Hello Ella Blog Readers!
 
Its Katie Scott and every Friday for the next 7 weeks, we are going to be talking TV. Why? Well, last month was sweeps month, so chances are that between the Winter Olympics and all the new shows on primetime, then your TV has probably been on more than usual! (At least it has been in my family.)

How does TV relate to scrapbooking? It doesn't, except that the monitor in my scrapbooking room doubles as a computer screen and as a television (thanks honey), and that I find that if I've got a theme, it makes it easier for me to scrapbook more quickly. And as I thought about TV last month, I was inspired to creative and quick pages that I might not have otherwise thought of making.
 
Let Me Explain: If you are an Ella fan, then you are probably familiar with Wendy Smedley and her book with Aby Garvey "The Organized & Inspired Scrapbooker" (which is unfortunately sold out). This book is pure eye candy; but the most interesting part of the book for me was "Chapter 3: Approach," which explores how most scrapbookers fall into four categories when it comes to starting a layout: 1. Story First; 2. Photos First; 3. Supplies First; and 4. Design First. (Tip: for an excellent discussion of the Process of Scrapbooking, take a listen to Paperclipping Episode #7, where Angie Lucas and other scrapbookers discuss how they approach scrapbooking.)
 
Ok, back to the point: I am usually a "Story First" or "Photos First" type of scrapbooker, which means that I either (1) have an idea for a page then go about finding pictures and scrapbooking supplies to support my story or (2) I sift through my photos and come up with an idea and then go about finding the scrapbooking supplies to complete the page. By choosing a theme first (like TV), then I can think about stories associated with that theme or find photos that fit into the theme. I find I think up layouts and execute them more quickly. I completed the 7 layouts you will see in this series of blog posts in ONE AFTERNOON using this Theme Approach!
 
My first page was a combination of the story-first and photos-first approaches. Story First: I knew I wanted to do a page about a TV show that my family is currently enjoying, and we like to watch Survivor, The Simpons, and American Idol as a family. Photos First: Then I flipped through my photos and found some photos of my son playing the American Idol home game. Based on that, I picked American Idol for the page. (But if I would have found pictures of our many kayak trips to an uninhabited island near our house, then I probably would have done a Survivor-themed page. And if I found pictures from our last trip to Universal Studios it would have been The Simpons.)

Journaling reads: "I'm pretty sure our family has seen every episode -
its good clean fun & there isn't much of that on tv now days. We
even bought the at home game. The funniest thing was that Mac went
straight into AC/DC (thanks to our old "Manny" Gino) and Allison sang
'This Little Light of Mine' (thanks to Church School). "

Supplies: patterned paper (American Crafts); American Idol graphic printed from a google image search; letters (QuicKutz Studio); font (Calibri).
 
Ella friend, Barb Wong made this sketch to go along with the layout, Thanks Barb!!

Your first Ella challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to play along and create one TV-themed layouts every week for the next 7 weeks. Create your first layout about or inspired by a tv show that you or your family is currently enjoying. I can't wait to see what you create!

(Post your finished layouts in this gallery at Scrapbook.com by next Thursday, and tag them Ella TV challenge. We'll pick one random winner out of the gallery each week who will receive a free eBook. We'll also pick one random winner from the past 7 weeks who will receive a $50 gift certificate to Scrapbook.com!)

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One night last summer I was playing my usual Hansel and Gretel game online,you know the one, where you start clicking on an interesting link only to find five more interesting links, plus an amazing portfolio of photography followed by a whole slew of craft tutorials you've always wanted to try. And suddenly you're so far into the internet forest you can't figure out how you arrived at Point Z from Point A. To make matters worse, I had forgotten my bread crumbs. Of course, this is easily solved on the spot by carefully preserving one's browser history, if easy and efficient solutions are your thing, that is. I lean toward the sloppy habit of realizing much later that I can't for the life of me remember where it was that I saw the Most Amazing Idea of All Time.

One way to solve this problem, of course, is to bookmark all the Most Amazing Ideas of All Time in your web browser. Eventually your bookmark list is going to take so long to scroll through, though, that you won't even notice that you can't identify half (90%?) of what you saved in the first place.

Yikes. I'm going to go ahead and admit right here that this is but one of many long, disorganized bookmarks list on my computer. You would be correct in your assumption that my system of bookmarking ideas, sites, recipes, tutorials, pages, etc. was broken.

