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Design Simplified

So design I think the biggest place people fall off the fall down the black hole with design is that they don't think about the story beforehand that it is always the afterthought and pretty much everybody you know, we heard that pretty consistently not everyone but pretty consistently a lot of people are leaving story to a later point in the process and as a result what we're getting his pages that don't have a love story in them so it makes sense that if we want more story let's move the story up higher in the process it doesn't necessarily have to be first we've talked about that you can start with a cool piece of pattern paper because you love it you want to use it and still build a strong story around that but if you leave story to the very very end you can't get this mishmash and it might look great but it doesn't mean a whole lot it's those empty pages that I was showing earlier mike traditional pages so my biggest tip for design is to relate the design to the story and I have t...

hree designs that I use over and over again because not every design of every page needs to be completely different and we're going to talk about scrap lifting later but I lift my meaning copy myself frequently and I have three designs in particular that I go back to again and again and again so you might want to sketch the's out or you might even want to get out some your photos and kind of start moving around and see how they relate to these designs and how different photos you have might work in one of these designs worth better than the others, but feel free to do that in your workbook or work with some of your photos right now, while I'm talking and walking through these and yeah, I just knowing beforehand, sometimes we choose okay? Well, I know I want to use three photos on this page because the sketch has three photos, but we don't even know what the story is, so choosing to use a three photo design doesn't necessarily make sense if you don't know what the story is made, the story only has one photo, and again we're limiting ourselves or limiting the stories we're telling by not starting with the idea of what we want to talk about what we want to tell. Okay, um, so something else I want to say is there are people who are graphic designers who are very, very talented, very their pages look like magazine layouts and and that's great our pages in our own albums don't have to look like magazine layouts again when we're looking at our mission statement about what we want accomplish with our pages, realizing that we can do our thing is amateurs and create pages that are pretty it's, just like you don't have to be a professional chef who went to the court on blue to cook a nice dinner for your family. You don't have to be a train graphic designer to scrapbook effectively, so hopefully these next few layouts will earth design ideas will help you, so I called design number one ducks in a row and I like this one because it's great for multiple photos as we were talking about earlier, it can also show progression over time, so if you've got the the firefighter, shoot rubber boots at age two in the then at age five and then at age seven it's a linear progression and it works really well to tell stories that have a time aspect to them and also you can vary the size of the photos with this design to give photos more prominence than others and it's really basic it's just having your photos in a row and it feels natural to people because there's a strong since it's got that horizontal, I feel you could do it vertically as well, but I typically do this horizontally and our eyes are trained to look from left to right it flows naturally it's not we're not jumping all over the place there's no question about where that eye goes first in the page it's easy to put titles on the page on dh it's easy to embellish on top of because it's got a strong basis it feels it's fields grounded on your page and again you can see here I use different size photos the one on the left this is showing progression in time it's my nephew and my daughter and on the left there they're a little bit older on the right they're younger that's I just arranged it in that way because of the way they were looking the direction they were looking but I wanted to come compare them and their same seats at different ages and there's room for the story there's room for storytelling down at the bottom it works nicely on a twelve by twelve page and it's just a simple design that you khun dresses like the little bat black dress you can dress it up just sit down add more stuff depending on what you wanted tio here's another example we've got three photos we all went out to dinner. One of our family goals for the summer was to go to this restaurant called the ninety nine it's like a boston area like an institution and we had never been it just like a chili's or something like that but we have never been so was on our list their bucket list for the summer so I did a page about us at the ninety nine and again, it's easy. I mean, it feels like it's a grounded page and it's easy to add little bits of story and play with it and it's just really simple to move those those photos trim them to the size to fit on the page and again, great for twelve by twelve pages and you saw this one before the c s I massachusetts and you can see I used the four by six photos in a vertical format here. So again, you can play with this format. Lots of room for story down at the bottom, I basically turned the page. We've got borders on each side rather than at the top of the body or in the bottom, but again, really, um, a really simple approach to a page design. So if you've got multiple photos, it's a great way to get more than one photo on a page. Does this look familiar? Have you guys used just the kind of a linear it's? A pretty basic one? Okay designed number two I call this one the inside out. We've got a nice little