Julie Allen asked:




Scrapbooking is a wonderful past time. It is becoming very popular. What better way to display your memories and keep them alive than with making a beautiful piece of art that will add enjoyment to you photos. However, scrapbooking takes lots of supplies, papers, embellishments, and many other little pieces are parts. In order to enjoy scrapbooking and clear your mind so that you can be creative you must keep your supplies organized. Here are some tips that will help you do just that.

Paper Storage

Organizing your paper supply is the biggest challenge that scrappers face. Using stackable paper trays is one method, but there are many ideas that you can adapt so that finding just the right color or theme is easy.

Wall mounts are nice in that they are up off the desk and on the wall. You can either purchase a pre-made wall mount specifically for paper or build your own. Having your paper displayed in wall mounts makes them easy to see the colors or themes that you need right away.

Units called Construction Paper Storage are wonderful! You usually see these in class rooms. However, the price of these units are acceptable and can be obtained for a reasonable price. You can then organize your paper in to each cubby making them easy to view and pull out as needed.

Hoppers work well if you have desk space. You can sort you paper in an upright positions. This is also an excellent option as it is inexpensive and makes accessing your paper supply easy. Accordion files are the least expensive, and they work. But they do take a little digging to find what you need.

Your smaller Supplies

Pen caddies are a must have. If you are trying to utilize space that is limited a pen caddy if you invest in the type that spin. You can spin it to find scissors, glue sticks, pens and many other types of small tools that you are constantly looking for without having them lay all over your work area.

Embellishments

Boxes that have divided compartments are perfect for the job of keeping your embellishments under control. These types of containers can be found everywhere, from your local craft store or at any hardware store. If you have an old tackle box laying around in the garage you can put it to use instead of letting it take up room in storage.

Scrapbooking Furniture

Scrapbooking furniture is the ultimate desire. Scrapbooking furniture is not for everyone as it can run you a bit of money, but it surely makes cleaning up easy. Lets face it, scrapping can get very messy. And what better way to hide it all away then to just fold up the table and close the doors until you are ready to get back into your creative mood.

If you want to get your scrapbooking supplies organized you have many options. Just use your creative side to come up with solutions that best fit your style and personality.

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Abhishek Agarwal asked:




Scrapbooking is a popular hobby that people enjoy because it makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something important. Even though it takes time and work to create a scrapbook, the end product is a beautiful heirloom your family can enjoy for years to come. And scrapbooking is a great way to express your creativity and individuality in a new art form.

Scrapbooking is also popular because it’s easy to do. Just about anyone can assemble their favorite photos and memorabilia into a scrapbook. But many serious “scrappers” try to make their scrapbooks a personal masterpiece.

A scrapbook is so much more than a collection of photos and keepsakes. It’s a rich storybook that lets you express how you think and feel about the events and people in your life. It reflects what you think is important about your life and what made you the person you are. It’s much more than a journal or diary because it uses a carefully-planned, beautifully organized collection of text, photographs, and keepsakes to tell the whole story visually.

The colors you use and the textures you choose communicate to your viewer, too. They tell them about your joys and sorrows. The total package of your handmade scrapbook is a piece of your history that simple photos can’t reveal.

So now that you know what a rewarding hobby scrapbooking is, you may want to know how to get the materials and supplies. Fortunately, there are many scrapbooking stores that sell a wide variety of supplies and tools for scrapbooking. Here are some of the materials you can find at your scrapbooking store:

1. Books. Your local scrapbooking or craft store sells books and magazines with logs of tips and advice on putting a scrapbook together. They offer tips on what to include in your scrapbook and offer great advice on color schemes and how to lay your items out for best effect. They contain inspiring ideas about scrapbooking themes and great quotations you can use to emphasize your thoughts and feelings about your scrapbook’s contents.

2. Materials. Scrapbooking stores and the scrapbook departments of craft stores carry many different types of material to help you make a beautiful work of art. The basic pieces include paper and coordinated paper sets, press-on borders and alphabets, frames for photos and mementos, fabric swatches, and other pieces no scrapbook should be without.

