Guest Author - Bettyann Schmidt

Tomorrow starts May, a busy time for me. I'll be hosting the annual "National Scrapbook Day" event here in my little town for a bunch of ladies similarly addicted to saving their family memories in albums. We have a good time.

May also is National Photography Month, so those two go pretty much hand-in-hand.

If you're a scrapbooker, you already know what it's about, but if you're not, I'm going to tell you about it.

First, National Scrapbook Day was started by the National Scrapbooking Association, whose website has been renamed International National Scrapbooking Association, or INSA, which when put into your browser comes up iscrap.net. The site has a scrapbook store locator, although there were no stores listed in Tennessee, or Alabama, or Kentucky. In other words, the listing is not very inclusive. It does say you can put in your favorite stores, however, but who has time?

Iscrap.net does have a lot of wonderful articles, which I'll be going back to when I have some free hours to devote. The first one I clicked on was so good. The "Tips & Tricks" link showed a cool way to organize scrapbook paper, though I already have the best way of my own. I loved the "Events" link because it led me to some good online stores. There are contests too, which maybe when I have that elusive commodity again, "time," I'll enter one.

Moving on to National Photography Month. You can go to photography.about.com, where throughout the month of May a "photo of the day" will be posted, and you can submit photos of your own to appear.

A way good site to visit is takegoodpictures.com, sponsored by the Photo Marketing Association. Learn the secrets of professional photographers here, including digital, and compare cameras. Great site I'll be going back to again and again.

If you go to photoaxe.com/, you might agree that this is the best photo site ever. It's a photo clinic of sorts, and some of the shots on here are breathtaking. Scroll all the way to the bottom to get it all. There's a pic of two little birds in a nest that "blew" me away.

Go to their photoaxe.com/american-national-photography-month-ideea-for-shooting/ site for info on National Photo Month and more great content. There is not a link on photoaxe.com for this, so you'll have to type it into your browser. I found it through a Google search.

I've been doing a scrapbook writing workshop on my website you can visit if you want some ideas or wonder how to get started from square one. I start off assuming my reader has no knowledge at all of how to scrapbook or create family photo albums. We'll be covering digital in future sessions too.

Including my faith in albums is important to me, and the term "faithbooking" has become popular. This is simply writing stories of the God moments in your life for your children and their children after them. I consider that to be just about the most important thing one could leave for their family. The treasure of a Legacy.

You can visit my website at www.bettyannschmidt.com. From there you can also drop by my blog.

I've included below what I consider to be the best book I've ever used on scrapbooking page layouts. It's Becky Higgins' Sketches. My pages come together beautifully and simply now. Also a book is included that has taken the scrapbooking world by storm, The Big Picture by Stacy Julian.

I'll be reading...