No more ScrapaGogo :-(

Sadly, my favourite scrapbooking kit company, ScrapaGogo, have now stopped selling kits, so I've been looking around for a new company to try.  So far, I am very impressed with the kits from Funky Farm Scrapbook Barn - I have had two from them so far and they have been lovely.

The April monthly kit is based on the Theresa Collins Far & Away collection, which is a brilliant collection anyway, but it also contains some gorgeous extra bits and pieces.

This photo is not a very good photo, especially with the orange fence and the extra people in the background, but I love the happy smile and the memories it brings.  The colours in this collection were perfect to go with the colours in the photo, and I used some of the embellishments to cover up some of the less desirable parts of the photos and to draw the eye towards the better bits.  The title was inspired by the old "I love NY" slogan (only of course in this case it's York and not New York).

It's not Tuesday!

I'm going to be busy tomorrow afternoon so I've rearranged my week and have been scrapping today instead.  But I'm not going to blog about my scrapbooking today ...

... Scrapbooking is all about preserving memories, and most of those memories come in the form of photographs.  Like most people, I'm not a very skilled photographer, so when I had the chance to do a short, inexpensive, online course aimed at getting the most out of your iPhone camera, I jumped at the chance.

The course lasted for four weeks and each week we were challenged to take several photos inspired by some "prompts", each prompt being a word or phrase.  We  were also given tips on how to take photographs from different angles and in different lights, and on how to use various apps to help take photos and also to edit them afterwards.

So, here is an example.  The prompt was "mess".  As I have teenage sons, it was easy to find a mess in one son's bedroom -

Although I could use this in a layout (I can envisage a layout with lots of journalling about the mess teenage boys create), it's not really a very interesting photo.  But after I'd used an app called Snapseed to transform it and frame it, I think you'll agree that the result is a lot more visually pleasing.  The "distressed" look of the photo matches the messy theme.

The course left me with a little more knowledge and ability, so I'm now able to take slightly better photos, or at least to make them look better later.  But it also made me take some photos I wouldn't otherwise have taken.  I now have some ideas for some more "everyday" photos that I can use on layouts to capture our everyday life and preserve some memories of those more mundane moments, the ones we tend to forget over time.