The stores also carry many different add-on supplies that will add sparkle and personality to your scrapbook. These include felt cutouts and die-cuts, stickers, foam, ribbons and lace, and many other accessories to make your scrapbook a creative masterpiece.

3. Tools. You’ll need a set of tools to prepare and affix your pieces to your scrapbook pages. You can keep it simple with scissors, tape, and pens. You can purchase specialty tools like paper cutters and hole punches with special cutting patterns and shapes. And every scrapper must have the right glue!

Scrapbooking stores offer a few more items that have no cost but can be priceless. They’re usually staffed by scrappers who love the hobby and know a lot about it. You can get lots of free advice and guidance from them. And the people who shop there are likely to be scrapbooking pros who can help you through challenges and suggest novel solutions that will be perfect for your scrapbooking project.

In addition to advice and guidance, scrapbooking stores are a great place for scrappers to meet and get to know each other. Scrapbooking can be a lonely pursuit. You may need the opportunity to meet and chat with others who share your passion for scrapbooking. You can make new friends and share tales about your scrapbooking experiences. You can keep up on each other’s progress. You can plan scrapbooking parties and events. In short, scrapbooking stores are great places to expand your social life!

Because the hobby is so popular, there are entire retail stores devoted to scrapbooking. But you can also find large scrapbooking departments in other types of retail stores: craft stores are certain to have what you need. National chains you might recognize include Michaels (or M.J. Designs), Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts, and AC Moore. Your community will likely have independent and mom-n-pop stores that cater to your scrapbooking needs as well.

Online stores are very popular and easy to find. You won’t get the face-to-face interaction, but many offer advice and tutorial-type instructions for scrapbookers. They also offer blogs and forums for exchange with other scrappers.

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Kasan Groupe asked:




Alright, so Christmas is just around the corner and it’s been a tough year. Maybe you weren’t able to get presents for everyone this year, or perhaps no one. Well don’t feel too bad,  you can always just blame it on the economy, but you’re going to have to make up for it next Christmas. The only way to do this is to start saving now. You obviously aren’t too talented in finances, so follow my tips and you’ll be on your way to a fabulous Christmas next year.

First you need to decide how much you need to save, before you can actually start saving. To do this, think about how many people you will need to buy for. Let’s say that you have 10 people. Now think about how much you are planning to spend on each of these people. Depending on your typical gift style it can really vary, but in general between $30 and $60 per person is a reasonable goal. When you begin saving, it’s best to overestimate how much you will spend, so save for the larger amount. So in this scenario, you will need to save $600. After you’ve come up with an amount, it’s time to break it down into parts. There are 52 weeks in a year and you will probably want to start your shopping about a month in advance, so if you start saving right after Christmas you will have about 48 weeks to save. So now you will need to divide the $600 we came up with by 48. This means that each week you will need to put away $12.50 per week. Doesn’t sound that bad does it? Start saving right away and it won’t be a burden for you to buy your mom that chess set she’s been lusting after or that poker chip set you know your dad would love to own. Plan ahead and next Christmas will be great.

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Cathy Scraps asked:




Cricut How To

Would you love to create custom scrapbooking layouts or paper crafts? Do you ever wish that you could cut any shape you wanted to and not be bound by the limitations and problems that accompany using punches?

Look no further; the Cricut (pronounced “cricket”) is a revolutionary personal cutting machine, brought to you by the innovators and paper crafting leaders at Provo Craft. The Cricut does not require a computer or any additional hardware, but instead makes use of cartridges to give you abundant choices of die cut shapes and fonts.

The Cricut machine is growing in popularity, but perhaps you are in need of a little Cricut how-to. The Cricut, although complex in its creative possibilities, is a simple machine to use, and a little Cricut how to will certainly go a long way!

Cricut How-To

Our Cricut how to will begin with a basic run-down of how the machine works. The Cricut cutting machine is a portable unit that will conveniently plug into any grounded 110 wall outlet, which is the standard for household outlets.

