In the last couple of years, I've created some kind of travel journal for my trips. It really helps me keep notes along with all the photos I take. Last summer, I used October Afternoon's Campfire collection to do a journal for our mountain trip. I did a video but never got around to posting it. So in the video below, there is a brief bit about that journal before going through the process of making this journal.
I was so excited to see a new collection by October Afternoon! I love their 8x8 paper pads, label stickers and mini market stickers. Also with this collection, I got the word stickers and the border stickers.
You can make travel journals or Smash style books out of any papers. These just happen to be my choices. I also really like to put ledger papers in so I'll have plenty of writing space. Here are some close ups of the front cover followed by some of the pages:
Isn't the little car cute? I won't be traveling with a dog but I'll be loaded down with lots of other things.
I like a few pockets for receipts and journaling cards:
With Google Reader going away (very, very sad face here!), I wanted to add options for some other readers. If you have been using Google Reader, you have probably converted and hopefully my blog is on your new reader already. If not, here are buttons for Bloglovin and Feedly.
There is an option on the right side of my screen for subscribing via e-mail if you prefer. Also, in researching readers, I learned that a lot of people are just using Twitter for updates so I'll be more diligent in updating Twitter when I've created a new post. I thought it was sort of redundant but guess I was wrong.
And the last layout made especially for the 6x6 Paper Pad Scrapinar is...
this layout with a photo of my parents taken on my Mother's birthday this spring.
For the background, I cut a design from the Storybook cartridge on the Cricut. I got a lot of questions about the size of this piece during the Scrapinar. It is 10" square.
I used several papers from the Teresa Collins Fabrications 6x6 pad to fill in the back in different sections. The video shows how.
The video shows also that was the easy part. The challenge for me on this page was figuring out what to do with the photo and the arrangement. So, I never created a sketch for this one.
In the end, I kept it pretty simple. The great photo and the background were really the main focus.
All of the layouts from the Scrapinar are shown on this Pinterest board. You can also find the blog posts by clicking on the "6x6 Paper Pads" tag on the right side of my blog. I'll continue to add pages to the board as I do pages using 6x6 paper pads.
This was my favorite layout from the 6x6 Paper Pads Scrapinar. (We are almost done, the last one is posting tomorrow.) Not only do I love the strip piecing technique but this photo is just so, so cute! My oldest stepdaughter took the photo of my youngest stepdaughter's little boy on his first birthday. They all live far away so we weren't there. I just filled in the speech bubble from my imagination. It is fun trying to guess what a child might be thinking.
It says: "Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm cute. Now would you quit taking pictures so I can have my birthday cake?"
The background is Stampin' Up! now discontinued Bashful Blue and the 6x6 pads are the Pier from Crate Paper and Pinwheel from Lily Bee. For the mat around the photo, I cut some cardstock with regular scissors in narrow cuts for fringe to match his hat. The stars are Studio Calico mistables.
I feel slightly guilty. I just sent Jaime (my photographer) her album with pages I've made this year from photos she sent. I did not include this page. It was too cute and I couldn't quite part with it yet. I suppose that is a good reason to make another page with this adorable photo and send it to her.
Don't forget, this is the last week to purchase True Stamp classes at the discounted $7 per class:
We don't have a separate living room and den; we just have one room and so we use this room all the time. We read, watch television either on the real TV or on my laptop, eat sometimes, pet the cat, talk, and visit. It is a busy place for a house with only two people. Oh and the cat, we mustn't for get His Majesty who reigns in every room.
I grew up in a house with a formal living room that was only used when I was dating. My Mother keeps the room immaculate now and it is gorgeous but more of a museum than a living space. My goal is to use every inch of my house. I'm excelling in my craft space/guest bedroom where I have every drawer filled with product - ah, but that is another story.
For this page, I used several shots taken in the last few months of activities in our busy room. There is one in the kitchen of Lenny and I cooking together but it is all open. I used a 3x3 grid and 6x6 papers for each of the sections. The small scale prints make these papers perfect for matting. The coordinating 12x12 papers fill in the rest. The page also has a few of those tiny journaling cards for embellishments. Also for embellishments, I cut out some of the paper designs and added some butterflies colored and stamped.
