How To Apply Letter Stickers and Scrapbook Beginners' Advice

Sunday's Weekly Round-Up - 7th February 2010

This week I have written a couple of Scrapbooking Articles.

One is some advice for beginners where I tell you what NOT to buy, and the best way to start.

The other article is a quick tutorial for lining up your sticky letter (from all those sticker sheets). If you want straight aligned words, this is way to do it!

Am really busy with the Tearooms refurb, Hubby still working like a Trojan, logo and signs almost finished the design stage too. Will update you next week.

Money Saving Advice for Scrapbooking Beginners

How to Easily Apply Self-Adhesive Letters to a Scrapbook Layout

Simple Scrapbook Page, Beginners' Guide What to Buy and Tearooms Update

Sunday's Weekly Round-Up 31st January 2010

A number of items for you this week including a simple scrapbooking layout, some scrapbook beginners tips and what the Newsletter subscribers received as their free January download.

Oh and an update on the Tearooms refurbishment!

Simple Scrapbooking Layout - “Snow Angels” by SundayL (pictured right)

What Should I Buy to Start Scrapbooking?

Mini Album Page Planner - Newsletter Subscriber Freebie

Tearooms Update - It’s changing

How to make Scrapbooking Flowers and Beware Bum Advice!

Sunday's Weekly Scrapbooking Round-Up 8th November 2009

A quick round up today - I have a lot on at the mo, some of it to do with scrapbooking and a lot of it not! But I will tell you all about it as soon as I am able!!!

So this week a couple of offerings... (click on the headings to go to the blog post)

How to make Wet Crumpled Paper Flowers VIDEO Tutorial
Recently I showed you a birthday card on which I had put some “Crumpled flowers”. I made them using the “wet” technique. Here is a closeup of one of the flowers (before I put it on the card)....

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Don’t get the Wrong Scrapbooking Advice!
I do get fed up every time I read “the first thing you need to do as a beginner to scrapbooking is buy an album, a few papers and some adhesive”!
That makes me cross because you DON’T need to buy an album, if you are just trying scrapbooking out as a hobby. It’s a wasted expense if you decide you don’t like it for a start, but I put beginners off buying an album until they have made a few pages and can decide in what size they prefer to work...

ScrapBuddies Sketch number 4

Well going back to the "Is Simple what you want" last Wednesday, I have created a sketch based on the simple layout in that post.

The trick to this layout is to make full use of your patterned paper, just make sure it's not over-powering. As I like to say "let your paper do the talking".

The tag on my page is interactive... that is, it opens to reveal journaling inside... but you don't need to keep this feature.

Anyway, the "motto" (or "Mission Statement" as company execs like to say) for the SimplyScrapbookingNow.com site and therefore this blog too, is...

"Keeping it Simple to get you Scrapbooking Now"

So let's start right now!!!

Scrapbooking Taster Workshop more pictures

As promised, here are the rest of the pictures from the ladies who took part in the Workshop last Tuesday.

As you can see from these (and those posted yesterday) even real beginners, who have never done anything like scrapbooking before, can achieve great results for their photographs.

I always demonstrate, and make up kits for, 8x8" scrapbooking pages. It is so much more satisfying for beginners, and much easier to achieve fast results.

And don't forget that you can actually get quite a lot of photographs on an 8x8" page, just print your pictures smaller, or crop originals down. There is usually quite a lot of background you can crop off photos to get in tight to your subject thus making the pictures dimensions much smaller.

Great news for all those photos where you are "somewhere" in the picture! - oh and don't be afraid to shave off a bit of head, arm or body either... just makes the focus on the face/expression much stronger... trust me, it works!

Anyway... once again, well done to all the ladies who took part on Tuesday at Bungay.

Beginners Taster Workshop - Scrapbooking

Well the Adult Learner's Scrapbooking Workshop which I held on Tuesday afternoon went well, with everyone making at least one, and some making two pages in less than an hour and a half!

So well done ladies!

Here are some of the layouts - some of them are not finished (second pages were taken to finish at home!), but everyone got stuck in to the cutting and sticking and, for beginners, made some lovely layouts!

I will post the remainder of the photos tomorrow.

Sadly it was all a rush at the end and I didn't take any names to put with the photos, and a couple of the ladies had to leave promptly (collect children from school, etc!) so I was unable to take a photo of their pages.

Making your own Scrapbooking background paper

I don't know if you remember, but I posted a blog entry about some really colourful stamps I had bought? Link to the post here.

Well I decided to use them as a background for one of the pages in my "hanging concertina (Accordian) Album" that I mentioned in the last post.

