Be Real with your Mess

Real Life is messy in all aspects, especially if you have children. I’m sure you have taken pictures of the messes your children or pet or even YOU have made. What have you done with them? For me, I usually decide to scrap a ‘better’ photo or one that makes life look ‘better’. Not anymore, though. This year I am being brave and more real with my scrapbooking. I am documenting life and all the messes that go along with it.

Be Real with your Mess

 

Mommy Just Wants a Shower- I’m sure most Moms can relate to just wanting a shower without the house burning down.

 

Be Real with your Mess

 

This is Our Everyday- Two photos from that week that perfectly define our evenings. laughter, noise and utter silliness.

 

Be Real with your Mess

 

Real Life is Messy- My toddler is nicknamed the Tornado Toddler for good reason.

 

Be Real with your Mess

 

Lastly, this two pager documents all my favorite messes- literally and in terms of just a busy, messy life.

 

Be Real with your Mess

 

This quote sums up how I am approaching the mess of every day life. The actual messes, the long hours, the frustrations and the struggles with raising children.

 

Be Real with your Mess

 

So do you think you are up for the challenge of Being Real with your Mess? Head over to my challenge to scrap a page that perfectly captures your messy life.

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Sabrina About the Author: Sabrina is a wife and mom to two kiddos- Captain and Sunshine- living in sunny California. When she has free time she loves to do some type of  project whether it is scrapbooking, a string art board, a washi tape project or other DIY project that is usually inspired by Pinterest. Her favorites are creating colorful  layouts or pocket pages.  Another lofty goal she has for the year is reading 100 books.

Real Life: Document Your Days

Real Life: Document Your Days

If you’re anything at all like me, you reach for the camera when something catches your eye – or your heart. A sweet little moment, amazing light, beautiful colours, whatever it may be. Collecting these images together, however you approach your memory keeping, is powerful and can be a comprehensive record of your life and what you’ve seen and done. What it might not do is reflect the reality of your day-to-day: your real life.

Any given day can include a myriad of moments and details that taken together form a rich picture about how you live your life. From your morning coffee routine to your child’s favourite storytime read, from your commute to the changing view outside your kitchen window. Capturing the ebb and flow of a normal day in your life can be a beautiful way to document the memory of this life – the here and now.

I have been super inspired by two projects that do exactly that: the Day In The Life mini album project by Ali Edwards, and the Day In The Life photo-essay project by Clickin’ Moms. I love this quote from the awesome series of tips from Clickin’ Moms:

There’s something remarkable about the power of a single photograph to tell an entire story … but don’t dismiss the distinct but equally compelling strength of the photo essay. Allow the images of your Day in the Life project to speak collectively, to build on one another, to relay context and details about your life that would be impossible to convey with a single image.

If you’re not up for doing a whole project, I think it would be pretty to incorporate this approach to memory keeping into your normal scrapbook style, whether you do page or pocket scrapbooks. All it takes is to either journal or photograph your normal daily routine, or to scrapbook a series of photographs taken on a single day that document that day in your life. I chose to document a single day, one of the last days I have multiple photos before my son was born. This layout made me think that this approach would be an awesome way to document the changes week to week or month to month during your pregnancy or over the first weeks or months of your child’s life.

 

Real Life: Document Your Days

 

You’ll find plenty of perfectly matched goodies in the TDP store to help you out – I used the gorgeous Daily Routine {Collection} from Anita Designs:

 

Daily Routine Collection by Anita Designs

 

Make sure you check out our May challenge series in the forum that’s full of ideas for keeping it real this month. If this has motivated you to scrap a day in your life, our Document Your Days challenge starts May 6.
KathrynAbout the author: Kathryn Wilson shares her 1920s New Zealand home with her husband, her brand new baby boy, a wauzer, and a cavoodle. She is a photographer, and both a digital and hybrid pocket scrapbooker, who has lots of DIY projects she should probably be working on right now.

More Easy Ways to Upload to Instagram

Hey digi- and hybrid scrappers! I hope you are ready for a tutorial about how to get your layouts on instagram easily and in the blink of an eye. Because if you’re like me, you want your layouts to be seen. The more, the better.

When I began uploading my layouts to Instagram, I thought it’s complicated and extra work. Now that I played a little and found ways, it’s actually not that much more work and it’s even saving me some time on other tasks. What I love most though is the fact that I can be anywhere and use my phone to upload to Instagram and in the same step to facebook. I can be on the couch while watching tv, while I’m waiting in line at a store, while I’m having a little downtime… you get the picture.

