My New Scrapbooking Tactic ~ Drop It In, Baby!

Hello, ya'll!  While you are recovering from your turkey coma, Black Friday, and Small Business Saturday...I thought I would take a few down moments to talk to you about scrapbooking.  Did your teeth just clinch?  I know many of you are stressin' about your scrapbooks and some of you have just plain given up.  But hang with me here...

Ten years ago, many of us were hanging out at all-weekend crops, scrapping away and having a blast together.  But after talking with many of you, somehow all our lives have gotten really busy, and we aren't taking the time for crafting that we used to.  I chock it up to two kids and a few businesses.  I know you have your own reasons, too.  

But just because we've gotten uber-busy does not mean we have to give up the things we love.  It just means we need to find new ways to "play".  In my own life, that means SIMPLIFYING.  

So today I want to show you how I am simplifying my scrapbooking.  

My new system is a sort of "drop-in" method.  I put this page together in 5 minutes to show you what I mean.  Because SU no longer sells page protectors besides in 8x8" size, I am purchasing divided page protectors online or at the craft stores with 40% coupons.  

For this page, I dropped four pictures in.  For the other two slots, I embellished two sheets of 4x6" designer paper.  

This is such a quick and easy technique, and I am loving it.  It sort of brings together card-making and scrapbooking all in one.  Decorating areas 4x6 at a time is so much easier for me than decorating a whole 12x12" layout.  You can use any ratio of pictures to decorative quadrants.  Let your pictures dictate what you decide for each page.  

This method of "drop-in" scrapping certainly uses less adhesive, which is another great bonus!  

This method also helps you use up some of your stamping stash, which is also awesome!  Here I used doilies, stamps, a brad, twine, washi tape, a tag, etc.  

I also like to throw in some office supplies like the white adhesive labels for quick notes.  Slap them right onto the pictures...it looks so cute!  

Here's the thing, you can buy expensive kits for doing this kind of scrapbooking.  But I figure I have a TON of supplies already at my disposal.  I want to use them!  The SU designer papers can be a HUGE contribution to "drop-in" scrapbooking.  

So here is what I did.  I had a ton of 12x12" double-sided papers AND 6x6" double-sided papers from all our paper shares.  But 4x6" seems to be the best size for my new scrapbooking methods.  Sometimes I use page protectors with 4x4" or 3x4" slots...but those can easily be cut from 4x6" papers.  So 4x6" was the choice for me.  

Here is my new basket of designer papers for scrapbooking!  All cut 4x6" and ready to grab for scrapping!  I have them separated by their themes because layouts look great when I use the same theme of papers.  

This basket of papers is so neat and tidy.  And it's holding, seriously, SEVERAL of my 12x12 papers and a TON of my old 6x6" papers.  

Above are my former 12x12" packs.  Each pack is cut down to 4x6" and kept together with a rubber band.  

If you are afraid to cut down all your 12x12" papers, the awesome thing is that SU gives you TWO of each sheet.  So I kept 1 set of the designs in 12x12".  Then I cut down the 2nd set of designs to 4x6".  

Here are my former 6x6" paper shares.  I cut them down to 4x6" of course.  Then I put them into the clear envelopes that SU sells.  Those things are so awesome.  Seriously, you get 50 for $4.95!  What great storage!  The leftover pieces of DSP are 2x6" and would make two 2x3" tags easily.  The bags hold together all the scraps.

