Creating Keepsakes editor Natalie McConnell is our guest today, read below for her fall page suggestions.
Autumn is absolutely delicious! You can feel the crispness in the air, see the leaves changing, and start scrapin’ some of the best events of the year. Here are a few ideas to get you started on your fall scrapbooking extravaganza!
Fall at a Glance
It is easy to let your scrapbooking ‘fall’ behind, but there is an easy solution! Create a layout that includes all your favorite activities during the season—this will incorporate multiple photos and ideas at once.
Back to School
Capture school adventures with fun scrapbooking supplies, such as, rulers, cork, and vintage book pages!
Autumn Textures
Crunching leaves, sweaters, and straw scarecrows – utilize a variety of textures on your layout that bring these and other favorite fall fibers to mind.
I'm very excited to mention that we're changing up our Tuesday Tips a little bit. While we'll still feature tips from our members on various scrapbooking, household, or organization related items, we're also going to be featuring tips from our team members and our instructors. What are these tips going to be on? With a variety of instructors teaching a variety of subjects, the sky's the limit! Scrapbooking, photography, Photoshop, Lightroom, organization, I could keep writing all day. The best part is, all of them, if they're in video format (which will hopefully be the case) will be quick, meaning under 2 minutes.
The tips will all be archived on their very own page as well! I'll make sure to post when that page is up and available.
For those who don't know me, I'm Michelle Hedstrom, and I'm BPC's tech guru. Whenever you email admin@ with a technical question, I'm usually the one who gets your question and hopefully am able to provide you with a good answer. What you may not know, is that I'm also a photographer. My tips will consist of aspects of photography.
Please leave in the comments what you think of this new format, and also email us at tips@bigpictureclasses.com with what kinds of tips you'd love to see!
For the first tip in this new format, here's a quick tip about photographing water. Enjoy, and thanks for watching!
I used to dump out my little baggies of letters and sort through them to see if I had the necessary letters for the project I was working on. Not anymore. Now I tear off and save the packaging and X out the letters as they are used. For packages with multiples of some letters I use a pencil and write the number beside the letter to indicate the current quantity. Now I can see at a glance how many letters are in my package without having to empty them.
If your packaging doesn’t come with a display of letters, it’s easy to print out your own.
For a burned on mess in a metal pot, put in enough water to cover the top of the burned residue, or as high as you can safely fill the pot. Then put in one to two teaspoons of Cream of Tartar and bring the mixture to a boil. Allow to cool, and your kitchen disaster should easily come off the pot. If there are still stubborn spots, you can repeat the process.
I do not recommend this process in a non-stick pot, as the teflon can emit a toxic fume, which isn't good for anyone.
My paper piercer is always in close reach when I’m working on a project. I love how it makes placing a brad or adding some stitching a breeze. One of my favorite uses for it is to separate the prongs on the back of a brad. Just stick the point of the piercer between the prongs and press the tip down towards the center of the brad. It saves your fingernails, and it helps the prongs to lay flat on the back of your project.
Story triggers are everywhere! I was busy shredding bank statements when I realized as I was looking through my credit/debit transactions this was a record of my trip to visit my son in Tennessee! The transactions listed the dates and locations where my card was used and that was enough for me to reconstruct the trip timeline! With each purchase comes a story...some of which I might have forgotten if I had relied on my memory and pictures (of the bigger events). Now that I have gone green and get e-statements, I simply highlight and copy the transactions I want to keep for a trigger and include them in my scrapbook files. The statements are a great addition to the photos & memorabilia I collect from our family trips!
List ingredients to favorite recipes on 3x5 cards, punch a hole in the corner and fasten together with a jump ring. I carry these in a small pocket in my purse or in my car. It has saved me many a time when I was out running errands, needed to figure out what to make for dinner, and being assured I bought all the ingredients I necessary. It also saves me from forgetting the one ingredient I would otherwise forget that is key to the meal!
As a mom to 5 kids and one on the way, I needed to find a way to organize all the outdoor gear kids need, such as helmets, toques, mitts, hats, and so forth. Tired of having to always pull the down from the high shelf in the closet, I bought a set of hooks. On each hook I hung a different coloured mesh bag, one for each of the kids. These bags are large enough to hold the appropriate gear for the season and allow air flow should anything be wet. Now even my 20-month old knows where to find her gear and can put it away herself. This has made getting out and coming home much less stressful for me, and the kids can find what they need.
I finally found a way to organize my scraps that I love.
I used two 12x12 Karen Foster boxes that came with a bunch of 12x12 folders.
One of the boxes holds cardstock and the other one holds patterned papers. The folders in the cardstock box are labeled: Red/pink, Orange/yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, White/Cream, Brown/Tan, Black.
The folders in the patterned paper are not organized by color because most of my patterned paper has multiple colors. Here is the trick when deciding which folder to put it in - If I look at it and it says "beach" to me, I put it in the summer folder. Some of the papers were not intended to be a beach theme but if I always think of the beach when I see it, it makes sense to put it where I am going to remember it. My folders sometimes change slightly if I have a lot of a particular kind of paper. The basic labels for patterned paper are: Flowers/Nature, Seasons, Travel, Circles, Stripes, Kids, Shapes (not circles or stripes).
What I love about this system is:
the 12x12 folders fit the longest of my scraps
Nothing ever falls out
I can page through the folders without taking them out or I can open the folders wide open and you can see everything
My memory keeping tip has to do with documenting the journey. Not everyone on the go has time to keep a journal. I keep a small moleskine and write some words to remind me of what happened on that day. This way when we are working on a specific page we can look back remember what happened.
For those of us that are more digital, I suggest using a Google calendar to make notes on the day and this can be done from the computer or a smart phone!
