Classic Christmas Speedy Scrap Cards

Challenge!

Use ONE Classic Christmas Sticker sheet ($3).  Click here to purchase it from my website.  See photo below.

Use any scraps you have.  Use a tape runner.  Use our awesome dual tip pens.

Check out the new silver pen below.  Click here to purchase it.



Check out the new gold pen below.  Click here to purchase it.



Give yourself 30 minutes.  Create at least 15 cards.  Then, give youself 15 minutes to add details with the pens.  See what you've got!

Here's what I came up with. 

and some more

and a few close ups.



It was so so so much fun.  Here are some tips for how to go about it.

Think outside the box
Use the scoring blade to make folding faster
Don't think too hard - go with your instincts

You can do it!  Feel free to share you 45 minute cards on my facebook page - go here to post them.

Fa La La La Love - Winter Additions!

So - We've established that I LOVE Creative Memories Addition Packs.  But, the Winter Additions pack is ALL ME!

I remember at the Showcase National Convention that cM talked about how they are making scrapbook supplies reflect the styles of today and I can tell they are doing their research.  The colors of the Winter Additions pack are so cute and they certainly have been studying the popular fabric designers of today, I can tell.

Here's the Winter Additions pack.  Click this link to buy it from my website.

 

If you look around the internet at some of the popular fabric designers, you can find similarities.
Check out this line of fabric called, STITCH by one of my faves - Betz White.

And take a look at this one too -

I LOVE it that they added sewing machine stitches.  And Iconic Retro/Vintage images.  I also love that they've jumped on the chevron bandwagon.  Chevrons are BIG this season - especially with the new Missoni line at Target.

Now you see that Creative Memories is really WITH IT in the design areas.  Way to go designers.

But lets remember that this is NOT fabric, it's scrapbook paper and stickers.  So what better to do with it than make some awesome borders and journaling boxes.

I tend to be the type of traditional scrapbooker who likes to get a lot out of my real estate on a page.  I add as many photos as will fit and I journal - almost on every page.  But, I love to pop on a little decor here and there - so making up borders and boxes and other little bits and bots allows me to save them and use them when the right page comes along.

Here are some of the ideas I came up with for the Winter Additions pack.

I was not gifted with a "math brain," so the little expose on math shown above is about as deep as it gets for me.

If you are a consultant looking for a handout, I'm sorry but I didn't make one for this lesson.   You are welcome to copy and use anything you find in this lesson. Please Please do not copy these lessons as your own, sell them, or offer them on scrapshare sites.  They are my own designs and I request that you use them respectfully.  If you have any trouble seeing instructions, feel free to contact me here.  I was getting hundreds of requests for handouts and it was just TOO many to respond to!  But thanks for your enthusiasm.

I hope you will love the Winter Additions pack as much as I do, but if these designs are not your style, here's the cool thing... there are other winter additions packs available AND cM usually issues something new every year.  I love it that the styles in my albums will change with the times - what a great historical record that will be...not just the photos but the decor will reflect what was going on at the time.  COOL HUH?

Happy Scrapping!

Make N Take Holiday Tags

I've been absent from posting for TWO WEEKS!  But I haven't been idle - just really really Holi-busy!

My Holiday Open House is this weekend and I'm getting some things ready for my shoppers.  A favorite is the Make N Take tags.  This year, I've come up with two.

I'm calling them the Santa Suit Tag and the 3D Tree Tag. 

Both are very simple.  I'd suggest making a bunch, assembly line style and using them to add decor to all your holiday packages this year!  AND... guess what?  If you can make a tag - you can turn the same design into a card.  Play around with these two ideas for a variety of holiday decorating items...place cards, buntings, the sky is the limit!

Here are the tags.

Instructions for Santa Suit Tag

Needed:  Red, White, Black & Yellow Cardstock – Personal Trimmer and/or scissors – Black Fine Tip Pen – Hole Punch – Straight Edge – Rotary Trimmer with WAVY blade – tape runner

Step 1:  Cut red cardstock 2”X6”

Step 2:  Cut white cardstock 1.75” X 6”

Step 3:  Cut a scant edge from each long side of white rectangle using wavy blade

Step 4:  Attach white wavy edge rectangle to red rectangle

Step 5:  Using straight edge, draw line down middle of white rectangle with fine tip pen

Step 6:  Cut black cardstock ¾” X 2”

Step 7:  Attach black rectangle to one end of red/white, about 1” in from end

Step 8:  Cut Yellow square ¾” X ¾”