x ray there thiss one is also good for multiple photos and it's it's great for that collage effect on, and you can also use a lot of different photo sizes for this. And it's also wonderful for twelve by twelve or eight and a half by eleven pages and for those of you who are new to scrap, booking the standard sizes for scrapbooks or twelve by twelve or eight and a half by eleven now you'll find albums that might very eight by a six by six. But the standard sizes are twelve by twelve and eight and a half by eleven so the inside out basically starts at the centre of the page. You start building the page from the inside out, so you got three photos that you want to use or a journaling block you're working from the inside and lining them up against each other. You can only leave space between them, they don't have to be flush against each other, but it does give more of a collage effect, and it draws the eye to the centre of the page, and this page right here was talking about stuffing the turkey. The one thing I won't do on on thanksgiving morning is stuff the turkey and our our our turkey had a name, his name was norbert, and so it got the kids, they're just playing with the turkey, kinsey's, making him fly, and anyway, I tell a little bit about how I love to cook, but I hate definite turkey, so I got the kids to do it. So you just start from from the paint, you just put him up against each other and build out from there as many pieces if you have, you can vary the sizes you can put little pieces of of, ah like tags or card stock, a pad and paper in between to build up the collage it's just a fun, more eclectic look, and it had actually, I think, has a lot of energy to it because I tze going in different places through the page, although it's clear where the centre of the page is here's another example of the inside out, this one's called puppy love, and I made that one for our layout a day challenge this month and the prompt for the month was puppy love, and you could talk about an animal from your youth or ah, crush that you had on somebody and I'd already scrapped with the shaun cassidy thing, so I decided to scrap our our kids instead. Our excuse me, our pets when I was a child instead of my little sister up there at the top with some shots of our dogs and you'll see different size photos, you can trim them down so you don't have to use a four by six or or anything like that. And then talked a little bit about the dogs down there in the lower corner again it's great on twelve by twelve because they're typically is a lot of room for journaling as well. How about this collage? This is an older style I think when people used to do color blocking do you remember that where like every inch of the page was covered that was kind of back in like the nineties but it's still I think you could make it look really fresh. I see some people here notting have you guys do you like a more linear do you tend to like more of ah eclectic and for what do you tip please like very lynn linear on I've migrated towards more of an eclectic look yeah, yeah that's great beneath I do whatever I feel like that sometimes is linear sometimes it's a collage sometimes right? It's whoever inspires me right? So you're happy to play yeah tracy, what do you d'oh? I'm more eclectic I tilted photos and that's a collage and things on top of other things right layers and yeah, I can't really do win here and here yeah, okay exact opposite a it's very precise you mean simple, huh? That's good that's good and that's you know the beauty of it is our our scrapbooks should not look alike I was cringe a little bit inside when I see people of the page kids that they get where they tell him exactly where to put everything on the page and like that's the same pattern people like your animals you remember grin you don't because you're due a too young for grandma do they really where you match like them purple do they really purple monkey on top two purple monkey in the bottom it's for people who have knows fashion sense whatsoever so you just match up the tags and you know what goes in flood so that's how I feel about the page kits and it's very comptel pew make pages really quickly but how can my my pages shouldn't look exactly like yours were not telling the same story. So anyway interesting angela what about you? What do you typically you I think I have over evolved to a more linear just because, um it looks when it looks overwhelming and there's like so much stuff and later write whatever I don't it's distracting right? Right like stuff like I do stuff like this all the time. Yes. Yeah, I tend to be if you I mean even my eclectic ones are pretty clean oh, jane, what about you? I have no idea I do what? Well, like I said, I use a lot of of template, so I pick a template that is pleasing and sometimes it's a lot sometimes it's linear sometimes it was let's tactics I would be able to play that's the beauty of it too is that we can have every page in our album doesn't have to be the same style um the next designer want to show you though the one that I probably go to more than any other because I do scrapbook more eight and a half by eleven, then twelve by twelve and I call it the big photo could be the big bertha and it's great for single photo pages and particularly when the photo doesn't necessarily match what you're you're writing about and I do have a lot of pages like that there's typically tons of room for journaling, especially on a twelve by twelve page you can do this on an eight and a half by eleven or twelve by twelve and they're also easy and fast to create and when I'm doing those thirty minutes pages this is what I turned to again and again and again and it becomes part of my style and people recognize my pages partly because of the style used and partly you know, handwriting and other things like that but if it feels good to you it's not you know we talk about getting in a rut all my pages look the same well, are you happy with them? Then