 

More Easy Ways to Upload to Instagram

 

Why would you want to upload your layouts to Instagram anyway? For me in the beginning it was just another way of giving my designers additional airtime. I uploaded my layouts to spread the love a little more. Over the months it has become an inspiration board, informational tool, documentary of my own life and much more. The community at Instagram is a little different from facebook. It’s closer and more „intimate“. I get a lot more views and likes. I happily like the posts of the people that I’m following, too. It’s really a loving place.

How do you get your layouts up to Instagram in a whim? I know of three different app uploads. It depends on your choice of online tool. Do you use flickr, photobucket or dropbox to upload your layouts to show them to your creative teams, family or friends? Do you use facebook for doing that? Then it’s even easier to get your sweet stuff on Instagram and at the same time on facebook. Once you did it a few times, it’s a breeze.

All the phone screenshots you see here are taken from my S4. Although I’m not 100% sure if this works on apple devices as well, it might just be the same process. As far as I know, the windows machines have instagram beta running currently. I tested it and I couldn’t upload from other apps than the standard windows photo gallery. Sorry!

To use this tutorial easily, you have to have Instagram installed on your phone and know how to upload pictures from your phone’s gallery to Instagram. You have to be logged in to the app.

First and foremost, you use your own picture cloud service. I use flickr and dropbox and have used photobucket in the past. All three are available as an app for android and apple devices.

When you want to upload to Instagram, you have to get the coordinating app for your service first. Install the app, log in to your account.

Because I know lots of you use photobucket, I will get you through the uploading process from there first. The photobucket app is called Photobucket Share Print Photos.

  1. On your computer: upload your layout to photobucket like you usually do.
  2. On your phone: open photobucket, access your uploaded layout (via „your library“)
  3. Tap on the „share“ button, that looks like three connected dots in a half triangle.
  4. Search for Instagram, tap on the icon
  5. The usual Instagram dialogue runs now (crop, edit) and you can insert your text before you post it.

 

More Ways to Upload to Instagram
Upload via Photobucket

There is no need to download your layout to your phone first. You can directly upload from your cloud service to Instagram.

  1. The upload process from flickr is the same, only that you use the flickr app.
  2. To access your earlier uploads, tap on the portrait icon in the top line, then access your layout (left screenshot).
  3. Then tap on the share icon/the connected dots (middle screenshot)
  4. and if Instagram doesn’t show up, tap on “more” (right screenshot).

 

More Ways to Upload to Instagram
Upload via Flickr

From dropbox I can’t use the share button.

  1. I have to tap on the three dots in a row “More” on the right (left screenshot)
  2. and tap on „Export“ (middle screenshot)
  3. and on the Instagram icon (right screenshot) to start the upload to Instagram.

 

More Ways to Upload to Instagram
Upload via Dropbox

So far, so good. If you want to make your upload even more efficient, you might want to share your layout on various other social media. On my phone I can share to facebook, twitter, tumblr and flickr. You can do that on the same page in Instagram, that you type your text in before you post. Your device might ask you to log in to the service if you didn’t do it before.

 

More Easy Ways to Upload to Instagram
Sharing to other social media from Instagram

When you share to facebook, your layout appears with your full text from Instagram on your timeline and you can share it to any facebook group or friends. I show you how.

  • Search for the posting you made via Instagram on your timeline (left screenshot)
  • Be sure first, that the setting for the posting is public, otherwise your picture might not be visible.  To check the privacy settings tap on the tiny light gray downward arrow on the upper right of the post (left screenshot), tap on “Edit Privacy” (middle screenshot) and set it to “Public” (right screenshot). If it has been on public the first time, it will most probably always be.
  • Tap on “Share” (left picture, low right)

 

More Ways to Upload to Instagram
Check the privacy setting of your post in facebook.
  • Left screenshot: In the low line on the right you see the earth icon on the right. This shows, that it’s a public post. Tap on “on your own timeline” (down left)
  • Set it to “In a group” (middle screenshot)
  • Choose your group or type in the group you want to share your layout to (right screenshot).
  • In the next dialog you can share it directly as it is or you can also add more text if you want to (not shown here).

 

More Ways to Upload to Instagram
Share your facebook post on facebook groups.

In case you want to add more info like product links on facebook along with your layout, I’d recommend doing this step (the sharing in groups) on your computer as it’s not that easy to get your links into your post on the phone.

Some more info on hashtags.

