Scraps of My Geek Life » creative memories

Nancy O’Dell’s New Scrapbooking Book is Full of Love (Review)

Michele — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:00:22 +0000

Nancy O’Dell wrote a scrapbooking guide titled, Full of Love, Mom-to-Mom advice for enriching families with simple photo albums and scrapbooking. It is a must read for anyone who has a story to tell. The book is a result of a partnership with Nancy O’Dell and Creative Memories.

Nancy O’Dell’s Unique Perspective

In the 14+ years I have been scrapbooking, I have read hundreds of books about scrapbooking. I figured there wasn’t going to be a lot in this book that I didn’t already know. I was so far off!

Nancy O’Dell has a very unique perspective on scrapbooking. She comes from a family of scrapbookers going back four generations. She writes about her mother’s scrapbooks making her feel loved. Her mother left her 53 scrapbooks when she passed away. I can’t imagine a better gift to give your children.

Telling Stories

As a journalist, Nancy is the perfect person to talk about telling stories. She describes being a reporter as “telling other people’s stories.” As scrapbookers, we tell a lot of stories about ourselves and others. She equates journaling to interviewing yourself. She has a lot of advice about interviewing and storytelling. I know my scrapbooks will tell better stories because of her advice.

My favorite chapter was her interview with Dr. Kenneth Condrell, a nationally knows child psychologist, family counselor and author. Dr. Condrell explains why the scrapbook albums we create for our kids can improve their self-esteem, build confidence and strengthen family bonds. He calls it,”a parent’s secret weapon.”

Full of Love also includes chapters on the following topics:

Taking Better Pictures. Nancy interviews her friend, Ulrica Wihiborg who is the assistant editor at People magazine and a professional lifestyle photographer.
Tools and Techniques. She offers tips on the basic tools and not-so-basic tools she uses for scrapbooking. All the products are Creative Memories products. I put her “Go naked” tip saved me time and put the focus back on my stories.
Album Page Layouts. Lots of sample layouts with products used and explanations. Nancy includes a lot of her own personal pages she has created. Everything from her wedding, family moments to the red carpet and interviews with celebrities.
Our Albums. Nancy talks about her mother’s scrapbooks, her own scrapbooks and why she scrapbooks. She is a working mom of 3 and shares her tips for finding time to scrapbook. She carries supplies with her so if she finds herself with a few free moments, she can do some scrapbooking.
Foreword By Garth Brooks. Beautiful words written by her good friend.

Her Simple Formula

Nancy O’Dell has a very simple formula for scrapbooking. I have created a page around the quote because it’s something I want to remember when I’m scrapbooking. It’s my new scrapbooking motto.

Better Stories + Better Photos = Better Albums

This book is so much more than a scrapbooking how-to book. It re-ignited my love for scrapbooking and gave me a new perspective on how I create my pages. She shows you how to do so much more than create layouts. She shows you how to create stories.

Full of Love is a must-read for scrapbookers and anyone who wonders why we scrapbook or would like to scrapbook. Full of Love retails for $19.95 and is only available through Memories.

Full of Love Giveaway

Creative Memories provided me with one copy of Full of Love to giveaway to one of my readers.

To Enter, leave me a comment below with why scrapbooking is important to you AND tweet this post using the pink retweet button below. Only one entry per person.

Giveaway will end at 5:00 pm ET on December 30, 2010. I will randomly pick one winner and you will be notified via e-mail. You will have 24 hours to respond or I will choose another winner.

Full of Love Changed How I Scrapbook

I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy O’Dell earlier this year. She and I both participated in the EA SPORTS Active challenge. I attended her March of Dimes charity auction. It was very obvious that evening that she loves what she does and she is a genuinely beautiful person both inside and out. Her family and friends are very important to her. This also comes through in her book because she is very true to herself. Her love for her family comes out in her scrapbook pages.

As I was looking at the pages she created, I realized that I wasn’t looking at the stickers or the color of paper, but instead I was reading her journaling and looking at the pictures. Her stories definitely came through in her pages. It has changed my perspective on how I will scrapbook going forward. I often spent a lot of time worrying about getting the right embellishment. Not anymore. My focus will be on the stories and the pictures.

Nancy O’Dell’s Hummingbird Scrapbooking Line

In a partnership with Creative Memories, Nancy has created a full scrapbooking line, Hummingbird Series. It is available for both paper and digital scrapbooking through Creative Memories.

Disclosure: Creative Memories sent me one copy of the Nancy O’Dell’s Full of Love book to review and one to giveaway. All opinions are 100% my own.

Nancy O’Dell Debuts New Scrapbooking Guide (celebritybabies.people.com)

Nancy O’Dell’s New Scrapbooking Book is Full of Love (Review) originally posted at Scraps of My Geek Life.

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Michele — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:00:44 +0000

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Creating Memories with Creative Memories #CreativeMemsContest

Michele — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:39:23 +0000

This past weekend at the Type A Mom Conference, Creative Memories gave all attendees the StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software plus a really cool black and pink laptop sleeve. I have been paper scrapbooking for 13 years and digital scrapbooking for 5 years so I was really anxious to try this software.

I will admit, I was disappointed that Creative Memories did not have a Mac version of the software. I was forced to drag my 50 lb (exaggeration, probably 9 lbs) HP laptop upstairs so I could try the software out.

I installed the software with no problems and downloaded the update. I discovered there are a lot of free digital templates and other goodies on their website. Since I am a real simple scrapper, I downloaded all the simple templates and decided to scrap my son’s 6th birthday party photos since I’ve been trying to get those done for months now.

The biggest problem I had was trying to remember how to use a PC since I’ve been exclusive to my Mac for over a year now. I remember now, why I hate PCs. The software itself is much easier to use the Photoshop CS or PSE (which is what I currently use for digital scrapbooking).

There was one important task that I could not figure out, even after checking the help. I have thousands and thousands (no exaggeration) of files of digital scrapbooking papers and embellishments I have purchased (non Creative Memories) and I could not figure out how to pull those into my project. But since I was creating a simple page, I wasn’t really planning to do that today, but I wanted to figure it out for the future.

I pulled in about 20 photos from the day and dragged them on top of the simple 6 photo white template until I found 6 that I liked. The frames were already set up and I just had to drop my pics into them. Then I added a background, a couple of embellishments and a title and Voila! I had a layout. All of the extras were included in the software. Here it is:

It was so simple to do and only took me about 10 minutes to put it together (although it took me 20 min to figure out which pictures I liked best).

As a Mac geek, I can not wait until they come out with this software for the Mac, then I will begin to use it much more. In the meantime I am going to install this version on my daughter’s PC because she loves digital scrapbooking and she’ll be able to do so much with this.

Creative Memories has a free version of the Storybook software available online to create your own storybooks. The version I tried out was the Storybook Creator Plus 3.0 version.

If you created a layout with your software from Type A Mom, put a link to your post in the comments below.

Meet Creative Memories – Photo Walk Sponsors! (typeamomconference.com)

Creating Memories with Creative Memories #CreativeMemsContest originally posted at Scraps of My Geek Life.