Acrostic *Scrap Yourself* Challenge

Today, 8/7/2010, I challenge you to make a list of the roles, descriptions or characteristics of you.

And guess what? There is a twist.  I want you to do it acrostic style using your name.  You can use your first, middle or last name or all 3.

On my layout example, I wrote:

Mother to Christian
Offspring of James and Miriam
Niece of Carrie, Jean and Thomasina
Inventive and creative
Queen of my house
Unique creation of God
Energized by bright colors and sketches

Here is a layout I made using the above:

I also found a great example from  a book called "What About The Words" which also happens to be in the Scrapjazz.com gallery:






















There will be a prize (a $10 gift certificate to Scrapbook.com).  You have until 8/31/2010 to complete this challenge.  In the comment section, leave a link to your layout.  Also, leave your email address so you can be contacted if you win.  A winner will be randomly selected 9/1/2010.

Memories about your Hometown(s)

Hi everyone, it's my first post at Scrap Yourself and I'm really excited. I think it's important we scrap about ourselves, get our memories, moments and attributes registered!

My layout today is about the city I grew up. Until today I lived only in two citys: Limeira, countryside from São Paulo state, and Florianopolis, capital of Santa Catarina state, both in Brazil. Florianopolis is where I live now, so I decided to tell some memories about Limeira, where I lived until 18 years old, here is my LO:

And my journaling: "Limeira. Memories... Warm weather even in winter. Good friends. The sweet smell of orange. Sunday lunch in grandma's house. Lived in here from 0 until 18 years old."

Your hometown can tell a little (or a lot) about you, after all each city develops ourselves in a special way.

Scrap your memories about the city (or cities) you grew up. Was more then one? What you did and didn’t like about them? Is there any curious fact you like to share? I’m sure there is something you can scrapbook about your hometown(s). You can use some themes like comparing different times of your life (child, teenager, adult) living in the same city or showing us some special places for you.

Let’s us know your memories about your hometown. Have a great time scrapbooking!

Scrapping the Good times and the Bad

Good Morning and welcome to my first post with "Scrap Yourself". Let me first say how excited and honored I am to be a part of this amazing team of women. Kristine never disappoints when looking for ways to inspire all aspects of scrapping. I hope that you will continue to join us in the months to come and hopefully challenge yourself to scrap about those things that make YOU, you!


Ok, now for the challenge...I did this layout with a specific challenge in mind. I was once asked to scrap about a not so particularly "good time" in my life. I have to say this was quite an emotional journey. We tend to always scrap about the joys and memorable moments that we never want to forget, but if we want to tell our story, sometimes we need to tell about the times we were faced with difficult situations or decisions. Scrapbooking is our creative outlet. It is about telling our story not only to others but for generations to come. Who would believe that life was always a "bed of roses"? So today, I want to challenge you to scrap a time in your life where things were not so "sunny". Tell about a moment of indecision, a stressful moment, or a time that really had you questioning yourself. Dig Deep!!!! Bare your soul!!! Let your family and future generations see your courage, your mistakes, your hurts!!!! Come on...I dare you!

DOUBT

To read my journaling just go to my blog.

Personal Accomplishments

Our daily work, whether inside or outside of the home, can have its ups and downs. I love my job as a teacher, and after a challenging yet rewarding school year, I decided to create a layout focusing on my positive accomplishments during my fifth year of teaching. I used a photo taken by a student of mine and journaled my accomplishments in a list below.

In the 2009-2010 school year I: *Moved up from 4th to 5th grade *Looped with 20 kids and gained 6 more *Completed a TERC project on looping *Learned a new curriculum *Survived Outdoor Ed. *Mentored a student teacher *Got a Smart Board *Completed the Smart Board class *Completed the Daily 5 class *Completed the Diversity class *Wrote a grant to have my brother perform at West *Sent my students off to middle school!

Take the time to think about the work you do each and every day. What are your personal accomplishments? Recognize your positive work and pat yourself on the back by scrapping your successes, big or small!

Thanks for stopping by!

Q & A

Every once in a while I come across these quizzes on blogs or sent via e-mail, and I thought it would be fun to document my answers to them on a scrapbook page. Kind of a random snapshot of me at a particular point in time.

