The Best Shower Gift

I have a favorite shower gift that I've been giving ever since I became a CM consultant, and it's been a huge hit at the showers I've attended! I love it so much, I may have given it to myself when I got married AND when I had a baby...

Introducing the Everyday Display!


It has a 13.5 x 13.5" magnetic board with a ribbon across the front- I call it the clothesline, because it comes with matching clothespins!


You can attach pictures, journal boxes, and memorabilia. For the display in our baby room, I attached a journal box with a note about Baby H's birth, the hat she was given at the hospital, and a couple of die cuts for decoration.


These die cuts came from the Baby Girl Display Accents. Creative Memories releases different display accents a few times each year so you can keep updating your display with a new look!


It hangs on a decorative post with a thick ribbon. If you don't prefer that look, you can tuck it behind and hang it like you would a regular picture frame.


Did I mention that it's magnetic? It comes with 6 matching magnets! I love it because I can throw some photos up there, then take them down to use them in my scrapbook or put them in a frame. It makes it very easy to change the display as often as I want.

Materials:

Everyday Display (in white)
Baby Girl Display Accents

Have a shower to attend? Need an Everyday Display for your own home? Contact me at Marianne241@gmail.com or simply order from my site using the links above!

Persona = Personalization!

In my last post, I mentioned that I do all of my album cover personalization through Persona Imprinting, a division of Creative Memories. I highly recommend this, whether you have one photo album on the shelf or 100!

This is what my shelf looks like with some of my "annual" albums lined up:


My "annual" albums are my standard, chronological albums with all of the events in our lives. I started labeling them "annual" because I began them after graduating college, when I was starting out on my own (as a single woman... without a job...) and it wasn't yet appropriate to call them my "family" albums.


Since I married Scott in 2008, I decided that maybe it would be nice to transition from simply calling each album "Annual" to calling them "Walters Family Annual" instead. This album is the Plumberry coverset that I used for our 2010 album.


Even though I use different colors for each year, I tie them all together by choosing the same design when I order personalization from Persona Imprinting: it's called "Seasons" and has an icon for each of the four seasons. I think it's appropriate for a year-round, annual family album!


Finally, I do the same thing on the spine of each album. This is even more important to me than the cover, because I like to know what I'm looking at when my albums are lined up on the shelf. I have the same "Seasons" image at the top, and this time I stuck with "Annual" and the year at the bottom of the spine, so it would match the rest of the albums on the shelf (and because it's shorter).




The above album is the one that I just started, which will chronicle each year that I teach at my current middle school. I posted about this album earlier this week, and I'm so happy with how the imprinting looks on the Picfolio albums!

If this is something you think you'd like to start doing, contact me at Marianne241@gmail.com and I'll help you get started!

Finished Layout(s): 8th Grade

I have a traditional 12x12 album of my 6 years of elementary teaching, and I'm very proud of that album. It has every student that I taught in those years, and it's something that I really treasure.

When I chose to change positions and teach 8th grade at Lawson Middle School, I knew I would need a new album. For this one, I decided to switch to a Picfolio Milestones album, just for a change in format. I admit that I had been trying to think of a project to do in a Milestones album, and this one seemed to fit the bill.

Title Page
Excuse the awful picture quality here- the plastic sleeves are thicker than a typical page protector, and I hadn't quite managed yet to get my camera to adjust.

On each page, I had a particular theme, usually related to the school event from which the pictures were taken. Using the Picfolio Album Kits, it was easy to coordinate colors and mat some of the photos (but not all of them- that's not necessary). The best thing about Picfolio? No cropping necessary if you're not in the mood to crop... just slide them in!

All of the pages above were Picfolio Multi-Pocket Pages, but this last one is a Picfolio Large-Pocket Page. It allows you to store the larger items that belong in the album... in this case, I kept cards and letters from my students, as well as some of the large sports photos from the teams that I coached.

And the titles? As usual, I used my ABC stickers by Creative Memories. They're a must!

Finally.... the cover!


I personalize all of my covers through Creative Memories Persona Imprinting, which is the division of our company that does the fantastic cover and spine embossing. More details on this in my next post, so stay tuned....

Follow Up: Making Scrapbooks for Others

Several months ago, I posted about a project that two friends and I did, involving some basic scrapbooking for young mothers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I'm happy to report that we have some feedback! And it's good!

Click here for "ohmygoodness really, thank you thank you"

Maternity Album using sbcStudio

After all my excitement over the new sbcStudio software for Mac, I will admit I was a little apprehensive about creating a full album. I made some invitations and page prints, but I've become used to using the pre-designed pages by Storybook Creator Plus (the PC version of our album-making software) to create my albums. sbcStudio has not yet released pre-designed pages, so I knew I would be on my own.

