Making Memories

Great Idea

Here is a great idea for the last day of August, it comes from MM's Show & Tell book.  This page was created by Maggie Holmes.  This is a perfect way to use your old letter stickers.  The rules to this is there is no rules, mix your favorite colors and fonts for your background.

Instructions:

1. Attach stickers to cardstock and stitch boarder around edge
2. Attach vellum and ledger paper to page
3. Attach photo to page
4. Type journaling and cut into strips
5. Embellish with ribbon and rub-ons

Supplies:

• Stickers, cardstock, rub-ons, brad, ledger paper, vellum, metal board clip and ribbon: Making Memories
• Font: Arial
• White pen: Uni-ball

Travel Album - What I Collected

Hi friends! I hope you've enjoyed this month's MM vacation album challenge. I loved seeing the beautiful pages and great ideas from Wendy, Jennifer, Wilna, and Laura. 

My contribution to the vacation album will be a "What I collected" page. In July, my family and I went to Tokyo for 2 weeks. I was invited to Japan to do a scrapbook show and to give a seminar at a scrapbook convention much like the Craft and Hobby Association conventions that we have here in the U.S.

After the convention, my and family and I had the time of our lives exploring Tokyo. It was SO much fun!! The people were wonderful and the food was awesome! Once we figured out the railway system, we traveled all around and saw as much as we could. We got so many cool things in Japan; we had to pay $25 extra for luggage that exceeded the allowed weight, LOL. As a start to documenting all the cool things we collected, I created this scrapbook page.

To hold brochures and notes about our travels, I cut a transparency into a triangle and machine stitched it to the page, creating a clear pocket. I then used the MM travel tags to help hold different things. In the upper left I wrapped a rubber band around the tag so that I can slip tickets underneath the band. To hold some coins (yen and an anime coin that my son bought), I again machine stitched on a transparency so that the tag had a pocket. On the blue tag is an anime card (my family loves anime) which I just adhered to the tag using non-permanent adhesive. The last tag uses an MM clip to holds a few business cards - I met a lot of very nice people in Japan, and if you've been to Japan before, you might have noticed that exchanging business cards is an important part of the introduction process. It's pretty cool! 

Now you may have noticed that there is a lot going on in this page. I've really loaded it up, but I did that because it reminds me of Tokyo. In the city, there is so much going on from a visual perspective - whether it was buildings I saw downtown, advertisements, or even what I saw on Japanese T.V. There was lots of visual stimulation and it was interesting to see so many patterns, colors, and details all squeezed together.

So here's the challenge:

1. Create a "What I collected page" using the new MM travel papers and embellishments. I love this line!

2. Adhere or machine stitch at least one pocket on your page. It can be clear like mine (using a transparency) or made of paper.

3. Try some of my tag ideas or come up with your own ways to use tags to attach and display items that you've collected in your travels.

4. Post your finished page in our gallery. We'd love to see it!

Have a wonderful day! Take care :) 

Leah

CKU Nashville was a BLAST

Margie, Maricarmen and I just got back from CKU Nashville and honestly had a blast.  We did a day of make and takes and two days of our album track.  The people we met were fantastic and WE LOVE THEM!  We love attending and making new friends.  Here are some photos of the people we got to teach.

For fun we hung out at the Grand Ole Opry House.  We bought hats (we glittered them of course) and danced to the cool music. 

For more photos, take a look at Margie's blog. 

Creating Keepsakes 2008 Readers' Choice Awards

It's time once again to vote for CK Readers' Choice Awards. 

If you haven't already placed your vote for your favorite MM product, do so now.  Here is the link:

VOTE NOW!

Something Inspirational

I love to blog and I love my blog. Even though I have changed it many times and spend hours trying to learn HTML codes and stuff. Once in a while, I find a blog that totally mesmerize me. One such find is Sarah Bowen's blog. It's a wealth of artistic information. I also LOVE her play list and would often open her blog and listen to all her music (I call it radio Sarah). Her links to various things is fascinating and most of all, I love her photography and her scrapbooking.

I find that I can be visiting her blog and the next thing I know, a whole hour has gone by. I love to look at it (so clean and simple) yet so amazingly artistic and inspiring. She really inspires me creatively. She is one of those "gems" that I really treasure and admire.

Wilna

August Newsletter Winner

In MM's August newsletter, we had a refer a friend to sign-up promotion for our newsletter.  The FIVE readers who signed up the most people were promised a fantastic prize including the latest from MM.  Thank you to everyone who participated.

