Monday, September 21, 2009

25 Things

I have posted here on my relationship with my nemesis, Winter. I am certain that my mood changes as the light wanes (for information on SAD), and so this year, I am working to prepare myself to do battle against my adversary. This plan includes light therapy, hour walks, and a list of 25 things to accomplish -- dares, a scavenger hunt, and a chance to do, make, think, journal. I made a little book (see my blog roll for many inspirations) and a list of 25 things for both the fall and the winter. I generously asked my husband for input (he will get dragged along on most of these things anyway), and tried to include all the things that we say "oh, why didn't we blankety blank this year?!" And even cooler, I've been telling everyone at work about it, and other people are making their own lists! But my hope is that I will not find myself trapped inside our apartment all winter, wondering what happened to the weekend. I want to make sure I am learning, active, living.

The book is constructed from the dividers that are used to sort index cards. The dividers are covered by cool paper. I printed the title on transparencies, and the list on white card stock. Both were designed in Illustrator. I learned the hard way that the printed transparencies do scratch, and so placed an additional transparency over the cover and the back, to protect the paper.

I cut out several types of paper and cut outs from my magazine stash to fill the book with pages. These pages will hold pictures, random things and info regarding each successful task. Truthfully, I'm not sure what I will need, but I think I made about 25 pages. The whole thing is held together with book rings from Staples. I'm still trying to decide how to sort and label each task once completed, but I'm thinking about these file labels I have, or mailing labels, and of course, my favorite date stamp.

And a sneak preview of the winter one:

CA: Scrapbook Update

Thought I'd share some pictures of the scrapbook so far. The picts aren't the greatest, and I'm trying to cut out pictures of people, but I'm proud of how its going! And I have a new addiction to scrapbook papers...I thought I loved fat quarters but I really love collections of paper. And corner rounders. And tags. And date stamps. Yay!








Saturday, September 12, 2009

CA: The Beginnings of a Scrapbook

My husband and I recently took a trip to California to visit my brother and drive up the coast, ending up in San Fransisco (a place I've always wanted to visit) for my 32nd birthday. I've tried blogging the trip and making online photo albums, but didn't have a place for the great ephemera that we collected, like this awesome pamphlet on the left called "Don't Die in the Desert," complete with two exclamation points and a skull to let you know that they mean business. I decided to forgo digital in favor of a scrapbook.

I started by separating my photos and stuff into days, effectively breaking the journey into manageable segments to better tell the story. I then brainstormed (see right) and came up with the idea to create a front page for each day that would have a similar look. Each day page would have a map of the day's travels, a title, something showing mileage, and something showcasing these awesome date stamps I got from Staples. Since all the colors of California are in the greens, blues, creams, yellows and browns family, I decided on a deep, dark brown paper to build the day pages on (see below). I printed out maps from google, pulled out my huge letter stamps, found some packing tags (also from Staples) and practiced stamping some layouts.



In addition, I decided on this gorgeous green scrapbook (I love green) that has a chocolate brown tab, and the inside is the same rich brown that I wanted for the day pages.






Each day ended up with a map, labels and small pictures representative of some of the pictures to come. Plus a fun label with the location, mileage, and date, plus a (I think) clever title.



Some of the tentative layout for the airplane travel days...


Some shots of where the layout is now....



Next step: stamping the title and starting layout.
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