What I Learned From Challenging My Own Creative Assumption: Clean & Simple White Space

POSTED ON February 6, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs, Memory Keeping

From The Desk Of Nettio Designs Issue No. 4

I mentioned in From The Desk Of Nettio Designs Issue No. 2 that one of the key components of creatively capturing your life adventures is having an attitude of willingness to push outside your comfort zone and challenge your assumptions of what you think you’re capable of without worrying about failing.

We all have assumptions we make when it comes to our creative scrapbooking abilities, things like:

“I’m not a white space scrapbooker.”

“I can’t use bold colors.”

“I’m not as creative as so-and-so.”

While sometimes these creative assumptions are rooted in the reality of our skills and abilities (maybe we really don’t have the skills yet to pull off a certain technique), often times what they represent are our own insecurities: the fears & doubts we tell ourselves in order to keep us safe from failure. Because let’s face it, failing at anything, even something new, kind of sucks, right?

This is why actively challenging your own creative assumptions is so important to your growth as a creative artist. Because not only does it teach you what you actually are capable of (since almost all of us underestimate our true abilities), but with each step you take outside your comfort zone, the process gets a little bit easier.

Yes, there are going to be times when you try something outside your comfort zone and fail. That’s a given.

But that little voice telling you you can’t do something is almost always wrong. And to prove it to yourself, you have to ignore that voice and push outside your comfort zone in spite of your fear. Because that’s when the magic happens. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

At the end of last week’s From The Desk, I challenged you do exactly this by confronting one of your own creative assumptions. Scrapbook a layout in a style completely opposite of your own, try a new technique, scrap a topic you normally wouldn’t.

And I promised you I’d do the same.

Well I did and this week I want to share how it went when I challenged one of my own creative assumptions: designing simple & clean white space-focused layouts.

If you’ve ever seen one of my digital scrapbooking layouts, it probably comes as no surprise that designing simple, neutral, white space-focused layouts would be one of my creative achilles’ heels. I mean, I love me some bold colors and layered patterned papers and embellishments, so the idea of keeping a canvas mostly empty with just a few carefully placed elements more-than-a-little intimidates me.

Yet I constantly find myself drawn to these types of clean & simple layouts. I love the neutral backgrounds, the carefully placed elements and the generous use of open white space.

So I decided to design a simple & clean white-space-focused scrapbooking layout as my creative challenge this week.

Challenging My Own Creative Assumption: White-Space

Now I’m not going to lie, thinking about this challenge all week made me a bit nervous. A little knot would show up in my stomach and that little voice inside my head would come out with it’s “This isn’t what you do” and “What if you totally suck – you’re going to have to show this to people, you know!”

I’m going to tell you: this is a totally normal part of the process. Yes, it can feel a little bit uncomfortable in that moment, but I promise you it gets easier the more you do it. You just can’t give in at the first sign of fear.

In an effort to quiet my inner creative wimp, I decided to start with a small baby step by gathering inspiration. And to do that I headed to the first site I think of when I think clean & simple scrapbooking: Paislee Press. As Liz’s tagline says, I wanted to embrace my inner minimalist this week.

Quick Tip #1: This is what you want to do when you first start challenging your creative assumptions – start with a small step, a baby step if you will, that doesn’t seem so scary. Do a little research, find some inspiration. And then move on to the big stuff from there.

After spending about 30 minutes cruising through the Paislee Press blog, I narrowed my inspiration down to these four layouts from her Creative Team:

Layouts clockwise from top left: Sue Falstaff; Jippo; Sue Falstaff; Susanne

What I loved about these layouts in particular:

Fantastic use of white space (obviously)
Neutral yet still interesting backgrounds
Pops of color
Graphic use of text
Mostly neutral/B&W photos

With these guidelines in mind, I set out to create my own clean & simple layout. And to make sure I didn’t fall back into my Sweet Shoppe layer-lovin’ ways, I decided to use a Paislee Press’ kit, The Weekender, as well. Figured I might as well help myself out a bit and use a kit designed for this minimalist style of scrapbooking, right?

Quick Tip #2: When first trying something outside your comfort zone, do whatever you can to make the process easier on yourself. Use a kit in the style you want to try, start with a template or sketch or even scrap lift someone else.

Now let me just say, most of the time as I worked this layout, I felt a bit out-of-sorts, kind of like I was trying to walk with my right shoe on my left foot. I felt out of my element and the design process didn’t feel as natural or easy for me as it usually does. Again, this is totally normal.

