Double Happiness

Blog to Book?

We recently had a discussion on the MSN China Adoption forum about this and the subject seems to always come up in my personal email so I thought I'd blog about it.

For the last several years, my blog has been my sanity saving hobby but that changed last summer when I discovered www.blurb.com.    I still love my blog but now I can also preserve these special memories for our family in book form. 

It's not effortless to convert your blog into a beautiful high quality book but it IS totally possible.  Blurb provides the quality and you provide the content.  And I think it's incredibly rewarding and even...  fun!   

I've completed four years of blog-inspired books and I'm incredibly proud of the results.    These are books my family will enjoy for a lifetime (plus the lifetimes of generations to come).  With the possible exception of my Petrified Pot Roast, I can't give my family a gift likely to last as long.

Blurb lets you "slurp" your blog right into their software.  It grabs everything with your dates and headings and text in the right order.  It also imports your blog photos but I've replaced the photos it imports with original, higher resolution, photos from my computer. 

Why do this?  Most of the photos on our blog are usually resized so they'll load quicker for viewers.  Even though they look good on the computer, they're reduced in size and will print very small.  Small photos are less satisfying to look at in a book and not really worth to $$ to print them.  So I replaced all the photos.  It was a pretty big task but here's how I did it:

I uploaded my entire blog into one book (all four years!).  I picked size 11 by 13 and did a little bit of clean up.  Then I immediately made four copies of this draft and re-named each to correspond with only one year.  For example

"T_ _ _ _ Family Album (2004)" 
"T_ _ _ _ Family Album (2005)"
"T_ _ _ _ Family Album (2006)"
"T_ _ _ _ Family Album (2007)"

Then I went back into the 2004 draft and deleted everything that wasn't a blog entry from 2004.  I did the same with all of the other books/years too.  That gave me four smaller projects to work on at my leisure.  The task was much less overwhelming when it was broken down this way.

To replace the photos (and add others I had but didn't put on the blog), I took all the photos on my computer, copied them then put them in one folder and sorted them by date taken.  Then I divided them into folders according to date.  This made it easy to find and replace (or add) a photo just by dragging and dropping it into the free Blurb software.

You'll have to clean up the formatting of your book before it's totally ready to send to print.  They have dozens of different ways to combine photos and text and you'll be able to mix and match your pages to make the most of each page.    It's not hard and I found that it was really fun and very personally rewarding since I was making a record of something that would be special to my whole family for all the years to come.
 
I was also preserving our priceless photos so they wouldn't be totally gone if something should happen to our computers or if our house burned down.  I can't tell you how much I worried about losing our irreplaceable photos.  Once you print your Blurb book, they store the digital copy forever and you can always go back and print another copy if you need to. 

The 11 x 13 size worked best for me because most of our photos are large enough to print beautifully as an 8 x 10 (or larger).  This gave me plenty of room to have my blog text and still have a big gorgeous photo on the same page.    But other size books are available and they're also very nice (I've created Lifebooks for both girls in size 8 by 10).    Before you do anything,  I recommend that you first look at the public Blurb books that others have made just to get some ideas about what layouts, size and formats are available.  Once you pick a book size, you can't change it without starting over from scratch -- so pick carefully!  Also remember that larger books are more expensive.    We didn't plan to print more than one copy of our yearly albums so it was okay that they were big and more expensive.  But they still averaged out to less than .50 cents per page!  That's an 11x13 full color page for less than .50 cents!

Sorry this got so long but I'm pretty excited about our yearly album.  Our 2008 book is already in progress and now all I do I simply add to it as I go along.  When I post something to the blog, I copy and paste it to the book too (and add all the extra pics I want).  Then, when the year ends, I'll be able to add the last few pictures then upload it and it'll arrive a couple of weeks later!
   
The initial (huge) time investment is over and now it's just a little bit of maintenance to keep the current book updated.  I've also been able to include text and photos that I'd never put in our public blog (personal emails about the birth of our niece, etc) but it's wonderful to have a permanent record of events that are significant to our family.  Even if they're not part of our blog.

Before I started printing our blog this way, NONE of our digital photos were in physical printed form in any album in our home.  Seriously, we had no album since our wedding album in 2001!

Actual unretouched photos

I'm still trying to figure out our new camera and I promised myself that I'd actually learn a thing or two about shutter speed, ISO, etc and not fall into the old habit of using the auto mode.  Well, I broke that promise much sooner than I'm comfortable admitting.

