PICTURE MY LIFE - ALERT!

Would you love documenting your memories in minutes? Would you love a quick easy way to preserve your photos? 


COMING SOON IN FEBRUARY,  Picture My LifeTM scrapbook program from Close to My Heart. Easy, fast, fun!  

Look carefully - do you see the pre-divided page protector where she has slipped in her photos and the cards?

NOTE: Be sure to read my next post (on January 30th) for the unveiling of an AWESOME new way to print photos from your camera or iPad or tablet. 

If it's hard for you to find the time to make your photo books and scrapbooks from "scratch", with the cutting, gluing, trimming and stamping, then you’ll love the new Close to My Heart "Picture My Life™" scrapbooking program. It's meant for quick and beautiful memory-keeping. 

That's what it's all about right? preserving our photos, preserving the precious memories by keeping those photos in a safe place?
 

This is a really neat photobooking program that has eight different themes, all gorgeous! I call it "photobooking" as it's really not "scrapbooking". It's fast and easy and you put divided page protectors in albums, and fill them with your photos and the pretty and unique "journal cards" and "theme cards". No gluing, no cutting, no stamping, no measuring!

You can mix and match the themed cards for a truly unique look, or just use one theme. You’ll love the ease, affordability, and beauty of the Picture My LifeTM programs. Your own photos are all you need to add to make astounding artwork—in no time at all!

Each set (or "program" as it's called) (priced at $24.95) includes 122 (yes 122!) double-sided cards plus 10 unique Memory Protectors™ to capture life as it happens, very quickly. On one side of each card is space for journaling, and on the other you’ll find artistic sentiments and icons. CTMH designers have used some of the past beloved papers sold in previous seasons.

Included in each set are:

• 44 - 4"x6" cards (2 each of 22 designs)
• 78 - 3"x4" cards (3 each of 28 designs)
• 12x12 cover sheet (shown in the above picture)
•            decorated to match the program theme
•  10 -   12x12 memory protectors
•            with various compartments 

There is so much variety in the cards - way more than other programs of this type on the market.

Here's a sampling of a few of the cards in the Avonlea set:

 
Each of the eight sets has a theme, such as childhood, family, sports, "girly-girl", to friendship and travel.

The more I look at these cards, the more excited I get! I can hardly wait to get a set, or two...... or three...........

Sampling of Babycakes set:

 
Each program/set is designed to accommodate approximately 100 photos in your TEN included CTMH Memory ProtectorsTM, so with a balance of photos and cards, you’ll finish with about 20 remaining cards. That means you have plenty of choice and flexibility to make it uniquely yours! Of course, you can easily use more or fewer photos in your project to suit your story’s needs.

Sampling of Chantilly set:

I love these Chantilly papers!  Now I get to see and use them again! I'm thrilled!

Unique to Picture My LifeTM is an included 12" × 12" double-sided cover page with each individual program/set, using a beautiful My Reflections™ pattern.

  

Sampling of L8tr Skater set: 

The Picture My LifeTM program is so versatile that you’ll find dozens of other ways to incorporate it into your papercrafting. Use the cards to expand other projects you’ve started! Use the cards from this program on your other handmade "cards" that you send out for thank yous, birthdays and holidays. Use some of the cards on your "from scratch" classic scrapbook pages, as gift tags, or in your My CrushTM books or mini albums. What great embellishments!

Sampling of Laughing Lola set:

 

I've included a sampling of five of the eight program sets. Do you recognize some of CTMH's favorite paper themes from last year?

To view the other three sets,  you can view the online Spring/Summer 2014 Idea Book on February 1, 2014 by going to my website HERE and clicking on the Products-Idea Books tab.  Two of the programs use NEW papers from the new Idea Book! They are gorgeous.

Two pretty and unique 12x12 albums will be listed in the new Idea Book, to purchase separately for these Picture My LifeTM programs.You can choose either post-bound albums or 3-ring albums.


Even though I LOVE to make the traditional, paper and glue scrapbooking pages, I'll be excited to give these program/sets as gifts to my friends and family, (and to use for myself - don't tell!) for quick projects, so I can get caught up on my boxes and boxes of photos that need to be put into books NOW. 

Are you excited yet? Let me know what YOU would use one of these sets for!

 

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.

DON'T LEAVE THIS PAGE until you look down below at some of my recent FUN AND UNUSUAL scrapbook pages!

I took one of the Big Picture Classes in May which was to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day (or maybe it was National Stamping Month??? - can't remember for sure!).... all I know is that it was FREE and lasted all day long and I loved it!

 We had several challenges over a 10 hour period. What a blast! You would listen to the teacher, read her ideas and suggestions, and then go make your project, post it on the Big Picture Classes gallery, and be entered to win something fun and neat.

I was just looking at the different scrapbook pages that I made for some of the challenges.... and realized how fun they were and how "outside the box" they were!  

I probably never would have thought of them on my own!

So thought I'd show them to you, just for the sake of "ideas and inspiration". I'm not adding how I did them, or cutting recipes, measurements, etc.  I just wanted to show you the theme or idea that may just get you inspired to make a page or pages using some of your photos that are sitting in a box.

On this challenge, we were to make a page doing some handwritten journaling and talk about a relationship.

This was easy and quick. I used premade embellishments that came with an entire set of papers and stickers, etc. (not Close to My Heart... I had already started this page years ago!). I hand journaled and used stickers for the word "Sisters" and then drew around them with a black marker. I stuck some cute stickers on the paper, flowers and tags and voila! was done! Hand journaling is SO important.. that is what was stressed in this challenge.

The next challenge was to make up a "bucket list" for the summer.  What a great idea!

Never would have thought of it!  So I ran to my little digital scrapbooking program on my computer (an old one I downloaded years ago), made up a quick little page, printed it out, and voila! I was done!  This goes to show how fun digital scrapbooking can be.

Another fun challenge was to make a page showing the last 3 pictures we took with our cell phone!

Again, I NEVER would have thought of this!  I literally blew this page out in about 10 minutes. I matted the photos, used some premade tags that I had in my stash, wrote on them, made a little title, added a couple of strips of paper top and bottom, and voila! was done!

I got carried away with "the last 3" so also put the last three friends I made and the last three meals I made.  Oh... I see I also remembered to put a date on there.  Just a neat little memory to keep.

I'll show you one more.. this was fun! We were to make a page using a technique we've never used before.

Can you figure this out? ha!  Now that I look at it, it looks like an angry monster with teeth!  I sure didn't see that before!  I chose to scribble with paint on a page (as I've seen done before on videos, etc.) and then use just ONE PHOTO of no people! That's not like me at all.... and keep it very simple and no embellishments.  Hard to do.

Well.. I guess you can call the star an embellishment! This was fun. I used some textured white cardstock or you could use watercolor paper. Made dabs of acrylic paint on a little tray and added water and started scribbling!  Have fun.... be creative!

Then quickly chose one photo that would kind of match... cut the star out of my Cricut machine, added the date, and voila! done in about 10 minutes!

Boy it was HARD not to add lace!!

OK.. that's it for today.  I just thought these was such neat, innovative ideas from BIG PICTURE CLASSES.  I plan to take more classes down the road. Some are free. Some are a one-time only class and some may be a 4 to 6 week class.   

(Note: Close to My Heart is pairing (once again) with Big Picture Classes for another Pajama party on July 31st.  Go HERE to find out how to register and I think it's free. It will be covering the new Close to My Heart "Artbooking" Cricut cartridge and its many uses.)

Have fun scrapbooking "out of the box"!!