This particular summer night took a different turn, however, and I somehow ended up on the blog of a complete stranger named Rachel Cox (how I arrived there I'll never know) and read a post that began with four life-changing words: "Have you guys Tumbled?" Well, I'd definitely tumbled both down and up stairs (once in middle school, most recently in 2008 in my house in Virginia) but I didn't know another usage for the word. Interest piqued, I read on to find that it (Tumblr) was a place to store images you fall in love with online, and it's great for making sure you cite your sources because it saves URLs as part of the post.

The angels sang for me at that moment.

Let me be clear: I have never lacked for a place to store images and ideas I fall in love with. I have binders filled to the brim with page-protected tear sheets from magazines, sketchbooks, post-it-notes, scribbled lists, mysterious websites and business cards from stores I don't remember visiting... all with the intention of doing something with them eventually. And, sometimes I do. But my ratio of action vs. inaction is rather embarrassing if you count the sheer volume of things I save (evidenced by my bookmarks lists). So discovering a service that provides a visual archive of good ideas and images from the internet? Intriguing.

It's March now, and I actively contribute to three Tumblrs,and feel like I've been more productive and more creative tin the last seven months than I've been in a long, long time. I maintain my own Tumblr where I virtually stash all sorts of random things, a Tumblr with my sisters who live far away (but feel much closer when we share our exciting finds with each other), and a Tumblr through Write. Click. Scrapbook. filled with all sorts of things of interest to scrapbookers. There is something about the format that just clicks for me; it's the same mysterious phenomena that allows me to write regularly on my blog  even though I could never seem to get motivated to put pen to paper in any number of beautiful blank journals in my possession.

Though there are many ways to utilize this free service, I always try to post a photo of the idea I want to save so I can easily find it when I look at the archive screen. It's easy to tag entries, too, so if you're looking for a particular item or craft (i.e. I save lots of images and information about mobiles then tag them for easy reference later) you can do that quickly and effortlessly. Clicking on an image returns you to the original source, whether it's on a blog or some other website.

Three Ways Tumblr Has Made Me More Creative and More Productive

1. Because I am saving items that appealed to me on some level,color, design, content, or whatever,I am far more likely to want to use those items as inspiration, and can do so far more quickly since I don't have to go digging through binder after binder, or worse, through stacks of folded up paper stuffed inside my address book, to find what I was looking for.

Angie and Wendy came to Wyoming for a visit last fall, and we had a great time scrapbooking together. We challenged each other to make layouts on a budget, with a time limit, and based on a theme; a quick scan through my Tumblr archives reminded me of a layout idea I really wanted to try. I love the challenge of turning one good idea into something entirely different and personal to me, and even more so when it takes a half an hour from beginning to end as this page did.

2. I feel like I'm much better at seeing patterns and interpreting them for myself. Though I don't exactly consider myself to be an up-to-the-minute trend-watcher, I do enjoy seeing how a trend I especially love bursts onto the stage and manifests itself among diverse groups of creative people. Take banners, for instance:

Using pennant banners isn't really a new trend,car salesmen have been utilizing this decoration on their car lots for decades,but somehow, it exploded onto the scrapbooking and craft world scene. Suddenly, pennant banners are everywhere. I might look back one day and shake my head at my overuse of this trend, but for now? I'm simply excited to have my finger on the pulse of a trend I absolutely love.

3. I've rediscovered my love of creative efficiency, and have become increasingly better at it because I've been practicing more. Years ago, I faithfully scrapbooked pages inspired by the sketches Becky Higgins created in Creating Keepsakes magazine each month; these remain some of my favorite pages that I've ever made. Somewhere along the line, I stopped saving sketches, though,both hers and, later, my own. I've been paying far more attention to design principles in the last year, however, and Tumblr has motivated me to pick up this old habit once again.

Both the page and the card were inspired by this work I saw at L Palese; I already have two more ideas of how to utilize this basic design into something else entirely. Because I've made it a point to frequently look at my Tumblr images, they stick around in my head longer; this makes it more likely that I'll think up multiple ways to adapt them.

A word of caution, however: inspiration gathering, like eating chocolate, is exhilarating but can ultimately be overdone. An internet friend of mine, Missy Kemp, posted a poignant essay on her blog earlier this year about her quest for the perfect roast chicken recipe despite the fact that she already had a favorite, much beloved at her family's dinner table. The excitement of the search for something better, something more creative, or something else was actually paralyzing her productivity. The goal isn't to collect as many ideas as possible, but to collect ideas that can be internalized and acted upon in a completely unique manner; ideas that help us tell our stories and express our creativity, not ideas that simply collect dust or waste our time.

