Scrapbook Blog

Many scrappers are afraid to cut their pictures. I know one Creative Memories consultant who said, “We just don’t believe in that anymore.” Um, then why does CM sell their Cutting System for cropping pictures???

Here’s my thoughts. Cut when you need to be able to focus on a subject of the picture. Don’t let a messy background take away from who the picture is really about. On the other hand, don’t cut out objects or people who are rarely in your photos. For instance, I have pictures of my daughter jumping rope in the driveway. In the background is our old car. While I think it is distracting and not so pretty…I also realize how much I like to look at old pictures and see all the neat items in the background of that time period. It helps to date the pictures and to really get a glimpse into daily life back then. While I may not like our old car now, my grandchildren may think it is neat and oldfashioned in 30 years. Imagine my old Honda Accord seeming neat!

I also want to point out that it is good to cut out the un-pretty from the picture. One of my wedding pictures has my uncle tipping a brewski way up and slouching…and this is all seen from behind. Doesn’t really add to the wedding moment me and my husband posing in our first moments of married life. You want to yell, “MOVE…get out of the picture!” So, I crop!

Some people think it is just plain sinful to cut. I think it is sinful to let someone’s fat roll show when you could crop an inch off of the bottom and let everyone focus on her kind face. Yes, I have a picture like that of someone….and yes, I cropped!

There have been rumors that Sizzix is on it’s way out. However, there has been a buyout of the company (from what I’ve heard), or they bought out a company….or something like that….but there has been some sort of restructuring anyway which I see as a positive sign they may stick around. However, my concern is that stores may no longer carry the Sizzix items. I talked to someone at www.creativexpress.com, and she told me that this company will only carry Sizzix items through September. Hobby Lobby, a massive craft store in the Midwest no longer carries Sizzix now. These stores are stocking newer items like the Cricut in the place of Sizzix. I own Sizzix and Cricut and find that I like them both for different reasons and uses. However, I am taking the “get it while you can” approach to Sizzix items. I have noticed huge clearances on these products and am taking advantage of the sales just in case it is the last of Sizzix.

There are some great Sizzix Clearance Sales going on out there right now.   

CreativeXpress.com has these on sale.  They also have the best prices on the Sizzix Machine (29.98)  and the Sizzix Sidekick (18.56).   They will also pricematch!  A quick note though….you have to search through the site several ways in order to find all the items.  Do a search for “Sizzix” on their page, but also look by category. Here is the link to the Sizzix stuff.

Sizzix.com also has some MAJOR Clearance prices right now.  I got dies for just a couple of bucks each.  These were the big red ones too!  Make sure you look through the Ellison stuff also.  Those dies will work in your machines when you use an adapter.  Here is the link to their sales.

For all you scrappers out there who just don’t know where to start, I wanted to help by giving you a starting point.  The very first thing you need to do is GET ORGANIZED.  If you are at the point where your prints are still on your computer, I suggest using a software program such as Google’s Picasa to help you organize.  After that, you can print out the pics.  Once you have your pictures printed, there is only one way I would suggest to organize.  I would purchase the large POWER SORT BOX from Creative Memories.  This is a hefty purchase at $35.00…but after scrapbooking for 9 years and trying to find different sorting boxes/methods, I finally broke down and spent the money on this nifty organizer.  Let me tell you it was sooooo worth the money.  It holds up to 2400 pictures.  It comes with little white plastic dividing tabs that you can write on in pencil.  Then you can erase it when you need to.  Unlike paper, once you erase it, the plastic seems as good as new.  Includes 12 mini-dividers within the large storage box.  The lid has a built-in pocket for storing larger photos or memorabilia.  Most importantly, it is safe for storing your photos.  (I have had to learn the hard way that storing photos in cardboard boxes do not keep them safe.  My trip to Australia photos from about 12 years ago are all stuck together. )  You can organize your photos according to themes or just by chronilogical order.  I choose chronilogical just so I can keep the dates handy.  If I get behind, I may forget how old ”such-and-such” was in the photo.   

I would suggest you not buy supplies for your pages until you know what pages you are going to make.  Trust me…I have scads of papers and stickers that are cute, but I have no pages to put them on.  I would rather have spent my money on supplies I will use. 

Ok, scrappers, GET ORGANIZED!

Hey all you Cricut Owners…the cheapest way to get the Cricut Cartridges is by using a 40% off coupon at JoAnn Fabric’s.  Their regular in-store price has just been reduced to $64.99 (from 89.99), and they allow you to use the 40% off coupons (available at www.joann.com).  This brings the price down to $38.99…add 6% tax and that makes it $41.34.  I don’t understand why their website shows the price to be $79.99 on sale….that’s a rip!  The next cheapest place is Hobby Lobby with a regular price tag of $59.99, but they don’t allow you to use coupons on their Cricut products. 

After searching for a software program that would help me organize my digital photos, I have finally found what I have been looking for in Google’s Picasa.  I had thought about purchasing the Creative Memories software after seeing my consultant demonstrate it, but decided to try Google’s software for another reason:  IT’S FREE!   I would have gladly paid for something that does what this software does, but had not yet found what I wanted. 

Let me tell you the love story about me and my Picasa download from the beginning.   First of all, I went to www.picasa.google.com to download it for free.  Once downloaded, I started it right up, and the first thing it did was scan all through my computer and collect all of the digital images.  This was a great thing for me since my husband and I both download the images from my camera and we put them in different places on the computer…actually all over the place.  Not only did it collect them all, it grouped them together by date.  All of year 2006 pictures are grouped within that year, 2005 are all together, and so on.  Since I usually name my photo folders by using the date it was downloaded, I can actually look through the images in order from month to month through the years. 

Another feature I like is that you can look at the properties of an image, and find out the date it was actually taken, the time of day, the resolution, if flash was used, the focal length, exposure time, aperture, and ISO.  Not that I honestly understand all of those things….but some of it is good to know.

You can straighten out a crooked picture, fix lighting issues, and the red eye correction is the best I’ve used (works great when you zoom in, and really get all the red stuff).  You can crop pictures, change the color temperature (skin tones can go warmer and colder at the touch of a button), fix shadows, and more.  Beyond that, you can change the entire effect of the picture, by changing it to sepia, black and white, or tint the entire picture any color of your choice.  You can also do a focal black and white picture.  This feature allows you to make the entire image black and white but leave a small area colored.   You can also do a focal soft focus feature.  This feature allows you to make only a certain part of your picture clear, and then blur everything else.

All in all, I can’t really find anything I don’t like about this program.  The one drawback I noticed when it first gathered all the digital images was that it gathered images imprinted on my hard drive, the ones Dell put there, like your start-up page images.  You just click on that folder and delete the images from Picasa.  That took a few minutes.  Another plus is that it automatically grabs any images I put on my computer from now on.  Check it out…..it will be so worth it.  I’ve been showing it to everyone who comes over!

All about the cricut. The cricut has a USB port that is not mentioned anywhere in the documentation. Information on the website talks about a future use to be able to interface with a computer for enhances functionality. That would be a great feature to add to this system. Since the wishblade has come out, I think it would be wise for the cricut to offer or beat the functionality of that system.

Welcome to the ScrapBookBlog! This will have reviews, news, tip, and tricks for scrapbooking. If you have some scrapbooking ideas you’d like to share, please let me know.