SEPTEMBER SCRAPBOOK CLASS

Our September Scrapbooking Class was lots of fun this past weekend. We worked on two separate page spreads, as we usually do. The first was a layout about Back to School. Most of those attending the class have young children who returned to school in the past couple of weeks. (School starts in August here in Florida -- rather than after Labor Day as up North.) We had been discussing how to get good photographs of the children on their first day on school, subject matter, poses, lighting, etc.; so now we needed some pages for our wonderful photos.

But the real focus for this month's class was JOURNALING. We had a Guest Speaker, Ann, who opened our eyes to the fantastic world of JOURNALING on our scrapbook pages. THANK YOU, ANN!!! :-) I'm not an avid journaler, myself. I don't know about you, but I just never seem to know what to say... other than names, place and date... rather elementary (hehe... elementary... hehe... Get it? Back to school? Elementary?... A-hem.) Anyway...

Ann gave us many examples of different styles of journaling, including, but not limited to:

• lists
• tell our own thoughts and memories
• record someone else's observations
• letter writing
• interview/dialog

Ann encouraged us to write about how we felt seeing our children leaving for school, or maybe about their feelings about returning to the classroom. There was a hand-out with lots of Journaling Prompts to get our brains jump-started in the right direction. She showed us some fabulous pages from her own personal scrapbooks in which journaling played a major part. Ann pointed out that, many years from now, a page with a story would be much more meaningful than a page with only photographs. So we are all going to do some journaling and bring back our layouts next month to share with each other. We will all read each others' stories, and vote on our favorite. The scrapper with the "best" journaling on her page will be rewarded with a copy of the book Simple Scrapbooks 2, by Cathy Zelsky, an award-winning scrapbooker and Contributing Editor to Creating Keepsakes magazine. Thank you, Ann, for both your thought-provoking presentation and your contribution of the journaling contest Reward!

This is our "Back to School" layout:

As you can see, our journaling will be entered onto the "notebook page" on the right side of this spread. But that is no ordinary notebook page... nooooo. It was created by computer-printing horizontal blue lines and one vertical red line onto Stampin' Up! Whisper White cardstock. We then punched the left edge using the Spiral Punch (Item# 108341) and the right sides with the Corner Rounder Punch (Item# 109047). The layout uses primary color card stock and Designer Series Paper from (retired) Simply Scrappin' Kits.

We also learned how to get more than one color of ink on a stamp by using Real Red, Old Olive and Close to Cocoa markers to color in the apple with its' leaf and stem from the Tart & Tangy Stamp Set (Item# 111514). Color directly onto the stamp, then huff by breathing air directly onto the stamp, then stamp onto Whisper White card stock. Voila! Tres jolie! (That's very pretty in French.) We cut out the apples using the 1-1/4" Circle Punch (Item# 104403) to be used as photo accents after our photographs are cropped and mounted onto the page. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment here, or you may contact me directly.

~Alice