TIPS FOR THE BEGINNER AND ADVANCED SCRAPBOOKER

Tips for the Beginner and the Advanced Scrapbooker

Welcome to Your World of Scrapbooking!

As you already know, Scrapbooking is the best way to preserve your family’s photos, memorabilia and stories. Plus, you get to show your creative side by designing a Scrapbook for a particular event in your life.

When it comes to Scrapbooking, having your own flare, style, and originality is a must. There are tons of books and magazines to give you ideas but you need to find your own personality when it comes to Scrapbooking. The magazine may have the coolest layout but the color scheme is orange and you really dislike that color, so why would you use it in your scrapbook that you will be looking at for years, use the colors that you like. Remember, putting these memories together in a scrapbook is an extension of you.

Here are just some tips to help keep your creative juices flowing.

1. Make it personal: Include journaling on your layouts to tell about the photographs and help you remember what was going on during that time period. It helps make your page more that just an old fashion photo album, the kind that the pictures stick and covered by a piece of plastic.

2. When Journaling, use your own handwriting when possible (even if you don’t like the way you write). Down the road when people are looking at you scrapbook it will have a true piece of YOU incorporated into it. Wouldn’t you like to see what your grandma/grandpa/aunt/uncle etc. handwriting looked like?

3. A quote says it all: Adding the perfect saying/quote to your page can capture the moment and help set the theme. Include a funny saying or quotes from you, a family member or even your child’s first words.

4. Add dimension: There are so many ways to add dimension to your layout now days. You can use various embellishments such as die cuts, chip board, brads, buttons, staples, fibers, the list goes on.

Here are a couple of examples.

a. If you have a die cut of a flower, you can add more dimensions by placing a button or brad in the center of the flower.

b. If you like using chip board lettering, you can add stickers to them; distress them by using sandpaper on the edges. They are usually thick enough so you may not want to add anymore height to them or you will have one chunky page.

c. Fibers – you can use fibers as a border to your page vs. stickers or paper. You can attach the fibers by brads or eyelets on each end. This is a really cool look.

5. Don’t stop with pictures: Pictures are only the beginning when it comes to Scrapbooking. You may have been at the zoo and your camera ran out of film or your batteries died, but you want to share that part in your vacation or travel scrapbook. This is where journaling comes into place. Tell a story of what happened at the zoo, you may have your ticket that got you into the zoo, put that on your page along with your memories. You can also Scrapbooking favorite family recipes, your child’s first drawing, or consider this, Scrapbooking your score card from your best golf game ever. It will be keepsake that everyone will cherish.

6. Keep your scraps from scrapping: Don’t throw out your paper scraps. You can use them to cut out shapes with hole punches, use them in die cutting machines, such as Sizzix, Quickutz, Cricut, etc. to make shapes, or trim them with decorative scissors to make cool borders, paper weaves or striping.

7. Tell a story: Scrapbook pages should tell a story. So remember to enhance the key photograph so that is becomes the focal point of your scrapbook page. If your photo is small it may get lost, to make sure that it doesn’t mat your small photos with a color that will compliment your theme. You can also use a larger mat for your smaller picture for you to embellish and journal on.

Scrapbooking is great way to share your memories with friends, families. It also looks a lot nicer than shoe boxes of pictures that you have on the top shelf of your closet.

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

PRICING TIPS: WHAT TO CHARGE FOR YOUR HANDMADE CRAFT

What to charge for your Handmade Craft
Now that you want to sell your handmade crafts, your big decision is how much you want to charge for it. There are many formulas out there as guidelines but remember in the end it is all up to you how much you want to charge.
One Formula that I use is:
1. Decide how much you want to be paid per hour when working on your “craft”.
2. Then multiply this hourly rate by the number of hours a week that you spend making this “craft”
3. Write down that figure. This will be your weekly cost of labor. So if you need to make $10 per hour working 40 hours per week the cost of labor would be $400.
4. Now you need to calculate the total cost of supplies that you need to make one finished product.
5. Then see how many products you can make in one week.
6. Then you multiply the cost of Supplies per piece by the number of products make in a week. (If your cost of materials per piece is $2 and you can make 100 products a week, the figure would be $200.00)
7. Now add this figure to your weekly labor costs. (in our example that would be $400 + $200 = $600.00
8. Now divide this figure by the number of products that you produce in a week. So $600.00 labor/materials divided by 100 finished products a week would be $6.00 per piece.
9. If you will be wholesaling your product, you then multiply the per piece number by two. This would then give you a retail price of $12.00 per piece.
If the resulting price that you get is more than a similar product on the market, you may need to reduce it by cutting the hourly price. You can do this by using less expensive materials or by not being a “Total Perfectionist” and increase your production time. This concept goes both ways. If you see that your price is a lot less than similar products you may want to raise your price.
Just a little Tip:
Let’s say that you are making a Handmade Greeting Cards. If you use adhesive tabs to put your card together, keep in mind that you do not need the entire 1000 tabs for one card that you make, so you will need to calculate how many tabs that you need and divide it by the total cost of your 1000 tab package. This also goes for embossing powder, how many handmade greeting cards can you make with one container of embossing powder, same goes for embossing pens, glitter, etc.
*And this final cost per piece that we figured out was only for labor and materials. You may also consider adding into that price the cost for marketing your product. That could be the fee for your craft show, online selling, web sites, etc.
With all this pricing info that was just shared, just remember to:

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

Back to the top: Handmade Crafts 

BLENDING INKS WITH A STYLUS TOOL

My next stop at the Rubber Stamp show was what looked like just another stamp supplier, but all of the stamps were landscapes. I mean a stamp of one limb of a tree with a couple of leaves, then another was mountains, a lake you get what I’m saying. Anyway what they were doing was making beautiful landscape pictures that you could mount on a card or even frame.  The technique that he was using is not new to me but when I saw how many people were in awe of this I just had to tell you about it.