If you're new to scrapping yourself or not sure where to start, using one of these quizzes is an easy way to begin scrapping your story. There are limitless quizzes like this all over the internet, so you could never run out of things to scrap. A nifty place I discovered where you can find interesting and quirky quizzes and topics is The Daily Meme.

I'd love to hear about your favorite quizzes or memes. I hope you'll try scrapping one of these quizzes, and if you do, be sure to share it here with us!

Now...go Scrap Yourself!

Summer Favorites

Summer brings so much fresh goodness to us here in the Pacific Northwest. I love visiting local farmer's markets to get the latest from the farmers' fields and trees.


My favorites change year to year. Cherries, donut peaches, heirloom tomatoes . . . YUM!

What is a favorite summer activity of yours? Do you have favorite fruits or vegetables you look forward to eating during the summer? Document them on a layout.

Have a fabulous day :)

Meet & Greet

Alia Mohammed

Hello! My name is Alia, I am 27 years old, and I live in Massachusetts. I am an elementary school teacher, currently teaching fifth grade at the school I attended as a child. When I am not teaching, I enjoy photography, reading, organizing, traveling, and studying Arabic. Most importantly, of course, I love to create scrapbooks to preserve my memories!

I began scrapbooking in 2005 when I returned from one of many trips to visit my family in Egypt. I had taken a few hundred pictures and decided I wanted to do something special with them. I roamed into a craft store and came out with lots of goodies to make my first scrapbook. My style has changed and evolved since this time, but my love for scrapbooking has remained. Today, I am primarily an 8.5x11 scrapper who loves to creatively document my travel adventures as well as favorite every day moments and special times with friends and family. Bows are my favorite embellishment and I tend to include them on almost every page I create. I also love bright girly colors and patterns, ribbons, buttons, and fancy border punches.

I am thrilled to be a new member of the Scrap Yourself Design Team! It's important to remember to take the time to scrap yourself, and I am looking forward to doing so in many new ways!


Camila Borssoi
My name is Camila Borssoi, I'm 26 years old and live in Brazil with my husband and my dog.

Scrapbooking became my favorite hobby and art in 2006, since that year I love to be inside on what’s hot and new trends in scrapbooking world, so often I have classes with 'scrap' experts, in order to improve my skills and learn new techniques. Also I had the opportunity to teach some techniques of scrapbooking to beginners.

Actually my scrapbooking subjects are more about myself, trips, wedding, childhood and my family. I like to do several styles of scrapbooking, but I often use paints, superimpose elements, chipboards, die-cuts and more, that gives a crafty and colorful look. I love to put a lot of details and techniques in my work.


Cathy Bautista

I'm a scrapper addict from the Philippines. Married to my childhood sweetheart for a year and a half now. I've been scrapping for almost two years now and this hobby keeps me sane from all the buzz in the corporate world and helps me keep / journal the memories I don't want to forget. Me and my husband loves to travel. We make it a point to go out of the country at least once a year and so most of what I scrap are our adventures. I cannot wait to get our little prince and princesses for I surely will cherish each moment through scrapbooking.

My scrapbooking style keeps evolving as I discover new products and materials I can work with. I love to use different techniques as I often look for new things to try that keeps this hobby very interesting. I love to cut different patterns / designs from papers and can live with just paper, scissor and glue. But I also love to distress and layer stuff together. I tend to also do shabby style layouts from time to time.



Chalese Knight
Hi, my name is Chalese Knight, I am married to the wonderful and amazing Andre Knight. We have four children and we reside in Brooklyn Center, MN.

I fell in love with the Art of scrapbooking 10 years ago!! Everything about this hobby makes me happy and I love to create and share each moment of my family daily lives through this ART form!!

Excitement is an understatement, I feel so honored to work with such talented ladies on SY!!

I look forward to being inspired and having fun scrapping ME!!!

Debbi Tehrani
I'm Debbi Tehrani. I live in Maryland with my husband, Farzad, of 28 years. We have no children, but we have three cats and two bearded dragons. The beardies accompany me to school, where I teach fifth grade.
I've been scrapping for almost a decade. I love telling stories on my pages, so Scrap Yourself is a perfect fit for me! For me, scrapbooking is a creative outlet and a way to capture and celebrate all the random little things that make my life special and meaningful. To me, scrapbooking can be defined by this wonderful quote from Brian Andreas: "These are little scraps of magic & when you paste them together you get a memory of something fine & strong, she said. Sometimes it takes till you're 40 to see it though."
I love the concept of this new challenge blog, and I am so thrilled to be a part of it!


