Working with themed products on a scrapbook page

Hello! We are DAYS away from getting replacement carpet, which means this weekend I will be able to access my crafting supplies again. Phew!

Since most everything was packed away, I've been limited to what's on hand, which is mostly scraps. Still, I hooked the Iris containers that hold my camping and travel supplies before they were packed. Here's one page with limited supplies that I made about a mountain biking trip my son made with his aunt:

I started with the background paper, which is so gorgeous I didn't want to cover it. (I know what the collection is! But I had to pack up the Iris containers when I was done, so there is no hope for figuring it out until I put everything back this weekend.) Instead, I pulled a 6x6 paper made and put some circles to mat the three photos (I cut the google maps photo into another circle!).

Everything else on this page came from the travel or camping Iris containers, except for the title, which was tucked away in my wood veneer collection and was perfect for the page.

I liked being limited by what I could use. It spurred my ideas. Not that I'm sad to get my good supplies back, but there is something to be said for only being able to use what you can reach.

Bulletin-board scrapbooking design

When I was in college, I had a bulletin board on which I kept various photos and mementos. Later I put the photos in frames, then albums, but I remember the process of putting down photos then filling in the gaps with stuff. I did that same thing recently with a few pages. First was a year-end review page I did for 2016:

I used several photos from the year. I split the page between two pieces of patterned paper, layered some on a Project Life card and used another for journaling, then used bits of Ali Edwards' kits to fill in the blanks. It works.

I did something similar with a page about my son's recent birthday:

The photos were different sized, which left some gaps when I put them on the page. I dug out some birthday themed stickers and some similarly hued embellishments to round out the page. I think this was mostly Crate Paper.

I adhered some elements, like the camera and frame, with pop dots for greater dimension.

With some stickers, I just layer them flat on top of each other.

As always, I like to stitch some stickers down, partly for decoration and partly for adhesive.

Thank you for visiting! I hope this gave you some ideas for fitting together oddly shaped photos. I'll be back with more pages I scrapped this summer later this week.

Scrapbooking with paper strips

I have trouble getting rid of paper strips. I keep my narrow strips in a spaghetti holder.

Every now and then, I like to use strips of paper to make up the bulk of the page. (When I make these pages, I call myself a stripper. Heh.) I did that with the following layout. I had an 8x12 photo, so I only had some narrow space at the top and bottom of the page, so I dug through my strips and picked them in three hues for contrast: blues, neutrals, and brights.

Blues alone were too blah, so I had to pick some colors for contrast.

And here's my final page:

After I selected my strips, I went through my stickers to find colors and shapes that would match and contrast. Some I stitched down for interest and practicality (some of my stickers only stick with hesitance).

Thank you for visiting! I will be sharing a couple pages I made recently with what I call bulletin-board scrapbooking later this week.

Using cards on a scrapbook page

Hello! We just returned from our summer vacation--Hawai'i!--and I plan to share the scrapbooking I did while I was there. Until then, here's what I did before I left.

I've written about this before, but I make pages for my parents. I bought them a frame to put them most recent page in and an album to put the older layouts in. Recently, I made a page for my father for Father's Day using a recent beloved photo of my boys.

The papers I picked out when I sorted through scraps. (I do that a few times a year and bring it to my sons' former day care; the kids use the pretty paper to practice fine motor skills--cutting--and their former teachers love to see how much my boys have grown.) I thought these patterns would look good together, so I use them as my backdrop.

When I recently organized my supplies (more to come), I found this card that I had saved, maybe to use on a page. It went color-wise with the papers, so I thought I'd overlap it on my photo and use it for my title. I used some journaling cards that I'd also uncovered in my organizational spree, so I underlapped those with the photo, told my story, and embellished. My dad loved it. I'm happy that the pages I send him allow him to follow the boys growing into men, even though my dad and mom live so far away.

Thank you for visiting! If you scrapbook for gifts, or you use cards on your pages, please share!

December gallery for Write Click Scrapbook

December is upon us, and so is the new gallery at Write Click Scrapbook! The theme is holiday favorites, andI had one lone holiday photo unscripted that fit the theme. Here's the page:

I suppose it's fitting that I scrapbook this photo now with the new Star Wars coming out in a couple weeks. I hope you can tell the joke in the page--it's Christmas Lights, with {abers} added after the S just like my sons added Star Wars to the manger.

I also used my favorite scrapbooking products--embellishments, especially stickers and die cuts. No patterned paper this page!

Thank you for checking out my page! Please visit Write Click Scrapbook to see some other awesome holiday pages.

