Giving-Away Reminder!

Remember that today is the last day to enter the Windsor 1 hour album ThanksGiving-Away contest. We will announce the winner on Monday, December 1st. Aren't the little paper pilgrim and Indian above just so cute? They're made out of paper, thanks to www.Macula.tv. Visit their site to see their different paper craft templates that may become your centerpiece friends.

Also, we just wanted to give you a sneaky-peek of what's coming up Monday for our post. Next week we will be starting the 12 days of Glitzmas! It will be different from our other posts in that we will be posting daily, Monday-Saturday. Each day we will post 2 of our gifts so that we sum up the 12 days in 6. That will give you time to decide what gifts you might want to do. We are excited to share these ideas with you, have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

ThanksGiving-Away!

There’s pumpkin spice flowing through the air, leaves crunching beneath our boots & warm wool mittens pressing against our skin... it’s fall! And with fall comes a wonderful time to show our gratitude. Thanksgiving is a time to regard the harvest’s that have surrounded us throughout the past year.

Our art department has been preparing for our family Thanksgiving feasts coming up this Thursday. We have been able to use our Windsor line for so many of our decorations (you can view our gallery here). Pictured above is our Windsor 1 hour album that arrived just a few weeks ago. We were so excited by how beautifully everything came together!

We would like to show our gratitude to you our viewers for helping us make this blog amazing! The language of gratitude most appealing to us is to have a giveaway for our Windsor 1 hour album. Our 1 hour albums are incredibly easy to use. All the pieces are cut for you and you can actually put it together in 1 hour (we’ve tested it)! If you don’t believe us, try it for yourself. They are available in lots of sizes and different paper lines.

HOW TO ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY:
• post a comment by Wednesday night (the 26th) on this post
• we will randomly pick from those names and announce the winner on the blog Monday the 1st of December

See, simple as pumpkin pa (<---my southern accent)!

Club SEI's November Video Instructions

OOPS! Josh accidentally deleted this post about the November Club SEI kit, with the video tutorial for the star album.

Here's that video again:

Did you know...?

Seeing how this is a lifestyle blog…we’re shaking it up! Josh talked about text last week and this week I’ll be giving you a little history lesson.

Since Thanksgiving is getting closer and closer, I thought we could talk about the cornucopia! It is the symbol of food and abundance, and dates all the way back to the Greeks. (And here I was thinking it was the pilgrims!)

In one of Zeus’s creation myths, he was raised by a goat named Amalthea. One day, while they were playing together Amalthea’s horn was broken off. Zeus felt awful and returned the horn to her, endowing it with special powers. Anyone who possessed it would gain whatever they wished for.

In Greek iconography, Fortuna (Minerva in Roman) was often depicted with a ‘horn of plenty’ of the cornucopia. It would be filled with fruits and grains, like today.

The cornucopia is a symbol of the harvest. It was a symbol brought to America from European farmers to celebrate a good crop; often filling a real goat’s horn.

Today it’s usually a hollow, wicker, horn-shaped basket that can be used as a fabulous centerpiece or decoration. Fill yours with your most beautiful crop (from the store or your own garden!) and share with your loved ones the bounties of your life. Remember all that you have and can give for the holiday season with this timeless reminder.

Tell us some of the traditions and symbols you carry in your house!

Mandi

You Can Type

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. All the same, a layout with lots of pictures and no type is like a cupboard full of spices with no labels – if you can’t remember what each one is by sight, you’ll end up putting curry in your apple pie. But type does more than just label and date your photos! Page titles, captions, and “journaling” capture what your photos may not: what you felt and thought when they were taken.

Still, the decorative scrapbook papers available today are meant to showcase your pictures, not long blocks of text. But it’s not just the length of type on your page that’s important. The size, font, and placement of your type, and also the words you use, can make your text the perfect compliment to all your memories.

So how do you avoid distracting readers with unsightly type? Here is a list of a few things to keep in mind:

1. Choose words that have meaning.

• I’m probably going to offend some people when I say this, but certain words have become unfortunate hallmarks of cookie-cutter scrapbooking, such as “Cherish!”, “Dream!”, “Discover!”, etc.
  
• The best scrapbook titles and captions come from familiar (not cliché) phrases, like “Jingle All the Way!” for a layout about sleigh rides and Christmas caroling. Or, “Snips & Snails, and Puppy Dogs’ Tails” for a young boy’s layout.
• If you want to use a single or double word title, avoid obvious nouns, like “Christmas Tree” with a photo of a family picking out what is obviously a Christmas tree. To capture the frosty, pine-scented mood of the evening, perhaps “O Tannenbaum” would be better (“christmas tree” in German, but people fondly associate this with the famous song).
  

2. Pick fonts that are appropriate to your content.

• If you’re using your computer to generate type, avoid over-used fonts, like Papyrus, Comic Sans, Vivaldi, Times New Roman, Brush Script, and Curlz. Also, if you’re worried that a font’s letter forms may seem over the top, they probably are. Pick something similar, but a little more modest.
• If you’re buying chipboard letters, rub-on words, and other type embellishments, be selective! With so many choices out there in scrapbook elements, if you spend the time looking, you will find the perfect font for your project.
• Looking for more free fonts for your computer? I recommend www.dafont.com.
  

3. Keep your type readable.

• Our eyes are governed in large part by habits and patterns, especially when it comes to reading text. In western cultures, our eyes are trained to read from left to right, top to bottom. In general, then, titles, captions, and journal entries should follow this format.
• Avoid breaking words up into their individual letters, and for the most part, keep all the letters of a word on the same line.
• Our eyes also prefer smooth, even patterns in text. Every once in a while it’s alright to break the mould, like using an elegant cursive capital letter to start a word in a plain text (serif) font. But using several fonts on a single layout, or worse yet, using several fonts in a single word, makes it hard to read. The designer’s general rule of thumb is preferably two fonts per layout, and no more than three.
  

Well, that covers a few of the basics. There are more guidelines to successfully using type in your scrapbooking, but we can cover those later. The most important thing is to trust your own design instincts – do what looks good. After all, as any artist or designer will tell you, it’s important to learn the basic principles, so you know when and just how much to break them!

If you’re interested in follow up type tutorials, please comment.

Newsletter Template: Piece of Cake Box

This sweet surprise for your loved ones is a piece of cake! Fill this unique gift box with treats or notes. This box is featured in our newsletter, sei tidbits. Below is the template, you can click it to enlarge. Click here if you'd like to sign up for our newsletter!

Maria's Thanksgiving Memories

It's November! And that means Thanksgiving is just creeping up on us. Traditions make the holidays fun. Growing up Thanksgiving was a big deal at our house. My mom always got out the nice dishes and made a beautiful centerpiece. At each place setting she would put a sugar cone filled with treats. Before we ate, we would go around the table and each tell something we were thankful for. I thought I would adapt this tradition for my own family.

I made these simple origami cups out of our elegant Windsor papers and dimensional elements. They look so classy and would work great for Christmas too. The best part is they each took less than 5 minutes to make and require no adhesive! It might be fun to put a little thank you note in each one or instead of the dimensional element put a monogram sticker.

All you need to start is:

• paper cut into 6 x 6 squares (the shimmer is easiest to fold)
• dimensional elements
• treats or notes to put inside

You can click on the template below to enlarge and print it. Hope you enjoy this simple project as much as I did.