LeNae's Favorites
LeNae’s Favorite Products For Beginners
What are some of your favorite Hot Off The Press products?
When I scrapbook, I really like to focus on my photos and journaling. That’s why I love to accent my layouts with patterned papers and just a few touches of dimension.
Busy Scrapper’s Solution
One of my favorite products is the line of Paper Pizazz® Busy Scrapper’s Solution paper collections. They’re great for beginning scrapbookers, because each book contains tons of sheets of coordinating patterned papers, solid colored papers, alphabet tiles and tag and art cut-outs. I love heading out of town for the weekend, and it’s so easy to just grab a Busy Scrapper’s Solution book and a couple of tools and take it all with me. Plus, there’s something for every occasion because they come in a variety of themes like wedding, vacation, school, 4 seasons and more!
Personal Shopper
Another one of my favorite products is the monthly Personal Shopper packages. They’re great for beginning scrapbookers, because every month you get a whole set of coordinating products that are easy to take anywhere. Personal Shopper boxes come full of patterned papers, cut-outs, and all kinds of embellishments like ribbons, brads and clips. All I need is a couple of tools and I’m ready to create tons of new pages every month! Each box also comes with a newsletter that shows me how to use all of the products in the box and photos of great layout ideas.
8”x8” Mini Albums
I also really love the 8”x8” coordinating albums, papers and cardstock. They’re perfect for the first-time scrapbooker and for people who have been scrapbooking for years. What I love about them is that, because they’re smaller than the average album, I don’t have to stress about filling a bunch of empty space. I choose my best or most important photos to showcase in my 8”x8” layouts and have just enough space to add some accents and personal journaling.
Attachments™
Hot Off The Press’ Attachments™ line includes so many great embellishments, but I really love the Attachments™ Fabric Pockets. I like to use the fabric pockets to store small trinkets that emphasize the theme of my page. Sometimes I place a personal message in the fabric pocket and seal the pocket – this keeps my journaling private unless I want to share my secret note with the person looking at my scrapbook!
Can you share some ideas for new scrapbookers?
I think the Attachments™ Fabric Pockets are great to store private messages or trinkets, but I also love to use them to display my journaling. One of my favorite things to do is to journal in strips and place all of the strips in the pocket, sticking out of the top. This is a great, interactive way to add journaling to my pages because the viewer can pull my journaling strips out of the pocket and read them individually.
8”x8” Mini Albums are great to make a whole album with one theme like a vacation, wedding, or new baby. I’m currently in the process of making a special gift for my daughter using the 8”x8” albums – a “Pieces of Me” book. Using an 8”x8” album, I’m documenting our family’s heritage, my childhood and our holiday traditions so that she will have this book to know and remember where her family came from.
I really love to journal on my pages because I can document little memories or quotations that add a story behind the photos on my page. I think it’s important to make your journaling real – use your own voice! If you don’t like your own handwriting, don’t forget you can computer journal!
Where do you get inspiration for your layouts and projects?
There are two ways I get inspiration for my scrapbook layouts. Sometimes I use colors, patterns or themes in my photos to get ideas for which papers and embellishments I want to use in my layout. Since I love patterned papers so much, I also like to start with the paper and gather or take new photos that will look great on the paper I choose.
I love to look through books of Paper Pizazz® patterned paper to get ideas for my next layout, because the papers are already coordinated to go together. I usually use a four-step process for putting together my scrapbook layouts. I like to choose my paper first, then select the photos to go with it. After that, I choose embellishments that accent my theme, and finally I add my journaling.