So with this gentle warning in mind,that idea-collecting isn't all about the quest for more and better, but rather inspiration and action,I've developed a system that is working for me. Will I act on every single thing I save to my visual bulletin board at Tumblr? Of course not. But I am tapping into the very best features for me, and I can honestly say I haven't been so excited to make things in a long time. Why not give it a try and see how it works for you, too?

You can set up your own Tumblr by visiting www.tumblr.com and signing up for a free account in just minutes. Customize your Tumblr homepage or use the default settings,either way you'll be up and running in no time at all. Be sure to check out the 'goodies' section, including the bookmarklet that allows for faster posting from within a website without shuffling back to the main Tumblr dashboard.

For our Wednesday giveaway, we at Ella invited April Foster from Studio Calico to share how she gets her inspiration. Get ready to get inspired by this talented guest blogger!

June 28, 2007 was an important day for us at Studio Calico.  It was the day we, at Studio Calico, launched our first kit, BILLBOARD.  That kit began as many thereafter, with a piece of inspiration from outside the scrapbooking industry.  I believe it was an ad from Blueprint Magazine.  That torn out page is long gone now, but our aspirations at Studio Calico are not.  You see, one of our goals at Studio Calico is and will likely forever be, to deliver inspiration.  After all, our tag line is "Inspiration, Delivered."  How can we possibly deliver inspiration to our customers if we aren't first inspired ourselves?

Another goal has been to provide unique kits using the latest and greatest products, but afford customers the means to use the products in a variety of ways so it doesn't look like the end result of their work all came from the same set of products.  One way we do this is to combine products from lots of different manufacturers.  At times, we've ordered from up to 27 manufacturers, all for one monthly kit!  Also, we like to provide innovative products that challenge scrapbookers to use products outside their comfort zone, or from a style they may not have first been attracted to.  Somehow, seeing a product as part of a whole makes it easier to adopt as your own style than sitting on a shelf all by its lonesome.

Another important date at Studio Calico is January 28, 2008.  That date marked the launch of our first Studio Calico branded stamp (produced in coordination with Fontwerks).  Later that year, we began producing stamps under our own label, and had another co-branding stint with Tinkering Ink when we produced FabRips with our October kit.  But, it wasn't until the January 2009 kit that we really dug our heels into exclusive products.  That kit was inspired by the illustrations in the children's book, "The Incredible Book-Eating Boy" by Oliver Jeffers.

We designed three papers that were featured in the January kit, entitled BIBLIOGRAPHY:

For the layout below, made with the BIBLIOGRAPHY kit, I took inspiration directly from the layout of the book-page featured above:

Since, this kit, over a year has passed, and our members are still talking about this kit.  Even later that year, Lisa Truesdell, used the book as inspiration for a layout she made with Studio Calico's August kit, OVER THE RAINBOW.

I find that some of the most beloved kits are ones that are designed from an inspiration piece.  Another kit that has had similar popularity is February's BAKERS DOZEN kit.  Despite a large increase in quantity, this kit sold out in less than 2 hours.

This kit was inspired by an image I found on the Creature Comforts blog
(side note: this blog is on my RSS feed, so I get EVERYTHING Ez posts.  It's currently my favorite blog outside the scrapbooking industry and was even mentioned on the Today show.  I love those moments when I know about something that's mentioned on TV...just makes me feel so smart!)

I found this image several months before February's kit was designed, saved it, and knew I would use it at some point.  Those doily banners just called out to me.

Which is perhaps the reason they were so literally translated on these papers:

Which were a part of this kit:

Notice how the inspiration piece has strong orange, yellow, and pink tones, but it also has a touch of turquoise, so I definitely wanted to add that.  Another thing I like to do with kits is combine old product with new.  By old, I sometimes mean realllllllllllllllllly old....like a vintage item.  But, I also like to look for products that have been out for awhile that could use a breath of fresh air when combined with new products.  In the BAKER'S DOZEN kit, I included the Simplicity paper by Fancy Pants that was released over a year ago. Scrapbooking years are like dog years, so that paper is ancient!  But, when combined with brand new releases, it's instantly new and exciting again....oh, and very usable!