Issa Lucido
I am Issa Virtucio-Lucido from Laguna, Philippines. I am a better half to Dodo who is an Aquaculturist and a scrapping mommy to Luis Lauro Antonio, 16 and Lucian Lorenzo Roberto, 6. After working as an Accounting Assistant and managing my own craft store, I decided to be a full time mom when my youngest boy was born in 2004. Now that he is in pre-school already and my eldest is in high school, I went back to school and got another course. I am taking units on Education hoping to be a teacher someday and wanting to share this deepest passion on scrapbooking.

I am so glad to be a part of this new blog about US. Let us continue to discover ourselves, share the different experiences and happiness life brings to US and later, scrap about them.


Kim Arledge
Hi! My name is Kim Arledge. My family and I live in the big ole state of Texas. I have 3 beautiful children and a husband who is pretty amazing. He puts up with me and my endless amounts of scrapbook purchases so he must be a good man!!!!
In 2006, I began to dabble with scrapbooking and quickly became obsessed. Over the past few years I have tapped into a part of myself that I did not even know I had and I am so thankful that I have found something that I am so passionate about. More importantly, I am creating memories for my kids to treasure for years to come. If you don't find me in my scraproom, you will find me online talking, researching, or obsessing about scrap stuff.

My scrapbooking style is still evolving because I am always up for new challenges. For the most part, I want my pictures to tell the story.
I have had the pleasure of working with Kristine before so imagine how thrilled I was to find out that I would have the opportunity to work with her again. So many of us (me included) forget to tell our own personal stories while we anxiously scrap our families.
I hope to challenge myself and others to talk and scrap about the one person we neglect the most....ourselves. Look forward to seeing what all of you have to say!!!!


Melanie Jarocki
My name is Melanie. I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. My DH and I have lived in seven states so far (we've been married 15 years). We have five children--two girls, three boys--ranging in age from 10 down to 1. I have Bachelors and Masters degrees in physical education and biology. My scrapbooking began after my first daughter was born, although I've always kept journals, saved ticket stubs, postcards, etc. I really enjoy scrapping and love watching my kids look through our albums. Scrap Yourself will be such a fun adventure for me--I'm usually scrapping my kids so it will be great to record more things about me :)

My style is pretty clean and linear. I love using my sewing machine on projects. Journaling is super important to me--if it's not on the front of the page, it's on the back (sometimes I have too much to say to all fit on the front). Most of my scrapping is done in short time snippets throughout the day or in the evening after the kids are in bed.

In addition to spending time with my family (we love to read, play games, and bake) and scrapping, I enjoy playing the piano (I have 11 piano students), going for walks, and chatting on the phone with my sisters and mom.


Monique Fox
I am an American (by birth), a Marylander (by residency), sweet (by nature), ethnic (by design), and blessed (by God). I am a single mother of a 7 y/o son name *Christian* and an 8 y/o cat name *Angel*. I

have been scrapbooking for 7 years. I just love it and expressing my creativity. I am also in love with sketches. I really get excited when I see a sketch that inspires me to create.

I love being on Design Teams and meeting new people. I also am a published Poet.



Zoe Nemburt
My name is Zoe Nemburt and I live in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia, with my husband of almost 9 years and our 3 children Yasmin 7, Aydin 6, and Ceyda 3, I work for Canada Post by day as a casual letter carrier and scrap obsessively on my days off and evenings, My husband is a Carpenter and he also volunteers for the local Fire Department.
I was born in southern England and we all moved here to Canada in 2006 and have never looked back this is our new home and we are proud to call Canada our home!
I've always enjoyed playing with paper and have dabbled in scrapbooking for many years however in February of 2008 I got bitten by the scrapping bug and have never looked back, I am now proud to call myself a scrap-a-holic.

I have followed Scrap Yourself from the beginning I love the concept and I am one of those scrapper who seems to hide behind the pages rather than be in them! Same with the camera actually! I am getting better and have been scrapping myself a lot more, now what a fabulous challenge to be a part of this wonderful design team for the next 3 months! I super excited to get started. I hope I can inspire you to Scrap Yourself. :)