After soaking them all off their backings and drying them, I arranged them all on a piece of paper and then placed a sheet of acetate over the top and flipping it all over carefully, scanned it in.

The result is a reusable and very colourful background paper about 6x6" in actual size. Of course you can do this with anything, such as labels, tickets, menus, timetables, etc. Just make a pleasing collage and then scan it in (or just colour photocopy it).

And then you will have a background that is unqie to you. It's helpful to do this if something you want to include in a layout is actually bound into a book that you don't wish to destroy. Just use the same method. Scan it in, or just photocopy it and then make a collage by positioning your other items over the scanned image, then rescan with all your other items in place.

Of course, unless you have a large format printer, these backgrounds will be for A4 (up to 8x8") maximum, but you can always have a border on a 12x12!

Oh and by the way... the little bow embellishment... one of a pair of earrings. I cut off the stem at the back and it makes a lovely "quality" embellishment!!

Quick Mini Scrapbook Album

Here, as promised, are the photos for the mini (4x4") scrapbook album.

Below I have listed the "Reminders/Instructions" for the album as given in a hand out to the ScrapBuddies Group in September.


One point of note as to the reason for making up the pages complete and then sticking them onto the album pages is that all the items such as brads and eyelets, etc that go through the paper are ultimately covered by the pages of the album.


Thus you not only have neat back to back pages, but your pockets are not obstructed either.


One little touch I quite like to do, if I have the right photo, is place a picture on the back cover which is a picture taken behind the subject... usually people (kids!).


You can see this in the photo of the back cover... one of the children (washing my car yey!!) has her back to the camera.




Reminders
· Print and/or sort your photos – (print loads onto one A4 sheet)
· Cut paper (160gsm ish) ie not think card to 8x4” (4 pieces)
· Fold in half and staple
· Stick middle pages together to form a pocket and then the other 2 pages either side
· Choose your papers and sample embellishments NOW and place beside you (like a mini kit)
· Cover your Covers!
· Make up tag inserts x3 (3¼”w x 3½length) Note – embellishments will catch when sliding into pocket
· Cut 4x4” background sheets for each page.
Can use up scraps for this, backgrounds don’t have to the same throughout, DPS can be effective, use plain and patterned paper.
· Place all 8 “page backgrounds in front of you in DPS’s and place pictures and embellishments, when happy “stick items to backgrounds.
· When pages finished, adhere to book.

TIP – cover unwanted text graphics with placement of photos and embellishments.
TIP – you can also “paint” backgrounds using dry brush technique with poster paints/acrylics.

NOTE - (DPS = double page spread)

A quickie Post

Now for those of you that know me personally... you will know why this is just a "quickie" post.

I just wanted to stay in touch even though I currently have no access to my trusty PC!

Which is why there were no pictures with the last post. I do like to include at least one image with each post, but sometimes, it is just not possible to do so. However, I will have access again shortly and then will be able to upload some pictures! Hoorah!!

However, until then here is just a mini TIP for you...

If you are a beginner and planning to buy some stamps (the ones you stamp images with!) I would advise that you gofor acrylic ones. In other words not the wood mounted ones. This is especially important if you are planning on investing in some alphabet stamps.

The reason...

...because you can see precisely "where" you are about to stamp your image in comparison to other things around it because your mount is transparent. And because you can create a word straight onto the stamping block and test it out before stamping the real thing, thus allowing for adjustment, creating a stamped word(s) nicely spaced. Also and for some most important... they are a LOT cheaper.

I believe that the days of wood mounted stamps are severely numbered.

Circle Journals and Tag Books - what are they?

I have been in discussion with my new team on UKScrappers about Circle Journals (CJs). I thought I would post basically what I have explained to them here, as I am often asked about them and what they are.

So here is a link to a set of photos of a circle journal which I did with my ladies at the Scrapbuddies January crop.Normally a CJ is started by one person and then posted to the next and the next and so on, but instead of sending it around everywhere, we made the pages there and then (at the crop) and I put them into the book (just stuck the pages back to back). The way we share the book is that I posted these pictures on the website and they can borrow the book if they wish - to show family and friends etc.However, for those of you who don’t know what it’s all about…

The person starting the journal makes the basic blank book/album. That person then makes the covers and inside DPS (double page spread) explaining the content of the book (ie, the theme of the book. In this case it was “Likes and Dislikes about Christmas”).

