Welcome to January...

and although I refuse to make new years resolutions I have made a couple of goals to keep me busy. My greatest task ever is to organize my scrapbook area completely by the end of this month. I am so sick of all the extra stuff I have collected in the 10 plus years in this hobby that I am even dunging out some product I haven't used and do not plan to use. I want to say it's been going great, but everytime I get ahead there seems to be two steps back LOL! Here's my list of things I've been working on:

1.Clean off my desk of non essentials
2.Go through my patterned paper
3.Sort out my cardstock again : ( {It is now organized by color and one of 3 groups; neutrals, warm, cool}
4.Organize my albums (Lachlan's done (for now), Preston's 1st and 2nd album to be redone again as I found another pizza box with more layouts in it...Grrr)
5.Dung out anything I don't intend to use. No more saving for that perfect layout. I'd forget about it before it came around LOL!
6.Organize my photos and get them all in one place (digital and printed)
7.Date as many layouts as possible. (Lachlan's done and Preston's are almost done, then onto family, pets, and extras)

And with all this going on I've been doing really good at not spending any $$$ on scrapbook supplies this month. I plan on saving that for the Brandon Scrapbookers Convention in April : )

What are you doing to organize you space?

Not much going on in the Scrapbook front...

I've been super busy with Christmas and taking pictures to get ready for the after Christmas season that scrapbooking has taken a back seat. I did up Christmas cards for family this year, but other than that not too much has been going on. I have been organizing and trying to clear out stuff I don't want or use. I will be so happy when I finally have my scrap area totally organized.

Happy December 1st

Finally! It's December and finally beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas with this snow! I know there's a few people probably not too happy about it, but without snow for Christmas it just doesn't feel like Christmas. Marc and I took a trip to Estevan yesterday and it was just strange how we are almost finished our Christmas shopping and we both had said it didn't feel like Christmas. To get you into the holiday spirit here's a cute layout I did for Lachlan's first Christmas. Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

Here's a little treat to get you all in the halloween-y mood. First one is a layout with a picture of Preston last year at the pumpkin patch. That's the closest I got to taking halloween photos in his costume. He was so cute : )

The second one is for Lachlan's first halloween. Now all I need is the photo...

make your own paper...

Okay so I've been busy the last couple of weeks on crunch time as my mom is having her grand opening for her store's new location and I was nominated to create her a "Before and After" album of her shop. Of course the color scheme she chose made it difficult to find papers so instead of searching for colored papers I have created my own "patterned paper".


And since I haven't posted lately I thought it would be nice to share a technique with all you wonderful people who still come by and check out my blog. Here we go....

Now to make this paper I chose to stamp two different colors to add a little more, but you can always change that up. You can stamp with one color, but 2 or more stamps or you can stamp with more colors it's all up to you and how you want it to look. It's definitely fun to play around and explore to see what you can come up with. It's one of my favorite thing techniques. I used a background stamp and stamped the whole paper with the lighter color and then I chose a darker ink and stamped the butterfly randomly around my paper.

To make it really look like patterned paper this is my favorite trick...you have to stamp off the paper. To do this I use a cellophane plastic baggie (that way you protect your work surface) that I got from a paper pack or if you're like me and shop online some people ship paper in them as well. I let it show from behind my paper and then I stamped my image partially on the cardstock and part on the plastic. That way it gives a continuous look and that you didn't stop before the edge of you paper.


You can see here my plastic piece with stamped images on it. When you're done you can either throw it away or you can even re-use it by wiping it off with a baby wipe.

Have fun playing : )