Scrapbooking Made Simple

If you get a chance to check out Angela Daniels blog you may be able to let me know what the Bento Boxes are? I don't know about these Bento boxes (not big in Brisbane) but thought the picture looks COOL! Angela was talking about Omega 3 and how she has been taking supplements and this has overcome her dislike of eating fish, though she wasn't sure what Omega 3 did......BTW: Omega 3 is for your brain. It's supposed to make the kids smarter and stop us older people from losing too much brain power. We take ours in juice format as my kids wouldn't swallow a pill. ( www.my-monavie-juice.com ). I also saw a cool study where they measured the effects of Omega 3 supplements on pregnant women. Apparently the children born to these women proved to be smarter than their peers...... the downside..... the babies heads were bigger (Ouch!)

Get Your 500 Scrapbooking Sketches Now... Click here! This is the layout I completed to go opposite the "Proud Parents" Page of my 8x 8 album. This layout is a very simple design and the mirror image of my Proud Parents layout so they match beautifully in the album side by side. This is the last photo I have to scrap of my mother-in-law so I hope there will be some more coming. I have asked my father-in-law of photos of her childhood etc so I can get copies so the kids will have those photos to pour over when they're older. This photo is of my son who was the first grandchild and the only one she really got to know before she died. My husbands' sister had a baby boy a few months before her death who she did get to see as much as possible but with her illness I know it wasn't as much as she would of liked. My daughter was born five days before her death and though she knew she'd been born she was in a coma when I took her down to meet her so she never met her g...

Well we're fast approaching Mothers Day, which is not my favourite time of year as you all know. However I do enjoy focusing on my kids and my mother's day and it's a perfect time to update my scrapsupplies or tools.... but this year.... I don't really know what I want. I don't really need anything as far as I know anyway.... Do you have a favourite tool that is the best buy you've ever made? I really want to hear about it! I am looking for something I need but don't know I do... if that makes sense. I'm getting worried. It's getting close and I don't know what to ask for .... which is dangerous in my house as DH will get me something that is WAY over priced! Which is why I now decide what I want so he doesn't spend too much. I usually pick a few options and DH and DS and DD go shopping from that list... LOL or should I say circled and highlighted junk mail. HELP! What should I ask for?

My best scrap buddy and I had a FABULOUS evening on Saturday night. We went to our Local Scrapbook Store (well not too local.... five suburbs away he..he..he) for a five hour scrapathon! This was a good evening. There was lots of scrapping and gourmet pizza. We had a good time sharing techniques and ideas with other scrappers. The evening was hosted by a store at Lawnton called "Paper Addiction". This is a great store. Fabulous layout. Lots of room in the scrapping area! BUT... I was a little disappointed as there was no introduction to the tools etc available to us or what food and drinks were available for purchase..where the toilet was? I've been to other scrapbook evenings and there's at least a hi this is how we run our evening you can find (such and such) tools in (thingamajiggy) place. You know? So although we had a good time and got a bit done we've decided we'll have to experience other scrapathons to compare.... HE..HE..HE... so now the only hard par...

Well its a beautiful Anzac Day here in Brisbane (Veterans Day for all you who are overseas). My DH and DS went off to town for Dawn Service. DD and I slept on! Our new adopted pop is a returned serviceman having been to the Sinai Desert for active duty in the New Zealand Air Force and DS really wanted to go march with him. So we've had the morning to ourselves. We've had porridge and hot tea and lots of cartoons and cuddles. DD can be such an angel when its just her and me. Last night when DS went to bed (early because of having to get up at 3:30am this morning) she climbed up into his bed and gave him a big hug and kiss. Told him she loved him and she'd miss him. Isn't that cute? I love how great they are together. Now that she's preoccupied watching play school I thought I'd take the chance to blog about a technique I tried two days ago. It's really simple. I read about it in Scrapbook Creations (which I borrowed from the library). I don't like buying ...

I love reading Angela Daniels Blog: http://angeladaniels.squarespace.com/random-thoughts/ If you're looking for someone else to read.... I mean as well as me..LOL I can definitely recommend her. Anyway I left a comment on Angela Daniels Blog the other day about my favourite author. Angela was looking for new reading material. Something happy. I have to say I think Janet Evanovich fits that bill perfectly. She is a VERY funny author. When I read a book or watch television or watch a movie I either want to be educated or amused. I really don't like scary things.....I fail to see the point in scaring the crap out of myself. Gosh there's enough on the news to do that for you... (Which I don't watch by the way... too scary or depressing!). Janet Evanovich has a character called Stephanie Plum. This series is so funny. In fact there is one book that I read of hers where I literally fell off my chair laughing! My mum took an hour to get through one page of that book cause s...

Here's one of my wedding layouts. I'm doing a traditional album but have also decided to do a smaller album digitially. Just the main points! So I can print this for the kids to pour over. I had alot of photos taken at Movie World as that's where we had our Reception so there are lots of photos that don't really tell the story they're just pretty. Anyway here my mum walked me down the isle. She was really happy to be giving me away. Her friends told me it was the happiest day of her life. My dad and I were estranged at the time. (We were up until Mum got sick. We're o.k. now) Hard to believe this was 12 years ago. We got married in a little church at Oxenford as the priest I wanted to marry me had retired and had to borrow a church. So we didn't get to choose our church, which was O.K as the church he borrowed was really cute! Then the reception was held at Movie World on the Gold Coast in the set from Casablanca. (Casablanca was the first old movie I intro...

