Monthly Archives: July 2013

Jul29

Scrapbook Crop, Here I Come!

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Scrapbook Crop, Here I Come!

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Right now, I am packing for a full day crop hosted by a local scrapbook store/community. Normally I pack pretty quickly and easily, because I use a project based approach to scrapbooking away from home.

What does that mean? Let’s break it down for you.

When you use a project based approach to your scrapbooking, you assemble your supplies so you have everything you need to finish a particular project, like a baby album or travel album, all in one place. There are a few supplies I store this way: papers and embellishments I use for my children’s school of life albums, Christmas supplies. Most everything else I store based on type of supply or general theme or technique. Punches live in one place, alphabet stickers in another, and stamps are sorted by theme. (Have I mentioned I have a LOT of stamps?) Papers are sorted by color, paint supplies and coloring mediums have their own places.

When I go to a crop however, I ramp up the project based approach. If I haven’t updated my kids’ round up albums, I bring the school themed box. If it’s Christmas time, I start assembling or completing a Christmas album. If I’ve got a project in the works, like a wedding album or travel album I bring those supplies.

But sometimes, I have no project in the works. That happens to be the case tonight. I haven’t gathered together highlight photos for my kids’ highlight albums. I have no travel albums in the works. I am working on a summer album, but that’s all digital this time around.

The only project I have in the works is trying to use up all the letter stickers for the alpha sticker challenge. While I do have papers set aside, the subject matter for each page is so different, I have no idea how I’m going to choose embellishments and extra tools to bring along. This should be interesting.

There are some basics I will be bringing. Paper trimmer. Adhesives. Scissors. Ruler. Paper. Pens and markers. But the extras? This will be challenging. I’ll let you know how it went later this week!

Jul25

Mixing Old Product with New

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Mixing Old Product with New

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Ready to see some of the pages I’m making with my super old SEI letter stickers? Yes? Wait, let’s give a set away before we start.

Laurie is the lucky recipient of an extra set of these letters. Hopefully she’ll have as much fun with them as I am. Yay Laurie! Thanks for playing along!

As I said when issuing this challenge, these letter stickers are old. Almost ten years old probably. Current color and pattern trends don’t use this method for combining colors as often. Shall we see how easy it is to combine old product with new?

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Let’s start off with “Silly Boys.” After deciding to use this photo, I grabbed the leaf patterned paper, because it echoes the tree hugging theme of the photo, and yellow and orange work well with the blue/violet colors of the letters. I wasn’t loving the color contrast that much, so I added the washi strips to tone down the contrast, and tie in the lighter blue and newspaperish background from the patterned paper. These letters are pretty large, and I ran out of room for journaling on the blue, so added a neutral journaling spot. A few paper flowers, a little bling and some rub ons, and I was ready to call it done.

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When I was done, the last page felt like there was too much pattern, so for Cook & Clean, I used a solid and a tone on tone pattern to reduce the visual noise. I like this one better, but I still feel like the pattern on the letters still don’t mesh with the other patterns I’m using.

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Walk is closer. The background color works better with the letters, and the striped paper and blocked washi tape echo the pattern of the letters better. The striped paper, the letter stickers, and the washi all have a similar color blue in them, which helps them play nicely together.

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This is it! The colors work together, and the patterns complement each other as well. Thank goodness! I was beginning to think I was losing my touch! I may jump for joy myself now. 😉

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As you can see, mixing old patterns (especially on letters) can be tricky, but it can be done. None of these pages are horrible, but some are clearly better than others design wise.

Have you been scrapping lately? What have you made?

Jul22

Can YOU Use Up an Entire Sheet of Letter Stickers?

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Can YOU Use Up an Entire Sheet of Letter Stickers?

Figuring out how to use up an entire sheet of letter stickers was a fun challenge. Since I usually begin creating a page based on a story idea or theme, starting with a title was an interesting variation in my approach.

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It felt like there were a lot of letters and numbers to work with when I started off, and by the time I was done I felt like I was grasping at straws.