I'll show you a little further.  This is one of the 6x6" paper shares cut down so you can see exactly what I did.  6 sheets of 4x6" and 6 pieces of 6x2".  The 6x2" pieces would make great tags but would also be great for punching out images. I'm saving the 4x6" for dropping into page protector slots, though.  ;)

The great news is that SU is starting to sell items very conducive to my new scrapbooking method.  I picked up all these fantastic holiday themed products, and they will be perfect for embellishing 4x6" sections in my scrapbook.  The Season of Style Paper Stack is just $6.95.  The Tag Kit is one of my favorites, $10.95 for pre-cut tags, ink spots, twine, stamps...love!  The Season of Style Journaling Tags seem to be a hidden secret in the Holiday Catalog.  I keep having to point them out to people.  They are on page 22.  Look at all that pre-printed awesomeness!  They come in varied sizes, and you can just slap them into scrapbooks (or use them for cards!).  Seriously, just $4.95 for all those heavy-weight tags, 35 of them!  I forgot to picture the matching washi tapes, get three for just $4.95.  The price points on all these great scrapbooking items makes me very happy.  I hope SU keeps pumping out new designs because I will buy them all!

SU also has stickers that go with this Christmas theme.  And right now you can get a Bundle of some of this goodness with the Holiday Sale!  Ends tomorrow.  Get stickers, the journal tags, a smash book, and fun rotary stamp for 20% off, $21.44.  Smash books are a whole other easy scrapbooking method.  We will talk about those another day!  

While SU is not selling 12x12" scrapbooking materials, they ARE doing 8x8".  And they have the drop-in page protectors!  Here are the 8x8" supplies in the Holiday Catalog and they are part of the 20% sale ending tomorrow, too.  The album is $11.96 and a set of 10 divided page protectors is $3.96.  

  

NOW...I feel so much better telling you all my new secrets to easy scrapbooking.  It's not all SU supply related, but that's ok.  Find the albums and protectors that you want, and then get out your SU supplies and put them to good use!  

I also will soon be offering some 4x6" kits that will be very conducive to this kind of scrapbooking AND to card-making so stay tuned!  I may just have a Cyber Deal coming up...so you won't want to miss out!  

I'd love to hear what you think.  Have you seen "drop-in" scrapping?  Have you tried it?  Do you think it looks like something you could handle?  I would love to get many of you back into this hobby that you love...just in an easier and less time-consuming way.  Let me know if you are thinking about joining!  

Organizing ~ Leftover Pictures

There's one part of scrapbooking that I find very hard to get to....filing away the pictures I didn't end up using in the scrapbook.  Don't get me wrong, I have a system.  Oh, you know I do!  I have three white shoe boxes labeled according to whose pictures go in each one.  But actually putting the pictures into the boxes after scrapbooking...well that's just not the most pressing job on my "to-do list".  So instead, I just let the "file these" picture pile up and up and up.

That is, until I realized that even a 5-year-old could sort these pictures into the boxes!  You guessed it, I solicited my boys to sort and file the pictures for me.  My 7-year-old took the job a little more seriously but...I expected that.  The boys had fun looking at the pictures during the process too.  And now all my "not using" pictures are put away.  Yay!

Sometimes it pays to spend a minute figuring out an alternative way to get something done.  :)

e-cloth for Paper Crafting!

Last weekend, I attended an overnight crop.  I had a blast!  I talked more than I cropped, but that's another topic.  ;)

As many of you know, my Milk Allergy Mom blog is now an online retailer for e-cloth's microfiber cleaning products, "the perfect cleaning with just water".  e-cloth has been in the UK for nearly 20 years, and the products are used to clean and disinfect using just water!  Chemical-free cleaning is all over Europe and Canada, and I hope it takes off in the U.S. soon because we use too many chemicals!

I've become a bit obsessed and attached to my easy cleaning cloths so I actually took them along to the crop.  One, I had to show them off.  And two, I planned to use them if needed.  :)


And as it turns out, I found a damp General Purpose Cloth most helpful with my crafting!

1.  A damp General Purpose Cloth kept my table area squeaky clean.  Quick drying is awesome!

2.  A damp General Purpose Cloth cleaned acrylic blocks and rubber stamps to restore a great cling!

3.  A damp General Purpose Cloth kept my fingers clean, no fingerprints on my pictures!


With playing with my "greasy" hair often and snacking continually, being able to wipe my hands clean with just water was a huge time saver at the crop.  No more getting up to wash my hands at a sink all the time to keep my pictures clean.  Quick wipes with the e-cloth also saved my dry, cracked hands from too much soap and water washing.