The biggest challenge for this page was figuring out which Washi tape to use. I must have rolled and unrolled a dozen tapes before settling on a the red and teal. The striped one I tried so hard to use in the video finally found a home on another layout later on.
I shared this page in the Scrapinar but didn't show any of the video so here it is. The video goes pretty fast. It was so long; I may have gotten carried away with shortening it. Let me know what you think - faster pace or should I have slowed it down a bit?
Oh, I've been having such fun! All of these cards use techniques from the "Pages to Cards and Back Again" class by Bobbi Lemanski and Kim Ziehr at Raisin Boat stamps. This class is available as a replay from the past True Scrap event for $7 for a limited time. (Price goes up in a few days).
The class covers several stamping techniques using a brayer, some splattering which I did for the flowers on this card and also streaking which I used on the card above.
"Streaking" is supposed to be done on glossy cardstock but I didn't have any. I found their technique worked on vellum and was a great way to add some color to vellum. Several of their projects, including streaking, made use of ink refills. I love things that use my refills because I'll probably never run through a refill reinking a stamp pad. Plus ink refills are cheap and don't take up a lot of space so why not find out more than one way to use them?
I'd never heard of Raisin Boat stamps before. They offer stamps for sale or for rent. Renting stamps? It's like Netflix. You can sign up for a plan for a certain number of sets per month and then add them to your mailing list. You get the stamp sets, use them as long as you like and return when finished. I love this idea particularly for holiday sets. When I was browsing their selection, I kept seeing sets I'd like to buy and that is an option too. So I'm seriously considering the trial subscription at $5.99 per month for 2 sets a month to see how I like it. Has anyone tried a stamp rental program before?
This class and all the True Stamp classes are available for $7 for a limited time (I think through the end of June) then the price goes to $12.95 each.
At the time this page was created, the doctor wasn't saying and inquiring minds wanted to know. Boy or girl? My step daughter has a little boy so a girl was the wish for most of the family. The wish was granted. A baby girl is due in a couple of months.
This was one of my favorite pages made for the 6x6 paper pad Scrapinar. For the page, I used two 12x12 papers from Little Yellow Bicycles Fern and Forrest (girl collection) and the corresponding 6x6 paper pad. The smaller scale prints worked great for many of the embellishments including the little fairy turned into a tag.
Several 6x6 papers were cut or punched to create this flower garden. The stick pins are from an older LYB set.
When I completed the page, I asked my husband if I should put a question mark after 'little' to emphasize that we didn't know whether the baby was a girl or boy. He suggested using a 'blue' question mark and a 'pink' question mark. What a wonderful idea! He said "Why don't you use a pink sticker and a blue question mark sticker, if you have them?" If I have them... Ha, ha, ha!
So here is the video that goes through the layout process on YouTube or here:
Here are several of the layouts shown in the 6x6 Paper Pads on 12x12 Pages Scrapinar on June 12. They are also found on this pinboard on Pinterest.
A link below each layout takes you to the past blog post about that page. More pages using 6x6 papers from the Scrapinar and brand new videos are coming in the next few days...
After what seemed like months with only trips to the grocery store and other errands, we finally broke out of here in April! I'm exaggerating a bit yet still it was really nice to have some day trips and other activities.
For this page, first shown in the 6x6 paper pad Scrapinar, I used the tiny journaling cards in several 6x6 pads. When they shrink down the size of the prints, cards that are normally 3x4 become 1 1/2" x 2" and are a great size for embellishments.
This cute little paper clip is a Two Peas in a Bucket exclusive item and comes in several colors. The brads are some older Basic Grey product.
The title gave me a challenge and a few false starts before I settled on colors. "G" and "O" are some of the last letters I had from an older raw chipboard set. I painted them a very dark rust so they would stand out against this map print from Webster's pages Color and Composition 6x6 pad.
The process video for this page is at YouTube and also here:
Here is the sketch for the page. You could have more or fewer photos in the photo strip.
Thanks for stopping by! I'll have several pages from the Scrapinar in tomorrow's post and another video later in the week.
