RobinsCraftRoom.com

Scrapping a Get Well Message

Aloha, all!

     Last week I posted a scrap page featuring our lovely black cat, Cholla.  I had it lying out on a table, and our house sitter noticed it and asked why I hadn't done something about our dog, Hoku.  With all that's going on in our lives right now, creating a scrap page featuring the dog just wasn't anywhere on my priority list.

     First, a brief aside about what's going on (and why I have a house sitter).  My husband, Harry, has become very ill, and is a hospital on the island of O'ahu.  We don't live on O'ahu, and that's made life somewhat difficult.  Right now I'm back on our island – the Big Island of Hawaii – and crafting just wasn't in the picture when I returned home a few days ago.  I had to get some business taken care of and pack for both me and my husband for a prolonged stay away from home. 

     As I spent some time talking with Harry on the phone the first few days I was back, it became apparent that he really missed his daily walks in his garden.  And he'd asked me to pet the dog and scritch the cat for him a couple of times.  I first thought that I'd go around the yard and take some pictures so he could see what was growing at the moment and maybe take some pictures of the pets.  Pictures.  Aha!  Pictures go in a scrapbook, don't they?!  And so I decided that I'd make him a scrapbook to have with him while he's awaiting surgery, which may not happen until next week.

     This has given me the opportunity to use my craft room which I so thoroughly cleaned out last week (no, I didn't know I'd be gone for so long!) AND to focus on scrapbooking during National Scrapbooking month.  The scrapbook was of the quick 6 x 6 kind, but I had fun as I did each 2-page spread thinking about the techniques I was using, and how I could share them with you.  So, over the next few weeks, I'll be doing just that – sharing my scrapbook pages with you, of course with my thoughts about quick and easy techniques.  The bottom line in all of this is that you should approach a scrapbooking project with the idea of having fun doing it.  I've seen too many people struggle and freeze up when faced with a pile of photographs and a room full of paper and embellishments.  That's OK if you're entering a contest.  But, if you're like me and most scrapbookers, you just want to have a memory book that's fun to look at as time goes on.  It's just not scary!

     OK – so here's the first page to show off (though not the first page in the book).  Of course, Harry misses his pets, and I did, indeed, have to make a page featuring Hoku the Dog, to go along with Cholla's page.  The stamp set that I used for this page is D Is For Dog.  Did you think I had C Is For Cat and not the dog's stamp set, too?  Not hardly if I wanted to keep peace among the pets.  Here's another copy of Cholla's page so you can see how these two pages go well together as a 2-page spread.

     I had already made Cholla's page with the Melon Mambo, and somehow the pink wasn't going to work for Hoku the Dog.  He's just not a pink person.  But, even with the Soft Suede (an In Color that's going to be continuing as a standard color in the next Stampin' Up! Catalog!), I could tie the two pages together with lots of different techniques. 

• I scored the card stock in the same pattern to texturize it.
• I stamped and cut out the bones from the D is for Dog set to match the fish from the C is for Cat set.
• I used Crushed Curry (sniff, going away) as the photo mats
• I used a square rhinestone brad for the dog's collar to go with the round one I used for the cat's
• I used 1/2" Polka Dot Grosgrain Ribbon on both pages.

     The pictures are not the same size and the colors are not the same.  But the two pages work just fine together!

     I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post while I'm away from home.  But the photos are all ready to show off.  I just need to find some time for myself to write them up!

     Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, and I hope to be back in my craft room before long.

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Finally Back to Crafting!

Aloha, all!

     My Craft Room is finally back in order – and all my paper slots are labeled with the new colors that will be coming out very soon.  Retiring stuff is all packed up for my Summer Open House, and there are empty boxes ready for all those retiring stamp sets to be added to the stash.

     And now I can craft!  I understood going into my cleaning project that things were out of hand.  But I didn't realize how MUCH out of hand until I started coming across all these old copies of the demonstrator magazine, "Stampin' Success."  Last evening, I started paging through some of them, and came across an idea for a card in the May 2009 issue that used the stamp set, D is For Dog.  Ah ha!  I have been wanting to use one of the quotations from the new stamp set, Favorite Thoughts, with the set, C is for Cat.  And now I had a wonderfully clean craft room and the time to make it!  Do you see all those exclamation points.  I know I'm an exclamation point queen, but I really, really do feel elated that this project is done!

     Anyway, I woke up this morning and looked at the card and thought, "Hmmm.  It's cute, but who do I send it to?  What's the occasion?"  OK, back to the drawing board (all cleaned off, I might add!).  And the 6" x 6" scrap page was created.  Cholla (cho-ya) the Cat is, indeed, the Queen of our household, and she is treated thusly.

