Then & Now

So I thought it would be fun to take a little look back at my old scrapbooks and see how far I've come.  Boy, have I come far!  I almost laugh now when I look back at some of my early stuff.  I guess it just shows you what practice can do, huh?  Here are a couple pages from one of my first books, my wedding album.

Check out the template traced & cut photos!  How about the fact that everything is hand written--I love it!  Sadly, my sons' albums weren't too much better...although I did discover a couple new techniques.

 I "love" how I used no background color at all.  What was I thinking?  Again, I used a lot of the template tracing & cutting for my photos.  Don't get me wrong, that can be useful, especially if you're trying to fit several photos onto one page.  In general though, I don't really like doing that any longer.  It takes too much time and besides, I had to then hand cut everything with scissors too.  Thankfully, by the time my daughter came into existence, I'd sharpened up my skills and decided to try to add more to my pages.

By this time, I was waaaaay into accessorizing my pages with as much as possible:  ribbons, gems, flowers, wooden letters, rub-ons, die cuts, etc.  Sometimes this was good...other times it was just too much!  Plus, it actually took a long time to complete a layout.  I just don't have that kind of time now for the most part.  

That's why I like Close To My Heart; they make it quick and easy to do my pages.  Their idea books are filled with themed page layouts, including all of the accessorizing products to re-create those pages.  There's NOTHING wrong with admitting to being a scraplifter.  In fact, CTMH wants you to take the images and ideas you see in their Idea books and make them your own, whether that be that you copy it completely or you take the idea and re-do it, just go with it!  Here's a recent layout of mine that I copied from an Idea Book.

I had to rework it a little bit to accommodate the pictures I wanted to include but it was a wonderful starting point to get started and a great way to help me figure out what colors and prints to put together, what inks would look best, and how to design everything.

Here's another recent layout, though I designed this layout myself.  Still, you can see how far I've come since the beginning.

Soon, I want to start including more stuff about CTMH and their products, monthly specials, stamps of the month and more.  I'm really excited.  Now keeping up the momentum is going to be it's own challenge.  That's a problem I have.

I also just started subscribing to this neat blog called Mojo Monday where each week there is basically a card making challenge.  They will post a design and then it's up to you to create it with paper, stamps, bling, and so forth.  I've seen some of the things that others have come up with too and it's very inspiring.  I would definitely like to start with this challenge and start posting my creations as I complete them.

That's all for tonight.  It's late and I'm going to relax.  Until then...