Over the last year, Wholly Scrap in North Hampton, NH has been carrying a system of chipboard album pages so you can personalize your own word album.  I think they can go up to seven letters.  It was quite easy to get the letters I wanted and double check to make sure I had the right length of page for each letter.

I started the project back in February and just finished it this last week – I mostly used a 6 by 6 pad of Basic Gray’s Boxer line – that was a fabulous line and I was very sorry I hadn’t realized this back when it first came out – it was not possible to find any of the coordinating embellishments  by the time I got things started.  I used one of the Tim Holtz swivel clips and then used embellishments from my stash to finish it off.

Lesson learned:   The Faded Jeans distress ink does NOT work with this line of paper.  It was much too bright and light.  Thankfully Michelle from The Paper Tree in Manchester, NH helped me find a better ink – the Memento Dew Drop ink pad in Paris Dusk was the right shade to pull the papers together.  Tim Holtz needs to put out a darker blue!

Without further ado:

As much as I like making cards I continually realize I need a card once it is too late to do anything about it. I planned to use some of the cards for mother’s day – the kit had a lot of soft blues and soft but deep purples and they definitely looked a little more feminine than neutral.  I wish I was in need of more patterened paper because I really like some of the papers from the Wisteria line. I figured I’d have several more cards left over after Mother’s Day, just waiting to be needed.

The cards were pretty when i finished them but require a white journaling pen to complete. Frequently the directions had nothing in common with what was in the kit and I ended up just winging it a couple of times. Most everything was precut for you – no left over scraps to glean from this kit except for the rub-ons.  Some of the die-cuts were in 12 by 12 sheets and you don’t really want to take them out of the sheets too early as they are marked on the background sheet as to which card they go to.  While it is neat and unusual to have cards of all sorts of different sizes, only one would probably fit into the cardboard photo storage sized box in which all of my other pre-made cards are stored. Now I need a new system for these wacky sized cards.

The kit was a way for me to mindlessly spend a sporadic few minutes here and there but there wasn’t a great deal of satisfaction in the final product. It looked fine, but it wasn’t mine.  I had hoped to get some ideas about layering elements from the same paper line that I could carry over into my other cardmaking endeavors.  I feel much less confident in designing a good card than I do a 12 by 12 scrapbook layout.

This card is done using items from the Crate Paper Wanted collection.  I love the paper and rarely have a chance to use it in a way I deem worthy.  It’s pretty simple, but I did enjoy trying to figure out a quick design of my own in the process:

Resolution dropped for web use - printed image is much sharper

I am using this collage for the postcards I’ll send out as Thank You notes to the folks that came to the party.  This is MUCH faster than making thank you notes even with the learning curve and I think folks (meaning grandparents) would appreciate this a little more. I’m totally doing this for Christmas as well.

I started with the bare box and planned to use Fancy Pants Designs’ Aged Florals papers and coordinating rub-ons to decorate the box:

The box is a very hard, coated cardboard construction.  I used the Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabber in silver to cover all of the edges and corners that would not be possible to cover with paper.  I should have sanded these areas first. It took many, many coats of paint to fully cover the edges and the paint flaked off too easily after the box was finished. I wanted the stippled look that the Dabber makes possible but I often had to use a paintbrush to fill in missing areas.  I also should have extended the paint area at least a half inch beyond the edge to avoid any gaps in coverage once the paper was glued down. The Cartridge Box is not perfectly square and I had to dicker with the size of each piece of paper before I glued it down.

The upper face of the box was done with one single piece. The back of the box and the underside was covered with one piece of paper. You can’t do this inside the box – the hinged part of the cover will be too bulky and the box won’t close tightly, even with the magnets.  I used a craft knife to cut out strips of the paper on the inside of the hinge until I had removed enough for the hinged part of the lid to move freely. It’s the white part in the picture here:

I’m going to line the box with felt, so I didn’t do anything to the inside of the bottom part of the box.

I cut around the notch using a craft knife and finished it with the Basic Grey Precision File Kit.  If you ever think you want to cover something with paper you should have that kit!

My original intention was to use the Basic Grey Porcelain Collection Aviary Acrylic Stamp Set in Stayz On White on top of the box.  (You can see it here.) Unfortunately I mistakenly believed I had left all of my good inks at home and substituted the red color above.  It was tough getting the ink to appropriately adhere to the stamp to get a good image. This was particularly true of the little birds and I ended up having to go over them again with a fine pen to make them crisper.  I used a rub-on from the Aged Floral collection on the left hand side of the cover and continued the bird cage chains over the edge of the box and onto the back:

As I was unpacking my stuff from Cool Crops I noticed there were increasing numbers of flaked off silver paint on my box – very frustrating.  A visit to The Paper  Tree in Manchester, NH and a consultation with Michelle, the owner there, led me to try the Krylon Silver Leafing pen to fill in the holes.