This layout by Maggie Holmes represents the kit quite well:

Although this post has highlighted kits constructed using an inspiration source, many times our monthly kits are driven by the newest and best products on the market.  I see something (or one of our wonderful design team members sees something) I just HAVE TO HAVE.  Ever had a moment like that?  Then, I'll plan a kit with those items in mind.

Whatever the basis of inspiration, we're committed to staying true to our beliefs and values that are tried and true. 

We'd be happy to hear from you! To enter our little contest, leave a comment in this post with a suggestion for Studio Calico and you will be entered to WIN THE PATCHWORK KIT shown below. (Contest closes at Midnight Thursday, March 11 MST.) If you have any other comments or suggestions, email April at info@studiocalico.com or visit the Studio Calico blog.

Wendy and I are busy planning our April eZine, and it's going to be Ella good!

In our Editor's Note, we'd like to share YOUR best layouts and projects that have been inspired by anything you've read or seen in an Ella eBook. Send your entries to submissions@ellapublishing.com with "April Inspirations" in the subject line by March 17, 2010 at midnight MST to be considered for this article! Make sure you explain which eBook inspired your page or project and include a complete supply list. We'll pick 3-5 winners who will be featured in the article and will each receive a free eBook of their choice. (Please click here for complete guidelines and quality standards.)

Here's one Ella inspiration submission we received a while back, just to get your creative juices flowing!

Nita Vleeming of The Netherlands was inspired by Stacy Julian's How to Make a Smiles Mini-book (half of the proceeds of which go to benefit Operation Smile). So she created this precious accordion album (size 2.5 x 2.5) for her tiny grandson.

How sweet is that? To see more of Nita's work, visit her on twopeasinabucket.com or Flickr.

I started scrapbooking in June 2004, but I didn't really hit my story-telling groove until early 2005 when I read Clean&Simple by Cathy Zielske.

This book changed the way I scrapped. I started telling meaningful stories about people and relationships and just general observations about life; I stopped scrapbooking every single photo I loved; and I started scrapping out of chronological order. I found my groove and haven't looked back ever since.

These days, I don't have much difficulty journaling on my pages, especially when I'm writing about things that happened recently. It's easy to remember how excited the boys were about the Olympics last month or how proud my older son was when a friend phoned him to ask for help with his math homework, but ask me about something that happened last year or the year before, and my memories are a lot fuzzier. Even worse, ask me what my son's favourite book or song or video was in 2003, back in my pre-scrapbooking days, and I might not be able to tell you. I often find myself stumped for meaningful stories to tell about my pre-2004 photos.

It's a bit sad, isn't it? My boys are now 7 and 9, and they don't have baby albums. I have scrapper's block when it comes to my boys' baby and toddler photos. Thousands of digital files, chock full of chubby-cheeked cuteness, are sitting on my external hard drive, just waiting to be scrapped. Where do I even begin? I had no idea.

Last month, in a seemingly unrelated part of my life (in my office at work), I was cleaning out the old messages from my sent email folder. The IT guys were cracking down on our email storage limits, and I was at risk of having my old messages archived onto an inaccessible drive somewhere in some dark, dank dungeon if I didn't clean up my files. Okay, I made up the part about the dungeon, but the rest of the story is true.

During this email clean-up exercise, I deleted thousands of sent messages about meetings, presentations, missing data, and other unimportant details of projects long since completed. What a dreary, time-consuming task!

But hold on… what was this?! It was a short, two-liner email I'd sent to my sister about the funny face my son made when he tried peas for the first time. Oh, look at this one… a message I sent to my husband about the cute little conversation I had with our then two-year old as we walked to daycare that particular morning. It turns out that I'd discovered a treasure trove of scrapbooking material hidden amongst the trash in my sent box.

With this discovery, I was inspired to create an email-related page, and I challenged two of my talented scrappy friends to do the same.

Lisa Kisch found an email that she'd sent to her friends and family when her daughter, Lily, was just a wee babe. She paired the text from her email message with an adorable photo from the same time period, and the results are beautiful and meaningful.

