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.

Vellum… a girl’s best, err, second best friend.

Have you come to appreciate the full potential of vellum? Maybe not? I know I’m still learning tricks every day. Vellum, if used properly can be the best way to sneak in that extra something to your layout.

I love the way Vellum can allow you to add titles or journaling to your layout without completely hiding your beautiful background. There are many times I buy a page just because it’s so beautiful and I have a hard time covering it up, even if it’s to add a picture of my kids. So why would I want to clutter it up even more with titles, or journaling (as much as I might want to remember the exact details for that picture). Here’s the trick: VELLUM!

Once you’ve established the fact that you do want to use vellum, the tricky part is actually attaching it to your page. Since you can see right through it, this can be a bit of a challenge. Let me start by saying to all those who have never used vellum, regular glue, glue stick, etc just won’t cut it. Even after it dries, you can tell where you put the glue. Luckily, some brilliant person created vellum spray adhesive. If used properly, works wonderfully. I use Creative Imaginations Scrappers’ Spray. My other trick is to use brads or eyelets. That certainly does the trick. And don’t forget staples too.

Don’t get me wrong, I guess you can still use glue, double sided stickies or glue dots, but you’ll have to plan to cover it up on top to hide those spots. Try ribbons, buttons, pictures, (my chipboard letters :) I’m sure you can get pretty creative.

I’m sure you could think of some other ways of attaching the vellum, just make sure it’s sturdy.

And just on a side note, I’ve used an ink jet printer before and maybe I was in too much of a rush, but my words bleed on me since I used the adhesive spray. Maybe if I would have let my ink dry more it would not have happened to me. So please, learn from my mistakes. I also have a laser printer and love the quality it gives me (and I can use it right away too). Sure it’s only black, but hey!

So… some of the things I’ve used vellum for include (but are not limited to), making titles, journaling, using as a back ground, matting photos, and even laying the vellum right over the photo. On a side note, vellum rips very nicely so you can get a beautiful effect doing that for a background. Just make sure you’ve got something behind it, even if it’s just plain white paper. Another thing I’ve done which I just love is putting my journaling overtop of a picture. For a wedding page, I printed my wedding poem on white vellum and laid it over a picture of my wedding flowers. Just lovely!

And just remember, vellum doesn't just come in white, there's a variety of colors. So go ahead, give it a try!