That person also needs to provide a "sign in" page for each participant to place their identification (photo/words/whatever). And of course make a DPS of their own. It is then sent on to the next person who makes their DPS on the next available pages and also "signs in" on the designated pages.CJs can be any size, but are quite often 6x6 ish!UKScrappers have CJs on all the time in groups of 10 people and so if you are in one of the official CJ groups, you start one off and so do the other 9 people.

On a set date you all have to have finished your contribution and post the CJ on to the next person on the list (to your left as it were!!) each time.

It can take the best part of a year to complete and the reason for that is that if there are 10 of you and you move the journals around every 3-4 weeks - that's 30-40 weeks before you get your completed journals back!

If there is a group of you, a crop group or just a few friends who want to do this, it is great fun. But if the reason to do one is to create a book about all of you (so you can get to know each other a little better) then perhaps a better alternative is to make a tag book.

Each make up a tag about yourselves including some specific info like name, place where you live, who you live with, pets, age, some favourite things maybe, and you made 10 identical ones, you could all end up with an identical tag book each ! As long as you are all working with the same tag template (size especially!!!!) then it should be a breeze!

Scrapbooking Albums - 6 Tips for Beginners

I had a conversation with a lady recently, and it is not the first time I have heard this...

But she mentioned that she had started into the world of scrapbooking because she wanted to make an album for her 2 sons. She found the first album really hard going, and like many people, started with the oldest photos first.

Luckily, she was advised that the best way was not to try to do it all in chronological order, but to scrap the big events first. This helped and on putting the pages together (12x12 album - which I always think is a very difficult thing for beginners to do anyway) the pages dovetailed into one another nicely.

Unfortunately, the person who gave her the advice was a consultant of one particular company and so this lady had the constraints of only really being able to use one company's designs. Again a difficult thing for a beginner to do.

However, my advice to all beginners is:

1. DON'T attempt a whole album - start by laying out a single page, then another and then another.


2. Start with your most recent photographs - these memories are fresh in your mind and journaling comes much more easily.


3. If you are doing older photos, then concentrate on the layout leaving space for journaling - or even put your notes/journaling on the back (if only for posterity's sake)


4. Try to start on an 8x8 layout - there isn't so much blank space to cover than 12x12 and the picture takes up more space and has more impact - it's just not so daunting.


5. If you really want to make an album - start by making a paper bag book or a 6x6 album bound with book rings or even ribbon, pages are filled a lot quicker and subsequently your album is finished a lot quicker - this gives you enthusiasm to do more and bigger albums.


6. If you get stuck in a rut when doing an album on a specific theme (like a particular person's album), stop trying and create a layout about something completely different, this will free you from the constraints of your album and let your creativity flow, it should jump start your album pages again.

I love doing paper bag albums of a specific event, I scrapped my last holiday which was a week in Majorca. I will upload the photos of it shortly. But you only need about 12 photos you can make more journaling for the pockets and store other photos inside these pockets too, just add some papers and embellishments, keeping it simple and there you have it.

There are so many ways of creating little mini albums with which I always recommend beginners start.

When I have given a demonstration and the attendees have then made a mini album in a matter of hours, they are always so pleased with what they have achieved and that always makes me happy!

Let me leave you with this question...

Do you really have to make the whole album look the same - why not create layouts of all different styles and colours and then put them in the album?

Essential Tools for Scrapbooking – Number 2

Scalpel and Steel Rule

Continuing the “Essential Tools” series of blog posts here I want to extol the virtues of my scalpel and steel rule.

Mundane you may think… but at the end of the day, they are very simple, but effective tools of the trade.

I have always used a scalpel myself, but you could lump any suitably sharp craft knife into this category. I just prefer my scalpel because I tend to hold it as if holding a pen, especially for precision cutting around letters, etc, whereas the more bulky craft knives have to be held differently.

Now I know most of you out there have paper trimmers and guillotines and indeed, so do I, but you can’t beat the precision of an extremely sharp blade running down the side of a steel rule to give a really crisp cut.

Now, we shouldn’t forget the cutting surface of course! I have found an A3 sized cutting mat the most useful. A4 is just too small and A2 is too big for most tables/desks.

Useful TIP… the “self healing” cutting mats are great for almost everything, but if you want to cut an intricate design, for instance a title, then use a glass cutting mat.

No… don’t go and buy something special, I use the back of a glass chopping board! I found it absolutely useless (not to mention very noisy) as a chopping board, but it’s fantastic for cutting round corners, etc!

The blade of your knife doesn’t sink in to the glass mat as it does with a self healing mat (ideal for steadying the blade for straight lines) and it’s this that allows you to swivel the paper easily as you cut. It does blunt the blade more quickly, but it’s worth it when you achieve a lovely title with nice crisp edges!