This first layout from last week's Scrapinar focused on using full sheets of 6x6 papers. I used 4 for the background. When I showed my husband this page and another one I'd made a few weeks ago with the same photos (and the colorful stamped punched images), I asked which one he liked better. We would keep one of the pages and give one to my step daughter for her album. "Oh, this one of course! It even has little canoes!"
Yes, it has canoes, and trees and a lake. It will be the only page with those as those three papers appear only once in the Lakeside paper pad from Pebbles while there are 2 of each of most of the others. That's my only complaint with this pad. Those are great papers and I wish I had more of them.
When I completed this page, this was how it looked:
It looked sort of 'blah' to me. The photos stood out but nothing else did. All the elements sort of ran together. I'd gotten a bit too carried away in my blue/green/beige color scheme and there was no contrast. So I took the photo because I was about to try something on that one-of-a-kind paper that just might not work. I wanted to outline the letters with a black Sharpie.
The 'before' version is shown on the left.
The After version is here. Then I added a black mat for the journaling.
Before:
After the mat:
So just a touch of contrast really helped this layout.
This page was the first layout in our Scrapinar last week. I'll be posting all the layouts over the next 2 weeks. In the blog posts I'll focus on things we didn't talk about during the Scrapinar. Four of the layouts also have a process video ...so stay tuned.
Be sure to check out the True Stamp classes. Individual classes are available for $7 each through June.
The card I posted yesterday with the truck was my dad's card. He and Mother are traveling and will be home later today. I wanted him to be sure and get the card so I gave it to her to pass along this morning. (It was also the only way I could get him to accept a little money for a treat on his trip.)
The cards and tag here were made using ideas from the Inspiration to Creation class by Chari Moss and Kelly Marie Alvarez of Lawn Fawn during True Scrap earlier this year. While the class does inspire, it is also a great technique class for a beginning to intermediate stamper. It is particularly great if you have outlines stamps you want to color. You can use them for the paper piecing technique I used in the 'little birdie told me' card above. The papers from that card are from Lily Bee's Pinwheel 6x6 paper pad.
For the tag, I used my distress inks in one of the class techniques. I also loved the idea they gave that helped my stars 'glow.' It is nice to get more mileage out of supplies you already have.
True Stamp classes are now available for individual purchase. Through June, you can get them for $7 each and save $5.95. That's a great price for new inspiration and techniques!
Making my morning round through blogs and websites, I stopped cold on the Twopeasinabucket.com site. They just started a big summer sale. I'd been browsing earlier in the week and had decided not to get anything. Good timing!
I first checked the 75% off section and couldn't believe all the Washi and even My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pads! So I retrieved my old shopping cart with a few new items and quickly stocked up on several great deals.
They have sale items at all price points. The 60% off rack is pretty packed as well.
Today's card is another inspiration from Monica Bradford's Washi Woohoo Too Scrapinar available currently for $7. Here's the link:
I used Stampin' Up!'s Countryside set for the image stamped on vellum. I added a little paper behind it so it would show more and encase everything in a Washi frame. It was a really fast card!
Now I suppose I've done enough enabling and should go on to grocery shopping (blah!).
These little Polaroid frames are everywhere and they are really easy to do. All you need is something that will cut a square. I used my Cricut and cut a 2 3/4" square leaving some border around the square.
Then I trimmed the paper with my paper trimmer to leave a 1/4" border around 3 sides and 3/4" on the bottom. That's it, an instant Polaroid frame.
Then it was easy to glue it over a 3" photo. You can make these any size you want.
For the rest of this overview page from our recent beach trip, I dug into my stash for some old stickers and some newer Washi tapes. Before applying those, I stamped some circles but not with stamps or ink. The video shows how to make these - really easy and fun. I've seen other people do these but hadn't tried them. I'll definitely do this again.
Next week, I'll start posting all the layouts from the 6x6 Scrapinar. Some of these have process videos which go through more of the layout than was shown in the Scrapinar. I still need to edit and voice over those. I think I'll do a label for these posts so it will be easy to see them all at once.
