Clear Album

Last weekend I camped out at the Rochester Scrapbooking Company from Friday after work until Sunday afternoon. I did a little work on my sister's wedding album, but I'm not going to post pix of that until after I give it to her. :-)

This is hybrid project, combining digital and traditional scrapbooking. I'd wanted to do a theme album of songs that have meaning to me for a long time, and when I saw a funky, grungy, collage-y clear album in Somerset Memories magazine, I knew what my project had to be.

I combined 4x6 digital collages with a Clear Scraps 8x8 tabbed acrylic album, supplemented with cut down sheets of Hambly clear acrylic, a cut down piece of Prima embossed chipboard, and the contents of a Bo Bunny Clearly Mixed Up acrylic album. It's decorated with ribbon from May Arts, Maya Road and American Crafts; Stazon ink in various colors; Hambly transparencies; Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist; Tim Holtz alcohol ink; a Krylon silver leafing pen; chipboard shapes from Tattered Angels and Rusty Pickle; crystals from Prima, Glitz and Basic Grey; flowers from Heidi Swapp, Prima and Creative Impressions; felt, die cut black plastic and journalling spots from Maya Road; and lace paper from KI.

The lyrics for the songs were found on the internet (just google what you can remember of the lyrics, title and or artist and the word "lyrics" and you can find any song.)




The front cover digital collage contains a Be Mine paper from Retrodiva Designs, overlaid twice with a musical notes overlay from (I think) Scrap Girls called Holiday Lights, and the font is Bleeding Cowboys - one of my favorites.






The first layout shows a photo of Alex's room after he moved out. The song is "Ready, Set, Don't Go" by Billy Ray Cyrus. It was originally written completely from the point of view of the parent (as opposed to the duet version performed with his daughter Miley) and that's the version of the lyrics that I used here.

The journalling says "This song became popular as Alex prepared to move out. It always made me want to cry." You can see that I spritzed the back of the cover collage with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist. The two photos show the layout with the intervening Bo Bunny page flipped in either direction. The Bo Bunny albums holes didn't line up with the Clear Scraps album, so I used my Cropodile to punch new holes. The original holes have ribbon tied in them, to make them look like they are there on purpose. I painted behind the title to make it pop, and I used a Crafters Workshop template with an American Crafts Slick Writer pen to make the dragonfly's trail.




The next song is "Home" by Daughtry. If you look carefully, you can see the shiny underside of the previous page's dragonfly. The lacy border is from Prima. The collage shows Dumbledore, his new carrier, the logos for the airline and Minneapolis airport, some NY clip art from Tim Holtz and a photo of the highway outside LaGuardia airport in NY. Most of the song titles are printed on transparency paper, so I edged this one in brown Stazon to make it stand out.

The journalling says "Every time I thought about my upcoming trip home, I was reminded of this song. It kept me company through the days, then hours, then minutes until I saw my guys again."






Next up is "Just Might (Make Me Believe)" by Sugarland. There's another Bo Bunny page in here, and I used the silver leafing pen with a Crafters Workshop template for the doodling. The flower is three Heidi Swapps (in red, pink and white), layered with a Creative Impressions flower, a Prima flower, a large We R Memory Keepers silver eyelet and (I'm not sure who made it) a glittered brad. I decorated the flower with Stickles. The chipboard heart was painted, stamped on and covered with Glossy Accents. The ribbon covers where I smushed the glue before it dried.

The journalling says "When I had to close the store, I felt lost and afraid. I felt like a failure. But your love and support give me hope for the future. You believe in me - so I believe in myself." The photo is our engagement photo; after all these years, it's still my favorite one of us.








"It Won't Be Like This For Long" by Darius Rucker is another one that makes me misty. I used baby and recent photos of my boys. Notice the back side of the KI paper from the previous page and the ribbon at the top that wrapped around the font and back of the page. I'm not sure who made the bird paper, but the bird is a good symbol for my babies' leaving the nest as they grow. I backed the title with a ribbon.




"From the Moment You Were Mine" is a song by Beth Nielsen Chapman. I discovered her years ago when a song of hers was used on ER (Sand and Water). This one has always spoken to me:

I used to dream somebody's arms were around me,
Wake up all alone and feel so empty,
No, I never knew dreamed how real love could be,
'Til the moment you were mine

The photo of the three of us is printed on a transparency, the title is a Basic Grey sticker set, and I brushed paint on the embossed chipboard to bring out the details. The lyric were printed on a transparency and adhered with brads. (I loooove the Cropodile).





