CTMH New Product Blog Hop

The Spring/Summer 2014 catalog is HERE! And I don't know about you, but I am ready to see all of the fabulous new products and find out what people are doing with them. We are here today to do just that so let's get started!

If you have arrived here from Adeline Brill's blog, or if you are just starting out, you are in the right place. If you get lost along the way, I have a list of all participating blogs right here. (It opens in a new window so you can open it and still continue the hop from here.)

The new product I was most interested in trying out is our new Picture My Life kits. These are a Project Life-style product with a few differences. To be honest, as a traditional scrapbooker, I have never really understood the draw of PL because it just seemed so plain-Jane to me. UNTIL NOW - I totally GET IT now... so here are some details:

Each kit comes with 10 Memory Protectors of various designs,

1 Designed Cover Sheet (2-sided),

44 - 4"x6" cards (2 each of 22 designs, also 2-sided),

and 78 3"x4" cards (3 each of 26 designs, also 2-sided).

 You may notice that I have my cards in the Medium Organizer with my embellishments. I only have this one set so far, so they fit right in. If you have several, get them their own Medium Organizer, where they fit perfectly in the separate sections.

So, how does a traditional scrapbooker like myself see using the Picture My Life Kits? Well, here are the first 9 pages I made, all in less than 3 hours.

The Designed Cover Sheet with a single picture and a couple of cards defines the section. And as you can see, I could not resist adding a few little embellishments to this page with the Blue & Green Epoxy Bubbles.

Our kids each do some activities every year and I wind up with a bazillion pictures of nearly the same thing. So, here's a way to get a lot of them in their individual albums without spending such a great amount of time. For each year, I can create a section for each activity - in this case, my son's soccer games.

The left page here is just the back of the Cover Sheet. I added 1 photo and started filling in the data sections. The right page is one of the 3 other page designs included in the kit (3 of each design). I also dug into my stamps and used some old sports stamps in my stash to make a the left and bottom cards more soccer themed.

The left page here is the back of the right page above. Since I'm staying in theme, I used the backs of the cards that were in the pockets already. If you want to change to another theme, there is plenty of room for 2 cards in each pocket. Again, I added some old date stamps from my stash to designate the month of these games.

I love that so many of the cards in the kit are non-specific. Yes, there are some for the major sports, but most are general and I can see using them for a lot of things. (Did anyone else think Bazinga! when they saw that lightning bolt design?)

So, these are my first 9 pages and I can honestly say that I am hooked. I will never switch to this style for everything, but I am so happy to be able to use this for the myriad sports, orchestra & choir concerts, Girl Scouts, and Cub Scouts, or I would have literally THOUSANDS of pictures that would otherwise take a very long time to see the light of day!

Now don't despair if you don't have use for this Later Sk8r design. There are SEVEN more terrific designs on my website right here, so go check them out! And bonus, they all coordinate with a past or current paper pack, so you can totally combine traditional scrapbooking and PML. (This link opens in a new window so you can continue the hop.)

I would LOVE to hear what you think of this new product, then be sure to hop along over to Dawn Ross' blog and let's see what else is new!