I am soooo excited and I just wanted to share!  I received 2 happy e-mails about upcoming scrapbook classes that I have signed up for and I wanted to let everyone know about them in case they want to come, too!

Debby Schuh's classes at Crop Paper Scissors store in Waco, TX

The first e-mail was from a scrapbook friend of mine giving me more information about Debby Schuh's classes in Waco Sept 19-20th.  Here's the scoop:

Friday, September 19th:  Dinner Crop w/ Debby $20 , 6 PM to Midnight
Saturday, September 20th:
10 AM - Noon:   "Be My Guest" ATC Holder - $50 without ATC Holder and $65 with Holder
1 PM - 3 PM:     "Christmas Joy 2008 Album" - $50
4 PM - 6 PM:     "Wonderful Things Album" - $50

Debby Schuh is a designer/teacher for Anna Griffin and have taught album tracks at CKU for Anna Griffin this year.  She teaches classes at lss's around the country.  We took her classes at Gotta Scrap in Rockwall in April and loved them.  They are the bottom 3 entries at this link:
http://debbyschuh.typepad.com/my_upcoming_classes/  The top three blog entries with photos and class descriptions are for the classes she's teaching in Waco.

Here's the link to the lss website with additional photos:
http://www.croppaper.com/Class_Projects.htm

I called the store today and they still have plenty of spots but they are filling up quickly!

Design Your Life class at Big Picture Scrapbooking (online class)

My 2nd happy e-mail was from BigPictureScrapbooking.com informing me to Register for Design Your Life taught by Cathy Zielske.  I'm a huge fan of Cathy so I had to sign up for that ASAP!  Here's the scoop:

Design Your Life

Scrapbookers of the world, I have some questions for you: do you want to make amazing, beautiful, "wow" factor pages that make people stop everything they're doing just to admire your fabulous layout creation? Or do you want to make pages that are so sublimely stellar they cause spontaneous outbursts of applause each time they are viewed? Or how about just make pages that are really well designed?

If the answer is "yes" to any of the above, then join me, Cathy Zielske, for 12 weeks of intensive, fun, real world design education that will stick with you long after you've logged out of the classroom. From online slide show presentations and exclusive digital content designed by yours truly, to fun and educational weekly assignments, together we'll build a 12"x12" scrapbook that will not only be a totally cool slice of life snapshot but will also become an invaluable design resource for years to come.

I'm taking 18 years of my own design experience, as well as seven years of scrapbooking, and wrapping it all up into one comprehensive, educational experience that is designed to be fun and educational and will help you walk away with a renewed sense of design understanding.

Design is just another tool in a scrapbooker's vast arsenal of supplies. I'm going to help you refine your design skills, and in turn, you're going to make better looking pages and leave with the confidence that what you do makes visual sense every time.

So what do you say? Are you ready to join me and Design Your Life?

Visit http://www.bigpicturescrapbooking.com/designyourlife.php for details.

I received this today from a Yahoo group I belong to and I thoguht it was worth spreading around. This really spoke to me because I have a hard time MAKING the time to scrapbook.  We are all busy and we have to CARVE the time our of our schedules for ourselves.  This article reminded me that I NEED to do that for myself for my own sanity.  So many times I think I should be doing something more productive (laundry, bills, cleaning etc..) or I feel too tired to work up my creative juices.  This article helps me justify the time to play with my hobby for myself.  I think it can also be applied to other hobbies as well and not just scrapbooking.  I hope you find it as inspiring as I did.

The Therapeutic Value of Scrapbooking

By: Kathy Johnson, COTA

I have been a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant for 16 years and have worked with many different types of physical disabilities and clients with mental illness. When I started scrapbooking 8 years ago, I never realized what a therapeutic value it could have on my life. As the years have gone by I have also recognized the therapeutic values scrapbooking can have for those many different types of physical disabilities and those with mental illness. I have discovered that Scrapbooking has many qualities that can help restore an overall sense of well being, accomplishment, and self-worth, as well as help with physical deficits. Taking photos of loved ones and creating a scrapbook not only showcases familiar photos, but can also display feelings and memorabilia. It is not only the actual "scrapbooking" of pictures, but the memories the pictures reveal, that can be of great value.

