Scrapbooking Made Simple

Hi everyone, so for the delay in posts. I know I promised you some photos of things I've done for my house too... I'll get to that soon I promise! I've been offline for a week (I put in last weeks posts as pre-timed posts) as I've been up at the hospital alot. I now have gestational diabetes, low iron, low blood pressure and some strange flashing lights things in my eyes which I have to go for an MRI for.... gosh I'll be happy when this baby arrives Added to all that I have this impending sense of urgency to get everything done in preparation for this baby so whenever I'm upright I'm cleaning, painting sorting... etc (I hope that doesn't mean I'll go too early). DH is confused... I thought you were unwell and supposed to be resting? So if you don't hear from me for a while you'll know why... otherwise I'll get to those photos for you as soon as I can....

For those of you doing some digital scrapbooking you have to check out the Shabby Princess site for the latest free kit. It's gorgeous! P.S. thanks to "the Mrs" for emailing me about this as I've been offline a bit lately and hadn't noticed.

Another idea I had was to take small canvases, I've used 3.5 inches x 4 inches and decorate them. These were very cheap at $1.50 each. Once decorated I will use one canvas per letter to spell out the baby's name...... Hubby and I have narrowed it down to three choices... all of which have four letters......... So here are the decorated canvases. I will add the letters and embellishments once we decide on a name....LOL

Hi guys, I've been very busy re-organising my house. I'm in heaven at the moment labelling things and organising AND I took this opportunity to "scrapbook" some items for the home. I'll be uploading some pictures for you over the next couple of days. Mostly I have taken items I've found about the house and given them a make over so they match the decor better.... a great way to save money! But being so busy I completely forgot that the 6th of October was the 2nd Birthday of my blog... Yep I've been at this for 2 years... Hard to believe huh? Might tell DH he has to take me out to celebrate...... especially cause by January going out will be nigh on impossible for a while! Anyway if you're new to my blog I really do recommend you go back through my earliest blog entries as you will find the largest number of "cheap" tips at the beginning of my ramblings. I try not to repeat myself but of course occaisionally I do.... But if its tips for how ...

Beyond the page item: A Lamp for the Nursery. I had an idea for the nursery to do a lamp with a teddy bear impaled on a stick with the lamp fitting coming out the top.... after much searching of the second hand stores I couldn't find what I was looking for and then last week I saw this..... this teddy bear lamp was looking a little worse for wear so I enlisted the kids help to paint it. It is made of a clay like substance that isn't glazed so it was easy to paint. Then I had my husband (the artist in our family) paint in the leotard and I added the tutu and roses. I wanted to do a ballerina teddy bear as I had purchased a quilt cover set for the cot which has a ballerina teddy bear on it and the bassinet is embroidered with ballerina teddys too! I have been bargain hunting I can tell you! Thank goodness for EBAY.

This is the final layout I completed at the crop night. I called it Friends.... this night was the 20 year reunion of my high school. The photo of four is me and my closest friends. We all live within 15 minutes of each others houses. My best scrap buddy is in the white shirt with the black print. The other photos is of most of the group from school. We're still in touch with everyone but not as much as they live a little further away. There are only two girls missing from this photo. One couldn't make it to the reunion and the other wasn't there when we took the photo. The two extra girls in the photo organised the evening and did a great job. On this layout I used DCWV glitter paper from a bulk pack to cover the chipboard letters. The white flowery, print was added thanks to a clear plastic shopping bag from Ally which I cut up and added. The small flowers were all in a pack that cost $2.00 (which my best scrap buddy gave me) and the large flower was purchased in a pack ...

This is the second layout I completed at the crop night. Again very simple backgrounds. I used the patterned papers only on the chipboard letters. The stickers were a find at a cheap shop and they have a velvety feel. The ruby hearts were in a bulk pack of bling as were the red flowers. I love these photos (though they're very old now). Sometimes its best to wait to scrap certain photos until the perfect idea comes along. The focus for this page is on the photos and the content. DD was trying desperately to wake DS who was napping on the couch one day. The journalling under each photo follows the progression of events from wake up.... wake up and kiss me..... Wake Up and pay me attention to WAKE UP and LOOK AT ME! Simpler layouts can defiitely save you money as there isn't as much stuff on each page. While I was at the crop I was interested to notice the cost of items people were placing on their pages and one of the girls admited she shops for every page she does...... Wow th...

Get Your 500 Scrapbooking Sketches Now... Click here! On Saturday Night I went to a crop night with my best scrap buddy. It was rather fun! I got three layouts done. All the layouts I completed are pretty simple and use multi photo layouts. This is the first one. These photos were taken when my son was a baby and going to swimming lessons with his daddy. This is a very cheap layout. The background cardstock came in a bulk pack from the discount store and cost $0.13c a sheet. The bubble vellum was a present from someone so was free. (I used a craft knife and cut out the vellum in the shape of the reeds painted on the back wall). The title "Swim" was cut from blue vellum using my fiskars templates (which I bought in a bulk pack and costed at $0.50c a sheet, though I've only used a tiny bit of one sheet). The other part of the title "Time" is from a sheet of basic grey stickers and is probably the most expensive item on the page. (I think I got this sheet on specia...

Here's a layout I did of my kids having a tea party. They love doing this! If they're having a tea party kind of day I'll often go to the kitchen and prepare their lunch in suitable sizes for the tea set so they can have a real tea party. I painted each of these chipboard letters a co-ordinating colour from my background and then covered them in a couple of layers of glitter paint to get that really glittery effect. The tea cup and saucer embellishment is a gold outline sticker applied to acetate and then coloured in with my daughters paints. I then added it to the page using 3D tape for dimension. The teapot button was a find at a scrapbook fair. My favourite part though is the hidden journalling. I simply glued a chipboard piece to my ruled journalling paper and then cut out the open bits. I sometimes like using hidden journalling as it gives the page a more interactive feel and the kids love looking for where the story about these photos is. My background paper was ...

I had to share this photo... Here is my DD playing doctor and checking on the baby for me. She is so great with my bump. So loving and caring. She can't wait to get a sister. She talks to my belly and tells her "You're so cute! Yes you are!" And whenever she says goodnight to me she says a separate goodnight to my belly.

O.K. so here is another page from my wedding album. This page was alot of fun to do as it was so simple. The DCWV paper had a window on it so I simply cut this window out and placed my photo behind and then added stickers. I did go back with some glitter paint and highlight sections of the paper as this one had no glitter on it. I had to journal this page as a special page on its own because this moment was one of those OMG! moments..... You see as we left the church as man and wife the church bells were rung... but the first ring had a strange sound to it... then the ringing resumed.. I didn't notice so much but my husband did and on questioning my cousin (the ringer) found out that unbeknown to him a pigeon was nesting inside the bell... when the bell was rung the poor pigeon was killed and the carcass rained down on my cousin. Poor bird! Poor Cousin! I often wonder if this set up some bad kharma for us??? Oh well it hasn't jinxed us so far... though next Febr...