The Joys of Moving

POSTED ON May 29, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs

From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 14

The past two weeks my husband Adam and I have been busy moving from San Antonio, TX to Houston, TX. Being a military family, we’re certainly no strangers to moving, especially considering this was move number five in just under eight years. But despite being one of the shortest moves distance-wise we’ve done – no new states or countries involved! – this move was by far on of our craziest.

But thankfully we’ve managed to dig ourselves out from the piles and piles of boxes and now that life is feeling a bit more settled, I’m starting to get excited about our new adventure and the creative opportunities hidden within.

One of the things I love most about moving is the opportunity to start fresh with a clean slate. There are few things more inspiring for me as a memory keeper than a new home in a new city, ripe with the possibility for new adventures, photo opportunities and memories. Moving pushes me to look at everyday life with fresh eyes and even the most mundane tasks, like taking a trip to Target or cooking dinner can suddenly seem interesting when paired with a new environment.

But let’s face it, unless you’re living a modern-day nomadic lifestyle like I am, odds are you probably aren’t going to be packing up and moving every few years. So how can you take advantage of a fresh start without the hassle and stress of actually moving?

Well here are a few ideas:

1) Switch up your scrap time

If you normally scrapbook first thing in the morning, try scrapbooking at night. If you’re a night owl, try scrapbooking first thing in the morning! The change in lighting and mood may just push your pages in a fun new direction.

2) Scrapbook from a different location

Do you always scrapbook from the same exact spot in the same room of your house? For a change of pace, try switching up your scenery. If you have the luxury of a laptop, go to a crop or spend an hour scrapbooking in a coffee shop. Desktop lover? Move your computer to a new room in the house for a little bit. Even if all you do is moving from the living area to the bedroom for a day, the new view can do your creativity good.

3) Go on a vacation

Vacations are one of my personal favorite ways to get a fresh start because they’re basically like a short, non-permanant move. Even if you don’t have the luxury of a three week trip to Europe or a seven day cruise to the Bahamas, spend a weekend camping at the lake or even an afternoon visiting a new-to-you place in your hometown. The downtime and break from your normal day-to-day routine paired with some fresh new memories is sure to jumpstart your creativity.

By nature, we are creatures of habit. Our brains love routine, repetition and pattern because let’s face it, it’s less work for them! That’s why starting with a clean slate can be so inspiring. Because it forces your brain to take a fresh look at your surroundings and see new ideas & connections. Even if you only step away for an afternoon or a day, it’s sure to give your creative process a quick boost.

Well now that you’ve heard a little bit about what I’ve been up to, I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to! Any other fellow movers out there?

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Scrapbooking In the Wake of Tragedy

POSTED ON April 17, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs

From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 13

Back in January, when I first introduced From the Desk of Nettio Designs and this whole idea of creatively capturing your life adventures, one of the questions I was asked was if I would talk about how I capture the negative in our lives as well. In light of recent events at the Boston Marathon on Monday, today seems like an appropriate time to share a little bit about that.

I’ve never been to Boston and I didn’t know anyone who ran or attended the Boston Marathon. But as a military spouse, hearing about improvised explosive devices and amputations happening on US soil hits a little too close to home. These are known risks in my husband’s line of work – risks we accept while hoping and praying for everyone’s safe return. In a very sad but very real way, these types of stories or injuries are considered somewhat normal in our little military-driven world. But we expect to hear about them in foreign overseas locations not on our home turf.

What happened in Boston was a terrible and senseless tragedy. These were sports fans and family and friends cheering on their loved ones. They had no reason to think they’d be in any danger and my heart absolutely breaks for every single one of the families and individuals whose lives have been forever changed by this one horrific event.

When tragedies like this strike, I think it raises a lot of questions about our responsibilities as memory keepers, especially for those those of us participating in every day storytelling like Project Life where so much focus is on day-to-day events.

Do we have a responsibility to future generations to include these types of events in our scrapbooks?

Do we act as a reporter and share the facts or should we dig deep and share how these events affect us personally?

If we choose to leave out these stories, choose to focus on the good in our lives instead of the bad, will that somehow make our story less authentic?

My answer to all of these questions is that you should do whatever feels true to your personal story. Whether that’s saving a newspaper article, journaling your personal emotions or leaving these events out of your scrapbooks entirely, it’s your choice.

It’s not your responsibility to tell everyone’s story. It’s only your responsibility to tell your story. How you choose to tell that story is entirely up to you.

For me personally, I tend to approach these events from my own personal perspective. I will likely never scrapbook a layout detailing the facts of an event like 9/11. I figure there are plenty of news accounts available if some day someone wanted to read about what happened. But I may one day scrapbook the story of our visit to Ground Zero and how as a military family it affected us eight years after the event. Because that is what is true to my story.