     Both projects use Melon Mambo card stock and ink (this is a color that Stampin' Up! is keeping) and the accent color is Crushed Curry (yes, I had to go dig the card stock and ribbon out of one of the packed boxes, but all is nicely put away again).  The little gold fish were stamped onto Crushed Curry with a stamp from C is For Cat, trimmed and then turned over to show just the card stock.

     The technique that I picked up from the magazine was to texturize your card stock with some simple, straight-line scoring.  The card shows one side of the scored paper and the scrap page shows the other.  I think that both look equally good; it's really just a matter of personal preference and the project involved. 

     The card layout here isn't anything really special.  But I encourage you to work with your scoring tool (I used Stampin' Up!'s Fiskars cutter with the scoring blade) to make some designs with whatever card stock you have. 

     Have fun crafting.  I'm going to be doing the same now that I can find everything!

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My Latest Accordion Album

Aloha, all!

When I said "accordion album" to three different people, they each described a different album to me – and I’ve made all three!  Today’s album is sometimes called an "explosion album."  Explosion albums can be large or small, and today’s is a very small album that I will demonstrate to a group of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) later this month.  They each will have a kit of papers from the Patterns Pack III which is currently a Level 1 Hostess Set, along with some coordinating ribbons and punched card stock for decorations.  I’m going to encourage them to mix and match their kits if they’d like – more fun for everyone! 

But they have to have a sample so they can see the possibilities for this easy little album, and here’s what I’ve prepared.  I have my brand new pack of Tea Party Designer Series Paper and I’m having a blast with it already.  I’d used up most of the first couple of packs that I bought when it first came out, and now that it’s Spring, I need MORE!

Above is the cover of the album, made with light cardboard (the stuff that comes with those packs of wonderful Designer Series Paper!) covered with some of the Tea Party papers.  I punched a Scallop Circle topped with a circle punched with the 1-3/8" Circle Punch, all sealed together with one of the Pretty in Pink Corduroy Buttons featured in the current 2010 Occasions Mini Catalog.  The ribbon I used is a So Saffron Ribbon from the ribbon set Elementary.

Now for the inside of the album.  I made this one with three squares of 6" paper, and it holds 4 square photographs inside.  I decorated the triangles formed by the diagonal folds with punched imaged using the Boho Blossoms Punch and the Heart to Heart Punch, using So Saffron, Bashful Blue and Pretty In Pink Card Stock.  I cut the photos at 2-3/4" square, and the So Saffron Mats at 2-7/8" square.  

I also put two photographs on the outside of the album – after all, there are two blank square pages there – why waste them!?  Here’s the outside of the album.

Note that I "captured" the ribbon on the back cover of the album under a Pretty in Pink Scallop Circle Punch image, layered with a So Saffron Boho Blossom Punch image.  I actually used transparent ("Scotch") tape to anchor the ribbon, then I used Sticky Strip to adhere the Scallop Circle elements to make sure that the ribbon was safely in place.  Oh, and that tape was covered nicely by the punched elements, thank you!

Of course, I have one of my "One-Page Tutorials" for this project!  Click here for the latest version – updated from years ago when I first made this project.

Have fun with this – and, of course, if you need any of these fabulous papers, ribbons, punches or card stock, you know where you can order 24/7!  Right here!!!

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Designer Kits in My Digital Studio

Aloha, all!

As I showed you yesterday, you can use My Digital Studio to make a scrapbook all of your own design.  I did most of the layouts myself, and picked embellishments, stamp sets and papers from all over the place in the program.

Today I’ll share a couple of pages that I made using one of the built-in Designer Kits, Sunny Day.  In these Designer Kits, there are entire pages all laid out for you.  All you have to do is find your photographs and click and drag them into the spaces designed to holdl them.  MDS resizes the photos for you automatically (it does this no matter how you lay out your scrapbook pages.)

What I scrapbooked this time was my trip back in May, where I visited my son and his family in Oregon, family and friends in Maryland, and a couple of side trips to different parts of Pennsylvania.  The first page is the page that will be on the cover of my book.  Stampin’ Up!’s printer will be offering books with leather covers, books with printed photo covers, and so much more!  You can even get individual pages printed, and then add your own 3-D embellishments to make a hybrid page!  This book, though, is just for printing.

Unfortunately, for today’s blog, I’m a bit limited in the pages I can show you because the pages contain photographs of lots of people with whom I enjoyed my trip, and I’m not going to bother them with requests to be able to post their pictures on the Internet.  But you’ll get the gist of what MDS can do. 

For one thing, I’m probably not someone who would put pink, green, orange and turquoise together on a scrapbook page.  It really takes a good designer to make that color combo work.  And Stampin’ Up! has some darned good designers, because I think this works just fine!