it's great it's a it's a routine it's a style if you're unhappy with them and they feel boring then you're in a rut and that's how you feel about it that helps you determine whether you're in that right or if it's just the style that you prefer some people dress like what is it don't donna karan who wears black all black every single day that's her style and you know she might get bored with the one day and change it up but right now that's her style and it works for her um so just you you're the same way if it's working for you, don't worry about it if if you're starting to feel bored with it, then think about changing things up and here's here's a mine so big photo number one this was a a page that I created for past lay out a day challenge and I was telling the story of my older daughter's name and I had actually never scrapbook that before her name is kinsey and she was named from for a character in a detective serious because I love reading mysteries the kinsey millhone syria's by sue grafton so I talked about a is for alibi is the first um first book in the series and this is a great example of finding a photo on the internet because how do you take a picture of somebody's name I mean that's a little I mean I could have taken a picture of her cubby at school or picture of her as a baby, but I really wanted to get at the inspiration for her name, so I took the book cover and printed that out and there's computer generated journaling and in that here's another one fame if you look back it's basically the same design but I tilted in a little bit and I wrote the journaling versus versus computer generating it very few embellishments on this page but because of the strong pattern paper and the eye catching letters, it doesn't look blanket doesn't look bear and those are some of the tips I'll be talking about later when we talk about how to scrapbook more quickly because a lot of people get bogged down and how much they need on the page I used products that take up a lot of design wait so then I don't have to use a lot of little bits and pieces to fill it in. In fact, with that background, if I use a lot more, it would look to me too busy so there's just another example of big photo number two and then big photo number three again the same basic design but they look totally different and if they were in my album they got every page looks the same they actually very different because of the products I use and because of the way I add other elements to the pages well so this making sense to people what's going on on the internet what are they saying? I'm sure they have something that I think silver is very impressive you can tell a story on a single page noted doubles spring that's an interesting I wouldn't have even occurred to me that is resonating yeah, I'm interested in we have a lot of people asking questions about the formats the page size is that something that you want to get into right now just eight and a half eleven by eleven versus twelve by twelve we have all over the place yeah, I mean for instance this question comes from paper princess and they say when he used a pocket page in a twelve by twelve opposite how do you feel the backside? I've thought about just cutting up another twelve by twelve sheet and popping it into the pockets on the backside, but to do that thing I just assumed you'd have it on my sides, right? Just one of those things that I don't worry about it, right? I don't worry about if I were to do like I've got some pocket pages in here I think what she's talking about is just to demonstrate here is if I have a pocket page and then I have a twelve by twelve spread or page here what do I put on the reverse of the pocket page what I would do it's not something that I that I ever even worried about I would just put either the pattern papers she's mentioning to see if you just want something there I'd add in just random photos that we're talking about you have great photos but they don't necessarily have a strong story to tell like the garden photos or something like that, I would just put some photos in there or you know, just leave it blank tell there comes a time where you like cheese I really could create a page that tells the story and I only need one side of a pocket page it doesn't have to be filled up right away could skip that go on to your twelve by twelve here and move through your book that way and then come back later and that's another reason I don't necessarily worry about chronology because I'm gonna give you just can really tie yourself up in your book being with all the details like that so ok good you guys doing good here? Any questions, comments, concerns, compliments were talking about the pages looking the same and the reality is anybody that looks at him, they're not looking, we care about the stuff, right? They don't care about it I mean honestly like my when my kids look at their books they they don't care that I used blue paper instead of green or you know I mean they really don't right they're looking at the pictures they don't when my family looks at this what do they what do you think they're really gonna pay attention to what you wrote a story the photo and story and then maybe one of them might say oh that's a cool flag you put up there but overall they're not goingto ask why I did this versus that they just start and trace you were talking about I think sally and ask you if there was a motif that you like to use in your book you were talking about cameras mine is arrows arrows and stars and I love using them and they don't necessarily mean mean anything here but they mean something to me because to me they always show direction and movement and it's just it's just something I like for you photography obviously is in here in your career and in your family um so on its own that arrow doesn't mean anything but when you see the arrow repeated through my work then it becomes meaningful so sometimes the pages tio together me more than they do