The same is true for the Boston Marathon tragedy. Right now I think I will likely include a journaling card in my Project Life spread for this week with some of my personal thoughts on what happened because that’s what feels true to my own life experiences. Your approach may be totally different and that’s perfectly ok.

It saddens me that we live in a world where tragedies like this happen. But negative experiences and events are a very real part of life and I think it’s healthy for us as memory keepers to maintain a dialogue about how we approach these types of events in our lives. So with that I want to know:

Do you scrapbook the good with the bad? How do you approach these types of stories and events?

Rather than end this week with my usual jolly send-off, I’m just going to share this great quote from comedian Patton Oswalt:

“So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

Thoughts and prayers to everyone in Boston.

This post is Issue No. 13 of my From The Desk of Nettio Designs weekly email series. Want to get in on the action? Sign up for Nettio Designs emails here.

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The Importance of Creative Downtime

POSTED ON April 10, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs, Memory Keeping

Hello hello and welcome to From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 12. After taking a short break last week, I’m excited to be back chatting with you again today about something I believe is key to the creative process: the importance of downtime.

As memory keepers, and especially tech-lovin’ memory keepers, it can be easy to feel a huge amount of pressure to “keep up.” Not only are we constantly bombarded with a huge amount of visual and mental stimulation on a daily basis, but we’ve chosen a hobby which at it’s core is about capturing the passing of time. And let’s face it, time doesn’t simply stop because your scrap mojo goes missing, am I right?

One of the things I’ve learned in seven years as a scrapbooker is that, much like capturing new memories or seeking out new sources of inspiration, downtime is a key component of my creative process. It is in these moments of downtime – when I take a step back and do something completely unrelated to scrapbooking – that I not only find my most creative solutions, but my brain clears up and the ideas start flowing.

If you’ve ever heard someone say they “get all their best ideas in the shower,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s often referred to as a “creative pause” – a period of time where you disengage from a creative activity and let your brain just be.

The shower is an ideal place for this because not only is it usually a distraction-free zone but the sound of the falling water acts as white noise and the task at hand – washing your hair or shaving your legs – is mindless enough that you could probably do it in your sleep. All of these things combine to give your brain space to do what it does best – solve problems and make new connections.

Ideas For Taking A Creative Pause

Now of course, it’s probably not practical to take a shower every time you need a creative boost. So what are some other ways you can take a creative pause?

Well here are few of my favorites:

Take a walk around your neighborhood
Go for a hike
Exercise
Clean your house
Blow dry your hair (or do your makeup)
Go for a drive
Stand in line without checking your phone

Will it be weird at first? Most likely, yes. In our technology-driven world of 24/7 information and stimulation, we’ve largely forgotten what it’s like to be bored, what it’s like to be unstimulated. Our first instinct when we have any moment of downtime is to reach for our iPhone or iPad or Kindle to fill the void. I know I’m certainly guilty of this as well!

But just like our stomachs needs time to digest food after a big Thanksgiving meal, ours brain needs time to digest and make sense of all of the inspiration and information we take in on a daily basis too. Which is why as creatives, if we want to keep our brains in tip-top creative shape and avoid un-fun things like burnout or missing mojo, we need to not only embrace these moments of downtime but actively seek them out as part of our creative process.

Which brings me to this week’s Creative Adventure:

It’s Creative Adventure Time!

Your challenge this week is to take a “creative pause.” Choose a mindless task from the list above (or one of your own) and spend at least 15 minutes really disconnecting – step away from your computer/TV/phone/Kindle screens and give your mind space to wonder.

Then pay attention to how your brain feels both as you’re doing your task and after. Did the ideas start flowing? Did your brain feel lighter after? Or were you just itching to get back to your electronic device of choice, haha? Of course, if you’re feeling chatty, you’re welcome to leave a comment below and let me know how it went.

This post is Issue No. 12 of my From The Desk of Nettio Designs weekly email series. Want to get in on the action? Sign up for Nettio Designs emails here.

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Link Love

POSTED ON March 27, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs

From The Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 11

Hello hello and welcome to From The Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 11!

Behind the scenes here at Nettio Designs I am up to my eyeballs in design work for a certain upcoming book which may or may not rhyme with Smeveryday Smoryteller. So I decided to keep things simple this week and share a few links to articles and thoughts that have been inspiring me lately. Enjoy!

Loved this reminder from ifb…Daily Inspiration: The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Waste Time. I need to remember this more often!

Since I’m moving in a month and a half (eek, so soon!), I greatly appreciated these How To Move quick tips from Elise. Especially loved the reminders to make your new house yours and believe it’s worth the effort no matter how long you’ll be there. So true, especially for us military peeps.

