Personally, I think Christmas music is appropriate all year round. Recently, my Christmas playlist is what you can hear in my home office. Helps me get in the mood for all the holiday-related stuff I’m creating (we’re working on our December issue of the magazine).
It’s at least 110 degrees outside, but I recently finished a handful of Christmas card designs (and yet also thinking about getting in the pool with my kids later this afternoon). A little strange? Of course. But after 10 years of working in publishing, I’ve gotten used to working on the opposite season than what’s outside my door.
While I was in card mode, I did a couple of baby congrats cards (a cousin just had a baby girl and a neighbor just had a baby boy). Wanted to try out my new tag curler from Making Memories. Love it.
It curls the metal accent (also from MM) around the ribbon. How cute is that? The cards took like 2 minutes to make. I love quick. Speaking of quick, I’ll quickly answer a few more of your questions:
[ square punch ]
“Keatingdeirdre” asked about using a square punch for my pictures. No, I did not use a square punch on the 4th of July layout that I posted. I cropped them to size in Photoshop (they’re 2″ x 2″) and then put these small images onto 4″ x 6″ canvases (still in Photoshop), which I then uploaded to Costco for printing. When I trimmed the prints, I simply left a skinny, white edge around each little picture. No matting needed. PS – I don’t own a square punch.
[ current scrapbooking ]
Sue asked if the magazine only accepts submissions with more current pictures, and she was surprised that I was “behind” in my scrapbooking. First of all, I hope no one is adding stress to their life with the “I’ve got to be caught up” mentality in scrapbooking. It’s not about everything being totally documented from your life and your children’s lives. The fact that you’re doing anything at all is terrific. And the order in which you do your pages is entirely up to how you want to prioritize and how you’re able to manage your time.
I’ll soon be sharing more about my system & my entire scrapbooking process (it seems there are a LOT of questions on this subject). But in the meantime, I’ll tell you that I do NOT work exclusively with current pictures. I still have layouts from a few years ago that I’d like to do, and I occasionally work on family history stuff and other projects as well. But the “randomness” of how I work is actually pretty organized. Like I said … I’ll be sharing more on this, and how I manage it all.
[ CHA ]
Yes, I will be attending CHA in Chicago next weekend. If any of you are going to be there, please stop by and say hi! I’ll be in the Advantus booth (promoting the Lisa & Becky line) on Friday 10am – noon. I’ll be in the CKMedia booth from 3 – 5pm that same day (promoting my new Sketches book). I’ll also be in the CKMedia booth again on Saturday from 11 – 1.
