Hey there everybody, this is May Flaum for Big Picture Scrapbooking.

Today I am so excited because I get to talk to you about my new class, recipes for scrapbooking success. As you can probably guess from the title, it involves scrapbooking, so it's going to be a class totally about scrapbook layouts, and it involves my recipes that I have found over the years. There are just some thing that I've discovered that I use over and over, not in a bad way, not in an I'm-stuck-in-a-rut way, but just some very basic ideas that I use such as for photo placement, ways I use ribbon, things I do with my journaling. Very simple things that I can apply to all different styles and sizes and types of layouts so that rather than focusing on, "Oh, I just don't know what I'm going to do, or how I'm going to put these photos down?" It has enabled me to focus more on telling the story, decorating the page, and really having fun with this hobby that I love so much, scrapbooking.

This class was actually inspired by The Food Network. I was watching a lot of Food Network in those first few weeks and months even after my daughter was born, and one day I just thought, "Oh, my gosh. If I see one more recipe that starts with a roux, I just don't know." It seems like everything starts with that flour plus butter to thicken it, from gravy to apple pie to soup. It kind of hit me that I have things, recipes, that are kind of like the roux as well. Like the way I use four photos in the middle of a page, or the way I like to use ribbon to draw lines through my page, that kind of thing. I started to think about it, and then I started looking through my older scrapbooks, and I found that there are a lot of things that over time I've just learned to love and that I've had a lot of success with and that I use a lot even still today, because they are, I don't want to say "basic", but I will, because they are very simple in nature and can be applied to a lot of different styles or types of scrapbooking, so they really stand the test of time, it's not about trends or what's hot, or that kind of thing, these are just very very basic uses. Now that's not say that this class is only for beginners or only for people interested in more basic scrapbooking, not a all. It's just that the focus is on these basic recipes of how I turn them into and how you can turn them into great scrapbook pages, and it will cut time off your creating because you will be more free to play rather than thinking about what you are going to do, how are you going to do it, these can really help you get the creative juices flowing and get you moving on creating great scrapbook pages.

So, I hope that sounds good to you. I will be showing you scrapbook layouts every week. We will have a different focus each week. They will all be scrapbook layouts, from photo placement, journaling, embellishments and mixing different recipes together even, and, of course, you know me, I'm all about the bonus handouts, so there will be some of my personal favorite food recipes, and also some of my favorite recipes for mini books and gift albums, that kind of thing. I've got to tell you, it's going to be a whole lot of fun, so much so that I'm going to head off right now and go create some more pages for this class.

I hope you will join me. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Remember, this is big!