Washi Tape Cards

Target has four-packs of Washi tape in the office supply section for only $4. Usually I'm too cheap to go for supplies like that, but for only $1 a roll, I thought I would give it a try. I bought the blue and green packs, but now I'm thinking I need to go back to buy the red! As far as I know this washi tape isn't acid-free, so I'm a little reluctant to use it in a scrapbook along with photos, so instead I did a little experimenting with some cards.

Here are my favorites that I created (sorry if this ruins the surprise to anyone I sent these to!)

I hope I can find more good deals on Washi tape because it is so fun to work with! Or I need to ask for some for my birthday - just look at all the gorgeous patterns that are listed on Etsy.

Graduation Cards

It's graduation season! I had a sister-in-law and brother-in-law graduating from high school and college, and here are the cards I made them:

For the top card I used my Storybook Cricut cartridge, and for the bottom I used the Simply Sweet cartridge, plus a free graduation cap SVG that I found online. 

Congrats Laurie and Dan!

Scrapbook Room

I plan to spend a lot of this wonderful 3 day weekend scrapbooking and getting caught up on projects (and of course cleaning my house. I really don't know how it gets so dirty during the week.). Since I have nothing yet to show you today, I will give you a little tour of my scrapbook room. Originally our second bedroom was going to be a guest room, but we never bought a second bed. Then it was going to be Dave's study, but he never used it for that much (he prefers the living room floor, or the dining room table, or my parents' back porch). Since the room was basically turning into a junk room, I decided my scrapbooking and I could take it over. 

Here is a look at the mess creativity happening on my table right now:

Here's a bigger look at the generally organized chaos. 

I even cleaned up this room for the pictures. Look at that uncluttered floor! 

(Anyone want that arm chair? We are giving it away for free!)

My sewing machine and some embossing supplies. (And our enormous printer! It's so big and ugly, but it prints things for super cheap, so I'm okay with it.)

My laptop finally has a home! My family was getting rid of this old TV cart, and it turns out to be perfect for my computer, cricut, external hard drive, and laminating machine. I love it. 

Wish I could say that filing cabinet is full of craft supplies! But sadly, no. 

Okay, now it's back to scrapping and cleaning. 

Using a Layout Sketch

Hello again! Sorry it's been so long.

Got a little bit of scrapbooking done this weekend, including this single page layout for Allison and Stephen's wedding album. I wanted to try going from a pre-designed sketch (never done that before; usually I just make it up myself as I go along). So I did some Google searching, and found the My Little Sketch Blook website, where Liz has created dozens of layout ideas to give some inspiration.

I had two horizontal 4x6's to work with, so that narrowed down my choices of sketches. In the end I chose this one for my inspirational starting point.

And here is what I came up with (sorry about the weird glare above Allison's head)

I left out some of the frills (including the butterflies. Wasn't a fan of those), but I did want to do some kind of flower in the bottom left corner. I used a Martha Stewart flower punch for that, and whatever yellow and beige paper scraps I had lying around. I added ribbon to the top, because it matched the paper perfectly so I couldn't resist. For the journaling circle, I punched out holes using a nail (I know, super scrapbook-y equipment, right?) and then used embroidery floss for the stitching (I have pretty much every color of the rainbow, from my old cross stitching days). For the title, once again I used my Cricut and Sure Cuts a Lot software. I'm just now figuring out all the cool things I can do with that program. 

I really enjoyed having a sketch to start from, so I'll be looking for some more sketch inspiration for other pages. Usually I try to fit so much more than 2 pictures to a page, and most sketches don't do that. But for Allison and Stephen's album I have plenty of room for pages so I'm not worried about squeezing all of them in. 

Later this week I'll show some of the cards I've made using Target brand washi tape! 

Mother's Day Cards

I can now reveal the cards I made for Mother's Day! I had some leftover hydrangeas from doing this project, so I used some of the remaining flowers for these cards. I'm still searching for the best adhesive for pressed flowers. Right now my laminating machine does a great job, especially for large groupings of flowers like this. Not sure if I like it so much for individual flowers, though.

Anyway, these were pretty simple to put together (except for the yellow one, which I did as a window card. That one was a little more complicated). A fun trick for printing on scraps of paper like I did in these cards, is to first print your title/sentiment/whatever on a regular piece of paper, then cut your separate piece of cardstock to whatever size you need, and then lightly tape that cardstock directly onto the words you just printed on the regular paper. (Make sure everything fits and is lined up the way you want it.) Then put that same paper through the printer again (printing the same document as before). This is a nice trick to avoid having to hand write anything! (Good to know for people with sloppy handwriting like me.)