After reading the Cricut how to instruction and idea booklet, simply press the “on” button and go from there. Cricut will do the cutting for you to free more time for you to create and imagine. The Cricut is a cartridge-powered tool, so you must insert a cartridge into the machine in order for it to produce die cuts.

Purchase of the Cricut machine includes one cartridge, George, and additional cartridges may be purchased at craft stores, discount retailers, local scrapbooking stores, or online. The cutting blade itself is guided by an electronic cutting process. This means that you do not have to do anything to power the machine or actually cut the paper! The machine cuts letters/shapes/phrases ranging from 1-inch to 5 ? -inches tall, as well as titles and borders as long as 11-inches.

You will need to insert paper into the Cricut, from which your die cuts will be made. The machine has a paper saving option that cuts letters/shapes/phrases in an arrangement that minimizes the amount of waste from every cut.

The Cricut can cut a wide range of paper from vellum to cardstock up to .5 mm thick. Provo Craft has created cardstock pads and designer paper pads that coordinate with the Cricut shape cartridges. These papers fit perfectly in the Cricut.

You can unload the paper and remove just the pieces you need. You can then reload the paper at a later time and navigate to any open area to resume cutting. There is even a Paper Save mode, which will pack in any selected cuts to optimize the space needed.

The Cricut personal electronic cutting machine comes with a Cricut how to booklet to address any basic start-up needs you may have. A quick visit to the Cricut website (www.cricut.com) will yield video Cricut how to and basic training. Contact information and a list of retailers are also available to help offer you some extra help if you have any questions or concerns.



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Corinna Rhodes asked:




Scrapbooking layouts can be as simple or as elaborate as you wish. Often layouts become artistic masterpieces in themselves – regardless of the photo used. The embellishments and techniques which can be used is limitless. This scrapbooking creativity works wonderfully well for one or possibly two photos on the layout. What do you do then, if you want to include more than 2 photos on a page? Magazines are wonderful places to browse for inspiration but most of the layouts published are for less photos and more embellishments.

To create memory masterpieces with several photos can be quite easy. You need to think creatively yourself and allow your own individualism to shine through. Some suggestions which will help with this include:

Create ‘collage’ photo layouts. These collages can look extremely effective if done correctly. To create collage masterpieces:
1.Don’t try to add every photo you have, just for the sake of it. This can look very ’scrappy’ and childlike in it’s appearance.
2. Do use photos with a similar theme or from the same event. This creates consistency in the layout, making it easy on the viewer who can scan the layout and see the whole story, then look closer and see the details of the individual photos.
3. Use 4-5 full size (4×6) photos positioned to allow space for a title or embellishments on one side or corner of the page.
4. Overlap the photos to eliminate distracting elements.
5. Crop the important details from lots of photos and fit them in like a jigsaw. This does require a lot of patience but does look very effective if done with an eye for detail and artistic balance.
6. Keep the ‘extra’s’ simple. Focus on the memories and photos with the extra embellishments just that – embellishing the main focus.
7. Keep in mind what you are recording – holiday, event, childhood, family etc. Allow this to dictate the theme and feel of the layout.

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Cathy Scraps asked:




How can you get your hands on one of Cricut’s most sought-after cartridges, the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials?

It’s easy, if you know the right tricks. Don’t plan on going to a regular store and finding the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials, though, because you won’t find it.

Cricut sold the Accent Essentials cartridge exclusively with the Expression machine, so you won’t find it on store shelves. If you’re not one of the lucky people who purchased the Expression machine, you’ll have to be a little creative in your search for this exclusive cartridge.

1. Have a “Cartridge Swap”. Invite your fellow scrap booking and paper craft friends together. In the invitation, have a list of the “Most Wanted” cartridges. All of the guests will bring their cartridges that they are willing to swap, hopefully using the “Most Wanted” list as a guide. At the swap, you can trade cartridges for a limited period of time, such as 2 weeks. During those two weeks, you can tackle numerous projects and decide for yourself if the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials is a cartridge that you want to have in your permanent collection.