Boo! Scrapbooking non-Halloween pages with Halloween products

I've mentioned this past week that of all themed products, Halloween is the one I have the most of. My boys are almost outgrowing trick or treating, so I have to seek other uses of the products. Here's a recent page I made that uses those Halloween products:

I hope you can read the journaling. I grew up in an old New English town with some very old cemeteries, and I learned to hold my breath when I passed them (so as not to let the ghosts in, of course). My boys have started doing the same thing. It's not as necessary in Minnesota, where the cemeteries are not as scary-looking, but when we visited New York a few years ago? Whoa. Lots of breath holding. Here's some details:

I tried to choose some vintage-y products, and ones with headstones or about ghosts, since that fit my story. And that flair? Comes from the Globe theater. It seemed to fit.

I sewed down a lot of elements since the stickiness was abating and it was hard to hold down the patterned coffee filters with adhesive alone.

Thank you for checking out my page! Come back tomorrow to see my contribution for November's Write Click Scrapbook.

Finishing projects day 1: school mini-albums

Hello!The end of summer is around the corner, and I'll be starting a new year with a new teaching prep. My boys will also be in middle school, so I'm anticipating less free time, at least at first. As a result, I'm trying to finish as many projects as I can this summer.

I've actually accomplished quite a bit--I organized the garage, taped and speckled some wall holes in the house, and begun harvesting the garden and cooking (marinara, anyone?). Now here's a list of some of my scrapbooking projects I had to tackle:

1. Finish creating the boys' 5th and 6th grade school album pages
2. Edit and print photos from Custer S.P. (2011)
3. Create mini albums with thank you cards from school
4. Finish the Disney album (2010)
5. Update the Easter mini-album
6. Complete the iScrap class/album
7. Complete the Get Messy class/album
8. Ask Derick to finish journaling his London album
9. Complete 5 Vacation Faves (2015)
10. Create cards for my Dad
11. Rowan school album photos: 3rd, 5th, and 6th; class photo 4th and 6th
12. Dominic school album photos: 2nd, 4th, and 5th;class photo 3rd and 5th

I'm on my way, as you can see. I completed three things on the list, and I'm within a day or two of finishing 3 more. As a motivational push for me, I am going to share my projects as I finish them. First, the mini albums: I had to clean out my office desk last spring at school since the area was being turned into new classrooms. I found 17 years of thank you notes in the desk and decided to make them into mini albums to keep them more solidly. Here they are:

These first two mini albums include thank you notes given out for teacher's appreciation day. Students send them to teachers they want, so I kept the ones that were the most specific. Because they were the same size, they were easy to scrap I used some older Jillibean Soup kraft file folders to house them. For color, I lined the inside with some bright patterned paper (I dug into my scrap piles for them) and used a bunch of bright, non school accents.

Next are some actual cards.They were irregularly shaped, so a little more difficult to fit in mini albums. Here's what I did:

For these mini albums I did dig into my school themed Iris container for products. I pulled chipboard mini album covers from a 7gypsies mini album for the one on the left, covered it with paper using my 5-inch Xyron, and embellished the cover. The cards are not bound in there, by the way: the ribbon is holding it altogether.

On the right I wanted to use the Report card paper for the covers, so I trimmed some spare cardboard to fit, used the Xyron again to adhere, decorated and tied together with the ribbon like I did with the last album.

Finally, I needed something bigger for the actual letters and printed-emails I've collected through the years, so I used an actual manila folder:

Again, I lined the inside with patterned paper scraps, and for the outside, I dug into the school themed Iris container to finish decorating it. (Note: once I got to this point, I realized I had used basically the same design on each mini album. Different products, but same design. Huh.) Like I did with my first two mini-albums, I used a binder clip to close this. Easy-peasy!

Thank you for letting me share some of my projects! I'll share more this month as I complete them. I doubt I'll finish it all, but boy, will it feel good to empty out more project containers that I've been storing the half finished projects!

Stuff on the table

I love to put lots of stuff on my pages. I mostly make use of the kits I get, plus digging into a basket in which I keep my most recent embellishments before I put them away into my stash files. Sometimes, though, I keep something on my scrap table (lap desk) for a while because it didn't make it onto a page, and I forget to put it away.

Eventually, though, these little embellishments start to bug me. I really should use them or put them away! At that point, I dedicate myself to putting them on the next page I make. No matter what.

Here's one of the earliest pages where I did that:

This was back when Simple Scrapbooks was still published and had a challenge blog. I think it might have been a challenge to use stuff lying around your table. See those strips and ribbon? They were on the table, along with the flowers, pins, and sequins. I love this page. The rub-on is Hambly--I think I still have some of those, and I did the cut out with my Coluzzle, which I still have and use. Sigh. *nostalgia!*

Lately, I had some wood veneer birds I thought about using on a page, but I never did. These birds stared at me as I scrapped until finally I put them on a page. Here it is:

 

(Sorry the color is a bit off. This was during dark December, and I had to tweak the lighting on my computer.)