The page above is one that I made myself, but using only elements available in the Sunny Day Designer Kit.  I didn’t need permission from the azaleas and rhododendrons to show their photographs off!

Beginning today, I’m back in the craft room to make some cards for swaps.  Then I’ll be off for a couple of days while I go with my husband to Honolulu.  I hope to get some of those swap cards done to share before I leave!

Meanwhile, start thinking about all those scrapbooks that you’ve been putting off because you just don’t have the time.  When you get your own copy of My Digital Studio, you’ll get them done in NO time!

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“My Digital Studio” is Addictive!

Aloha, all!

Oh, my, where has the week gone!!!??  I’ll tell you–it went somewhere while I had my head buried up to my ears in My Digital Studio projects! 

What have I completed so far: 

• A 12" x 12" scrapbook about our summer at Bear Lake, Minnesota (mentioned that in my last post)
• An 8" x 8" scrapbook about our late and much loved dog, Cedro.
• An 8" x 8" scrapbook about my trip to the mainland last May.

The two 8" x 8" scrapbooks are very different.  Today I’ll share some of the pages about Cedro with you.  Remember that everything on these pages is either built into My Digital Studio, or is a photograph that I uploaded into the program.  Text is made with a built-in-text editor, but uses fonts that you already have on your computer.  There are no fonts included in MDS.  There are, however, "stamps" that are alphabets.  I used those in making the cover of the Bear Lake Scrapbook I shared in my last post.  The background color for this entire album is Kraft card stock, with a row of Whisper White stitching running along the bottom.

Most of the colors are standard Stampin’ Up! colors.  The embellishment colors for the page are Not Quite Navy and Pumpkin Pie.  One of the things that MDS lets you do is change the opacity of elements such as these, thus changing the color, as I did with all but the dark Not Quite Navy flower.

In the following page, I used the built-in color picker, and "picked" the two darker colors for the embellishments out of the outfit I was wearing in the upper left photo.  Way cool way to do this!

For the next page I used some of the winter-themed MDS stamp sets.  There are snow flakes in several different sets, and I was so glad to find something with which to use them (we don’t have much snow where I live in Hawaii!)

What fun it was to do this scrapbook!  I loved being able to choose from so many stamps, embellishments and colors!

Tomorrow I take a different tack.  I’ll be sharing with you some of the pages from a scrapbook I made using one of the built in Designer Kits that MDS offers.  Completely different look!

I am so excited about this product, and I’ll be working hard to get my MDS certification as soon as we’re able to try for it.  And then I’m looking forward to many of you buying this program and working to help you make the most amazing scrapbooks–in record time and with no mess in your craft room!

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My Digital Studio – A Special Scrapbook

Aloha, all!

I have been waiting all summer to be able to use My Digital Studio to create a very special album to commemorate our family’s time at Bear Lake, Minnesota, this summer.  Now I’ve finished the album, and it’s ready to be sent off to be printed (not quite yet as Stampin’ Up!’s printing service is not quite ready to take orders yet!)

This will be the cover of the album.  There’s not much in the way of embellishments, but the alphabet is one that comes with MDS. 

The photograph is a very unusual photo of SEVEN loons swimming in formation near our dock.  We couldn’t believe that many were swimming peacefully.  Unfortunately, the only camera at the ready was a lower resolution camera.  But we’re happy to have the photo anyway.

As the week goes on, I’ll share some of the pages from the scrapbook with you.  As I don’t have the opportunity to get photo releases from most of the people in the album, most of what I show will be scenic pages.  Not bad, though!

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More Scrapbooking

Aloha, all!

As promised, here is the right page that goes with the left page in the scrapbook layout I introduced  yesterday.  This is my grandson, Quin, who had a blast at the Oregon Zoo.  I wanted him to stand in front of the Black Bear because it had the ruler markings.  But Quin wanted to stand in front of the Sun Bear, because they’re the same size.  Of course, both photos turned out well enough to make the scrapbook.

Again, I used the Circle Scissors Plus, and this time I double-matted the photo with Chocolate Chip and Baja Breeze Card Stock.  In this case, the bear was real, though thankfully behind glass.  And that cute, cute Bear from the stamp set, Under the Stars, adds even more fun to this page.

Now I have to go get packing for yet another trip across the ocean.  Come to think of it, my destination fits right in with this theme:  It’s a place called Bear Lake in Northern Minnesota.  Hmmm, think I’ll get to use this stamp set there??  Believe me, it’s packed.

In fact, I’m packing lots of my Stampin’ Up! supplies just in case of rainy days.  Our little granddaughters will be there, and grandma is going to try to get them hooked on stamping at a very young age!   Yes, you call me a "pusher"

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A Bit of Scrapbooking Fun

Aloha, all!

