My Scrapbook Evolution-Blog

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The New PaperScientist Blog is Here!

After a lot of thought, I decided it was best to push forward. As I mentioned earlier in the year,blogger is not currently meeting all of my needs in regard to website design. After a few month of playing around with the main MSE site, I have developed a new blog design. It's one that I hope you will find easier to navigate.

The new blog reflects a lot of the changes coming to MSE. Over the years, I have had requests to tell more of my expat stories. I will be sharing those and pocket pages to document them on the new blog. For a long time, I focused all of my creative efforts on scrapbooking. Within the past few years, I have had an increased desire to create more mixed media and art journal projects. I also want to create and share quick crafts and home decor. I will still be sharing lots of scrapbook layouts and page inspiration on the main MSE site. The paperscientist blog will focus on my other endeavors.

There is a lot of good information still here on this blogspot blog. It will not go away. However, all new future blog posts will happen on the new MSE Paperscientst Blog. I hope you will pop over and check it out.

You can also keep in touch with MSE by subscribing to the Lab Report, MSE's free newsletter.

Thank you for joining me on this creative journey! I look forward to sharing more creative inspiration with you at My Scrapbook Evolution and The Paperscientist Blog.

Monday, May 23, 2016

News from Behind the Scenes: May 2016

I haven't posted much to this blog for a little while now ( and not and frequently as I had wanted to for MSE in general). There has been a lot that has garnered my attention, but also, a little housework on the back end of the website. I wanted to give you an update so that you can have an idea of what to expect.

Blogger isn't meeting a lot of my needs these days. I have come to regret the decision as to whether or not to merge this blog into the main MSE site so long ago. When I bought a domain name, I should have just merged the two. Lesson learned. Meanwhile, I am struggling with the decision of moving this blog over as a subdomain to the main site( which is a HUGE ton of work), or simply to leave this be and begin posting to a blog series there.There are pros and cons to both. This blogspot still sees a lot of traffic but I prefer working through the MSE website. It has more functionality and it is so much easier for me to format the posts there. Rest assured that whatever my end decision is, I will announce it for you here.

I have been doing some tweaks and edits behind the scenes of MyScrapbookEvolution.com in an effort to provide new content later this fall( and maybe as early as this summer). For the most part, you won't notice anything until the new content goes live. I am adding in a new article series about my life as an expat. Much of my Project Life and pocket pages will be shared through it, as that is how I document my life abroad. Since we have a new apartment, I have found a need to start decorating it. What better way to do that than with things that I have made! These articles will start appearing under the new MSE LifeStyle category.

For added security, I have decided to upgrade the website with an SSL certificate. Under the previous hosted plan, it was a shared certificate through Hostgator. This new certificate will be for MSE only. Hostgator will handle the changes for me, however, I have been informed there might be a conflict in some content on wordpress. In some cases, the current wordpress installation and the SSL certificate cause some images to not display or for the person visiting the site to receive a mixed content warning. I am hoping this won't happen, but wanted to let everyone know in case it does. ( You can read more about this issue here is you are considering an SSL certificate for your site. It also explains what an SSL certificate does.) Please, rest assured that MSE is safe to visit! I also have a plan through Sitelock which scans the website for malware and keeps hackers at bay ( it's peace of mind for me as a website owner and ensures you have a safe site to visit). I will also be updating the plan through Sitelock to include a CDN. For you, that should mean MSE uploads faster.

It seemed so daunting to start a website of my own a few years back. However, despite those times when it's a headache, I have learned a lot.It continues to be a learning experience which is always good for the soul.

Meanwhile,as a family, we have settled in and love our life in Abu Dhabi. We have gotten an idea of what our homeschool schedule and social life will be like. I am making adjustments but also, looking forward to a few weeks of rest during the summer.

I hope everyone enjoys their upcoming school breaks! Happy Summer everyone!

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Happy St. Patrick's Day with 3 Luck Inspired Scrapbook Pages

St. Patrick's day is not one of those holidays I find myself documenting often. It's not that we don't celebrate it...we do. It just seems that it's one of those holidays that flashes by in the blink of an eye. I can literally think of maybe two layouts that I have dedicated to the day itself (one of which I will share today). I figured today would be the perfect day to share a little inspiration with you and perhaps inspire you to document something about the holiday itself or about luck.

This is one of the few pages in which I have documented the actual events of St. Patrick's day. My son built a leprechaun trap. I went with a traditional green color palette. Green being a sort of given color when you choose to document St. Patrick's Day. If you need some tips for creating a monochromatic green layout, you can find some here on the Layout a Week Challenge Blog. You can also find some green color palettes and inspiration here.

If you don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day, it's perfectly all right. Instead, you can choose to create a layout about how lucky you are.I feel like this is a wonderful opportunity to practice being grateful. Many of us try to do this everyday, but generally, the focus on living a thankful life is often documented most in the fall when Thanksgiving is celebrated.Here's your chance to do an "I am lucky" or thankful page with gorgeous spring color as your inspiration.

I created this layout last year for an article at Get It Scrapped. My goal was to document what luck means to me. I wrote about opportunity and how I appreciated the chance to take advantage of opportunities that came my way.

This layout is about my son and how good things always happen to him. This is a hybrid layout I created back when I was with JBS Mercantile. I used green but added navy and yellow as accent colors. Even though the layout isn't about St, Patrick's day, I used a couple of shamrocks on the page.Many people think of luck when they see them, so the shamrocks work on a symbolic level rather than a literal reference to the holiday.

I used photos of myself and my son to document luck, but really, you could use a photo of anything. For example, you could use a photo of your home to document how lucky you are to have a roof over your head. Or use one of those Instagram foodie photos to document how lucky you are to be able to go out to dinner ( which gives me an idea for a page...I remember a time in which my husband and I couldn't afford to go out to eat). Luck is really all a matter of how you perceive it. You can document a page about St. Patrick's day or you can document something you are thankful for. What will you document? If you make a lucky themed layout, feel free to share it with me in the comments below.