Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 8: Christmas Leftovers

 

I haven't done many Christmas layouts (so far, I've done only one) but after I was done, I was left with all these small paper scraps - much like food left over from all the feasting :).  Now I could've easily thrown them out, but I just thought they were too pretty to dispose of.  And this is my dilemma with other paper scraps as well, so what I do with the scraps is to punch out shapes that I can use for future projects.  Here I used a cupcake punch that cuts out a separate top and bottom, so it's easy to mix and match patterns.

 

Of course, this solves the problem of storing paper scraps.  I put my punched out shapes in little resealable baggies and I now have a small collection of hearts, butterflies, flowers, etc.  Here, I used the cupcake punch outs to embellish tags and gift cards.  This paper collection (K & Co.'s Peppermint Twist by Brenda Walton) is a Christmas one, but many of the designs are flexible enough that these can be used for birthdays and other types of celebrations.

Materials:  Patterned paper (K & Company), cardstock (Moods), puncher (EK Success Paper Shapers).

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 7: Holiday Mixup

My entry to challenge #11 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  I readily selected the photos as soon as I saw the sketch, but only got to work on the layout today.

It's quite a literal interpretation of the sketch by Melissa Bonifacio, but I used an 8.5" x 11" format instead of a 12"x12" or 8"x8" page.  I also had a title and journaling in mind when I first picked the photos out, which are actually a bit blurry but I thought it would be a fun moment to scrap about.

Journaling:  "HOLIDAY MIXUP - No, your eyes are not deceiving you, the kids are indeed wearing their Halloween costumes with a Christmas tree in the background.  They were not able to go trick-or-treating that year.  And so on this particular weekend in December, the cousins just wanted to dress up.  Jared the pirate, Jonas the ninja, Dyllan the cowboy, Jessica the fairy, and Jillian the lady bug."

Materials:  Cardstock (Moods), patterned paper (K & Co., Me & My Big Ideas), metallic paper (Star Paper Corp.), alphabet stickers (EK Success), gem stickers (All About Scrapbooking), pen (Dong-A, Galaxy), others - glittery shapes/sequins.

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 6: Stamped & Embossed Gift Tags

In the Philippines, the Christmas season is long, it starts way before Christmas (if you judge it by the music and decorations in the mall, that would be around Sept./Oct.) and ends well into the next year (about a week after New Year's Day).  It makes for a very festive few weeks, and I don't know about you, but it's the day after Christmas, and I still have gifts to wrap and distribute to friends and family ;)

So I've made these gift tags ahead of time, but were unable to use them for the first batch of gifts that have already been given out.  I used stamps and embossing folders to decorate these, but I still like how simple these are and easy to make.  The stamped ones above are made from cardstock scraps, and I stamped them with a regular office-use stamp pad in green (I have a variety of different colors aside from the red one, for dating paper submissions). 

And for these tags (above) and tiny gift cards (below) I used my Texture Boutique and four different embossing folders that fit in with the Christmas theme.  These are so fun and easy to do that I want to make some more - that I'll probably get to use next Christmas.

Materials:  Cardstock (Moods), stamp pad (HBW Office), one-hole punch, Sizzix Texture Boutique embossing machine, embossing folders (Cuttlebug - Snowflakes & Swiss Dots, Ellison Textured Impressions - Ornate Swirls & Winter Words), clear stamps (Making Memories - Noel).

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 5: Christmas Loot

Being a part of a large family, it usually takes us a very long time to open our gifts.  To date, there are twenty of us, and we all stand by and watch each family member open all their gifts, starting with the youngest and moving along to the oldest :).  Today though, we broke away from our yearly tradition as one of my sisters and her family spent the past few days (including today) out of town.  But we did let the kids who are here open their gifts today, since they've been waiting to open their Christmas presents for quite some time now.

