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brought to you by the letter J {a giveaway}

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There are some products that just seem born to be used in amazing scrappy and story-centric ways.  You know the kinds of unique elements that add THE perfect touch to your story?   And there are some designers who are positively gifted with this kind of creativity.  Jacque Larsen is just that kind of creative force.  Her products are fun and full of unique energy.  And because she creates them with her own hands, with real life paper, they provide a fantastic sense of realism to pages that I just adore and that totally satisfies my love for paper-y goodness .

I was just talking about the awesomeness of photo-less scrapping.  Highlighting, among other things, just how photo-less scrapping & theme-centric, unique products are Made For Each Other…and I can’t tell you how many times I found *just* what I was looking for in Jacque’s store.  She creates AMAZING products, both “theme-y” and more general and without fail they bring out the best in my pages and they are just the kind of products I was talking about…they can be put to use so beautifully in photo-less scrapping.

Here are a few of my most favorite Jacque products:

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I am SO SO thrilled to present a special blog giveaway today sponsored by Jacque.  She is generously offering a $10 gift certificate to her store to one lucky commenter.

I would be willing to bet that you will find something dozens of somethings that endear you in Jacque’s store which is FULL of unique hand-painted and pieced paper pieces.  And to enter, that’s all you need to do.  Simply take a peek in her store, wander around a bit and come back here to share the name of one of your favorite Jacque products.  Or if you happen to know the name of a favorite off the top of your head, that’s wonderful too!

To increase your chances of winning, you can tweet this contest and/or post on Jacque’s wall FB group wall telling her how much you agree with me and think she’s made of awesome, lol!  Just come back to share a separate comment with the link to your tweet or letting me know you showered the love.  🙂

You have until 8pm PST Monday 9 May to enter.  Lots of luck!!

To Photo or Not To Photo?

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I confess.  For a very (very) long time in my scrapbooking, I put off tackling the *cue scary music* Photo-Less Page.  I love photos.  I have tons of them.  I like to scrap them.  For some reason I was intimidated by scrapping a page that dared to have no photos.  How do these really fit in to my story anyway, right?  Wrong.  Wrong-o.  When I finally kept a scrapping resolution to myself and scrapped my first photo-less page I found it to be….creatively empowering.

My photo-less pages have become some of my most favorite pages.  They have been, at times, really challenging to scrap but always ALWAYS…really {full} of emotion and story.  I love the emphasis I can place on mood and tone and words when I scrap without a photo.  I love how I can visually tell a story in ways that are different from capturing it with photos.  I love that my boundaries for telling my story have expanded because I start to think outside my box a little bit and venture in to scrapping the little details that haven’t been caught on camera.  They have facilitated telling my *own* story more vs. just focusing on the stories of my children and family.

And so now I have myself thinking “what took me so long?”.  Because really photo-less pages have the potential to be a storyteller’s dream.   And since it probably goes without saying that I (a.k.a. Wordy McGee) love journaling and I pretty much think that journaling is the Cat’s Meow, this has become THE huge appeal for me in a photo-less scrapbook page.  Because a photo-less page has the potential to be a journaling-FULL page *contented sigh*.  But even if journaling is not your forte or gives you hives, photo-less scrapbooking can be a valuable tool in documenting your days.

And so today I would like to shine the light on some ways photo-less scrapping can enhance the telling of your story.  And why photo-less pages deserve a place in your scrapbooking and albums.

Here are 5 Reasons to Scrap Photo-less a.k.a. 5 Reasons why Photo-Less Scrapping is Made of Awesome:

1.  Photo-less pages put the focus on storytelling. I suppose you’re thinking “DUH”.  But here’s what I mean:  photo-less pages encourage you — simply by virtue of the space on the page waiting to be filled with your story — to take your journaling to the next level.

When you allow a photo-less page to become a journaling-centric page the focal point is the story.  Your words.  Your voice.  Your Story.  And when there is no photo to act as your focal point, it often compels you to share more details and more of your thoughts and feelings; it allows the narrative to grow beyond the images.  It often compels you to let your journaling become something MORE than the Who, What, When and Where.  There is potential for more of the Why.  And that is journaling and storytelling at a different level.