Essential Tools for Scrapbooking – Number 1

We all talk of stash… the huge mountain of stuff we have acquired since we began to scrapbook. The reference is usually referring to papers and embellishments is it not?

Sometimes it includes the odd “special tool” but stash mostly refers to our lovely bits and pieces that make the visual experience we like to call a Scrapbooking Layout.

Well we often overlook and frankly, take for granted, our trusty tools – those tools that we use every day without thinking about them. So I have decided to dedicate a little blogging space to discuss these various bits of essential equipment and I am starting with my trusty…

pH Tester pen

Oh how that has come in handy over and over again. Now if you are like me and feels it’s all part and parcel of crafting to find the bargain alternatives to the “official” supplies, then you too will have delved into the depths of various non-scrapbooking supply shops and found little gems of possible scrapbooking embellishments and papers or cardstock.

Or, even better, have found various bits that you already have in the house.

The pH tester pen comes into it’s own for the budget scrapper. There have been many a material that I have thought worthy of adhering to my scrapbooking layout, only to whip out my pH pen and watch the colour go from purple (which means it’s not acid) to transparent (which means it is VERY acidic) in a split second! “Blink and you miss it” sort of thing!

“Woah,” I say to myself, “can’t use that then!” Which isn’t strictly true, because if it is a particularly attractive piece of paper or something, then I decide to use it on a greetings card instead - not as much longevity in their lifetime is there?!

An eye opener for me was the item in which I was storing my paper and various other “flat” items. This was an expanding file. It was foolscap size and was brilliant because I could put all my paper in there (12x12 included) separated into one colour for each section. I could pull it out to sit on the desktop for easy access when in use, but I could also squeeze it together to a reasonable width to transport to a crop. By the way, I like the fact that the paper sticks out above the top of the container because it’s much easier to flick through the contents – with a 12x12 paper container you have to keep lifting everything up slightly to view it.

Anyway, I digress…

The storage solution was great apart from one thing……it was made of paper (Manilla), and yes, you’ve guessed it was REALLY acid – I hadn’t even taken the pen from the item when the mark disappeared! It couldn’t have been more acid!

The upshot of this is that I bought two smaller versions (couldn't find one large one for a straight swap) of the desktop expanding file (from Woolworths at £2.99 - 13 pockets each) but this time they are made of plastic! My paper is safe!

My trusty pH pen also showed my mum that all the “swatches” of wallpaper she had collected (for something else initially) that she was giving me for scrapbooking, were mostly too acid to use.

The solution to that was to use a photocopy of the original wallpaper!

And some of the paintings my daughter “paints” (ha ha) at nursery, come home on acid paper and others are ok. Significant because I occasionally use them as backgrounds.

So, if you don’t already own one… go get a pH tester pen, it can be revealing!

Beginners Scrapbooking workshop

I am holding a demo and workshop at one of the local libraries (Bungay, Suffolk) on Saturday 4th August (2-4pm).

I held a workshop at the end of last year at another local library and we had a number of ladies turn up, of varying ages and abilities. I made a small kit for each of them and they paid £2 for it, only to cover my costs - the demo/workshop was free.

I really enjoy teaching (adults) and seeing how people are "chuffed" (pleased) with their accomplishments at the end of the workshop.

I show them a particular layout design and, I have to say, I expected them to just copy it verbatim, but I was really pleased that each one of them made their own adjustments and at the end of the 2 hour session, all participants went home with their unique version of the demo layout. And they all went away surprised at how easy scrapbooking can actually be when given a little guidance to get them started.

I really want to express that scrapbooking is one of those arts/crafts (whatever you want to call it) that can give someone, who thinks they are not creative at all, a real boost from the knowledge that they can actually create something lovely. And that scrapbooking - the modern way - can REALLY enhance their photographs.

The good thing about scrapbooking is that YOU get to keep your work. I used to make other crafts to sell, which I actually found difficult at times, because of the amount of time and my creativity that had gone into that particular project. With the advent of digital photography at least we can take snaps of our projects before giving things away (like mini albums and cards).

I wish I could teach scrapbooking everyday!

The picture is the 8x8 layout of the first workshop I held when starting up the Scrapbuddies crop. The dog is my dearly departed "Badger" and the words inside the tag (which opens) read...

"Badger...alias Squidge... alias Little Man"

and

"My Darling Badge... How I miss you so."

Why we should Scrapbook ourselves! – Part 2

Scrapbooking Layouts – A Very Personal Journey

Carrying on from Part 1 about actually trying to take a decent picture of ourselves, I thought I’d mention the printing of such photos!