Step 9:  Attach yellow square to center of black rectangle

Step 10:  Cut black square ½” X ½”

Step 11:  Attach black square to center of yellow square

Step 12:  Punch a hole on center pen line about ½” in from non-belt end of tag

Step 13:  Write the word TO above the black line and the word FROM below the black line 

TA DA!  Congrats – you’ve made an EASY Santa Suit Tag

Instructions for 3D Tree Tag

Needed:  Red, Green (double sided) & Yellow Cardstock – Tag Maker – Galaxy Maker – Tape Runner (optional – Rotary Trimmer with Scoring Blade)

Step 1:  Cut a tag from red cardstock and a hole at the top of the tag

Step 2:  Cut 2 green rectangles 1.5” X 2”

Step 3:  Place a dot at the top of the green rectangles.  Center the dot on halfway on the 1.5” side.

Step 4:  Make a diagonal cut from the dot to the right corner.  Then, make another diagonal cut from the dot to the left corner.  A triangle will remain.

Step 5:  Fold or score the triangle in half long ways.

Step 6:  Open the folded triangle part way.

Step 7:  Line up the folded triangle edges next to one another along the center of the tag, the base of the triangle will be against the bottom edge of the tag.

Step 8:  Punch a yellow star using the star on the galaxy maker

Step 9:  Attach the star to the tag slightly under the tip of the tree

TA DA!  Congrats – you’ve made an EASY 3D Tree Tag

Paper Flowers how to.

Creative Memories Project team - JILL - gives a tutorial on how to make really awesome flowers with scrapbook paper and Creative Memories tools.

Her tutorial is awesome.  Have fun and give this a try.  Check it out here.

Friday Freebies Apple Orchard

This week's Friday Freebies from Creative Memories feature png files about apple orchards.  Follow this link to download.



Happy Digi Scrapping -

Thanksgiving Advent

When my daughter (a new grad student) and her roomie moved into their apartment, I gave them a mini everyday display board as a gift.  They needed some added inspiration for how to decorate it - so...

I got on my Storybook Creator PLUS software and created this "Countdown to Thanksgiving" calendar decoration for them to use.  I made it with the Autumn Additions Digital kit.  The font is called Caitlin.  Inserting a calendar is SOOOOOOOOOO easy with the 4.0 version of the software and I could customize it to look anyway I wanted.  I even added a little photo to the calendar square for Thanksgiving.

The page took me 5 minutes to design.  It's a custom 8X8 project and I saved it as a jpg and emailed it to her.  She will be able to print it on a color printer and magnetize it right to her board.

Croptoberfest 2011 RECAP

Croptoberfest came and went about 10 days ago.  My November workshop is right around the corner.  I did a little recap of the event.  It was a roaring success.  The November preview products were a BIG hit - LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of prizes were won - many pages were completed.  Albums and calendars were finished up in time to give as holiday gifts this season.  Border and page ideas were copied.  Storybook 4.0 updates got loaded onto computers, we all lost a lot of sleep - it was AWESOME!  Here are some highlights...

The paint chip chain link tutorial from the photo above can be found here on my craft blog.

I put tags on bags and gave them to my guests as part of their gifts.  I will have an upcoming post called "we're talking tags" in November.  Check back, you won't want to miss that one!

I included two Reflections additions packs in my guests goodie bags.  Then, I displayed ways they could use the projects in a traditional scrapbooking style.  You can find more detailed posts about the lessons I taught using these two items by clicking SPRING AND SUMMER or AUTUMN and WINTER.

I also taught a lesson on the Autumn Additions pack that many of my attendees had purchased when they came to my September workshop.  I made up a bunch of designs to show how several of our cM tools are used.  I posted a lesson on that as well.  Click here for the Autumn Additions post.

After a lesson about the new border maker tool, I challenged my croptober attenders to CREATE their own design using the Create It paper pack that Creative Memories provided for us to utilize at our event.  There was a vote and several attendees won prizes for their ideas.  Here are some of the favorites and winners.  Aren't these gals talented?  LOVE IT!

A big hit at the event was the Chocolate bark.  I made two varieties.  The first I call Halloween bark.  I found this recipe. but I found the directions a bit tricky so  I slightly adapted how I made the bark which I found much easier.  It was a sweet and salty sugary treat.  The Halloween bark is the one made with white chocolate.

I made a second bark recipe adapted from this one.  The dark chocolate bark wasn't quite as sweet.  It was the one I preferred.  I made it in the same way as the Halloween bark.  I did a little blog post about it and included the recipe over at my FlyTheCoopCrafts blog.  Check out the Halloween bark here and the Dark Chocolate Pistachio Bark here.

