Scrapbooking Made Simple

As usual everything is so busy around here. DD2 has just cut two teeth while DS1 has just lost two teeth... and the tooth fairy was a day late cause I'm so busy with stuff (oops!) But I have had time to do a few crafty things lately.... here's a digital batch I've been working on: I'm so excited about these! Can't wait to pick them up from the store! Both my kids will be doing swimming at school next term and I had a brilliant idea to help them easily find their bag amongst all the other bags (and help the teachers and helpers assist them) by designing their swim bags. So here are the digital designs I created using the kit "Twirl" from the Shabby Princess online store (LOVE THEIR DESIGNS). This first one is on a red bag: and this second one is on a green bag: I think these will be really easy for the kids to find....LOL!

Of course as I'm such a miser ...... not only did we use rubbish to make gifts we then used every last scrap of patterned paper we had to make up cards for the kids to buy.... These were very simple cards as they had to be made into take home packs for the mothers to take home and just glue together...... so even the least crafty person could put them together. Here are a few examples:

Hi Everyone, Sorry I've been unavailable for a while now..... I've been busy organising the school fathers day stall at my kids school. I was very lucky to have some wonderful mum's and dad's making some of the gifts and even some of the kids at school pitched in. We ended up with enough gifts for 850 students to buy a few things for their dad's. But now I can't wait to get back into some scrapbooking. Of course my scrapbooking skills did come in handy .... turning rubbish into gifts.... Like my seed raising kits, my desktop zen gardens and money boxes as well as the photo thingys for the fridge... I loved the soap on a rope (the saying by Bill Cosby made it: " Fatherhood is pretending the thing you want most in the world is soap on a rope) or the cool shaving brush kits that say: "Fatherhood is like shaving. No matter how good a job you do today you still have to get up and shave again tomorrow".... Or my washing powder scoops filled with '

Hi guys I've been AWOL for a while now..... I'm in charge of the Fathers Day stall for my kids school. Luckily for me I have a couple of wonderful helpers in Michelle and Nicole with Karen and Chrissie and Sylvanna to back us up! But I have 880 students to make gifts for....... So as you can imagine I'm a bit hectic.. LOL and alot of other things have had to slide... my blog for one... Hopefully though when it's all over I should have some fabulous Off the Page ideas for you all..... And you know they're cheap to make! So I thought I should take a moment to show you another layout from Retreat... but not one of mine. Here's a layout which was done by my new scrapbuddy at the Retreat I went on. Sharon has a Cricket. She used the cricket to cut her title from patterned paper. I love the economy of this layout. Cutting the title from patterned paper and the stars and then doodling and stamping on the page. The costs for this layout were the background paper and t

O.K here is the final layout I did on my retreat weekend and I have to say it's my favourite. I love the sewing! Which my new scrap buddy sharon did for me (those of you who know me know that sewing machines don't like me ... hence the reason I don't have much sewing on my pages). The ways I saved on this page... I used ribbon and stitching as my background... I also stamped onto the page and then stamped and embossed onto my chipboard letters to make them seem different to the last time I used them ( on JOY). oooh I also saved on the journaling page as this was on a discount rack as you only got a few as someone had opened the packet before so instead of $11 I paid $3. Also the little lady bugs were a find at a discount store $2 for a packet of 10. It is a fairly busy layout but I like it anyway! I also saved by sewing elements to the page rather than glueing them. (ie. the journalling page and the ribbons). As well as being practical and saving me money it creates anot

For those of you who've seen my videos on You Tube you'll recognise this photo. I used this photo on a tutorial on how to pick your backgrounds and colour schemes. I hadn't actually put the page together until the retreat weekend and then I threw all those ideas out the window because these papers were on special for 50cents each..... what can I say? The miser in me won out... I also created the flower embellishment by using other paper flowers as a template to cut out from these papers and then edging each flower with my puffy velvet markers. I did use some thickers for the "beary" but as I was using them on other layouts that weekend I knew I was getting my money's worth. (Sometimes you can buy an alphabet and it takes years to use up the rest of the packet... if at all).

I've been hanging onto these photos for a while (DD1 just turned 5 LOL) .... anyway as it was a butterfly party I used punched out and stamped out butterflies to embellish my page... very cheap embellishments as they use my patterned papers as the embellishments. I also punched out of the cardstock to add another depth and lucky me used my new scrapbuddy sharon's cricuit to cut my title out of patterned paper. Cutting your title out of patterned paper, whether using a scalpel, cricuit, slice, cuttlebug or sizzix is a very thrifty move!