But I kept at it, adding elements, moving papers and reminding myself that in the wise words of Young House Love, “The middle makes no sense.” Even when I had doubts about how it was going to turn out, I continued to push forward until I had eventually had a completed layout I was happy with – a clean & simple white space layout with a Nettio-twist…

Neutral photo? Check.
Pops of color? Check.
Graphic use of text? Check.
Neutral yet interesting background? Check.
Fantastic use of white space? I like to think so.

And the truth is, I’m really happy with it. It’s me but more clean up and refined. Does this mean I’m suddenly going to become a white-space lovin’ scrapbooker all the time? Yeah, not so much. In fact there’s a major part of me that is itching to increase the size of the photo and add on a few more buttons and flowers to the layout, haha.

But the finished layout is not the point of challenging your assumptions anyway.

Quick Tip #3: It’s not about the end result, it’s about the journey of getting there. So slow down, don’t stress and just take this challenge one step at a time.

It’s all about the process of pushing yourself to try something you didn’t think you were capable of because it forces you to slow down, look at your creative process with fresh eyes and question what you’re doing and more importantly, why you’re doing those things as you design your page.

Because that can offer you some very valuable insight into your regular creative process.

As I was designing this layout, I was forced to question my creative instincts the entire time. To ask myself things like:

Do the vertical shapes look balanced? Is there a good flow throughout the layout?
Do I have enough variety in my colors & scale of patterns? Is it too much?
Does it need more embellishments or is it good as it is?

All of these things are things I think about when I normally scrapbook a layout, but usually they’re so ingrained in my process and style that I don’t consciously think about them. But because I was scrapbooking in a style completely opposite from what I normally do, my brain had to stop and really question each design decision I made.

And as a result, I learned some valuable lessons:

I love having my photos be a focal point of my layouts, which is probably why I love using single photos or a single repeating photo as opposed to many different smaller photos.
Neutral backgrounds with pops of color & pattern can be fun – I should really try this more often!
I like having space to tell my story – and I didn’t feel like there was enough room for that with this design.
I heart geometric shapes.
White space isn’t nearly as scary as it seemed like it would be – you just have to find a way to balance out all that space.

These are all insights I can apply to my regular style of scrapbooking. Are any of them mind-blowingly earth-shattering on their own? Not really.

But each time you step outside your comfort zone, you gain more and more insight into your own creative process and what you truly love. And that is ultimately how you create a style that is 100% all your own.

This is exactly why I push myself to do challenges like this and why I highly encourage you to as well.

Now It’s Your Turn

If you didn’t challenge your own creative assumption last week, I really hope you’ll take some time to do it this week. And if you did complete the challenge, WOOHOO, you get a gold star! I’d love for you to share all about what you did and how it went in the comments section of this post.

I’ll be back next week with a special Nettio Designs’ 2nd Anniversary edition of From The Desk where I’ll be sharing a behind-the-scenes peek at some lessons I learned in my second year as a crafty business owner. See you then!

This post is Issue No. 4 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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How To Design Type For Your 10 Things I Love About You Mini Book

POSTED ON February 5, 2013 IN 10 Things I Love Mini, Memory Keeping

Over the weekend at Sweet Shoppe Designs I released my 10 Things I Love About You Mini Photo Book Templates based on my Valentine’s Day mini photo book I wrote about last week. One of my favorite things about this album are the text-based pages. Not only are they the bread & butter of the book’s sentiment but they’re fun to design as well! So today I wanted to share a little tutorial about how I styled the text in my 10 Things I Love About You album.

Here’s a look at the text in one of the spreads in my album. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how I designed the title & journaling on the right page.

Here’s a little closer look at the text:

And here’s how I designed the text…

Step 1: Open the template file. It’ll look like this. The large YOU text is included as part of the template but the area below is left blank for you to fill with your own sentiment.

Step 2: Turn on your Rulers if they aren’t on already. Ctrl/Cmd+R will turn them on for you or you can go to View>Rulers in the menu bar. They should show up around the edges of your window.

Step 3: Drag two guidelines out from the rulers – one to the left side of the bottom of the Y and one to the right side of the U. These are going to be your guides for aligning your text.

Here’s a closer look. Notice the left guide is lined up with the bottom left edge of the Y, not the top left edge of the Y.