If you want a cloth for wiping fingerprints off of your PICTURES, you would need to use a dry cloth.  I recommend the "Glasses Cloth" as a small, compact option for crafters.  :)

Did you know that e-cloth's General Purpose Cloth was chosen by Real Simple Magazine as the "Best Overall Cleaning Product" for 2012?!  It's good for up to 300 machine washings, dries quickly, and can be used all over your home (kitchens, bathrooms, dusting, crafting, windows, etc) for sanitizing and cleaning with just water!

If you would like to subscribe to our e-cloth emails about periodic sales, JUST CLICK HERE.

And if you would like to purchase your own General Purpose Cloth to try, you can click the cupcake logo on the top right sidebar to enter our store and look around or you can simply click below to purchase the General Purpose Cloth.  It comes in yellow, blue, dark green, and my favorite...lavender.  :)  I would love you to give e-cloth and chemical-free cleaning a try.  I guarantee you will love it!

General Purpose Cloth

$7.99

My Scrapbooking Style

I thought I'd take a minute to share my personal preferences for tackling scrapbooking.

• Album size 8.5x11 or smaller. Although, I do the 12x12 size with Scrap Club.
  
• 3-Ring albums. They fit more pages and post bound make me crazy.
• Simply Scrappin Kits. I choose a kit, coordinating papers and cardstock, matching ink pads, a stamp set, an alphabet set, a couple punches, a spool of ribbon, and an accessory....throw them into my carrier and don't look back. I like this method of efficiency, even if it means my pages don't always match the colors in the pictures perfectly. Oh well. I do however go with the custom made pages for our Scrap Club.
• Do it all at Once. I prefer short-term scrapbooking. For example, when Graham turned one, I printed his whole first year of pictures and completed his album in a couple months. You could call it intense scrapbooking. I'm not good at scrapping as I go. I like to see the big picture and plug away. Although, with Scrap Club, I do scrap month to month.
  
• Scrap the Best.....Box the Rest. I am pretty good at weeding down pictures for the scrapbook. Then I keep what I don't scrap in a nice photobox. I have a photobox for each of the boys and organize each box of pictures by their ages.
• Collage. I'm a big fan of squeezing lots of pictures on one page. I did this for both boys' first years as i take a lot of baby pictures.
  
• Linear. Nothing was more freeing for me than to discover the scrapbooking style of Cathy Zielske from the magazine Simple Scrapbooks. I loved her simple, block style. Few embellishments. Lots of journaling. Everyone has their own style, and this is definitely mine...although it still took me awhile to get the hang of it and to "perfect" it.
  
• Online Prints. I heart Snapfish! I love prepaid prints costing 8 cents each, showing up at my doorstep. And the quality is superb. Can you say, "matte finish!"?
  

I think that's all for now. What is your style? What is your system?

My Scrapbooking

So some of you are keeping up with my progress on little Graham's scrapbook. We had his birthday party today and sadly, the album was not complete. BUT, I do have most of the pictures in place, and for me that is the hardest part. Now I just need to go through and add embellishments and designer papers, titles, and journaling. Easy enough! I was really feeling the crunch of the birthday party and finally came to the conclusion that I would rather take my time and do a good job than to rush and do a sloppy job that I'll later regret. I don't think it will take too much longer to finish it up. Yay! Guests still got to see the pictures and gist of it today. Most people don't get scrapbooking anyways so I'm probably the only one who cared that it wasn't done.

On a more successful note, I put all the 12x12 pages from Scrap Club into an album finally and had that available for viewing at Graham's party. It's just month-by-month for 2008 of the boys together, the family, or whatever came up each month. Having all those pages done and together really felt nice. Scrap Club has been great for keeping me up-to-date with at least one album. Yipeeee!

