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{fresh seeds} grow with love: letters edition {may}

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As May is approaching ever nearer, a month that is home to Mother’s Day and Memorial Day in the U.S., Crystal and I felt inspired by the spirit of family and history and legacy.  And so, Grow With Love: Letters Edition {may} which hits The Lilypad today is rooted in that inspiration.

“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” — William James

Meet Grow With Love: Letters Edition {May} — a set of four templates created in the spirit of remembrance and accompanied by four thoughtful story-driven journal prompts which will help you put pen to paper, writing letters of legacy and history.  As always these templates and prompts can be used together or separately to suit any page and story.

And here’s a spot of inspiration:

Grow With Love: Letters {may} is available for 20% off at The Lilypad through Sunday 24 April.

As always I looove to see your stories and art too, so please feel free to share with me anytime.  Just shoot me a mail or share them on my facebook page.  And if you haven’t signed up  the newsletter yet you may want to do that so you can be the first to hear the latest news and get the latest exclusive savings.

Registration for Grow With Love: Self Portrait is open and runs through 6 May 2011.  We would love for you to join us on this journey as we plant ourselves into the story.

{grow with love: letters} Day Fifteen

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Happy Wednesday!  I’m so happy to present Day Fifteen of the Grow With Love: Letters project.  This month has us putting pen to paper about “beginnings“.  And this week’s prompt calls for us to get a little reflective and retrospective as we consider how a “beginning” of a relationship has evolved over time.

When I think of the “why” for my love of scrapbooking and storytelling, so often my thoughts land squarely on: relationships.  As I am documenting our days, really what I am doing is telling the story of our interactions: the conversations, the events, and the moments shared *together* with those I love.  Or I am gushing about or reflecting on the people I share my life with…and at the core of all of this is a portrait of my relationships.

Usually I am recording memories as they happen, preserving snapshots and details and connections in little windows of time.  One day, taken together, they will reveal an entire history and journey of our relationships.  But generally, as it’s unfolding in my storytelling day by day, the evolution of the relationships  isn’t immediately obvious.  And so this week’s prompt was refreshing for me.  It inspired me to take some time to consider the entire history of a relationship and give the “sum up” as I reflected on how that relationship has evolved over time.  And I’m really pleased to have scrapped it!

I was inspired to scrap about my relationship with my sister.  This is a relationship that has, regretfully, not been documented in my scrapbooks as often as I would like.  A huge part of that is the geographical divide between us.  Living at opposite ends of the country makes it difficult to make memories together like we once did.  And so that is another reason I really appreciated this prompt — I could focus on documenting a relationship that means so very much to me and has deep and long history, but fewer “today” moments than I would like.

I used goodies from the amazing new grab bag from Fruit LoOp Sally at Ninth and Bloom.

Coila was inspired to reflect upon her relationship with her husband:

And Lex was inspired to scrap the evolution of her relationship with her sister:

And Nicole was also inspired to reflect on her sister relationships:

As I was seeing the beautiful pages for this prompt I realized that several of us were led to scrap about our sibling relationships!  What relationship’s story do you feel inspired to share?

Hope this prompt speaks to you today too!  Happy Scrapping!

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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

Grow With Love: Self Portrait Q & A

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So hopefully by now you’ve heard a little bit about our latest Grow With Love installment Self Portrait.

Crystal and I are really excited about this one as it takes the entire experience to a new level and because it gets us focused on something we both really believe in: telling OUR stories, ones about us..not just our kids or husbands or families, but about us.  We are really excited about the format and our plans for the class and can’t wait to share it with you!  So we invite you to learn a little more {HERE} and in the Q & A thread in the forum.  And we also invite you to ask questions here in this post!  What would you like to know about the process and the class?  Feel free to ask any questions in the comments and we will respond to them as best we can.

I’ll share a few FAQs…

Q:  Do I have to register in the forum?

A:  No, you do not.  You’ll receive all the basic course materials which are enough to follow along with the series at your own pace.  That said, we really encourage you to register in the forum because, while we will send out some emails with additional content, the bulk of our bonus content and all of our exclusive offers from class sponsors and contributors during the “enhanced class period” will be posted in the forum.  If you’ve signed up for the class, or even if you haven’t feel free to register and join in conversation in the forum.

Q: What if I’m not comfortable sharing or participating very much?

A: That’s ok!  Crystal and I really understand that not everyone will want to participate at the same level.  And so we aimed to design the class in such a way that you can still participate with as much or as little involvement in the forum as you would like.  You can sign up for the forum and peek in throughout the class simply to snag the latest content or exclusives or you can get comfy cozy and join in and share.  It’s completely up to you!

Q: Is the forum private?

A: Yes and no.  There is a general forum area that is visible to all Plant Your Story forum goers.  And then there is a private forum specifically for Grow With Love class participants.  This will go live just before the official class start date of Monday 9 May.  Only class members will be able to see and share in this forum.

Q: Is the gallery private?

A: Again, yes and no.  Like the forum, there is a general Storytellers gallery that is open to anyone.  There is also a private gallery for class participants.  You may post in the private gallery or in the public gallery, or simply in the forum, or not at all…whatever you are most comfortable with.

Q: Is this class only for digital scrapbookers?