Step 4: Decide what phrase you want to use for your text. I used a post-it note to write down a list of general ideas and then tweaked my exact wording once I was in Photoshop. Keep in mind that for the design, we will be splitting the text into multiple lines, so it tends to work best with a phrase that has some more & less important words as part of it.

For this example I’m going to use “You make me laugh.”

Step 5: Type your text into photoshop, dividing it in to multiple lines as you go. Don’t worry too much right now about which words goes onto which line since we can change it in the next step. Just get all the words in there so you can see what you have to work with.

For my album I used the font Museo which can be downloaded for free here.

Quick tip: An easy way to create multiple lines of text to type the first half of your phrase first, duplicate that layer (Ctrl/Cmd+J or hold the Alt key & drag) and then replace the text in the duplicated layer with the second half of your phrase. If you need an additional line, you can repeat this process.

Step 6: Nudge your text layers so the left edge of your text lines up with the left guideline.

Step 7: Decide on the word (or words) you want to emphasize. For my example I chose to emphasize the word “laugh.”

Quick tip: If you’re having a hard time deciding what word you want to emphasize, try saying your phrase out loud, paying attention to which words you naturally emphasize when you speak. Yes it’ll feel silly, haha, but it helps!

Step 7: Select the text layer of the word you want to emphasize with your Text tool (T) and retype your word in all caps.

Step 8: With your text tool still selected, hit Ctrl/Cmd+T on your keyboard to Transform the text so the right edge lines up with the right guideline we drew earlier. Depending on the word you chose, you’ll be sizing your text larger or smaller. Once you’re done transforming your text hit the enter key.

Step 9: Now we’re going to do the same thing with the text we want to demphasize. Select the text layer for the text in the Layers panel and with your Text tool selected, Transform your text (Ctrl/Cmd+T) so it lines up with the right guideline. If you have more than 2 lines of text in your phrase, repeat this step for each line of text.

Step 10: Turn off your guidelines (Ctrl/Cmd+;), take a look at your text and see how you’re liking it.

Quick Tip: This is the point in the process where it may take a little trial and error to get a look you like. Try different combinations of words, caps vs no-caps or separating your lines of text differently. Sometimes all it’ll take is a little nudge of the words up or down or right or left to get it to look good to your eye. I usually end up turning the guidelines on and off a few times until I get a look I like.

I’m liking how this looks so I’m going to move on to the next step.

Step 11: Once you have your main title text placed the way you would like, add in your additional journaling below the heart accent line and adjust the spacing between the text as needed.

Since my phrase was fairly short, I moved my accent and journaling up just a tad so everything was evenly spaced. If your phrase is long, you may need to move the entire block up text up just a smidge to keep it centered vertical in the journaling block.

And here’s what my completed page looked like once I added my photo and papers:

A closer look at the text page:

And my full completed page as printed:

Of course if you’d like to add your text using something other than a font say like a digital alpha, here’s a great example from Team Awesome member Jen using the alpha from Talk Nerdy To Me:

Fun, right? I hope this gives you some tips & ideas for designing and styling your own mini book text. And of course, if you’d like to make your own version of this lovey-dovey mini, you can pick up the 10 Things I Love About You Mini Photo Book templates right here.

Any questions about this tutorial? Feel free to ask away in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to help you out.

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New Release | 10 Things I Love About You Mini Photo Book Templates

POSTED ON February 1, 2013 IN 10 Things I Love Mini, Shop News & Releases

Happy Friday everyone! Surprised to see me?

In honor of Sweet Shoppe Designs’ 7th Anniversary this month, we’re kicking off February a little early with a special Sweet Shoppe New Release Friday this week. Which is awesome for me because I can’t wait to share this week’s new release with you!

I don’t know about you but Valentine’s Day and I are not exactly friends. I’m not the most mushy person in the world to begin with so I always have a hard time coming up with meaningful gifts for Valentine’s Day. I mean, candy, hearts, chocolate, it’s all so generic. So this year I decided I wanted to come up with a more creative & unique way to show a little love to the most important people in my life.

Which brings me to today’s release…

10 Things I Love About You Mini Photo Book Templates

This week at SSD I’m releasing a brand-new set of photo book templates, the “10 Things I Love You” Mini Photo Book Templates. These mini-sized templates are perfect for designing your own list-lovin’ 6×6-inch or smaller photo book or mini album.