Tonight, I also got to open mine and was so happy to get some scrappy supplies.  I've been putting off buying these for a while now, as I've been trying to decrease my spending (not just on scrappy stuff but on just about everything).  Also, I think I have a lot of stuff in my stash that I want to make a serious dent in it, but I just haven't had the time.  I was hoping to have time this Christmas break, but preps just took up most of my time so far.  But now with just a few gifts to round up, I hope I can do more crafts.  Especially with the new stuff I got, thanks to my brother, Paul, and his wife, Ica.

And this is how the gift was packaged - so cute!  I can definitely use container for storage, too.  And yes, I painted my nails festive especially for the holidays.  :)

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 4: Upcycled Gift Tags

Christmas shopping can be truly stressful.  Fortunately, there are some little conveniences that the mall provides to their customers to lessen the stress.  One of these is the free gift wrapping service.  When we got to the mall yesterday, the first thing we shopped for were gifts for the kids.  And since those toys can be difficult to wrap at times, we dropped them all off at the gift wrap counter and then shopped around some more for gifts for the older kids. ;-)  Although there weren't a lot of people lined up at the counter, there were lots and lots of bags of toys waiting to get wrapped.

The wrapping paper was pretty enough with the star/snowflake swirly design and with the mandatory department store logo, of course.  We had many color options but chose to stick with red and green because purple and orange won't exactly fit in with the Christmas decor at home.  Now here's where today's project comes in - the tags don't coordinate color-wise with the decor either.  I actually find it a bit strange that the gift wrap (no matter which color it was) had gold undertones in it (the swirls) and yet the white gift card had a silver design on it.  And yes, I confess, I am a bit OC, so as soon as I saw the gift tags, I knew I had to modify/upcycle them.

I just wanted to cover up the silver design (it's a graphic of a gift the a heart-shaped bow on top) on the front cover of the gift tag.  I decided to use the small pieces of wrapping paper that are left over to decorate the cards/tags.  I cut the really cute Santas out and pasted the images on the tag.  For the smaller cut-outs, I either drew a border around the image or used washi tape to frame the image.  A really simple and easy way to get everything to look coordinated.  :-)

Here are the finished gift tags, with no trace of silver and all ready for use.  Btw, I used the term "upcycle" because these tags haven't been used yet.  But had I left them alone, I wouldn't have been able to use them.  And that would be a waste.

Materials:  Wrapping paper scraps (Hallmark), red pen (Galaxy), washi tape (All About Scrapbooking), others - gift tags to recycle.

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 3: Washi Tape Decorated Candle Tins

One thing I love about the Christmas season is that it gets dark early and then you see all these lights everywhere.  As we're usually driving home just about when it starts getting dark, there's something magical and festive with the electric lights on display, but one of my real favorites is candle light, which gives the home a warm and cozy feel.  And Michael Buble's Christmas Special playing on TV right now definitely adds to the Christmas-y mood.

So I was excited when I saw these candles already contained in tins that can easily be decorated.  These actually had labels on them on the top and sides that easily peel right off.  I used washi tape to decorate the sides of the tin and I plan to put gift labels that will fit snugly right on the top of the lid.  The washi tapes I used had a width of 1/4" (6 mm), so I put several strips on the tin, making sure that the design on the tape was aligned all throughout.  Another quick and easy idea for gift giving.

Materials:  Washi tape (All About Scrapbooking).

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 2: Personalized Notepad

My sister asked me a while ago if I can help her out with gifts for her friends at work.  That was actually quite some time ago and I've finally gotten around to working on them.  The idea was to embellish and personalize plain notepads. 

So here's the first one I made... it's very simple with just floral patterned paper and plain lavender paper fancy-fied with a border punch.  I also hand cut some of the flowers on the patterned paper to decorate the area around the name that I stamped using some teeny tiny alphabet rubber stamps.

It looked a little too simple, so I made the flowers sparkly with some glitter glue.  This was fairly easy and quick to do.  I actually need to make twelve more of these for my sister.  Speaking of the number twelve... I missed posting for two consecutive days in this series already.  You all know how busy the Christmas season gets.  But I am still determined to put up 12 posts in all, no matter how long it takes (maybe it will take me into the new year). :-)

Materials:  Notepad (Paperline Kraft Notes), patterned paper (K & Company), plain paper (Sterling), glitter glue (Leeho).  Tools:  Fiskars Threading Water border punch, Studio G alphabet stamp set.