Apparently, our new camera is much smarter than I am.    After yesterdays underexposed photos and this morning's experimental photo shoot with the exposure set differently (but still a total failure), I'm abandoning all hope of understanding ISO and shutter speed, admitting defeat, and flipping the little dial on top of the camera to the little green rectangle.  And the little green rectangle will be my best friend from now on.

Here are some pictures taken in the auto mode (the heavenly little green rectangle).  This is Gwen on the swing in the backyard.  I love the way the sunlight shows off her gorgeous hair.  If you think her hair is pretty, you should smell it!  I'll do my best to describe:  If you took a beam of pure sunshine, spritzed it with vanilla and wrapped it in alternating layers of lavender and honeysuckle, you'd come close to experiencing the treat my nose gets each morning when I lift her from her bed and bury my face in her hair. 

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to take closeups of small things with this new camera but this photo shows that I had nothing to worry about.

Maddy is pouting because Gwen took her plastic golf club.  She loves to pose for the camera and was happy to model her most emotionally abused look for us. 

I just noticed that she's wearing the apple sandals we bought for her two summers ago at the Majestic Hotel in Nanning.  I'm not sure where the heck she found them but I'm most surprised that they actually still fit her!

Here's Gwen with her lovey.  She prefers the corner with the tag and she'll almost put herself into a trance when that corner touches her lip.  I've never seen anything like it!  Sometimes, that one corner gets so nasty looking that I can't even get it clean in the washing machine and I'll have to take a pair of scissors and cut it off!  You can imagine how well THAT is recieved!

There's a small artifact on this photo but I love it because it's so honest.  I also love that you can see the detail in the texture of the pink washcloth.

Daddy's new camera: Canon EOS 5D

Daddy's Father's Day present arrived in the mail yesterday so I packed a picnic lunch, grabbed the girls and the new toy and headed to a local park to play!    Here's a sample of one of our first pictures:

Yes, it's a gorgeous photo but it didn't look this way straight out of the camera.  Here's what it looked like:

The image was dark and full of shadows.  It was a clear sunny day so I set the ISO at 100 to take these pictures and really had my hopes up that all of them would look as spectacular back home on the computer as they looked right there in the glorious sun shine in the park.  I love the vibrant colors of the hill and sky but you can't see the faces of my lovely little girls so all of the pictures would be destined for the recycle bin if not for some photo editing magic from Paint Shop Pro (my trusty photo editing program). 

Here are some other altered photos from our first photo shoot (shown with the original photo on the right).  The camera has no built in flash but I didn't think one was necessary outdoors in such lovely daylight. 

I really hoped that our new camera would help me take pictures that I don't need to correct.  Considering the cost of the new camera, you'd certainly think such an expectation isn't unreasonable.  So far, I'm spending just as much time fixing my photos as before but I'm sure it has to be operator error.  This camera really does seem to be an incredible piece of machinery!

We took flash-less photos in the house last night and they came out surprisingly good (considering there wasn't a flash).  The sensor in this camera is amazing and it seems to want to do a good job for me but I'm holding it back.  Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

(tickle tickle) "Professional" photos -- at home?

Lately, I've been thinking about children's photography. Specifically, what helps a professional photographer take consistently good photos of kids.

I recently had a chance to see how the pros do it when our pre-school had "Picture Day." Their system was really brilliant and I took lots of mental notes!

First of all, they had an area set up in advance for the photo shoot. There was a tall bench for the kids to sit on and a tall table in front of the bench for the kids to rest their elbows on.   The height of bench and table wasn't insignificant as it seemed to serve two important purposes:  First, it kept the little subjects from easily squirming out of the chair and running for the hills.  It also kept the adult picture-takers from having to constantly lean over to look through the view-finder.  As someone who's chased my children around on my hands and knees while my heavy Canon Rebel XT was hanging off my right eye, I'm not sure why I didn't think of this already!

The camera and special lights were set up on tripods. They had several different props: hats, scarves, coats, etc to quickly create various types of scenes with the kids.

I watched as several 4 year olds had their photo taken and they all seemed to enjoy the quick-change, fast paced, dress-up aspect of it.  Their smiles came naturally and I could almost hear the "woosh" of their parents checkbooks flipping open as I thought about how irresistible the photos were going to be.  I kissed Gwen and Maddy goodbye and silently hoped they'd have just as much enthusiasm for the photo shoot when their turn came. I got half of my wish.

Maddy liked dressing up and having her picture taken.  She can be stubborn but she loves to dress up and be a "girly-girl".  But we were surprised to learn that Gwen cried when it was her turn! She's usually a good sport (not to mention - a ham) about these things but we have noticed lately that she's been a bit shy and her responses to various things have been less predictable. 