separately as well but you're right people aren't going to say t she is that paper from probable block no no what comes through the story in the love and the emotion all right, let's get on to scrap listing scuff lifting is one of my favorite favorite techniques for quick scrapbooking and we're going to have a whole segment later on about we have ways to speed up our scrapbooking because ofthe sometimes I hear people say I don't scrapbook more because it takes too long or I scrapbook but I want to get one page done you know, a month because it takes me twenty hour or whatever, so we're going to talk about that later but I wanted to do a segment on scrap lifting in and of itself just because it's such an awesome technique and a lot of people aren't familiar with it or they think they're doing something wrong if they do it so basically scrapped lifting what would you say scrap lifting is jennifer if I said that to you, well, I know what it is you're really looking at a design in a magazine or online or and or a friend's layout and just lifting the elements that you like about it, you know, copying them right? Exactly. So it's like copying part portions are finding inspiration might be a nicer with say it and other people's work and it's awesome because because of many reasons, some of the reasons I love it is that if you're a newer scrapbook er you could take a page that you already like and figure out what you like about it and use that on your own page so just like when I was remodeling my kitchen are designer had me go through magazines and pull out pictures of kitchens I liked and then he asked me what do you like about that well I like the handles on the cabinet door what do you like about this when I like the finish of the wood what do you like about this I like the marble on the countertop and as a result I used the pieces that I like to build something that was uniquely mine but was inspired from many different places now scrap lifting some people think there's something wrong with it because it does sometimes feel like copying like if I see tracy's tracy's layout online or I see cindy's layout online I say oh my gosh I'm totally lifting that that might seem like I'm copying but if it's going in my scrapbook most most people put their pictures and ideas out there because they want to be inspired they want to be inspiring to someone else so if I sent cindy in email I said oh my gosh I'm totally lifting that lay out you did about yeah yeah I think this is your son at the fair you'd be like oh thanks tag me so I can see it right so we're going to talk about attribution a little bit but copying is something that artists have done, designers have done for years and years of how the master's usedto learn they would go and sit in front of great works of art and copy them tow, learn the lines. And when I was a newer scrapbook, er being able to look at something in a magazine or something in a gallery that I knew I liked already and imitate that on my own page was so comforting because I wasn't in, but, you know, in the wilderness anymore was like having a map that I could follow, and that could be true for sketches. A lot of people like sketches as well for that that reason it gives them something to start with said is staring at the blank page, they've got inspiration. Many companies have blog's and galleries because they want people to get inspiration from them. So it's not just the design that you can you can scrap lift you, khun scrap with colors you might see, somebody used colors together that you would have never thought to put together, and that might be the element that gets you started past the block that you're facing. You could also scrap left the design as we talked about, oh my gosh, I love how she put this here, and she put that down there, you can scrap with the design, the storytelling so if you saw some of the pages I did and you say oh my gosh that page where lane did the numbers of text she received in the laundry and edited a I'm totally lifting that um or the voice that it's told in james page about baseball but there's a lot of people watching I think I need to do a page about my love for baseball or basketball or whatever it is or my hatred because there's a lot of people are like I can't watch another football game but anyway you know you you flip it and make it your own the title I often times have seen titles that I'm like that's a cool title and it's spurs a story in my own mind that might be completely different from what they created but it's something that I just it resonated with me so I want to use it on my page the photos style I mean who was not inspired by katrina? Yes hey it wasn't there at least one photo that you said I got to take a photo like that right at least one exactly the perspective the bowling alley or just you know that's lift that could be considered scrap lifting I guess photo lifting right embellishments a lot of people say I want to use the embellishments I love the embellishments I don't know how to do those little clusters that are so cute you can copy that from somebody else on your page use it with the supplies you have and create your own thing there are times when you want a lift at whole page you just are practicing or it's a challenge or something like that and you want to reap produce the page entirely but with your own photos in your own products that's ok too what I do want to talk about those attribution because I think it is really important to give people credit when you do find inspiration from them if it's just something simple like like oh they used a button in the corner of the photo to hold it down or something like that that's pretty minor but if you're taking if I'm as I'm just lifting your page about the trip to the fair and it's recognizably inspired by by cindy's work I would definitely be giving her credit not in my own albums but if I uploaded it to my blogger a gallery in my own album I actually might put a little sticky note