Twelve Crafty Days of Christmas - Day 1: Christmas Stocking Card

I've been planning to work on many holiday projects for many weeks now.  But with work being crazy hectic since the third quarter started, there just wasn't any time.  So I was anticipating that with the Christmas break coming up, I would be able to work on one project a day.  And I had meant to start on the 14th (our last day of work), which meant that the twelfth day would actually fall on Christmas day.  But unfortunately, all the stress and exhaustion of the past weeks have finally caught up with me that I only felt up to posting anything today.  So letting go of all my OC-ness, I decided to just push through with it anyway.  Although if I'm being honest, I cheated a bit for this first project, since I made this weeks ago. ;-)

But this truly counts as this was my first honest-to-goodness Christmas project this year.  I joined a Christmas card swap (my very first one!) and had to send this out by the end of Nov.  This card took me quite a while to plan and to actually create.  I've been liking all the patchwork designs I've seen in magazines and on the 'net and thought I might give it a try.  I'm happy with how it turned out, I hope the recipient likes it, too> :-) 

Materials:  Patterned paper (K & Co., Nitwit), metallic paper (Star Paper Corp.), cardstock (Moods), glitter glue (Leeho), gem stickers (All About Scrapbooking).  Tools:  Making Memories Slice Cordless Design Cutter, Making Memories Slice Mistletoe Design Card, Martha Stewart Crafts Doily Lace Edge Punch.

Tummy Time

It is 9:32pm on Nov. 30, 2012.  Challenge #10 on the Filipino Scrapbooker's Blog is about to end in a little less than 2-1/2 hours.  As of now, I have nothing done.  I am challenging myself to beat the deadline again.  This is a lot worse than the last time as I only got home at 8:00pm, had dinner first and then did stuff online.  So we will see how this goes.

It's now 10:56pm and I'm almost done with my layout.  All that's left is the title and journaling.  It's a really simple page, but I'm having a bit of writer's block.  Not a bit actually, it feels like a major one... well, at least for now.

And so, here is my finished page.  I had planned to use the same set of pictures and papers for the previous challenge, but since I didn't find the time to do it, I used them here.  So I didn't really start from scratch.  The borders were actually cut from paper scraps and glued together a week ago.  I wanted to use them for a card I was supposed to make, but decided to use them here instead.  The papers are from the Everyday Eclectic Kit I purchased from Ms. April Lim some weeks ago.  I wanted to start working on some pages as soon as I got the kit, but this month was so busy.  And that is why I wasn't able to submit an entry for Challenge #9.  November is usually a busy month for me, both due to work obligations and home/family stuff.  But this month has been incredibly hectic, I can hardly wait for the Christmas break!

Materials:  Patterned paper and letter stickers (Echo Park), cardstock (Me & My Big Ideas), pen (Dong-A), button, brad, ribbon, and fabric flowers (All About Scrapbookling), others - baker's twine.

Fight for your right

Sadly, this is another last minute post.  I just wanted to make an entry for Challenge #8 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  The past two weeks have been super hectic and I just finished my grades when I started on this layout.  This is actually a remake of a page from my old US scrapbook.  I wish I could've done more with it, but it's nearly midnight and it had to be posted.  Oh well...

Here's the original sketch by Melissa Bonifacio:

Journaling:  "You've gotta FIGHT FOR YOU RIGHT Grad school gets too stressful at times...  TO PARTY!!!"  (lyrics from the Beastie Boys' "Fight For Your Right")

Materials:  Cardstock (Venice by Veco Paper Corporation), patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking), ink - (Dong-A My Gel Pen in Black Blue) others - assorted paper scraps for arrow punch outs.  Tool: EK Success Paper Shapers.

