Archive for October, 2011
Here’s another card making idea to try. Use a colored watercolor crayon on a flower and its petal images. To make the flower image lighter than the petals, spritz the image with a little extra water and gently apply a stamp on the watercolor paper. Once the image dries, color the petal image using the same crayon that you first used, spritz it with less water than you did the flower image, and stamp the petal image over the rose. You have created a beautiful, effective card.
I’ve recently seen some cards that were made with stamps and water. They were quite unique, so I’d like to describe how they were designed. The first card was created with a beautiful flower and leaves. The design was colored directly on the stamp with a watercolor crayon, then spritzed with water, and the image was stamped on scrapbook paper. The first image was completely dried before the second image was stamped. The watercolor images were beautiful!
More on this in a later article.
Here are a few more tips on journaling. Jot down a few notes about each pile of photos that you’ve gathered so as to spark your memory later. A few words on the back of each picture will help with the journaling, like the date that the photo was taken, who’s in the picture, what’s happening in the photo, and you may wish to number the photos.
When you sit down to journal, organize the pictures and thoughts into a creative presentation that ties into your scrapbook page. These ideas will also help you to establish a great title for your page. More on this subject later.
When giving gift advice, many people maintain that it’s the thought that counts. And this is absolutely true. A gift given from the heart will always mean more in the long run to the recipient. But with no gift is this truer than with the anniversary gift. For many people, anniversary gifts are notoriously hard to pick out. They are meant to express how much your spouse or loved one means to you, and that kind of gift can incite a lot of stress. This is true whether it’s your first anniversary or your fiftieth.
These gifts don’t have to be so stressful, though. The most important thing to remember is that the only real way to fail with an anniversary gift is to get something completely generic. The gift must express something unique about the person or you as a couple. This is the perfect time for a sentimental gift like wedding scrapbooking albums or other collection of photos. There’s nothing like remembering the time you’ve had together by reliving some of your best memories together through photos.
Too many of us scrapbookers put off journaling and sometimes never even finish this vital part of our pages–because writing down the details feels so intimidating. Here are a few tips that I use to instill that journaling on my scrapbook pages.
When you get your photos developed, take a few minutes when you first get your pictures and organize them. Separate them so you have all the photos that belong together in the same pile, then keep those piles separated. Slip each pile into its own keeper, or store your photos in keeper dividers separating the piles. More on this topic this week.
I just purchased a tabletop paper trimmer. It is amazingly light and quite portable. I can cut up to three layers of scrapbook paper without any fraying. A nice feature is that I never have to change the blade. The blade is made of hardened stainless steel and comes with a five-year guarantee. I can also detach the measuring arm and handle and tuck it in my scrapbook storage area. It now makes it easier to take it with me to my cropping and crafting events.
Here’s the steps that I use to dye fibers. Cover the bottom of a small, shallow container with water. Leave plenty of space to allow for liquid displacement when the scrapbooking ribbon is added to the container. Next, squeeze ink from an ink refill bottle into the container, (1 tsp. of water to 10 drops of ink). Test your color by soaking a small sample of ribbon in the ink using tweezers from your scrapbooking tools. The longer you soak the ribbon the darker the color. If the color isn’t quite right, adjust the water-to-ink ratio.
Here are some more ideas for dyeing with stamp sets, ink refills, and pads: Dye ribbon and twill tape to change the color as you desire. With re-inkers, you can get all of the color from one spool of white ribbon.
If the color results aren’t what you want, remember that when you dye a ribbon or twill tape, you many never achieve exactly the same color twice. Some colors have more undertones than others, producing a more noticeable variation between the strands. However, most of the colors result in vivid, beautiful fibers.
More tomorrow on how to dye the fibers.
If you look around in nature, you’ll notice that circles surround us everywhere. From the sun to tree rings, they reflect a circular theme. Using only a few simple items, you can take this soothing theme from nature and create stunning looks in your scrapbooking card making.
Circles draw attention to the focal point of a card. A large flower on the card can be the focal point by layering circles behind and as part of the flower. Use circles punches and a button to carry the theme throughout the card. The circles echo each other in different sizes.
One of the most thrilling things that you can do with ink is change the color of your embellishments. If you have a spool of white grosgrain ribbon and a handful of ink refills, you have a variety of scrapbooking ribbon choices for your project.
For example, a card saying, “With All My Heart,” has the ribbon dyed a lighter shade of the original color than the card stock. You can achieve a subtle tone-on tone effect with little effort.