My attendees are an awesome bunch - they work hard, but manage to have a lot of laughs and a lot of fun.  And did I mention there were A LOT of winners?  Thanks everyone for attending and happy Croptoberfest!

Friday Freebies Fall Fun

Here are some great fall freebies from Creative Memories.  Click here to down load them to use with your digital scrapbooking - LIKE the Facebook wall for cM and you can stay notified of all of their freebies and exciting news!



Happy Digi Scrapping!

Friday Freebies - Halloween Alert!

Go get 'em -

These are available FREE for digital scrapbooking from Creative Memories.



Click here to get yours.

Happy DigiScrapping -

Tool Time - Scallop BorderMaker Bunting

I LOVE Buntings! - Banners! - whatever you call them, I love them.

So why not love them on a page.  I've made some before using triangles and watermelons.  See that post here.  But - today, I'm showing you a new way to use the Border Maker tool.

Here's the Border Maker tool.


You need the Scallop Stitch Cartridge for this lesson.  It will be in stock on Oct 26, 2011.  Make sure to grab one as soon as it's in stock.  It's my favorite cartridge.

To see other posts I did about the border maker try this post (border maker designs) and this post (T-guide for the border maker).

Step 1.  Load a paper into the border maker and cut one side with the scallop stitch cartridge.

Step 2.  Use the rotary trimmer to cut off part of the paper.  Use the straight blade.



Step 3.  With scissors.  Cut apart the scallops between the two stitches at the bottom of each scallop bump.

Step 4.  Line pieces up across a page.  Add stickers, ABC letters or use a dual tip pen to write a letter on each scallop flag.  Use this design as a title for a page!  Show me what you made - or post your ideas on FB to share!  Here's a link to my FB blog page.

Variations - What about a rainbow scallop bunting?  Make a bunch of flags in different colors and make many many buntings.  Cut a few buntings and share them with a friend. 

Easy - Cute - Try one!  Happy Scrapping!

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Autumn Additions - Designs Galore

This lesson features the Autumn Additions pack recently released by Creative Memories.  Autumn/Fall is my favorite time of the year.  I love the colors in this pack.  Here are some ways you can use the Autumn Additions pack in an "old school" style for your traditional album pages.  The papers and stickers in this pack lend themselves to just about any fall seasonal page you would want to create.

Page 1 in this lesson shows the elements included in this pack.  The traditional pack costs $9 (US) and you can purchase this pack by clicking here.  It is available as both a traditional and digital additions pack.

I've used this pack to create borders and journaling boxes.  Here are some borders created by cutting apart the 12X12 papers and adding stickers to the border designs... 

This next border design creates a scene all of its own. 

I've used the Tag Maker to cut the tombstones in this border.  The tag maker looks like this.


To purchase the tag maker click here.

I love using the tag maker to create tombstones!  The possibilities are endless.  I did another post about making tag maker tombstones out of paint chip swatches to create a Halloween bunting you can use to decorate your home for the season.  Check out the Tombstone Tag Maker post here.

I've also used the border maker to create the picket fence.  The border maker looks like this.

Here are a few more border designs and also some ideas for making journaling boxes.

I used the leaf maker to cut out leaves for this design.  The leaf maker is on sale for 50% off the original cost. (now only $8.25 - WOW)  You can't beat the price.  Get it while it lasts by clicking here to purchase the leaf maker.


This next page shows one last border and journaling box.

The next page shows borders made using the Creative Memories tearing tools.  Check them out here.

There are three tearing tools from Creative Memories.  Here's what they look like.

This one's my favorite.  They only cost $10!  To purchase this one, click here.

Here's another one.  It's called the WAVY tearing tool.  Purchase it here.



The last tearing tool is the newest.  It's called the Nancy O'Dell gratitude tearing tool.  See it below.

Click here to purchase the gratitude scallop tearing tool.

I hope these designs have inspired you to make pages using the Autumn Additions pack.  Here's a link to purchase Autumn Additions Traditional.  I also hope that you will share these designs with other scrapbookers so they too can see how to use this seasonal pack to decorate their pages.  There is a handout for the lessons found in this post. 

IF YOU ARE A PUBLIC FOLLOWER of my blog, you may request a handout by contacting me here.  PLEASE, one request only one handout per email, PLEASE signup as a follower BEFORE you make the request.  PLEASE state your follower name in the email when you request it.  Thanks!  And Happy Scrapping!