Saturday, February 09, 2013

Scrapbooking Crisis: It's Official

I'm officially having a Scrapbooking Crisis. No, it is not that I no longer find it meaningful or satisfying, it is not that I've run out of creative juices, it's just that my boys are not willing to get into photos for me anymore. The whole of January they were refusing to get into pictures and I only have their birthday photos and the rest of the photos were shot whilst they were unawares or caught by surprise! Sigh.. I guess they are just at that teenage phase, or they feel awkward in front of the camera, or most likely they are having Scrapbook-Mom-Burnout!! Hehe!

So what's a scrapbook mom to do? Besides getting smarter and more ingenious at capturing the boys without them knowing, lol, as we started 2013, I have been also wanting to include more than just photos of what happens everyday. So my focus this year: to capture what is on our minds, our thoughts, our prayers. I'm further inspired by Ronnie (find her at Pink Ronnie) 's post on tips on taking pictures for Project Life. If you haven't, you must go check her blog out, or start with this post. This is what she says in her point #4: Don’t let your photographs always be dictated by the subject matter (ie. people, food and objects). Instead, try to focus on capturing a ‘moment’ once in a while. Totally! New focus: capture the moment, the mood, the atmosphere, the feeling, the interaction, what is on our minds, our thoughts, our prayers, all that which makes up the complete story of our everyday lives.

January 365 digital pages
Firstly I rounded up January with my usual two half-monthly layouts. These are daily photos captured 95% on my iphone. I'm departing from last year's staple background of graph papers, but still keeping it simple and very quickly done.

January marks the beginning of the school year for dh and the boys so it is a hectic change indeed, everyone gets into school mode, we start our days very early (up at 6am) and school days and homework fill most days. It is hard to escape from the same photos for 365, but that's our life and it should reflect in our pages.
The main other thing occupying our days is working on our renovations, and shopping for furniture. I think we have too much a set idea in our heads so it is really hard to find that dining table or bedroom set we have in mind. It's a fun adventure nevertheless, though dh and I joke that wherever we are now, we can only notice the flooring, the table tops, texture, grains, lines and so on.., lol. We are novice at this but do love design of any sort. It's been quite an education! We are renting now so there will also be another move really soon, hopefully early March. So more hectic days in Feb!!

January Project Life
For my PL pages, as intended, there is more focus on capturing thoughts and prayers and more journaling. On this page  I included is DH and my Word for the year (following Ali Edwards' One Little Word) as well as more journaling by DH and on the new school year.
You can read more about our journaling on our word here: My word is Less. I am more determined not to let this year's word slip out of my view so I will be dwelling more on it and how it is taking shape in my posts. Accountability really helps!
And Dh's word is Accept
This page captures their current craze: Ryan's is Dungeons & Dragons, and Jared's is Adobe CS 6 of which he uses Illustrator (he takes a half year class on this at school this year). Then some anecdotes hand-journalled on Becky Higgins' journaling cards from the Cobalt kit. And I do love these series of shots of them sharing a few moments.
This is how the double page looks like. I stuck to the orange and black/grey theme picked up from the series of photos for R & J. I like color themes. 
On this next page I added collages of photos related to furniture hunting and home improvements. I simply layered the photos haphazardly and crop off the edges. And the other half are part of the boys' birthday spread. I used up one and half of the PL pages, to include photos, Birthday prayers and journaling. 
 The Birthday prayer is a tradition we started a while back. You can see prior year's prayers here and here and here and here. This year I wrote Ryan's prayer and dh wrote Jared's prayer. 
 
And on the last page for Jan is the rest of their birthday spread. Yes, they are fourteen and sixteen (gasp!) and their birthdays are 3 days apart so we always celebrate together.
This is how the double page look. I really like it!

Beijing Album
Finally I have started on my Beijing album! We visited Beijing on a dream trip in December 2011, so I'm one year late on my travel albums, but fantastically up to date on my everyday Project life album. Good enough for me! I've reverted to my usual double page spreads, so you will find these in the store for the next few months at least :)
First layout is of the budget Red Lantern House lodging we stayed in, which are housed in re-furbished courtyard houses of Old Beijing, we loved it. Except that it is not very well insulated, and we the tropical Singaporeans completely froze in the winter cold. They gave us extra portable heaters and it was a good thing we got more used to the cold after a few days :)
The very next day we landed in Tian An Men square and were quite awed by the square, though due to over -expectations from dh's descriptions and the biting cold which caused us to be all hooded up and to have 'tunnel-vision' we missed the grandeur quite a bit, lol. Later we will visit again and appreciate it so much more! I'm getting excited over the coming Beijing pages :)

And finally this is a layout I made for my in-laws family celebration to welcome in the New Year. Happy 2013! It is our Christmas cum NY's party so  i used a christmas ornament theme.