PS. [10 hrs later] After I had uploaded the layout, I wasn't quite satisfied with how it turned out.  It appears that 30-something minutes is just not enough to work on it.  I actually had the pictures ready for some time.  And since the sketch looked like it would be fun to do, I was planning on doing a more elaborate page this time.  But alas, I've had to deal with deadlines and so I was swamped with work for the past two weeks.  So I decided to add a little more to it after I posted it.  I just added a couple more punched out arrows and some bling (All About Scrapbooking).  So technically, this one pictured below is NOT MY ENTRY, since I finished it after the deadline.  But I did have fun putting the bling on where I had to cut the gem stickers individually and stick them down on the page according to a design in my head.  I've been wanting to do that for a long time now, but never got around to doing it 'til now.

Radiant

The fourth and last entry to Challenge #7 of the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  Another layout in which I didn't do much.  The papers from the Magical line from All About Scrapbooking are perhaps my most favorite 8"x8" patterned paper set.  But what I found is that when it was time to work with them, I felt a bit constricted by the design.  The papers are really beautiful, but I guess I couldn't do much with them except add pictures, the title and some journaling.  Which should be good if I wanted to do pages quickly, but I guess that is just not my style.  I usually like to add a little bit more to my pages, do something more creative and involved.  But maybe it was also because I was trying to beat the deadline (again!) that left me with the feeling that I hadn't done enough.  It looks a little bare to me, to be honest.  Oh well, at least I got to scrap some more pictures.  Can't wait to NOT CRAM the next challenge. ;-)

The journaling on the bottom of the page says, "Even when you're frowning, your light still shines through.  Jillian, age 5, 10 December 2011".

Materials:  Patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking), die-cut sentiment (K & Company), glitter glue (Leeho), metallic gel pen (All About Scrapbooking), others - fabric flowers, die-cut oval frame, gem stickers, gold ribbon.

Groom Aglow

You don't often find a groom being described as "glowing".  The bride, yes, but the groom... well, not really.  But that was exactly what my brother, Paul, looked like in these pictures taken as he was getting ready for the wedding.  After the stress of all the wedding preps, here you see him spending some time with family and his close friends, even joking and goofing around. Seeing all the hard work he and Ica put into this day, I'm glad to see that they were able to enjoy it.

Another very simple layout, as the design of the paper can definitely stand on its own.  All I did to add to is was stamp the title and some subtle designs as a background for the pictures.  I have very dreadful stamping skills and I obviously need to practice some more.  I don't know if it's the white ink that's not compatible with the smooth-ish paper.  But I'm really not blaming the equipment, it's all on me.  :P

This is my third entry for Challenge #7 (sketch by Kathleen Hernandez) on the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  Please check out my other entries on my blog and leave a comment.  Thanks!

Materials:  Patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking), ink (Tsukineko), stamps (Crafty Secrets, Creative Imaginations, and Pink Paislee).

The Ring Bearer's Speech

A really simple layout about my nephew, Jonas, who was the ring bearer at my brother's wedding.  As most people in our family (the older ones especially) are bit shy about public speaking, the task fell on this little boy's shoulders.  Well, not-so-little anymore, as he proved to be very capable and quite the charmer as he certainly engaged his audience with his heartfelt speech. 

There really was no need to do much as the patterned paper was great by itself.  I only added the pictures, some journaling and the title.  The journaling consists of snippets from Jonas' speech handwritten on the swirls in the dark blue sky, around the sun's rays and right along the blades of grass.

This is my second entry to Challenge #7 on the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog.  I had four pages planned, but have so far been able to fully finish two.  With about 2-1/2 hrs to go 'til midnight, we'll just have to see how this goes.  It's getting harder and harder to sneak in my scrappy time when we're already well into the school year.   Sigh!

Materials:  Patterned paper, die-cut shape (label) and metallic gel pens (All About Scrapbooking - Magical), others - square brads, metallic paper for matting.