Having finally got around to taking some photos of myself in the mirror, I then started to feel a little self-conscious about having them printed by someone else! Well you know… I felt they would think me vain! In truth, why should they be bothered. But, and this is more important, I shouldn’t let myself be bothered about what others may, or may not think of me… something with which scrapbooking is helping me (more about that in another post).

Anyway, initially I thought I could print these self portrait photos out myself of course, but my printer at the time wasn’t really up to the job! So I ended up taking a disc of the photos down to my local shop where there was a Kodak Instant Processing Booth. It was here that I printed my first self portrait pictures and those are the ones you can see on the layouts in my first post on this subject.

I found I could print them out at the booth in relative privacy, and the quality was good, certainly a lot better than my printer at the time.

After creating my first self portrait page “It’s My Life” I gained a little more courage to actually get some more photographs printed by a photolab and was pleased with the results.

You may well be feeling a similar sense of self-consciousness about taking pictures of yourself… but I assure you, it is possible to shoot and print them in relative privacy, even if you don’t print them at home.

By the way… a little tip for those of you struggling a bit with how to print your photos.

I was having a conversation about this with my mum. She was struggling to use the program which came with her camera to view and print her photos. She had managed to print a couple, but they were large and printed right in the middle of an A4 sheet of photo paper (which isn’t particularly cheap) and of course it wasted all the white space around the edges.
Now… there are packages out there for fiddling with and printing photographs, but for a large percentage of home users… all they want to do it print the picture (or pictures) onto a piece of paper.

So here is my tip for successfully printing one or more photos onto a sheet of A4 paper, to get the most value for money out of your sheet.

Use your word processor.

I use “Microsoft Word” and my Mum uses “Lotus”. But most word processing packages are very similar. This is what I do.

In Word, I bring up a blank sheet of paper and reduce the margins just enough so that they are within the printer’s range. I take them down to about 4mm top, left and right and about 7mm at the bottom.

I then insert the first photograph I want into the “piece of paper” on the screen. It always brings the picture in full width (so it may initially take up the whole page) but all I do is click on a corner of the picture and drag it towards the middle to reduce it’s size. Now I can use the crop tool to trim it how I want it, and I can also adjust the contrast and brightness too. I also have the facility to change the image to black and white.

I use this method of printing for most of my photos. It is especially good for printing a load of photos for a mini album or something like an exploding box. I can manage about 12-15 pictures of approximately 5cm square (2”) on one A4 sheet and there is very little wasted paper!

If you want to have an exact measurement for your photos, ie all the photos cannot exceed 5cm width because the exploding box pages are only 5½ to 6cm wide anyway, you can go into “properties” for each photo and specify the height or width and, hey presto, the other measurement is automatically calculated for you.

Just click to the side of the picture to insert another picture beside it and so on.

So … now you can photograph yourself and… you can print lots of them using your printer… but the great part about printing them at home is that (also in Word) you can “flip” the images so that the photographs are no longer mirror images. Particularly important if you cut out the camera from the shot!

If you print using a photolab… unless you have fiddled with each photo to flip them before saving them onto a disc, you will end up with mirror images (of course!). All ok, but that’s not how others see you.

"Interesting to see what others see..."

It’s actually quite interesting to see the flipped image of yourself… it’s not how you are used to seeing yourself in the mirror, but it is how other’s see you, and strangely it takes a little time to get used to it. No-one has a symmetrical face and I for one, have a side parting!!

My profile picture on this blog, was achieved by doing the above. The slight difference is that I opened it in a photo imaging program to crop, reduce and flip it.

So… have I given you any more incentive to try self-portrait photos?

I have also achieved some nice shots of my daughter and I together using the “mirror technique!

Part 3 will be about how you can scrapbook yourself… now that you’ve taken some photos! LOL!

A bit of Planning before the Event!

I was traveling around the “ether” again last night and I came across this post.

Although the information is targeted at people making a gift album, it is actually relevant for all our scrapbooking layouts really. Goes back to “a little bit of planning goes a long way”! How many times have you said to yourself – “oh I wish I had taken a picture of …”. What’s more, it’s worth photographing what you might call “the ordinary things”. Because oddly it’s those things that will bring back the memories in years to come.

“… Planning a Gift Album Before the Event
by Nicole Humphrey

Gift albums are such a special item to give. They are also the easiest scrapbooks to make. Some people disagree, but they take less time to plan and complete than an entire album, and the memories and feelings that they can evoke in the recipient, are priceless and timeless.