If you can't see the journalling on the layout, here's what the email said:

Lily is 8 weeks old now, and such a precious baby. She just loves to be cuddled and kissed, and she's a wonderful eater and sleeper. The other night she slept 7 hours in a row! (We won't talk about last night, though, ha ha!) She is about 13 lbs., and is already wearing some 3 month clothing. She is smiling, and following things with her eyes. She loves her mobile and Mr. Panda on the bouncy chair. She is very strong and can hold her head up like a champ! Audrey adores "baby sistah" and is a very big help. Here are photos of Lily, taken today, and one of Audrey, too. I am such a lucky Mommy to have two such sweet and lovely girls!

Stephanie Howell  took my challenge in a different direction and created a page about how her husband's emails from abroad help sustain her when he's deployed. The raw emotion she captured on this page gave me goosebumps.

This page must mean a lot to Stephanie personally, but it also serves to remind the rest of us of the sacrifices that military families around the world make so that all of us may continue to live the blessed lives we're accustomed to living. So to Steph and her family and to all the other military families out there, thank you!

Finally, I'll leave you with my project, created from the emails that started this journey of discovery. I transcribed a few conversations between my precocious toddler and me from email messages to journalling bubbles in Photoshop Elements and printed them out include on this page.

 
Can you read the journaling? I didn't think so. It says:

J: Mommy, look at all the clouds!
M: Oh, wow... what colour are the clouds?
J: Pink!
M: Ummm, I think they are mostly white. Maybe a little bit pink.
J: Oh, they are mostly white.
J: Mommy, I hear a bird.
M: Yes, I hear a bird too.
J: (pointing) Mommy, look there's a bird over there!
M: Yes, I see it.
J: Oh, another bird! He's flapping his arms.
M: (laughing) No, those are his wings. The bird is flapping its wings.
J: Oh, he's flapping his wades.
M: His wings...
J: Oh... wings!
M: James, look! A kitty is crossing the street.
J: I don't see him.
M: Over there, by the blue car.
J: Oh... hi, Kitty! (big smile)
M: He looks like our kitty.
(Cat rubs up against our legs.)
M: Okay, we have to go now. Bye, Kitty!
J: Bye, Kitty! See you a-morrow!

I had a lot of fun creating this page. It's one of my favourite pages with photos from my pre-scrapping days. I plan to search through the sent mail folders on several other email accounts I have, in hopes of finding the next meaningful story to tell.

How about you? Does your email account hold any undiscovered gems? I challenge you to do a quick search through your old messages and find a meaningful story to tell.

Congratulations to Leah Larson of Washington, the random winner in our grand prize drawing for a Cricut Expression (from our Six Weeks of Sketches contest)!

We had a total of 159 entries in our 6-week challenge, and we added each entry to a handy-dandy spreadsheet in order of entry. And random.org gave us the random number 117!

Lucky Leah happens to already have an older Cricut model that she takes VERY good care of, but that doesn't mean she can't win this one too! And guess what her plan is? She's going to raffle off her old Cricut through her local scrapbook store, Paper Pals, where she's a design team member. The proceeds from the raffle will go to the Red Cross for Haiti relief. Way to go, Leah!

Now for a quick Q&A with our winner:
1. What did you like most about the sketch challenge?
"It allowed me to be more creative. I usually scraplift and had never followed a sketch before this challenge.  With the sketches, I had to create the page around the sketch. It was challenging and fun."

2. Did you have a favorite sketch?
"My favorite sketch was the 4x6, 4x4, and 4x4 arranged in a line across the middle of the page.  I love the layout I did for that sketch. I have copied all the sketches in my journal and will use them again and again."

3. What's your favorite treat?
"Light butter microwave popcorn.  I am on weight watchers.  If you're asking about a non-food treat, then I would say scrapbooking pictures of my daughter."

4. What was your favorite layout created during the challenge?
"My favorite layout was the star layout titled Yogurt for WEEK 4.  Made with my favorite sketch!"

5. Did you use your Cricut to create any of your layouts for the challenge?
"Yes. Visit my blog to read about how I created this dimensional duck accent (see below) for WEEK 2."

Here are the rest of the layouts Leah entered during the challenge. See all of these (and more) on Leah's blog: Confessions of a Scraplifter.

WEEK 1

WEEK 3

WEEK 5

WEEK 6


Congratulations to Leah!
And thanks to everyone who participated. We had a blast, and we hope you did too!

Hello everyone, Stephenie Hamen here.

When Wendy asked me to blog, I was so excited to be coming here to Ella and sharing. Then, as I am sitting here, tasked with blogging about ways to get inspired at the end of a long day, I quickly became terrified!

