our 2012 bearski book...

... has arrived!!!  And I'm totally in love with it.  I had a lot of anxiety around this book.  With my 2011, I just used one of the book templates on Shutterfly.  This year I decided to go on my own, and use the blank book for digital scrapbooking that they offer.  From doing project life, I have fallen in love with pocket scrapping and decided to do this book that way.  I started posting pages here on the blog, but I got behind with posting and got on a roll with scrapping, so they're not all on here. 

I had two big stresses when completing this book:

1.  Would I lose things around the edges when printed.
2.  What in the world would I do for a cover.

 Well... for the cover, I used one of Emily Merritt's page templates...

As you can see... I did lose a tiny bit of stuff on the left and right edges, but not enough that it bothers me.  The cover portion of the 12x12 book is not quite 12x12, so keep that in mind when designing your cover.  Other than the tiny bit I lost... I couldn't be more pleased with the cover and how it printed!

I'm also totally thrilled with how the pages inside printed as well.  I used a variety of different templates from The Lilypad and not a single one got cut off when printed.  You can see though, from the samples below... that some templates printed closer to the edge than others, but again, none of them got cut off (and I made no adjustments to the templates)...

The quality of the photo printing is wonderful!  Above you can see some Instagram photos and below the smaller photos were all taken with my iphone.  They all printed really nicely.

Everything below was pretty much taken with my big camera....

... and I'm thrilled with how those came out as well.

This was my test run for my project life photo book I've been working on.  If I had problems with this book, I was considering going the route of printing individual pages and putting them in an album.  But I couldn't be happier with how things turned out!  I'm excited to print my project life book now!  My only beef is the page limit on Shutterfly.  I'm going to have to break my project life book into two parts now, since I'm going to be just over the 110 page limit.  Oh well... on the bright side, that means I'll get to see half my year of pages printed in the next few weeks!!

catching up... part 2.5

When I went back through and looked at my last post, I realized something was missing!  I knew there were more photos and pages for my in-laws' visit last summer.  I thought I just missed them when I uploaded, but no, I never saved them for the web so they weren't even in the folder ready to upload!

So, here are those missing pages (in the book they go after the swing pics and before the sunset photos in my last bearski post)....

catching up... part 2

So sad that I have not finished this book yet!!  I have a new goal though... I MUST have it done by 4th of July week.  I really want to get it done and get started on my 2013 book so I can work on it throughout this year vs. having this huge project to do the following year.  I also want to change this project a little to include more journaling... I started out trying to do that with this 2012 book, but as time kept passing and we got later and later into this year, I just focused on getting the photos onto pages. 

These pages mark the end of our summer there last year, which means the photos left should be a manageable amount.  Our other trips were weekend trips, with the exception of Christmas... but at Christmas, I was sick so I took very few photos.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel!!  :-)

As before, I'm not posting supply lists, but if you want to know about anything specific... just ask!

catching up... part 1

I've titled this part one, because I'm pretty sure I have too many pages to include in just one post.  I don't know where the time has gone!  When I started this book, my plan was to have it done and printed in time to take it to Bearski with us over Memorial Day.  Well.... given that Memorial Day weekend is NEXT weekend... I just don't see it happening.  Unless I really get moving on it over the weekend.  So, since I'm so far behind on posting, I'm just posting pages with no credits.  If you want to know where I got something, just let me know and I'll be glad to pass that info along!

Here we go...

I was on a roll...

... last week.  Not so much this one!  I'm posting a bunch of Bearski book pages.  I could pretend that I did some last week and some this week.  But in reality, I did them all last week and I've done nothing so far this week!  

To make it simpler... all products are from The Lilypad... they all use Amy Martin's Project Grids and all have One Little Bird's Pagekraft paper as the background.  I'll list the individual stuff with the pages.

 Journaling card - Winter Frost by Amy Jaz Designs

 Awesome word art - Dear Diary by Little Butterfly Wings

Striped paper - oh dearie by Paislee Press

 Paper - oh dearie by Paislee Press

arrow card - Hello Lucky by Amy Jaz Designs

 Journal card - Hello Lucky by Amy Jaz Designs

Papers:

oh dearie by Paislee Press &

how it began by One Little Bird

today was good card - Dear Diary by Little Butterfly Wings

two more...

... Bearski book pages.

Simple, simple, simple... but they get the job done!

Supplies:

Project Grids by Amy Martin

Pagekraft Paper by One Little Bird

Journaling Card from Everyday Essentials by Amy Jaz Designs

Word Art from Dear Diary by Little Butterfly Wings

All available at The Lilypad.

Now that I'm kind of on a roll with this, it's just like slipping photos into an album!  Yes, I could do more with it, but right now, getting it done and printed is my highest priority!  :-)

I lied...

... I'm back to project life style pages for my Bearski book.  In the end, I decided that I preferred the consistent look with using Amy Martin's Project Grids set vs. mixing and matching various templates.  Plus, when it really came down to it, this fits my current style more and the pages came together much more quickly.  And this is a project I want to keep moving on.  I have a ton of photos of this year at Bearski and I would really like to have the book done before summer.

So... here is my second take at this set of photos...

Supplies:

Project Grids by Amy Martin

Pagekraft papers by One Little Bird

Arrow and Snowflake from Star On Top by Amy Martin and One Little Bird

Dotted paper from Crazy for You by One Little Bird

Journaling Cards - Chevrombre by Amy Martin

All available at The Lilypad.

progress...

... on my 2012 Bearski book.

Clara was home sick (strep... ugh) almost this whole week, so I had a lot of scrapping time as I was tied to the house.  The first couple here have been done for a while, just had to save them for the web.  The second two page spread has been finished since last week, but I just didn't love it.   Still don't... but I have decided that I can't love them all and done is better than not done :-)  Finally, with the last set, I decided what I didn't love about the middle set... I didn't like being tied to the project life style templates for this entire book.  I'm already using them every week with my PL pages, I just needed to mix things up a bit.  I found a good set of multi-photo templates by Amy Martin and downloaded them.  I really wanted to embellish the last two pages a bit more, but I decided to hold back.  It already looks so different from the first few sets of pages, that I didn't want to go too overboard.   As I keep using these templates, I'll embellish a little more... just wanted to ease into it a bit.

 Supplies:

Project Grids:  The Templates by Amy Martin

First page journaling cards and elements - Winter Frost Collection by Amy Jaz Designs

Last page papers and elements - Star on Top Collab kit by Amy Martin and One Little Bird

All found at The Lilypad.

 

 Supplies:

Lots of 'em templates by Amy Martin

Paper and most elements - Star on Top Collab kit by Amy Martin and One Little Bird

Heart - Dotted:  Love Edition (recolored) by Emily Merritt

Banner - banner'd by Amy Martin

All available at The Lilypad.