The mini book is made up of 10 sections numbered 1-10. Each numbered section of the mini book is made up of 2 two-page templates for a total of 4 pages: one accent & number spread and one photo & text spread, each themed around this idea of “YOU” like so:

To make printing extra easy on you, I’ve included two sets of templates in one download: one 6×6-inch set which can be customized for any photo book printer and a second slightly smaller 5.25×5.25-inch Mpix.com print-ready set which is perfectly sized for the 5×5 Custom Hardcover Coffee Table Book from Mpix. I used Mpix for printing my own photo book and not only was the process super quick & easy (my book arrived in 3 days!) but the quality was top-notch as well. Highly recommended!

Mini Photo Book Inspiration

Of course, I had a ton of fun designing my own pre-Valentine’s Day gift for my husband using these templates. There’s something so incredibly cool about seeing your own work as an adorable little book. Plus I guarantee your giftee will ooo and awe at your mad digi skills when it’s printed in such a legit-looking way.

Plus my husband? Totally got a little teary-eyed looking through this mini book from his normally non-mushy wife. So if you’re looking to score some major wife-y points, I highly recommend making your own lovey-dovey mini book. And with these templates, it couldn’t be any easier.

New Release Discount: SAVE 20% thru Saturday

As with every Sweet Shoppe New Release Day, you can save 20% off all new releases thru Saturday. Which since we’re kicking things off on Friday gives you a whole extra day to shop.

Want to save 20% off this weekend?

Pick up 10 Things I Love About You Mini Photo Book Templates here today!

Well that’s it from me today! Have a great weekend everyone!

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Creative Adventure #5: Designing a Hybrid Mini Photo Book With Photoshop

POSTED ON January 31, 2013 IN 10 Things I Love Mini, 30 Creative Adventures, Memory Keeping

I’ve known since the beginning of this 30 Creative Adventures project that one of the projects I wanted to do was another photo book. I had designed one once before for my Week In the Life album in 2011 and I thought it’d be a fun challenge to do another one.

And since I designed my WITL photo book using Adobe InDesign the first time around, I thought I’d give designing a book in Adobe Photoshop a try since I know that’s what most of you use and I was curious to see how the process works for you.

Let me just preface this post by saying, designing a photo book in InDesign? WAY easier than using Photoshop. Seriously. But I survived and am so very in love with my completed mini photo book that all the hard work was worth it.

Which brings me to Creative Adventure #5: Designing A Hybrid Mini Photo Book With Photoshop

Creative Adventure #5: Designing A Hybrid Mini Photo Book With Photoshop

Step 1: Planning My Mini Photo Book

When I started this project, here were a few things I knew:

I wanted to use Photoshop to design my book, as I mentioned
I wanted to do something smaller, like a 6×6 or 5×5 book as opposed to the 8×10 book I did for WITL
I didn’t want to pay a fortune to have it printed

Since Valentine’s Day was coming up, I thought it’d be fun to make a little book as a gift for Adam. So I came up with the idea to do a 10 Things I Love About You mini book because a) I love lists and b) it seemed like it’d be fun to design.

After drawing up some sketches, I decided I wanted to go with a repeating pattern of 2-page spreads: an accent/number spread and a full photo/text spread using the word YOU as the focus for the text.

So I made a little mockup version on scratch paper to see how it would work:

Then I drew out a bigger version of all the pages I would need since I wanted to make sure whatever printer I used could handle the number. I also decided to keep all the number pages on the right side of the spreads but I wanted the photos/text to alternate with every other number like so:

Super high-tech, I know, haha. But I find it really helps to give me a feel for sizing and/or the flow of the book.

Once I had a general feel for the design of the book, I went on the hunt for a kit that would work with my design. As soon as I saw this super adorable Talk Nerdy To Me kit from Penny at Sweet Shoppe Designs, I knew we had a winner. A+L definitely equals nerdiness, haha.

The final planning decision I needed to make to decide on a final size and book printer. I like to do this before I design any actual pages since the final size of a printed book varies depending on the printer and this way I can account for any bleed/trim since every book publisher does things a little differently.

