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Testing Canva and their Embedding Abilities

This is supposed to be a PowerPoint presentation...Let's see if it works.

Presentation by Kelly Massey

A New Digital Magazine with lots of eye candy but all in French

Hello,

I helped a friend of mine who's final project in her French 101 class this fall is to create a digital magazine with articles and advertisements that they write. It can be produced on paper or digitally. My friend Barb, wanted a paper copy and a digital copy. The paper copy is GORGEOUS but the digital copy has a few more fun things such as a couple of videos and some changing pictures.

Hope you enjoy it!

Click the magazine cover to read this magazine on the hosting site.

Next Issue of my Family Magazine

YEA!!!!

It's F-I-N-A-L-L-Y live! Issue 4 of my family magazine.

I'm posting a link here for anyone who is interested. Just click on the magazine cover to be whisked away to the the digital version.

The music that plays is one of my many favorite piano pieces. Just so happens it was super popular in the 20s too and that's why it plays. Normally the music only plays over the featured story but this piece is beautiful and over 8 minutes long so I opted to have it play over the whole magazine. It is Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin and this recording is Gershwin playing. It was important to me to have the original artist. The information on the orchestra was not available in the digital version I purchased from iTunes so I don't who what orchestra is in this recording.

Click Magazine Cover to Read This magazine Through the Hosting Site

Didn't Make The Cut

Thanks to everyone for the well wishes during the Digital Scrapbooking Studio's Layout Artist Competition 2016.  It's been so fun making new friends and getting back into scrapbooking! If you'd like to see all 9 of the submissions (one person didn't submit) click HERE!

My photoshop skills are quite rusty and my scrapbook design skills even more so. It’s been a handful of years since I’ve actually completed a layout. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to dust off some forgotten skills and really do something with them.

Now to focus on the remainder of the year and get some of those family scrapbook pages I needed for Christmas since 2012 done so my family has them. (For the post of how my extended family gives scrapbook pages as THE gift for Christmas click HERE!

 It’s quite fun to look back over each year of my sibling’s families and see how their families have grown and changed! However I’ve been a bit slack and haven’t done mine since 2012…so it really has been a while. I’m sure my family will be happy to receive a number of back years this year as my photoshop skills and layout skills have been dusted off!  :)

My cousin passed away completely unexpected almost 3 weeks ago now, reminding me that time is short and we need to get these things done while we can so IF something should happen to us there is a record for our loved ones and our posterity of their lives.

Good blessings to you all as you enter the holiday season.

The Gifts My Extended Family Gives At Christmas

Hello everyone,
Today I thought I'd explain what gift my parents, brother, sister and I give to each other each Christmas.

Instead of giving presents, we give one present (little kids sometimes get more). That present is 4 scrapbook pages with the year on them documenting our own family throughout the year.

So each year we send each other 4 (12 x 12) pages in sheet protectors of our own families activities, milestones, or just fun things we did. We can design it any way we want as long as it's only 4 pages.

This is an example of what I did in 2009. I made these out of paper then photographed them and used the jpg files to print them at Persnickety Prints.







We each have a 12x12 scrapbook album of some sort where we store these. Some of us store them by family by year. Some store them all by year. 

What we didn't expect is how amazing it would be to watch the kiddos grow up on the pages. If we don't do any other pages the whole year, we at least have to do these 4. 

Well...I am the bad family member who hasn't done mine (since 2011) in like 4 years (in 2016 we give the 2015 pages)...so I'm a bit behind and it's high time I get caught up!

I hope you have some fun family traditions the preserve your families history too!

My First Digital Magazine

Wished this was editable!

If you didn't know, I publish a digital magazine! Yup a monthly digital magazine aimed at bring present generations closer together as we all connect with our shared past.

Here's how it all got started...

This spring as a few key relatives got together to discuss the planning for our April 2017 family reunion we talked about all the different things that needed to be done and how we wanted to get the extended family excited about the upcoming reunion.

The reunion was a good 12 months away but one way we wanted to increase interest in the reunion AND in each other was to have a monthly newsletter that was mailed and emailed to each extended family member going back to my great-grandparents on my mom's side.

We decided to hold the reunion in 2017 because it would be the 100th wedding anniversary of my great-grandparents. This would allow us to have a vintage looking wedding type of feel updated for a modernist vibe as our overall design idea.

I looked and looked and looked and looked for a vintage style newsletter template that would allow us to drop in tidbit memories and pieces of our grandparents lives along with highlighting each of the grandchildren's families (as their are 11 of them).

I could find vintage looking web page templates, vintage newspaper templates for print, and lots of static images but not an editable newsletter temple. However I did stumble across another idea...

Not quite vintagey (Yes it is a real word now!) enough 

Great look! But it's an actual website!

Just felt too much like a newspaper but this is what I was leaning toward.

But a digital magazine would allow us to have a updated vintage feel, use lots of pictures, even incorporate video if we'd like.

This could have a vintage look and feel but allow us to do sooo much more with pictures and we had TONS of pictures! I thought we could really help tell their story with pictures that way and it would also appeal to the younger generation which would help the family stay connected.

Cover page I pitched to the group. (and of Issue 1)

So I pitched the idea to the group and frankly they were sold after just looking at the cover page!

We've now had 3.5 issues (currently working on the 4th). I don't have to do the actual writing for the main stories but certainly supplement a number of items. I am doing all the layout and design however.

It's been an amazing tool to communicate information to the family and they actually look forward to getting it in their email each month. It's helped with getting some of the family that live around the country involved and excited for our April reunion too.

We have "help wanted" pages where we are looking for folks to volunteer to help with certain tasks and a Kids Korner to involve even the young'ns.

Overall it's been a great experience although massively time consuming for me ESPECIALLY if I change up the layout style rather then use the same one from issue to issue.

Due to schedules we had to take a month or two off from publishing...it takes gobs of more hours than I anticipated. We've had all kinds of trouble with converting the digital magazine to PDF in order to place printed magazine orders for record keeping sake.

So it hasn't been perfect...but it's been really great!

Here is the link to issue one. If you'd like to see the next issues and how the magazine has grown in length and style and fanciness, once you get to the first issue, there is an icon on the left side that will give you options to see other issues. If you'd like to follow us, please do so by subscribing.

SEE ISSUE ONE BY CLICKING HERE!