It Takes All Kinds

A Puzzling Development...Child's Birthday Card

Hello, all, Ann Marie here!  Do any of you remember the DCWV "Chip Stacks" from a few years ago?  Basically, DCWV took the popular textured cardstock in mat stacks, glued a piece to the front and back of a piece of chipboard, and voila, already papered chipboard for you to cut into whatever shape you liked (although, really, if you wanted to do this, I think it would be easily accomplished with a Xyron or spray adhesive).

I had a few pieces languishing in my stash, so set about creating a unique birthday card for my cousin's daughter.  First I designed the greeting, straight on the piece of chipboard.  I used rub-ons, stamps, and made sure the butterflies I used were fully adhered, with the backside completely covered with my Xyron, so that no matter what happened, they weren't going anywhere!

A little sanding to match the distressed look that happens when you stamp on textured cardstock, wrote a personal greeting across the back, and I was finished.  Onto the fun part!  With my Sizzix steel rule Original Puzzle Die, I centered the cutting area on the card so that there would be a solid border to help her piece it back together.  I cut the card into a set of puzzle shapes.

Now when Lily gets the card, she'll need to complete the puzzle first (using the images created on the front) in order to read the greeting on the back!  Fun, interactive, age appropriate, and best of all, mails flat.  ;-)

Happy Birthday, ITAK, congratulations!!!

Birthday Cards

Happy Birthday to ITAK!!  Two years and doing strong thanks to all the talented ladies who contirbute their time and awesome art.

I thought that I would celebrate by posting some recent birthday cards that I made.

I used some Japanese masking tape on this card.  It is my new favorite paper crafting supply.
Notice the punched paper border at the bottom that I used instead of ribbon.
Punched circles can add dimention to your projects.

Quick and Simple Birthday Layout

My son celebrated his first birthday back in April, and I was determined to get it recorded as quickly as possible. I decided to do a very quick 1 page layout to make sure that the big day was documented.

Of coure I took a ton of photos on the day, but was able to cull it down to just these four for the page. I used the free Photility software to print the smaller photos.

Then I went quickly through my stash and chose coordinating papers and embellishments. Since the day is documented, I can now take my time to go back and do a mini-book with all the other photos and more details.

His party was held two weeks later. Again, lots of photos were taken. I'll be back later this month to show you how I documented the party highlights on another 1 page layout.

If you're struggling to record a big event with lots of phoitos, cut yourself some slack! Choose just a few highlights to make a quiclk page. With the pressure off you can then take your time to do a more detailed project.

 

In keeping with a theme free month...

I present you with a theme-free post.  Just chock full of random free-for-allness.  First up, some general feel-the-love cards:

Or maybe you're more in the mood for a general cute-for-cute's-sake layout:

Or maybe a theme *is* what you need.  Maybe you've had a few graduations in your social circle recently.  I bet they'd like a gift of green that would coordinate nicely with any one of these cards, celebrating their stellar achievement:

Or perhaps you need an end-of-school gift for a supremely frazzled teacher:

(The Do-It-Yourself part?  It was a bag full of fancy chocolate.  :-)  Self-medicating, indeed.)

Maybe you want to document the everyday summer surrounding you right now:

Well, whatever your poison, have a great weekend, go get your scrap on--and try to stay out of trouble! 

Celebrate Traditions

What traditions are you celebrating?!

Peace and Warmth to you all this holiday season!

A Christmas Past

Christmas has always been a big deal in my family. Even when it was just the four of us (My Mum, Dad, sister and I) it was always full of fun and excitement. I remember traditions like always having home made bread with smoked ham for breakfast on Christmas morning. My Dad was crazy about Christmas lights, so there was always at least one string up at the front of the house. Of course everyone's favourite part was opening the presents on Christmas morning! As we got older we even managed to wait until after breakfast! I found these old photos from various Christmases past and put them together on this page

I used a combination of Christmas theme and other products (like the house fabric paper) to convey my theme of Christmas and home and family.

Find some older photos and document what your Christmases past were like to share those memories with your current family!

Let's Celebrate!

Whatever your beliefs, December is a month just made for celebrating! Join the team this month as we post all about what we're celebrating this year. With all the activity, we know you won't have any extra time, so there's no challenge this month. They will be back in January though! Stay tuned for more to come!

Happy Birthday to Me

I turn 41 today. Yikes! Age is just a number right? As you look around the web and through scrap magazines, there are lots of examples of pages for kid's birthdays, not that many for adults. Since until recently I wasn't scrapping kids, I do have several examples of adult birthday pages to share. For the last few years I have made the effort to document my birthday as the old memory is going and I've got to get the details down!

This one from two years ago focuses on the delicious cake my friend made, and the flowers I got from my husband.

This 12x12 is from the same occasion and was published in the CK book 50 Moments. In this page I talked about my wishes for the following year.

Last year I spent my birthday back home in Barbados. Not as exciting as you would think, since Lucas wasn't with me, and I spent most of the day dealing with the local DMV. In the evening, determined to salvage the day I went to the beach. One of the benefits of being on a small island! I did two separate pages to document the event.

This one tells the entire story of my day.

This one is a fun take on bullet point journaling and a To Do list.

A few days after my birthday I had some friends over and this last page documents part of that occasion.

Notice that I scrap a variety of sizes. I use the American Crafts D-ring albums which can hold all sizes of pages. These will all go into my About Me album. Also did you notice that only one page has a photo of me? Since I am usually the one behind the camera (something we are all familiar with), I rarely have photos of myself taken during events. In that case I use photos of representational objects instead.

If you haven't scrapped pages for adult birthdays give it a try! If you have any questions about products or techniques used in these pages feel free to ask in the comments.

Welcome Kieran Haden

Our son Kieran was born on April 11th, just four days late, but it seemed like a month to his anxious parents. Since then it has been an endless round of breastfeeding, changing diapers, sleepless nights, and of course tons of photos!

As luck would have it, just as I am getting to the point of thinking about scrapping again (and actually finding a spare hour to do it) we ran out of printer ink! So I decided to play around a bit with digital scrapbooking. I'd still call myself a beginner at digi, even though it's been 4 years since I first tried it out. I don't do it very often, usually only when, like this week, I realise printing photos isn't possible.

I converted my original colour photo to black and white using a free action available from The Pioneer Woman. The digi kit, Embrace Life by Sandy Krieger, is also a free download from Memory Makers Magazine.

This page came together very quickly, as I didn't use any fancy techniques, just simple layering of papers and elements with a few drop shadows to create depth. Since time is a scarce commodity for me now, I am happy that I was able to create a layout to celebrate Kieran's arrival without having to pull out all my paper stash!

One Month to go

Our baby boy is due in exactly one month, and I think I can safely say that we are ready! Well physically ready anyway. His nursery is all set up with the essentials, and most importantly we have settled on a name.

I wanted to record this great event, and did this page about it.

Since we have decided not to share his name until he is here, I have more detailed journaling on the back of the layout. That's a good technique when you don't want to share private or intimate information.

All products used except the sequins are by Jillibean Soup!