I have moved!

My scrapbooking is on hold for the time being while I focus on my photography.  Here is a link to my new blog address...hope you will stop by :)

http://portraitsbykristy.blogspot.com/

My Promise to Myself

This is a blog about scrapbooking and photography, yes, but today I am going to go WAAAYYYY off topic and talk about a more personal issue.  Losing weight.  Not that I have been doing much of that lately!  But I need to.


I have been focused on the number on the scale in some way or another my entire life.  Either I was trying  to make it go down with some new diet or exercise regimen, or I was watching it carefully to make sure the weight I had just lost did not sneakily try to come back.  Blame it on my poor metabolism, unhealthy eating habits, poor genes, stress, depression, blah, blah, blah.  But what it comes down to is that I am not healthy.  Period.  So I can accept that as my fate, or I can try to make a change.


Well starting today I decided to take control.  For me, so I feel better.  For my husband, so I can go on hikes with him and stop snoring at night.  And for my daughter, so I can be a positive role model for her and stick around to watch her grow and have babies of her own someday.  These are all the reasons why I quit smoking, which was a pretty difficult task.  So I should be able to handle this, right?!


My inspiration, my aha moment, came from a member of our military base's wight loss support group named Kate.  I don't know Kate, but she posted a photo and called it "a bit of visual motivation."  It looked a bit like this:

Suddenly the fact that I needed to lose weight went from a HUGE INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE to a matter of one marble at a time.  I don't need to lose a hundred pounds.  I need to lose one pound.  Then I get to pick up one shiny, blue marble and go "plink" and put it in the other jar.  

And to make it even less stressful on myself, I chose one small goal...35 pounds.  That is how many marbles are in the first jar.  And win that jar is empty, I get to buy a new lens for my camera!  The new clothes I will need to buy, they are a bonus!  

There is an additional component to my plan involving accountability.   It is a food journal.  I am not on a "diet" and I am not restricting any food group from my life.  But I AM requiring myself to write down every thing that I put in my mouth.  This will make me sllloooowwww down and think twice before I munch.  


So, wish me luck!  And thank you Kate for the inspiration.  I hope I have inspired someone else to make their own jars, and don't forget to reward yourself!  Feel free to leave a comment and share your story.  Thanks for stopping by!

Out of my Comfort Zone...

To grow as an artist it is necessary to experiment, do things that you wouldn't ordinarily do and of course, make mistakes.  Up until recently my photography was limited to photos of my daughter and I wouldn't have DARED call myself an artist.  But now I am taking chances and trying new things.  Sometimes I am happy with the results and I share. Other times, not so much and I chalk it up to another learning experience!


Tonight I went on my first photography meetup.  If you've never heard of meetup you should definitely look it up!  There is a group for every interest in every geographic area.  It is a great way to meet new people, get out and do fun things and (great for military people like me) get to know the area where you live better.  There are 800 members of this photography group and they ALL know more than me.  But they all started right where I am!


We went to Plymouth by the waterfront.  This was only my third time there ever, so everything is still new to me. That is a positive when taking photos; it helps to not be already bored with the scenery!  We were challenged to look at the small details to photograph, but I fond so much of interest that I took over 300 shots!  Here are some of my favorites (click on the images to enlarge):

Sunset behind a rose bush

The waterfront at dusk

The Mayflower II small boat

Brilliant Sunset Colors

Sunlight reflecting off store windows

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Leave me a comment if you have ideas of other places I might have fun with my camera!

On Daddy's Shoulders

My daughter sure is one lucky girl.  My husband treats her like a princess.  Heaven help the man that marries her, because he will have some steep standards to live up to!  I love to watch the two of them together because they bring out the silliness in each other!  He just loves to bop around with her riding on his shoulders, and she lets out the loudest squeals of excitement!  So when I captured these photos at the zoo last weekend I knew I had to do them justice and highlight this special bond!

The focal photo is my favorite picture ever (right now!) so I wanted it to be big.  I didn't want to clutter the layout with a bunch of photos from this day, even though I took 319, because they would have taken away from my very specific purpose of highlighting a relationship.  This is unusual for me as I usually like to pack my layouts as full of photos as I can!  But this picture was one I was proud to capture with my newly learned photography skills:

The layout itself is fairly straightforward.  My color choice was obvious based on the focal picture!  I worked to achieve simplicity yet interest herewith the title treatment (2 styles of chipboard letters and letter stickers), the paper strip and rickrack at the top (my"sky"), and the flower border (formerly white and sprayed with pink ink).  I also had my husband write the journaling because I wanted Grace to hear Daddy's voice in her scrapbooks too.  Here are some detail shots (click to enlarge):

Well I thank you for stopping by today.  I am happy I could share two layouts in one week!!!  Now I am off to shoot some more photos downtown.  I will share if any are good :)  Have a great weekend all!