If you’re looking for another fun way to capture your Faves, Christine shared a fun favorite things inspired mini album on her blog this week. Yay for list lovin’!

If you have a tendency to start creative projects with gusto and then get stalled as you get towards the end, I highly recommend checking out these 5 Ways to Get Through the Creative Red Zone tips from Productive Flourishing. They’re written with a bit of a creative business bent to them but I’d say the core principles apply to creative memory keeping & scrapbooking projects as well.

Love this series of Lists of Thirty from Kelly Purkey in honor of her 30th birthday year. These would make great content for a series of scrapbook layouts. Hmm…maybe in honor of the end of my 30th birthday year?

If you’re in need of every day photo inspiration, this post from A Beautiful Mess on Thoughts On Lifestyle Photography nails it. These types of photos & stories are so what I want to capture in my scrapbooking. Be sure to check out their 5 Tips for Lifestyle Photography post too.

Well I think that’s probably enough inspiration to help you procrastinate on whatever it is you really should be doing right now. Just a heads up, things will likely be slow on the Nettio Designs blog for the next week or so while I finish up my big project but I will have a March Faves template sneak peek and new release for you this weekend so stay tuned for that.

And with that From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 11 is in the bag! As always if you’d like to share your own links to what’s have been inspiring you lately, feel free to reply to this email or leave a comment on the Nettio Designs blog. I’d love to hear from ya!

This post is Issue No. 11 of my From The Desk of Nettio Designs weekly email series. Want to get in on the action? Sign up for Nettio Designs emails here.

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Goodbye Google Reader & A Lesson for Tech-Lovin’ Memory Keepers

POSTED ON March 20, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs

From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 10

Hello hello and welcome to From The Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 10! Woohoo, double-digits, baby!

This week I wanted to talk about something that’s been on the mind of a lot of bloggers and blog-readers this week: the demise of Google Reader.

If you hang out anywhere in digi-land, odds are you’ve heard by now that Google announced last week that as of July 1st, it will be discontinuing it’s free RSS feed-reader service, Google Reader. While I had switched away from Google Reader as my main feed reader a year ago, the announcement was still a bit of a surprise to me. Considering the media frenzy that ensued in the online tech world afterwards, I’d say I wasn’t the only one.

A lot of blog posts I’ve seen lately have focused on alternatives to Google Reader which is awesome. If you’re a highly visual person or subscribe to a lot of visual blogs, I highly recommend Feedly. It has the Nettio stamp of approval.

But I think the even bigger lesson for us tech-lovin’ memory keepers is this: We need to be smart about what companies and services we trust our priceless memories and photos with, especially when those services are cloud-based and/or free.

There are a lot of amazing free services that can help us creatively capture our life adventures: journaling sites like 750words, Facebook, Instagram, Evernote.

But as with any service that exists primarily in the cloud (as opposed to an app downloaded to your desktop or smart phone), there is always a certain amount of risk that one day that service could disappear and just like with Google Reader, you may not have any say in it.

Which is why before investing a lot of time and energy into any new platform or service, it pays to do a little homework and ask yourself some questions like:

How long has this company/service been around? Do they have a successful track record for maintaing products and services? What is the fan-base like?
If it’s free, how are the costs for the product or service paid for? Is there a premium level available? Is it ad-based? Do they take donations?
Is there an exit strategy? If you need to remove your content from their platform is there an easy way to do that in a non-prioprietary readable/editable format?

And of course, as with any technology, always make sure you backup anything that’s important to you. Save copies of your WordPress blog posts, download your Instagram photos to your computer or screenshot your favorite Facebook status updates.

No matter what we do in this fast-paced tech-lovin’ world of ours, we’ll never completely mitigate the risk that our beloved app or service won’t one day go the way of the dodo. If anything I always say the more I love something, the more likely it is to disappear, haha. But with a little due-diligence and proper backups, we can be that much more prepared should the unthinkable happen.

So goodbye, Google Reader, it’s been fun. Thank you for keeping me up to date on all my favorite blogs all these years. I hope you enjoy the rest of your days in that cloud-based code-heaven in the sky.

And with that I’m bringing this edition of From The Desk of Nettio Designs to an end. As always if you have thoughts to share, feel free to leave a comment below. I love hearing from ya.

This post is Issue No. 10 of my From The Desk of Nettio Designs weekly email series. Want to get in on the action? Sign up for Nettio Designs emails here.

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Digital Galleries & The Rise of Templates

POSTED ON March 13, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs

From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 9

Hello hello and welcome to From The Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 9!

