Anniversary Week – Day 3

| cristina

{this is part of a series I wrote for write.click.scrapbook. You can find the full post here}

Welcome to Day 3 of this Anniversary Week! Today I will be sharing some inspiration for anniversary cards.

I find it especially meaningful to give a homemade card to celebrate the sweet milestone of an anniversary.

Some of the tips I shared on Day 1 still apply to cards. In particular, focusing on the numbers is always a nice way to build a card.

Here’s an example from me for our 6th anniversary.

For my in-laws’ 50th, I made a card that featured gold – the color of the 50th anniversary.

Finally, this is the card I made this year for my husband.

Come back tomorrow for some mini album inspiration!

Anniversary Week – Day 1

| cristina

{this is part of a series I wrote for write.click.scrapbook. You can find the full post here}

Hello! Our theme for the week is Anniversaries. I figured this would be a fitting theme for this week, given that write.click.scrapbook’s 5th anniversary is coming up, and it happens to be my wedding anniversary as well. 🙂

Throughout the week we’ll be talking about documenting anniversaries and relationships, how to scrap milestones, anniversary cards, mini albums, and ideas for anniversary gifts.

Documenting Anniversaries

Here are a few tips for your anniversary pages: focus on the photograph, feature the numbers, and tell a story.

Focus on the Photograph

This tip is simple enough: just let the photo speak. Here is my Second Anniversary page.

And here is our Third Anniversary.

Feature the Numbers

I also love to feature the anniversary number on my pages.

Can you spot the number 5 on my Fifth Anniversary page?

The numbers on my Sixth Anniversary page aren’t as subtle. 🙂

Tell A Story

Another tip is to add some journaling about your couple, or about what you did on your anniversary. For my Fourth Anniversary page, I wrote a couple sentences to document how we celebrated it.

Documenting Relationships

All these tips work not just for anniversary pages, but also to document relationships in a broader sense.

A Word About Taking Photos…

As you may have noted, all my anniversary pages feature photographs of my husband and me. But I don’t think I am the only one with a husband who hates being in photos.. am I? So I wanted to share a few tips on how to get those photos taken.

  1. Choose your camera wisely. My husband has a particular aversion to my D-SLR, while he is much more ready to take iPhone pictures. So I pick my battles and only insist on using the big camera when I feel it’s worth it.
  2. Be prepared. Whenever I want a photo with my D-SLR, I know I need to plan in advance, set up the tripod, etc. and have everything ready to snap quickly.
  3. Keep it light. Don’t expect to take 100 shots, one or two good ones will suffice.
  4. Set the mood. The best way to get some good pictures with my husband is to make him laugh. I remember a particularly tough photo session – I had my tripod set up, the cherry trees were in bloom, but he was in a lousy mood. But while I was taking a couple shots of him alone, he started taking a selfie, and I took a photo of him taking a selfie, and that made us laugh. After that, everything went smoothly and I got some great shots (check out my Sixth Anniversary page above for proof).
  5. Share/Motivate. Show him the previous photos you took and how you documented them, and perhaps he will be moved to take new photos. (Sadly, this one doesn’t work at all with my husband..)
  6. Bribe. If your husband is anything like mine, he’ll be open to posing for a few shots in exchange of something he wants – in our case, it’s usually a nice meal ;).

I hope you enjoyed these tips and the inspiration! Tomorrow we will be talking about how to scrap milestones!

Little One

| cristina

I love the new collection by Digital Design Essentials! And it’s such a steal at $5.99!

The theme is babies, but it’s such a versatile collection! I used it for two cards.

These are very simple one layer cards, printed on matte photo paper.
Here’s a closer look at each card.

Credits:
Little One Collection Bundle by Digital Design Essentials
Diamond Template by Catherine Davis
Credits:
Little One Collection Bundle by Digital Design Essentials
For those of you celebrating Memorial Day, I hope you are having a lovely day! I certainly enjoyed the unofficial start of summer!

 

Ready for NSD?

| cristina

Eeeek. It’s May. And National Scrapbooking day is tomorrow!! Do you have crafty plans? I have school meetings in the morning, but after that I plan to get crafty. Yay!

In the meantime, here’s a couple of pages from me. The first is for the write.click.scrapbook May gallery. The theme was “everyday”.

