What I worked on this week…

This week I worked on my Book of Small Thanks. If I were more organized you would have had this idea BEFORE Thanksgiving. But I am who I am! I had this book in mind for about a month but had neither the time nor the supplies I needed until late last week. I rushed to throw it together (and it still isn’t done). I wanted a book where our family of 5 could keep track of the daily, ordinary things. I’m not talking about the big things either, like family, a warm home and food on the table. I am very aware everyday of those big things. I wanted this book to be a moment in time of the things that make us happy right now. It is never too late to make a book of thanks. It is an exercise that you can undertake any time. I hope my project inspires you to make one of your own.

Here is my cover before I did any embellishing to it. I made the whole book with chipboard covered in different papers from the Die Cuts With A View (DCWV) Autumn Stack. The alpha is Thickers (large) and some small letters from my stash.

I formatted the book with smaller inner pages. On the front of the small inner page I plan on putting a photo of each family member. You will notice that the next page is peeking from behind. On the next page is the journaling for each person for each day. I arranged it so that the journaling that shows will match the person in the photo on each and every page.

On the left hand side of the small page I plan on printing and cutting out quotes strips that have to do with thankfulness. I have yet to research what those quotes will be.

And when you turn the small page, the book opens up to see everyone’s thoughts of thanks for that day. I did one day for each weekday during the week of Thanksgiving.

Like I said before, it isn’t done yet. But I had a chance to give the cover some embellishing with leftover ribbons from my stash before typing up this post. Enjoy!

Crafting for a cause

There is a lot of buzz in the scrapbooking industry about using our crafting abilities for charity. That could be as simple as donating our scraps to our kids school, to as heart warming as making a scrapbook for a Make-A-Wish child. We all have ways we can help! I’ve decided what two of my charitable contributions will be for the next year.

As a small contribution I will be making lots of handmade cards. I will compile a stack of general occasions cards and donate them to a silent auction for a homeschooling conference that my family attends every year. The silent auction raises money to use as scholarship for families that can’t afford the conference otherwise. This idea started because I have been making cards for challenges, contests and just for fun and now I have some cards I don’t have a specific purpose for. So I made a purpose! It is funny that it took me so long to think of this idea because last year I did donate cards to the silent auction. But it was a last minute idea that I could just pull a bunch of cards that I hadn’t use in a long time to donate. Now I’ll be creating cards on purpose for this function. It should be fun.

The second donation I plan on doing this year is for my local YWCA. The YWCA supports women and children in domestic violence situations (among other things). This is a need that is close to my heart. I’m not sure how my donation will look yet. Will it just be donating supplies to help with emotional healing through crafting? Will it be teaching a class on scrapbooking a personal story? I’m not sure yet. But this idea has been on my mind for a while. I don’t know where it will go, but I know it will help someone, somewhere at some time.

So, what can you do to help? I’d love to hear your comments on causes you have helped or plan to help!

Thanksgiving Wreath

I created this project to take to share with my kids’ homeschool group last week. I pre-cut all the elements on my Cricut (Storybook cartridge) and let the kids (and moms too!) assemble their wreaths as they wished. The wreaths were cut in two shapes: an outer ring shape and an inner solid circle shape. This was really just one cut on the Cricut. I set my Cricut to the center point function, cut a 6 3/4″ circle and then immediately cut another circle at 4 3/4″. This left me with the ring shape and the circle shape. I cut leaves at 2″ (I think) and used the fill page function. This gave me 25 leaves on one 12×12 sheet of pattern paper. Add in a couple of fall sentiment stamps, twine and glue sticks and the project is good to go! A more elegant version could be created using a bigger wreath layered thick with larger leaves of more varied shapes. I think this project would be great too if you add a favorite fall photo to the center. Try this one with your own kids or make a lovely version for yourself. If you make a wreath, post it on your favorite online gallery and share a link to your file in the comments!

Day 7 Back-in-action

Okay. It is day seven. It was my goal to give you a straight week of projects to welcome myself back to my blog. I hope you are enjoying. My goal is to post things about once a week. But you all know how life gets in the way sometimes. I hope to not go for months without posting again though!

So my final post for this run… Cutting a mask with the Cricut! For those of you who don’t know, a mask in an object that you lay over your project in order to prevent that portion of your project from being inked.

Sorry the picture is bad. Just trying to get photos fast to share with you. This is supposed to be a photo of a 6×6 page protector. I used a scrapbooking page protector as opposed to a regular office 8.5×11 page protector because it is slightly thicker. The page protectors are inexpensive and readily available. To create a mask, trim off the three sealed edges. This will leave you with two sheets of plastic. Place one on your Cricut mat and choose a shape to cut. I set my blade to 6, pressure 3 and speed 3. You may need to experiment with your settings. Here is what my mask looked like after I cut it (it is inked already for greater visibility).

This material is thinner than a commercial mask but it much cheaper, just the image you want and easy to make. Use it like you would any mask. However, if you find it is curling a bit, then add some re-positionable adhesive to the back. I laid mine on the corner of my project and sprayed with Glimmer Mist. This left the tan, uninked shadow of my image behind. I then spayed my mask a little more, turned it over and stamped the image over my misted section. This gives two distinct versions of the same image.

After allowing it to dry I finished my layout. Enjoy!

