The Book of Us

Here it is, a list of all the links I can find during this Virtual Book Tour. It is obviously a work in progress, and will be updated daily until the end of the Book of Us Virtual Book Tour

Preparation

Phew, these VBTs take a bit of preparation. Here are some blog entries by Angie.

• Blog entry 4th April - Angie announces the VBT, and the tour schedule. From this is a link to the ScrapYourStories website, for more information on the Book of Us
• Blog entry 4th April - the SB Industry News Blog - again announces the VBT with schedule and information. This also includes the official press release.
• I copied the press realise onto the Scrapability website here.
• Blog entry 14th April - Angie designs the banner graphic you see on all of these sites.
• In this blog entry above, Angie also links to the new page on the Virtual Book Tour, on the ScrapYourStories site again. Here, you will find the Event Calendar, with more information on what each tour site might be doing, with links to those relevant URLs* The page also includes a pinned map of locations where you will find the websites being visited virtually.
• Blog entry 20th April - Angie updates us on some of the things happening at some sites.

Your main source of information will be found at the VBT Webpage, with event calendar, and links to everything happening on each site.

 *Note: for many of the Websites concerned, and links to these forums or galleries, you must be a member of the website to access these.

Sunday April 24th - Angie Visits Scrapbook Bytes

1. Angie blogs about her first tour schedule.
2. Scrapbook Bytes opened up a Q&A Forum called  Ask Angie Forum In here, you will find links to a nice review of Angie’s books, Angie’s favourite scrapbooking software, the challenge, and where to get copies of her books. Scrapbook Bytes also held a chat session with Angie.
3. Here are the Scrapbook Bytes galleries for the Angie Pedersen challenges. You will see layouts for the Book of Me, Growing Up Me, and Book of Us.
4. And Angie blogs about the whirlwind chat/challenge and crop.

Monday April 25th - A Visit with Scrapbook Jungle

1. Angie blogs about her upcoming tour through the Jungle
2. Scrapbook Jungle held a 3 day game before the VBT. This was a layout competition towards Relationships.
3. Scrapbook Jungle’s Official Book Review of the Book of Us
4. An interesting Angie Pedersen trivia game at Scrapbook Jungle
5. And Scrapbook Jungle’s overall Q&A thread with Angie on the day, called the Thread of Me
6. This is the PDF file transcript of the actual chat, on the SJ site.
7. Angie rounds up the Scrapbook Jungle tour in her blog entry here.

Tuesday April 26th - A Chat with SSReflections

1. Angie visited SSReflections for a Chat Session at 8pm that night. This was via the SSReflections Ezine Yahoo Group chat facility. You needed to be a member of this yahoo group to logon to this chat.
2. And here is Angie’s blog recap on the Chat at SSReflections, with other news on more tour visits.

Wednesday April 27th - Scrapbooking.About Com

1. Scrapbooking.about.com published an interview with Angie Pedersen on the Book of Us, by Rebecca Ludens.
2. Angie issued a layout challenge, with samples and free graphics (What’s in Your Car challenge) for this also.
3. Scrapbooking About Com showed the challenge entries in this gallery here.

Thursday April 28th - Scraps Ahoy is setup for further visits

1. Plans changed a little on the day - see Angie’s explanation on her blog entry
2. Scraps Ahoy put up the Book of Us challenge on their message board here - to create a timeline of a relationship. The challenge was for two weeks until Thursday 12th May
3. An Ask Angie thread was also setup for the day, and in readiness for the chat session (on Thursday 12th May)

Friday April 29th - The Lifetime Moments Stop

1. Angie blogs about the upcoming chat at Lifetime Moments in this blog entry

2. Lifetime Moments has a Message Forum entitled “Angie Pedersen A Virtual Book Tour LIVE Q&A” - this thread went on for several pages.