After looking around a bit, I finally settled on an Mpix 5×5 Hardcover book (it’s under their Coffee Table Books in the left sidebar). A huge selling point for me was they had templates I could download to make sure I got the sizing just right and their books were reasonably priced:

Step 2: Prepping My Mini Photo Book

Since I like to design two-page spreads as a single file, I used the 5×5 page template to make a single 5×10 document. The actual size ended up being around 5.25 x 10.5 since their 5×5 pages are actually 5.253 x 5.253. This is why checking the sizing for the book printer you want to use is so important before you start – because it’s much easier to design your pages correctly the first time than it is to make adjustments later on, especially if you want full-bleed (images going all the way to the edge) pages which I did.

Once I had my two-page template made I made two master templates: one for the accent & number page and one for the photo & text page.

Then I duplicated and renamed all those files to represent each spread in the book. This is basically the same exact process I would use in InDesign: design master pages first and then duplicate them as a template for all the following pages. But in InDesign it’s much simpler since all these pages are in a single document. Since I was using Photoshop this time around, I had to make all the pages by hand as individual files. #sotedius

Step 3: Designing My Mini Photo Book

But once I finally had all the planning out of the way, now came the fun part: designing the book! This was the easy part, haha.

Since I was trying to keep this a secret from Adam, I designed all the accent & number pages one night while we watched TV (I just told him I was making a mini book) and then I did all the photo & text pages while he was at work one morning.

Here’s what the pages looked like once I had them completed:

And here’s a bigger version of the two spreads for Reason #1. Each “reason” basically gets 4 pages.

Accent & Number page:

Photo and text page:

Here’s a little slideshow that includes all my pages in case you want to see them all together…

Step 5: Printing My Mini Photo Book

Once I had all my pages designed, the next step was to save and upload them to be printed. Which meant cropping each two-page spread back into single files. Blah. Not my favorite part of the process but a bit of a necessary evil I think since designing the pages together makes more sense than as separate files. But it definitely made me long for the “upload a single PDF to Blurb” process I did with my Week In the Life photo book, haha.

Thankfully, one of the fastest parts of the process was uploading my pages to Mpix. Two thumbs up for their online software because it was really easy to use. Just upload your images, drag them onto the pages of the book and set them as a background. My pages all fit perfectly since I’d used their sizing template when I designed them.

I did run into some issues getting the cover just right but I think that was more due to user error. Once I went back and double-checked my page against their template, it worked fine.

Step 6: Receiving My Mini Photo Book

Another huge positive for Mpix, they printed SUPER fast. Like within a day or two my book had shipped. And since I’d paid for 1-day shipping since I wasn’t sure how long the process would take, my book arrived in like 3 days. I was amazed.

And even better, I’m really happy with how my mini photo book turned out!

Here’s a look at the cover. I went with the custom 5×5-inch hardcover book and it’s nice and sturdy – sturdier than the cover of my Blurb photo book. Plus I love that it has a glossy finish to it. Adam’s comment when it saw it was that it looked like I’d had a real book published.

A look at the interior pages. The one thing I don’t love is the binding on the book is really tight, almost too tight. It’s hard to keep the pages open and it makes me nervous to pull the book open too far because you can start to see the stitching at that point. It also made taking these photos a bit interesting, haha.

A look at one of the photo/text pages. The actual color is more rich and less saturated than this photo – it’s looking a little crazy here, haha.

I do love the way the cover design wraps around the edges of the book. Makes it seem legit, haha.

Another photo/text page, this time with the text on the left & the photo on the right.

This page may just be my favorite. The photos make me laugh every time. And no, other than saying things like “let’s do a normal one first” or “silly face” the poses were not planned. Apparently “silly face” means “mouth opened really wide & crazy” to both Adam and I, haha.

A closer look at the book. This is a good example of how far you can open the book. If you open it too much more you start to see the binding.

A look at the text on the spine. Using the template made it pretty near perfect. Good thing since I was worried about it!

And for those of you wondering about the 5×5-inch size, here’s the mini book compared to a 4×6-inch Seafoam Project Life card. It’s pretty petite but exactly the size I was imagining in my head so I love it. I don’t know that I’d do a super detailed book in this size though – I think it works best as being similar to a mini album. I can totally see it being a fun way to do like a vacation highlights album or something though! Hmm, now there’s any idea…

And that’s how I used Photoshop to create a hybrid Valentine’s gift 5×5 mini photo book! I have to say while it was a lot of tedious work, my only comment when I got the book was “WHY DO I NOT DO MORE OF THESE!!” Seriously, I was excited, haha. It’s just so so cool to see something you’ve designed as it’s very own little book.

