Customer Reviews

Clean and Simple Scrapbooking - The Sequel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have a zillion different scrapbooking books and magazines, and I'm always on the lookout for more. I think my search has ended.

Cathy Zielske writes with warmth, humor, and creativity. She offers tons of tips and suggestions, as well as concrete guidelines for scrappers to follow. She enables you to adapt the layouts you see on the pages of your favorite magazines to your own style. This book offers more of what she wrote in the first volume, but it also goes further, getting into greater detail about how Cathy creates her fabulous style.

I may never buy another idea book -- nahh, of course I will! But this one will have a place of honor on my shelf.

Any scrapbooker, any style, any budget, this is required reading. It can pretty well wipe your bookshelf of any other scrapping reference books - with the obvious exception of Clean and Simple Scrapbooking part one. Cathy Zielske is the master of her art. Her ability to share her techniques with her readers is unsurpassed. The layout ideas are pure Zielske, no surprises there, but the real value of this book lies in the author's instructive ability; her knack for imparting the underlying fundamentals of design. If you only buy one scrapbooking reference your entire life, make this the one.

I've been scrapping for a couple of years, but have never been that pleased with my layouts, no matter how much paper and expensive embellishments I threw on there. They still look somehow "not quite right" even though I put a lot of time and effort into them. As a result, I have felt like I was behind on my pages, and got scrap guilt, compounded with not being happy with the end results anyway. I just felt like I didn't really get what made the pages in the scrapping magazines look better than mine. Having come to scrapping from altered art, it is quite a different mindset, and one that I just didn't really feel like I could get.

Then a friend recommended Clean and Simple - The Sequel and I finally "got" what scrapping was all about, and more importantly, how to actually DO it. Cathy makes scrapping seem as simple as it actually should be. Oh how I wish I had read this one when I started. If you only read one scrapbooking book, this is it. Cathy has a real talent for explaining both philosophy and actual "how to" in a way that is relevant and applicable.

I could only give it four stars though, instead of five, much though I would have liked to. I read this book (The Sequel) first, and since I loved it so much, I bought the first Clean and Simple book as well. Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas in The Sequel are also in Clean and Simple (the original), they are just more fully formed. If I had to pick just one, I'd pick the second book over the first one. Its genius is diluted a bit in my mind however, in knowing that it does have a lot of recycled material. It's still a great book though!

This book is fantastic! It's actually even better than the first Clean & Simple Scrapbooking. It's full of beautiful photos and easy to read insights into making your scrapbooking experience fun and free from guilt. You can do whatever you want - you're supposed to be having fun, not trying to catch up!
I love Cathy's striking graphic style. This is definitely not for scrappers who are addicted to stickers and gaudy embellishments! Think of it as modern, contemporary, fresh and clean.

I am loving this book. I have a bookshelf of scrapbooking idea books and magazines. This book is by far my most favorite. Every time I open it I get inspired to scrapbook. I am a die hard digi scrapbooker and although Cathy is a traditional scraper, I can apply her ideas for layout, color, and font. What more is there to a page? Here ideas are fresh and hip, my eyes just flow over the page. If I could only have one idea book this would be the one. If I could have two, I would also keep cathy's first book, Clean and simple. I tend to be the type that just piles on the photos, decortive paper and embelishments to compensate for not planning my layouts and The page just never agreed with my eye, so I would add more. When what I really needed is to take more off the page. This book reminds me that Less is more, much more. I wish I would have had this book years ago. We all have to start somewhere though, right? My ONLY complaint is that my new book is already falling apart, the pages are coming out. I guess it needs to be spiral bound.
Bravo Cathy! The book is an insperation.

Does a sequel mean there won't be any more? Please, say it isn't so! This is a rare tool that will also inspire you to look at your life in a whole new way. Don't just look at the layouts, read the words, find the gems, and use them to change the way you look at everything. You will also make some really amazing pages! And the book recommendations in the back are right on target. This book is priceless, and if you don't have the first one, you need that too.

It's so easy to get caught up with embelishments and how many photos you can fit into a page - I love the liberating feeling I got from reading this book... I am preserving memories - not photos! Will definitely be a loved book and used over and over again. Thanks Cathy.

While it's obvious that Cathy Zielske is a very nice and good person (since most of the layouts are of her and her family, you get to "know" her), it pains me to criticize this book. I am all for "clean and simple" - there is not nearly enough of that in the scrapbooking world! But I find her work to be too slick, too anonymous, too much like trendy magazine ads, too graphic-designy. There's a distance that this style creates between the subject and the viewer. So much of the charm and appeal of scrapbooking, I find, is precisely its human-touch quality. A little imperfection. A little less analyzed. Since most of us are recording our families for posterity, the obvious hand of the creator of the layout is what gives it so much depth and power. I gave this 4 stars because, like I said, Cathy seems like a great person and is certainly talented and sincere - the book is organized brilliantly. But aside from a few technical tips, mostly it just doesn't inspire me. Contrast this to either of Ali Edwards' books (which I can't recommend highly enough) and you'll see what I mean.

ok so i'm not a simple scrapbooker. i'm one of those over embellishers but i really love her books. cathy is very inspiring and even though my pages are a world apart from her's i found her general concept on scrapbooking to be my thoughts exactly.

For those of us who are weary of cluttered pages that look like advertisements for new products and would prefer instead to focus on the photos, this book is a breath of fresh air. Zielske explains graphic design principles such as white space, leading, layouts, etc., in terms the layman can understand. She also gives tips for improving photos and journaling. The result is beautiful pages that won't become dated 20 years from now.