2008 Christmas Card

Well, I’m all done with all of my 70 hand stamped Christmas Cards. I went to the post office this afternoon to mail them all. So now it is safe for me to show you my 2008 Christmas card.

handmadechristmascardwithstampinupstamps

The stamps that I used are from Stampin’ Up!   Santa’s beard is fluffy. I used white flocking powder. It feels velvety soft. The sun is applied to the card with a round adhesive dot for dimension. All the coloring in was done with Marvy embossing pens and stamp-n-stuff clear embossing powder.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Fantastic 2009!

Back to my Handmade Custom Christmas Cards

Back in September I was telling you about an idea that I had for my Christmas cards this year.  Well my idea in my head sounded great, but I just couldn’t get it right on paper. So now I am really behind in my card making, but not too worry. I just finished a sample of this year’s card. It is a fun card, with a lot of color and layers. I will share my card with you in December only because if my family & friends read this blog, they will see the card that they will be receiving in the mail.  And if you like my Christmas card, you can start making them for your cards next year.

Now it’s time to talk about Cricut.

If you never heard of a Cricut, you will start hearing a lot about it from me.

I have had this personal cutting machine for a year already but am just seeing how much you can really do with it. It’s too cool.

This machine is amazing. It is great for all of those Scrapbookers out there as well as Greeting Card Makers.

After you cut an image (from whatever color paper you want it to be), you can embellish it any way YOU want, not how the craft store and manufacturers sell it to you.

So when I am done with my Christmas Cards, I will share with you all of the new creations that I will be making with my Cricut.

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

Great Scrapbook Idea

Have you just thought of the most fabulous idea for your Scrapbooking page? It might have been the colors on an advertisement in a magazine that started your idea, or a sign that you saw driving in a car. Whatever sparked you idea there is just a couple of things to do to make sure that your Scrapbook page turns out just as you pictured it to be.First you decided the theme of your Scrapbook. Then it is time to gather all the materials that your will need.

Let’s start with your color scheme and work around that. You will need to get your paper. Start with the main color that you want and then add all of the accent colors around your main color.

You can add accent colors with additional papers, and all types of embellishments such as: Silk flowers, brads, eyelets, stickers, ribbons and the list can go on and on.

For example: If you are making a Wedding Scrapbook you would gather together some white, elegant paper, maybe some lace ribbon, some white flower 3D stickers and then use the color of your bridesmaids dresses as the accent color to bring the whole theme together.

Or

If you are making a Birthday Scrapbook for your son who loves fire trucks, you would get some Red Paper and some sticker letters in the shape of a fire water hose or firemen’s boots. You get the idea.

Now that you have all the materials that you will need it is time to put your Scrapbook Page layout together. Before you start cutting and gluing things all over your paper, you should start by just laying each item on the page before you permanently put them on the page. This will save you a lot of heartache later when you find that your layout isn’t what you thought or it is not fitting on the page. Once everything is in place, then you can permanently adhere to the paper, using a glue stick, glue dots, tape runner etc.

*Tip: Make your Scrapbook in chronological order.

Example: If you have one Scrapbook of yearly vacations, either start with current year first then go backwards from there, or visa versa. Don’t skip a year unless you didn’t take a vacation that year. It will be so much nicer to look at a book that is not jumping all over the place from year to year.

Making a scrapbook can be one of the most satisfying things that you can do for yourself and others who you will be sharing it with. You will be preserving your memories in a beautiful, decorative fashion, and can let others see the photo stories that mean so much to you.

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

Online Digital Scrapbooking

If you are looking for an inexpensive way to share your photos with family and friends, check into Online Digital Scrapbooking. This fun alternative to your standard paper bound album is easily shared across the internet. As this addictive hobby grows in popularity every day, more and more online digital Scrapbooking sites pop up to indulge your creative needs. With Online Digital Scrapbooking you can upload your digital photos to a site and arrange them in a customized slide show and then invite all of your friends to view it. You can add special tags to each photo to identify who is in the picture or you can even add decorative frames to pictures to make them unique.

Many Online Digital Scrapbooking sites offer users the ability to order physical prints of the pictures you have uploaded to their website. Other websites will enable you to add your photos to certain merchandise like coasters, magnets, mugs, t-shirts, or a blanket. You can use your pictures to create a small scrapbook page of your favorite photos and then turn it into a greeting card or poster for the wall.