And as a Valentine’s Day gift, Adam gave it too thumbs up. Maybe even got a little teary over the fact that I, the non-mushy one in the relationship, had gone to all the trouble to make him a little book. Thinking I scored some major wifey points there, haha.

If you’re interested in making a 10 Things I Love About You mini photo book of your own, stay tuned, because I may just have a little something coming tomorrow (Feb 1st) at Sweet Shoppe Designs. Just consider this an extra special sneak peek, hehe.

And with that, I’m calling Creative Adventure #5 a wrap! How about you? Have you ever designed a photo book using Photoshop? Do you design your two pages together and then crop them into separate files? Do you find the process a bit tedious but well worth it like I did? Have any tips to share? Let’s discuss in the comments below.

Want to make your own “10 Things I Love About You” mini photo book and show your love in fun & creative way? Then check out my 10 Things I Love About You Mini Book Templates available at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

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ABOUT THIS PROJECT

In honor of my 30th birthday, I’m challenging myself to go on 30 creative adventures before the end of 2013. This is Creative Adventure 5 of 30. You can read all the details behind this project here and find links to all my completed adventures here.

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What Ziplining 140 Feet in the Air Taught Me About Challenging Creative Assumptions

POSTED ON January 30, 2013 IN From the Desk of Nettio Designs

From the Desk of Nettio Designs Issue No. 3

It all started when my dad asked if any of us would like to go zip-lining in redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains over New Year’s. A friend of his had been and he thought it might be fun to go.

“Sure,” I said, figuring it would be a good adventure to end the year on a positive note. My husband Adam and I had been zip-lining once before in Hawaii and while I’d been a bit nervous at first, by the end I loved it so much I was volunteering to zip first. I figured, how different could this time be?

My mom and my two sisters refused to go so my dad, Adam and I made a reservation for the morning of New Years Eve.

Our zip lining trip started out innocently enough with a gear introduction and your standard safety brief.

“Don’t touch your gear, we’ll do that for you.”

“Don’t worry, you’re always strapped in.”

“These ropes can hold two elephants worth of weight.”

We did a quick practice zip to learn correct form and braking and then it was time for the first zip.

It was at this point that I started to get nervous. To get to the first zipline platform, you had to cross a rickety-looking rope bridge over to a seemingly small circular platform attached around the trunk of a very large redwood tree 30 feet in the air.

Now let me take this moment to say that heights and I? Not exactly friends. I don’t hate them, but hiking around the rim of the Grand Canyon made me more than a little nervous, and I’m certainly not planning to be sign up to for bungie jumping or skydiving any time soon.

So the thought of crossing that bridge made me more than a little nervous. And by the time I’d hurriedly walked crossed, my hands were shaking and I was starting to think that maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

And then I looked around and realized just how small the platform was and just how high we really were. And the first few zip lines were only going to get higher, with zip #3 maxing out at a whopping 140 feet above the ground.

Have I mentioned these circular platforms couldn’t have stuck out maybe more than maybe 5 feet from the tree?

By this point my brain was screaming at me, “ABORT, ABORT, TURN AROUND WHILE YOU STILL CAN! If you think THIS height is bad, it’s only going to get WORSE!”

But everyone else in our small group seemed to be fine and I didn’t want to be the lone person to take the chicken exit back to solid ground. So I hugged the tree a little tighter (literally) and reminded myself that it was going to be ok, that I’m strapped in and the guides most likely wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t think it was safe.

Then it came time for the first zip. And this is when I realized that in order to get strapped into the zipline, I would have to stand on a very small stool at the very edge of the platform overlooking the ground 30 feet below.

I was scared. Majorly freaking out inside may be a better description. But I’d committed, so I forged ahead with the first zipline.

Hand on brake, feet up & here we go. No turning back now right?

I made it to the next platform and you know what? It wasn’t that bad. It was maybe even a little fun.

Then came the second zipline. And by the time I’d finished with the 3rd and tallest/fastest zipline of the bunch, I had a pretty big grin on my face. 140 feet in the air and all.

With each zipline, my confidence grew. I started looking around more and hugging the tree a little less. Admiring just how pretty the trees were. I even took some photos with my phone (being careful not to drop it into the forest below).

Sure I still wished our guide would strap me in a little faster so I didn’t have to stand overlooking the edge for very long.

But by the time we got to our 7th or 8th zipline, I didn’t want the trip to end. And if you ask me if I’d do it all over again, I totally would.