Enchanting

This time around, when I looked at the sketch for Challenge #7 at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog when October began, I had some ideas on what I wanted to do.  It was such a versatile sketch by Kathleen Hernandez, that I thought there was so much room to be creative.

But as I was going through my stash for stuff I could use, I came across this set of 8"x8" papers called Magical from All About Scrapbooking and most of the designs included celestial bodies nestled in one corner.  The designs simply lent themselves to the sketch, that it seemed the sketch was made with these papers in mind!  I already took out some pictures that would fit right in with the theme.  And since I still have a bunch of pictures from my brother's wedding last year, I used those again.  But this time, these are pictures of some of the cutest people in the entourage - my nieces and nephew.

This layout is all about my niece, Jasmine, looking all calm and peaceful right before the wedding, in the midst of everyone rushing around her.  Since the paper already had a beautiful design to it, I didn't want to add too much.  I did add die-cut and punched out flowers to hide some things that didn't go with the overall design/color scheme.  I actually rotated the paper 90 degrees clockwise to get the sphere (I think it's the moon) where I want it, so I can position the picture at the lower left corner.  As a result, there were awkwardly positioned birds near the bottom of the page that had to be covered up.  Same goes with the bright green stars that came with the paper.  And since the left side of the picture was adorned with artificial poinsettias that were part of the church's Christmas decor (it was a December wedding), I had to cover those as well.

Journaling:  "In the hustle and bustle that comes with getting ready for a much anticipated wedding, here you are - all CALM and SERENE.  How I wish that we could all take a moment to stand back and happily watch as life unfolds, like you do."

Materials:  Patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking, K&Company, Corona), die-cut glitter flowers, gem brads, gem stickers, metallic gel pen (All About Scrapbooking), others - pearl stickers; tools - flower and leaf punches (Carl & HBW).

Celebrating World Card Making Day

Sunday afternoon marked the first time we'll be celebrating World Card Making Day.We had been anticipating this day for quite some time and the preps I did took me well into the wee hours of Sunday morning.  I had planned on each kid making three cards in all - a Halloween card, a Christmas card, and an anything-goes card, where the kids can use it for any occasion they want.  I made a sample for each and prepared six kits per card (expecting four kids and one adult, plus one for me to demo).  It probably took me much longer to look up ideas and inspiration than to work on the kits, but it was all worth getting only about three hours of sleep.

 The sample cards.  It took a while to decide what cards we would make, 

but in the end, the prime consideration was that they should be something the kids

 would enjoy doing - nothing too complicated, but something that we'd all be proud of.

Took a pic of all the kits I prepared the night (up until the early morning) before.  

There seems to be a lot (18 kits in all), but compared to the first ever project we did, 

this actually look less time and effort to prep.

The Halloween card sample up close.  I admit, the color isn't all that Halloween-y, 

but I really like how this turned out.  The patterned paper is pretty but a little bit eerie.  

 

A really simple Christmas card (sample).  I cut all the patterned paper strips, 

which were all double sided, so the kids can choose which design they would like to use.

The sample I prepared for the anything-goes card, which is basically an all-occasion card 

that the kids can turn into any kind of card they want.  I made this one 

with a stamped sentiment that says "thinking of you".

 

The fruits of our labor.  I like to keep the design simple enough so the kids can easily follow, 

but I also love it when they put their own twist to it (like the one on top).

Our anything-goes cards:  there's a birthday card, a "thinking of you" card, 

a "Happy New Year" card, and one that says "happy everything!"

Jessica with all the cards that she made.  

In the end, the afternoon went very quickly.  Both the kids and the adults had a great time.  It's a great way to spend an afternoon seeing the kids smile, along with the awesome feeling that they've accomplished something.  Hope you had a fun and fruitful World Card Making Day!

Happy World Card Making Day!