on the back side and just say this was inspired by this this such layout so if I ever did upload it I would know that it was because again I feel so strongly about that but if you're just doing it for your own album no attribution you'd have to put down in the corner of the page inspired by the message board galleries and blog's definitely definitely tagged the person in fact, I would I would ask them if it would be oh, ok, sometime or if they've shared it online already. I consider it fair game to be inspired by if it was shared in another manner like I saw it in their own scrapbook and then I wanted to copy that and I wanted to upload it. I would I would ask first and just ninety nine point nine percent of time people are honored by it, but definitely just tagging them and saying, you know, if you share it on flicker tagging are linking back to their original photo. Tracy, do you have any thoughts on that attribution? Because this is something that as a designer, you might, uh, have some some ideas I would just always say link back I mean, I people scrapped with me and I don't need to be tagged, but if I'm linked back and I see the the traffic coming from someone else's work right, then I'll probably go and comments on their album, but I would say the biggest thing for me with the link back, yeah, everything all it's a courtesy that day will definitely appreciate because it gives them that traffic back and it's just it's a nice thing to dio if you are going for publication, do not lift somebody else's stuff I would just say no again if it's a color combination or a button, but when you submit something for publication, they're expecting it to be your original work. And if you have any question at all about it, I would check with them because the worst thing is to have your your layout picked up by online magazine or print magazine and then so and so designer says you well, you should totally lifted my stuff that with my work, you don't want to even go down that path. So if you have a question about it, if it's to cause, ask somebody who is in the industry or who's been published before what they think email me, I'd be glad to take a look at it. Ask your editor you're just doing yourself a favor. You don't wantto get a reputation as a z a as a thief because that's really what people consider that to be your publishing and getting credit for their work. So I wanted to share some strapless for you, and I did get permission from the lovely laura vegas. She created this layout over here on the left about what was currently going on in her life, and I just loved it because, you know, I love these snapshot pages and I lifted a lot. From her and that was the challenge here was to lift this layout, but still there are some changes there some buttons for you there, sally, but basically just talking about what's going on in my life and I even found the same dye cut from from an online like silhouette gallery and and made it my own. So, um, I just thought, why improve on perfection? I thought her layout was gorgeous and I wanted to do the same thing for myself. So I did that there was a superfund went toe lift, and I probably will go back and do it again again. You can see some changes where I stood down the page and use some different products, but it's very I mean, obviously if you saw these two layouts, there would be no doubt in your mind that they were related to each other. Here's one where I lifted from a piece of art, I saw this on pinterest and I just loved the textures and the shapes and just the distressed look, so I took that background. I used a stencil to draw those little I don't even like turkish so there's public from name for them, but cut them out of pattern paper and then distressed him in a similar manner and use that as my inspiration, so I have lifted from something that wasn't even scrapbooking related. And you can do that if you see a design in a magazine or a color combo, open up your eyes. Anthropologie store window his right before getting design ideas. I mean, they're just awesome. So and it was just a cute little story about my boy here's. A photo. Again, I loved the textures and the different sized circles, and so I created a page where the background was different textures and different circles. Now, this is one where you might not look at it and think they're related. This one. Definitely. You would see the relationship there. The next one? Not necessarily. Because even if they were next to each other, you might not see that. That relationship. But I know where I got it. I got no, I got it right from from this idea. Here, you can scrap. Lift yourself. So this was a cool idea that I have learned from noel hyman of paper clipping where you bracket your photos and it was taking, like a little florist, your tag or something, cutting it in half and putting it at the top in the bottom, and just help serve as a frame for your photos. So I got the idea from her, I created the page on the left of my nephew and my daughter, and then I thought, I like that I'm going to do that again, so I actually lifted myself went from two photos toe one photo it's obviously a different style in many ways. One photo I didn't have the journaling block there, but you can see the relationship there, so if you find something that you're doing that you like, do it again, every page does not have to be completely new and different. If you have a design you like, use the design again if you have colors you like, use the colors again and again. He's probably won't be in the album right next to each other, but even if they were, who cares? They're telling two different stories it's my album, it's, like we're in, you know who doesn't wear the same thing two days in a row? Sometimes I feel I feel like some days I'm wearing the same thing, even if I have washed it and between, I've got my uniform and it helps us get dressed, so it helps me scrapbook more quickly line of those whirly gigs on that this's the digital