I finally bit the bullet and decided to create a simple, 5x7 softcover album using some of the pictures that my friend had taken of The Husband and myself for our Christmas cards. After making our Christmas cards, I realized just how many great photos we had from the shoot, and I wanted to preserve them somewhere other than my computer's hard drive, but I didn't need anything fancy. A 5x7 album is easy to create and can be uploaded to the CM Digital Center and ordered for only $17.95!

So here's a sneak peek at the album I created. These are 8 of the 20 pages in the album, and I created all 20 in just a half-hour! As I had hoped, it was simple and unintimidating. :)

Happy World Card-Making Day!

Before becoming a consultant, I didn't find any appeal in making cards. I knew that cards were simply thrown away after being read, and I couldn't imagine spending that kind of time on something that wouldn't be kept.



I've since gotten over that issue... I guess I found so much joy in card-making the first time I made my own Christmas cards, and I knew how much the receivers would enjoy seeing my hand-made creation (even if it was soon forgotten or *gasp* thrown away), that I really found it worth it to put in the effort!



Besides, not every card you make will take a lot of time to create. I'm the queen of assembly-line card creations... for example, I'll cut 10 cards out of cardstock, then apply background colors to all, then apply stickers, embellishments and titles to all... and before you know it, I'll have 10 unique, hand-made cards to send! Easy peasy.



Here are some more favorites. These are all posted on the Creative Memories Project Center, a wonderful website where ideas are free for the taking and directions are clear and simple. I love it over there!

Girls on the Run 5k- Sneak Peek!

Last week I posted about the Girls on the Run 5k that I helped out with on May 15th. Well, the albums are off to the printer and I can't wait to receive them!

Here's a sneak peek of some of the pages. Again, this was made using the Creative Memories Storybook Creator 3.0 software. I used predesigned pages, which made it a breeze to design!





You can still order your Girls on the Run album- just send me 10 pictures of your child/team from the race, and I'll insert them into this album (there are 20 pages in all). I can even personalize the cover with a picture of your choice!

Contact me at Marianne241@gmail.com for more info.

Girls on the Run 5k

One of my many activities outside of teaching 8th grade and running my Creative Memories business involves an organization called Girls on the Run. This program combines two things that are very important to me: running and building confidence and self-esteem in young girls.

I have had the pleasure of volunteering at the Silicon Valley Girls on the Run 5k for the last 4 years, and for the last 2 years I've served on the Race Committee as the Volunteer Coordinator. For an event like this, approximately 200 volunteers are needed for logistics and safety, and I'm in charge of recruiting, delegating, checking in, and managing these volunteers. It's a lot of work and a lot of fun!

For the second year in a row, I've created an album using Storybook Creator 3.0, which is Creative Memories' digital album software. Using the Simply Beautiful Digital Power Palette, I came up with this year's album, the cover of which is shown above. It wasn't difficult- I used the Simply Beautiful Predesigned Pages and just plugged in my photos and titles! Done!

The best part? Parents and coaches from the event can send me their photos from the day and I will insert them into the album so that each participant will have her own personalized album from the 5k! Their personalized photos will be mixed in with my photos of the venue, start and finish line, pre- and post-race activities, and large group shots of the runners. This will make a very special piece of memorabilia from a very fun event!

If you're a parent or coach and are interested in ordering your album, contact me at Marianne241@gmail.com for more information.

Great Ideas: Graduation

I was going to do a simple Page of the Week for Graduation, until I discovered the wealth of project ideas in the Creative Memories Project Center. There is so much more you can do in addition to your album pages!


Cards...
Display ideas for your Everyday Display....
Gift Ideas....

(It's a notebook!)

...even cupcake picks!

There are MANY more ideas in the Project Center, complete with the products needed and instructions for assembling. Go check out all the graduation stuff, and browse around at the other categories while you're there!

Simply Beautiful Greeting Cards

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the new Simply Beautiful Power Palette, and heard some good feedback from some of you on the great new colors for spring: bright and colorful!

Luckily for us, CM has come out with a new Featured Project: Simply Beautiful Greeting Cards. Here is a sneak peek at some of my favorites:





This kit makes 16 cards in all, with the cardstock pre-folded and ready to go, and envelopes included. The product value is $45, but the cost of the kit is $35 (plus shipping and tax), and we'll be creating these cards at a workshop on April 16th!

More sneak peeks into the kit will be posted soon, but let me know if you'd like to join us- registration closes for this event on April 7th!