3. And this is the challenge issued by Angie at Lifetime Moments.

4. And this is the recap blog of Angie’s chat with Lifetime Moments, in which Angie gives some starter tips and a link to some journaling prompts - Lists of 10

Saturday April 30th - Angie joins Scrapability

1. The Scrapability Blogsite opened up a new Journal especially for the Virtual Book Tour, which Angie Pedersen was given editing access to. This features many blog entries and challenges for the day, with additional information provided within regular Scrap Rants blog entries.
2. Within the Book of Us Virtual Book Tour blog you will find entries for a Profile on Angie, with links to purchase the books, and a full listing of links and pages created during the entire tour (this document).
3. This is the Scrapability Contents Listing for the day - with a full list of blog entry links and challenges during the tourstop.
4. Angie recaps her experience of the day at her blog

Sunday May 1st - A Visit with UKScrappers

1. UKScrappers opened a special forum entitled “Angie Pedersen’s Virtual Book Tour on UKS “
2. On Tuesday April 26th Angie issued her challenge to the UKScrappers to create a favourite song layout, ready by Sunday.
3. Angie blogs her recap of the event at UKScrappers

Monday May 2nd - Pages of the Heart

1. Pages of the Heart put up the chat highlights for the night here

2. These are the links to their reviews - Book of Me, Growing up Me & Book of Us

3. Angie ran a Layout Challenge also at POTH - to create a layout based on the phrase - Keys to our Celebrations. The challenge layouts were uploaded to this gallery.

4. POTH members Barbara Snyder and Michelle Pieters also had an interview with Angie Pedersen, and the interview article is published here.

5. Angie blogs her recap
   

Tuesday May 3rd - Scrap Outside the Box

1. On the Tuesday beforehand, Angie uploaded her layout challenge for the SOTB crew - this was to create a 50 Things About Us layout. She had a special digital kit freebie created by KirstyAnn Nerness which after the tour would go on sale at the site. The layouts were uploaded to this gallery.
2. Christina Blomberg held an interview with Angie, which is published at SOTB
3. There are also reviews of the books on the site - The Book of Us- review by Christina Blomberg, and another Book of Us review by Andrea Sampson.
4. Angie blogs her recap.

Wednesday May 4th - A tour to Scrapping With Style

1. Another layout challenge from Angie - this time to create a layout about what makes us laugh. Layouts will be posted at this gallery, up until May 9th.
2. Scrapping with Style also had an Ask Angie thread.
3. Here is the Angie blog recap

Thursday May 5th - Digital Scrapbook Place hosts Angie

1. Digital Scrapbook Place held a chat with Angie on the day. The transcript has been put up on site here.
2. Angie posted a challenge at DSP - If you could tell the story of your relationship by taking someone to 5 places, where would you go?
3. Jamie Rouselle provided a Book of Us review
4. Angie rounds up the tour with a recap in this blog entry

Friday May 6th - Angie goes down under to Kiwiscraps

I’m sorry - I just can’t stop myself from saying something here - can I come home with you too? Signed Michelle@Scrapability (lost in England, and pining for N-Zed)

1. Angie’s tourstop at Kiwiscraps came at the same time that New Zealand was celebrating National Scrapbooking Day. Her tourstop became part of a nationwide event, which you can read about here.
2. During the day, Angie logged onto a chat forum which was provided throughout the country at several different crops. Read about this in Angie’s blog entry below.
3. There was also a challenge - Things You’ll hear at Our House.
4. Angie rounds up the tour with a recap in this blog entry

Saturday May 7th - The Tour ends at Angie’s site - One Scrappy Site

1. One Scrappy Site also hosted a Round Robin Interview between several contributors who had layouts or projects published in the Book of Us. This series of interview questions and answers can be found at this link.

2. Angie rounds up the tour with a recap in this blog entry

But - StoryCircle has a bit too

• Story Circle Hosts a Book Review for the Book of Us - reviewed by Lee Ambrose.

Blogging is so fun
Reading instead of work done
Michelle, love your blog!

This is a Republication of the Review I did in February of this year - after my copy of the book arrived. For the sake of the Virtual Book Tour and Angie Pedersen’s visit here tonight, I am reprinting this review today.

This is by no means a full review on the new Book Of Us, by Angie Pedersen. Because I have a couple of layouts published in this book I fear that I will not be independent enough to give a quantified opinion on Angie’s latest book in her series. The series commenced with the now famous Book of Me, continued with Growing Up Me, a book about encapturing children’s Me albums. And now we have the much bigger Book of Us.

Angie’s normal format continues with this idea book - in use of textured photographic backgrounds to the pages, and each chapter having copious quotes on the subject. I love the quotes out of these books - for me the text and quotes are often more inspiring than the actual sample layouts used.

One of the first quotes I found on the first chapter brought me back to earth last night, when I opened this book. After struggling a little with my own blog writing this quote helped -

“The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all” - Voltaire.

Although Angie used it to conceptualise how a scrapbook is indeed our way of writing to the world my interpretation was into the 21st century, where my own scrapbook writing is going out to the world over the internet.My designs and scrapbooks are just another way of kindling my ideas.