And for the next scrapbook adventure, I hope to have an ABC book for Miles's two-year-old album done by next month! Oh man, why do I do this to myself? However, I DO have the pictures picked out and ordered. That alone took several hours. Do you know how hard it is to find a picture for the letter X! I will keep you posted on how it's going. Wish me luck!

Blog Series: National Scrapbooking Month

Time to report in on our scrapbooking the past week. I don't have much to write home about this week. But I did do a couple things.

• Noelle came over again Friday night to scrapbook. I spent the time stuffing bags for Scrap Club so that part doesn't count because that is "work". But having Noelle over to scrapbook DOES count because that was "personal".
• Looked through a scrapbooking magazine.
  
• Ordered more pictures from Snapfish.
• Tweaked a few pages that I had done in Graham's book. Already messing with it and it's not even done yet.
• Ordered my first scrapbooking t-shirt from cafepress. Mandy found the perfect one for me. "Got coffee, will craft". Can't wait to show it off!

Blog Series: National Scrapbooking Month

I'm on time this week! Here's what I did in scrapbooking last week.

• Scrapbooked at my house with Noelle again on Friday night. We are so on a roll!
• Tentative plan to scrapbook with Noelle this Friday night. Jeff keeps working late!
• Checked my ArtsCow account. Thanks to all who signed up through me!

If you did any scrapbooking this past week, we'd love to hear from you! Report in on the comments section for this post.

Blog Series: National Scrapbooking Month

Ok guys, you let me slack on this! Let's pretend it's Monday. Here's what I got accomplished in scrapbooking last week and last weekend.

• Scrapbooked again with friend Noelle. Worked on Graham's baby album.
• Noelle and I put another scrapbooking night on the calendar for this Friday.
  
• Ordered refill pages for Graham's album.
• Organized Snapfish pictures.
• Gave out duplicate pictures to family.
  

Now it's YOUR turn. How did you do last week?

Blog Series: National Scrapbooking Month

Ok ladies, it's time to report in! Did you get any scrapbooking done last week or over the weekend? I did! Here is my list of accomplishments. I won't include the work I had to do as a demonstrator like prepping classes and such. This is just my personal stuff.

• Registered at ArtsCow
• Ordered my free 50 4x6 prints from Artscow for April
• Scrapbooked (ok, really I made cards) with my friend Noelle on Friday night, until 1 am
• Updated Miles's baby book
• Organized my pictures on Snapfish

Now it's your turn. Go to the comments section of this post and tell us what you did! I can't wait to hear.

Blog Series: National Scrapbooking Month

If you don't know about the blog series that I am doing this month, you can read about it here. If you are a scrapbooker or want to become one, you won't want to miss out on the fun!

Every Monday this month, I will share my week's accomplishments in scrapbooking and will encourage you to do the same by leaving a comment. I know that many of us do most of our creating on the weekends so I'll set this up for us to come share on Monday's.

I already have a few things to share about this coming Monday. I can't wait! I hope you have plans for some scrapbooking the end of this week too. Get ready to come share!

National Scrapbooking Day/Month

Did you know that Saturday, May 3rd is National Scrapbooking Day? I don't know about you, but this gives me some serious motivation to scrapbook this month! I'm going to do a blog series this month, where each week we can report on what we've accomplished in scrapbooking this month. I will write up a post each week on what I have gotten done. And you can leave a comment in the comment section to tell us what YOU have been up to. We will celebrate every little accomplishment.

So what kinds of things can you do this month to celebrate National Scrapbooking Day? Here are just a few ideas:

• Just think about scrapbooking
• Check out the Scrapbook Club that I offer each month
  
• Take some pictures
• Order some prints
• Organize your pictures (online or prints)
• Organize your scrapbooking supplies
  
• Check out some online printing sites if you haven't already
  
• Purchase some scrapbooking supplies
• Attend a crop
• Get together with a friend and scrapbook
• Get out an unfinished album and finish it up
• Start a new album
• Make a mini album for a gift

If you do any of these things this month or something else scrapbooking related, we want to hear about it! So go get started and check back in soon. Happy National Scrapbooking Month!