Behind the scenes at Nettio Designs this past week, my team and I have been having an interesting discussion about Creative Teams, galleries and the role they play in digital scrapbooking. One of the things we’ve all agreed on is that the role galleries play has changed a lot in just the last few years, especially with regards to CTs and product promotion.

Back in 2006 when I first started digital scrapbooking, especially after DigiShopTalk first opened, galleries were king. If you wanted to get your latest product seen, one of the best ways you could do this was by having a talented member of your team create a layout that stood out in the gallery. Galleries were the place to see and be seen and I can certainly remember spending hours and hours browsing the galleries for inspiration. There was so much eye candy!

Fast forward to today in 2013, and it would seem at least on the surface, that digital galleries play a much less prominent role in our digital scrapbooking community. Unfortunately, zero comment and low view layouts are the norm in some of the bigger galleries and it seems in general that people spend much less time browsing galleries for inspiration than they did at one time.

So what happened? Why did this change?

Well I’m sure some of it is due to the rise of social media sites like Pinterest or Facebook, as well as the many many years of technical issues suffered by big gallery sites like DigiShopTalk. Or maybe as a community, we’ve simply evolved past the point of needing as much inspiration as we did in those early days.

But I have one other factor that’s rarely mentioned but I think is important to discuss: the rise of templates.

Now I know, as a template designer that may be a weird statement for me to make. But here’s the thing:

Back in the wild west days of scrapbooking, templates didn’t exist. And yes, if you’ve ever seen someone’s first layout from back then, it’s probably terrifying, haha. There was definitely a MUCH higher learning curve in those days!

But at the same time, that steeper learning curve also meant there was much more room for growth and creativity. If you wanted to be on the best Creative Teams or work with the top designers, you needed to improve your design skills and find a style that would make your layouts stand out from everyone else. And in a lot of ways, that pioneering spirit was good for the digital scrapbooking industry, because it encouraged people to step outside their comfort zones which pushed the industry forward.

Today the scene is a bit different. Thanks to the evolution of templates, a lot of that initial learning curve has been lessoned which, in a lot of ways, is awesome! It’s easier than ever for new scrapbookers to get started and it’s hard to deny the overall quality of digital scrapbooking layouts in galleries has improved thanks to an abundance of templates.

But one of the downsides of templates is the tendency they have to homogenize, or create a certain level of sameness throughout a digital gallery.

For example, let’s say you have 3 template designers, each with their own unique style. Then let’s say, 3 different scrapbookers buy templates from each of them. Assuming each of those scrapbookers use the templates as designed, you now have 12 scrapbookers (including the designers) whose layouts represent only 3 main styles.

What I loved about galleries in the pre-template days was that unless you were a hardcore scraplifter (and most people weren’t), those layouts from the 12 scrapbookers would have represented 12 individual styles. And while everyone’s “style” back then wasn’t necessarily amazing (and I put my own early layouts firmly into that category as well, haha), you were much more likely to come across someone who’s style was completely unique and amazing than you probably are today.

Now before you go grabbing your pitchforks and running me out of digi land, haha, let me assure you I am in no way suggesting we do away with templates. Far from it. I am all for the template-y goodness as much as any of you.

I design templates because I see them as an awesome tool for jump-starting your creativity, building your confidence and making more complicated or out-of-your-comfort-zone styles a little bit easier and more doable. But if you’ve read all of my various posts on creatively capturing your life adventures, it probably comes as no surprise that my goal as a template designer has never been to create a scrapbooking army of Mini-Me’s. That would be quite weird actually, haha.

Plus there’s a little part of me that wonders if templates had existed in their current form back when I first started scrapbooking, would my style have evolved the way it has? While it took me a few years to really find my own unique style, I do know that those early days of pushing myself to be different from everyone else, whether it was scrapbooking 8.5×11 when everyone was doing 12×12 or going linear and graphic when everyone was all clustery and angled, did help to shape the scrapbooker I am today.

I guess what I’m wondering from all of this is how we can find balance. How can we balance creativity and personal style with the ease and confidence that comes with using templates? How can we get back some of that early digi-land pioneering spirit and creative learning without giving up everything we’ve gained since then? And, perhaps from my own perspective, how can I as a designer create products that help you to embrace your own creative spirit and personal style while still providing you with that leg up when you need it?

It’s an interesting question and one that at this point I don’t know that I have all the answers for just yet. But I’m willing to investigate, so stay tuned…

With that I’m going to bring this weeks installment of From the Desk of Nettio Designs to a close. As always if you’d like to share your own thoughts with me, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment below and share away. I’ll be back next week with more thoughts on scrapbooking, life and creatively capturing your life adventures. See you then!

This post is Issue No. 9 of my From The Desk of Nettio Designs weekly email series. Want to get in on the action? Sign up for Nettio Designs emails here.

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