There are no set of rules when planning, selecting or creating your gift album, however one thing is true, planning ahead can make a world of difference.

Perhaps you are planning on making a school year gift album for your child, or your child's teacher, or maybe you are planning a vacation gift album for a dear friend or relative that will accompany you. The ideas for gift albums are endless and will be discussed in another article, but for now, we are focusing on planning ahead.

Typically, the theme is the easiest part of creating the album. You might want to commemorate a friendship, or highlight certain special places you've been together. When setting out for these events, with camera in hand, having some idea of the types of photographs you wish to capture, can really help.

Let's pretend you are going on a special vacation with your friend. Before you leave, you might have an idea of some of the sites you plan to visit, or perhaps some of the activities you plan to participate in. Grab a piece of paper, a pencil and a quiet place and think about your destination. Will you be eating out for most of your meals? Will you be staying in a hotel room together? Perhaps you both enjoy red wine, and will have a glass before retiring for the evening.

All of these events are perfect for pictures. When you plan your vacation, try to plan a few pictures around what you will be doing. If you eat at restaurants, exclusive to the area, don't hesitate to ask the server to snap a photo of the two of you, enjoying your meal. In your mind, you might wish to remember special conversations, funny moments or just how you are feeling at that moment in time. When you return to your hotel room, jot those memories down while they are fresh. This will help when journaling in your gift album.

When you finally sit down to scrapbook, you will have a nice variety of photographs, many planned, and some great journaling to add to your pages. And if you planned ahead, you won't forget any of the pictures either, so everything you wanted, will be right there and ready. Oh, and don't forget to enjoy your vacation. …”

So… there you are – some great ideas. Although it all may sound a bit complicated, if you think about it at home and write notes beforehand, you should enjoy your holiday more because you don’t need to worry about not getting the right pictures!

Can’t get any more minimalist than that!!

I had to create a couple of birthday cards today for a couple of “in-laws”.

The first, for a woman, fairly traditional style and, as I have been doing Page Accents this weekend with the Scrapbuddies Crop, I thought I’d stay with the theme.

So turning to some scraps, I came up with a card.

I did use a printout from my PC using some free downloads of digi scrapbooking, and placing them into Word… bit of a challenge but I managed it! I am currently waiting for my Photoshop Elements 5 to arrive so that I can dip my toe into the world of digital, possibly combining that and traditional “touchy feely - cut and stick” scrapbooking layouts.

Something for Free - always a good sign
I have to say thank you to shabbyprincess.com for the free downloads… you should check out the site, there are lots of free bits and pieces including full kits… very generous and ideal for starting into digital scrapbooking layouts.

I used a couple of items from the “Festival” kit - a "Swirlie frame" on top of the "paper sack" background, upon which I added a text frame. This is the quote mounted in the middle.

Now then… the second of the two cards… bit of a story there!

This card is for my brother-in-law Neil. When we were visiting a year or so ago, my sister-in-law, Claire, was very interested in what I had brought with me to show as to what I get up to in my spare time (for spare time, read “enforced creative time” – I don’t know anyone who has “spare time”… do you?!!).

Anyway, my brother-in-law, bless him, commented that it was all a bit “Arty-Farty” as far as he was concerned. Of course we (my husband and I) have been having digs about this comment ever since!

I have, since then, sent a fully crafted card to his wife, and two daughters… and now it’s his turn! There were two ways I could have gone with this, one was to really over-do-it, and the other was to really under-do-it!

As you can see I chose the latter! Can’t get any more minimalist than that!!

Inside the card is a little bit of writing at the very top of the card and the usual ‘to and from’ stuff tucked into the bottom right hand corner… the rest is completely blank! I think he’ll see the funny side!!

Page Accents - good exercise in Not "Over Thinking"!

I was thinking last night, whilst preparing my demonstration for this afternoon's crop, that it is actually helpful for people to watch the process of making scrapbooking layouts. By this I mean the process of how I make the various choices for what goes on a page and where.

To this end I try to show my notes and/or sketches and practise pieces in order to convey how I achieved a particular item on my scrapbooking layout.

This month’s crop subject was Page Accents.

I think these items are particularly useful for using up all those scraps we have piling up after a project. They are great for using up the bits and pieces left over, such as odd alphas, stickers, die cuts… in fact anything.

They can be used for Scrapbooking layouts, but also for cards. They are home-made “toppers” if you like.

A good way to approach the subject is to gather a few bits together and then make up a page accent without anything in particular in mind. It frees the mind, just to put a few papers, stickers and other embellishments together for their own sake and not to try to match things to a photo.

