Planning a Layout... How do you do it?

I've got a confession to make... I "scrapmiser" am a pusher! Not in any illegal sense you understand just in my approach to planning my layouts. I usually get all the elements out that I want to use, then crop my photos and start pushing them around my page till they look good or till they make enough room for the title I want to use or embellishment I simply must have on that page.

I'm sure I've talked about this before. But what I want to know is how everyone else approaches it... I say this because last night I did a two page layout and although I love the second page it took me a long time to find something to do with the first page.... I knew I wanted to feature her name because at the moment she is too little to say "Elizabeth" so she calls herself "Rory Lil Bit Patterson" which we find so cute! So I knew I had to feature this in a layout so she'll remember it when she's older. I also knew I had to use the photo in the centre of page two. This is my all time favourite photo of her. So from there my colourscheme was pretty much set for me as her shirt dominates the photo. So I kept an eye and and eventually found the pink frangipani A4 and the pink and white frangipani 12 x 12 and the two A4 frangipani vellums. But then the hard part... what to do with the elements.....

So how do other scrapbookers approach it?

I've followed a sketch before and sometimes a small element of this will work for me but I tend to have a problem with replicating the sketch (or even making it my own) because the size and quantity of my photos is vastly different. So what works for you?

Watch what you Buy!

Well today I was in scrapbook shoppers heaven. A scrapbooking store about half an hour from us (at Geebung)is closing down....And yep you guessed it there were specials! It's kind of hard to relish the specials in this scenario though cause I just feel so bad for the lady who is having to close her store. Everything was reduced by 25% some up to 50%. The major problem I had was making sure my purchases were things I'd use. For instance there were papers for 25cents. Which is really good value when you consider they're usually $1.10 here. But they wouldn't be much of a saving if I never used them would they?

So I definitely recommend when you're scrapbook shopping that you consider each purchase carefully and decide if you'll actually use it. I put alot of papers back that even though I liked them I'd never use them.

I went to the shop with my best scrapbooking buddy (we've known each other since the fourth grade....some 28years). We had lots of fun and our kids had fun in the kids corner (they're the same age). On the way home though she mentioned to me that she had enough supplies to open her own scrapbook store and I thought about how we hoard supplies for future planned layouts. Then when the time comes to do those layouts we've moved onto a new style or a new favourite product and very rarely use our supplies...

So we've decided we're going to have a swap day, where we bring all our extra's and swap them with each other. I'm not sure how we'll run this to be fair so any suggestions from anyone who has done this would be greatly appreciated!

Heat Embossing Gun from the Hardware Store

Well I followed the advice of other scrapbookers and have purchased my heat gun. Yeah at last! I did purchase from the hardware store instead of the scrapbook store and have saved alot! At the scrapbook store you could expect to pay $61 but at the discount hardware I paid $26. My gun has two heat settings too as opposed to the one heat setting on the scrapbook store variety. The settings are 300 degrees and 600 degrees. I've been using the 300 degree heat setting as I thought I should be care full I didn't set things on fire. It works wonderfully.

So if you're looking to save money on your tools think outside the square a little. I'd also suggest posting your question on a forum as you'll get a great response from other scrapbookers and loads of suggestions.

My Article Featured on Helium

In an effort to share my passion with people, apart from this blog and the forum and my google group and posting on other forum boards, I also post articles on Helium. I'm very excited because today my article is featured.

This is the email I received:
Congratulations Kyra!

Thank you for your concerted effort to build and expand the Helium treasury of knowledge with your quality work. Your article about tips for becoming a scrapmiser shows insight, rich analysis, and reflects the highest standards for writing quality at Helium. Thank you for sharing your time and talents with Helium!

Take a look at today’s homepage, where your article is in the limelight! (www.helium.com). Tell friends and family too. Usually feature articles appear for one 24-hour period.

So if you'd like to see my article you'd better be quick..... go to : http://www.helium.com

Scrapbook Lifestyle

Here's the Scrapbooking Show I was Talking about.

Enjoy!

Cheap Scrapbooking Ideas ...: Little Ballet Dancer

Cheap Scrapbooking Ideas ...: Little Ballet Dancer

Little Ballet Dancer

My Little Ballet Dancer!

