Scrappin' from A to Z with Kathryn Estry!

Hi!  I'm Kathryn Estry, a designer here at MyMemories, and I'm back with another episode of From A to Z.  My goal is to give you a new idea with each letter so that you'll never be at a loss as to what to scrap or how to make your pages look amazing. Luckily for me, I have a brilliant Creative Team, and the inspiration layouts I use in this series were made by the talented ladies on my team.

I'm hoping you'll see some things in my A to Z Blog Series that you want to try!  If you do take any of these ideas and run with them, I'd love to see your layouts!  Please post them in the MyMemories forum in this month's A to Z Challenge thread HERE. Everyone who posts a layout in my challenge thread this month will receive a surprise gift!

J is for ...

Journaling!

When you look at scrapped pages, which ones stand out to you the most?  For me, it's a page where the layout artist has taken the time to tell about the photo.  The journaling is so important because it tells the rest of the story.  The down side is that many of us struggle with journaling.  We can easily put a picture on a page and embellish it with pretties, but then we hesitate when it comes to writing our thoughts down on paper.

My first suggestion is to just let it flow.  Pretend that you're telling a friend about the photo and write exactly what you would say.  That will make it easy to read and make the come alive.  As I used to tell my students, you want to give your writing voice.

Liz is on my CT, and she does exactly this.  Check out her page about her family visiting Furnace Run Park.  Without her journaling, we'd still love this page showing her sweet daughter hugging her shawl close to her and enjoying the flowers.  How much more the family's memories are preserved now with Liz's amazing journaling! 

Here are more examples of Liz's free-flowing journaling.  I'll bet you could do this, too!

I enjoyed the journaling in these layouts by Lori and Robin as well, and I'm sure you will, too.

Now, if you're not up to writing your own journaling, you can try this.  Liz completed this page with the cute children's song, Five Little Ducks.  You can do this!

MY FAVORITE:

My favorite J collection is actually one of 12 kits I made for the 12 months of the year.  My Scraps series includes a page kit, extra packs, and bundles for every month of the year! Use them to scrap your life, your memories, your families, and your friends. The monthly colors are all drawn from the same large color palette, so you can use elements from one month with papers from another. You'll want the full year! Each month's bundle is only $9.99, a savings of 50% or more!  Here is June Scraps and the large color palette I used for the year.

Thanks to Kathy and Rhonda for these layouts.

I hope this post inspired you to add journaling to your next scrapped page.  Again, I invite you to visit my forum challenge, Scrapping with Kathryn from A to Z.  :)