Mele Kalikimaka from the Far Side of the Sea

Mele Kalikimaka! This is a page from my 2009 journal.


Far side of the sea, originally uploaded by Trish Nonaka.
A few days ago we went dpwntown to view the huge gingerbread display and wandered in to a gift shop where I found this beautiful shell enameled in my favorite colors. It had to come home with me of course!

Yesterday I remembered how much it reminded me of the sketch I had done so I was anxious to combine them and share a bit of Hawaii with you for the holidays!

TA-DA!

FINALLY got my wireless printer set up so that we can both print from it wirelessly!!! A seemingly small accomplishment but HUGE from my perspective! Already printed a pedigree chart and family group sheet for R's genealogy! This also means the scanner is now located next to my work table so its easier to scan old photos and new art work.

Another small task I accomplished today was getting my Log Your Memory logbook ready for 2012. Much simpler this year since I used it in 2011 and had the tabs and dividers all done. And this time I opted to get the printed version instead of printing it myself.

LOAD Completed

LOAD officially ended 30 Sept but our instructor just posted this cute little medal for us so I thought I would add it here and give you my final count of pages completed!

-Completed one chipboard mini-book
-Completed 47 (YES FORTY-SEVEN) layouts in one month

YAY ME!! So here is my medal:

Another Trip Documented

After completing the title for our trip to Yellowstone Mount Rushmore, I decided to finish up my scrapbook pages for that trip. We went on this trip way back in 2000 and I've had photos attached to pages for quite some time but never added any journaling or memorabilia to them making them more than a little boring to look at. I won't say they are the best pages I've ever done (they aren't) but they are done and I am content with them.
These pages make a second completed chapter in what will eventually become "Our Trips with Grandparents" album and that is pretty exciting to me. I have also decided to add 8 pages to my LOAD count (even though I finished more pages than that I feel like I really only completed these 8. Either way I am happy they are done and in our Places We Go album (Vol 2).

LOAD Progress Report

I am SO excited with the progress I am making with LayOutADay (LOAD)! Of course I am not following it to the letter but have adapted it to get some projects done that I've either dropped the ball on or just plain forgot about. As of yesterday we were to have completed 17 layouts. Here is my count:
-Completed one chipboard mini-book for Caity's Prom
-Completed 36 layouts that documented a huge trip of the East Coast we did with Randy's parents back in 2006. For now this is an album in its own right but will become a section of a larger album that includes all the various trips we have taken with his parents over the years. I am thrilled with it and am already working on a second trip!
-Completed 1 layout for "Our Trip to Yellowstone Mount Rushmore"

No matter how you want to count the mini-book (as 1 layout or as 8 pages) I am still ahead of things and oh-so-very-happy with my progress!

Some lessons learned: I don't really LOVE paper scrapping (unless it is for a specific SPECIAL layout)
1) it is much harder to get color matches
2) you cannot resize photos
3) sharing layouts is difficult and requires additional steps of photographing the layouts, uploading them to both your computer and a photo sharing site
4) there are few ways to batch process pages making the entire process far slower than digital. Doing one layout a day means getting out your supplies, working on that page, putting everything away and then repeating that process every single day.

Result: Patti and I decided we can do this more efficiently with a few of our own tweaks applied to LOAD. We created a checklist of sorts and hope to give it a trial run sometime in October as we work on getting the remainder of our LOM category drawers emptied out.

Digital photo repair

My MIL wrote in my dh's childhood album that this was her favorite photo of him. I have to agree he is pretty stinking cute! But the photo was badly damaged as you can see.

I decided to try and repair it a bit in PSE8. Here is my result. Not bad huh?

So this is the LO I created for it. I hope she likes it! I know I do. What do you think?

LOAD week 3

Still hard at work organizing digi stuff but took the time to work through the LOAD assignments for this week.

Homework Assignment: Be a detective in your own scrapbooking. Think about the kinds of pages you’re creating, and the kinds of pages you’d LIKE to create. Since taking Library of Memories(LOM),now known as Finding Photo Freedom (FPF) for the past few years I enjoy scrapbooking SO much more than ever before. I've taken some design classes and found the style I like and for the most part I stick with it. I still like to try different things now and again but know the look I like for my scrapping pages.
Layout Assignment: Create a layout in the way that you “normally” scrapbook, whatever that is. Here is one I whipped out this morning using items from Jessica Sprague.

I am so beautiful, originally uploaded by Trish Nonaka.

Photo Assignment: It’s self-portrait day! I know you hate it – we all do. Find a way to get a photo of yourself—mirror, selftimer, a kid.

LOAD week 2

Homework Assignment: Start small. Identify one area of your scrapbooking “space,” whether that’s a kitchen cabinet or the entire basement, and spend 15 minutes organizing. Try to do this a couple of times this week.
I feel really good about the organizing progress I've made this week. Between beginning to get things together for a garage sale (things are priced, boxed and waiting to be added to) and my digi organizing I think I have more than met this objective.

Layout Assignment: During your organizing process, pull out a few items that you forgot you had. Use them on a layout this week. Yesterday I was finally able to use some of my digi kits and templates that I've been wanting to use for a LONG time and got 13 pages for my 2011 Monthly book ready. Its amazing how fast you can do this stuff once you have a great system going. I cannot tell you how essential I now think it is to have organizing software for scrapbooking. I should have bought it long ago. Here is one of LOs I did last night.


Photo Assignment: Photograph something that makes you smile. It could be a kid, a kitten, a clematis – your choice. I had to post this picture because I took the photo and then Caity came in a while later and said, "This just makes me smile!"

Scrapbooking Update

Yes occassionally I blog about my scrapbooking progress here as well as my art. Today is one of those days. You might notice a new "blinkie" on the side bar that looks like this:



My friend Patti and I have been hard at work on our photos and using our LOM system to its utmost. Even if you know nothing about the method you will still understand that in 3 days I:
- emptied 9 storage binders of photos from 1981-2005
- created over 20 more pages for albums
- created one complete album of Randy's adventure in Hokkaido
- staged an additional 20 plus pages for an upcoming class we plan to take the end of this month

- and placed all the remaining photos into categories (4 drawers total; all labelled and organized so yes, I can put my fingers on a particular photo in just a few minutes time!) That means that EVERY UNSCRAPPED printed photo I have in my stash is now living in the sum total of only 4 drawers measuring 4x6x18in. And every one of those has room to spare. Essentially, I am caught up!

That was last week....
This week brings me back to the blinkie. The photos that I mention above are all printed photos. I still have GOBS of digi pictures on my hard drive. I've found I rarely print individual photos these days and only print out complete layouts all ready to place into my albums. That is the general rule and yes there are exceptions. But I digress...

Since the majority of my scrapping and photo keeping is now digital, I invested in ACDSee (an organizational tool) and just completed a class on the program. I've been BUSY adding all my digi supplies to the catalog, adding/organizing/deleting folders and files, etc. I cannot wait to use this system in the near future (hopefully this doesn't confuse you but I have mine set up the same as my LOM system). I still need to work through my photos (Previously used PSE8 to organize them but didn't like that much...LOVE it for editing but organizing.)

I also moved all my scans of my artwork over to ACDSee to organize those as well.
Hopefully I will get all this work done, get a nice workflow going and will be posting here more regularly than I have been recently. Just didn't want you to think I left the planet!