It worked very well to fix the problem areas with the only exception being that sometimes the pen itself caused a few more pieces of the acrylic paint to chip off.  The pen leaves a much smoother silver surface behind than the acrylic Dabber.

I was originally thinking if this box turned out well I might make one for my daughter’s play jewelry. With the paint coverage issues I had I don’t think I’d turn a decorated box over to someone less than 6 or 7.   I’ll probably try one more, making sure to sand the edges before applying paint – getting the paint right took the most time by far because you have to wait for edges to dry before you move on to another side and many places required 4 or 5 coats. Originally I thought they might make neat gift boxes for my mom’s necklaces but as it stands the boxes are too time consuming for that if the paint adherence issue isn’t solved.

Materials used:

• Fancy Pants Designs: Aged Florals papers and coordinating rub-ons. I got the papers locally at Wholly Scrap in North Hampton, NH late last fall – love the line – I made a jewelry box using the same line which will be up here at some point, too.
• Photos were printed at home at the 1 3/4 inches by 2.5 inches each.

I discovered I had come home with a souvenier from Cool Crops Snowflake II.  It’s a title from a swap someone participated in. She had many, many to go around.  As it turns out, The Banjo Clock has kindly this particular swap gem a space to rest until I can sneak it into someone else’s stash.  Hey, won’t I be seeing several ladies at CK in Manch? Hmmmm.

I just got back from a 3-Day crop a week or so ago and I cleaned my scrap space BEFORE I brought my stuff back in from the car (and the Outback was loaded as much as you can load it and still be able to see out the windows). I thought I better write about it now, because it might not look like this again.

I was merciless. There’s a huge pile of stuff due for donation, including the three wire display racks I turned into cheap Clip It Ups, magazines and books I never used but kept because I had won them as door prizes at CK Manch, and more.  I even recycled the smaller scraps of paper and jettisoned all the adhesive I bought back before I had any clue whatsover. Those PSB sticker binder refills I bought BBIHACW?  In the give away bag. I have a feeling I could have made a bit of cash (just a bit) if I waited for a scrap store to have a yard sale but I don’t want the stuff hanging around any longer.

I actually even got to wash the surface of my table and desk – it’s hard to believe a surface can get that grimy when it barely ever sees the light of day.

I then unloaded my car container by container and put everything back in it’s place before I went back out for the next armful.  My set up has been working for awhile – the only major change was that I liked having the Baby Cricut under the wire shelf so much at the crop that I repeated that move at home. Now I have an out of the way spot to stash my red tool tote which has long been a source of constant fascination for The Dark Princes.  I’m down about $25 in tools and pens since she first realized forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.

So here it is in all its glory:

This is my nice white Walmart-esque bookshelf. Hard to find them this tall, wide, and sturdy, now. Deep enough to hold albums well.

This is my main working area. The sterilite drawers fit underneath the desk surface with a small space left over - I love having it that way as I can keep my trimmer and large pieces of paper there until I am ready to use them.The stamps and stickles are on an acrylic nail polish bottle display unit.

At some point we will replace these two tables with countertop and cabinets. I can easily reach the vertical paper holders when working, which is huge to me. I really don't like having to get up to get stuff, particularly at the start of a layout when I'm just pulling things out to figure out what I'll use. The cart to the right of the computer table holds spools and cards of ribbon and my scrap files.

And there you have it – quite possible my favorite incarnation of my scrap space ever.  And so clean and shiny! Makes you want to just mess it up with a new project!

I had all sorts of grand plans to get posts up about my weekend with the Cool Crops girls but once I got home I immediately headed out again for a visit to Texas – I’m just now getting photos sorted.

The basic facts were this:

• I had a fabulous weekend.
• Total reasonable price ($135) included a huge personal space, several meals, and an absolutely appropriate level of “group” activities.
• The hotel cost $69 per night and was very reasonable as well.
• I knew by the first day that I was going to be signing up for the November Cool Crops date in Portsmouth, NH.

This was my first ever 3 day crop.  I spent a long time prepping for the crop by cleaning up my space at home and keeping several lists. I made a 3 column table in Pages and just printed it out again and again. This was something I got right.  I had one list for projects I wanted to work on that I wrote down as the thought occurred to me and a similar one for things I wished to bring.  Both were exceptionally helpful when packing because I didn’t really make page kits – next to each project I jotted down specific materials I wanted to use with that project and just made sure that was packed.

