When my October issue of Creating Keepsakes arrive yesterday and I recovered from the-year-is-going-to-fast shock, I cracked it open and saw an article by Ali Edwards listing several very helpful websites for scrapbookers. Boy is this woman after my heart.

First she directed me to a great site for organizing my digital photos. Yeah! I needed that. Then she shared another site about working with color. Both of which are great and you should grab your CK and read about them. (I won’t steal all her thunder…)

The site she shared next made my heart sing.

A site all about typography. Not a place to download fonts, but a place to learn about them - in great detail. Oh my.

If you are a regular reader of ScrappinCabinet you know I don’t use computer fonts when creating my layouts. So why all the fuss? Well, in the early days of my career I was a desktop publisher. I created newsletters, brochures, postcards and other marketing materials for small businesses. This was in the “good old days” of computers (and awesome 80s music =:). My first system cost me $2500 and had a 40 meg - not gig, meg - hard drive.

My first font collection was a set of disks - the old 5 1/4″ ones, remember those?

I also bought several design books to learn how to create professional looking materials. And I got a big fat book all about type. It wasn’t enough for me to just experiment to see what looked good. I wanted to know the ins and outs of each typeface. I still have that book and from time to time crack it open to warm my heart with knowledge of the fonts. When my business partner and I merged and hired employees I was diligent about everyone using the same font for all our company materials and become known at the office as “The Font Police.”

Anyway, if you are a typface aficionado too you will also really enjoy Thinking With Type, the site Ali recommends in her article.

Enjoy, courtesy of The Font Police - and Ali Edwards =:)

So I’m in the grocery store yesterday when I see this cute under-sized magazine at the checkout lane. It is called Scrapbooks Made Easy 12 cool album ideas. Make one tonight! Of course I grab it right away. Not often I get to make a scrapbooking impulse buy at the grocery store.

This little magazine is a dynamo. Not so much for the layout ideas (although there are some cute ones) but more for the guilt reduction. You know, the stuff we scrapbookers make ourselves crazy over - cropping every picture, not doing anything unless everything is perfect, stuff like that.

A quick glance at the section headings alone offered me some relief from the self-induced stress of scrapbooker’s perfectionism.

It’s never too late.
Lose the guilt.
Leave most of your photos in the box
Celebrate your life

Here is an excerpt from the final section, Quality, not quantity:

“It’s easy to get excited about scrapbooking and start seeing everything with ’scrapbooker’s eye.’ Suddenly, everything is a layout waiting to happen. You dress your kids in shirts that match the paper you just bought and take them tot he park to take a picture for a scrapbook page. If you snap the photo and rush home to make your page, you’ve missed the point. If you take the photo, then put the camera away and have a great time playing on the swings, there is still hope for you! Scrapbooks are for saving memories and telling stories, but first you have to live them.”

These great concepts are interwoven with good ideas for album themes for baby, school, vacation, holiday, birthday and family. All in all, this was a great impulse buy. Well worth the $3.99. When you see this little mag co-produced by Simple Scrapbooks and Soap Opera Digest, go ahead and get it. If you aren’t seeking the latest, greatest, whiz-bang layouts but good concepts and ideas about scrapbooking, you’ll be glad you did.

I’m getting ready to send out my first email update for ScrappinCabinet and would love to have more scrappers on my mailing list to receive it. If you’re interested and sign up today and I’ll shoot you an email when I come across something really cool for your scrapbooking. (Of course, I won’t be selling my list or anything like that.)

Plus, you’ll get instant access to two special reports only available to those who sign up.

7 Scrapbooking Ideas You Can Use Today
and
Top 3 Places to Get Discount Scrapbook Supplies

Sign Up Now!

My friend, Kim Wolinski (aka Dr. DeClutter) has an excellent e-zine about decluttering called Dr. DeClutter’s Organizing Tips & Tools Newsletter. In her Q&A column this week she wrote about how to organize the massive amounts of school projects that come home all the time.

Dear Dr. DeClutter,

School is around the corner and I’m already dreading all those
“creative crafts” and materials that the kids will bring home from
school. What’s the best way to organize these things and what
do I keep?

Too much Schooltime Joy!, Destin, FL

Dear Joy!

Millions of parents are feeling overwhelmed already just like you!
A few years ago my mom gave me a box, a 12X10X5 inch
cardboard box. It had several projects and class worksheets
from my 3rd Grade Year! Just smelling that old glue and construction
paper took me right back to that classroom, back into my
3rd Grade body. I don’t think I have memories from back then,
but when we actually can see, smell and touch “artifacts” from
our past, the memories come alive again. It’s a good thing!

Here are some simple answers.

1)
Make files that are kept in the kitchen or the area of the
house where everyone knows where to find them. Label them:
a) School projects;
b) Activities, like sports and plays;
c) Parent/Teacher meetings;
c) Papers to READ & SIGN;
d) and other such files specific to your school and children’s activities so that nothing gets lost.

2)
An extra tip here: Put up a Family Calendar too with every
activity noted.

When arts and crafts and worksheets with stars on them start
showing up, do this:

3)
Keep on the “best of the best” and show on the refrigerator or
wall for a week or two. When the “next best” comes through,
replace it — get rid of the rest!

