Journaling & inspiration made easy.

Today I am thinking of SUMMER.  I am planning to visit family on the East Coast this summer and can hardly wait for some beach time.  As a busy mom I have to carve out time to scrapbook, and I don't always want to spend 7 hours moving things around on a layout or thinking about what to say.  Especially during summer (or whenever school is out).  But I do want to enjoy my scrapbooking time. So here are some of my favorite techniques for simplifying the process:

                  My Best Journaling tip is: If you don't know how to say it-

Let someone else say it for you.

  Sometimes you already know what you want to say, and sometimes explanations any your own words are important But often you can let someone else do the work. This can be done in many ways such as recording a conversation you had or overheard, you can use emails or texts, and once in a while you might even literally hand a page & pen to someone else and ask them to write.  Song Lyrics or Quotes (I love DCWV quote stacks. They are even pretty already) can make great titles or embellishments and can often "speak" your thoughts quite well.
One of my favorites is poetry. I love using poetry because it is about emotion-something I really try to capture in my layouts.

Made using Jennifer's Spring Break Page Kit (find it here )

For this page I used a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. He captured digging in the sand  far better than I ever could. One of my favorite websites for poetry is www.famouspoetsandpoems.com. I love that I can search by poet or by subject and find all kinds of ready made, emotional or not, journaling right there. It's easy to use as well- you can copy & paste it right into your word processing program or even Photoshop Elements text tool. I also love that all of my favorite classical poets are in one place.

I did the same with this card:

Papers & Elements from Jennifer's Waiting for Spring Page Kit.

In this case I only used one stanza out of the six in Wordsworth's poem. there is nothing wrong with taking the parts you want, and leave out the rest (if you are publishing your page or card, you should make sure that you let people know that in the credits). If you are leaving out something in the middle use ...

There are lots of quote & poem sites now, and song lyrics too. If you don't know where to look try your search bar- in this case I searched for "Spring Poems" and found just what I wanted.
 
I personally love to use scripture as well- one of my favorite examples is this page:

In this case the scripture just happens to be poetry as well. And it describes the beauty of fall perfectly, in my opinion.

         My best quick design tip is: If you don't want to spend hours trying to decide where to put your pictures-  

Let someone else do it for you!  

Wait a minute, didn't I just say that?  Okay so maybe these tips are kinda similar but really, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.  Just flip through your favorite magazine or turn to your favorite Layout gallery... There are so many talented scrapbookers and designers that you can get inspiration from. I know what you're thinking but repeat after me "Lifting is NOT cheating" okay now whenever you need to just remind yourself of that okay? okay.   Take your favorite Magazine for example: they have designers and ad execs who get paid big bucks for deciding what colors to put together and where things go best on a page.  I didn't go to design school, but I can be just as classy in my scrapbooks by using their experience to my advantage One of my favorite magazines is Real Simple.  I was flipping through and saw this ad:

Right away I liked it.  At first glance it doesn't scream "Scrapbook Layout" but I really liked the diagonal strip.  When you break it down into shapes & colors you can see a prominent title, a  journaling spot and places for 3 photos.  So here is what I did:

Made using Jennifer's Spring Break Page Kit (find it here )

In this case I really stayed true to the shapes & lines of the ad.  Another example is this layout:

Like the ripples?- Tutorial here

Would you ever think I got the idea from this ad:

I also like to lift other scrapbookers.  Check out my earlier post about the Lift it Up Challenge here.  I lifted another fabulous LO to get this one:

I used these papers by dilek designs and a digital stamp from this set by LaLa studio.  They are both  from MyGrafico who sponsors the design team I am on at http://scf-designteam.blogspot.com/

 (Post updated with this LO)

Page by Tambur McDonald- Thanks Tambur!

Challenges are also great ways to get inspired by other people.  There are many blogs that have challenge inspirations- sometimes they are contests and some are just for fun.  I think the best part is looking at what others have done with the same challenge. For the above I used the weekly challenge from Log Your Memory.

There are even some blogs that keep track of other blog challenges like Feline Playful and The Daily Dare.

And there are always sketches & templates too...So now it's your turn. I challenge you to use one of the above tips to create something and share a link in the comment section if you like.