Well, she might be shy about strangers taking her pic but she's certainly not shy about me doing it!  So I thought hard about what made that photo shoot work and decided it might be fun to try to recreate it here at home.   

I already knew that lighting was really important.  We've ruined so many photos because of exposure problems so, for Christmas, I got Andrew some inexpensive photography lights (the type that are on tripods with umbrellas attached).  Even though we understood their value, they weren't very easy to incorporate into all of our impromptu photo sessions.  On Christmas day, they were extracted from their box, momentarily admired, and immediately sent to the hall closet (the Siberia of our home) where they were almost certainly destined to live out the remainder of their days. 

I dragged the lights out of the closet and set them up in the guest room.  I picked the guest room for two great reasons.  First, it's the only room in our house with white walls.  That's important because all these luscious warm wall colors we have elsewhere in the house makes all of our pictures look like they were taken in the Bat Cave!  Secondly, it's also the only room I can lock the kids out of!   

I put our camera on a tripod and adjusted the height so I could sit comfortably and spend more time engaging my kids and less time engaging the viewfinder.  Then I worked on making a comfy place for the girls to sit.

I found a bench (okay, it's actually a cat-scratcher post) and I put a booster seat on top of it to make it taller.  In front of that, I placed an ironing board as a "table" for them to lean on. I liked the idea of using the ironing board because it was easy to adjust the height and I could quickly change the appearance just by throwing a blanket, sheet or tablecloth over it. 

For this particular photo shoot (with Valentine's Day in mind), I picked a soft pink baby blanket to drape over the ironing board.  Then I changed the girls into clean pink shirts and grabbed a couple of toys to use as props. 

When everything was set up and all ready to go, I brought one child in and sat her on the bench in front of the camera. I raised the ironing board (with the pink blanket on top) to a height just under her elbows and she seemed really comfortable and able to focus on our silly conversation.  I snapped dozens of photos while we chatted and I tried hard to keep eye contact and not to look through the viewfinder.  Every now and then, I'd glance at it just to make sure she was centered.  Oh my gosh, she was CUTE! 

When we were finished, I brought her sister in and repeated the whole fun process with her!  When we were all done, we celebrated with lollipops!

The whole thing turned out better than I could have ever dreamed! We took about 300 photos and more than half were wonderful! Overall, 20% to 30% were really spectacular! This is SO much better than our usual ratio of about 1% being a "keeper!"

More (including unblurry pics) on the private blog. <here>

Pretty view through the lens of a brand new camera!

We have a Canon Rebel XT that takes amazing pictures but it's large and clunky so we don't use it as often as we should.  Then there's our Canon Powershot S80 that also takes good pictures and is tiny and portable -- but the shutter is SOOOO SLOOOOOW.  Most of the time, we just end up with pictures of the back of our kids head as they turn and run the other direction!

So we got a nice little "in between" camera:  A Canon Powershot G9.  It's 12 mega pixel and much faster than the S80 but it's about the size and weight of a can of soup.

We had a pretty sky today so I loaded the kids into the van and we headed out to take some pictures The girls have a toy camera (or "Cam-ee", as Gwen says) and they love to look out the window and snap pictures as we drive along.  One of our first stops was a local Lake where we got this amazing pic (top photo).  There were several more that were equally beautiful so it was hard to pick just one for the collage for the blog. 

The camera is really easy to use!  It's small and comfortable to carry and it uses the same battery our other Canon camera uses -- same flash too! 

I think we'll use this little gem a lot!  It won't take the place of our Rebel XT but it'll fill the gap that existed with our other camera quite nicely.   

Tom Tom

I'll admit it, I'm really REALLY geographically challenged.  I have the worst sense of direction of anyone I know.  Even Maddy knows her way around San Jose better than I do.  So well, in fact, that she'll start screaming "No go home!" from the back seat any time the van is headed in the general direction of our house.  That child must have a compass in her head. 

I don't have a compass in my head.  When I come to a fork in the road, I should have a 50/50 chance of picking the correct route but I seem to get it wrong about 90% of the time.  This problem was made worse when I became a pilot because I was able to rely totally upon my navigation equipment.  On the ground, my navigation skills are completely non existent.  My instincts always serve me wrong.  Even tricks like picking the opposite direction from what I'd usually pick don't work.