4)
Get the really large lidded tubs for storage. Label each with
a child’s name. In it goes “the best of the best each week.” Only
one or two items is good. When it gets half-full and there’s still
plenty of school year left, cull it out and complete it for the
year. School class assignments are in this same category.

5)
Use their paintings and art as show pieces on your walls.
Get inexpensive but colorful frames and frame their paintings
and drawings. Put them in the hall, kitchen and other walls
to showcase their work. They will feel very loved and honored
when you do this and they can show their friends and other
guests. A great way to support encouraging high self-worth
in your children.

6)
Plan on a mantle, shelf or other area for trophy’s and such.
Make sure to always have a “place of honor” for their creative
productions.

I hope these tips, tools and techniques are helpful!

Do you have a question for Dr. DeClutter? Email your question to
kimwolinski@msn.com . Type Dear Dr. DeClutter in the subject line,
write your question and see it answered in a future newsletter edition.

Life’s too short to keep dealing with the same stuff over and over again!

Thanks, Kim for that great article. Since yesterday was the first day of school I am not too far behind for this year to be the one that is well organized.

You can sign up for Dr. DeClutter’s e-zine here.

My friend Carolyn over at CropChic posted a great article about Preparing for a Crop. Her first of four terrific suggestions is:

Pick one album, project or up to three layouts to complete. Before you set off for the crop, know what you want to do. If you’re going to a 4-hour crop, it may make more sense to do a few layouts. If you’re going to a weekend/marathon event, try working on an album. Either way, set a scrapbooking course and follow it.

I also suggest having a secondary project and bring it along. In one instance I actually finished up the project I had brought, leaving me hours to organize my supplies and gaze at idea books wishing I had something else to work on. Another time, the creativity just wouldn’t flow for my chosen project. So now I always bring a couple different projects.

Be sure to check out Carolyn’s other three suggestions here. And have fun cropping!

Just returned from our Alaska cruise and our laptop’s hard drive is bursting at the seams with digital photos. Honestly, we took at least 1000 photos during our week-long trip. Now I am faced with getting them organized before I can even begin to scrapbook our trip.

This is new to me. We’ve never used a digital camera before as our primary camera. I’ve grabbed my Simple Scrapbooks, A Simple Guide to Easy Organization, special issue magazine and culled a few tips from it:

- Organize the photos into folders with different category names
- Print out an index print and store it with the CD for long term storage

Sound simple enough, but I’m sure that there is more to it than that.
Do you have any tips for organizing digital photos?

We leave tomorrow on our Alaskan cruise. So I won’t be posting for a week or so. We’re all ready to go - packed, MP3 players loaded up, house-sitter arranged, milk delivery stopped - the works. Oh and my husband got a new digital camera. I am slightly nervous to not be taking our “real” camera, but I’ll get over it quickly I’m sure.

While I’m gone, I have a favor to ask. If anyone has any great resources for travel scrapbooking supplies, please comment for me. I have a feeling that between the beauty of Alaska and the great new camera I am going to want to do a really special album. I am especially interested in ideas for the album itself. And stuff for an amazing title page.

Thanks for your ideas and I’ll be back soon. Then school starts. (Where did the summer go?)

Now this is something I am going to have to try - Artist Trading Cards. Collectible cards you make in 2.5″ x 3.5″ size and then trade (never sell) with other artists/collectors. To my scrapper’s mind they are like tiny scrapbooks. Seems like a great way to experiment with different mediums.

I came across a really great site all about ATC’s written by Joumana Medlej. Her site explains all about ATC’s and shows a ton of different styles and ideas. I fell in love with the whole concept instantly after reading her site.

Do you do ATC’s? Have any tips?

More Artist Trading Card information:

Art in your Pocket: ATCs
(This is the article I mention above)

Stoney Creek Studio

ARTIST TRADING CARDS : A COLLABORATIVE CULTURAL PERFORMANCE

Just got an email from Jo-Ann stores announcing Creating Keepsakes products are now exclusively available in their store. It says they have scrap totes, albums, storage units, kits and CKOK-Scrappin’ Creations embellishments. So I popped online to see what I could find.

While it appears that their online selection is still limited, there is one item in particular that caught my eye. It is the Creating Keepsakes Basic Essential Tote that is not just an empty tote, but comes stuffed with scrapping stuff from Creating Keepsakes. (I tried to grab the photo to paste in here, but it is not grabbable.) Here is what is included in this cool looking bag:

Kit Includes:
* Fabric Tote
* Trimmer
* 12″ deckled edge ruler
* Set of 3 pens
* 25 sheets of cardstock
* Scissors
* 4″x6″ photo organizer
* 12″x12″ paper holder
* Sketch book
* Tool guide

It is $99.99 but this week at their online store, they have a 50% off coupon which does appear to apply to Creating Keepsakes products. That is a pretty good value!

Just thought I would share this. I am going to take a minute to stop my local JoAnn store too to see what the offline selection is too. Could be fun. (Or dangerous…you know, to the pocketbook =:)

I came across a site where you can create your own word search games. It occurred to me that it could be a pretty fun piece to add to journaling. Basically you list the words you want and the site creates the puzzle. Then you can print out the puzzle and circle the words (or have your kids do it) and viola - the start of journaling.

Here is a sample puzzle I created with the idea that it would be journaling for a day at the park.

What do you think?