Want to see what words/titles I came up with?IMG_5654

  • Wash Me
  • Cook & Clean
  • Mr. Fix It
  • Silly Boys
  • Jump 4 Joy
  • 24-7
  • 8 (for a quick one photo per age photo album scrapbook)
  • 12 (ditto)
  • Pizza Night
  • Queen (I’ll probably add “Bee” or “of the Crop” in smaller letters once I decide where to take the page.)
  • Go For Broke (Zeroes=o)
  • Walk
  • Quips
  • Wolverine (using lots of repurposed numbers as letters)
  • Wave
  • Doubt
  • Daddy
  • Thump
  • Bug
  • JV & V Jock (something re: my husband’s sports team history)
  • 55 (As in I can’t drive…)
  • FF (Fantastic Four!)
  • Chex (using an 8 as an E)
  • ’99
  • ’69

That’s a lot of useful titles. 25 to be exact. However, the colors and patterns of the alphas are challenging for me right now. They don’t really mesh with my current style. So, to make creating pages with these alphas easier, and make sure I have enough paper for all those pages, I put together a paper kit with 15 sheets of patterned paper and 15 solids/cardstock.

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Most of these papers are older. They’re from Studio Calico, American Crafts, Around the Block, Basic Grey, Little Yellow Bicycle, DCWV, CK, Paper Pizazz, and KI Memories.

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Various shades of blues and purples should work well with the alpha set, and you can never go wrong with kraft. Orange will also make an interesting contrast. (It’s my new favorite color. I love adding a bit of orange everywhere!)

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How did you do with your set of alpha stickers? Don’t give up! It can be done!

Later this week I’ll show you some of the pages I’ve made, and announce the winner. Don’t forget to drop by!

Jul18

Summer Album Update

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Summer Album Update

While we figure out just how many words we can make and use up all the letters in a alphabet sticker set, let’s switch gears for a moment and talk summer to-do list:

How has your summer been going? Ours is off to a pretty rocking start, if I do say so myself. We headed to Niagara Falls after the Fourth of July, and explored Old Fort Niagara while they had a re-enactors encampment. The kids loved it!

These are the first two pages that will go into the Shutterfly book I’ll be printing after the summer is over.

OFN pics

OFN Journaling

I like to keep things simple when creating a digital page. I find the extensive layering and embellishments that is so common in scrapbooking right now to be overwhelming on a digi page. An embellishment or two, some lovely patterned papers, and I’m good.

If you want to create your own Shutterfly book like this, you can find the templates I created here.

Notice the margin around all the elements on the photo page? That will be cut off when Shutterfly prints the page. Make sure you keep those guide lines visible, so you know where your printed page will be trimmed!

How are you documenting your summer? Are you crossing items off YOUR to-do list?

 

Jul16

Scrapbook Product Challenge: Alphabet Stickers!

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Scrapbook Product Challenge: Alphabet Stickers!

Here’s a fun little challenge for all you scrapbookers out there.

You know how you never use up all the letters on a sheet of letter stickers? How you run out of E’s long before you even look at a Z or Q? Well let’s play a fun game of Scrapbook letter scrabble.

I’ve got this ancient sheet of SEI letter stickers.

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Can you see how each letter has both a positive and the negative version? That was such a cool idea, I had to have this. I liked it so much, I bought two sheets! Looking at it now, all I can say is “yikes.”

So here’s what we are going to do. We’re going to approach these stickers as a puzzle, and challenge ourselves to make words that use every single one of these letters and numbers. We’re not going to bring in any extra letters, although we can use the ones we have in any creative way we see fit. (Coloring them and using them as outlines comes to mind right off the bat.) Feel free to play along with any full letter set you have at home, or throw out word suggestions for me in the comments below.

You know what, let’s even turn this into a giveaway. If you comment below, you’ll have a chance to get that second set of alpha stickers to use as you see fit! How about one week to comment, and then I’ll pull a random winner and notify them when I post the titles I manage to cobble together from these letters. *ETA: the contest is now closed! Thanks for playing!*

If you want to play along at home, the letters I have here are as follows: (6) A’s (3 positive and 3 negative); (4) B’s; (4) C’s; (4) D’s; (6) E’s; (4) F’s; (4) G’s; (4) H’s; (6) I’s; (4) J’s; (4) K’s; (4) L’s; (4) M’s, (4) N’s; (6) O’s; (4) P’s; (2) Q’s; (4) R’s; (4) S’s; (4) T’s; (6) U’s; (4) V’s; (4) W’s; (2) X’s; (4) Y’s; (2) Z’s; (2) of numbers 1-9; (4) zeroes; (2) ampersands; (4) periods; (2) exclamation points; (2) apostrophes.

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Let’s show these letter stickers who’s boss!