As digital photography continues gaining momentum as the preferred choice to capture photos, the option to create a scrapbook online is more appealing. You no longer have to spend a fortune to develop a whole roll of film of which you will end up using not even half of them, or using your own printer and using alot of photo paper, then spend more money on paper and embellishments. That is not to say that all of that isn’t beautiful, all I’m saying is that it gets expensive. Now all you have to do is upload from your digital camera your favorite photos to the Online Scrapbooking site of your choice and let the creativity begin. Most sites have a wide variety of styles and sizes for you to choose from so you can customize your scrapbook exactly how you like it.

What is so cool about Online Digital Scrapbooking you can include so many different things. Here a just a few ideas:

When creating a page in your Online Digital Scrapbook to commemorate a special event that you attended, such as a birthday party, theater play, concert, county fair, or sporting event, you can scan the invitation, ticket stub, program, stat sheets, and upload to your scrapbooking site to include on the page.

If you are making a scrapbook for a baby consider scanning into the computer his/her hospital ID bracelet, hospital bill, doctor visit notes showing weight, height at a particular age or even his or her foot print.

If you or any of your family members like to draw pictures, scan some of their artwork and add it to a scrapbook.

You can also scan a newspaper/magazine article of an event that you attended or have maybe even written and then add it to the pages of your Online Scrapbook.

My husband and I just got done re-modeling our kitchen and we wanted to show our family who live 2000 miles away how fantastic it looks. We uploaded photos from our digital camera to our computer then to an online photo service, created a scrapbook and just emailed them the link to view our Kitchen Scrapbook. We got to share with them our new kitchen in minutes, instead of printing 4 sets of photos to send to every family.

The possibilities are endless of what you can do with Online Digital Scrapbooking. Let your creative side go WILD!

The great thing about Online Digital Scrapbooking is that once you have finished your Scrapbooking Masterpiece you can share it with friends and family members all around the globe via the internet. It is also great to know that if You or whoever is viewing your Online Digital Scrapbook can also order print copies of your Scrapbook to share with people who do not have a computer.

Make it a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

Scrapbook Journaling

Scrapbooking is a great way to preserve memories. You don’t want to lose the sight of your main goal and that is to tell a story of a special landmark in you or your family’s life, to share with your friends and family with pride and confidence. Most people forget to journal in their scrapbooks and without journaling it is just a photo album. The reason why journalizing is important is so that you can express to others who are looking at you scrapbook your thoughts, the names of people in the picture and Why this event has made such an impact on your life that you want to share with others.Think of your Scrapbook pages as your very own story book and then give it a name. There are so many ways to TITLE your pages, from big bold letters to handwritten letters, just make sure it does not overwhelm the most important elements of the page and that is the pictures.

If your picture is of a special person in your life or a place that you love to go, don’t forget to journal that somewhere on that page. You do this for a lot of reasons but the main reason is so that whoever is looking at the scrapbook page will feel connected to who you are with and also where you were when this event took place. You want family and friends to feel like they were there with you.

My husband and friends say that I make up words and I usually have a “weird saying” from each trip that we take. My favorite was “Too Tatootey” you had to be there to understand anyway, I make sure that I put down my “saying” somewhere in that Scrapbook and all of those who know me will get a good laugh when they read it. Make your Scrapbook Personal. So many people are Scrapbooking making there pages look like someone else’s, where the fact is that this is a story of what happened in your life not there’s. Just Make it your own and you will see how easy scrapbooking becomes when you are You, and that is the best person/scrapbooker to be.

Even though you may have laughed your butt off when the picture was taken, if you don’t write things down, in years you will forget what touched your funny bone. It is so important to jot down a few words on a piece of paper and save it with your photographs if you think that you won’t get the chance to create your pages right away.

Occasionally you may forget your camera, or run out of film or disc space, or maybe even not be allowed to use a camera at an important event. No worries, you can still Journal that part of your life by using your Scrapbook to document that event. You can use all types of embellishments to capture what you were experiencing at that time that your camera was not. Your words will make the picture.

For those who have a fear of using their handwriting to journal you don’t have to worry. There are stickers, rub-ons, die cuts to help you overcome your fear, however, I recommend using your handwriting at least once in each Scrapbook you create, just so a sample of your handwriting will be with your family and friends forever.

Have a Great Day and don’t forget to leave time to Craft!

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