It was also my in-laws wedding anniversary last week, so I made them this card as well:

This one was super easy and fun to put together: starting with a fun blank card, I added a border with flower punches and brads, and a small sentiment that I adhered using 3 dimensional sticky squares to give it some depth. 

Gingerbread Houses

Happy weekend! So far I've spent my weekend cleaning up my house (which was really overdue), taking care of a sick doggie, watching a cute family of ducks that live on the lake by my house, and reading this book:

Okay, I know I've read it about 50 times already, but it's just too good. Probably my favorite of the HP books. I got hooked on it again this morning and couldn't do anything else until I finished it. Now I'm tempted to start book 4, but not too tempted since it's one of my least favorites in the series (after #2). 

Here's my layout for today. It's from back in December when we decorated gingerbread houses. I finally overcame my fear of my sewing machine, and did some zigzag stitching. It took a few tries, and I'm still not good at figuring out the right tension, but it worked here! I've always wanted to do that. It's such a fun way to add subtle embellishing. I found a lot of good tips on how to stitch on paper here and here.

The paper is from a fun Paper Studio pack from Hobby Lobby. I really liked the patterns because they didn't scream Christmas, but they still give a Christmas-y feel. The title was done using my Cricut and free fonts I found in various places. 

Maine Roadtrip 2009

In only a few weeks my family will be in Maine for our summer vacation, and I can't wait! It's been 2 years since Dave and I have gone, so I'm especially looking forward to it. We haven't decided whether we are flying or driving yet. Flying would obviously be nice, and roughly a million times faster than driving, but I think driving has its advantages too. For one thing, you don't have to be as picky about what luggage you bring. Also, we could bring our dog. And it's possible to make the drive fun.

Back in 2009 when we drove up from Georgia, my sister Annie came along to keep us company. Her job wasn't to help me and Dave with the driving, but mostly to keep us awake and entertained during the drive. :-) We had a van back then so it was super comfortable and there was lots of room to spread out.

For this layout, I wasn't so much focused on the pictures, as on the story behind them. I didn't take many pictures during the actual drive up, yet I wanted to document the long trip. I liked the idea of having a map that showed how many states we drove through, and our actual route. Making that map was time intensive! First I had to find a map online that fit what I was looking for, and was big enough to fill up a 12x12 space, then I had to print it, cut it out, trace it onto my paper, and cut that out. Then I filled in the state lines, which aren't quite exact, but thankfully I'm not a perfectionist (or I was just to sick of it at that point to care).

The yellow letters were cut out using a Cricut machine. The stickers were whatever random ones I had in my very-random collection of stickers.

Maybe if we fly to Maine this year I'll do a parallel page that emphasizes how much quicker that is. :-)

Spring Layout

I am THIS close to finishing a super cool new layout, but sadly I didn't have it done in time for this post. It will be cool though, and I tried a new technique (successfully!) that I've been wanting to do for ages.

So instead of posting that one, I'm posting an old one from two (or three?) years ago. This one shows how easy scrapbooking can be, even if you don't have a lot of supplies. It's another one of those layouts that includes random photos that didn't warrant their own page. So I just put them all together under the heading "Spring Fun." I used colorful background paper, some coordinating solid green and yellow paper, stickers for the title, and some brads and ribbon scraps. The yellow paper under the words "Spring Fun" I stamped with green ink to give it an interesting background (I like that it looks like patterned paper, but nope it's just a stamp!).

One thing I really miss about living in Georgia is the spring bulbs--crocuses and tulips especially!

Oh! I must share a wonderful new tool I discovered the other day. You may have noticed how I like to pack (as much as possible) my pages with lots and lots of pictures (to me, the pictures are the point of the scrapbook). Well, I usually run into a problem since the majority of my pictures are 4x6, and you can only crop 4x6 pictures so much (and since I zoom so much in my pictures, cropping is usually very minor). I've always wanted to be able to print some of my pictures at a 2x3 or 3x4 size, which I know I can manage with photoshop, but wow is that a pain.

Photosheet solves that! It lets you put multiple pictures in a 4x6 sheet, then you can print it at any photo place for the normal price of a regular 4x6. Genius! (This would also be great way to save money on wallet prints, if you are needing those). This way I can print out tons more photos, some in smaller sizes, and still fit them all in my album. Plus it breaks up the 4x6 monotony! So if you have tons of adorable baby pictures, or maybe a million vacation pictures, this would be a great way to include them all without sacrificing too much space (or money).

