Scrapropos

I’m Annie LuMaye from Colorado and I’m happy to be joining 451 Press as their Scrapping Blogger! I’m a certified scrapaholic and look forward to getting to know others who share that frame of mind.

I created my first scrapbook in about 3rd grade and have barely stopped since then. I joined the “current” world of scrapbooking (back then it was more about saving memorabilia) the Creative Memories way about 11 years ago. Now I’m all about keeping up with the latest trends, buying whatever I can get my hands on and subscribing to every scrapbooking magazine I can find!

This blog will delve into the latest scrapbooking techniques, great new products, challenges to get you scrapping, organizational ideas, chances to win prizes and MORE! So visit often, leave me comments on what you’d like to see here, and get scrapping!

My name is Laura and I am new to the Scrapropos blog and I look forward to providing you with information and links that will help you with your scrapbooking journey.

As a digital scrapbooker, I will try and bring new and innovative ideas to your scrapbook fun. Even if you currently only scrapbook in paper; you would be amazed at how much your home computer can assist you with your paper pages. I will post some pages I have done in the past and I will make new pages in the future so you can see my progression from total digital newbie to more advanced digital goddess. Well, at least I would like to think “goddess”, but I know there are those out there who are amazing in their digital abilities and definitely better than I; as you will get too see soon.

If you are interested in digital pages, yet are too scared to try and make your own images, then there are always places to go for digital images already made and you just “digitally slap” everything together. There are even digital pages out there that are already made for you and all you do is “plop” your pictures into/onto them and there you go; you have a finished page in just a few moments.

Tools, Flickr

digital, scrapbook, layout, home, house, computer

Welcome this week’s guest scrapbooking artist Sharon Barrett-Shanks

Sharon

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Sharon’s First Layout

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When and why did you start scrapbooking?

Christmas 2005 my oldest child, Bonnie, gave me a scrapbooking kit she put together with an album. I remember being scared of it all and I wasn’t to sure I even wanted to start with it all so I let her “show me” how to crop and mat a photo. I went home with 2 pages which I treasure. I’ve glitzed it up a bit after I got a wee bit brave.

It must be noted I was always a picture taker and mostly they got tossed in a box. When the kids were little (5) of them I put them in albums. It must also be noted here that as a teen I kept a scrapbook and loved doing it. One other note when I was real young I just loved cut-out dolls!

How would you describe your personal style?

Clean, sleek, geometric, colorful, whimsical and impulsive.

What most influences your scrapbooking?

I have asked myself this question over and over is it the picture or is it the paper…it really is both.

Digital? Paper? A little of both? Why?

Only paper, absolutely no digis here, although I try to copy some that I love looking at. just not that creative with PC and graphics.

If you had to make an entire album using only three colors, which would you choose and why?

Pink, Brown & White

What is your favorite scrapbooking tool?

Cricut

What is your must-have indulgence?

Rub-ons and clear stamps

If you had the opportunity to witness one historical even first hand (and take photos), what event would you choose and what would the scrapbook page you make for the event be like?

Peace in USA after WW 2. I would be taking photos of all my uncles who were in the service and were handsome, they’re girlfriends and wives were deliriously happy would make great shots. My Aunts dressed daily in dresses, nylons, make-up so it would be mostly black and white and I would colorize anything red/white/blue. I may even use the Life Magazine format as my style for the page. it was a happy time for my family and I was barely old enough to know what was going on, but I remember it well. Unfortunately not a lot of pictures were taken at that time by my family.

What does your workspace look like?

You can see more of Sharon’s Work HERE

The best scrapbooking pages are not always the most expensive. Here is a video showing some great tips for layouts and embellishments without a high price tag.

scrapbooking

Check out this short but sweet tutorial for creating a travel scrapbook at Martha Stewart Crafts . The accompanying photos provide some great tips especially for using punches.

In related news, Variety.com is reporting that a “new” Martha Stewart Crafts will begin on the DIY Network on Thanksgiving of this year. The show will feature “best-of” compilations from the past decade and more of Martha Stewart’s various shows. Crafts, including, scrapbooking will be the topic for the shows.

The Scrapbook lounge over at CraftTvWeekly.com has a new technique video posted. The almost 9 minute video demonstrates a variety of fun techniques to do with border and corner punches and features some great layouts created with the techniques.

Show description from CraftTvWeekly.com:

Tricia delivers a one-two punch with these beautiful pages. She starts with elegant cardstock and dresses it up with a corner punch. She turns that punch into a border punch creating unique borders and a stencil. When she’s done punching, Tricia assembles these elements into gorgeous pages that will knock your socks off!

scrapbooking, scrapbooking tutorials, scrapbooking videos

Need some inspiration? Head over to Flickr.com and type the tag scrapbooking into the search box. Tons of scrapbookers upload their layouts and other scrapbooking related images to share. Spending some time browsing through the postings or choose the slideshow option and watch all of the wonderful, inspiring work . You are bound to be inspired to get to work on some of your own scrapbooking projects.

Here is a gude to credits for the “scrapbooking” tagged images in the mosaic above:
1. Swimming Fun, 2. Lucy, 3. Baby Tina, 4. Tazz, 5. Rouge, 6. Untitled, 7. G, 8. A, 9. teen-queen-dancer-zoom-in1
 Do you post your scprapbooking projects on flickr.com? Post a link to your gallery in the comments for this post and share!

scrapbooking, scrapbook, flickr

I created this digital scrapbooking paper just for (Scr)apropos readers. Scanned from my own ink and watercolor artwork at 300 dpi and sized for 8.5×11 inch pages, this paper will print out in excellent quality for digital scrapbookers that print their pages or for hybrid scrapbookers. I decided to create it at 8.5×11 because so many of the digi papers out there are 12×12, which is a nice size, but challenging to print at home unless you have one of the new larger format printers. 12×12 scrappers can always use the smaller page as an element on their bigger page, and 8.5×11 scrappers will not have to resize or worry about distortion.