This is what happens when you step outside your comfort zone.

Your brain’s instinct is to keep you safe. To stay the course. To stick with what you know because it’s safer & easier.

But with each step further you take outside your comfort zone, things get a little easier. Your body starts to relax and your confidence grows. You start to think, “Hey, maybe I can do this.” Before you know it you’re looking back and admiring how far you’ve come. And by the end you’re high-fiving someone from the rush that comes with the realization that “Hey, I CAN do this!”

Stepping outside your creative comfort zone works the same way. Which is why challenging your creative assumptions of what you think you’re capable of is so important to creatively capturing your life adventures.

Because that little voice inside your head is going to try to protect you in it’s own misguided way.

It’s going to tell you that you don’t have the skills. That you can’t scrap the way so-and-so does. That you aren’t creative enough.

But that little voice is wrong. And to prove it to yourself, you have to ignore that voice and push outside your comfort zone in spite of your fear. Because that’s when the magic happens. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Sure, I could have turned around at the sign of the first scary bridge. But then I wouldn’t have this awesome life adventure and smiling photo to share with you would I? Even with a 2nd scary bridge looming in the distance…

And that’s exactly what creatively capturing your life adventures is all about.

Now It’s Your Turn

Your mission this week is to step outside your comfort zone and challenge a creative assumption of your own.

What’s something related to your scrapbooking that you don’t feel you’re capable of doing? That makes you feel a little bit nervous at the thought of actually doing it? Think scrapbooking a layout in a style completely opposite of your own, trying a new technique or scrapping a topic you normally wouldn’t.

Then email me or leave a comment on this blog post and let me know how it went. Did you experience moments of doubt? Did the process feel uncomfortable at all? How do you feel now that you’ve challenged this creative assumption? Are you ready to high-five someone in a totally dorky air-five yet?

I’ll be challenging myself to confront a creative assumption of my own this week (can we say white space? eek!) and I’ll be back next week to share my experience. I’ll see you then!

This post is Issue No 3 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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Project Life 2013 | Weeks 2-4 & A Faves Freebie For You

POSTED ON January 29, 2013 IN Free Stuff, Project Life

Welcome to Project Life 2013, Weeks 2-4.

If you’re thinking you somehow missed Week 1, well you haven’t. Ha! The week of Dec 31st to Jan 7th, we were still out in California (we flew home on the 4th) so we did a TON of stuff in those days. And since I chose to wait to start my album until my Seafoam kit arrived mid-month, I decided to start with the most recent week and work my way back. So I will share Week 1 once it’s finished, hopefully by my next update.

But I wanted to share what I have finished today.

Project Life 2013 Week 2: Jan 7-13

Here’s a look at Week 2 spread. I mentioned in my Creative Adventure: Project Life post that I’m mixing Design A page protectors with a variety of other designs. You can see that in action here – the left page is Design D, right page is Design A.

Closer view of the left side of Week 2:

Why yes, that is me meeting John & Sherry from Young House Love (points to Jen for catching this in my peek last week!). They came to Book People in Austin for a signing so Adam and I went (even though he had no idea who they were, haha).

I admit I was really nervous – what exactly do you say to someone when you”know” all about them from their blog but they have no idea who you are? LOL! But they were super sweet though and just as fun in person as in their blog. And I have to say major points to Book People because they ran that signing like a well-oiled machine.

The photo on the left is of my signed copy of their book:

After the signing Adam and I headed to one of our fave Austin eateries Hopdoddy Burger Bar. Even though it was almost 9 on a weekday when we got there, there was still a line!

I made a little accent card using one of the 4×6 cards from the Seafoam core kit and some washi-type tape from Target:

And I also made a little foodie accent as well:

Here’s a closer look at the right side of Week 2:

I mentioned in my intro post that I’m planning to have some items that repeat every week. Well here’s an example of the two main ones: my Weekly Faves card and the Month/Week title card:

I know, the Faves are hitting Project Life, surprise, surprise right? I do love my faves, haha.

My plan is to use papers/colors from the same kit for each month so all the titles, Faves cards and any accents I make will all match. I think it’ll add some nice continuity to the album since the colors in the photos are all over the place. For January I’m using Paislee Press’ More + Less kit. You can see how the same blue & tangerine color tie the title card and Faves card together throughout all the spreads.