I had made this page using up last bits of a fall kit. I had laid the vellum over cardstock, put the patterned paper on the bottom, used Project Life cards to frame the photo, and used wood to back the title. I then added the hearts and thought I needed more wood, but had no more hearts. And thus came the birds onto the page. It has nothing to do with birds, unless you think that there's two of them, and they represent my boys, but that's a stretch. They just look cute because they are wooden birds and they complement the other accents.

Here's some details:

Thank you for checking out my pages! If you haven't ever, try using something lying around on a page. It's fun sometimes to make it work!

Scrapbooking giveaway!

I purged my stash recently and found a few things I LOVE but I either no longer use or have doubles of. I put them together and would like to give them away! Here it is:

I have a box fill of random goodies and a pad of October Afternoon's Public Library 8x8 paper. If you would like a chance to win one of these, eave a comment telling me something about you and November. I will draw TWO winners Friday, November 21 at 8 P.M. CST. Have a great weekend!

Using up scrapbooking products

Hello! School has started again here in Minnesota. It was busy here as I started teaching again and my boys started their last week of elementary school. Now that things are getting back into a rhythm, I thought I'd share some pages circulating around an idea I had: using up products you have on hand.

I got a kit a while back that I didn't really care for. I'd bought it, though, so I had to use it. I sometimes feel the same way about older products that I one loved but now...not so much. Here's a few ideas I had for making pages I like with products I don't like as much.

1. Use B sides of paper. They are less dramatic than the main side and are more versatile.

2. Use smaller bits of paper. If the paper has a dramatic pattern, cut it apart and use it in smaller doses.

3. Supplement with stash. Use bits of stash to liven up the products you're not as keen on. Here I supplemented with some Amy Tangerine die cuts, a flair, and a Crate transparency frame.

4. Use the dramatic patterns in different ways. I can explain this hint best with the following page. The pencil paper speaks of school, but I used it for music lessons, certainly a type of school. In addition, once I put the layout together, I realized the space in between the pencils would make a great spot for journaling. (Ignore the place in the journaling where I whited out a spelling error and forgot to correct it. Grr. Arggh.)

5. Look for similar products to use together. I did this with this next page. I cut down the big geometric paper in a circle, then noticed that the colors in it matched the colors on a project life card and some transparent circle stickers. And so the page came together.

Thank you for checking out my pages! So tell me: how do you use up products that you are not as excited about using?

I made a page just to use some feathers

Trends are funny. Since this weekend is CHA, trends are going to be lighting up the message boards. I look forward to seeing what will be on trend this year.

Some trends I end up liking a lot. I love wood veneer, especially arrows. It took me a while to warm up to epoxy dots, but I'm finally there, especially now that they are different shapes. Mists and templates? Love it.

Some trends, though, perplex me. Take feathers, for example. They were everywhere last year: wood veneer, die cuts, paper, even actual feathers. I got them with some kits, so I had to figure out how to use them.

Now, I'm not a literal scrapper. I don't feel the need to scrap with feathers only if I'm scrapbooking birds. Heck, I love butterflies on pages about my boys since both are active and playful. Still, what kind of symbolic significance do feathers hold? Light, delicate, fashionable...not my boys. *sigh* Every now and then I put a feather on a page, thinking it might symbolize stories (you know, quills write stories...). Then I found the photos of myself as a child in front of the chicken coop my grandparents painted with the grandkids' names, and I knew what to do with some of the feathers. Here's the page:

You can see I started with my chicken wire misting template--I mean, if you're going literal with theme, go all out, right? Then I used my Studio Calico kit Cuppa to design the page. I added some SC die cut feathers left over from an old kit--not all of the feathers, but a few here and there but to add some plumage to the page. (I'm trying hard not to scatter bird puns all over in this post. Sorry. Couldn't help myself that one time.) Not the details:

I'll admit I don't often know what to do when I get seam binding in a kit. It's too thin to lay down straight--it's see-though--so I folded it into a ruffle as I lightly adhered it and stitched it down into a random ruffle. I love it.

This is the coop--if you look to the left of me in the grass, you'll see my nickname "Jenner" painted into the grass. The purpose for the page! Framed, of course, by four feathers.

I had some feathers left over, which someone in my scrapbooking group suggested I use on a page about Thanksgiving. I hadn't been planning to do a page about Thanksgiving, but finishing off the feathers made it worth it. Here's that page:

I now only have some wood veneer feathers left. I'm planning a trip to the raptor center sometime this winter to use up some of those babies, then will probably give the rest to a girlfriend who raises--you guessed it--chickens.

I'm curious: Have you ever made a page or done something just so you could use a scrapbooking product?