This has been one of those weeks where everywhere I go there is something really sad. One of my son's school buddies had his baby sister die over the school holidays and I was just so devastated for his mum. She's a wonderful lady. I don't know her very well, just to stop and say hi to at school so I couldn't do anything for her. You know how usually you'd send a card or flowers or drop around some dinners for them? Well I don't know where they live so I wrote them a card and slipped it to her at school. Then I went to a Tupperware party and spoke to a mum whose son died recently at 23 yrs old. My heart went out toher too! At that same party I spoke to one of my mum's oldest friends which just made me miss my mum so much! Mother's Day is coming up and it's a really hard time of year if you miss your mum. Then to top off the life lessons there were a few more to come. I had an interesting day recently. A gathering of friends for a birthday. You know...

I popped into my local scrapbook store today for some ideas. I love having a look at the latest layouts on the walls and checking out the products. You can often get some fabulous ideas for embellishments this way. For instance today I saw some great pieces of chipboard that were decorated using "Opals" and inked stamps. I loved this effect! It's a good idea if you're looking to create embellishments to think in layers. The layers are what make the best embellishments what they are...... and glittery bits! I thought I'd share a few ideas on how to save on supplies as I havent' done this for a while. 1. Corks from wine bottle can be carved to make stamps. 2. Recolour paper clips and eyelits with clear ink and embossing powder. 3. Use decorative scissors to cut thick cardboard then use this as an embossing template. 4. Take a swirl template and mark evenly along the edges of the cut out section to create a cheap template for use as a sewing template or eyelet s...

This is a very simple layout. I painted my chipboard letters with a pink making memories paint then went over this with a glitter paint by making memories. (Several layers were required to get this effect). The velum quote came in a bulk pack from crazy clarks. I think they cost $4.99 for the pack. I love this saying " A mothers' children are portraits of herself". I think she'd of loved it! The patterned paper is from the Die Cuts With a View "Once Upon a Time" mat stack range and cost $8.97 for 72 sheets. I wanted a simple layout to showcase the first photo of the album. Here my mother-in-law is about 25 years old. (I found that out on the weekend when my father-in-law was over). I wish I'd had the chance to do these photos when she was alive though and could get lots of information from her. I've been very sad lately. Scrapbooking these photos has been a bit difficult. Then I found out that my father-in-law's dog (this dog used to be mine...

This layout is another 8 x 8 layout I have done. This is a photo of my daughter sleeping on her daddy as a baby. I used my alphabet punches to cut out the letters of the words "Sleeping Beauty" though the S and the B were done with chipboard. I love using easy replenishable methods like these to do my titles. Next I used a piece of wool to decorate down one side and then made ribbon flowers to decorate that border. Along that side of the photo I used a brass template to kindy glitz this shape onto the photo. I used my blade to cut out some of the paper so that I could tuck my photo in behind this.... like the paper is hugging my baby. A simple sticker with a saying on it added the final touch.

This layout is for the opposite page of "The ABC Song" Layout. I have used the same elements in terms of embellishments and patterned paper. I did change my fonts and alphabets for the titles though. I love this photo cause it's so random. Here my mother-in-law looks great as this was well before any illness had taken hold. My DS is looking cute too.....though the smile looks a little pained but that's cause he was trying to smile...lol The rubbons used here were very cheap $2 from a discount store near me. The stickers used for the "say" and "nana" are a set I got in a cheap packet of odds and ends. They were a latte colour and I just coloured them in with a felt pen and then painted them with glitter paint before peeling them and sticking them. And because I've recently fallen in love with the glittery papers from the Die Cuts with a View range I used Kindy Glitz to add some bling to the layout. My journalling is handwritten and follows aro...

I was in K-Mart yesterday and saw a "Page Talker". For those of you not familiar with these they are a little recording device you stick to your layouts that you can record sound on then whenever you turn to that page you can press play to hear the corresponding sound. I purchased one of these last year from a Scrapbook store for $19.95 but have to say the K-Mart version is cheaper at $12.95. There are differences of course. The one purchased from the scrapbook store has a better play button. The one I got from K-Mart is made by Grant Archival ( http://www.grant.com.au/ ). Neither of these is as easy to decorate as the one on The Scrapbook Lounge though. The Grant one requires you to decorate a piece of paper which you then attach to the unit with a stretchy band (this was not easy for me). But it does give you a template for cutting out your paper which the one from the Scrapbook Store did not. On Looking at the one from the scrapbook store it is made by imaginaton project a...

This layout was completed by my sister-in-law over the easter weekend when we were scrapbooking together. I think this looks great and wanted to share it with you all to show how you can make a lovely layout without using everything from the same range. My SIL has used several patterned papers, all from different companies to form a really pretty layout. Also the felt flowers are shown in close up for you so you can see the "bling" from the bedazzler.... (I want one of these so BAD!) Maybe for Mother's Day :)

This is one of my latest creations. I did this as an 8 x 8 layout to go into an album recently given to me by my sister-in-law. This is the last photo I have of my wonderful mother-in-law. This was taken in Easter 2004. She died 2 months later. I've just started doing some layouts of my mother-in-law for my kids. I haven't done these before as I was busy doing the latest photos of the kids but then I found a couple of poignant photos and felt I just had to start on these. I think the reason I hadn't done this photo in a layout before was because I couldn't think of an appropriate title. Then I found this poem and just had to call the layout "Beautiful". Mind you I know she wouldn't of picked that title herself as she wasn't feeling very beautiful at this point. She had been in pain for many years with rheumatoid arthritis and then even more pain due to the tumour for the last 8 months of her life. By the time this photo was taken she'd had her bo...

As I mentioned Easter Weekend I went to my best scrapbuddy's house and did some scrapbooking. Whilst I was there I took the opportunity to use her stamp collection. I used a sheet of white paper to stamp all the images on and tried to think of things that may suit my photos and future projects. I love going through another scrappers stamp collection. Often I'll find a stamp that is perfect for one project so I can borrow it. I only tend to buy a stamp if it will be useful for lots of projects.