I realized that at the end of a long day, I often find myself stuck to the couch, enjoying mind-numbing entertainment on TV. So, with this in mind, I set about the task of writing this post. This meant on a random Tuesday night, peeling my couch potato butt up and moving it into creative mode. It was seriously the best exercise I could have done for myself and my creativity.

I guess I should explain.

See, after a long day of work, I come home with the strong intentions of spending time with the kids, reading books, saying prayers, and tucking them into bed, then heading downstairs to the basement to my sanctuary of a craft room (aka the furnace/water heater room) and playing. I usually get as far as the kitchen before turning back and landing on the couch, honestly saying once "How I Met Your Mother" is over I will head downstairs. Needless to say that rarely happens anymore.

I accepted this challenge with open arms in an effort to reignite my mid-week crafting and embrace the chance get my "groove on" if you will.

Here is what I found worked for me:

1. Light.
I need a lot of light. If it is dark or dim, it doesn't work. I have one single overhead bulb - yes the kind out of old movies in the interrogation rooms of Chicago police stations - which is clearly not going to spark any creative juices. I added a floor lamp and two desk lamps that work for me. I am a fan of the Ott Lights - they provide really bright light and give you great color.

2. Music.
I truly believe in the power of music in my life. I have playlists for everything! I have a playlist for walking (when it isn't 10 below and 3 feet of snow on the ground), for my kids, and even for this year. Yes, you heard me right - I have a 2010 playlist. My life deserves the same kind of soundtrack as a big blockbuster movie, so I made one. I highly recommend it - it is really fun when the right song plays at the right moment... it actually feels a little movie-ish... So, I created a playlist for creating. Fun, up-tempo, happy music that makes me smile and helps me to see the world in a better light.

3. Snacks and bevs.
Yes. There. I said it. I craft better with a bowl full of yummy goodness and a cup full of something tasty. I am a huge proponent of Pirate's Booty, mixed nuts, and M&M's, as well as iced tea, Pellegrino, iced Chai, and coffee. Smells and tastes that make me comfy and happy. Aromas that speak to me and spur my senses often help me to feel more creative.

4. Pictures.
I do crafting beyond scrapbooking, but when it comes down to it, scrapbooking is where my heart is and where my family's memories live. Pictures are what inspire me the most. After a long day, there is nothing better, in my opinion, that flipping through photos and remembering the moments that make up my life. I find it peaceful and truly inspirational. When I scrap, I let the pictures guide the way. They are where I start. If an event or set of pictures are not speaking to me that day, I do not scrap them. Crafting is meant to be fun, freeing, and creative - not, and I repeat NOT, stressful or anxiety driven. If I am not feeling it, I am not scrapping it. For me, pictures of even the most basic moments can awaken my love of crafting and just the right picture will start a frenzy of scrapping that will last into the wee hours of the morning if I am not careful!

5. Stuff.
What I mean by stuff is this - patterned papers that make your heart leap for joy. Embellies that have you gasping, just a bit, when you see them in the store. Fabrics that make you want to run home and craft that very second. That is the stuff that we use - our mediums - to create our works. It can also be what fuels us when our inspiration tank is running low. Grab that paper or rub-on you have been saving for "just the right project." You know the one I am talking about. Yes - that one. Use it. Today. I am just as guilty of buying things and then judging projects in terms of worthiness of that item. What are we saving these things for?!!?!? We bought them to use them, so in an intentional moment, let us unite together and grab them and create! If our 30th birthday or 15th high school reunion isn't enough to use them for, what is?

After taking my own advice, which is all this is - I do not, on any level, claim to be the secret keeper to the mojo we all search for - I created. And created. And created some more. On random weeknights. And you know what, it made me want to do it again and again and again. It made me a happier person overall. It made me feel more complete as "me." It took what I feel on those odd weekends here and there where I make time to craft with friends and brought it into everyday life, which, as a crafter, it should be.

Here is one layout that I made after going through pictures and just being inspired. They are just some simple ones of my son, Jacob, around the time he turned 4. We didn't go for studio portraits this year, so I took some out on our front porch. Nothing fancy - just Jake being Jake. His eyes and smile were all the inspiration I needed to get crafting this night...

Sometimes all it takes is the Black Eyed Peas, a bright light, and the right picture to get inspired… at least for me anyway!

Happy scrapping and thanks for having me here at Ella! come by my blog and say hello sometime.