versus realism compete really dig something even stuck on the page. Ok, that is actually a an easel is using to prop up the picture so I can take a photo of yes, I want, because that looks really e option on my page it's funny, because I just don't even see him anymore, but I was like, really gigs and that civilian terms way would normally side do the deck e yeah, I want you to understand may thank you. Okay, so anything else that scrap lifting wise that that you've done in the past or anyways, that you found to to find inspiration from other elements, especially outside of scrap when you send your that in your head over them? Yeah, there's took a great way to push myself into a different direction and to really challenge myself, I have a really distinctive style. People tell me all the time and know what your layout unless I'm lifting somebody else's, and that has expose me to a lot more techniques, a lot more styles, a lot more ways to use product. Yeah, there's tons of inspiration yeah, yeah, there's so many creative people out there and they're sharing their work for free typically online and whether you go to youtube to find inspiration on how to use tim holt is sprayings oh our, you're going tio some kind of gallery or if you have a favorite manufacturer and they show you fourteen different ways to use their kids for that like gossamer blue has a gallery to see how other people have used the same materials and again sometimes it feels like it might be not story focused but if you're finding a new way to to tell your story and you're learning new things face it we're doing this versus writing in journals because we like the stuff we liked the design that's fun if it isn't fun just you know, just use a photo album right on the back of the photo, but we're doing this because we love this stuff and I love to always be learning more things, especially stretching our supplies that we already have that's really fun too very, very helpful when I have taken a whole trip and I have all these pictures just to scrap lift somebody's whole album how they've done this six by six is so many different ways I can go in and scrapped with that's like, oh, ok, they got the six by six this way they've got the six by six that way and before I know it, my whole album's done, you know and there how they've designed their photos and that's you know, when you have lots and lots of photos from a trip or a vacation or something like that it's time saving that right thing this time saying I'm sure definitely, that is your personal album, no one's going to know where you got the idea or whatever. We were at a crop one night and a girl was had a picture of her daughter, and she was scrapping in and she's like, I just don't know what to say, and then we flip through a magazine and there was a block of text that was perfect, and she read it in a major cry, and she goes, is it wrong to copy? And I go, no, you're going to put that in there, your daughter's going to read it some day, and I think this is how my mom feels, whether it's your words or not, if that's how you feel you some, right? Completely I mean that's, why quotes are so popular if somebody else that said it a song lyric, somebody else has already said it and it's got an emotional connection use it definitely that's great, good. Okay, onto products. So what do you really need? And he said, well, how exactly? We're going to go through my must have list, and then I'm gonna ask you all what you would add in there, thinking back to the time that you were beginning skeptical because there are so many options and it really can be the reason a lot of people don't scrapbook because they get everyone welled either they think it's too expensive they go to the scrap book store they go to the craft store and they think I've got to spend five hundred dollars to create one little album for my daughter for graduation that's insane and it in a way it is but you don't have tio it doesn't have to be expensive also, I heard that because I was doing some back and forth on my facebook page just to give a plug for that facebook dot com slash lay out a day we have lots of conversations like this about scrapbooking I would love to have you join us there but he's asking people you know, why don't you scrapbook? What what kind of gets in your way and often times it was the products they didn't have any storage space, they said, because they see these rooms rooms online and I think I don't have a room to devote to scrap booking all my kids are still help. Jennifer was saying hurts the middle middle child and moved out so now she had space I started, you know, in a little little container and then it expanded from there and I am in a room now, but you don't have to do that you could, especially if your digital scrapbook er you don't need tons and tons of space um also, when people look at pages, they think more is more that I've gotto ad, I've gotta have the enamel dots. I've gotta have all these specialty stamps, I've gotta have the co pick markers and every color I've gotta have this in this in this, and actually I believe that more is less, they're less is more less is more that's what I believe because we can get overwhelmed so easily when suddenly you've got four if you have one pen, you know which pen to use if you've got forty seven pens, suddenly you've got to decide which of the forty seven pens you're going to use, and then you're upset because it doesn't match perfectly. I mean, the same goes with in pads and everything else, so if we limit ourselves suddenly we become more creative because we have less to work with its it's a nice paradox and, uh oh, there's something old, something new. I just wanted to refer to the idea that oftentimes we feel like we can't use the older stuff because we're not seeing it online or we think it dates us somehow, but as you've seen in my layout I had paper from a company that went out of business in two thousand eight, so it's at least six years