So, what’s different between the Book of Me, and the Book of Us? Angie explains it well in her first chapter - The Book of Us celebrates our relationships. Relationships are about intimacy and connections between people. It’s a two-way, cause and effect process. Whereas a Book of Me may deal with your feelings on being a mother, a Book of Us will look at it from both directions - how you feel about being a mother, and how your child feels about being your child.

The book’s chapters deal with different subject matters (or types of relationships) - from our history, theme albums, perspectives, our celebrations, our love, family, or groups. There are also two end chapters on circle journals and gift albums. In fact, the entire book has numerous mini or gift albums through it. These are absolutely lovely and highly case-able as ideas and in format. The mini albums, tag albums, accordian albums, smaller journals featured in the Book of Us fit well with the concept, when trying to document relationships.

As an aside, mini or circle journals are big lately. Pinecone Press is bringing out a Circle Journal book later in the year. Many scrapbookers are looking to smaller concept albums, or mini albums as a quicker but worthwhile way of documenting things like relationships, or as gifts. I know I do. It’s always sad to see these gifts being given away, but in doing so we are moving our communication channels onwards and out of our personal family albums. Scrapbooking is going out to the world.

Layouts chosen in the Book of Us range from simple layouts on themes to complex and extremely beautiful layouts. This is all subjective to my own liking of styles etc, but Angie has managed to select a wide range of differing styles, and not just layouts which some might think of as being advanced. The ABC albums and other simpler layouts are do-able, even for newbie scrappers.

I think I am most impressed with the care and production quality taken over the photography of the published layouts and mini albums. Photos are taken close enough for you to read all the journaling with ease. Details show, and the colour is exactly right - at least for my own layouts featured.

Angie changes format a little from her earlier books. In those she provided a lot of internet links for additional resources for each chapter. Those links are no longer published in the book, but instead on her website, One Scrappy Site, under the Links area. This is perhaps a good idea, considering the volatility of links nowadays. At least dead links can be taken off her website when encountered. The links resources from Angie’s site look helpful in themselves. For instance, under the Circle Journal theme, there are article links explaining what a cj is, and how to set one up, and several links to cj galleries.

Even without these links, the book is 150 pages long, and includes many interesting subjects, ideas to use, and fabulous layouts and mini albums. This book really should be in every scrapbooker’s library. You can use it to break a scrapper’s block cycle, by ducking into the book at any point to apply the ideas. Or you can create an entire Book of Us themed album using the ideas within.

To finalise this, on a more personal basis - I simply enjoy the ability to read into other scrapbooker’s lives here. I’m sure I’m not the only one who stops at a layout and reads the actual journaling. The Book of Us not only shows that journaling in fine detail, but the photographs on the layouts are interesting too. My layouts in this book show some less detailed shots of myself (thank goodness Angie chose to put a belt across my own mugshot), and my family. Whilst my husband and I went through the book last night, I made a comment towards someone else’s layout, which has two reasonably large photos of her partner. My musings were how lovely all these men must be in real life, to allow their scrapbooking partners to publish what perhaps may not be their best portrait photos out to the world like that. My hubbie nods agreeably, for the sake of making me happy.

-Michelle Thompson (Scrapability) Feb22nd 2005 and republished April 30th 2005

One thing I love about blogs and blogging is the “inside look” it gives to someone’s life.  I think it appeals to the voyeur in all of us.  As you read blogs, you get a sense of people’s schedules, priorities, personalities, and senses of humor.  You come to realize how much, perhaps, you have in common.  You may not agree with everything that’s posted in a particular blog, but you come to appreciate their insights, or their candor, or their approach to life in general.  I know that I appreciate reading blogs that have me nodding my head in confirmation — I can relate to their entry topics, or their insights on situations.  When that happens, I feel more “normal” — like if at least this person has also experienced or thought this, at least I’m not alone.

That’s part of what appeals to me so much about this Virtual Book Tour, or at least part of the results I’m looking for.  I want people to read my challenges, chat transcripts, and blog entries and not see a “celebrity scrapbooker”.  While I am working to “make a name” for myself, it’s very important to me for people to realize that I’m so very much like them.  That’s already been apparent in this first week of the tour — Thursday night’s chat at ScrapsAhoy had to be rescheduled because of a choir concert, and I wasn’t able to blog here this morning because of a soccer tournament.  As Jen at ScrapsAhoy said to me that morning, “We’re all about ‘Life Happens’”.  Because it does.  “Mom-stuff”, family duties, and work obligations often pull us in so many directions that our perceptions and priorities become skewed.  It still happens to me.