I didn't know that this particular holiday was celebrated until I came across this newsletter from Creating Keepsakes about their countdown to said holiday several days ago.  I told my sister that we can do a Crafty Kids weekend with card making.  We actually get to make cards with the kids tomorrow, but I should be doing preps today.  And all I've done so far is look up ideas online and browse old card making magazines here at home.  I've listed some ideas of my own and done some sketches already.  But as far as getting all the elements that will go on the cards (and based on my list, there will be lots :-b) ready, nothing has been done.  I need a swift kick in the you-know-where to get me going I think. - 5:03PM, 10/06/2012 (Philippine time is GMT+8... so when I get stuff done, hopefully it will still be World Card Making Day somewhere!)

And so... 6-1/2 hours later.  I've only finished one card, as well as six kits for the kids to make it.  It's a Christmas card and I can't say that I designed it because I've seen different versions of it before.  But it has to be kid-friendly and I thought that it would be fun to do.

 

Two more cards to go!  11:47PM, 10/06/2012

Such a looooong day

It's only a little past four in the afternoon and I'm already exhausted.  So very tired that once I get home, I will probably just go to bed and sleep until it's time to get up for work tomorrow.  You see, I've had five classes since 9:30am up until this afternoon, breaking only for a 10 min lunch because I was still grading papers during my lunch period.  Sigh.  All the stress and exhaustion comes from yesterday's suspension of classes.  As I couldn't afford to miss those meetings (our quarterly exam is scheduled for next week), I scheduled makeup classes for those two sections whose classes were affected.  And it just so happens that the available time that they had was today - so that's a total of five classes for me today.  Whew!  Well, at the end of the day, I finished everything that I needed to do.

And now for a long overdue post.  I got some happy mail about two weeks ago.  It wasn't really a surprise as I've been long awaiting its arrival.  I was actually selected as a favorite at the Filipino Scrapbookers Challenge Blog for the month of August.  Now they do not normally give prizes to the favorites, just to the randomly drawn monthly winner.  But in this case, one of the lovely ladies at the blog volunteered to give out a prize for the August favorite.  I was so very lucky :-)

So anyway, the mail was due to arrive on Sept. 19 and when I got home from work, there it was!  Was so excited to see what was inside, and as much as I tried to refrain from opening the package right away, I couldn't resist peeking.  I took a quick picture of the bag of goodies, and proceeded to inspect each and every item.  They're all so pretty!!!  Thank you Ms. Ces de Guzman!  Check out her blog to here see the really fun and creative layouts/projects she makes.

As soon as I saw all the goodies I couldn't wait to get started on a project.  But alas, the end of the second quarter beckons with piles and piles of papers to grade!  So I truly hope that this weekend I will get a chance to use these awesome embellishments on a layout or two (hopefully more).  Seeing this picture again has cheered me up some actually :-)

Crafty Kids Project #3: Birthday Card for Lola

Last Sunday, my grandmother celebrated her 86th birthday.  The week before that, we rounded up the kids (great grandkids, actually) to make a birthday card for her.  "Lola" is Tagalog for grandma, and interestingly enough, great grandchild translates to "apo sa tuhod".  Which literally means grandchild at the knee (yes, the body part), while great great grandchild is "apo sa talampakan" - grandchild at the sole (as in the bottom of the feet).  Odd, isn't it?  I wonder how those terms came about.  But I digress, so back to the kids making a card.

Actually, I recently purchased this flower-shaped mini album (made up of 5 foam pages and bound with a ball  chain) for this particular occasion, so the kids can each have a page for their greetings.  But instead of letting them loose and do whatever they want with their page, in the end my sister and I wanted to make a unified mini.  As I was browsing Scrapbuck.com (please check them out - they have a lot of great stuff at a very reasonable price) a couple of weeks ago, I saw some really cute animal wall art.  And this has inspired me to have on each page, a particular animal with a its own sentiment.  Here's what I came up with:

• Bird:  "A little bird told me it's your BIRTHDAY!" (cover page)
• Chicken:  "How egg-citing!"
• Hippopotamus:  "Hip-hippo-ray!"
• Bee:  "Bee happy!"
• Cat:  "Have a purr-fect day!"

