The Blog

As an avid user of ‘SCRAPBLOG’ since it first began (user name ‘cazjane’), I was delighted to be asked to choose this week’s ‘Friday Five’. I always browse through the ‘recently updated’ thumbnails to see what new albums have been created (and there seem to be new ones every few minutes) so I thought that it would be a fairly straightforward task! How wrong I was- as the pile of shortlists and ammended shortlists on my desk demonstrates!

At first, I thought I would be clever and find a theme into which all my choices would neatly fit- ‘Family and Friends’ or ‘A Man’s Perspective’, for example. In the end, I just chose five varied scrapblogs which caught my eye but which fulfilled three guidelines:

1) The scrapblog would contain at least four pages (This was made easier by being able to float the mouse over the thumbnail to bring up the number of its pages).

2) It would be created by someone other than the ‘usual candidates’ -There are some brilliant scrapbloggers who produce beautiful and unusual albums every few days-but you will have seen their work featured before so I was trying to find scrapbloggers who have only just started publishing and have just one or two scrapblogs…..at the moment!

3) It would look interesting from the very first page.

So-at last-to my ‘Friday Five’

JoeCashin ‘Flowers’
This scrapblog is five stunning pages of photography enhanced by some bright backgrounds and subtle effects. The pictures were all taken in the garden or in a local park at JoeCashin’s Kilkenny, Ireland home.

FrannyBaggins ‘The Wizard of Oz’
FrannyBaggins, an artist from Southampton,U.K. has taken this unusual topic and portrayed the characters in pages full of colour and detail with a clever use of stickers.

SusieK ‘Easter 2008′
There were many beautiful Easter albums produced over the last two weeks. I chose this one because it is a real ’scrapbooker’s’ scrapblog- gorgeous photos, pretty backgrounds enhanced by the frames and stickers and with a perfect choice of music. SusieK has joined ‘Scrapblog’ fairly recently (and, if you read her profile you will see which of her relatives may have encouraged her to do so!). I have watched her progress from a one-paged scrapblog to this-my ‘Friday Five’ choice.

Joey8a ‘2008 Italy Trip’
I love ‘travelogue’ scrapblogs and this is one of the best. There must be something about Italy which inspires scrapbloggers because I realize that another fantastic album on Italy was featured not long ago but I had to include this one in my ‘Friday Five’. ‘2008 Italy Trip’ records what Joey8a says was the ‘best trip ever’ in 41 pages of artistically presented photos and text and three videos!

ytus ‘robot programming’
I’ve noticed over the months how ‘Scrapblog’ can be used for educational purposes-for literary projects, to display classroom artwork, for students’ portfolios etc. In this ’scrapblog’ a ‘robot programming’ task is clearly set out on the first page and then we can see the resulting models on the next few pages. There is a video, too, but you will have to look to ytus’ comments underneath the scrapblog to find the link! I might add, at this stage, that comments under scrapblogs can sometimes be as interesting as the scrapblog itself and reveal much about the content of the album.

As I finish my ‘Friday Five’ report and send it in before the deadline, new and fabulous scrapblogs will be arriving in the ‘newly updated’ section. Some will be using all those interesting new ‘cropping’ and ‘editing’ features which have just been released. I know that I will have overlooked some scrapblogs which should have been chosen but they can be for another week and for another person to choose in their ‘Friday Five’ selection!

‘cazjane’