  1. Use hashtags. If you want your layout or picture to be seen, use them. For instance every time I upload a layout with my dog in it, I use #dogs and #dogsofinstagram and #dogsofig. I get a lot of likes from people who would usually not see my layout. People who don’t even know scrapbooking! The more views you get, the more people will follow you. Don’t be shy on hashtags. Think of words that fit your layout in any way and type them in. My phone shows me how often the hashtag has been used on Instagram in the past when I have typed it in. This helps you in deciding if you want to use it or not.
  2. Once you typed a hashtag in, your phone remembers it. You won’t have to type it in again and again. My phone even remembers series of hashtags I used and I just have to tap on them, to make them appear in my text.
  3. Recommended general hashtags for your layouts: #digiscrap #digitalscrapbooking #digiscrapbooking #scrapbook #scrapbooking #pocketscrapbooking #hybridscrap #hybridscrapbook
    Of course you don’t have to use all of them, but if you want to, you can! There are many more. I learned a lot by looking at other Instagram peeps and watching what hashtags they use.
  4. Recommended hashtags for your The Digital Press layouts: #thedigitalpressco #TDPinspire and the hashtags of the designer, whose product you used, if you want to.
  5. Please mention us with @thedigitalpressco when you upload your The Digital Press layouts, so that we can like your layout and time and time again we might regram (repost/share) your layouts on our own instagram account. Wouldn’t that be great? When you set your Instagram account to private, we usually can’t regram your posts. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I hope this has been helpful and you are full of motivation to try new things out! We hope to see you on Instagram! Follow us @thedigitalpressco . Please remember …co at the end! This is the real one.

 

 

AlinaAbout the Author: Alina enjoys sitting in front of her large computer screens too much. Apart from that she loves walking her dog and watching sunsets while being amazed of life in general. She is married to her best friend. Tries to manage the needs of her two cats and her dog and badly fails when they all want their cuddle time at once. Everything else is scrapping, taking photos and currently crafting. Having said that, she needs a bigger craft room.

 

 

Be Real with Yourself

Be Real With Yourself

Have you noticed that sometimes our hobbies take on a life of their own and produce far more stress than they release?

When I was young I always kept the ‘old fashioned’ scrapbook.  You know, the kind my Grandma had.  A simple album with newspaper articles and photographs, old movie stubs and various memorabilia. All taped or glued in every which way.  I would write and draw in them and just have a good time with the memories. I had stacks of them as a girl. They were a mess – and I loved them!

But somewhere in growing up I lost that freedom.  In fact, for the majority of my life I have had a tendency to be a perfectionist.  It really showed itself in my memory keeping.  I would fret and worry and spend hours (OK, WEEKS!) on a layout and even then I was not sure it was done. The funny thing was, I could start twenty pages in a day, but finishing them . . . oh man!  I literally had a box labeled ‘in process’ and it was always full.

When I switched to digital scrapping I simply transferred my ‘in-process box’ to an ‘in-process folder’ on my computer which slowly took over my entire hard drive.  It took a complete breakdown – including a massive computer crash – for me to question my methods and my sanity.

Finally I just had to ask myself a few searching questions.

Why am I doing this?

What is it that I want to accomplish with this?

What is it that I really like about memory keeping?

I realized that I really like photography.  I enjoy taking photos and looking through them again.  I get almost giddy when I see a photo that I just LOVE.  I also like the little stories that go along with those photos.  And I LOVE sitting with my kiddos, going back through the photos and telling them the stories that match. I can tell that they love it too.

I came to see that my drive for the perfect layout, the perfect technique, the perfect album was keeping me from having more of those moments I actually enjoy and creating more stress than I needed.

I decided it was time to simplify. I needed to get real!

Instead of spending hours (or weeks and months) on one page trying to make it perfect, I decided to focus on the things I liked – the photographs and simple stories. I made my goal to get the pages finished, imperfections and all, so I could share them with my family and the world.

In order to do that I used a combination of minimalist layouts and pocket scrapping techniques to zero in on the heart of my memories.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still strive to improve my techniques.  I love shadowing and I am always tweaking and learning new ways of improving my pages.  There are some pages I still go all out on and spend loads more time working through. But the key is I no longer stress about it.  I see my albums as documenting my learning and crafting technique as well as documenting our lives.  Yes, the pages I made last year are not nearly as nice as the ones I make today, but that is to be expected.  By accepting where I am right now and setting realistic goals I am able to enjoy the process and share the finished product with others.

And there are perks!

By simplifying I have been able to  either finish or make pages for most of the years I have lost.  Like this one from a family trip to the beach in 2009.

Be real with yourself IMG 01

and here are the separate pages

Be Real with yourself Image 02

Be real with yourself Image 3
(credits: Kim B Designs Simple Pleasures Collection, Wishing Well Creations Project Twenty Fifteen Template Bundle, creashens Eggshell Alpha)

Additionally, by going more minimalist I have been able to stretch my stash so much farther.  This is a series of pages from last month.

This double page spread was the layout that started everything off.

