Spring is Here!

With Spring comes many different reasons to celebrate. Between Easter, my son’s birthday, my daughter’s birthday and just the fact that summer is on its way and winter is over, what better reason is there to celebrate.

Besides, it was time to pull out those bright and festive papers. There are some great new papers out this season and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them and start cropping.

Some of my favourite of course, include Bo Bunny and of course there’s Three Bugs in a Rug. Match up some funky embellishments from YMBD Etsy site, and I’ve got some inspiring spring layouts I can’t wait to show off.

Organizing Your Scrapbooking Supplies (con’t)

4. Sorting my paper

New

I purchased an expandable scrapbook file folder that perfectly fits my 12x12 pages.
I categorized my pages by themes: spring, summer, fall, winter, boy, girl, Christmas, Halloween, birthdays, school… etc. These categories work best for me, so you’d have to figure out what’s best for you.

I also keep a section for just cardstock.

I find my file folder is great for crop outings. I just grab my case and go!


Scraps

I also have an expandable file folder for my scraps, but not a 12x12 one. It fits a full sheet length wise, but not in height. But I’m not too concerned since my scraps are usually not that large anyhow. I have the sections divided up by color: white, yellow, orange, red, pink, purple.. etc. I also keep a few sections for patterned paper, tho these are a little harder to divide up.

It’s so nice reaching for my folder, opening it up to the color section I need and digging through until I find the perfect color. And what a great way to save money. There have been many times that I’ve found just what I needed without having to cut up a brand new sheet for one little piece.

Hope this helps!

Organizing your Scrapbooking Supplies (con't)

3. Embellishments

I have to admit, I do fish. Although not as often as I would like. It's a great family activity, but my husband just raised his eye brows at me when he saw me dump out my tackle box and started organizing my scrapbooking supplies in it. You would be surprised how versatile these tackle boxes are. I organize my embellishments, which include embossing thread, buttons, metal embellishments, paper clips, gems and many other things. They are great for sorting all those little things you just can't scrapbook without. Most tackle boxes allow you to customize the size of the slot which is great! I've got 6 boxes so far, and my husband knows nothing would make me happier then to get another one. :)

I get so excited when I get a new tackle box. I crack open a bottle of wine and get comfy for an evening of sorting my embellishments and filling my tackle box.

I also have a tackle box full of brads (seperated by color) and and one for eyelets. It's so great to have these seperated so you don't have to dump them all out to dig for that perfect color.

Organizing your Scrapbooking Supplies

This will be a running post, so make sure you keep checking back.

I love to scrapbook and I find I enjoy it much more when I know where everything is. When my family moved into our new house, I tore everything apart and organized from top to bottom and this is what I came up with. I still have a spare bedroom being renovated into my hobby room, but until then.

1. Use Clear (see through) boxes.

I found these at Costco and they work beautifully. I can see what’s inside each of them so I really don’t have to label them. Which is really nice since I’ve got 3 for stamping tools alone. They nice very nicely, are sturdy and I can fit quite a bit in each of them.

2. Ribbons

Luckily, these clear shoe boxes fit my ribbon perfectly when they are on their side. I just stand them up side the box and have a little edge dangling over the edge. I just pull out the amount I need and cut! No need to even open the lid. This works best if you have enough to fill the box though. If you don’t have enough, all the ribbons will just go flying all over the place in the box.

Ready for St. Patrick's Day?

Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Growing up this day really hasn’t meant too much to me aside for the occasion to wear green on this day. Not being much of a beer drinker, the appeal of drinking green beer has completely escaped me.

When I went to college, I befriended a guy named Pat, who, low and behold, was born on St. Patrick’s day. What this some cruel joke played by his parents? He didn’t think so. He always had the best birthday parties!

Fast forward a few years, add two kids and an addiction to scrapbooking and you get to where I am now. I just LOVE coming up with new goodies to scrapbook with for St Paddy’s day.

So come on! Get in the spirit, wear some green, and someone drink a green beer for me. Lord knows I’ll never try one. And don’t forget to check out my special green goodies at my Etsy site! (see right)

Double Whammy!

Wow! What a day! Ok, now to be honest, I really don’t know if I’ve ever been featured in a Treasury before. I just don’t have the time to search through them all (and I keep forgetting too). But what a surprise I got today. Not only do I get featured in a Treasury (Thank you PeachCult!) with my Gold Tipped Gray Leaves Chipboard Letters but the Treasury makes it to the front page on Etsy!! I was wondering why my email started going nuts, I’m not used to getting those emails notifying you of a new sale.
And my messenger popping up from YMBD letting me know I was on the front screen. (Thank you! I would have never known otherwise)

What an amazing feeling! Ok, I’ve definitely been bite by the Etsy bug again. What a great way to get yourself motivated and keep moving forward.

My Guilty Pleasure

Ok, so everything scrapbooking is a guilty pleasure for me. I love creating beautiful pages about my family and friends. I’ve always admired those fancy stickers you can get (Jolees and other 3d stickers). They add such a beautiful finish to any page. Adding a lot of character and making it look fun. Since I scrapbook about kids, the page always has to be fun.

I have to admit, as much as I love these stickers, they sure are expensive. So from these stickers, I decided to try paper piecing. It takes a bit of time and effort, but the results are beautiful. But you think I can find sites that have a variety of paper piecing templates? At my cost? Free?

Know I can’t remember if I read it somewhere (so if I did, thank you for the idea!), or if I was actually brilliant enough to come up with the idea myself. (highly unlikely) So here it is: use coloring pages as your paper piecing template. A coloring page with lots of big open spaces would probably be a good way to keep your sanity in tacked.

Brilliant, isn’t it? You start with a base color, hopefully a color that the majority of the item is going to be. You trace the object on to your page and cut it out. You can use a light box or a window on a sunny day. If the page is too dark to see through, put the coloring page on top of the colored paper and using a pencil, trace along the lines on the coloring page. This will leave an indentation on the cardstock underneath. Then you can just over these indents with your pencil again. Now you can cut out your shape.

Now comes the tricky part. You need to trace all the smaller areas onto other colors of papers, cut them out and glue to this base color. For example: if you have a cartoon character you are working on, say Pablo (see picture), I started with blue. Then I traced out his tummy. But then I needed a blue bow tie, so I went back to my blue and cut that out and glued it on top of the yellow. I used a black marker to make outlines on the pieces and to draw in the lines that were originally on the coloring page. (see the foot?)

If you need to attach two pieces of paper together, you’ll need to make sure you leave some overhang where you can glue and attach the two pieces. Like the hat. I cut out the hat along the top, but left about an inch on the bottom so I could line up the hat perfectly with the head but still have some paper to put glue on to attach to the head.

(I sure hope all this is making sense) So give it a try! I know you won’t regret it.