I'm so excited. My daughter has started dancing lessons. She does ballet, jazz and tap. Tap is her favourite..... She likes the noisy shoes! It's really funny though cause everyone we meet finds it so cute that she's starting tap at two and a half. And it is cute, she's so small... but the problem with that is getting her shoes and ballet slippers has been pretty hard. As to the leotard and skirt... I had to pin tuck some larger ones so unfortunately she doesn't have the same ones as the rest of her class. But I think this looks cute! So now I have all these photo's of her in her leotard and skirt at her first dancing class to scrapbook. Most of the other photos are with her best friend (so I'm not putting them up here cause I don't have permission from her mum). Now my dilema.... what papers and embellishments? I'm sure there must be some specific ballet papers and embellishments out there .... but the scrapbook stores near me don't stock them..... So I need to shop online for them...... I'm sure I'll eventually find what I need but I wish it wasn't going to take so long to get the supplies cause I'm ready to do these layouts now! Any suggestions of a 'range' would be greatly appreciated!

DIY Network recommended by regular reader.

To give credit where it is due you should all know that one of my regular readers (yes I have a couple! lol) recommended the DIY Network videos. I agree that it is a great resource hence yesterday's blog topic. Thanks Anne of Virginia USA.

I'd love to hear some suggestions from other readers. Either post a comment on the topic or if you're wanting to start a whole new thread head over to the forum and leave me a message, or if you prefer anonymity you can email me at: cheapscrapbookingideas@yahoo.com

Behaviour Chart - Scrapbooked!

Well today I was at the shops and decided to buy a small whiteboard to hand in the kitchen to encourage the kids to be good. You've probably seen these before. A list of activities the kids find difficult to perform like .... oh being good? Anyway as they do well at each task they get a sticker or gold star and then at the end of the week they're rewarded for consistent good behaviour... So I drew up the list and the days of the week.... but I just couldn't hang it! It was too boring! So naturally I scrapbooked it! I dug through my stash and came up five pieces of different coloured pattern paper with the same white poka dot and then an embellishment to go with each. These are the photo's of what I did. I'm pretty happy with it... Any suggestions on how I could of improved it?

Free Tutorials

O.K. for those who know me you know I LOVE FREE! Cheap is good, but FREE is even better! So in my quest to share every money saving tip I can I wanted to share with you a couple of websites that provide free tutorials.... apart from me that is...

I frequent all of the following and get different things from each of them. Some of them are great for 'how to' information whilst others are great for ideas, so check them out and see which ones you like.

http://tinyurl.com/34hvuj
http://www.retailtherapy.tv/video.php?id=165
http://tinyurl.com/3c3qj9
http://www.crafttvweekly.com/player.html

You Tube is also great for tutorials and ideas videos (mine are there) so don't forget to look there.

There are lots more... I know! And as I discover them I'll be sharing them here. Remember though that if you have a limit on your downloads then these video's may push you over your limit and incur an extra fee from your service provider..... in which case the tutorials wouldn't really be free anymore.

Feel free to post links to other sites you find so we can all check them out!

Thrift Stores = Great Finds!

This morning I was browsing in a Thrift Shop along the waterfront of my little home town and found some gorgeous finds! I found a lovely old handkerchief that I'm going to use on one of the vintage pages of my grandmother. The embroidery is devine!

I notice alot of scrappers are using embroidery stitches in their layouts lately and wish I could remember what my mum taught me. It was many many years ago and my mum would buy me little pieces of linen with a picture on it and she'd teach me how to 'fil it in' as it were. How to make daisies and bows...... Shame I can't remember any of it now.

I also found some fabulous buttons and a postcard for my mum's vintage album. I'm planning to one day go back over the album I did of my mum and add to it... Make it better. It was my first attempt at scrapbooking so it was extremly basic. And because the time available to us wasn't that long we kept all embellishments to a minimum. Just getting the pictures in, and matted, some journalling and a title. No backgrounds. No embellishments. So I want to go back and add backgrounds and embellishments to alot of the pages. Especially the ones of my nana and poppy. I have a great photo of my grandfather in his uniform when he went to World War I. (He lied about his age to get in and then was in France for about a year before he was shipped home with his jaw all wired up. ) I'd especially like to redo this page as I have since found my grandfathers service record that I'd like to add to the page. I have also since found his ANZAC badge. I don't know what happened to his medals though... shame.