I've got one to two super crummy layouts that I want to re-do. I think I'm going to use Photosheet reprint the pictures and include even more in the new layout.

Good Luck Card

I can finally reveal one of the cards I made over the weekend. My sister Annie is starting her dental hygiene program today. For the past year and a half she has been taking her prerequisites, getting awesome grades, and a few months ago she found out that she was accepted into the super competitive dental hygiene program. I'm so proud of her! :-)

So as today is her first day of classes, I wanted to make her a little encouraging "Good Luck" card. A few months ago I found these perfect Mrs. Grossman stickers, which apparently are now considered "vintage," as I found out through a quick Google search. (Someone is selling two tiny sheets of these stickers on ebay for $2.99! Crazy!)

The paper I used for the letters I got for super cheap at Tuesday Morning (never would have thought that they would sell scrapbook supplies, but they are actually awesome. You have to dig a bit--which I think is fun--and they don't have a big selection, but everything is marked way down.) I used my Cricut machine and Sure Cuts a Lot software to cut out the letters.

The whole family signed the card and we gave it to her last night at dinner. Here's to hoping she has a wonderful first day!

Friends

Happy Tuesday!

I've got another oldie layout to share today. (Life keeps getting in the way and preventing any new creations! Hopefully that will change tonight.)

Before we moved down to FL, Dave and I were living up in Georgia and were neighbors/co-workers with our best friends Aaron and Megan. We were so sad to leave them when we moved. I had a lot of random photos of us together that didn't really need a page of their own, but I wanted to scrapbook them nonetheless. So I ended up grouping together all the odd pictures into a page of their own.

Megan and I used to watch a lot of Friends episodes while we scrapbooked together, so I found a free font online to use as the title. My usual trick is to print out my title on normal printer paper, then rub the entire back side with a blunt pencil. Then I lay the paper (right side up) over wherever I want to letters to go, and carefully outline the lettering with a sharp pencil (or pen, or whatever). It helps to lightly tape the paper to your layout, to prevent any movement that could mess up the design. When I'm done and I've removed the printer paper, there's a light transfer left on the layout, which I outline and fill in however I want. This time I filled in the letters with a white pen. I use this trick all the time when I don't feel like printing something straight onto my layout, but still want to use a computer font.

Enjoy all these goofy pics!

Snow Day Flashback

As we are already roasting in the 90s here, I thought I would look back on some colder days. (I am working on some new projects, but I can't share them with the world because they are still secrets!)

This layout is from 2010 when we had a quick but heavy snow on Lookout Mountain. It ended up being only a few inches, but on the Mountain that's enough to shut everything down. Then the snow melted a little, and froze overnight, and we woke up to a crazy winter wonderland. We couldn't get down the mountain for church, so we spent the day with Aaron and Megan, and had some students over for lunch.

What's great about scrapbooking, is even though this wasn't necessarily a huge event in our lives (not a vacation, or a graduation, or a holiday), it is still a wonderful memory and now that I have these pictures and the page that tells the story, I'll always remember it.

The trickiest part of this layout was that I attempted to print on vellum paper. My printer did NOT like that. The ink wouldn't dry and stick, and it was frustrating. I eventually got it to work (if I remember right, the trick was to set the printer to the transparency setting and letting it dry for hours). I also tore up some plain white cardstock to resemble snow at the bottom of the page. Add some coordinating paper and some shimmery snowflake stickers, and you have a layout.

On a warmer note, my mom, sister, and I had a great time at the beach. Only a tad bit burned in a few places, but it was worth it!

Orlando City vs Philadelphia Union

Happy National Scrapbooking Day!! (No, I'm not making that up.) I was so excited to bring you this layout that I woke up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning to finish it up! (Okay, that is definitely not true. What is true is that once I woke up, I couldn't go back to sleep. So might as well scrapbook.)

Last February, the six of us went to see Orlando City play the MLS team Philadelphia Union play at the Citrus Bowl. I'm not a huge soccer fan myself, but even I thought this was an exciting game. They tied 1-1, but Orlando didn't score until the 92nd minute, and the way the crowd went wild made it feel pretty much like we did win. I even got a picture of the tying goal!

Instead of including any personal journaling in this layout, I saved the Orlando Sentinel write-up about the game. I also wanted to challenge myself to fit everything on to a single page layout, which was a bit tricky! I ended up having to toss some extraneous pictures, and cropping things really close. In the end, I like how compact everything looks.