The weekend that Andrew and I were married in 2001, I drove to the San Jose airport to pick up my Dad.  It's a journey I'd made (with Andrew) at least a half dozen times and it should have only taken 15 minutes but it took over an hour because I was hopelessly, helplessly, hysterically lost in San Jose for what seemed like an eternity.  Fortunately, my Maid of Honor was in the car with me or I would have have been a sobbing, inconsolable, mess.  To make matters worse, it was dark and the interior light in my car wasn't working so we had no way to read a map except under the sporadic glow of an amber street lamp as we sped past.  It was maddening since we could SEE the airport but couldn't find a road that took us there.  It was such a horrible experience that it stripped what was left of my self confidence about being able to drive anywhere in San Jose on my own.    Now, how's this for irony:  Before I moved to San Jose, I lived and worked in a small town in Southern California for 13 years and one of my jobs was a Deputy Sheriff!  And I never got lost!

So, for Andrew's birthday this year, I got him a Tom Tom.  Yeah, I know it's something I'll use more than he will but he does most of the driving when we go anywhere so this was a good excuse to cough up the money and get this little goodie.  And it's a REAL GOOD goodie too!  You can even program it to talk to you in a sexy James Bond voice (but I picked a business sounding female voice because I didn't need more distractions while I was driving).

Our other recent purchase was two Pea-pod Plus travel beds.  They were on backorder for months but finally arrived just in time for our summer vacation!  Since the girls sleep in their crib, in crib tents, we needed something to travel with when we vacation.  We're going to try them out tomorrow at a local hotel (with a pool!).  The girls are really excited about their pink "Bye Bye Beds".  I'll post the results, and photos, of this experiment later!

"Life books"

I've gotten lots of emails over the last few weeks asking if everything was okay since my presence, on line, has been really sparse.  I appreciate all of the love and concern and I *am* sorry to have been so absent!  I've just been really absorbed in some BIG PROJECTS. 

Pictured here are two of the projects: 
Madeline's Life Book & Gwendolyn's Life Book.

I finished Maddy's last week and I'm really proud of the result.  It took hundreds of hours to do this but it was fun to work on it in all of my spare moments.  Naturally, my spare moments are few and far between so it meant that something else had to be sacrificed and (unfortunately) that meant my on line friendships, reading and commenting on blogs and participation in adoption forums -- including my own forum (which I horribly neglected during that time).

Here are all 130 pages of Maddy's finished book! (click on the image to see a larger view of the thumbnails).

I was so excited about Maddy's book.  I even started it first so hers would be "best".  From experience, I know that the 2nd child always gets the hand-me-downs and the 2nd rate baby book (if any book at all).  I wanted her to have the best life book so I did hers first.

I started by asking her Yahoo SWI group to email me any high resolution photos they had of her orphanage and her city of birth (Qinzhou).  The photos in the albums on the Yahoo Groups are very low quality and won't print nicely in a book.  You can use them but they'll only be about 2 inches wide, at most.  Lots of people were happy to help me out and sent me some good photos.  One family, traveling to Qinzhou on vacation, offered to stop at her finding location and take pictures for me!   I can't tell you how grateful I am for that since we weren't able to visit Maddy's city when we adopted her last summer.

Then I sent off for her finding ad from Brian Stuy. Then I contacted Asia Threads to get a CD of photos from her city. 

The finding ad cost around $35 and the CD of city photos was about $45.  The finding ad photo was very good quality but the CD of photos from the cities (I also got a CD of Gwen's city) were pretty horrible.  Still, they were MUCH better than nothing at all!  The resolution wasn't bad but the images were faded and almost always crooked.  Also, each photo has their site name (which is acceptable) but also an imprint of the name of the photo.  I didn't need that since I planned to add captions to the photos in the book.  So those imprints had to be removed.

I do recommend that you scour Google Images for as many photos are you can so you can supplement what you get from Asia Threads.   I was able to use their photos in the lifebooks because I have good photo editing software and I was able to enhance, straighten, fix perspective, and remove the photo name from every single image before uploading it to the book publishing software.

Then I combed through every single picture I had of Maddy and put everything in chronological order. I used an online book publishing company to make the book.  They don't think my blog's 500 hits per day is worth their time so they won't make me an affiliate (so I won't link to them).  Their software is free and very easy to use and you can research "online publishing" and probably find them.

Okay, so what's in her life book?

There are lots of resources to help you make a good Life Book for your adopted child and I don't think anyone can do the wrong thing when it comes to this particular project.   As usual, I didn't consult any of the experts.  I just plowed straight ahead into the project without fogging my mind with advice from anyone!

