Scrapbooking Made Simple

I discovered that if I cut up the packaging that my daughters hair clips come in I have a very cheap ribbon slide. It is really easy to attach the little knick knacks that come off all the clips to this plastic or to write on it. You can even use it as the mechanism for attaching your ribbon to the page by adding a second one at the other end. And its FREE! I go through ALOT of Hairclips! My daughter seems to have an amazing way of only getting one wear out of a clip! Problem is she needs to wear them otherwise there is a mass of curls in her eyes. So seeing as how I have to spend money on hairclips I 've been finding ways to make them into a scrapbooking supply. For instance all the little bows, bling and flowers are used as embellishments on my layouts and now the packaging is used too!

You know, I always say to new scrapbookers that they should view the world around them as a possible source of supplies and today was a perfect example of this. I was walking across the road when I saw a squashed bottle top. The bottle top has a snowflake on the top of it so I'm going to use it as a Christmas Page embellishment. I'd love to do a blue layout of something skiing related but as we don't get snow here I figure my chances are pretty slim of getting a snow photo anytime soon. Because it's been out in the elements for a while and obviously driven over it has a lovely "aged" effect..... So watch where you're walking.... you never know what FREE scrapbooking find you're missing out on... lol

If you've been reading these posts you know that I LOVE FREE! I'm always looking at everything that comes into my life and evaluating it's worthiness as a scrapbooking supply . Well as I mentioned previously Christmas bought alot of free supplies my way due to the paper, cards and ribbon, and also the packaging the toys came in. My tip for avid scrapers wanting to save money is to check out all the packaging that comes into your life as many of them contain a clear plastic window . You can open the box up and remove this window and use it as you would a transparency. Or sometimes the combination of cardboard and clear plastic are a great shape and you can simply paint the cardboard and place it over a photograph like you would a picture frame.

I recently went on a lovely holiday to the Sunshine Coast (home of Steve Irwin , recently deceased) with my family..... My husband took some photos' and I foraged some shells and then I put this layout together. This is a very cheap layout as it uses alot of scraps of paper from other projects and some stickers from a gift I was given.... then there's the shells.. FREE..... so all in all its a very cheap layout.... Hope you like it! I'd love to see some other ideas for beach layouts.