But for vintage albums I definitly think the Thrift Shops are the place to go... lots of cheap and unusual scrapbooking supplies. I do get a little tired of all the layouts I see in the magazines and such having the same papers and embellishments. I know there are some great product ranges out there and we all love using them but my favourites are always the unusual, original and totally personalised layouts.

Wedding Anniversary

OK. as of four days ago I have now been married 12 years! WOW time flies! It's a bit hard to believe that twelve years have passed already. My DH and I didn't do anything special. We never do. We actually missed it this year cause neither of us new what the date was .... then all the hype about valentines day got our attention and we realised we'd missed our anniversary. So we made up for it for valentines day by treating each other to really expensive chocolate! YUM!

I really have to say though that valentines day is my least favourite holiday. It's so much pressure. Yes you can do it cheaply, it's all about how you express your feelings. But for me it just feels so false. I think you should find small ways to express your love every day rather than trying to prove yourself on the 14th of February.

My DH makes my breakfast for me every morning and every night after the kids go to bed he makes me a cup of tea and we sit and watch TV for a while, during our TV time I usually get a shoulder rub or a foot massage. To me that's LOVE. Not just roses in February. IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT!

Well hope you all had a great Vallentines Day Anyway!

What do you do to get over scrappers block?

Do you ever get scrappers block? You know like writers block but for scrapbooking. Where you get out a project and just can't figure out what to do with it? I rarely have this problem.... but when I do it's a doozie....I do have a notebook full of ideas I'd love to try but never have the right size photo's.... (insert sigh)

Generally my scrapbooking creative process is evolving as I push things around the page. I'm a pusher! I tend to get my photo's out. Crop them. Pick my papers, cardstock and embellishments that go with the photo's and then I push the elements around the page until I find something I like. Sometimes I will have a plan and stick to it. Sometimes I'll have a colour scheme I want to use and no photo's to match... so I reprint some photo's in black and white to match. I get most of my inspiration from songs and movies (for titles and themes).

I recently set myself a challenge where a girlfriend of mine gave me the papers I was to use and a rough sketch and I had to fill in the gaps. It was a big challenge for me I must say but well worth it! I think it helped me be to be a little bit more creative in my colour combinations.

But how do you tackle the problem of creative block? I suggest making cards! Get out all of your scraps and make cards! That'll get some creative juices flowing. And if you can't think what to do then copy some from magazines. Post your photos and a "help" on a forum and get the forum members to give you feedback. That's what I did with the photo's of my son's first day at school. Or post the photo on my forum anytime and I'll be happy to give some suggestions. We have some great contributors on the forum with lots of interesting ideas.... But really the only way is forward..... Just start creating! It's the same as for writing when I have writers block I stop trying to finish the project or story and I will just write paragraphs for the sake of writing paragraphs. Then I'll take all those little tid bits and try to weave a story around each one..... Just get the creative juices flowing. Check it later on and you'll probably discard half of what you've done but the half that is left is pure gold!

How do other scrapbookers deal with creative block? (Feel free to leave a comment explaining how you tackle this problem... it's for the good of other scrapers!)

2 Peas Challenge - Favourite Comedian

I love the challenges scrapladyb posts on the Monday Blog challenge on the 2 Peas Board. I LOVE comedians, both male and female. I will choose a funny book or movie over a love story or scary story every day of the week. In fact when I did the "which twelve people would you have to dinner" quiz only four of them weren't comedians, but one of that four is a good comic actress.

So my penchant for everything funny brings me to my favourite comedian..... Now I love the work of some very fine Australian comic's and some outstanding Americans.... BUT for my money it's Billy Connolly all the way!

I laugh so much when I watch him, I've even fallen off my chair. My husband also finds him funny but unfortunately he can't understand a word Billy says (it's the accent you know) so now he lets me watch him and then I go repeat all the best bits for him. I haven't seen him in person but would love to...

