Denali as well as the Alaskan beer we drank. I patterned paper has leaves on it, to enhance the campy feel. I used the ripping technique at the top of the page. It's so simple to rip the edges of the page but it definitely gives it a different feel.
The second page is about starting our fire. The map cut out is from a leaflet I picked up about Denali at the visitor's center. The map shows where our camp is and on top of it I pasted the information about our campgrounds (flush toilets yeaaaaa). The pictures detail the building of the fire. I made little notes on the edges of the photos, describing the steps we took to get the fire going.
It took a long time for me to get off the couch tonight and start working. It actually took a long time for me to get out of bed this morning and go to work. I wanted to call in sick so bad but it's not really my style. Guilty conscience and all that.
Anyway, once I finally rallied, I ended up making two pages - and surprisingly I like them both. ::gasps:: Actually no gasps, there's only 3 people reading this blog, so probably not enough gasps for me to actually hear it over here.
Fun Fact about me: I usually buy things and not use them until almost a year later (this does NOT include food, which I always eat right away like ravenous dog). This happens very often with clothes and even more often with crafting materials. In this particular case, I bought these sponge paints almost two years ago now and just decided to use them tonight. They are actually really cool. I made the rainbow design behind my first page with them. Then I used a rub on over them to get the wording.
The second page is my collage for Denali. Denali was the big event during the trip so it will probably stretch out quite a few pages (there might even be two full pages devoted to bear pictures, seriously...so many bear pictures).