Working off lists of projects and their needed materials was absolutely the way to go – I had always done very specific page kits in the past, even for shorter crops, and the agony of selecting coordinating cardstock a week before I actually was scrapping wasn’t working for me.  Since I didn’t have various colors of cardstock in fifteen different sacks to return to their right places once I got home, unpacking was a breeze.

Only once did I have a problem with my packing – I thought I had forgotten a key set of inks when actually I had packed them in a completely non-intuitive (my intuition, not a normal person’s) way and found them after I had to make some serious changes to one of my projects.

I took just about everything.  All of my vertical files of CS/PP fit into a large laundry basket (HEAVY!). I just scooped up my Sterilite drawers (they fit perfectly under my table – I would gather there would be crops where this might not be so).  I also ended up throwing large categories of things like my ribbons and adhesives into the big 2.5 gallon Ziploc bags I originally bought to put page kits into.  I also ended up just throwing a lot of stuff into a second laundry basket. It would drive me nuts to have stuff like that at home, but it worked for me at the crop.

I think the only thing that was totally superfluous was the Big Bite. There was one there, and I had so many projects that never got completed I just never got around to playing with mine.

I am very glad I brought my own Baby Cricut and the big wire shelf.  There were plenty Cricuts to go around and I took advantage of the tool table’s cartridge selection several times.  I got a ton of use out of two of my newer cartridges, Storybook and Happily Ever After.

A couple things I learned:

• I personally have no interest in a “location” crop.  I care about a quiet place to sleep, reasonably healthy food, good lighting and a really big table all my own.
• If I had had more room in the car I would have brought my office chair – the banquet chair wasn’t so much uncomfortable as it was just a little too short.
• Planning a four hour outing with my family in the middle of Saturday messed with the mojo.
• I had a tough time concentrating after lunch on Sunday – I had planned to stay to the very end but I was tired and had a hard time ignoring the packing up going on around me.  Next time I’ll get there at 9 on Friday morning and make up the time thataway.
• None of the Crop Horror Story Threads I had previously read on Two Peas and Scrapbook.com even came close to being true here. We had some issues with other guests of the hotel but that was it.  The crop organizers were able to advocate for us all and we were comped the last night’s stay.  For me, the other guests are now just a funny story to tell.
• Sometimes there was dueling musical styles being played. I did have earphones with me and if any of the music had been intolerable (like listening to High School Musical or Christian music) I could have listened to my own stuff. I take fiddle lessons while there are bagpipers practicing outside my lesson room and I taught third and fourth grade.  The dueling music in the background didn’t crimp my style one bit.  I actually found using headphones hindered me from being with the others.  My final verdict is to have them (I imagine you’d not make many friends if you asked someone to can their music) just in case, but only use them as needed.
• It was refreshing to be with a large group of women. Somehow, topics mostly stayed light and appropriate for the situation. I really hope to run into the women I met there again.

My favorite surprise of the whole weekend was how much I enjoyed the group participation.  I’m not a huge fan of get to know you games or anything like that.  Cool Crop’s “events” were just the right level of participation.  Participation in various challenges, group games, and other things were rewarded with Cool Crops Cash which were then used on Sunday morning to purchase raffle tickets for the raffle prizes. Everything except the Saturday night group games was totally optional and I really valued the experience of the group games.  We were assigned a random group ahead of time and moved through stations where we played brief games. It was over in an hour and it was a quick hour.

I am so signing up next week for the November crop date in Portsmouth.

Here are a couple pictures of my space.  I’ll post photos of the stuff I did separately so I can talk about what I did and the techniques/materials used.

This is the crop room. Plenty of room to move around and excellent lighting - I only turned my Ott Light on once or twice whilst matching papers.

My space. Plenty of places to put my stuff and enough room to work, too.

The blog is The Everyday Scrapper and has some other nice reviews of kits and things like that. Very nice LOs of things other than kids and holidays, which I always appreciate!

The Everyday Scrapper

I did discover the Kids and Pets mode that was sort of hidden in a drop down menu towards the end – this made the four year old camera take MUCH faster pictures and played as big a role in me getting the shots I was trying for as the composition tips I was learning at the time.

Most of these shots are a little bit of composition effort and more luck. This particular photo also got some help in iPhoto.

I don't know if I took the saturation thingy too far in iPhoto - I just love the color blue.

All other photos in later posts, unless marked otherwise, will be from my Canon Xsi.  Most of the photos here were used in scrapbook layouts – I found myself taking photos based on the layouts that could possible come later for a long time.  Now that I have a camera that is way out of my league I am able to try the things I’m interested in, like close up shots of leaves and things like that.