Life in Color Photography

Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

This is who I am

My name is Amber Lee Garrison, I'm a thirty something mother of two who grew up right here in Salem, Oregon. I received my fine arts degree from Oregon State in 2004. Though I was trained in traditional black and white film photography I got my first digital camera in 2005 and went fully digital in 2006.

I love the flexibility of digital photography but I much prefer to be behind the camera instead of in front of the computer so you won't see a lot of post-processing from me. I love my kids, my husband, and my crafts. And I love documenting all of it here on my blog.

Monthly Archives: August 2011

Annual portrait

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Last night we went to the fair, for my 31st time. My mom was with me and she saw a tiny little baby in a front pack and said, “that was me when you were only a week old.” I still love it as much as ever and I think I’m passing on the love to Tuesday who is a total ride fiend!

I especially loved sharing a swing ride with her. The classic swing ride is my all time favorite and this mini swing ride is so cute! I fudged a tiny little bit on her height since I was going to be sitting with her anyway. She loved it. And Sciarrino and I tried out the new swing ride (vertigo) totally awesome.

(Bj did such an awesome job taking pictures of us, I love them!)

Plus of course food, friends, and the animal barn. We got locked out of the home economics barn (it closed an hour before the fair which I think must be new), so I might have to go back and check out the quilts and things. One thing I didn’t miss, my annual portrait:

(see 2003-2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010)

Happy birthday to me!

Posted in Family Life Tags: annual portrait, fair, oregon state fair, photobooth

The travel mini

Monday, August 29, 2011

We’re back from our vacation up north, and happy to be home after visiting great friends. I am so glad I did this book on the road, for lots of reasons (see blank book here). Mostly I knew I would be too busy to scrapbook the trip if I didn’t and I was right. It took me days to finish the last couple of days that I needed to do here at home. I ended up printing all but a two days while I was up in Alaska, and it made for quick finishing up of the book when I got home. I just had to punch everything with the Zutter to put it in the book when I got here. I’ll show you the pictures of the book first, and then add my thoughts on the scrapbook on the road process at the end.

Even though I’ve made lots of scrapbooks on the road (really more like embellished journals) I decided to purchase Ali’s class to make sure that I wasn’t missing out on any of her great ideas. And she did have lots of great ideas. The acrylic overlays on the cover was one. My favorite part of the class though was just listening to her thoughts (via her videos that come with the class) while I tinkered around with my supplies deciding what to put in the book and what to bring. I love getting ideas from crafty friends and this is what listening to the videos felt like to me. I’m sure I’ll go back to them again the next time I take on a project like this.

And when did I “scrapbook”? Well mostly in the evenings in the hotel. I would jot down some journaling or adhere some ephemera as we were all winding down for bed. I did take my box of goodies, the book, and some prints over to Carmen’s one afternoon while the girls were napping and work on figuring out where photos were going to go. I loved doing the back to back prints as pages thing, it worked perfectly. Bj is a fan of the book too, he loves all the little bits (receipts, brochures, etc.) the most. Tuesday wanted to work on hers once, and then was over it. I printed off some extra pictures for her and they are in a bag along with a few extra pieces of ephemera in case she wants to come back to the project.

All in all a success, now if only Zutter made thicker bindings! Any questions? Ask in the comments.

A few things answered:

Stickers are an awesome set from Lily Bee, you get a whole bunch of tiny alphabets on one big 12×12 sheet, I cut it apart to travel with. Loved it for titles and dates.

I did bring stamps, I mounted unmounted stamps from Purple Onion (via their tutorial) and they could be stuck to an acrylic block. I kept them in an old school CD jewel case.

The photos that are stuck back to back as pages are sized 5×7 and are lustre prints from Costco.

Posted in mini books, Scrapbooking, Travel Tags: on the road, scrapbooking

So far

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The trip is lovely so far, if a little damp! My scrapbook on the road is going well, I really like having this project to do on a mellow trip like this.

Sorry about my hack job on obscuring my address, I just used lightroom to do it. These are just the first few pages, but I’m about halfway through the book.

I’ve also added pictures as I uploaded to Costco and printed some off yesterday. I love that this book will nearly be finished by the time I get home. Such a great memory!

This is what I brought to work on it. Various attachers (clips, tape, glues, mini stapler), ink, a few stamps in a CD case, acrylic block, mini cutting mat, brads, paper piercer, pens/pencil, ruler, eraser, scissors, tiny letter stickers and a few little embellishments.

Looks like a lot but it fits all in this little plastic box. I did bring extra things knowing Tuesday would be scrapbooking with me. So far she has only wanted to do it once, so I probably could have left some of these things at home. I’ll wait until the end of the trip to give a recap on what I should have brought/left home. But I will say I did stop in at a craft store to pick up an exacto knife (left mine at home on accident) and a mini tape runner thing. I didn’t think I’d need one but putting in the photos I printed went a lot smoother with it.

So what am I recording?