Crop Corner

Another great online idea for a mini book. I just love the creativity and step-by-step scrapbooking instructions.

If you’re like me, you enjoy peeking into others crop rooms to see how they organize their scrapbooking space. Here’s a small crop room that looks like it could be in anyone’s house.

I just re-organized my room at home as well. I bought a ton of coordinated boxes to stash supplies in. It’s not really picture-worthy yet though. It’s still just a table and a set of shelves from Ikea sharing space with the guest bedroom.

If/when we move - I have my sights set on a better layout!

Many classes and tips about photography, talk about improving the fundamentals of how to take better photos.

I was inspired by this article by Jim Altengarten, an educator in photography, in which he talks about ten principles of how to take better photos.

His top 10 photography tips include:

1. Believing is seeing
2. Take five or more shots of any scene
3. Keep your mind open
4. Use every lens in your bag
5. Photograph your values
6. Use one of the seven exposure values that are available
7. Be childlike
8. Stay out late… get up early
9. Know when to pull the trigger
10. Practice, practice, practice

What I liked about the article was that he really made me think about how to get in the right frame of mind to capture a scene. Although I’m still a one lens kinda-gal, and I fumble with the manual settings on my camera, I still took away some valuable lessons.

Over the years, I’ve been doing genealogical research about my family, hoping to someday find the time to put together the stories and old pictures for future generations to enjoy. As a girl, I remember spending hours pouring over my grandmother’s old photo albums with the black pages, white writing, and picture after picture of my mother, her siblings, and cousins who’ve names have long since been forgotten.

I enjoyed reading Jane Swanson’s article about Scrapbooking a Secret. She tells a great story about her great-grandfather, a secret he had, and how she captured it in a layout.

I hope through my research to be able to uncover some of these same types of secret stories about my own ancestors.

ScrapbookBytes website has some great tips on how to use Photoshop to make digital elements for your pages.

For example - check out their tutorial on how to use Photoshop to make RickRack.

Also worth a look is how to create plaid paper from striped paper.

What I like most about the site (from a scrapbooking perspective), is that the tips and techniques are relevant to scrapbooking itself, not just vanilla image manipulation.

One of the great things about digital cameras is the instant gratification they give - you can immediately look to see how the picture came out - and whether you need to reshoot.

With kids - it’s almost a necessity! Also, the theory goes, that you only have to pay for the good shots. Well, why is it August and I just sent some of my 2006 photos to be printed?

I guess it’s no different than the rolls of film that sat in the drawer for months before they got developed. It just feels like the extra step in selecting what pictures to have printed slows down the process… Oh well…

How do you avoid having your pictures of your summer memories end up with a different fate than 80% of all film developed? Get them out of their development envelopes and into albums where they can be enjoyed.

In this article about preserving your vacation memories, tips are given about what to do before, during, and after your vacation to capture the memories you want.

I save and categorize scraps of paper. I just can’t bear to throw them away.

ScrapJazz has published some layout ideas on how to use all those scraps of paper you’ve been collecting.

Pre-made templates can be a quick and fun way to put together pages. This tutorial will show you how to use layered templates in Photoshop, adding papers and photos. To add the background paper, open desired paper & holding the shift key to center, drag paper into layered file. Rename layer to background and move to the bottom of the layers palette. Delete the original background template layer. To add papers to the shapes, open new paper and drag over holding the shift key to center. Place paper above the desired shape layer, in example Layer 11 is the yellow paper to be masked by Layer 2.

I love finding blogs of other scrapbookers where they take the time to give instruction on a particular technique.

Here is a nice description of how to use chalk and clear embossing ink to get more use out of your rubber stamps.