Not all pages have to be missives or full of heart-gushing, weighty thoughts.  Journaling centric pages can easily be lighthearted and fun or tongue-in-cheek and silly.  But I would contend that when the journaling is the focus, as it often is in photo-less pages, there is a different kind of voice shining through that really contributes to the authenticity of the whole story.  Because the truth is, there is so much we *think* and want others to know but we don’t *say* it.  Journaling-centric photo-less pages give us the freedom to explore all of that.

All of these pages could easily have been pages scrapped with photographs.  In choosing to focus on my words which are, in large part, words written for and to my husband, they became MORE meaningful to me and I was encouraged to really express myself in a deeper and richer way.  And they were scrapped in more of a “for all time” kind of context becoming something classic and lasting and transcendent of a specific moment in time captured in camera.

2. Photo-less pages help you tell YOUR story. One of the reasons I haven’t scrapped All About Me pages as much as I want to is because I don’t have many usable photos to scrap.  Photos of me are scarce because I’m always behind the camera (note to self: make future post about why it’s important to get out from behind the camera).  And the photographs of my childhood are certainly fewer and farther between.  But lack of photos is no excuse for excluding myself from my own story.  Enter, Photo-less Scrapping.

Scrapping sans photos allows you to scrap about yourself (and you’re doing that right?) without the limitation of a photo to tell your story.  You can scrap light-hearted pages, listy pages, moment-in-time pages; you can scrap biography and history pages; you can scrap emotional and cathartic pages.  You can scrap all the little details of your story and nothing needs be left behind because you don’t have a photo for that memory or moment.

3. Photo-less scrapping really lends itself well to conveying mood and tone through the use of color. We make use of color all the time in our scrapbooking and photography but when when you scrap color without photos it becomes a focal point in and of itself and guides the story in a fresh way.

By being deliberate in your color choice and letting it be a dominant feature of your page design, a beautiful emotiveness can emerge.  There is something that is striking — in an emotional way — about color.  And when color is the “star” of a design, there are endless options for scrapping stories without photos.

Color can be used to subtly convey emotion.  I decided to go photo-less when scrapping my “One Little Word” of 2010.  I wanted this page to serve as a graphic reminder to myself of the word I had chosen to frame my year.  “Wellness” for me carried with it a certain kind of peacefulness and calm and balance and so I chose a soft palette of blues to convey this mood.  And every time I looked at this page I was struck with just that feeling.

In this page I used the darkness and the deepness of black to convey emotion of this day and memory I was scrapping.  The weight of the fear and the dread and worry of the story is almost tangible simply through the power of color.

There is a lot of power and a lot of room for creativity when letting color become a focal point in your photo-less scrapping.

4. Photo-less scrapping affords the opportunity to get “theme-y”. When you take photos out of the design, or if you simply don’t have photos to scrap for a particular page you want to scrap, you have room to really explore different “themes” in scrapping.  Which means you can also really have fun scrapping theme specific products you may have LOVED but not been sure how to incorporate into your page.

I have had enormous fun scrapping some amazing AMAZING products that were either: theme-centric in a way that didn’t seem to “fit” any of my photos naturally or were so unique and so full of whimsy that I found myself struggling to use them in a cohesive way for my photo-founded page.  When I ventured outside of my scrapbooking comfort zone a little bit I found there was tremendous freedom in using these products for my pages.

And I found photo-less really encouraged me to create pages with a strong theme and coordinating lots of fabulous products from within my scrapping stash.

5. Photo-less pages  let you play with journaling design. One area some scrappers have expressed challenges with is where to place the journaling on their page.  One of my most favorite remedies for this obstacle is something I call “journaling design” . That is to say, the incorporation of journaling into page design so that it becomes an aspect of your design in and of itself.  And photo-less pages really give you the chance to explore journaling design.

