Monthly Archives: April 2015

Derailed

Derailed

You know what makes writing harder? Gorgeous weather!

I live in the northeast US, and in the past two weeks, the warm weather has arrived. It’s been simply beautiful outside. Staying in my dark little corner and writing just hasn’t seemed anywhere near as important as getting ahead of the weeds this year.

So no amazing, or even just plain silly, scrapbooking insights for you this week.

Just this.

Don’t get so busy scrapbooking that you forget to live your life. The paper is patient. It can wait for a rainy day.

And, while we’re at it, how about a tulip just about to bloom for you?

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Happy Spring! (Or if you live on the other side of the world, Happy Fall!)

Defining Scrapbooking

Defining Scrapbooking

You think you know what a scrapbook is, right?

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It’s pictures attached to paper with personal stories, all gathered together in a book, right?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, scrapbooking is still the traditional scrapbook, with its acid free papers and embellishments and photos, but it can be so many other things as well.

We are going through a digital evolution, and it has changed scrapbooking as well.

Photo books with pictures and a few captions printed by someplace like Shutterfly or Snapfish? Yep, that’s a scrapbook.

Completely digital pages, that never get printed? Yep, those are scrapbook pages.

Blog posts with family stories and pictures? Yep, that’s a scrapbook

Short and sweet posts on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram that capture a moment in words or pictures or both? Yep. You’re scrapbooking.

There are so many people scrapbooking, who just don’t realize it. They think it has to look a certain way in order to be a scrapbook, but really, it can look like anything at all. A real scrapbook captures personal stories and pictures and ties them together. If you’re doing that in any medium, if you are documenting life, you ARE scrapbooking.

What do your scrapbooks look like? How are you saving your memories?

Kit Making Fiend!

Kit Making Fiend!

Apparently the Counterfeit Kit Challenge was just what I needed. After a bit of assembly, I have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR kits to work with now.

FOUR.

What does that say about the size of my stash?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

One of the things that inspired me the most about creating a kit was the idea of naming it. That helped me decide what kind of themed papers to add to the basic, more useful, multipurpose patterns.

So the first kit for you? Number one son saves the world:

E saves the day || noexcusescrapbooking.com

This kit was inspired by oldest’s love of maps, and the color palette took its cues from the Basic Grey sticker sheet on the left below.

e saves the day embellies || noexcusescrapbooking.com

Since I’m trying to use up stash, there are lots of partially used packs of embellishments and alpha stickers. This is the season of making them go away. (So I can get new ones eventually!)

Kit number two: Number two son has dastardly plans. Because well, they make him laugh, not because he’s actually evil or anything. 😀

s's dastardly plans || noexcusescrapbooking.com

This kit needed mustaches for twirling, and evil dolphins. Since I didn’t have any dolphins, I settled for whales and robots and an octopus and crab. This kit came closest to the original inspiration, with its emphasis on red and black and cream.

s's dastardly plans embellies || noexcusescrapbooking.com

Hopefully there are enough bits and pieces to make pages fun. The striped paper between the alpha sets is actually a sheet of washi paper. That should be fun to play with.

Kit number three: My nieces take over the universe. Because they could.

j & e take over the universe || noexcusescrapbooking.com

This kit called for rocket ships and secret hideaways and glittery tiaras. It’s a fun combination of elegance and playfulness and action. I think this one is my favorite.

j & e take over the universe embellies || noexcusescrapbooking.com

Once again, the large sheet of Basic Grey stickers helped narrow down the color theme.

The last kit, kit number four, has little bit of a music bent, since I’ll be working on pages for May’s ScrapHappy only LOAD, and we’re going with a musical theme for the month. Tentatively called Musical Memories, it may be the kit least inspired by the kit from A Beautiful Mess.

music memories || noexcusescrapbooking.com

This kit was built off the cassette and blooming tree paper. There are some older papers in this pile, most notably, the  papers from Becky Higgins Turquoise Project Life kit. Why does 2010 seem like it was so long ago?

music memories embellies || noexcusescrapbooking.com

Apparently, I’m going with yellow as the accent color for this kit. That should work, we’ll see how it goes.

You’ll be seeing pages from these kits a lot over the next few months, with May’s LOAD coming up.

Have you put together a kit or two or more? If you haven’t, don’t you think it’s time to put one together? It’s fun, and it will make your scrapping process so much faster!

Learning to Counterfeit

Learning to Counterfeit

Have any of you ever bought a kit from a kit club? There are hundreds of different kit clubs out there. (At least!) They all have different themes, and different ways of finding and assembling scrapbooking supplies, so there’s usually a kit club out there to suit everyone’s tastes and desires. (My personal favorite is Gossamer Blue. I love their style!)

(If you don’t know what a kit is, it’s a preselected group of scrapbooking supplies that you use to create pages. A kit club is a monthly subscription where someone selects the supplies for you.)

But what’s a girl to do when she’s trying to stick to a scrappy budget of almost zero dollars? How about making your own kit?

Does that sound intimidating? It doesn’t have to be. Choosing products from your stash to create your own kit can be fun and easy, especially if you use a kit from a kit club as inspiration. That’s the big idea behind the Counterfeit Kit Club.

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Each month the wonderful ladies at Counterfeit Kit Club choose a kit club kit to use as inspiration and create their own kits based on the kit club samples.

There’s no purchasing of supplies or kits. They build personal kits out of their own stash.

This month, they chose a kit from A Beautiful Mess.

It’s an interesting assortment of papers in different sizes, with a decidedly graphic designer bent. Lots of handwritten fonts and black and white patterns, with a few dashes of color and gold foil thrown in.

The folks over at Counterfeit Kit Club have a blog hop each month where they share their kit and talk about how the inspiration kit led to their kit. It’s a great way to start thinking about how to create a kit of your own.

You should check them out.

Me, I’ll be over here, pawing through my stash, pulling together a kit or two. I need to use up my stuff, and this will be a great way to do that!

 

 

Truth Scrap on Sale!

Truth Scrap on Sale!

Since I’ve been trying to save money this year, I haven’t gone to any of the True Scrap events this year. I’m feeling a bit left out and lacking in inspiration. *le sigh*

(And yes, I am channeling Pepe Le Peu today. My life is rather cartoonish.)

There’s good news for any of you who are interested in art journaling: Truth Scrap, the first True Stamp event of the year, is now available as individual classes. AND they’re on sale!

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From now until the 24th, individual Truth Scrap classes are on sale for $9.95 each, or if you want all 7 of them, you can enter the code “TRUTH” to get them all for $49.

After the 24th, the classes will go up to their regular price of $14.95. So, if you want to save at least a third off the list price, go buy a class or two or seven, right now!

Now to decide what I’m going to get, I’m feeling in need of a bit of inspiration, how about you?