If your name is listed below, then you are a winner.  Email me your contact information so I can send you the prize.  (jweston@makingmemories.com)

• Chelsi Dall
• Heidi S. Tallerud
• Katie Piotrowski
• Kristina Lewis
• Tina Mayo

Watch for future newsletters from MM.  We will definitely be doing this again.  If you don't currently receive our newsletter, sign up now.

"What I Did" Travel Challenge

This week, as part of the month long challenge, we're creating a layout for our travel album with the theme of "What I Did". When Making Memories asked me to create a layout with this theme, I actually panicked a little. LOL! I hate to admit that my family and I don't travel much ... and I really didn't have any photos to work with. Luckily for me a close friend of mine, Kori Babb, had just gotten back from a vacation to California (my home state). She had such a great time on her trip and had some really great photos. So I thought it would be fun to create a "What I Did" layout for her ... using her photos and her words.

 

I do know that it's easy to get back from a vacation and end up with a ton of photos. So why not pick a few photos that really sum up your activities and create a layout using those. For this layout I choose a photo of Kori and her husband Terry as my main photo ... and then I printed a few smaller sized photos to display together that highlighted the trips activities.

 

I absolutely love the new travel collection. I think it is actually very versatile and I'm looking forward to using it on lots of different themes. Maybe it'll even get me motivated to actually travel myself. LOL! I love all the colors in this collection and they went perfectly with these photos. I think my favorite product was the jigsaw letters and the chipboard accents. I'm in love with chipboard and I think it's great that there are all the different patterns of letters to mix and match ... and how cute are those buttons!

To create this layout:

1.  Trim your red pattern paper to 10.5" x 11" and then mat with white cardstock. Adhere this to the right edge of your green pattern paper.

2.  Trim a 3/4" strip of the cream and brown pattern papers and adhere across the middle of the layout. Add a piece of blue ribbon where the edges meet and staple on the ends.

3.  Adhere your main photo to the top right side of the layout and arrange the smaller photos in the bottom left hand corner, overlapping the paper strips and ribbon.

4.  Adhere the "our adventures" tag and add jigsaw letters for your title.

5.  Adhere "favorite places" tag on bottom of layout and add journaling strips across each line, or hand journal directly on tag.

6.  Thread chipboard buttons with floss and adhere to layout along with chipboard colorboard tag, anchoring them to the paper strips and ribbon.

Are you up for the challenge? Get out that stack of vacation photos and pick out a few that highlight what you did on your trip. Then create a layout and get the main events down in writing to go with the photos. And don't forget to share it with us. Upload your layout to the Making Memories idea gallery so we can all see where you went on your vacation and what you did. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Laura Vegas

We Caught You

It's time for another "We Caught You" blog post.  This time we caught the following people linking the MM blog to their blog.  As a thank you, we are going to send them a surprise.  If you are a winner, please email me (jweston@makingmemories.com) your address.

The WINNERS are.....

• My Scrappy Stuff Blog
• J boys Mommy Blog
• Well Said Cards Blog

It's not too late for you to be caught also.  If you have the MM blog linked to your blog, post a comment with your blog address.  If you don't have the MM blog linked to your blog do so and then post a comment with the address.  We will pick another winner by the end of this week. 

We Got Sidetracked

Ad meetings at MM are always really exciting.  We love the opportunity that it gives us to be creative with the products that we are coming out with.  On this particular day we were at an ad brainstorm meeting for our Holiday and Christmas programs.  It was the end of a long week for all of us, so we got a little sidetracked.  This is our graphics department getting a little crazy with our Clears.

By the way, don't tell them we put their photos up.  I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate the entire world seeing them with a fake mustache.  Check our the following publications to see the end result of the ad.

• -Scrapbooks Etc Nov/Dec. issue
• -Simple Scrapbooks Nov/Dec. issue
• -Creating Keepsakes December issue
• -Paper Crafts Dec/Jan. issue

Bowling

Today we decided to have a little company bowling party, so we headed down to the local bowling alley to show off our bowling skills.  We had a great time.  Here are some pictures of the fun.  The winner was our DC manager, who managed to score 198. 

(Tess and Angela enjoying a refreshing soda, Jodi and Mike posing for a photo before the next round, Jodi, Megan and Dawn hoping for a strike)

(Keith, Hillary, Audre and Colin - the team wanting the bowling trophy the most, Brian and Leslie checking out the score, Jodi doing her pregame stretches)

   

(Jodi and Heather trying their lucky spin, Mike giving it his all, all the smelly shoes after the game - gross!)

(Amy and Jodi - tall and taller, Hillary and her lucky charm, Dave giving it one more try, Brian following his winning game)

 

(The "Victory Pose" complements of Margie, Jenny, Jodi and Tess)