I'm usually bad about doing this, but I'm trying to be better about labeling the names of people on the page. Not that I think I'm going to forget Matt and Melinda's (or my siblings') names, but I figure that down the road my kids/grandkids will probably appreciate knowing who everyone is!

Have a great Saturday! I'm off to the beach!

Fenway Park

I don't have a new layout to show you today (kick boxing wiped me out yesterday, and all I wanted to do last night was sit on the couch and watch tv), but instead I'm putting up one of my favorites pages that I've done.

Not sure if it's a favorite because of the actual layout, or because I really like how the pictures turned out, or because we had such a wonderful time that day. (Or maybe just because it's Fenway Park? I think that makes it automatically awesome.)

Anyway, a couple of summers ago, as Dave and I were driving back from Maine, we split up the trip by stopping in Boston to see Lianne. One night we spent seeing the Red Sox beat the Indians, and the next day we spent exploring Boston and the Freedom Trail. We had such a blast.

As for the layout, it's nothing fancy. My real focus here was to emphasis the pictures, and to try and fit as many of them as possible on the two pages. I really like the sparkly baseball stickers. It's surprising how difficult it is to find sports-related stickers that aren't designed for pages about Little League!

For the title, I downloaded a free Red Sox font. I couldn't find a font specifically for the Cleveland Indians, but I tried to get something as close to it as possible. The "Fenway Park" I colored in with a white paint-like marker.

I say that all I did last night was sit on the couch. Well, I did get up for long enough to take this super cute picture of my pooch, Suzie. Is this adorable or what?? 

Sneak Peek

Good morning!

Last night I finished a layout for Stephen and Allison's wedding album, so I thought I'd share it as a little sneak peek of the fun I've been having.

Every week I get fresh flowers on my desk at work--the leftovers from the flower arrangement on Sunday. Usually they are pretty dead and nasty by the time Friday comes around, but earlier this year we had a bunch of blue hydrangeas that still looked beautiful at the end of the week. (Probably because they had been in the senior pastor's office all week, and it's basically as cold as a refrigerator in there.)

I was so excited when I saw the flowers, since blue hydrangeas were part of Allison's bouquet. So I cut them up, pressed them in a book, 3 months later zipped them through my laminating machine, and voila--a beautiful embellishment to these even more beautiful pictures!

While You Were Sleeping

While we were in Chicago with Aaron and Megan, we tried to find as many filming locations as we could from the movie While You Were Sleeping. It is one of my family's all-time favorite movies. We always have to watch it around Christmas (usually Christmas Eve). It's become such a tradition for us, that it actually feels weird to watch the movie when it's not Christmas time. I think together my sister and I could quote/act out the entire movie.

Since we had a day to spend in Chicago, I wanted to see as many While You Were Sleeping-sights as possible. Unfortunately I didn't get any shots of the train stations, since you had to pay for a ticket to get into that area (and I'm too cheap for that). We were able to see a few places though--my favorite was the river walk along the Chicago River (if you've seen the movie, it's where Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock are walking back to Lucy's apartment after delivering the loveseat to Peter's apartment).

I always seem to have a hard time filling the last odd page in a scrapbook album. This one, however, was a perfect end to my 2010-2011 album. I used up some beautiful double-sided paper from October Afternoon (I just discovered their website and all their stuff is so fun!), and I added a little hand-stitching along the bottom, just for fun.

Thank you to Dave, Aaron, and Megan for being really good sports in dealing with my movie nerdiness. 

"Christmas Adam"

Sharing another layout that I did a few weeks ago. These were pictures of our Christmas celebration with my family. Since we were spending the actual Christmas day with Dave's family, my fam was nice and let us open gifts on December 23, or what we've always called Christmas Adam. (If you can't figure out why, it's the day before Christmas Eve.)

For a little explanation of the family traditions going on here: for Christmas lunch we always have appetizer-like food (everyone gets to pick their favorites, and it's always delicious). I try to take a picture of the food every year, and it's fun comparing what changes over the years. The paper my dad is reading is our "family journal" that my sister and I write at least once a year (we try to do it more often... so maybe twice a year). It's mostly full of inside family jokes, but it's always hilarious. Dad's smiling because he hasn't yet gotten to the article we wrote about him. :-)

And now about the scrapbook layout: I had a really fun pack of Christmas-themed paper, and I chose the red and turquoise for a little non-traditional Christmas color. Turns out I happened to have perfect ribbon to match too! The letters are cut out from my Cricut, and the journaling is stamped with brown ink.