old, if not older and it's, not it's still paper I love if you love it, use it, it's, just like if you bought a pair of boots and they're stuck still a pair that you love ten years later, why wouldn't you wear him? So here is the big question when you are thinking about adding something to your page or buying it for your collection, does this support or detract from my story? Oftentimes I'll sit down to scrap book and there's a product that is so cute little stickers have little sayings, and I think I'll put that there, but then I think you know what? It doesn't support the story, it says, like, you know, one hundred percent authentic and it's super cute, but the page isn't even about that, so I have to refrain from using it because it's not supporting the story, and if I add something on that doesn't support the only option, is that it's detracting from the story, and if I'm about telling the stories, then I need to be very intentional about what I'm adding to the pages, so just question to ask yourself, if you're at that point where I'm embellishing, should I add this? Ask your does it support or does it detract it could support because I've got the perfect word on it or it could support because you're using photo corners that frame the photo and bring the attention into the the photo or this story or use an arrow I showed you the layout the other day of my son's text to me and it said awkward which was the title the page I used an arrow on that page two point two where he said awkward because it helps support the story so any piece of embellishment can support story but it can also detract us like jewelry on your outfit it could add to your outfit or it could be really distracting you just need to ask that question so without further ado card stock card stock is a heavier weight of paper comes in a zillion different colors and it just gives a good firm base for your page and whether you use blue or white green purple doesn't matter you can buy sets of card stock like this one I find that I tend to use more basic colors I don't try to match my card stock to the color of the grass and the photo I don't try to match the brown to my daughter's brown eyes I don't do anything like that at all I think about the story if it's a positive uplifting lifting exciting story then I might choose a brighter color card stock depending on what other elements I'm using on the page but you can't go wrong with some basic colors in the background that that blend with the other things rather than compete with them if you get neon green you're making a certain statement and it's ok to make that statement you have to know what that statement is it's having an impact and he thought that was like to be shouted out first adhesive is anything that's going to allow you to stick the stuff to something else and there are again dozens of different kinds of it, he said. If you walk down the adhesive aisle at your scrapbook store, you've got tape runners glue dots, liquid glue, everything and glossy accents everything under the sun and fourteen different brands of each one so it's really a personal preference when I started scrapbooking I used photo tab does anybody remember that they're like little squares of it? He said with the blue backing on and they were a pain in the rear now I tend to go for a tape runner and we've got we've got some on the tables here I like the permanent versus the reposition herbal I've found that the reposition double doesn't always hold really well and also it keeps me from making too many choices if I know it's permanent it's down that I'm not going to go back later and try to tweak it too much there's also double sided tape there's glue sticks laurie gentle, who is the owner of gossamer blue, uses liquid glue for all her scrapbooking, which is actually pretty unusual, but it's, what works for her? So you've got to find what works for you to start. I would go for some kind of tape runner permanent, and then I would also pick up a pack of glue docks there little the little dots, and they're great for holding heavier items like buttons or tags or ribbon on your page. And then you can branch out from there into how many other zillion kinds of adhesive it's like black shoes you know there's a pair for everything there's, a there's adhesive for everything journaling pens this is the american craft there's, a precision pen there pretty popular among scrap bookers I like them. I also tend to use just a plain black felt tip a lot of the time or a blue felt tip I don't get too fancy, I also use sharpies. I'm gonna be talking a little bit later about archival safety and how that impacts the longevity of the scrapbook pages were creating I don't up front, I don't worry about it too much, but this is a pen that is safe for for scrap booking and it's pretty readily available, too. Letter stickers are super fun, and I know that there's lots of options for di cutting as well where you can actually cut out the letters and put things together. But as far as a basic scrapbooking goes, letter stickers are a great place to start and then if you decide you want to move into some of the dye cutting, those tend to be more expensive. Take up more space, so I'm giving you right now just the basics letter stickers come in a number of different colors and styles. This is a set from simple stories that I love because you get all those colors together and they they're a basic font and you have lots of vowels oftentimes you run out of the vowels and you find yourself I called my guy bring where you're cutting in and ate into an s things like that pattern paper is also superfund. This is from simple stories as well. I'm a big dotson strike person and you confined pattern paper that themed from anchors to baseball. Tio parks tau whatever you want but it's it's just a personal preference if you like to do themed pages like you're doing a page about parking, you want to use some park themed pay a paper that's great, you don't have to