When you have a page that does not include photos, you are free to experiment with different orientations and methods for your journaling. And this, in turn, makes it SO much easier to find placement for your journaling in your photo-full scrapbooking pages too.  You can play with journaling in blocks, journaling in lists, journaling in scatters, journaling on papers and paint, journaling on journal tabs and journalers.

And making good use of journalers and journal tabs, papers and frames is one of my most favorite ways to scrap and journal a photo-less page.

There are many other reasons why I think photo-less pages can be Made of Awesome including…they give room to play with and let title work take center stage, they make for AWESOME list pages and they let you explore the amazingness that is Art Journaling, but most of all I think photo-less scrapping really lets your creativity soar and it can result in some of your most fun to create and most fulfilling pages.

So next time you find yourself unsure how to scrap a story that you have in mind, or the next time you feel like you’re in a “rut” creatively or you need a boost in your journaling,  I encourage you to dive in and tackle (and fall in love with) photo-less scrapping.

{grow with love: letters} Day Seventeen

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Happy Wednesday!  And Happy May!!  (By the way, how is it May already?!)

If you’re just finding us here’s a smidge of backstory: “Grow With Love: Letters Edition” is a collaboration of templates and journaling prompts presented by Crystal Livesay and Sara Gleason and rooted in and inspired by letter writing as featured in the Artisan Notebook throughout 2011.  We will really explore the beauty of letter writing in our scrapbooking through letters to loved ones, letters to ourselves, letters as words into the cosmos.  Letters that help us set our hearts to paper, help us to get introspective, challenge us to bring words and thoughts to action in our days and letters that guide us to share the fun, the little moments, the every day.   So far we have penned letters that reflect upon setting direction and setting compasses, loves and relationships, gifts and beginnings.

With Mother’s Day and Memorial Day here in the States, we were inspired to honor family this month with our prompts.  And so the {may} letters will have us putting pen to paper writing letters honoring those we’ve loved, those we’ve lost, celebrating legacies and pondering our own.

We hope you will enjoy continuing in this scrapbooking and storytelling journey with us!  Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.  The schedule for May is as follows, with all posts found right here on the Plant Your Story blog:

Week One: Wednesday 4 May – join Sara for Day Seventeen
Week Two: Wednesday 11 May – join Crystal with Day Eighteen
Week Three: Wednesday 18 May – join Sara with Day Nineteen
Week Four: Wednesday 25 May – join Crystal for Day Twenty

And I’m so let’s dive in to the prompt for today, Day Seventeen:

This is a timely page for Mother’s Day which is celebrated here in the US this Sunday.  Let yourself ponder your mother and how she has shaped you (good or bad).  Reflect and write a letter that reflects this relationship and its dynamic.

Here’s a page from me that shines the light on my mom, who I am blessed to say has been an amazing light and influence in my life.

And here’s a spot of inspiration from the Storytellers:

Coila:

Lex:

Sara:

A page like this is not only a wonderful addition to your own albums and your story, but it could make a really lovely present for your mom too!  We hope you feel inspired by this prompt and we would love to see your pages!  Feel free to share them here in the comments or in the Plant Your Story gallery!

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Grow With Love is a story-centric scrapbooking and journaling project.  We hope it will inspire you to document your stories in a meaningful way that helps you live life more meaningfully too.  Please remember anyone is welcome to join in and follow along at any time.  You can access the complete Grow With Love archive and hop in to any past Grow With Love project or follow along with the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

Grow With Love Archive

Scrap Your Theme Song

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Hi there everyone! I am so excited to be here today with a super fun contest! Behind the scenes we are working on a team page and we wanted to do something different instead of just the regular old bio and pic. We are storytellers after all! So we decided to have the girls scrap their theme song. Music is a huge part of our lives and sometimes there are songs that totally speak to us and scream “This is sooo me!” or maybe they just lift your spirits and you find yourself singing it all the time. Either way, we often are moved and inspired by the music around us.

We wanted to have a fun little contest for our readers too! So, I want you to think about the song that describes you right now. Maybe it’s the anthem you live by. The hymn that moves your soul. The song that sounds like it could be written from your own life. Whatever it is, scrap it however you are inspired to!   You may use any products of your choice.  And you one entire month — woot! — until Tuesday 31 May 12am EST (Friday night) to get your pages posted in OUR GALLERY and link us up in the comments of this post!