Hi everyone! I am here today to share with you one of my favorite products – Photo Canvases. Like most scrapbookers I have a sincere love for my family photos and enjoy displaying them in my home to remind me of favorite family memories and the love that we share.  I am also always on the lookout for a unique and attractive way to display those photos, and when I first saw this photo canvas idea I knew I had found one!

As President of our family-owned company, Adornit – Carolee’s Creations, I knew I wanted to share this with our customers. We have been offering this service for about a year now, and it has been very popular. These photo canvases are a very stylish, affordable way to display your photos. Alone, or in a grouping, the unique texture and dimension make your room come alive. Here’s a peek at the grouping I have in my home:

We offer two different options for printing your photos. The first is Canvas Wrapped, where the canvas wraps around and creates a box effect with a two-inch depth. These do not require framing and are what you see in the picture above. The second is Canvas Flat, where the canvas is mounted flat onto 1/8” wood and then you frame it.

We offer standard framing sizes, 8x10, 11x14, etc., and also a very popular square 8x8 size, perfect for groupings. We can also do customized templates, which makes it easy for your display to be super-unique.

For Valentine's Day I created this custom 12x12 canvas template. I enjoyed it so much that after Valentine's Day I decided to move it to a shelf in my room.

So how does this work? It’s very simple! I’ll walk you step-by-step through the process:

1.  Choose a place in your home where you’d like your canvas photos.

2.  Measure the space you have chosen and determine what sizes would work best.

3.  Choose the photos you plan to use.

4.  Go online to adornit.com.

5.  Using our online order form, choose Canvas Wrapped, Canvas Flat, or go here for the templates

6.  Also choose your size and a custom filter, if desired, then complete your order.

7.  Email your high resolution photo to info@adornit.com.

8.  Wait with anticipation while we process your order at Adornit. The happiness will arrive on your doorstep within 2 weeks!

Now for the fun part- who wants to win their very own
16 x 20 Gallery wrap canvas?

Leave a comment on my blog and tell us what what picture you would print and where in your home you want to hang it.

Thanks for reading about my favorite product

Every now and then it's fun to get a little peek at the man behind the curtain. (No, I'm not revealing anything secret about my gender identity. I'm being figurative, folks!) So, here are a few fun "behind the scenes" tidbits about Ella Publishing Co.

Tidbit #1
Once a week or so, Wendy Smedley comes over to my house for a "work day." We really do try to focus, but there's SO much to talk about. We get quite a lot done, and we also spend plenty of time discussing books, parenting, movies, scrapbook industry gossip, Richard Armitage (hero of of our favorite BBC mini-series North & South), and so much more. (Disclaimer: we're both growing our hair out for either Locks of Love or Pantene Beautiful Lengths, and it's starting to drive us crazy!)

Tidbit #2
Joe the Programmer is the genius (and the little brother of one of my husband's high school chums) behind making Ella Publishing Co. work. Having come from the financial industry and worked in may other industries as well, he has seen his fair share of tech-support requests. And he's always floored by how NICE Ella readers are when they're reporting a problem.

Average tech support request: "Your website sucks. I downloaded a file yesterday, but today it disappeared. Please fix this immediately or give me my money back. I'll never order from you idiots again!"

Ella tech support request: "Hi! I LOVE what you guys are doing. Keep up the great work! I hate to bother you because I know you're busy, but it seems that a file I recently downloaded has disappeared from my account. Could you please look into this for me when you get a chance? xoxoxo! ~Janice"

The above may be a slight exaggeration, but it's only VERY slight. After the site had been live for 3 months, Joe the Programmer e-mailed me to say, "I'm shocked! You just got your first tech support complaint that DIDN'T end with 'xoxoxo'! How are you going to handle it? This customer might possibly be a bit disgruntled."

Well, I replied to that customer, offering her money back AND restoring the missing file to her. Her response? "Oh, you didn't have to give me the file AND return my money! Here, let me pay you for that again!" Of course, I wouldn't let her. But the level of kindness and respect among Ella customers is truly unprecedented.

Tidbit #3
We have picked a winner for Thursday's UR2 Cre8ive giveaway. And thanks to random.org, the winner is #11...Fun Mama Deanna!

We're also selecting the winner of our Six Weeks of Sketches challenge as we speak, and we'll post it later this week!