match your paper to the story that's being told in fact I rarely do that because I don't like to invest in something that's going to serve a single use if I buy a specific pack of pattern paper that I could only uses and pages for the park, I like to have more flexibility, so I'll pick a more basic basic pattern page protectors they're just what they found like they protect your pages in your albums, they come in twelve by twelve sizes, they come in all different sizes in the pac that you've gotten here today in the studio it's, a pack from snap studios, simple stories and it's got I think this one includes this might be all twelve by twelve this one's all twelve by twelve pages, but they also come in eight and a half by eleven they come in the pocket pages that we've talked about before simple stories, I love their products, they sit with the album that we have that we'll be talking about in just a second, and you can mix and match you. Can you get a twelve by twelve album and put a half page eight and a half by eleven pages, and they're put twelve by twelve pages in there? You don't have to select just one size too scrapbook with forever that's, why I really love the simple stories quality and the versatility it gives me and the album and this is like my favorite is like ah, this is also from simple stories you notice I mention them a lot there one of my favorite favorite companies to use their supplies, the colors just work really well for me, the quality of the products, they work together really well, and they're just good people also, and I love I love the company so it's simple stories, they're available on a lot of the major online and in person brick and mortar scrapbook stores as well confined them simple stories dot com and this is a twelve by twelve album, but as I mentioned, you can put all different page sizes in here. So in this one, I've got eight and a half by eleven pages and you see they fit on the same rings. I do a lot of eight and a half by eleven I also have the pocket pages that we'll be talking more about later and they fit in here really nicely so I can mix and match and then you can also put the twelve by twelve is in here as well. I don't have any twelve by twelve and here now, but I have the page protectors in here, so that's really fun to be able to it's just more options, and I'm all about having options for myself and giving those to you. Paper trimmer if you try to scrap book without a paper tumor in just a pair of scissors, you can get frustrated it's very difficult to get a straight line, so I really suggest investing in a paper trimmer you don't have to spend fifty or one hundred dollars on one of the ones we have here are are very decent, very portable. They have an arm that it's new, so it's sticking an arm that swings out, so that allows you to go out to twelve inches and trim from there so you might want to trim your photos. You might want to be trimming pattern paper it's just it's so much easier, so much quicker, and you'll find a million other uses for it at home. My kids put in my paper tomorrow, all the time for school projects and things like that so it's a great thing to have around my favorite one is the rotary blade, one from fisk, er's and that's shown on the screen right here. So once you go from there, the sky is really the limit, and you can add on anything and everything from there, and it can be hard when you start trying to decide what you're going to use so that's, why I love kids and kids are basically like having a personal shopper for scrap booking supplies and everything's pre coordinated it comes in a nice little package once a month I have a subscription they send it to me it's got card stock will be going through this whole thing after our break but everything's pre coordinated it helps you find all the cool stuff you don't have to worry is that green on the screen in my computer the right green to match the dots they do it for you and my favorite kid has got some are blue and that's what we're working with today and typically there's just enough to get me through about a month or so of scrapbooking and so I'm not investing in twentieth sheets of something it's it's enough to make about probably I would say I get about six to eight layouts out of a month's kit and it all works together it's fantastic! She does a great job of playing together just I want to do one quick word on archival safety before we before I hand it over to you guys but basically we scrapbook most of the time because we want our work to live on after us in some way shape or form. Some people are very concerned with archival safety and they want to make sure that everything they put into their album is acid free lignin free I don't even know what lignin is but it's not supposed to go in your scrapbooks apparently I most of the scrapbook supplies that you can purchase our archive really safe if you're adding ticket stubs, a receipt, a parking ticket, something like that, those are probably not our acid free. You can put them in a little separate page protectors there spray you can get to spray on them to make sure they don't damage your pages. But my opinion is that I would rather tell the story I want to tell, realizing that two hundred years from now it might be a little bit afraid, hidden hard to read, but they'll probably always also have some really cool technologies and restoration processes to bring it back, because some of the things I love is looking at my mom's old scrapbook and seeing how it's kind of worn over time, and I'm ok with that, and that, again is a personal choice as to you how much it's like transfats, how much do you want this to be a part of your consciousness? And some people are very, very concerned. Some people are not concerned at all, and for me, I figure most of this stuff I'm using is archival e safe and other stuff might damage a little bit over time, but based on the number of scrapbook pages I've done, I think we're pretty good state.