To prep for this project, I stamped the sentiments on white cardstock, sketched out and cut all the shapes  for each paper pieced animal, and finally, left out the colored markers and stickers so the kids can decorate the pages however they wish.  And so here they are with the pages they made.

  

This is a little more effort on the kids' part as when they got their kits, they had no idea how to arrange the pieces to make up their animal of choice.  Fortunately, I still had my original sketch of the different animals and what they were supposed to say, so we just passed that around until everyone was able to finish their page.  Then they wrote/drew their personal greetings on the back of their page.  And by the way, my sister stepped up to make the hippo page, since nobody wanted to do it.  The kids were probably intimated by the number of pieces (10) or got confused because it's pink.  In any case, we all had fun.  It's all in the googly eyes, I think. :-) 

Materials:  Mini album and stickers (All About Scrapbooking), magnetic alphabet stamps (Making Memories), ink (Studio G), border die cuts (Papemelroti), others - colored markers and googly eyes.

Crafty Kids Project #2: My Little Sketch Book

The pictures took a while because everyone was busy this September.  So this post is late as our Crafty Kids weekend took place two weeks ago (on Sept. 16).  No matter, this was a fun and easy project to do.  Didn't take too much time and effort to prep either.  The most labor intensive part of the preps was probably wrapping the sketch books in colored paper.  The strips of solid white and patterned paper were easy to cut. And I've punched out the top note shapes a while ago when I was just getting rid of small pieces of scraps.  The monograms were mostly hand cut by me, except for "D" and "S", which I got from a sticker set that I used in a couple of projects already.

Here are pictures of the kids working on decorating their own sketch book.  They just had to stick the strips and cut outs onto a solid colored paper base.  As a finishing touch, we stamped "My Little Sketch Book" next to their monogram.  It was actually surprising how fast they all worked compared to our first project in August, a scrapbook page about their name (click here to see the entry).  I suppose they couldn't wait to start doodling/sketching away, which they did right away actually. ;-)

Materials:  Sketch book (A1), colored paper (SoFun), patterned paper (All About Scrapbooking, DCWV), magnetic stamp (Making Memories), ink (Studio G), around the page puncher (Martha Stewart Crafts), others - colored pens, assorted paper scraps.

Love Mini Album for Paul & Ica

It took quite some time to finish this album, Paul & Ica's wedding took place in Dec. 2011.  I can't even remember when I actually started the process of making this mini album, but I suppose that the idea came to me shortly after the wedding.  In my stash of scrappy stuff, I had this chipboard album that spells out "LOVE" and I thought it would be appropriate for a wedding themed album.  The next step was choosing the patterned paper and embellishments that would go into the album.  After I had covered all the chipboard and put in some basic embellishments, it sat untouched for a long time.  I haven't had any pictures printed yet, and when I found that the pictures were already ready for saving and printing, there were just soooo many that it was difficult to choose which ones would go nicely with the album. When I finally had the pictures printed (it took months before I got it done), I was held back by inertia.  I don't know if I was feeling overwhelmed, or I was simply looking for inspiration, but I just couldn't get started again.  But as I was eyeing all my piles of unfinished projects, I thought, why not?  I had planned on giving this album as a birthday gift to either my brother or his wife, but the birthdays have come and gone and the album was just sitting in my room, begging to be finished.  So I just did it.  And I already gave the album to the newly weds about two weeks ago. :-)

 

 

Materials: Chipboard album (Bare Basics), paper (solids - Star Paper Corporation; patterned paper - KI Memories & Paper Reflections), paint (Tim Holtz Distress Crackle Paint), embellishments (All About Scrapbooking - ribbons, trim, skeleton leaf, feathers, fabric flowers, gem stickers; Craft World - paper flowers; Hallmark - sentiment stickers, K & Company - die cuts; Making Memories - glitter chipboard flourish; Michaels - ribbon; Papemelroti - foam die cuts; Simple Joys/Regalong Pambahay - ribbon flowers; Yellow Violet House - tickets), others - vintage buttons, ribbons, font (French Script).