I spent most of last weekend putting together a scrapbook of photos I took when I visited my son and grandson, son’s significant other and her son.  We had two wonderful days out and about in Portland, Oregon.  On a Saturday we visited the Oregon Zoo, which is a delightful place to spend a day.  Then on Sunday we visited the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden.  I couldn’t imagine trying to please an 8 year old and a 6 year old – both boys! – at a flower garden.  Wrong!!  This garden has lakes and ponds, and the lake and ponds have ducks and geese.  The first order of the day was to buy a very large bag of goose and duck food (of course).  Believe me, no one was bored!

I thought I’d share a couple of the scrapbook pages with you.  The scrapbook uses Stampin’ Up! products exclusively throughout.  For awhile I thought I was going to have to use non-Stampin’ Up! alphabet stickers.  But then I found some Avery Label sticker paper, and used one of the Sizzlit Alphabets that Stampin’ Up! offers in its catalog to make my own stickers.  When I priced things out, I definitely saved a lot of $$$ (not counting the Sizzix die because I’ve used that a lot already for other things).

This is the left page of a two-page spread.  I had the most fun using the Circle Scissors Plus on most of the pages in this scrapbook.  I could adjust it to just fit the image I wanted to cut, then adjust it slightly larger to make the mat behind the photo.  Most of the papers here are all papers that are going to be retiring at the end of this month.  The Baja Breeze was just the perfect color for this set of photos, and went well with the Kraft card stock, punched with the Photo Corners Punch, as an accent.

The printed papers are from the retiring set of Designer Papers, Parisian Breeze.  The stamp is from the set, Under the Stars, and another stamp from that set is on the right page (which I’ll share tomorrow)

The sticker letters are from the Sizzlit Naturally Serif Alphabet die.  It’s a long strip die with all the letters of the alphabet–upper and lower case–on one strip.  It was very, very easy to cut the sticker paper with it, and all the letters separated from their backing with just a bit of a push from the tip of a straight pin.  It’s just the perfect alphabet set for this size scrapbook page (8-1/2" x 11").

Are YOU ready to do some scrapbooking?  Beginning this fall, I’ll be offering Scrapbooking Classes in my Craft Room. Let me know if you’d be interested. 

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A 1940 Memory Book – Part II

Aloha, all!

Now that the excitement (at least in Robin’s Craft Room) about the Stampin’ Up! "Last Chance" lists having been published, it’s time to get back to an old project and let you know what I did with it. 

Back in April, I told you about having found my mother’s Memory Book from her High School graduation in 1940.  Since then, I’ve been working on and off on it, sometimes for days at a time.  It took me awhile to figure out what exactly I was going to do about pulling it apart and then putting it back together.  I decided at some point that the "new" version of the book would be a gift to my niece, Margie – my mother’s only granddaughter -  on the occasion of her graduation from a graduate program at Johns Hopkins University last month. 

While I didn’t get all the embellishing done that I’d like to have done, I nonetheless finished the book in time to take it to the graduation.  I wrote up a summary of what I did with the book, and thought I’d share it with you.  You can click here for the summary, which also contains a link to a YouTube slide show of the pages in the "new" Memory Book.

And of course I used all Stampin’ Up! products for the project!

Now back to figuring out what to do with all the "retired" Stampin’ Up! stuff in the craft room!  For sure I’m going to have a sale–probably at my New Catalog Open House in July!

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A 1940 Memory Book – Part I

Aloha, all!

Last month when my cousin, Sherry, was here visiting us in Hawaii, we started rummaging  through a box full of old photographs.  Now I know that the readers of the Robin’s Craft Room blog are far too sophisticated about such items as photographs to have them stashed in boxes in closets.  You all have them neatly arranged in wonderful scrapbooks, don’t you?  No??   Hmmm.  I may have a scrapbooking class for you this summer!

Anyway, there in the middle of the box was a book I probably had seen before but had never really noticed. 

It was my mother’s scrapbook from her Senior Year in High School.  She graduated in 1940, and here in my hands was a book that contained what was important to her all those years ago.  My mother passed away several years ago.  Looking through this book, though, made me feel almost as connected to her as if she were still alive.  Except that I couldn’t ask her questions about it.

Here’s the cover, and over the next month or so, I’ll be sharing with you some of the wonderful little tidbits that I found behind this cover.  Some of the sharing will be excepts from an article that I’m going to write about what to consider as you’re preparing a scrapbook in terms of what’s really important to preserve your memories.  Think you know all the answers?  I may have some new insights for you, based on my own personal experience. 

May is National Scrapbooking Month.  For most of the month I’ll be traveling away from Hawaii, so I haven’t scheduled any scrapbook classes.  But Scrapbooks aren’t going to go away, and I’ll probably schedule something for June–just in time for Wedding Scrapbooks, of course!

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