Lou

When my friend Lou moved away last June, I didn't have much time to make him a full-blown scrapbook, so I made this little tag book for him to take on his 2 month long road trip.

The colored tags are from a K&Company's Tag Pad. When I was in Michael's on Friday, I saw that they make Big Tag Pads! I didn't purchase one, but perhaps in the near future.

When I was reading a scrapbook magazine once, I learned that you can hide the flaws of an imperfect circle by tracing it several times. This is what I did on the 3rd tag since I didn't have a circle punch small enough.

P.S. We miss you, Lou! Hope you're enjoying Stanford.

Purging & Reusing

Purging
At work, we are getting ready for reaccreditation in the beginning of March. That means that I am purging a lot of things that I have not used since I began teaching. Some may call me a pack rat (which I think is a little extreme) I usually think, "I may need this at some point, so let me hang on to it..."

This is not always good.

De-cluttering at work (and the rest of my life) makes me feel so much better. Today I am going through my paper and stickers. (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE patterned paper!) I have stuff from years and years ago, and some things are still unopened. It's decided: Purge.

It feels so good! Since I have been scrapbooking for a while, I know what I like and what I use, so that makes it a lot easier to decide on what to get rid of.

Reusing
In my last post, I showed a layout that had a teal and green flower. I used the packaging from that to make a frame, and then I used my Fiskars circle squeeze punch to make a circle embellishment. We'll see how I decide to use these two things... the possibilities are endless! :-)

wish

My friend Kelly's birthday is next month. I was kindly reminded when I was looking through some old photos and found this one amongst the mix. Kelly is always so good about remembering my birthday and sending me cards (and presents too!) so I wanted to make something special for her.

This photo was taken our freshman year of college on her birthday. We celebrated by throwing her a surprise dinner at Hooters on St. Patrick's Day. I wanted to use the color green, especially the clover ribbon, but since I used so much of it with the paper and embellishments, I used a blue piece of vellum as the background (which was then backed with white paper.)

Sometimes, it's hard for me to use just ONE photo, but I found this project fairly easy. I was reading through an old issue of Creating Keepsakes, when I found a layout that I wanted to scraplift. This article was titled "10 Fast & Fabulous Designs" by Vanessa Hoy with Jamie Waters.

I used Approach 2 which says, "Use a large photo mat to include your title and embellishments, If you use a patterned-paper background, mat on solid cardstock. If you use a solid background, mat on patterned paper."

Some fun things to know about this layout:
1. I backed the photo with an old card. it says, "Though we're far apart, I always know right where you are."
2. The green flower used near the title had a petal ripped off, so I overlapped the pattern paper on the missing petal.
3. Hidden journaling is written on the tag with green ribbon.
4. I was going to use two pieces of patterned paper until I read the Vanessa Hoy's article.

I would say that the layout turned out successful. Happy (early) Birthday, Kelly! :-)

Her Birthday is a Beach

About a week ago, it was my youngest sister, Jessica's birthday. For the past couple of years, I have made her a birthday card. This year, she expected no less, and she put in a request: a beach theme. This was a little unusual to me, considering her birthday is in February. Since I hadn't made the card yet, I made a mental note of her request and brainstormed some ideas.

Of course, I procrastinated until an hour before I was supposed to leave to meet my family for dinner. A beach is not a beach without the ocean, so I used paper in teal and blue to make an ocean with waves by cutting the paper with crinkly scissors. I then added the sticker words "Happy Birthday" to fill in the dead space of the ocean.

My favorite part of the front of the card is the sun. I LOVE my Fiskars circle hold punch! I used this to make the center of the sun, the freehandedly cut the triangles for the rays. I thought about adding some sea gulls, but time did not give me that choice.

Instead of a traditional "Happy Birthday" message inside, I used a quote that talked about the beach. I put the sticker on the same color paper that I used as the sun, and then I added a cute teal brad.

Over the summer my sisters and I took this underwater picture in the pool with my Olympus Stylus 850 SW camera. (It has been the best birthday present to myself!) I backed the photo on a printed tag by K&Company (Happy Trails Tag Pad.) These tags are also great for journaling. Some of them even have quotes on them. I added some teal scrap paper left over from the waves to the side of the photo and a white sand castle brad to the bottom right corner.

While my mom thought the card wasn't so "beachy" ('Where is the sand?' she asked) Jessica loved the card, and I loved making it for her. I think she looks forward to her birthday cards even more than the present that I give her. Happy Birthday, sis!

Lovestruck

In the past week, I have made 2 layouts and about 15 Valentine's Day cards... all due to this epic blizzard that we have been experiencing in the DC area.

I was holed up in my apartment by myself the first two days. My roommate decided to get snowed in at a friend's house, and I wanted to stay at our apartment with all my stuff... yes, I wanted to scrapbook! But after many hours of scrapbooking and card making, I was ready to see mankind again.

I used mostly scrap paper that I had saved from previous layouts, and I had a lot of love embellishments that I wanted to use up. My favorite card that I made is "Lovestruck." I had no idea how I was going to use the maroon lightning bolt, but after some thought, and a heart shaped hole punch, I think it came out pretty sweet. :-)

Happy Valentine's Day!