Credits:
Scrap Your Stash Sketch 5, Good Eats word art and Happy Place word art by Digital Design Essentials
Photobooth by Paislee Press
Fonts: American Typewriter, Castro Script, Silverfake

It was my first page with the oh-so-trendy pie chart, and I like how it turned out.

Next up, I had fun with creashens’ new kit! Oh, that pink+yellow combo has me smitten!

Credits:
Keen by creashens
Wet Paint Alpha by CD Muckosky
The Damsel Series fonts by Heather Joyce and Valorie Wibbens

Happy NSD! Make sure to stop by at The Lilypad for all the fun games, and to kiss a certain frog… 😉

At Sea Cards

| cristina

I’m late in posting this, but Sahlin Studio and Britt-ish Designs’ latest installment of the Project Mouse series is so much fun!

Perfect for cruises, sea/lake, and so much more! I made two hybrid cards with it.

Here they are one by one.

I was inspired to make a round card and used my newly acquired Big Shot to cut the circle.

I hope you had a great weekend! Alas, I have not had any crafty time this weekend.. too much work/study to do. Next weekend is National Scrapbooking Day so I am really hoping to get some scrapbooking time.. but it’s not looking good! Do you have plans for NSD?

Hoppy Easter!

| cristina

OK.. Easter is tomorrow, but I just have to share this adorable new kit by Jenn Barrette (20% off today) and the card I made with it!
These colors are just so pretty, and they look so vibrant when printed out on matte paper! I made a trifold card.

Happy Easter!

Hello Friday!

| cristina

I am thrilled that it’s Friday! After a crazy weather swing from the 80s to the 30s, we are back in the 50s and I am enjoying it. I have lots of pages to share today! (Ok.. just 3 but it’s more than I usually have ;))

First off, I played with some of the new releases at The Lilypad (20% off all weekend long), and let me tell you.. I really had fun! Here’s what I used:

The first page is somewhat Easter themed – we made these cookies a few weeks back, but they are bunny shaped. 🙂

Credits:
Sunny Days Ahead kit by Paislee Press
100 Labels by Valorie Wibbens
Paper Mats Egg Hunt by Kaye Winiecki
The Golden Friends fonts by Heather Joyce

The second page I made with this kit describes the crazy weather we’ve had this week.

Credits:
Tag You’re It by Valorie Wibbens
The Golden Friends fonts by Heather Joyce

Switching gears, I also made a page with the new lovely kit by creashens. I love all the watercolor touches in this kit, and the colors are so pretty!

Credits:
Before kit by creashens
The Golden Friends fonts by Heather Joyce

It’s Easter Weekend so make sure to stop by tomorrow for a pretty Easter card I made!

Because I’m Happy

| cristina

Today is the last day to take advantage of the early bird sale on Digital Design Essentials’ new collection!

All this for $5.99? Yes please!!
I am crushing on kelly green lately, and I sure got my fix here! 🙂 And of course, you never go wrong with hot pink. 😉

Credits:
Because I’m Happy by Digital Design Essentials
Font: The Velvet Vixen by Heather Joyce

Hybrid Tip!

I picked up a tip on instagram and I feel it will be a game changer for my Project Life. I tend to rarely include hybrid cards in my album because I don’t want to bother filling up a full 11×8.5 sheet of paper to print out.. So using a 6×4 sheet of paper is the perfect solution! Granted, it’s more expensive per journaling card than the larger paper, but totally worth it for me if it gets me to print more!
What brand of photo paper do I use? I go with Canon – I find it has excellent value. I use glossy 4×6 for photos, and matte 8.5×11 for hybrid projects. And now I will also use the matte 6×4 for Project Life cards.

Playing with Paper

| cristina

After a couple of panicky work emergencies, I can finally take a breath and rejoice that the warmer weather has arrived! Granted, it is not yet here to stay for good, as we likely will be getting some snow later in the week, but I am choosing to ignore that for now. 🙂

I have been super busy with work, but today I carved out a couple hours for myself and got crafty. It was fun to play! I made a card using the lovely collection Sahlin Studio made for the April BYOC at The Lilypad.

I also grabbed the free April template on the Sahlin Studio blog and used it for my card. 🙂

Credits:

In my opinion, enamel dots are just the right touch for any project. 🙂 The same is true for mini alphas.