What do you win you ask?! One of our dearest friends and designers was super generous! Kristin Cronin Barrow will be giving the winner of this challenge an amazing GC of $25 to her store! Such an amazing prize and her goodies are soooo beautiful! In fact! I used them when making my theme song page!

Her stuff is super versatile and 25 will get you lots of amazing goodies!! Don’t forget you have until Tuesday 31 May 12am EST (Friday night) to get your pages posted in our gallery here at Plant Your Story!! I cannot wait to see what songs move you guys!!

{grow with love: letters} Day Sixteen

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Hello Everyone! Crystal here bringing you day 16 of the letters. I am pretty ill but I was determined not to leave Sara hanging on today’s post, so I apologize in advance for any typos…or sentences that make no sense! Today’s prompt was a bit different for Sara and I. We are always looking for different ways to inspire you in your storytelling. Let’s take a look at what we had for today and then chitter chatter a bit more about it!

I quite like this quote, don’t you?? So much comes to my mind when I think about it and so much can be scrapped with that as your inspiration. Sometimes an ending is very sad. It’s hard to move on from some things and ever see good things come from it. Sometimes you feel as if nothing good could ever come from something. However, I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason and a lot of the time you have a lot of control over what is to be gained from a situation. If you sit around and sulk over your broken heart then you will never be able to heal or find someone to help you put it back together. Maybe a period came in your life where you felt so hopeless and full of despair? Where did you go from that point?? What good were you able to spring forth from those ashes? Maybe you are still at an end. Your new beginning hasn’t come yet. Where do you hope to go from here? We have a couple super amazing pages from the girls to share with you too!

by Lex

by Nicole

Totally amazing and inspiring!! I hope that you are moved by this prompt! Don’t forget to snag the May Letters because they will be starting here on May 4th!

creating a self portrait

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I’m often asked: Why  Do You Scrapbook?  And while there are 57854 reasons why, in the spirit of simplicity I usually say something like “I think it’s important to preserve our story”.  Which is true, of course.  But there is so much more to it for me.  And one of those “so much more”s has a lot to do with this:

Recently I was thinking about my grandmother. This month marks the anniversary of her going Home and it is the month of her birthday, so as it happens every year around this time, everything about her was fresh in my mind.   Life has a funny way of making people and moments vivid again for us around holidays and anniversaries and milestones doesn’t it?

So I was thinking about the way she laughed..such a beautifully vibrant laugh for such a small woman.  I was thinking about how much she loved natural things and playing with flowers and digging in the dirt.  I was thinking about how I never once (not ONCE) saw her look angry or sound angry.  I was thinking about how much she loved my grandpa.  And politics.  And I was thinking about how she made everyone smile.  She was one of those people who epitomized those words Tom Hanks used to describe his late wife in the movie “Sleepless in Seattle”: “She made everything beautiful”.  And that was her story.  As I knew it.  It is her story, written by me.

And sometimes I wonder what was her story…written by HER?  I imagine know it would reinforce the portrait I have of her in my mind and the one my mother has painted and my grandpa.  But I’d love to know…how did she feel when she first became a mother?  What were her favorite songs and books and what are her most vivid memories?  What was it like to grow up in her shoes?

I am fortunate to have been given a glimpse of all of this.  Shortly after she passed, as we were going through her things, we came across a diary of hers from long ago.  What a treasure it was.  And there we were, the whole family, gathered around the dining room table reading from age-stained pages.  And her voice shone through so beautifully.   And it was….nothing less than a gift to all of us.  Because as much as we all knew her, this was her in her own voice.

So I was thinking of this the other day and remembering how it felt that day around the table learning more about this woman we so loved.  And I was thinking about how much MORE I would love to know.  And I was thinking about my own story.  Am I telling it?  Am I represented in the pages of my scrapbooking?  Is my story there?  Will my loved ones, gathered around a table one day, hear my voice?

Are you creating a self portrait?

 

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