It is all about blending your inks with a stylus tool. The key though is the paper that you need to use. It can not be a matte finish paper it needs to be GLOSSY, that way the inks blend perfectly.

Tools Needed: Rubber Stamp, Stylus Tool (I use the brand Color Box)

Supplies Needed: Glossy Card Stock, Ink: StazOn brand for the black outline, Dye based ink for color

1.  You start with a rubber stamp of any kind, you do not need landscape stamps, you can use flower stamps, sun stamps or whatever kind of stamp that you want. It is just easier with a landscape since all the colors blend really well together and you can overlap without looking messy.

2.  Then you get your glossy cardstock

3.  Now you take your rubber stamp and ink it with a black stamp pad ink. (I use the brand “StazOn” acid-free, archival, fast drying solvent ink)

4.  Press the stamp on your glossy paper and lift up.

5.  Then you will need to heat set this black ink. So using your heat embossing tool, heat this black ink so that it is set and will not smudge.

6.  Now it is time to color in your image. Using your color ink pads (dye based ink) and a stylus tool (tiny sponge on a stick)

7. Gently press your stylus tool in the ink and lightly press it on your image, you will also be able to drag the color since the paper is glossy. Using light application of ink is a great technique since you can always make is darker if needed just by applying more the next time around.

You will be surprised how different this technique looks compared to embossing pens, pencils, chalks. Your finished picture looks just like a photograph.

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

TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE YOUR HANDMADE GREETING CARDS OR SCRAPBOOKS USING THE CONCEPT OF EMBOSSED ICING

TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE YOUR HANDMADE GREETING CARDS OR SCRAPBOOKS USING THE CONCEPT OF EMBOSSED ICING

As promised I would now like to share with you some of the steps involved in using embossed icing along with a brass stencil template.

Tools needed: Brass Stencil Template, Spatula, Low stick stencil tape

Supplies Needed: Card Stock, Embossed Icing (I use Embossed Icing from The Stencil Collection).

*Put your paper card stock down on your work surface.
*Pick a stencil and position it on your paper card stock
*Using a low stick adhesive stencil tape, tape down all four sides of the stencil. Don’t worry about sticking it to the card stock it will lift right up and not tear the paper.
*Then using a small spatula, take some of the icing and spread it along the stencil filling in the grooves. If you need to change color proceed in the same manner by just spreading the icing on the stencil (Pretend that you are icing a cake – same principle)
*When the entire stencil is filled with icing, take the back end of your spatula and scrape all the excess icing off, so you are left with a smooth non lumpy bumpy surface.
*Now it is time to remove the tape from the stencil. Do it in the reverse that you put it on. Then leave on piece on and use it as a hinge to lift up the stencil this way it will come up straight and not smear/smudge.
* Finally, you just need it to let it set for 10 minutes.

Now you have a completed a beautiful custom handmade greeting card or a unique page in your scrapbook. The really cool thing is when it is completely dry to the touch it actually feels like suede. It also looks raised just like you had heat embossed it. The neat thing is that you did it all without a heat gun and powders. You did it with Embossed Icing.

Have a great day and don’t forget to leave time to craft!

SOME OF THIS YEARS NEW CRAFTING IDEAS FOUND AT THE RUBBER STAMPING CONVENTION

SOME OF THIS YEARS NEW CRAFTING IDEAS FOUND AT THE RUBBER STAMPING CONVENTION

Oh my goodness! I have just had the best day when it comes to Rubber Stamping and Paper Crafting.
Today was the 7th Annual Rubber Stamp Convention here in Albuquerque. The doors opened at 9:30. I arrived at 11:30 and I stood in the entrance like a little girl entering a candy store, except my candy was rubber stamps. As I entered they stamped my hand with a cute bird stamp and handed me a brochure of all the vendors that were there, along with a BIG plastic bag. I was laughing to myself as to who would be able to fill this huge bag. (ha ha)

My first stop was at a stencil booth. I figured that I would start there as the process of using stencils in my scrapbooking creations has always been interesting to me. I have done them in the past with pastel chalks but I preferred rubber stamping. Well so I thought. As I looked at all the different designs in these brass stencils the instructor asked me if I have ever used Embossed Icing. And at that moment I was hooked. I don’t know if it was the word icing, since I love icing on cakes but it just sounded so cool. The demonstrator then proceeded to show me what this process was all about. It was so simple but the finished product was beautiful.

Be sure to check back with me here in a few days and I will gladly share with you some of the techniques I am perfecting using the new process of embossed icing.

Have a great day and don’t forget to leave time to craft!

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