Project Life 2013 Week 3: Jan 14-20

Here’s my Week 3 spread:

Left side Week 3. You can see how I swapped out the paper on the title card but kept the same colors for all the text:

Orange “This is Life” card is from the Seafoam core kit. Everything else is random scrap stuff I had lying around. This week was the first time I tried adding in Instagram square photos – I have to say, I’m liking them.

And can we just pause for a moment and say, WAHOOOOO 49ERS!! SUPERBOWL HERE WE COME! WAY stressful game to watch, haha, but we were a wee bit excited about how it turned out. It’s hard to tell in the photo but I’m totally wearing my SF Giants World Series Champions shirt in the photo – figured maybe some of the SF Giants luck might rub off on them, hehe.

Another look at this week’s Faves card. I’m totally not stressing about these – I just write out 5 quick items and print them directly onto one of the blank 3×4 Project Life cards.

Right side of Week 3. This week is a mix of Design A & Design F page protectors. Saturday we went on a hike here in San Antonio so the entire right side of the page is devoted to photos from that.

We went out to dinner on Friday so I included one of their cool business cards on it. Since it was too small for the pocket, I just stapled it directly to the page protector using my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher.

Project Life Week 4: Jan 21-27

My Week 4 spread – a mix of Design F & Design A page protectors. I’m really thinking Design F may be my fave – I love filling all the little pockets.

Left side of Week 4. Pretty simple, movie tickets, back of the restaurant business card. The mini photo book in the top right photo is an extra early sneak peek of my product for this weekend.

The Target “window shopping” photos were a total happy accident. I went to Target last night to get some frames and since I needed a bunch I knew I couldn’t buy anything else. So I snapped photos with my iPhone of a bunch of stuff I liked so I could “try” them out in our house instead. But when I saw them all together I thought they made for a fun addition to Project Life. Just imagine if you had something like this from the 70s or 80s. It’d be so fun!

For the Target card, I just googled for a logo image that had enough pixels that’d print nicely and then added some text in Photoshop and printed it onto a blank 3×4 Project Life card.

Before we went to the movies we had dinner at Chipotle so I saved one of the napkins to include and then trimmed down one of the Seafoam 3×4 cards for my journaling. We went & saw Zero Dark Thirty which I have to say, we really enjoyed. But it was a wee bit weird considering some of the places and events happened when & where Adam was in Afghanistan. So he kept saying things like, “yeah that’s totally not what that FOB is actually called” or “it doesn’t really look like that at all,” haha.

Right side of Week 4. The Eat|Drink card came from a brochure from the Yard House where we ate dinner on Saturday. Diagonal journal card from the Seafoam kit.

This week’s Faves card. Since we went to the commissary on Saturday (the grocery store on the military base) I included our receipt with a paperclip to hold it in.

Well that’s it for Project Life 2013: Week’s 2-4!

Here are my thoughts on this project so far:

LOVE the mix of page protectors. So very glad I decided to go that route.
Faves cards – always a winner in my book. Loving the repeating title cards & colors too.
I was really worried about having enough content for each week, especially since some weeks I felt like I didn’t really take many photos during the week. But I’ve had to cut more than I’ve had to fill so far. That’s the hardest part for me – I want to include it all!
Definitely need to streamline my process a bit but I think once I get in a rhythm it’ll be good. Not getting behind is going to be key though.
Am already coming up with new product ideas, simply because they’re things I want to use. Love that.
LOVE LOVE LOVE-ing all the little stories captured so far in this album. They’re exactly the reason I wanted to do this album this year. SO glad that I took the plunge. I’m loving the completed pages even more than I thought I would.

FAVES 3×4 Journal Card Free Download

Clearly there’s a whole lot of Project Life lovin’ going on here, hehe. And to share a little bit of the love, I’ve got a little freebie for ya!

Use the link below to download your own FREE copy of my Faves 3×4 Journal Card. All I ask in exchange is if you like it, pin it, share it & let your friends know they can find it right here at Nettio Designs.

Since the card is designed for Project Life, the actual size is a tiny bit smaller than 3×4 inches – it’s about 2.9×4 inches. File includes a layered, customizable PSD file and a solid colored PNG file.

Download here

What about you? Are you doing Project Life this year? If you are, how are things going for you so far? We’re almost a full month in, can you believe it?!

Project Life is a memory-keeping system created by Becky Higgins. New to Project Life? Learn more here & find all my Project Life posts here.

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