Here's Maddy's Table of Contents:

Page   4:  Earliest photos of Maddy
Page   9:  Finding location
Page  11:  Birth note
Page  12:  Finding ad
Page  14:  The Orphanage
Page  21:  What does Maddy's name mean
Page  22:  The City of Qinzhou
Page  39:  Referral pictures
Page  42:  Our Paperchase
Page  43:  Our Timeline
Page  45:  Quarterly reports from GHC
Page  52:  "Gotcha" day
Page  66:  Adoption day
Page  69:  More Nanning pics
Page  73:  Guangzhou:  Six Banyon Tree Temple
Page  74:  Guangzhou:  Red Couch Photo
Page  75:  Guangzhou:  Shamian Island
Page  77:  Guangzhou:  Pearl River Cruise
Page  79:  Guangzhou:  Maddy eats an apple
Page  81:  Guangzhou:  Tomb of Nanyue King
Page  82:  Guangzhou Zoo
Page  83:  Home
Page  85:  September photos
Page  91:  October photos
Page  96:  November photos
Page 100:  December photos
Page 106:  January photos
Page 107:  February photos
Page 112:  Maddy (and Gwen's) room
Page 114:  March photos
Page 122:  April photos
Page 129:  May photos

I didn't add any bunny rabbits or baby graphics or soft pastel colors or try to sugar-coat anything.  I *did* enhance the photos to make them more clear and colorful and less dull.  I want her to have good feelings about the place she came from and not assume that the horrible photography represents the "true colors" of her birth city.  Yes, there is horrible poverty in Qinzhou but there are also lovely flowers and smiling children there too!  The book was written directly to Maddy and we purchased an extra copy for her keepsake box since one of the copies is likely to get lots of use over the years.  We even purchased one soft-cover copy for her foster parents in China and we plan to have a Chinese friend transcribe, in Chinese characters, some of the pertinent text of the book so her foster family in China can understand it.

Maddy's books should arrive in the mail any day now.  Gwen's book is still a work in progress.  Her situation was quite different than Maddy's since she was never in foster care and we have no photos (other than referral photos) from before Gotcha Day.  But we adopted her at 14 months (instead of 25 months, as was the case with Maddy) so we have plenty of photos from that day forward. 

I'm so proud of these books!  I hope other families will consider doing this.  It's not only good for your kids but it's incredibly satisfying to your own soul too!

Sharing good pictures

I'm not a professional photographer and probably will never be one because I don't have the patience to learn about all the technical stuff that goes along with that job.  But I love taking good pictures and I've had moderate success doing it.  People always ask what camera we use, what software, etc.  So here I am -- sharing all of our secrets.  Enjoy!

Our Stuff:

• Camera:  Canon Rebel XT 8MP  (update:  We now have the Canon 5D)
  This camera is big.  Much bigger than its little 8 MP counterpart (which we also own but never use) but totally worth every extra ounce and inch.  When you think about how much extra stuff you get to haul around with a new baby, this camera is nuthin'.  Besides, there's almost always a stroller nearby if you get tired of carrying it.  Best yet, it takes GREAT pictures!  When you have kids, you figure out pretty quickly that their perfect smile won't wait for a slow camera shutter.  You need the speed otherwise you'll just end up with pictures of the back their precious little heads as they turn and run away from you! 
  
  A few more things about this camera:  It's fully automatic so you just point and shoot.  If you enjoy challenges, there are other settings that allow you to have more say in what the camera does.    I always use the Automatic mode but sometimes use the closeup mode (like I did for this picture of the tulip).  Someday, I might learn what the other modes do!
  
  Why do you need 8 (or more) megapixels?  You need this for printing photos.  Even if you don't print 8x10's, you probably need to crop images and print them as 4x6's.    You don't get a really crisp result if you don't have the image resolution to print whatever size you're printing.   
  
