Designer Technique (Glenda Ketcham)

Original posted 2/9/07
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Please allow me to introduce our first Designer to participate in the Designer Technique, Glenda Ketcham. In the Yahoo Group, we have all come to love Glenda, so I could not resist asking her to be our first. When she volunteers for something in our group, we can always count on her. She pops in every so often to post in the group and is just as sweet and humble as can be.

Glenda is a designer at Digitals. Click here to go to her shop.

Our group claims Glenda as our "journal police/cop" and, therefore, I was not surprised when she chose her favorite technique as journaling. I have asked each designer for one layout and one favorite kit, but it is just like someone who loves to journal to want to share a lot! Please read more.

You may click on the photos or the links to see larger layouts.

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Hummie asked me to share a layout using some of my favorite techniques. However, I’m not much of a "techniques" kind of digital scrapper. I started paper scrapping several years ago and that style has carried over into my digital pages. One thing I liked about paper scrapping was the fact that journaling was stressed very strongly. I think it’s important to not only document our lives and the lives of our loved ones with photos, but also with the stories that go with those photos. When we’re young, we think we will never forget the story that goes along with a particular photo or event. But, now that I’m older, I know for a fact that’s not true.

I love journaling about every-day things that happen, sometimes just silly little things. But those are the things that make up our lives. If I only wrote about earth-shattering events in my life, there would be very little journaling! But I think, in journaling, we tell our kids and grandkids that what they do on a daily basis is memorable. This is that kind of layout, something my granddaughters do every day. In years to come they will know how special these little things were to me.

Every-day journaling

For a bigger event, like Christmas or another holiday, I like to do a lot of journaling on one page and then little snippets of journaling on the other pages of that same event. It may look like a lot of journaling, but in years to come I think it will be neat to look back and know that Christmas was spent at Damon and Amy’s new house, the one that Damon was the main contractor for (his first time). Also in years to come if my other two grandsons, Jake and Grayson, look at the photos and wonder why they’re not in any of the pictures, the journaling tells them that was the year they moved to Missouri and weren’t able to come home for Christmas.
Christmas layout with lots of journaling

I think it’s neat also to talk about a particular gift that was received. In the case of Christmas this year, Sydney received her American Girl doll, which she will probably keep forever and her own little girl may play with one day. Won’t it be fun for her and her child to look back and see photos and a story about when Sydney received that doll.
American Girl Doll layout


I’m not sure whether this is considered a "technique" or not, but this is certainly one of my favorite layouts/photos. I blended the background of the photo into the background of the page, making it look like these little "angels" were floating in the clouds. In this soft, beautiful photo, I decided not to use any elements that might detract from the photo.

Angels floating on cloud

About the only other "technique" I use is deleting the background from the photo and placing it directly onto the background of the scrapbook page. I’m pretty picky about the way these pictures look, so I only do this when I can get a nice "clean" cut.

Extracting Photo

I’m not sure this would be considered a technique either, probably more of a style, but I love to put the pictures on the page at crazy angles. Many of the photos we take of the grandkids are of action shots, them running here and there . . . chaotic. So, I like to reflect this chaos in the layout, photos going every which way, tumbling here and there, just like the kids!
Grayson’s birthday party

Zane and Lindsey

My current most favorite kit is "From the Attic: Mamaw Lucy’s Trunk." I have been thinking of doing a kit like this for a long time. I wanted to base it on my own mother’s suitcase of photos she always kept under her bed. This first kit in the "From the Attic" series is based on a trunk full of wonderful old things that belonged to my brother-in-law’s (Russell’s) mother, Lucy. Russell’s sister, Linda, was one of my best friends all through grade school and high school. So, even though the items in this trunk didn’t belong to my own ancestors, it still had very special meaning to me. I’m working on another kit in that same series, which will be "From the Attic: A Time for Elegance." I will eventually do a kit for that series called "Grandma’s Suitcase," based on the wonderful items in my own mother’s suitcase of photos. I’ve sort of had to work up to doing the kit based on Mother’s suitcase because it brings back such vivid memories of her and me sitting around the suitcase talking about the different photos and who the people were. I have kicked myself several times over for not writing down those stories.
Here are some old photos done using this kit:

Layout 1

Layout 2

And, here are some recent day photos done with the kit:

Layout 1

Layout 2