I have found that a page accent I had already made, actually matched a photo perfectly and all I added then was a background and some journaling. (see picture above)

Page accents are ideal as a quick fix for pages… so a scrapbooking layout would actually only include a background, a photo and the page accent… hey ho… you’re done! And if your picture is black and white, you can make up the page even quicker as you’re not dictated to by the colours in the photograph!

Some people find it difficult at first to stop trying to “match” what they are making to particular page they may have in mind. I call this “over thinking” and it is something of which we are all guilty.

The beauty of Scraps

The beauty of using our scraps is that we aren’t using our precious “save that for a special page” papers and embellishments and therefore we should feel a more free to experiment and make the page accent purely for the sake of it.

A good way to do this is to use some papers you may have received as a free gift with a magazine or similar. I have a number of papers (usually in collection of 6 at a time) which I gain from Scrapbook Inspirations each month.

A lot of the time they are collections of papers I would not ever choose for myself, but as they are ready-made collections of complimentary colours and designs, I make use of them to get me thinking outside of my usual “comfort zone”. I can usually find embellishments, etc to match them from the “left-overs” of packs which I have bought.

In this way I have 'made' myself think

differently and it can be satisfying

to see the end result has worked well.

For things like page accents, whether for scrapbooking layouts or cards, it often pays to make use of free goodies that wouldn’t necessarily be your “usual” style, just to see what you can achieve.

So I urge you to pull out a few papers, a couple of embellishments, and maybe some ribbons and just make up a page accent or two just as an exercise in a little free thinking.

The magazine I mentioned earlier, Scrapbooking Inspirations, does have a regular feature at the moment regarding Page Accents and they are a good source of ideas for getting you started.

Visit my Scrapbuddies site to see how some of the group got on with their Page Accents.

A little bit of planning goes a long way!

I was talking with my mum recently about what we would do in the way of scrapbooking layouts when we next got together at the end of this month.

I go and stay with her for a few days with my 3 year old daughter every 5-6 weeks “ish” and we like to do some scrapbooking layouts together. The trouble is that we can’t get stuck in to anything until my daughter has gone to bed!! I can hear all those mothers out there nodding their heads in agreement!

Then we eat our meal and tidy up, but by the time we get the stuff out all over the table and begin it’s already starting to get late and we end up going to bed in the early hours. But also, what usually happens is that my mum gets “the boxes” out (you know the ones… the large boxes of old photos and boy, there’s hundreds in there!) and proceeds to start sifting through them to decide which ones to put on a scrapbooking layout. Of course, time ticks by as she reminisces and basically by the time she starts a layout, she can’t keep her eyes open!

Sound familiar?

A bit of Planning

So apart from arranging to eat with my daughter earlier in the evening to make the most of child-free time, I told my mother, “You need to do a bit of planning. Go through your pictures before my next visit and choose which ones you would like to scrap. Just choose a few pictures or groups of pictures. Then resist the urge to get “the boxes” out!”

“I’d like to scrap some of the pictures of the girls [recent photos of my daughter and her cousins],” she replied, “but there are so many old photos I should do, and then there’s all those of my mothers, it’s a bit overwhelming.”

Now this is a comment I have heard before, and felt myself.

We feel we should give equal attention to every picture in our huge stack of photos and the task seems so daunting that we don’t even start a scrapbooking layout. And there is also the fact that we are adding to the pile all the time with new photos of events, children, pets and basically… Life!

I made the same suggestion to my mum, as I have to other people when asked “where do I start?”…

Firstly, don’t try to scrap your old photos first, just because they “came first”! Start with some recent pictures that you “want” to scrap. Not only will the memory be fresh in your mind for journaling purposes, but they are usually more exciting photos than the “old” ones and are more likely to get the “creative juices” flowing.

There are various ways to sort your photos and various ways to scrapbook them, these are just a few!

Sorting those photos

1. Chronological order.
Now if we are talking about the old photos, you may not actually know in what year order they go, so sort into “rough decades”. If you have (or can find out) the details of who is actually in the photos all well and good, but it’s not always possible, so don’t worry as you don’t have to journal anything specific on a scrapbooking layout, if at all.

2. Sort by Occasions

Weddings, birthday parties, new year’s and the like, great sets of photos for a single scrapbook layout or a even mini album if there are a number in the set.

3. Themes

Themes are great for mini albums, ie, paper bag books (although do watch the acid content of some paper bags) or concertina albums, or tag books, the list is endless actually. Themes for scrapbooking layout can be…
Sports for a particular family or even a specific family member if they have been particularly sporty through their life.
Clothes changing through the decades.
Couples - showing photos of couples through the ages
Siblings – group shots of brothers and sisters together
Houses – pictures of different family homes
Pets – self explanatory!
A child’s firsts - self explanatory!