I recently read the book Billy's wife Pamela wrote about Billy turning 60 and that was also funny! It was a lovely book because it made me feel like I was getting to know him .... It showed his endearing qualities as well as his foibles and was written in such a way that you were being introduced to him piece by piece.

He pops up all over the place. There was a very funny story about him on the set of "Mrs Brown" in Dame Judi Dench's biography that had me laughing for ages.....

If you haven't seen Billy take his kit off and skip around a large monolithic rock then you won't understand how spontaneous and funny he is, but this story in Dame Judi's biography mentioned all of that plus the fact that the water was very cold and he had to take his nipple ring out and the hole closed up..... Well I guess you had to be there!

The second part of the challenge is to say why this comedian is your favourite..... Is that possible? I mean it's just cause he makes me laugh. I can't identify what it is about him I find so funny... maybe its the Scottish heritage I carry that identifies with him I don't know! I just know he's funny and makes me laugh ALOT!

Colour Combinations Lure Me!

Today I was at the 'discount chain store' near me searching through the scrapbook supplies on offer and I discovered something interesting about myself.

I go through colour phases. There are combinations of colours that will grab me at different times. For instance I recently went through a "Pink and Orange" Phase (this was a particularly long colour phase for me). And although it hasn't passed completely, it was pushed aside for a short "Blue and Purple" Phase... but today it was all about ocean colours. Ocean Blue and Ocean Green. Deep rich Saphire Shades....

I went in to buy supplies for a particular project which is very purple (recipients' favourite colour) and before I new it I had my arms full of cardstock and fibres in Saphire Blues and Greens. I actually had to put them all back and get a grip on myself. I think I'm a bit of a 'Bower Bird" when it comes to bright shiny things. (lol)

The thing I hate though is when you're trying to find a particular colour scheme that has gone out of 'scrap fashion' and you cannot find any pattern papers representative of that colour scheme or style when only months before it was everywhere..... That's why I can't wait for my new computer so I can get into digital scrapping and I can easily store all the papers I see that I like, rather than waiting for an appropriate layout which is what I do with my traditional scrapping....

But whilst at the discount store I did check out the price of heat guns in the hardware section as advised to me on one of the message boards and they are definitely cheaper... Try $25 verses $61.... Do they just automatically triple the price of something if they're putting it in the scrapbooking section or what? So guess where I'm getting my heat gun from... (I'm just worried if the hardware section ones run hotter or something (like they're used to strip paint off stuff, so surely they're hotter..... my page isn't going to burst into flames on me is it? YIKES... hope not)

Cheap Scrapbooking Ideas ...: My latest layout: I love you to Pieces

Cheap Scrapbooking Ideas ...: My latest layout: I love you to Pieces
I've posted this layout on the 2 Peas Board as it fits the criteria for the challenge of multi-photo layout and uses a watery looking paper (pp background) as well as the washy blue on the vellum. The 2 Peas Board has a an excellent challenge that I think is great! Get your creative juices going and try the challenge: http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/mb.asp?cmd=display&thread_id=2131971

Check out the hardware store

Earlier today I was on one of the message boards bemoaning the price of heat guns (I check my LSS today and they wanted $61.90?) when someone replied that I should buy one from the hardware store, just don't expect it to be pink..... Now this is a great idea! I can't believe I didnt' think of it before. I'm going tomorrow! But now that I know they come in pink... well I'd kinda like a pink one. lol.

But I definitely agree the hardware store can provide some interesting finds. Especially if you're thinking outside the box.

Samples of laminate, wallpaper, vinyl and paint swatches are all useful for your scrapbooking. As are offcuts of flyscreen, copper and thin pieces of tin.

During a recent trip to the hardware store I saw a small eyelet setter that was only $2 with a heap of eyelets included. (It was a scisor action tool). And lets not forget all the little rubber rings and metal hinges, keyholes, and handles.

I use the paint chip samples all the time. In fact I used them to decorate the jigsaw pieces of my last posted layout: I love you to pieces.

