Day One | Keep It Simple Scrapbooking Week

Good Morning and welcome to day one of  Keep It Simple Scrapbooking Week (KISS Week). Today we are welcoming Jenny Theriault and Jess Forster, both Ali Edwards Design Inc creative team members,  as they share their favorite tips to help document their stories. Enjoy! 

Jenny Theriault // Start with Stories of Life Right Now

I’m Jenny Theriault and I am thrilled to share my number one tip for folks just getting started in scrapbooking or those wishing to return; and that is start with stories of life right now. I have been scrapbooking for 20 years and often have been asked where to start. For me, scrapbooking is something I am passionate about and has become a part of my lifestyle, but as with everything in life hobbies ebb and flow. For me to continue to be excited about and invested in scrapbooking it also needs to feel interesting and relevant and not like a chore to be added to a long list. Some folks I have talked to have been keen to start with childhood albums or to go back in time to scrapbook their children’s baby albums, and while those kinds of albums are meaningful and have value, they can feel daunting (if this is you – check out Ali’s class Yesterday & Today for some great inspiration for telling some of those childhood stories). My hope is that scrapbooking will be a fun way to mix creativity and storytelling and using some pretty supplies too. 

I have two go-to methods for telling stories of right now. The first is to make a list of things that are going on right now in the life of someone you love. I use this method most often for my daughter who is growing and changing all the time and I love going back to read the stories of these pages that I have completed about her over the years, but this can also be used to tell stories about yourself or other loved ones in your life.

In this spread, using supplies from Ali’s storytelling basics product line, I simply made a list of things about my daughter right now. In this list I wrote about school life, home life, and included some of her hobbies right now. Then I added a large photo of her and a few embellishments. This page was quick, and easy and I love this look at what my daughter is into right now.

Here are a few more examples of past layouts I’ve created using this same storytelling technique:

My second go to way to tell stories of right now is to make a list of all the things currently happening in my life. This could include things just about me or a mix of things happening for all my family members. This is a great way to capture all the big and small everyday life stories that make up our lives. 

Thanks for reading my tip today and I hope this gives you some ideas for jumping in (or back in) to scrapbooking in an easy to do way that feels not only exciting, but doable. 

JESS FORSTER // PHOTO ENLARGEMENTS

Hi everyone - its Jess, I am so excited to be participating in the Keeping It Simple Scrapbooking (KISS) week here on Ali’s blog. Today I am going to share with you one of my favourite ways to make simple scrapbook layouts: photo enlargements. Not only can enlargements take up space and help reduce creative decision fatigue, it helps give your pages, a clean graphic look. Read on to learn more!

Photos have always been an integral part of my memory keeping process and photo enlargement is one design technique I return to again and agin on my pages. Not only do photo enlargements tell the viewer, “hey look at this”, it also can allow you, the scrapbook artist, to clearly define what is important to you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what I choose to enlarge, may be different than what you choose…and that’s okay. 

When you sit down to create, consider, what do I want to emphasize? What is meaningful to you? What is the “visual’ story you want to tell. Pets, friendships, places etc are just a handful of subjects you could document. Thinking about what you want to highlight is almost as important as the size you choose to print your photos. For me, I alway want to highlight relationships between my family members as well as growth and development of each family member. For me, as long as photo checks these boxes then I will choose to enlarge a photos I have taken.

Incorporating photo enlargements in to your layouts will depend on your scrapbooking budget and the type of printer you have. For me, photo enlargement sizes include but are not limited 5x7, 6x8, 8.5 x 11, 9x12” or 12x12. Depending on the album, pocket page or traditional layout size that you are working with, will guide what photo to select. Whether you print at home or send your photos to an outside printer as well as your budget, will determine how often incorporate this technique into your pages.

Here is one example where I have included a photo enlargement as part of a “daily opener” associated with a specific project. This 8.5 x 11 single page layout is from 2010 Week In Life project includes a photo of my husband and I pre-kiddos. The picture sized to 8x5 x 6”, the page tells the story of what we did on the Wednesday evening and is still one of my favourites to date. I love the idea of incorporating a large picture in a project like WITL, DTIL or December Daily as an “opener” or introduction to a specific day.

Another example where I have use a photo enlargement is this most recent project using the 2021 March Stories By the Month physical kit. It is an 6x8 double page layout documenting how my kids got creative in the first few weeks of COVID, quarantine lockdown. Although the photo is blurry, I love that this picture reminds me of a positive event from that shocking / weird time.

My final example is a 9x12 double page layout that uses the Celebrate Story kit to document the final walk on the beach for my dog Charlie. The page, which celebrates his life, highlights one of his favourite activities: a walk on the beach. For me, it was important to my to include the enlarged selfie of Charlie, my husband and myself from that day as it is one of his last happy moments before he passed away. 

There are many sizes and projects that can use photo enlargements. I hope this post inspires you to try this design technique to emphasize what is important to you in your layouts. Thanks so much for reading!

We hope you enjoyed Jess and Jenny's tips. Find more inspiration from them both on instagram! Jenny can be found at @jenny_theriault and look for Jess at @jess_forster. Make sure to check back tomorrow for some great advice from Jen Schow and Ingunn Markiewicz!!