Be Real With Yourself Image 04

and here are the separate pages

Be Real With Yourself Image 05

Be Real With Yourself Image 06
(credits: Anita Designs Lets Go Biking Collection, Wishing Well Creations Project Twenty Fifteen Template Bundle, Sugar Plum Paperie Its Elementary My Dear Alphas, Karla Dudley Giddy Cut Files)

As I finished up this layout I realized there were more stories hidden in these photos.

When we brought my daughter’s bike home, my youngest son decided he wanted to learn to ride too. Here is a page that looks at his story.

Be Real With Yourself Image 07

(credits: Anita Designs Lets Go Biking Collection)

The addition of two bikes changed the dynamics of our nightly family walk. I really loved the photos I was able to capture of all three of my children enjoying the exercise and so I made one final page highlighting that.

Be Real With Your Self Image 07

(credits: Anita Designs Lets Go Biking Collection, Wishing Well Creations Project Twenty Fifteen Template Bundle, Sugar Plum Paperie Its Elementary My Dear Alphas, Karla Dudley Giddy Cut Files)

This kit by Anita Designs was perfect for this memory and I was able to make pages for all the different aspects I wanted to remember (and all in less time than I would have spent on just one page back in the day).

It seems that these days our world really stresses perfection.  Having the perfect body, being the perfect mom, keeping the perfect house.  But I have found that when I take a step back and take the time to be real with myself the stress just melts away.

So now my goal is not to make the perfect layout, but to enjoy the process and share the memories.

How are you keeping it real? Join me in the Forums for a fun challenge about Being Real with yourself!

Erin 1 About the Author: Erin is a work from home mom of three living in Thailand. She loves playing with her kids and anything artsy. She can often be found knee deep in toys with paint on her face. She is slowly learning the meaning of living an authentic life, and enjoying every minute of the adventure.

How to make a hybrid box card

DonnaEspiritu-LifeCaptured-hybrid

Hi all! Donna here to share with you some tips and tricks that I do when I create hybrid projects.

1. Re-sizing patterns

In traditional or paper crafting, they have sizes like 12×12, 8×8 and 6×6 paper pads. The last two are perfect for card-making. They’re basically shrank 12×12 patterns. Digitally, it’s super easy to replicate.

Here are image comparison when you re-size a paper to 6×6 and 8×8, respectively.

2

1

For this particular pattern, I like the 6×6 version better for the card I have in mind. Below is a sample of how I collage my elements. I re-size them first before printing, of course.

3

Here is the card after the print/cut/paste/assembly process (closed)

DonnaEspiritu-LifeCaptured-hybrid003

And you can watch this video for a short tutorial on how I created this super fun card:

Thanks and hope you liked what I shared today.

Have a great day!

Donna

About the Author: Donna Espiritu is a new mother to a little girl and wife to a very supportive husband. She is currently living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with her family. When she is not scrapbooking, she likes to read some sci-fi/romantic/time-travel themed books or watching old episodes of some of her favorite tv shows.

Everything You Can Imagine is Real

 
Everything You Can Imagine is Real
 
Hi everyone! It’s the start of a new month, and that means a new crop of challenges in the forums here at The Digital Press. Each month we create a series of blog posts and challenges that correspond with one word. This month, we chose the word REAL.
 
REAL can be interpreted many different ways and we would love to have you join us as we explore these different aspects through our scrapbooking.
 
I personally gravitated towards the “Everything You Can Imagine Is Real” note card and so I was thinking about scrapping a goal, dream or bucket list item – something that I imagine will be real in my life at some point. I would love to travel to Ireland someday. I’m not much of a traveller, but this is one place that just intrigues me and it would absolutely be a dream come true to see it for myself!
 
Everything You Can Imagine is REALImages used with permission by Roberto Taddeo and Vincent Van der Pas.
 
Everything You Can Imagine is RealImages used with permission by Danny Huizinga, minniemouseaunt, and Tony Webster.
 
So, what about you? Do you have goals, dreams or a bucket list? I’m hosting a challenge over on the forums at The Digital Press and I hope you will come play along! Check it out at The Drawing Board: Challenges. See you there!
 
 
 
Amy H.About the Author: Amy is a wife and mom to three from Ontario, Canada. She’s always been interested in scrapbooking, but didn’t try digiscrapping until 2008 when she received PSE for her birthday. By then she had 1 year old twins and a baby, so the thought of just playing for 10 minutes, hitting save and walking away with no mess was extremely appealing! She’s been hooked ever since. She loves being the memory keeper in the family, loves taking photos, loves telling the stories. She’s also excited to know that these memories are recorded for her grandchildren to enjoy someday!