Scrapbooking Vacation Recap

This past weekend I set sail for Toronto with some of my best gal pals to attend Scrapbook and Cards Today Crop and Create Markham. It was such an inspiring weekend, a really fun event to get away with girlfriends.

The big drawl for us was headliner Ali Edwards in the classroom. Ali has been on the scene for quite a long time, she is a wealth of scrapbooking, journaling and memory keeping ideas and knowledge.  I sat in on 3 of Ali’s classes and I’m coming home inspired and ready to do some mad recording.

The class themes fit perfectly into the kind of scrapbooking and project life I enjoy doing. I just had to share a few of my take-aways with you!

The first class was “Love you Because” we created a small album to highlight the reasons we love our people. It was nice to get thoughts and feelings down on paper, regardless how silly or serious it was. We learned some fun techniques – who knew you could cut up a page protector to make your own sizes and different ways to incorporate them in an untraditional way.

Up next was “A Day in the Life” where we recorded everything about the small details of our daily life- what do you do? Where do you go? What do you eat? Who do you talk to? What time do you get up and what time do you fall asleep?

It was wonderful to take little shots of the happenings around our house. It really makes you think about how you conduct your days, the perspective and importance you see in things, and for me made me stop obsessing about having the perfect photo. Ali’s photos are beautiful and real. I’m constantly am nagging at my kids to look at the camera, don’t do that, wipe your face… I need to focus on capturing real moments, ‘Capture Life’ as Ali would say!

The final class was  “Storytelling with Project Life” I have to say this was the class I needed the most! I can match paper, and put together embellishments, but ask me to get my thoughts down on paper and I’m lost. Ali provided us with worksheet and journaling prompts to get the creative juices following. The whole class had their pen to paper scratching away within the first 15 minutes of the class.

Her story starters were perfect, simple ideas like- My favourite story from today was…, This is what I love about you right now…, I am thankful for…, The top 3 best things about this trip are… Fairly simple ideas, but a great handout to have when you can’t get started.

In addition to the journaling, we also got to play with a Studio Calico Kit and recreate some journaling cards. Ali shared easy ways to take a basic kit and make it your own, buy cutting up the cards, and adding embellishments and stamps. We also got to use some fresh sets of Ali’s stamps, you can see all her products in the Ali Edwards shop.

When all the classes were complete I returned to my own seat to apply what I had learned to my own projects. Can you believe I wrote directly on a photo, and chopped up a large one to put on a project life spread? Ground breaking!!

All in all the weekend was amazing! If you ever get to attend one of Ali Edwards classes take it, you certainly won’t be disappointed. You can check out all her work, over on her amazing website, it is so easy to navigate, you’ll spend hours going through all her inspirational ideas!