All my pages (so far) new link!

Luna, they dont suck at all! LOL You did a very nice job! I like all the quotes you found to use! Nice touch!

Linda C

I really like your use of the cutouts/stickers, some on the pics & some on the background. That's one thing I've not mastered, being a digital scrapper.

Wow, that is one relaxed cat on the bottom of page 5! I envy cats their ability to sleep anywhere & relax so completely.

I'm the kind who always puts "who/what/when/where" on all my pages. I like the look of yours without that. Have you thought maybe of putting something at the back of the album telling what you know about each pic in case someone looking at the album has questions?

Alicia

LOL alicia! It always helps me to write things down too!

Thanks. I cut out all the shapes from the leftover scraps of paper. With some I cut out the designs on the paper, the hearts and butterflies I just made a template and traced.

I have a lousy memory myself. I could write the same comment for every picture:

"I have no idea when or where this was, in fact I don't even remember taking this picture, I just found it somewhere sometime and put it in my storage box."

Like, in the one on page 2, where my sister is eating something, see that wallpaper? I don't remember ever living in a house with that wallpaper. Maybe we were at a friend's house? *shrug*

I was talking to a friend of mine recently, about how bad my memory is. He's told stories about stuff the two of us have done, to a friend of his named Ben. Ben remembers these events better than I do, even though they happened to me, and he wasn't even there!

They don't suck at all! Great job.

Lynne

Thanks. The quotes are kind of a copout, actually, because I don't know what to write, since I don't know dates or places for most of those pictures, and my brain couldn't come up with any clever alternatives, so I stole other people's words. ;o)

Thank you to everyone who has had such nice things to say! Is it like, a policy on this group that no one ever says anything critical? Because I know my pages don't look near as good as the ones I've seen from you all, with all the complicated layering and special details.

Luna,

Your pages ARE beautiful. We are not looking at it with a critical eye of wow, that's not how I thought it would be. I love your butterflies, they have such character and I love your use of the scraps. I have a huge box of scraps that I never throw away but didn't know what to do with... now I do. I love how some of your frames overlap and the black is fantastic. I've never used a black paged album not even for my heritage albums from 1904 forward. So you have taught me 2 things and I've been doing this off and on for 23 years! People do offer creative criticism when deemed warranted. But usually we like to pat each other on the back for what we appreciate and scraplift components of ideas. We all teach each other. I hope you don't give up. Your work is beautiful. And, remember, no one does perfect pages the first time out, but I think you've come very close. And that's not at all insincere.

Melissa in Seattle pages in 2005 = 150

Melissa said it very well. You are naturally talented and I really like your pages alot. But scrapbooking is also a personal journey and we all understand that. It is about your love or appreciation of things that have happened in your life and the lives of those around you that have influenced you enough to want to imortalize them in your layout. Your pages, even the way you plan them and lay them out, are all part of the story. I think that is why many of us never go back and "re-do" our first pages.

That said, your pages are creative, bold and a lot of thought went into reflecting your sister's personality, while still I think reflecting yours. Put together those two things are beautiful because they express how you feel about her.

Hope that makes sense, M-C

Michele...for a new scrapper I think you have made a fantastic job of the album. Thank you for sharing!

Take care, Marilyn

Yes it did, thank you! I suppose I should give myself more credit. Maybe I don't think so highly of my book because it seemed so much easier to do than I thought it would be. But when I stop and think about it, it seems I've been unknowingly preparing to be a scrapbooker my whole life. My mom was an arts and crafster, so I can't even remember a time when I didn't do crafts. I'm a craft generalist, but I've been making collages since middle school, and in high school my friends and I made an underground newspaper. We all typed our articles with different fonts and cut them out and glued them down for our layouts, including little doodles we thought were neat. We even had a feature where we cut out words from newspapers and magazines and rearranged them to make what we thought were clever or weird new phrases. And then, when I got a computer in '99, I started learning graphic design, and doing a web or ad layout uses the same type of brain function as doing a page layout.

Speaking of graphic design and digital art, that site is here:

I haven't done anything for a while, and I believe most of the web design links aren't up anymore, but the graphics are all still there. In my honest opinion, that work is ok, not great. I'd never make a living at it, but I'm good enough to do stuff for friends at a small price when they need it.

Luna, Your album is wonderful. I think your sis is going to cry and I think you have done a remarkable job for your first book!! I do love your color choices and your quotes are perfect. Thank you so much for sharing with us!!

Hugs, Sabrina in Kentucky Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out...but I can usually shut her up with cookies. Tracy Briseno

Luna, i don't think they suck as yu say!! You know what they say about YOU being yor own worst critic, well it is true!!

The pages I think suck are the first ones that I did. UGH and want to change them SO bad, but it is a often discussed topic in here so I live wih them. They are of mama and papa and that is why I think they bother me so.

71 for 05 25 cards 1 swap

OKC Dave

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Luna your book is amazing. I love they way you laid out the pages and the cutouts and the quotes that you used. I don't think the quotes area copout. There are all different kinds of scrapbooks, some tell a story, some are inspirational and some are just because you love the pictures and the papers. Your sister will love her scrapbook.

I think scrapbooking is a constantly evolving process. I recently did a couple of pages about my cats. When I first thought about them, I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the pages. When I finally sat down to do them, the pages came out very differently than what I had originally planned. I think that if I picked up the same pictures a month or a year from now, the pages would be completely different.

Enjoy creating your pages.

Thanks! I think I'm going to keep this up and do more. I think the next one I'm going to do is one about nature. I used to be in the habit of just taking pictures of flowers or foliage around the neighborhood when I thought it was a pretty day.

Your pages are wonderful! I would have never thought of using black paper through an album. I like the look, will have to keep that in mind. Love how you used the quotes on the pages. Your sister is going to enjoy the album.

Chrissy

Luna, I love the look of your album, too! The pages are bright and colorful in spite of (because of?) the black background, and even though every page is different, they go so well together. I like the idea of a nature page, too. I've got a ton of pictures of trees, flowers, birds, butterflies, and other critters that I'd love to do an album of, someday. (I feel a bit guilty wanting to do that type of album, when there are literally thousands of family photos here waiting to be scrapped. But I'm gonna do it anyway.) I'm looking forward to seeing your nature album. By the way, I saw your posts on alt.tv.lost earlier this week. I'm glad to know I'm not the only Lostie around here. I watch almost no TV (three shows, max), but I've never missed an episode. Love it! Keep up the great scrapping! You have ideas I wanta scraplift!

Mel K

Thanks! I chose black because my sis is kind of a goth chick, but I think she'll like the patterned papers too because she's more a romantic goth than a scary goth. If I could have found large sheets of paper in rich, ornate patterns like that I would have used them, but Michaels didn't have anything like that so I just bought a black album with black pages.

Those papers are actually even prettier irl, s> Your pages are wonderful! I would have never thought of using black

They all look so wonderful Luna! No one will ever know you're a newbie. :-)