I saw a great article by Andrea Steed over at Scrapjazz.com about what to do with all the Christmas cards, letters and photos you received over the holidays. I have a hard time deciding whether to store them all safely away or put the photos on the fridge.

Andrea collected all of them and put them in a big manila envelope - decorated it and kept track of the pertinent details of her family and friends. It is very cute idea. You’ve just got to see how cute the envelope turned out and how easy it was to do.

I’m inspired.

In all the years I have been a scrapbooker I have pretty much gone along for the ride in terms of the supplies and tools. I’ve never once predicted a trend or even foreseen some of the cool things that have come our way.

Who knew that Sizzix would make die cutting so accessible to the masses? What about the Cricut? A personal scrapbooking computer that cuts anything in any size. I never saw that coming.

But today when I saw ProBlogger’s challenge to offer up a review or a prediction about what 2007 will bring in my niche I knew EXACTLY what to predict.

Here goes:

I believe that 2007 will bring news of a 12 x 12 Digital Photo Frame perfect for displaying digital scrapbookers’ creations. With one of those nifty 4GB SD cards and a digital scrapbooking frame like this a digital scrapbooker could display oodles and oodles of pages without taking up all that shelf space for scrapbook albums.

Anybody know of such a thing yet?
Does that sound as cool to anybody else as it does to me?

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Oh how cute are those little matchbooks! You know the ones that are cropping up (pun intended) everywhere. But I’ve never gotten one because I’ve thought they might be hard to fit into a layout - color wise that is.

But…Rebecca Ludens has saved the day.

She has a terrific step by step instructional article - WITH PHOTOS -that shows how to make your own mini matchbook.

Check it out!

OK, it is safe to say that alongside my husband (pictured here) that another true love of mine is digital scrapbooking. Last night I thought I would break into some of the free scrapbooking kits I have recently downloaded. In about 45 minutes I created this layout and I just love it.

Since I used a free kit, it cost me nothing because I have not yet printed it out. Plus I have nothing to clean up! And it was fun, fun, fun to do.

A downside I see to digi scrapping is a lack of organization and focus. So far, I have done a one page layout of a my daughter loving life in a huge snowfall and one picture of a dinner on our Alaskan cruise. But maybe the real focus is that I’ve chosen to digi scrap my husband and my daughter and that is focus enough.

Somehow I feel a bit freer to just “do stuff” in the digi side, instead of feeling compelled to get the photos into albums. Not that I plan to give up paper scrapping, but it is nicee to have this option too.

I used the Beach mini kit by Jackie Eckles in this layout.

I saw the greatest idea in the new Top Ten 2006 issue of Creating Keepsakes this weekend. Faye Morrow Bell, who always has such great ideas, suggested creating an Idea Index to keep track of all the creative, fun and gotta-do-it ideas you come across.

She suggested creating a spreadsheet and listing the ideas in it with details as to where to find these great ideas again. Sheer brilliance!

I created a Scrapbooking Idea Index spreadsheet and thought maybe you’d like to grab mine so you don’t have to start from scratch with yours. I also created a second tab to list each source as you use it (so you don’t have to wonder if you have already cataloged something).

A final bit of advice from Faye:

Do not attempt to index five years worth of magazines and idea books in one sitting! Start with this Top 10 issue and build from there.

Thanks, Faye, for the great idea and the solid advice (as usual!).

Here’s my Scrapbooking Idea Index file. It is an Excel spreadsheet file. Feel free to share it with anyone - just don’t start selling it and please leave the credit lines to Faye and me intact. Enjoy!

Now that I am almost done with my Christmas frenzy of cards, shopping, wrapping and parties I am starting to think about the photos I want to be sure to take this year. Here are some of my ideas:

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Empty and Full Stockings

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The Christmas tree with all the gifts under it before it becomes buried in a mound of discarded wrapping paper.

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The food. And I want to write down the stories of the food that my husband’s 92 year old grandma will tell us.

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All the kids in their fine clothes.

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All the kids in their PJ’s.

Here’s hoping you capture all the photos you want. Have a great Christmas!

One of my 100 Scrapbooking Things I Want to Do is to use ribbon in a layout. Up until a few days ago I thought maybe I would just buy some ribbon and run it down the side of a page. Then I found Shimelle Laine.

On her site she has a very cool PDF file called 101 Things to Do with Your Ribbon You’ll see it - her site design is very clean.

The ones I am going to try are:

10. Punch holes along one side of a photo or mat and finish with ribbons tied in loop knots.
16. stamp a name or date on a ribbon, fold around the corner of a photograph and secure with a paper clip.
19. Make a masculine tag by threading a plain washer onto a ribbon remnant, folding in half and stapling to the top of of the tag.
32. Cover a scrap of cardstock with ribbon scraps in lines, then place a cut out shape over the top so the quilted design shows through.

I’m off to The Ribbon Jar!

Sometimes it seems my scrapbooking gets in a rut. I’m doing the layouts just to get it done. Or I feel like all I’m doing is scrapping family celebrations (that’s the only time I remember to take pictures). Does that happen to you?

Well, if you want an inspiration to scrapbook with a purpose, read Angie Pedersen’s back story of her wonderful book, The Book of Me. If it doesn’t make you want to sit down and create a meaningful layout RIGHT NOW then clearly you need to rent Old Yeller to break out of your emotional block.

Thanks for sharing your story, Angie.

Looking for more scrapbook time in the coming year? Me too. There is a great article by Rachel Thomae in the January 2006 issue of Creating Keepsakes on this exact topic. She shares strategies from six scrapbookers about how to create 52 pages this year. Sounds like the perfect mini album to me. My favorite part of the article is the list of 52 questions to get your mind flowing.

My top three are:

3. If you could have a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you go?
8. What’s your favorite color and what does it say about you?
49. If you could write your own fortune-cookie fortune, what would it say?

Not that was hard to pick a top three. If you read Rachel’s article what are your favorite three questions?

So last night at the Girl Scout leader training when we were going over the leader motto it occurred to me that there are several mottos, creeds, prayers, vows and pledges I have made in my lifetime that mean a great deal to me. What a perfect section for my Book of Me scrapbook.

Even though I was right in the middle of learning how to be a better, more inspired and organized leader of my Girl Scout troop I jotted down some notes of the important vows I want to include in my next scrapbooking project - my book of ME!

1. My wedding vows
2. The Delta Zeta Sorority Creed
3. Pledge of Allegiance
4. Lord’s Prayer
5. Girl Scout Leader motto

The Delta Zeta Creed

To the world,
I promise temperance and insight and courage,
To crusade for justice,
To seek the truth and defend it always:
To those whom my life may touch in slight measure,
May I give graciously
Of what is mine;
To my friends,
Understanding and appreciation;
To those closer ones,
Love that is ever steadfast;
To my mind,
Growth;
To myself,
Faith
That I may walk truly
In the light of the Flame.

–– Dorothy Mumford Williams, Alpha Zeta (1939)

In my album I will include this creed that touched my heart during rush 20 years ago and to this day stirs my soul and makes me want to be a better person.

Oh I just cannot wait to dive into this album. It is going to be so much fun.