Scrapbooking Paper

Well, I’m off to Las Vegas to CHA — a scrapbooking and craft tradeshow. I’ll be sure to take good notes and share with you the latest things in scrapbooking when I return. I always love getting new ideas and finding inspirations. The only hard thing is to limit myself with favorites. Have a great week!

Just a thought for today. Music has tremendous power — to motivate, to cheer and uplift, to change moods. One of my favorite things to do when I get overwhelmed or start feeling down, is to put on fun music. I have music which helps me to open up my creativity, music which brings back funny memories and other music to help me de-stress.

If you start feeling stuck in your scrapbooking, just put on some fun music and see what can happen. Try some 70′s disco music, or a big band dance number, or something you remember from high school. Then check out how music can not only inspire your creativity, it might bring back some memories which you can journal about. Music and scrapbooking can go hand in hand!

The 65th Annual Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) Convention and Trade Show is coming up. The craft and scrapbooking tradeshow will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center from January 30th through February 2nd. General crafts such as yarn, beads, jewelry making will be covered as well as everything scrapbooking and papercrafts. Scrapbooking is expected to cover about 1/3 of the booths at the expo and digital scrapbooking products from Epson, Sony, Noritsu, Polaroid, and Mitsubishi will be showcased. Over 1,100 exhibitors and 3,000 booths will be at the show.

If you want to see what is the latest and greatest in scrapbooking, get down to the show. My schedule is really busy so I haven’t decided if I’m going yet, but if I do, I hope to see you there.

Personally I love the Asian influence. I like the reds, blacks and creams the best and using Asian characters for Love, Peace, Joy, etc really add an element of design to scrapbooking. Asian characters are works of art in my opinion. I think they can be used for many aspects of scrapbooking. I also think that adding some Asian artwork as part of the backgrounds for your photos can add a sense of style and elegance.

You can use Asian characters (along with their English translation) as a title, or along the side of your page. You can stamp the characters all over a page just to create a nice background. I’ve seen Asian influence in scrapbook pages for weddings, travel, nature photography, rose garden photos, or spa vacations. There are many ways to incorporate Asian influences into your scrapbooking. If you have any good ideas, let me know because I like to see what other people create.

Sometimes I look at all of the scrapbooking I should be doing and wonder — where do I start? I have boxes of photos in various places in my house. I have digital photos which I’ve never printed in 20-30 online folders. I have hundreds of scrapbooking papers, embellishments all over the place, and so many rubber stamps I may never be able to use them all.

Scrapbooking can be overwhelming. Don’t look at the huge amount of pages you need to complete. Just take it one step at a time. It’s like eating an elephant — just take one bite at a time.

The first step is to get organized. Even if you just gather all your photographs into one place that’s a great way to start. I personally have file folders which I have labeled into categories. I have a folder for specific trips, a folder for childhood friends, grade school memories, roommates, nieces and nephews, and specific holidays. Then each time I want to scrapbook, I just pull out one folder and select the photos I want to use. It says within a specific theme and I don’t get overwhelmed.

The benefits of file folders (hanging ones are my favorite) — rather than just using photo boxes, is I can add other things into the folders besides photos. On some of my trips I’ve attended plays, or events where I’ve collected the playbill. I have some photos I’ve enlarged to 8×10 and I want to include it. I’ve even collected pins and wristbands from the 2002 Olympics which I want to add in my scrapbooks. With the hanging file folder I can have all of those things in one place so I don’t have to try and remember what things I want to include once I start scrapbooking.

Another tip I have used is to take all my photos from a specific trip or event, and lay them out on the pages. I don’t add any embellishments — just put the photos onto the page. Then I put sticky-notes onto each page which includes details about the trip — people in the photos, funny experiences I want to journal about, etc. This way I am able to get a ton of scrapbook pages laid out and can come back with the creative stuff later on. Then I don’t feel like it’s going to take forever to get my scrapbooks done because I spent 2 hours on one page. Then it becomes fun when I actually get to do the embellishment part.

Let me know if you have strategies or ideas about getting started in scrapbooking — or if you have any suggestions for beginner scrapbookers.

Here is a great quote I wanted to share today.

“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end. For then the journey is over and it is too late. The time for happiness is today, not tomorrow.”

—Joseph Smith Jr.

Photos.com is one of my favorite resources for photography. If you are looking for stock photography for any reason, check out their royalty free stock photography membership.

Hi all,

Just thought you might want to see my latest scrapbook paper and sticker designs. They are up on the Rocky Mountain Scrapbook website now.

I designed the volleyball, soccer, and golf stickers, Latin Fiesta, Basketball, Baseball stickers, and Spring Stickers.

Also just released are Latin Fiesta scrapbook papers, Basketball and Baseball scrapbook papers, and Spring designs.

I’m working on the next batch right now and I’m pretty excited how they are turning out. It is fun to be creative and actually see results. Anyway, check out the new papers and stickers and let me know what you think. I’d also be interested to know which are your favorites, so I can stay on top of what people really want.

Daily Thought. . .

“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old-time rail journey…delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”

—Gordon B. Hinckley, quoting Jenkin Lloyd Jones

The more specific goals you can set, the better chance you will achieve your goals. If you want to lose weight, you should set very specific goals and a plan of action to achieve your goals, such as: “I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of March. In order to reach my goal I will exercise 4 times each week for at least 1 hour each time. I will cut out fast food. I will not eat refined sugars.”

Scrapbooking doesn’t just happen. For those of us with extremely busy lives, it’s important to set time aside to finish our scrapbooks. You may want to take some time to determine what goals would be appropriate for your scrapbooking. It might be to attend a crop once a month, or organize that box of photos under your bed, or finally get your hundreds of scrapbooking embellishments organized. It might be to include more journaling, or to create a mini scrapbook for each of your children. Whatever your scrapbooking goals, if you are specific you are more likely to be successful.

I found a great quote about setting specific goals.

“A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn’t be very impressive, for instance, if they weren’t specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as ‘thou shalt not be a bad person.” — Neal A. Maxwell

Good luck with your goals and even if you mess up — just get back on track and keep moving forward.