Sunday, August 4, 2013

A Solution to Your Christmas Card Pile

If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time deciding what to do with all the great cards and photo cards you receive each Christmas. I've been collecting my Christmas cards from the time I was married, nearly 19 years ago! Recently, I ran across an idea on another blog and had an “aha!” moment and knew exactly that’s what I wanted to do. And in about 40 minutes, I had my first project done and couldn't be more pleased!
Final Product!
For this project you’ll need:
Your favorite scrapbooking software (this tutorial shows SBC 4.0, but I now use PSE)
Your scrapbook kit of choice.  I used here Creative Memories 'Digital Winter Additions'
Corner Rounder
Hole Punch
Scissors or paper trimmer
Tape Runner

Color printer
White Cardstock or cardboard and white paper
Ribbon or Binder Rings
First, I corner rounded all of my cards and photos using my Creative Memories corner rounder. Then I hole punched each of the cards, using only two of the holes of the 3-hole punch so that the holes were centered on the card. If the hole was going to go through an important part of the card or photo, I moved it to the side a little bit.

I measured the width and height of the largest cards. That dimension turned out to be around 6.5”x9”. I made the project with a 1” border around for folding over. That made the project 8.5”x11”. I used Winter P1 as my background, with birds and snowflake embellishments. I added text and shadows. You can see here how I added the tab guidelines so that I would know what portion of the design would be on the front of my cover and what would be folded behind. Remember to take into account where the hole punch will go when placing important items.
Christmas card cover
If you’re printing your cover design onto card stock, simply print, punch, and add it to your book. In this case, I printed onto paper and wanted something a bit stiffer for my cover. I recycled some 12x12 cardboard that comes with CM paper packs and cut it to 6.5”x9” (I used scissors, but you can use your rotary trimmer). Place the cardboard in the center of the back of the printed page and use a tape runner to affix the cardboard to the paper. Cut off the corners at 45 degree angles and fold each side down. Affix that to the back of the cardboard.*
Making Cover
I printed out a 6”x8.5” piece of paper with Winter P4 to affix to the inside cover to cover the remainder of the cardboard.  I did the same procedure, using Winter P2, on the back cover. Hole punch the covers.
Inside Cover

You can use ribbon, ring binders, raffia, string, yarn --you name it-- to feed through all your cards and letters and bind them into a nice book. Use this method to bind together Christmas cards, baby cards, anniversary cards, or those Mother’s Day cards you just can’t part with. I know that I’ll be doing this project over and over, both traditionally and digitally, and maybe soon I’ll have an empty basket that I can fill with something else!
*If you want a rounded cover, you’ll need to skip the trimming at a 45-degree angle and carefully wrap the paper around the corner, folding in small increments and tacking down with bits of tape runner as you go.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Traveling

Oof.  What a summer.  My husband retired from the USAF two months ago and we moved into an RV, which I'm still living in.  We visited lots of friends and five national parks which has been a lot of fun.  Internet has been spotty, but I've still managed to keep up my CT commitments.  We've landed in Pennsylvania and I still have more than a month of RV living to look forward to.

I've also been busy making *.page files for Scrapping With Liz and she has some great templates, including new calendar templates that she did as a collaboration with Fiddle Dee Dee.  Check them out!  The page files will work in SBC 3.0 and 4.0 and Artisan, depending on when you bought it.  And the templates are 12x12 and 8.5x11, allowing you to use whomever you want to print your calendars.  And of course, there are *.psd and *.tif files for PS and PSE users.

Mye De Leon has been making some great kits, too, at her new home at Design House Digitals.   She recently had a new collection of Scrap It Simple templates that are available with *.page files, too.

I thought I'd share some pages I've been making using Amanda Heimann's products.  Check our her kits at Scrap Orchard.


Little Blossom

Spring Forward kit
American Pride kit (collab with Suzy Q Scraps)
Island Getaways (collab with Ziggle Scraps)
This Side Of Crazy
This Side of Crazy

Little Blossom kit























Wednesday, May 30, 2012

New Design Team


I am very honored to have been selected for the design team for Amanda Heimann's design team at Scrap Orchard. She has great templates, which will be complete with *.page files from now on as well as fun scrapbooking kits.  Her blog is here.  These cute templates already have *.page files for those of you that use Storybook Creator Plus.  Here, I used the templates along with her Spring Forward kit.  Both the templates and her super cute kits are on sale at Scrap Orchard!





Thursday, May 10, 2012

Mye de Leon

Mye de Leon also includes *.page files in her template packs.  I've only been making her templates for a short while but her catalog of them is extensive.  Mye uses lots of layers to get a great look.  Have you seen some great clustering in the galleries?  Her templates help you achieve a great look without having to guess about what looks good.  So whether you want something griddy and formal or whimsical and wonky, she's got you covered.  She also sells some great kits with beautiful 3D elements at her stores.

Here are some of my favorites that you can pick up from Digital Scrap ShopGotta Pixel, or My Memories.  I included one of my favorite kits of hers, too. 













































Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Scrapping With Liz makes *.page files

Did you know that you can get *.page files that will work in SBC3.0 and 4.0 from many sources?

 I make *.page files for Scrapping with Liz and when I make them, I make sure that photo spots work like photo spots and that any standard shape, when possible, is also a live photo spot.  This allows you to drag and drop your papers into places and then zoom and move the papers to get the part of the paper you want.  I also make sure the text spots are editable.

So when you get templates from Scrapping with Liz, you can be assured that you can make your pages quickly and easily.  I've been doing these for the past year, so you can be sure that you'll find *.page files in any of her recent offerings.  If you find a set that doesn't have page files, just contact Liz (find her on Facebook at  Scrapping with Liz).  From adorable Christmas letter templates to cards, to 12x12 pages to blog wear, to super cute calendar toppers, she's got you covered.

Here are some of my favorites, but you can find them all at The Scrap Orchard:
Fairly Simple Templates

List Templates
Lots of Photos - Templates
Chopped Paper Templates


Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Fun with Fonts

Head on over to the Digital 411 page to see my latest post about importing fonts to use as shapes in SBC4.0

Fun With Fonts

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Creative Memories Virtual Crop

Did any of you play along with the recent Creative Memories Virtual Crop this past weekend?  I did and loved following along with the cues.  I got a good number of pages done.  I was sort of cheating because I was playing in digital but the important thing is to make progress and get those pages done, right?  I thought I'd share some of them with you here.
Using a Magazine layout for inspiration
Inspiration from Vegetarian times to make
the layout to the left
Scraplifting from the Project Center
















Making pinwheels, coffee colored papers, and spring


Using "scraps"

Pinterest inspiration
Using their sketch for inspiration



















If you didn't make the crop, don't worry!  The challenges can still be found on the CM Traditional 411 Blog.  There is so much inspiration there!  And you can see all the other great projects made with these cues here.