A:  Not at all!  While Crystal and I both have roots in the digital scrapbooking community we feel sincerely that this is a class that any scrapper (traditional, paper, or digital or digital art) can find inspiration.  In fact, we have had paper scrappers follow along with Grow With Love, scrapping the prompts and we have LOVED to see the results.  In fact, you could adapt this project in to any craft or type of storytelling.  And while the exclusive kit is in digital format, it is produced in printable quality and can easily be used in hybrid or paper scrapping.  And the digital templates can also be used as basic sketches.  We will be offering some more traditional sketches as well, but we truly believe that anyone hoping to tell their story can find inspiration in this journey.  🙂

Please feel free to ask anything that comes to mind.  We will update this post as we receive and answer questions.  We’re getting excited!  Can’t wait to embark on this journey!

today i…

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So.  I love to play with paper.  I love neutral krafty papers.  I love pretty patterned papers.  I love papers with beautiful color palettes.  I love papers with realistic textures.  I love papers that make you want to pet them even if they are digital.  I love layering papers.  I love cutting papers.  I love using papers in fun shapes.  I love using papers to frame photos, to blend photos, to mask photos, to create alphas, to use as mats.

And this love of paper probably goes a long long way in explaining just why I love Liz of Paislee Press so much (beyond the fact that she is completely made of awesome).  She creates gorgeous papers that make my paper-loving heart go all a-twitter.  She’s also a storyteller at heart I find myself effortlessly inspired by her beautiful work.  So needless to say, when I laid eyes on Liz’s newest release (landing in her store on 20 April) I was smitten all over again.

I was instantly inspired to use the beautiful papers in Sorriso to create a design that framed and anchored this photograph of Bugga.  I really wanted to create a balance of letting the photo AND the papers shine without one overpowering the other.  And Liz made it easy by offering a cheerful and vintage-y palette and both big patterned papers and smaller patterned papers,  as well as beautiful neutral papers.

And I knew this kit would really afford itself beautifully to my latest album that showcases a series of “todays” over time.  I am scrapping a page every month or so that simply captures the beauty of one moment and then includes a stream of thoughts and feelings I have on that day.  So this is “today i…” for 4.18.2011.  In the end, these pages will be compiled together into an album mosaic of moments that will reveal the bigger picture and let my daughter and family see themselves and me through my eyes over time.  It’s a fun and simple way to document the everydays and see a progression of our story.

So yeah.  Liz has inspired me to create another page that helps me tell our story.  And I love her for it.

For another peek at Sorriso inspiration that will no doubt WOW you, please wander over to Therese’s blog {HERE}.  Therese is a dear inspiration to me and has such a beautiful and restrained voice in her storytelling.  I think you’ll be taken in by her beautiful photographs and pages too!

 

Planting Roots in the Story

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I suppose I’ve always had a love affair with The Story.  Although I didn’t always realize that’s just what it was.  At least that’s not what I called it.  I knew I loved to write.  I knew I loved all the things that stories are made of:  the characters and character development, the details of the moments, the plot, the tapestry of images and words and art.   I knew I liked to collect memories.  They lived in shoe boxes of stuff and in my photo albums and in my journals.

But it wasn’t until I started to document the characters and the details and the events in my own life, through photographs and through scrapbooking and through journaling, that I realized what I was really doing was: storytelling.  Not in a fictional sense of the word, and not in a “sit right back and you’ll hear a tale” kind of way, or even in a “when I was a young gal, we had to walk uphill (both ways!) in the snow with no shoes” kind of way.  This storytelling isn’t about tall tales or embellishments, it’s not about capturing, keeping or entertaining an audience.

It’s about documenting, about recording, about saying “I was here”, it’s about taking stock in life, it’s about celebrating the every day, it’s about finding your voice and getting to know yourself better, it’s about writing love letters to those I care about, it’s about keeping a family history, writing biographies and an autobiography, and it’s about building a legacy.  It’s about things that matter.  Not to the world.  Not to Tom, Dick or Harry or Lady Gaga.  Not to anyone else but those who matter to me.  The ones I love, the ones I hope to teach and to learn from, the ones I share myself and my life with.  I am recording our stories.  And in the process, I am *writing* my own.

Anyway…all that is to say, I have a spark for telling my story and I feel there is a value in documenting our days that pours out beyond the page and into our lives.  And I hope that this site will emerge as a source of inspiration and encouragement for anyone who finds themselves wanting to tell their own stories, whether they have a “pull” like I do, or if they feel like they don’t know where to start.  I hope that, together, we can tell record our memories and document our days in a more meaningful way by planting our roots in the story.

{grow with love: letters} Day Fourteen

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Happy Wednesday!  I’m happy to be sharing today’s prompt from Grow With Love: Letters.  This month we are considering the stories of beginnings.  In Day Thirteen we let ourselves get reflective in our remembering and we captured the feelings that come with the beginning of a new season of life (married life, parenthood, stepping in to the world on your own for the first time..).  Today we will build upon that reflectiveness and the exciting energy of “begninning”:

This is what Crystal and I call an “act and scrap” prompt.  These prompts are designed with the hope of encouraging you to let the story touch your life in a tangible way…to actually *write* your story, so to speak.

And there are so many possibilities for this prompt, so you can have fun with it!  What little something (or big something) have you been thinking about beginning, but haven’t found the time or made the time for?  What something New would you like to try?  Try something new today.

Sara was inspired to share about a new lifestyle she is embarking on:

And Kelly documented her adventure in trying a new crafty project:

For more inspiration on scrapping the story of  “trying something new” I encourage you to visit Peppermint and Christine as they document an entire year of New in a project called New 52.  Each week they try something new to them and really embrace the journey of living life fully, trying new things and embracing change.

And be sure to visit next Wednesday for the next installment in the Letters series.  We can’t wait to see your pages!

Happy New and Happy Scrapping!

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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 the Letters project which will be highlighted here every Wednesday.

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