To download the file, click on the link below. File is a jpeg compressed in a zip file. The purple title text is for the above banner only and does not appear on the actual downloaded paper.

Download Swirling Rose Digital Scrapbooking Paper

Swirling Rose Digital Scrapbook Paper by Teresa McClary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Please give credit for the images to me, Teresa McClary, and when possible link back to this blog post. If you wish to share the file with others (PLEASE SHARE), link to this post for them to download the file. Thank You.

scrapbook, scrapbooking, journaling, scrapbook layouts, scrapbook projects, freebies, free scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking freebies, hybrid scrapbooking

Occasionally, I am going to post a video or link to a written how-to for a fun technique. I will post a picture of my creation using the day’s technique and challenge YOU to make something yourself using the technique. It would be even better (but by no means necessary) if you took a picture of your creation and posted a link in the comments to this post!

First Challenge: Ribbon Covered Chipboard Tags

Here is mine:

I used random ribbons from my sewing stash, Xyron permanent adhesive, and I cut the tag myself from scrap chipboard.

scrapbooking, scrapbooking embellishments, chipboard, ribbon, scrapbooking techniques

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed the free All About Me class at BigPictureScrapbooking.com. I have been taking more of their “Projects Now” classes and one of their workshops, “Colors of Your World”. While I am not quite ready to write reviews for the classes, I thought it would be fun to share some of my completed pages and projects.

“10 Reasons Why”

“No Excuses Journaling”

“Colors of Your World” (I have posted Orange before, but I am posting it again because I like it! )

scrapbook, scrapbooking, scrapbooking classes, scrapbook layouts

The Craft & Hobby Association’s big summer show is this weekend. Here are some sneak peaks at the new products that will be debuted at the show:

S.E.I

Basic Grey

Cosmo Cricket

Tim Holtz

Karen Russel

Bam Pop

Masterpiece Studios

We R Memory Keepers

Technorati Tags: cha, sneak peaks, scrapbooking, scrapbook

Scrapbooking When You Travel

ThriftyFun.com has a good article to help you plan ahead for how you want to record you vacation. If you are anything like me, you usually just think “I will bring my camera and plan a scrapbook when I get home.” The tips offered such as photographing your waiter or hotel staff and remembering to pick up two copies of brochures and maps, are little things that will really help you to better document the memories from your vacation.

Technorati Tags: scrapbook, scrapbooking, vacation scrapbook

Social networking sites are everywhere on the internet. A popular one among scrapbookers is My Place at Scrapbook.com. You can post images of your layout and other projects, maintain your own scrap blog, comment on your neighbors layouts in their gallery, and add friends to your list.

Do you have a gallery at My Place or another social scrapbooking site? Post a link in the comments and be social!

scrapbook, scrapbooking, journaling, scrapbook layouts, scrapbook projects

Mr. Ellie Pooh-Elephant Dung Paper

As you can probably imagine, a lot of my email focuses of paper crafts in some way. Being that I use gmail, there are sponsored links on the side. The link for Mr. Ellie Pooh-Elephant Dung Paper comes up on the side of pretty much every email I read.

I love elephants, so of course I had to check out the site. As the name implies they offer paper products made from recycled elephant poo. As a teenager I volunteered at a zoo and had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with the elephants. This time included a fair share of poo shoveling. I can confirm from my personal experience that the elephant’s waste is mostly plant matter and pretty nice stuff as far as the material goes.

The home page tells about the plight of elephants in Sri Lanka:

The elephant is running out of space in Sri Lanka. Most of
the protected areas inhabited by elephants are small, less
than 1000 sq. Km in size (900 sq. Miles). Nevertheless,
elephants, especially the bulls, may range over hundreds
of square kilometers in the course of a season. Their sheer
size and gargantuan appetite mean that elephants and
people cannot live together where agriculture is the
dominant form of land use, unless the damage they cause to
farmers can be compensated.

and how the idea of making paper from the elephant’s waste was born:

Since an elephant’s diet is all vegetarian, the waste produced is basically raw cellulose. Thoroughly
cleaned and processed, the cellulose is converted into a uniquely beautiful textured product, marketed
as “Ellie Pooh Paper�. This acid free, linen-like papyrus-type paper can be formed into art and
construction projects, notebooks, cards and assorted gift items where the only limitation is ones
imagination. These products have proved extremely popular among many in the local population and
among foreign tourists.

A visit to their store brings a surprise for scrapbookers. They make their acid-free elephant poo paper in to what looks like some fun products made just for us scrappers including albums and cardstock.

Looking for some fun scrapbook reading? Check out these blogs:

Scrapjacked - Every 1st and 15th they post a new featured artist and one layout for inspiration then hold a challenge for the best “jacked” layout.

One Little Word - Another challenge site. They post a word and you create and post your layout inspired by that word. The current word is “Simplicity”.

Pencil Lines - Sketches, sketches, and more sketches

Scrapscene - The self proclaimed Who’s Who of scrapbooking. Always lots of good information here.

scrapbook, scrapbooking, journaling, scrapbook layouts, scrapbook projects, freebies, free scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking freebies