You can download this Christmas themed template HERE. Thank you for dropping by and love to hear from you

29 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for the freebie! I love your templates!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you! I love the different shapes to fit in so many photos!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for sharing another wonderful template.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your pages are fabulous! I particularly like yours and your hubby's remarks about your OLW. This year my word is "choose." I probably need to remember "accept" for next year. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you so much for the template. My kids went through that phase a bit. Now i am empty nest and struggled with value for me to even scrapbook. But i am enjoying Katrina Kennedy's daily photo prompts and having fun doing that and i think it is a great idea to scrap about your thoughts and prayers. I am trying to include scripture on pages. Something different to try for that creative outlet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rhadonda, thank you for sharing from your perspective, yes there is much that is worth capturing! I wil check out her prompts, thanks. And I just read from Ali Edwards' blog about 52 lists that you might want to check out too.

      Delete
  6. How will you incorporate the monthly "summary" layouts - are you printing those as photobooks separate to your Project Life pages? Love the multi photo pages!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Maby, I print them out and insert them into 12x12 page protectors into my PL album. You can see my process and pictures in my previous post. Thanks for dropping by!

      Delete
  7. HI Yin..sorry about your kids... but is because their ages... you are so creative so surprise pics can be fun to take and later with years remember when they "not" wanted to have pics as before.. think as other challenge .. and you will find the pics inspiration!.. love your talent and pics and free and not free templates.. i have many of the ones you sell too! thanks and hugs

    ReplyDelete
  8. Helm's Deep...lucky boys! I read the Lord of the Rings series last year.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are lucky boys! They were considerate enough to suggest sharing that huge present!

      Delete
  9. This is terrific layout template, thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks for the Template

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks once againg for an awesome template...and I especially love your beautiful letters to your boys! God bless.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I am not a big fan of PL but I love your pages and the spin you give the project.
    Thank you for the awesome freebie, too!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks so much for the lovely template! Your pages are wonderful, too! :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you so much for the template. I shall save it for next Christmas. You are so creative!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I loved seeing your unique spin on Project Life. I have one teenaged boy and one almost teenaged boy so I appreciate seeing others documenting that stage of life in their families. Loved the idea of a birthday prayer. I used to live in Beijing - four years - so it is fun to see your pages on my old home! Just moved back this past summer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I loved Beijing! You must have had a rich experience living there!

      Delete
  16. Yay! Thanks for the templates . . . keep 'em coming, I love visiting your store to see when new ones are posted. Though I keep buying and using your templates, my pages never look as good! :)

    I wanted to tell you I just re-read my Blurb review from a couple of years back. While I have not printed with them again (mostly, honestly, because of cost and because you can't customize the spine---I'm picky, I know!), I did take Magic Eraser to that annoying cardboard cover. It came completely clean! While the image is still a bit over-saturated for my taste, I was thrilled that I could get the surface clean.

    You're such an encouragement!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Thanks Sarah for that tip on Blurb covers. I will have to use them if my Beijing album exceeds 100 pages :)

    ReplyDelete
  18. thanks a lot for this lovely template

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thank you for the template, it's lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  20. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Hi Yin! I somehow missed seeing this blog post until today. :) I am so sad that your boys no longer want to be in the photos! I have thought about that too, and I am just hoping that the day never comes. Ha! When I read your words of the year, I couldn't help but think that you'll have to "accept" that the boys will be in "less" photos. Of course, the grammatically correct word in that sentence would be fewer, not less, but still... a little funny. :)

    As always, love your pages and your template freebie! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha! Jenny, you hit it there, accept that there will be less photos! And still capture life! So glad you dropped by!

      Delete
  22. I totally understand where you are with your boys & photos. My boys are 12 & 13 and we're already starting this battle. I think (hope) I have a few more years before they refuse to take pictures. Thank you so much for this new template :)

    ReplyDelete
  23. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Thank you for this template. Perfect! Merry Christmas Yin! Thank you for your generosity.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...