I made a 25th Wedding Anniversary album for my parents and which included photos from their childhood as well as photos from the time since they were married. What I learned from rummaging through all these old photos was an invaluable lesson in family heritage. There were places they had been, and family members I did not know and events that were unknown to me until I sorted through these photos and interviewed my parents. The end result was a wonderful memento of their lives and a keepsake we could all cherish and share for generations to come.

Individuals with depression can find comfort in scrapbooking memories from the past. Using the scrapbooking task as a way to help individuals with mental illness stay on task, follow directions and reinforce the need to complete a project are all valuable Life Skills they will need to be productive individuals in the community. Many with mental illness have a sense of hopelessness and low self worth. Scrapbooking can provide these individuals with a great sense of accomplishment.

The physical benefits of scrapbooking became evident to me while working with a young brain injured individual in Rehab. This person used the cropping tools to increase her fine motor skills, as well as the photos to help with memory recall of loved ones and others from her life. Cutting with scissors or a paper trimmer and handwriting journaling helps build good fine motor skills as does using shapes and stencils. Visual/perceptual skills are also utilized with the activity.

Following directions of the therapist or using an idea book help with organizing thoughts and following verbal and written instruction. The organization skills needed to complete a scrapbooking page can assist a head injured individual with the skills needed in many aspects of their life, from Activities of Daily Living to work skills for returning to employment. The step by step tasks of building a scrapbook page allow the individual to process information and put the steps together to form a completed task. Then putting all the pages together to form a completed scrapbook reinforces the idea of task completion and the overall understanding of getting an end product from their labor of love.

Overall the craft of scrapbooking can be therapeutic to all of us in some way. The companies that create scrapbooking supplies and tools are often coming out with easier and less complex ways to create scrapbooks. Someone with limited hand motion or cognitive skills can learn to master this wonderful craft with minimal guidance. I highly recommend scrapbooking as a therapeutic tool for anyone and hope that if you know someone who would reap its benefits, you will pass your love of this art form on to them.

Kathy Johnson, COTA
Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant and
Crop Camp Coordinator

About the Author: Kathy is a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant and avid scrapbooker for the past 8 years. She lives in Kansas and works in a small hospital full time, and scrapbooks any time she gets the chance. See more about Kathy at www.cropcamp.com.

 Are your photos safe? I mean REALLY safe.  Are you sure?

I personally rely on my photos to freeze time.  Kids grow up way too fast; pets and loved ones pass away (sometimes unexpectedly and without warning).  As we age, our memories fade, but photos can bring back those memories or even keep them from ever fading in the first place. This is why my photos are one of my most treasured possessions.

I want to talk to you about making sure you don't lose your photos.  This is a subject I am highly passionate about (it's kind of my soap box) so much so that I help some family members back up their photos every year. 

Here is what I recommend to make sure your photos are safe:

Upload, Share, Print, Burn

Here are the details of those 4 steps:

1. Every month, UPLOAD your photos to an online photo web site.  I recommend Shutterfly at http://www.shutterfly.com (best quality, easy to use, great share feature, but not the cheapest) or Kodak at http://www.kodakgallery.com (nice quality, easy to use, great share feature, cheaper than shutterfly).  Some people do this every 3 months by season. Personally, I prefer monthly because I take lots of photos and 3 months worth of photos is just too much for me to work through at one time.  Doing this monthly makes it much more manageable for me.
   
   This ensures that if your house burns down or when (not if) your computer crashes, you can go to these sites and buy CDs of your photos to replace what you have lost.
   