But my hope is that if people see me as “one of them”, it might make my message more meaningful because they can relate to it.  I struggle with the same issues of not enough time, too much to do, self-doubt, and fatigue that so many other women do.  But since I’ve made the philosophy behind my books a priority in my scrapbooking, maybe other women can see that it’s do-able.  And my hope is that this book tour will reflect that.

I also want this book tour to reflect my priority for being approachable.  I have been scrapbooking for almost seven years, and have been successful in marketing myself into a career I’ve created for myself basically from scratch.  Yes, technically I am a “world-famous best-selling author”, but if you’ve ever taken my classes you know I often make light of that.  I happen to have some good ideas, and love sharing them with people.  I’m a good teacher, and my classes are really fun and informative.  I guess I’m a bit of a show-off at heart, so if I have an idea or resource that helps someone with a scrapbooking question, then that allows me to feed that vice a bit.

But I make a point to not let my success change my own perception of my “worth”, in comparison to anyone else.  I have experience and resources that I want to share with anyone who will listen, so I love it when people ask questions!  This book tour is the perfect forum for that — I’ve gotten some really interesting questions in chats and message boards, and in return, people get the information they need.  Win-win, in my book!  I want this book tour to reflect that I’m really not all about being a “scrapbooking celebrity” — I am easy to talk to, and am very happy to answer questions.  I will do my best to offer insights and give straight, honest answers to help you make your scrapbooks more meaningful.  My books do that in print form; this tour offers a more accessible, immediate venue of feedback.

Putting these concepts out there, that I’m just a “normal” wife/mother/woman like you who’s happy to chat about scrapbooking — is not something I’ve been able to communicate so specifically on other stops on this tour.  That’s what I love about a blog — you can put your whole heart into a message, write it all out until it says exactly what you want to say.  I guess that’s actually what I love about scrapbooking, too!  :)

Welcome to Angie Pedersen, who is today visiting the Scrapability Blogsite as a stop-off during the Book of Us Virtual Book Tour.

Welcome also to any blog readers on this day. Below you will find an ever-updated list of the events during the day, with links to the appropriate journal entries etc. This will act as an archive and contents listing through the day’s proceedings.

The following will be updated as Angie provides some blogging entries herself.

Preliminaries and OnGoing Journal Entries

1. This Welcome and Contents Listing (this document - a work in progress)
2. Where May I Buy the Book of Us, and other Angie Pedersen Books?
3. The Big archive of Links - Book of Us Virtual Book Tour (I am creating this as Angie moves around the net on the tour)
4. An Interview with Angie Pedersen (by Michelle Thompson via Scrapbook Craft Magazine)

Scrapability Events on the Day

1. On Blogging Memes - some additional reading and information provided by Michelle Thompson, with examples from the scrapbooking world also
2. The Book of Me-Mes - the first BOU VBT Blog entry for Angie Pedersen to contemplate, on how Memes can be helpful to the scrapbooking world.
3. Other Me Stuff - some information on further blogging and internet trends, provided by Michelle Thompson (this is broken up into smaller journal bytes, with the successor - Blogging Trends)
4. From Me-Mes to Us-Us’s - the second BOU VBT Blog entry for Angie Pedersen to discuss - on the movement to an Us culture within blogging and the internet
5. Other Blogging Trends - provided by Michelle Thompson - with examples again from the scrapbooking world. This is further developed into another journal entry - The Future of Blogs
6. The Future of Blogs - where will it all go? Whatever the outcome, some of the information provided in this journal entry by Michelle Thompson, is already available to us now, and is helping to form a vaster scrapbooking community.
7. Us-Us Challenge - a challenge is issued to join in with the creation of an Us layout to celebrate the Virtual Book Tour
8. Angie blogs about her own Normalcy and Approachability - blogging allows us to see inside a person.
9. My Republished Review of The Book of Us
10. And the final signoff by Angie is a little Haiku

Additional Book of Us Entries

1. While Angie was gone (to a soccor tournament) and I recovered from an intensive Saturday Uk morning shopping for toddler birthday presents, I uploaded some Book of Us layouts I had created in answer to a challenge Angie had issued for another tour stop.