Who needs Toys? We have socks!

My daughter loves to play with socks.  I have no idea why.  Despite all the toys we have for her, she can often be found crawling down the hall to her bedroom and pulling all the socks out of her basket.  Hey, whatever makes her happy!  One day I thought she looked especially adorable (those overalls get me all the time!) and so I followed her down the hall with the camera.  I sat on her floor for quite a while playing with the settings on my camera while she played with her socks.   And this is the layout that resulted:

This is my first completed layout in a couple of weeks, so I felt a little rusty and it took me longer than usual to make every decision.  But I was thrilled to finally get a chance to scrapbook!

As I mentioned, I was playing with my camera settings on this day and I accidentally started taking Black and White shots.  When I saw this picture of the socks abandoned on the floor when Grace found another plaything I just knew it would make a neat focal picture.  I chose to use the pink color to make it pop off the page and coordinate with the striped socks.  I added some fibers to give the page a tactile element, since we are talking about socks.

The strips at the top and bottom of the page are used to ground the photos and were made using two different widths of ribbon.  I added some buttons to add to the clothing theme.

The title is my favorite part of the layout.  I used my Cricut to cut four tags and used a marker to draw an outline on each.  I used some glittery Thickers letter stickers to spell out the word sock, but used a zero instead of the letter o because it was larger.  I was able to sneak in a photo of Grace in the 0.  I chose brads that coordinated with the colors in the striped socks and finished off the title with tiny type.




And finally, my journaling.  I just had too many fun photos that I wanted to include in this layout and not enough room!  So I turned a photo into a journaling block.

I did so using Microsoft Word.  I cropped and resized the photo, then increased the transparency.  I laid a text box over top and typed my journaling!  Then I printed it on glossy photo paper.  Click on the photo for a closer look.


And that is my latest creation!  I will be back sometime this week, hopefully with another completed layout!  I will leave you with another adorable shot that didn't make it on the layout!  Thanks for stopping by.

The World of Photography

So I said I'd post Wednesday.  I did not.  It seems the Spring has brought with it a never-ending list of things to get done, appointments to go to, and new adventures!  I am not complaining though.  My life is pleasantly full!


To add to the already packed schedule of work, play groups, appointments, cleaning, (sometimes) sleeping and caring for my family I decided to start taking a photography class.  Everything I know about taking pictures is self-taught and involves mostly "pushing the little silver button until you hear a click."  So I am starting from the beginning, Photography 101.  Already I have more questions than I did when I started!


So although I miss scrapbooking and haven't created ANYTHING in two weeks, I am having fun playing with my camera and want to share some of my new photos.


These are some azaleas that grow in front of my house.  They just started to bloom

yesterday and I just love the awesome color combination.  I also got in really close so my foreground is in focus while my background is blurred.





These are called Orange Stars.  I bought them at Stop and Shop, amazingly enough, and when they grew too tall to be inside plants we transplanted them outside.  The color is just so vibrant, which is why I was drawn to them!

Another amazing color combination provided by Mother Nature!  

And of course, the photographer's self-portrait!

I hope you enjoyed looking at some of the photos I've taken while I experiment with my camera and settings!  I will be sharing more as they come!  Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend!

Mothers Day Photo Display

I am posting just a quickie post today as I try to finish my massive to-do list in preparation for my first session of a new photography class tonight!  It seems I may take on a bit more than I can actually handle at times (not that any of you other moms know what that's like!)  But I am not happy unless I am CRAZY BUSY!  Always have been!


This weekend I set out to make my mom a photo display for Mothers Day so she could rotate photos of her adorable granddaughter.  This is what I came up with:

It was inspired by a layout I saw on the Little Yellow Bicycle and Petaloo Blog Hop at this link http://artmadewithheart.blogspot.com/.

My layout is made with sticker flowers and fabric flowers with brads in the centers.  I hand cut the tree from textured paper and ran an ink pad along it to bring out the texture.

  

In order to make the display changeable I used tiny clothespins to hold the 3 different sized photos.  These particular photos are from my Mothers Day picnic on the beach.

And that is it!  Hopefully my mom will treasure the gift I made for her and hang it somewhere to make her smile!  I will be back on Wednesday to share another creation!