   
2. Every month, after you upload, SHARE to friends and family by sending them email from the site with link to your photos.  This keeps people connected in our busy lives even if we live relatively nearby and personally I think that is REALLY important. 
   
   
3. Every month, after you share, PRINT at least 10-25 of the photos you have uploaded. 
   
   This ensures 3 things: first the sites (Shutterfly or Kodak) require you to place at least 1 order per year for them to store all of your photos forever and ever; second, everyone (you included but more importantly especially your kids) will enjoy your photos more if you have some printed and stored in slip in pocket photo albums and some framed and displayed in your home.  This is a huge self-esteem builder for your kids and I think that is really, really important; third, when (not if) your computer crashes, you at least have some prints while you are re-creating your digital files from the site. 
   
   I store my photos in these albums that I learned about from Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking.  That class is absolutely, hands down, worth EVERY penny!  I HIGHLY recommend that class. I order from Costco.com (this is the cheapest I have found them at $19.99 for 2 albums in a pack together). http://www.costco.com/Browse/Productgroup.aspx?Prodid=11173520. These albums are also available at Scrapbook.com:  http://store.scrapbook.com/p-bta-204bgdy.html.   
   
   
4. Lastly, BURN a DVD backup of your photos every 3 months (quarterly).  So around the 1st of April, burn a DVD of 1Q-2008 photos from Jan-Mar, etc.... this is really the hardest part.  We're all busy and this is just one of those maintenance tasks that we push to the back burner.  Try to do it as often as you can, but don't go more than 1 year without doing this. 
   
   Store your DVD backups in another location from your home, maybe your office, maybe a friends home. Do not give it to someone who will lose them.  You need that person to be able to find them ASAP if you need them.  Do not store them with someone who is going to get mad at you and throw them away or never return your calls. The reason is if your house burns down you can get your DVD copies from the other location or if the web site you're using goes out of business, you have another backup.
   
   This is what I do for my cousin each year.  I copy her photos to my external hard drive, and then I make DVDs for her to keep at her house so she can either delete them from her computer to free up hard disk space or just keep them for when her computer crashes.  If her DVDs get destroyed we have a copy on my external hard drive.  When my hard drive crashes, we can re-create the copy from her DVDs.
   
   Now, not all DVDs are created equally.  There is a huge amount of technical information about archival quality DVDs.  Personally, I believe you get what you pay for.  I purchased Verbatim UltraLife Gold Archival Grade DVD-R and CD/DVD Disc Marker Pen from SuperMediaStore at http://www.supermediastore.com. You also have to be careful what you use to label your DVDs.  I have only done a tiny bit of research on DVDs.  If anyone else has better information, please let me know! 

Ok - I have 2 more things I want to caution you about:

• Computers and external hard drives WILL crash.  It is not a matter of IF it is a matter of WHEN.  And usually they crash without any warning that they are about to give up and out which results in much crying and gnashing of teeth and sometimes even some cursing.  I'm speaking from experience!
  
  
• Web sites sometimes disappear in the middle of the night.  This has also happened to me - I am speaking from experience.  It was not a big deal for me because I had my photos stored on my computer, printed, and backed up on DVD. So, I just shrugged my shoulders and said, oh well, and found another site.  There were others not so fortunate.  They uploaded their photos to the web site and then deleted them from their computers so when the web site went away, so did their only copy of their photos! The horror of that is heartbreaking! Seriously, I'm not trying to be melodramatic.  But, the thought of that nightmare will make me wake up in a cold sweat. Shutterfly has been around for a long time and Kodak is a very well respected name in the photography industry. This is why I recommend both them.  I believe that the risk of either of these sites disappearing in the middle of the night is very low.

And now, I'm done - off my soap box.  PLEASE let me know if you have questions about any of this.  I'd be happy to teach you how to do any of this if you want.

Don't forget:   Upload, Share, Print, Burn 

Everybody say it with me now: Upload, Share, Print, Burn   ;)