TIP 1 – if you find one particular picture could be useful for a number of Themes, scan it and use the scan (or parts of it) for other scrapbooking layouts/albums. For instance you may only have one photo of Auntie Marge and Uncle John standing in front of their house with their pet dog! It covers 3 of the above themes!

TIP 2 – if your original “old” photograph is too big for your layout, and you don’t want to physically cut it up (crop it) then scan it, or photocopy it and crop the copy to use on the page/album. You can store the photo in a pocket on the back of the page.

4. Sort by individuals

Span the lifetime (thus far) of a particular person, or maybe just a crucial period of time in that person’s life.

Scrapping those photos

My scrapbooking layouts are in all sorts of sizes, it just depends how the mood takes me and what the photos “tell me”. I think the most satisfying for me are mini albums, such as paper bag books (which are great for storing extra photos by the way), 6x6 albums made from card and book rings, 4x4 concertina books, etc. With a small amount of paper, the photos and a handful of embellishments your album takes shape really quickly.

So try not to be overwhelmed by your numerous boxes of photos… you don’t have to scrap them all, just pick out the ones you like and get started. Remember you can always store similar pictures in a pocket with the pages. Dive on in..!

5 ways to find Free or Discount Scrapbooking supplies

There is a wealth of scrapbooking layout supplies out there and more being invented every day. But the cost of these things can mount up pretty quickly and so here is a list of tips for making your scrapbooking budget go a lot further.

One. Firstly, although embellishments such as brads are supplied in all sorts of shapes and sizes by the scrapbooking industry, you can buy ordinary brass brads (paper fasteners as they are known) from stationers and discount stores for a fraction of the price. Always take a look at clearance bins for things like ribbons and fabric ends.

A good resource is the stockists/showrooms of blind manufacturers, they often want to give away their out-of-date books of swatches and these samples are really good as backgrounds for scrapbooking layouts. The picture shows a card made with pieces of blind material and the gold flower was pendant found at a charity shop.

Then there are the bouquets of silk flowers available at discount stores and garden centres. Just take the heads apart and you have instant blooms as embellishments. And an extra tip is to buy white ones because you can always colour them with your ink pads to the exact colour you want.

Two. I have found various items at charity shops, for instance, costume jewellery which I have used on cards and scrapbooking layouts. I have bought packs of used stamps for next to nothing and found loads of buttons too.

Then there are the car boot and garage sales. You can discover little items for embellishing scrapbooking layouts, for instance sewing box contents like measuring tapes can be useful. Small metal washers and other little items from the tool boxes are great for “manly” pages.

Three. It does pay to organise your supplies. In that way you can see what you have already got and only need to spend money on specific things. A standard concertina folder (or expandable folder) is very useful. I keep all my 12x12 layout papers and card stock in colour groups with smaller size paper and scraps in clear plastic folders within the same colour range. It means that I have all my available paper all together at my fingertips.

Of course with all our stash we still want and need more, but keeping them in an orderly fashion reminds us of what we already have so that we don't duplicate. I have also made a “swatch book” of all my ribbons using a page per colour and beside each ribbon a note of which shop I bought it from… because they all stock slightly different ribbons! In this way I know exactly which shop to go back to in order to refresh my supply.

My buttons are stored in clear plastic bags with a colour tag attached to the top. They are all kept in a box. When I need a particular colour I just reach for the tag and pull out the bag. I can then see all the buttons clearly and so can choose with ease the ones for my scrapbooking layout.

My embellishments are kept in various clear boxes with lids. Some chocolates come in clear boxes which are great for storage (any excuse eh!?). Some sewing shops stock boxes with compartments inside for pins etc… these are very useful and can be less expensive than ones specifically made for scrapbooking.

I have found keeping lots of small boxes more convenient as they are more versatile for packing into my “rolling toolbox” to take on crops. Mine is a standard toolbox and therefore a LOT cheaper than a specific scrapbooking one and serves me well.

Four. Use your scanner/colour photocopier to copy fabrics such as clothing, for backgrounds. Things that give good textures are items such as towels, and the range of colours is brilliant nowadays too!

Five. Search Google and other engines for “free fonts” and “free scrapbooking” Find free fonts to download, free templates and even if you are not a digital scrapbooker, you can make use of thousands of free digital scrapbooking supplies, such as background paper, and embellishments, simply print and cut out.