RECIPE
cardstock, flower punch, ink: Stampin’ Up

pattern paper: Scenic Route
spray ink: Tattered Angels
die cuts: Cricut (Storybook cart.)
marker: marvy
from stash: stamps, silk flower, crystals

Day 6 Back-In-Action

Whew. I almost didn’t get a post in today. But I am squeaking it in here. I had planned on submitting the following layout to Creating Keepsakes Magazine as a “scrap lift” from a previous issue. But I can’t seem to remember what issue and who the original layout was by. So I will just share it here with you! The original layout featured a large focal on top and lots of detail photos on the bottom of a vacation layout. I seperated out my detail photos based on categories such as people and nature. It was a fun layout to do and goes to show that sometimes scrap lifting can be very inspirational and prevent brain-freeze when dealing with so many photos! I’ll have one more day of back-in-action posts for you tomorrow!

RECIPE (sorry I don’t have everything)

cardstock, tab punch: Stampin’ Up
large alpha: American Crafts
small alpha: Cosmo Cricket
bracket punch: McGill
pattern paper, camping stickers: ?

Day 5 of back-in-action

Okay, day five of my planned week-long back-in-action eye candy. This treat bag was created for another magazine call. I really had fun with this one. I don’t tend to use a bunch of flashy embellishments but the Valentine’s day them of the call got my bling flowing. To creat the heart I simply hand drew a heart shape and covered the drawing over with gems. And I enjoyed the color scheme. One of my favorite color palettes is rich brown with pops of vibrant color. I reversed this one a bit and went with vibrant pink with a pop of brown. In the past I hated pink, but in the past few years I have come to really like it! It is funny how tastes and styles can change. So pretty, but one of the things I realized is that I don’t really like working projects out of season. I admire the magazine industry for preparing all the holiday goodies 6 months in advance! I used to want to work in magazines, but doing these winter season calls in the summer left me feeling a bit out of sorts.

RECIPE

envelope: Office Depot
cardstock: Stampin’ Up
alpha stickers: Cosmo Cricket
spray ink: Tattered Angels
gems: Want 2 Scrap
hemp twine: (can’t remember!)
punch: Ek Success
adhesive: Terrifically Tacky Tape (Provo Craft), Tombo liquid glue (for gems)

HOW TO…

To create the pouch, seal a regular A2 size envelope along one short side and the two long sides at about 1/2 inch. Trim off the remaining short side to create the top of your bag. Use the score lines to fold the envelope into a bag shape. This will leave two little triangles at the bottom of the bag that must be adhered down. I used a very sticky adhesive to keep it in place.

Day 4 of back-in-action

I love my crafting time. And this Love card is one of those things that came out of that time. I had made this card for a magazine call but did not get a response. So it gets shared with you! The call was a sketch based on a pennant design. I had turned the design on its side and added extra touches such as the circles over the pennants and the stitching which extends the pennants. It was a fun and relatively simple card. Enjoy!

RECIPE

cardstock, circle punch: Stampin’ Up
pattern papers, alpha stickers: Piggy Tales

Day 3 of back-in-action

Here is another layout from my calendar layouts. I had been wanting to do a layout split down the middle and this subject fit perfectly. It shows two opposing emotions. Flowing the title down the middle both separates the two emotions AND brings the two images together. I also had an ulterior motive for placing the tile as I did. The pattern paper under the word “courage” is actually hiding some distracting elements in the photo to the left. It is a good way to use an photo with problems.

Day 2 of my back-in-action posts

Here are some more older projects that I have worked on. These are from my kids’ calendar scrapbooks. I wrote about this style of scrapping in an earlier post. You can see here how I incorporate my calendar record keeping into a companion page to go with the main layout. In my current calendars the right hand page is always my calendar (blanked out here for privacy).

I have found some things I didn’t like about this approach to my calendars. First, I used too small of a format of calendar for my older kids. I thought I would need less room to record their lives since they aren’t growing and changing as rapidly as the little one. But I ended up really cramming journaling onto a small page. Apparently, I have just as much to say about them! I used a larger calendar for my youngest and now I know I would like this larger size for the older kids as well. Secondly I felt like making an entire companion page for the calendar became boring. I felt like I was wasting supplies just to glue a calendar down to a pretty page. Finally, I did not keep a general family calendar, which I have done in the past and I missed it very much. I missed recording tidbits of life for my husband and I as well as larger family events.

My approach for the coming year is going to be different. I am going to make the larger size calendar for everyone, including a family calendar. I am not going to make companion pages. Instead I am going to build pockets in behind the main layout with a tab at the top to pull out the calendar. This will save materials and space in my albums, but still preserve all the information. I will report back in the new year to see how I like the changes to my system!

I’m Back!

So you may have noticed that I took a hiatus for several months. Life and health have been crazy which had kept me out of my scrap space. But I have been doing projects again and feeling motivated again! I am glad to be back. I will be posting several items over the next few days, beginning with a few things I worked on before my break.

Let us start off with this older item. I made this for a magazine call and never got a response. So I am sharing it with you! Since the weather has cooled off here I thought it would be a fun one to share. I used yarn to braid a scarf-like heart and used a few other sewing notions to complete the look. Hope you enjoy!

RECIPE

cardstock, inks: Stampin’ Up
stamp: Technique Tuesday
yarn, safety pins: stash