Everyday Memory Keeping :: Marcy Penner

For the first time, CP Gal, Marcy Penner, is granting the Crate Paper blog a brand new monthly series devoted to everyday stories–the big & small. This is her very first installment and it's a good one.

***Let it be heard that her post is packed full of awesome tips! You won't want to miss a single sentence. Take a moment to read and absorb, and then pin whatever catches your eye. Marcy is genius! 

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Everyday moments are a big deal. They're the things I want to remember. The things I want to look back on. They may not seem important at first glance... but it's these little pieces of everyday life that I strive to capture and document. They're the ones that are important to me... now and later.

I'm super excited to share little tips and tricks for Everyday Memory Keeping with you through the course of the year. They may come in the form of layouts, pocket pages or something else entirely.... but they will hopefully encourage you to record and preserve those little moments of your life.

I started this page by digging into my chipboard frame stash. The Crate chipboard frames are for sure one of my top 5 embellishments of all time. They get their very own basket too. They're that special. I decided to start with the black and gold glittered frame from Maggie Holmes Open Book collection. It was quite the showstopper and I liked how the diagonal division pointed directly to my cup of tea in the photo.

I had another basket full of Maggie's latest release, Confetti, nearby so I pulled out some of my favorite things to see if they would spark some sort of idea or direction. I ended up pulling out a few papers, two alphabet sets and some die-cuts. I think narrowing down the papers was the hardest part.

I don't get to use girlie products all that often so when I can, I totally do! I used one of the leaves in Confetti's metal die pack and cut one out of vellum. I figured I should be able to layer that somewhere on my page. The vellum would keep it subtle and add dimension if I curled up the edges a bit.

At this point I went back to the item that jumpstarted this whole project... the chipboard frame. I really loved the diagonal division and thought it might be cool to echo that in my patterned papers and have them line up together. I laid out my patterned paper on my background cardstock and lined it up so that I could follow the line of the frame across the page. I marked the points where it hit the edge of the patterned paper and trimmed it off using those marks as a guide.

Once that was done, I was left with something like this.

I matched up another piece of patterned paper to fill in the other side and added some gold paint splatters. Once the paint dried, I sewed along all the edges. It's so very simple, but the black dot paper is a current favorite of mine!

I housed my large photo inside the chipboard frame and adhered a smaller one beside it. Embellishing is always fun for me, so I gathered up those die-cuts I set aside and started incorporating them onto my page. I knew for sure that I wanted to tuck the "A Gift for You" tag somewhere.

This whole page is about my morning tradition of making tea for my daughter and myself before we head off to meet the bus for school. It's a small thing. Just a minor routine, but it really is so special to me.

Once I tucked some flower die-cuts (and that vellum leaf) behind the frame, I decided to add a title. Normally I'm totally fine without having a title...but I had some extra space on the bottom that I wanted to fill up. If I moved my frame down to fill up the space, my diagonal line wouldn't line up with it anymore. So title it was. I like to use my plastic ruler to line up my letter stickers. This lets me move them around until I'm happy. To do this I just stick them on the edge...

...and once I'm happy with where I have it on my layout I press them down and slowly peel the ruler back.

Lastly, to add a little bit of context I added an "every single day" word strip to the chipboard frame.

I originally had these photos printed out to go in my pocket page album. But really there was a story to tell. A small story, but an important one. And those are the very best kind.

Comments

[Amber R.]

Loved your first post Marcy! I do the same thing with my plastic ruler and alphabet stickers. Makes it so much easier to find the perfect spot for a title.