2. Visit an online auction site. Thanks to the Internet, you can get in touch with sellers literally all over the world. Online, you can find people who have the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials but don’t want it and are willing to sell it. If you don’t want to navigate around large auction sites, there’s even a simpler option for you. Visit www.cricutcartridges.net to see an up-to-date listing of Cricut Cartridges listed on eBay. The cartridges, their price, and shipping information is posted for you without you having to do a search on eBay.

3. Check out the local classifieds. Lots of people list items for sale in the newspaper or in online classifieds such as craigslist. If you can find someone locally who is selling the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials, you will even be able to look at the product before you buy it. Classifieds are updated every day, so keep checking back if you don’t find what you’re looking for on the very first try. You can also post in the “Wanted Items” section that you’re looking for the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials. You may be contacted by someone who didn’t think to post their cartridge but is willing to part with it.

4. Visit online scrapbooking forums, message boards, and groups. You can search through posts or create a post of your own. You can bring up the possibility of swapping some of your unused cartridges for the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials, or you can offer to buy someone’s unused copy. If you are willing to purchase a used cartridge, make sure you put that in the post. The likelihood of someone responding to your query is greater since the entire site is dedicated to your target audience.

Whether you’re looking to trade a cartridge for the Cricut Cartridge Accent Essentials or you want to buy it outright, it’s simple to find what you’re looking for, if you know where to look.



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Audrey Okaneko asked:




If you are visiting central California, plan to stop in Pismo Beach, home of Simply Scrappin. Owners Debbie and Merrily believe scrapbooking can help us reflect on and celebrate our lives.

Simply Scrappin has a wide variety of products from many vendors. They also offer help to the newcomer. They have articles on sorting photos, choosing an album and choosing the right supplies for your first scrapbook.

Pismo Beach offers many photo opportunities. Hearst Castle is 55 miles away but well worth the drive. They offer a variety of tours and the grounds and home are beyond words. The pool alone is just breathtaking. You can ride in a hummer on the dunes of Pismo Beach. If you enjoy horseback riding, you can arrange a horseback riding trip right on the beach.

Solvang is about 40 minutes away. As soon as you enter Solvang you know by the windmills and d?cor that you’ve entered this quaint Danish village. Solvang is loaded with shops and restaurants.

At nearby Avila Beach there are naturally heated mineral springs where you can swim in the pool or take a hot mineral bath.

Monarch butterfly grove is just beautiful late October through February. There are paths and trees and many many butterflies.

There are a dozen wineries in the Pismo Beach area that you can tour. Not only will you be able to take wonderful photos of the grounds, but you’ll also be able to sample the wines of the region.

There is nothing like the central California coast for picture taking for your scrapbook.

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Peter Gitundu asked:




As we do our scrapbooking, we may sometimes find that we have so much material but not a proper or convenient layout on how to present our collections. It can be quite frustrating trying to organize and sort them out in an order that makes sense yet we do not seem to be getting there.

Just sit back and relax because there is always a way out of a slippery situation. With the innovation of computers, much of our ‘hard’ tasks have now being simplified into a matter of just issuing commands and achieving results. What i mean is that you can be able to down load free scrapbooking layouts that you can put into use to come up with a desired layout for your scarp booking.

The layout is not only the sequential order of your photos, but a general beautiful outlook that appeals to the eyes of every one who looks at the scrap book. The computer will help you to collect your photos and arrange them in very many layouts until you can settle to for the best one. Special web sites will present you with many free scrapbooking ideas that you would never have thought of in your entire lifetime.

Moore free scrapbooking ideas are readily available from friends who are willing to share the secret behind their successful scrapbooking activities. They may also be willing enough to go through the process step by step with you so you must never shy away from asking for help whenever necessary.

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Michel Maling asked:




Vellum is a normally smooth, tough, but see through paper that is very popular with scrapbooking and card making enthusiasts. Using vellum on your pages will add elegance, sophistication and is an ideal choice for a wedding theme. In fact, if your turn your scrapping tool box upside down, you will be surprised at how many leftovers you can use for a wedding theme. Bits of lace, ribbon and jewellery will suit the mood of the wedding theme all to well.