Scrapbooking table scraps

I have this drawer by 7 gypsies on my side table where I scrap. In it I plunk every little bit that I am too lazy to find the original packaging for and put away. I also keep a spaghetti holder in my space in which I put every cute bottom border that I trim off but don't use. For the most part they just sit there and stare at me while I scrap, but occasionally I get serious and scrap these scraps.

Here's an example of one I did long ago:

I did this page long ago for a challenge for the Simple Scrapbooks blog to scrap bits on my space. I tend to be pretty meticulous and orderly, but I loved this look, and it inspired me to be a bit more random in my product choices every now and then. (Funny that this layout was so long ago, but my style is definitely showing itself here: cutouts from the photo, strips of stuff, and overlapping the photo.)

Recently I did something similar. Here's the result:

I did this page for The Art + Science of Scrapbooking at Big Picture Classes. The challenge was to pick an embellishment and design the page around it. I had long ago bought the HAPPY--it's my favorite color--but I had never used it, so I pulled it out, selected photos, then found happy paper to go with. The products were either in my tray or my new embellishments basket I keep near me. In particular, the "summer note" die cut and the "picture perfect" acetate were just sitting right by me, so I put them on the page. Just because they were Happy. Here's a detail:

Soon after, I also scrapped some of those thin strips on a layout. A LOT of those thin strips. Here's the page:

I used a sketch from Simple Scrapper for this. Here it is in process when I was working on it at Archiver's with some girlfriends last weekend:

I pulled every strip I had in a leftover Studio Calico kit and lay them down in a sunburst. I didn't think to make them all matchy-matchy--I just used what I had. Then I glued them down and trimmed the edges. The hardest part was not spelling a swear word with the strip that spelled "Hello." (Heh.) Here's some details:

This was pretty funny: I needed a small grid card for journaling, but I'd left my Project Life kit at home. My friend Janet had a mini-set of religious Project Life cards, so I looked through them and found this one that said "Blessed." Since I DO feel blessed now that Derick has been smoking all summer, it was a perfect match for the page, and it made me laugh to boot. Another instance of scrapping what's on hand.

So this is how I scrap what's lying around on my table! The look on my pages is a bit more eclectic than I normally produce, but I like it, it uses up supplies I have, and it's fun. Thank you for looking at my process!

How many mustaches can you put on a page?

Trends are funny. Some are super popular, others not so much, and others have a mixed recepetion. I think mustaches fall in the latter. If you have a reason for using them, you love them. If not, you may not.

Me, I love mustaches. My husband has a beard, so I figured I could use them on a page. In addition, I found some old photos of my boys wearing fake mustaches that tied in nicely to a recent conversation they had about the mustaches they are growing (seriously! LOL), so I went to my stash (pun intended) and looked for every mustache product I owned.

I found about 10 mustaches. Which begs the question: how many mustaches can one put on a page?

This is when I remembered one of my favorite quotations: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

This quotation helped me so much. I regretfully but firmly returned 7 mustache products to my stash (pun intended, again) and made this page, one of my recent favorites:

I used Fancy Pants Designs Swagger line, one delightfully exuberant in facial hair. I trimmed the excess (sorry for the puns!) and kept only the stashes in the banner, the button, and the felt.

Here's the details:

I also used some chalk labels and cork shapes as well. They pair nicely with Swagger, even though they came out at different times.

That pocket stache is maybe my favorite.

Thank you for sharing my page! Tell me: have you ever used a mustache on a page? Will you? Or will you prefer that they be shaved from the supply stream?

Write Click Scrapbook March sneak

Presidents Day weekend means two things: celebrating Dominic's birthday and scrapbooking. The birthday boy had a great time at Space Alien and enjoyed his favorite present: a bearded dragon he calls Stone. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

For scrapbooking, I spent all day Friday making my project for March's Write Click Scrapbook gallery. Here's a sneak:

I loved using the new Dear Lizzy flair on this project. I paired it with older Studio Calico chipboard clouds and American Crafts Thickers, plus some newer Studio Calico and October Afternoon stickers and Crate Paper photo overlays. That's one of my favorite things to do: play with new products while mixing them with old stash. This happened on my WCS project.

Come back to Write Click Scrapbook see the whole project on the 1st!

End of summer pages: Beach pages

My son LOVED Sand Beach at Acadia National Park. I had a lovely picture of him there and used it to scrap his memory.

I don't like using themey papers, so I pulled all the beach colored papers and products from a Studio Calico kit (most were actually office themed--October Afternoon's 9 to 5).

I pulled blues and greens to mat the photo, then add strips along the left. I also used my good old Fiskars Boundary Waters punch to add some theme--just a bit! I added blue and yellow stickers to the top of the mat.

 

Next--more of those darling wood grain birds, walking in the sand with my son.

 

I added some stitching, then put journaling strips inked in blue to the right.
 
So tell me--am I the only one who doesn't use themed products the way I'm supposed to? :-)