So go for a wander round your local hardware store and let me know what else you can find. I'm going tomorrow to get a heat gun! Yeah

My latest layout: I love you to Pieces

Well I finally managed to get some time to do another layout. This one is of my daughter and all the "pieces" of her I love..... Hope you like it!

Yesterday we went to my daughter Rory's first dance lesson. SHE LOVED IT! I then spent the rest of the day searching for the outfit she needs for dancing. I was really frustrated when I tried to support a small business and they weren't even there to take my money???? We turned up at the shop which is a demountable airconditioned 'container' that has been plonked in their front yard. (They being the people who live across the road from my girlfriend). So I turn up there ready to spend money but the shop is unattended. This mind you is despite an "OPEN" sign and a Business Hours sign that says they should be open. So we drove away went to another shop and tried to spend our money there.... but ... you guessed it! We couldn't! My daughter is too small for the smallest size they stock. They tell me this is because they expect that someone in size 2 is only learning to walk! Not doing Ballet! So on the way home I drove past the little home business again.... and they still weren't open! So by this time I was despairing of ever being able to get an outfit.... till I went into my local grocery store (Coles can you believe it?) and there it was. Everything I need. A little leotard, a chiffon skirt, tights, ballet slippers as well as a long sleeve t-shirt and long pants. Now the leotard is a little big and the skirt needs taking in and the shoes are only jiffies and not proper ballet slippers but for $29.99 I'm not splitting hairs. Besides at two and a half proper ballet slippers will be grown out of so quickly she won't know what hit her.... The only problem now is tap shoes! I need to get her those tan mary-jane style tap shoes in a childrens Size 8.... but do I buy the taps in an 8 and she grows out of them really quickly or do I wait and get the 9?..... I don't know what to do. Cause she can't dance in shoes that are too big for her... but they're pretty expensive at $59.99. And she wants to do it so badly!

So as you can all imagine my 'miserly' ways are being severely challenged by this! I'll keep you posted on how I overcome this. I'll also have a photo of her in her new outfit to upload sometime this week!

Video coming!

For those of you looking out for my next video I can reveal that the topic will be making your own embellishments from paper clay. We've actually shot the footage but are waiting for more memory on our computer to edit and upload.

On the video I talk about how to make your paper clay and also give you a few examples of things you can do with your paperclay to create accents and embellishments for your scrapbook pages.

When I post the video I'll also post the recipe.

Now to my 'Girl Heaven Day' on Friday! It was great! I've actually completed a layout which I'll post in the next day or two. It was funny though. I was walking home from the hairdressers in a torrential downpour. I ended up saturated from the waist down.... I managed to keep my chest dry with my tiny umbrella because this was where I was holding my scrapbooking magazines that I'd taken with me to the hairdressers to read while waiting for the colour to process.

So after spending all that money on getting my hair done I then got home looking like a drowned rat because I had to protect my magazines.... lol

Girl Heaven

Today I am in 'Girl Heaven'. My husband has taken my son to school and taken my daughter with him to a meeting. As it is with his sister and will give my daughter a chance to spend some time with her cousin C.J. who she loves playing with.

My day is all mapped out.... A bit of scrapping, a hair appointment, coffee with a friend, home for some folding of washing, prepare dinner, maybe some more scrapping and then my darlings all come home to me....

It's raining today too. Which is fantastic. We need the rain desperately as we've been in drought. Not sure if enough of this rainfall is happening in the dam catchment area but hopefully it is at least easing things a lttle. The best part for me though is it cools the day down. It has been so hot lately that even if I have had a spare half and hour I haven't been able to do any scrapbooking. Our airconditioner is in the lounge/living area and my scrap stuff is in the bedroom. I've tried working in the lounge but I get up and down so many times to get supplies all the cold air escapes and I don't get much done. This is also why my folding is at mamoth proportions. It is way too hot to stand in the room and fold everything, so I've been putting it off. Telling myself I'll tackle it of a night time when it's cooler. Of course then I'm either too tired or busy checking out all the message boards to see what's happening with all my scrapbuddies...

Well I'm off to do some scrapping. Hope to have something to show you all in the next day or two....