Vellum comes in many entrancing colours, patterns and textures and has endless uses on all your scrapbooking and card making projects. You can try tearing it and layering it for a frilled look, or even cutting out flowers and layering different coloured shapes on top of one another to make the petals come to life. Layering vellum adds a beautiful soft appeal to any layout. You can use ribbons to hide any unsightly glue that might be visible through the vellum, as ribbons and vellum work very well together. Punching holes in the vellum and threading ribbons through is also a lovely way to finish off the edges.

Try matting your romantic or wedding photo’s onto vellum for a sense of romance. This can also add the elegance of a wedding day to your layout. By matting your photo onto velum, you will draw attention to the photo. If you want to make the photo the focal point, try matting it onto several layers of vellum.

Vellum comes in many entrancing colours, patterns and textures and has endless uses on all your scrapbooking and card making projects. You can try tearing it and layering it for a frilled look, or even cutting out flowers and layering the vellum for a beautiful soft appeal. You can use ribbons to hide any unsightly glue that might be visible through the vellum, as ribbons and vellum work together very well.

Before using vellum, make sure that you wash your hands, as the natural oils in your fingers can create visible smudges, which will spoil the look of the vellum.

For more scrapbooking ideas and solutions, visit http://scrapbookideasandsolutions.blogspot.com

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Genie Balfour asked:




Digital Scrapbooking Templates – what are they, and how can they save you time, reduce your hobby costs, and liberate your creativity all in one go?

In just the last few years there has been such a huge surge in computer use that many people now have an internet connection, and use it.

To keep in touch with friends and family, by email, social networks, For entertainment – music, videos and TV online, and, of course, For crafts such as scrapbooking.

In fact, the internet is changing our lives in many ways, and for scrappers, that provides the opportunity to get into digital or online scrapbooking in some form. Going online to scrapbooking websites provides fast and easy access to the work of expert designers and crafters, bringing a wealth of high quality scrapbooking ideas and resources, as well as downloadable digital products, into the home of the average scrapper.

Instead of having the expense of traveling to your local scrapbook store (LSS) to browse products, see a demo or participate in a workshop, you can now view scrapbook sketches and example layouts online, watch streaming tutorial videos, and even more conveniently, use downloadable scrapbooking templates. These you can open in your favorite digital scrapbook software (such as Photoshop Elements), adapt the design as you wish, then drop in and adjust your digital photos. Just as when paper scrapping, you need to personalise the page layout by adding your embellishments, journalling, tags etc.

If you’re not yet up to speed with computer scrapbooking, you can create paper pages by printing off your downloaded template, and either use these as the basis for building a traditional scrapbook page, or to store in your ideas file for later use.

Digital scrapbook templates and supplies save you time and money by reducing the amount of stock you need to store, and make scrapbooking possible conveniently without having to get all your supplies out to work on your projects. All you need is enough space for a laptop computer and you can scrapbook anywhere.

Another benefit of digital products is that they save you time by eliminating many of the usual repetitive tasks as you create a series of pages for an album, and save you wasting photos through cutting errors. Also, its easier for your computer to search for that elusive embellishment, saving you the frustration of hunting through paper stock for that special paper or tag…

Digital scrapbook products are usually less expensive than their physical equivalent, and they can be used over and over again. With so many internet scrapbooking templates available at little or no cost, you have access to as many sketches, templates, papers, and embellishments, as you could possibly need, so you’ll probably spend much less than you would normally spend on your stash.

Here are just a few more benefits of the digital approach to scrapbooking:

Easy to find and share layout ideas You can re-use digital “papers” and embellishments many times over, with zero replacement costs Very much easier to duplicate your scrapbook pages or completed album. So if you want each granny to have the same album, with extra copies for a couple of aunts and a favorite uncle, you just create the album once. You have easy online access to resources for every season and every kind of life-event

You can think of your digital scrapbooking templates as a fast start to page layout designs. You can use them either in your paper-based projects, or you can create pages and albums completely on your computer, then share the finished project with friends, family and fellow scrappers easily and freely across the internet.

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