  When we got our first digital camera, I routinely reduced the image size so they wouldn't take up as much space on my hard drive.  WHAT A MISTAKE THAT WAS!  Yes, the photos look good on my computer but I can't print any of them (all our wedding and honeymoon photos).  I learned from that mistake and , now, I NEVER mess with the original of any of my photos.  I always make a copy before making permanent changes.
• Lens:  Canon EF-S 17-85mm (our new lens for the 5D is this one)
  The camera came with a lens but I don't remember ever using it.  We always use this one.  It's got great zoomability and it's not too big and clumsey. 
• Flash:  Canon speedlite 430EX
  The flash that is built into the camera is usually sufficient but we have this one too.  It makes a big difference indoors!
• Camera Bag:  Domke F-5XB
  We searched high and low for the perfect bag -- and found it.  It's been with us to China twice.  It holds all our gear (and even our passports) but it's about half the size and weight of our diaper bag.  Best of all, Daddy will happily carry it! 
• Collage software:  FotoFusion by LumaPix
  I love this program! It makes it so easy to work with large numbers of high resolution images and backgrounds, etc.   You can even drag and drop images onto the canvas.  One of my favorite tricks is to use a background that is the same color as the background on my blog and have the text or other graphics "flow over" onto it.  It's a really cool effect.  Check out this picture to see what I mean.   I use this for almost all of my collages -- even if I'm only adding a drop-shadow.
• Photo editing:  Paintshop Pro Photo X2
  I paid $100 for this program several years ago and consider it some of the best money I've ever spent. Some of the great things I can do with PSP is straighten images, fix perspective, fix color and light problems, remove unwanted objects (and people!), crop, and reduce image size.  There are 500 other things too.  This is probably the most important piece of software on my computer!

Some photo taking tips:

1. Have good light in front of your subject (avoid intense backlighting).  Outside photos are almost always twice as good as inside photos.
2. Take 200+ picutures and hope that 5% turn out "okay".  1% might be "awesome"!
3. Encourage kids to smile by engaging them in play.  Be goofy.  Have one parent engage the kids while the other takes lots of pictures.  One of my favorite pictures of Andrew and the girls is this one.  We did it by having Andrew spin while holding them and stop in front of the camera just long enough for me to take the picture.  They LOVED this game and I got one of the best pictures ever!
4. If you're taking pictures alone, experiment with taking pictures while NOT looking through the view-finder.  Just play peekaboo with your child and pretend to ignore the camera (while pointing and snapping away!)  Hope that something ends up in the picture!  After time, you'll get better at taking pictures "in the blind".  The pictures for the Elmo FFFF Challenge were taken this way.
5. If you have a very young child, try using some earthquake putty to adhere a tiny toy to the top of the camera.  They'll smile ear to ear when they see it!  (at least for the first 20 seconds)
6. When all else fails. Just ask your child to smile.  You might be surprised that they can do this (fairly well) on command!

How do I create the collages on this blog?

Many people have emailed me to ask about the program I use to create the collages on this blog.  I'm using the standard version (downloadable for a very reasonable price) of Fotofusion Version 4.

The most interesting digital scrapbook pages have many layers of backgrounds, images, frames and elements and Fotofusion is an excellent tool for working with those layers.  I've never found anything better!   Keep in mind that it doesn't really do anything other than work with layers though.  If you want to alter your photos (fix flaws, etc), you'll need a good photo editing program.  My favorite is PaintShop Pro.  I use this every single day and couldn't live without it!  I like it because it's much cheaper than Photoshop but seems to do everything I want it to do and it's much more user friendly.   

I get my digital scrapbooking backgrounds and elements from many places.  Sometimes I even make them myself but usually I find them for free by subscribing to blogs that advertise "freebies".    Here are my favorite freebie blogs:

• Ikea Goddess (daily links to the best freebies)
• DigiFree (daily links to ALL the freebies)
• Kubivet (she creates wonderful things and gives them away!)
• Artistic Musings (freebies on fridays only)
• Shabby Princess (everything at this link is FREE.  It's the perfect place to start your collection!

Every now and then, I splurge and actually pay for something.   I love frames and my favorite frame designer is Katie Pertiet.  Here's a link to a little set of frames that I use all the time.  This set was under $4 and I use it constantly: http://www.designerdigitals.com/ecom/product_info.php/products_id/3006.  Be sure to look at all the other stuff she offers.  It's awesome!

Finally, here are some inspiration pages to get your creative juices flowing.  Sometimes, I need to see what someone else has done before I can start to see a fun possibility with some of my own photos.  I hope these inspire you as much as they do me!

• Mary Fran Gallery
• Gallery Standouts

Here are some of my favorite collages that I created over the last year or two:

You'll probably notice that I don't scrap in traditional 12x12 sizes.  I picked a rectangular size because I thought I might want to print the pages on my home printer.  Then I found www.blurb.com and started creating yearly family albums in their 13 x 11 size.  I love the results and I'm so happy that our family photos and the text from this blog is preserved in printed form each year.  If you're not doing this, I strongly recommend it!  It's one of the best investments of time and money that we've ever spent (other than our adotions, of course!).

Let me know if you have problems or questions.  I'm very happy to help if I can