"Then" by Brad Paisley is a fairly recent song. I heard it on the way to the scrapbook store last weekend and realized it had to be in my album. It's all about how love grows over time. This wedding photo of Blair getting birdseed out of my hair after the wedding is one of my favorites. The swirly frame behind our picture is printed on a transparency. And the debossing on the back of the Prima cardstock is emphasized with pink and white paint. You can see the back of the jewels from the next page on the right hand side.



Martina McBride's "I Just Call You Mine" speaks to how lucky I feel to have Blair in my life. I used the May Arts vine ribbon as a place for a Daddy bird and Baby bird to hang out together. Maggie took this photo of them doing a crossword together at the store.







Using Photoshop I eliminated the background from this photo and gave it an artsy painted effect. You can still see the vine from the previous page, but I added more birds, because the heads were cut off of the ones on the other side. "Longer" by Dan Folgelberg is another long-time favorite that speaks to me about love - especially my love for Blair.







Our first song was to "I See Your Smile" by Gloria Estefan. It became "our song" after we heard it several times one Saturday when we were dating. The Bo Bunny page is stamped with a Close To My Heart stamps set using Stazon ink. I slipped a piece of white cardstcok behind it so you can see the detail.

I used a "notecard" effect on this photo after editing out a distracting background

















The last time I was home, the three of us sang along when "1, 2, 3, 4" by the Plain White T's came on the radio. The photo wasn't the right proportions to crop to 4x6 so I stretched one edge. I grunged it with a digital overlay to hide the stretch. I applies "lumos" action to the photo of my guys on a tandem bike to give it a grungy, vintage look. That's the back of a Fancy Pants glittered transparency on the next page that you can see through the page.






Last up is "Proud of the House We Built" by Brooks and Dunn. The house photo was taken after our remodeling was complete, and the photos on the Bo Bunny page show Daniel helping his Dad put furniture together.




For the back cover I Glimmer Misted the back of the previous page's collage, and decorated it with a digital corner flourish printed on a transparency. The backs of the previous pages jewels add to the design. I distressed the edges of all the transparent pages in the book with black Stazon to give the pages definition.

Terminator Movie

I went to see the new Terminator movie last Friday, and it was fantastic. Another non-stop nail biter that also manages to address the question of what makes us human.

(minor spoilage ahead for Terminator Salvation, the New Star Trek movie, and somewhat more for the finale of TV’s Sarah Connor Chronicle)

But, as I say to Daniel whenever we get into questions of cause and effect in sci-fi movies and shows, “I hate friggin’ time travel.”

It makes use of the same alternate/branching realities idea as the Trek movie, in that in this version of the Terminator multiverse, the events of the various movies seem to have happened (although only events in the first movie are directly referenced), but events from the TV show have not (as evidenced by the fact that his father is younger than he is, in the conclusion of SCC, he was in the future, a teenager, and no one knew who he was.) But it would have been hard to tell this particular story (he’s looking for his father so he can send him to the past) with a teenaged Connor, even ignoring the fact that they met at the end of the series.

I’ve never been a fan of the infinite alternate realities version of time travel, because if every possibility exists, there is no point to traveling to the past to “set right what once went wrong.” But it bothered me less than the similar plot point in the Trek movie, I suppose because the Sarah Connor series already had gotten me used to rewriting the Terminator timeline when it basically wiped out the plot of the third movie in the first episode, and the fact that the date of Judgment Day changed as people from the future kept going back in time. In Star Trek, though, any time they traveled to the past in the television shows, it turned out that whatever they did in the past had already happened in the existing timeline (like the ep where they accidentally traveled back to the 60’s and had to put the pilot back because a descendant of his would be among the first to go to Mars.) Previously in the Trek universe whenever an evildoer tried to alter the past to his advantage, it turned out that, like Oedipus’ father, he was the engineer of his own demise, rather than preventing it (although you can make that point with the first Terminator movie – if the machines hadn’t tried to kill Sarah, her son would never have been born.)

I hate friggin’ time travel. ;-)