How do they do it? I know I’ve thought it at least a million times, and that was just this week! How do these wonderful mama-razzis, with the snap of a camera and a zip up in photoshop, achieve amazing results time after time. I’ve trolled through galleries full of amazing pictures, and imitated literally hundreds of poses and angles. But there is definitely something striking about pictures that have spent a little time in post-processing. Post-processing is anything you do to enhance a picture after it’s been taken. (Note: If you feel intimidated by the instructions that follow, just KEEP READING, because there's a FREE action at the end of this post that will allow you do get the very same effect with just one or two clicks of your mouse!)

Without getting into anything that’s too crazy stylized, there are several little touch-ups you can do to make your photos really pop. I know I’m a bit of a photo program junkie, so for this I narrowed my program usage down to just Photoshop Elements. When I say just Photoshop Elements (PSE), it is absolutely a program that gives you all of the tools to post-process to your heart’s content. And just a word of warning, adding that extra pop to your pictures is highly addictive! My dad often said, “Here’s Noel to make a long story longer.” So in keeping with tradition I’m going to walk through the process, and give an easy shortcut.

Every digital photo comes out of the camera in a sort of fog. (Think: Claratin commercials when the fog is lifted off the picture.) We’re going to bring our pictures out of that fog and into the clear in just a few easy steps.

The first step will be to brighten up the picture a bit. Open your photo in PSE, and click Layer > Duplicate Layer to copy your background layer. With your new layer selected, change the blending mode to Screen. (The blending mode menu is located in that little drop down menu just above the layers pallet toward the bottom right corner of your screen.) This will brighten your photo up... way up! It just might have brightened it up WAY too much. Luckily PSE lets you lower the transparency of each layer! So taking the opacity slider, on the top right side of the layers pallet, and slide it to the left until the brightness level looks appropriate.

Next we’re going to add a little color pop to the picture. Click on your Background Layer again, and click Layer > Duplicate Layer.  With your new layer selected, change the blending mode to Soft Light. Now it is very likely that this layer will also need an opacity adjustment. Moving the opacity slider to about 35% is a good starting point, but you can adjust it to suit your picture and taste.

Now to really blow that fog out of the air, we’re going to sharpen the picture. Before we do that, we’re going to need to merge all of the layers together. Click Layer > Merge Visible to condense all of the layers into one. Now click Layer > Duplicate Layer to make a copy of your background layer. To sharpen the new layer click Enhance > Unsharp Mask, and type in 100 for the amount, 1.0 for the radius and 3 for the threshold . Your image should be noticeably sharper. If the sharpening is a bit too much, you can lower the opacity down to a level that suits your photo. Again, we’ll want to merge the layers by clicking Layer > Merge Visible.

Finally, a little trick I picked up from my friend Janet Phillips to add that one last subtle touch of greatness, a vignette. For most of my pictures I add a darker vignette (an area that’s shaded off gradually) to bring the eye in toward my subject. To make a darker vignette, select the oval Marquee tool by right clicking on the dotted square on the tool bar, and selecting the dotted oval from the fly-out menu (or by pressing “M” twice). Draw a large oval by clicking and dragging your mouse. Now right click inside your oval and select Feather from the fly-out menu. I usually type in 250 pixels in the feather window, if your pictures are lower resolution, adjust the feathering to something like 150 pixels. Next we’re going to select the inverse of our oval by clicking Select > Inverse. This will select everything but the oval. Now click Edit > Copy, then Edit > Paste. You will now have just the selected area on a new layer. Change the blending mode of the new layer to Multiply. Lower the opacity to your liking, and you’re finished!

With that all said and done you may be saying to yourself, “This is a lot of work to put into every photo,” and you are right! That’s why I, with the help of a little Google research, developed a PSE action to condense all of these steps into a single step! If you’re not familiar with PSE actions, it is a series of Photoshop commands that are done for you, and they are fabulous. With the click of a button, all of the previous photo-popping steps will automatically be applied to your picture. How sweet is that! You can download the action here, and watch a video tutorial here.

After downloading the action, unzip the file and install it in PSE.

(If you need help installing the action, this site will walk you through that process)

After installing the action, open a picture in PSE, double click on the action in the Effects pallet and watch the magic!

You will still be able to adjust the opacity on each layer to suit your picture but all of the work will be done for you!

Once all of your edits are in finished, click Layer > Flatten Image to condense your image down to one layer, and save masterpiece.

Let me know what you think of this action, leave a comment on my blog.