Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Teacher Appreciation Week-Photo Tips

Hey there, I am happy to be posting about some photo tips for capturing your child's relationship with his or her teacher. I was a teacher before I had my sweet children, so I have plenty of experience both as the teacher and the parent.

First, and foremost, make sure that you ask or let your child's teacher know that you are going to be taking some pictures. They expect that you are going to want to capture some of your child's school experience, but it's always nice just to make sure.

• If you are looking to get some candid, action shots, do your best to do so during a classroom party or another time that the teacher is expecting parents. Try turning off your flash so it's not going off and disturbing the activities.
• If you want some posed shots, try emailing the teacher and asking when would be a good time to do so. Parents always want first day of school photos, but that is usually a super busy and stressful time for not only the children, but also the teacher. It might not be the best time to ask the teacher to stop what she's doing to take a picture. Nobody will know that you waited until the 2nd week of school to take your child's first day photo. :)
• Classrooms usually have wonderful, natural light, so make sure you take advantage of that light when positioning yourself to get that great picture.

Here is a photo from Francine, which is too cute! Francine said, "My tip is just to be brave enough to ask! I really wasn't sure if she would agree (I was the only parent with a camera! lol) but she was fine with it. I'm really happy that I got these since he changed schools just two months later when we moved. So when in doubt, ask!"

Layout Idea: Capture the Action

These pictures of me reading to my students were taken by my assistant, and I love that I have a layout showing me at work.

Teacher Appreciation Gift Idea: Water Bottles

A couple of years ago, I made this gift for my child's teachers. They loved them, and they were so easy to make. I just purchased a cool water bottle, filled it with their favorite candy and added a tag.

 

I can't wait to see how you capture your child's relationship with his or her teacher, and make sure to let them know that they are truly appreciated.

Valentine's Week Day Three

Thank you for coming back for day three in our Valentine's week celebration! Today we are focusing on ways we can use our supplies and talents to help bring a little love into our home decor.

 

Katie is up first with a sweet and simple banner. Made with dictionary paper, patterned paper hearts, a few beads, and some ribbon, this is something that we could all make! 

If you look closely, you can see the ribbon is stapled on. 

 

Diane is up next with a bit of loveliness for your wall. A printer tray would work well for this, no?

I love the hanging heart with a key. It makes it almost feel like a cuckoo clock--one of my favorite childhood fascinations.

 

If you have a lonely shelf, Katie's birdhouse would be a terrific spot of color and design.

 

Have you stopped by Lisa's blog lately? If you did, you will certainly have noticed her intricate craftiness in this pieced and quilted paper heart.

Here is a closeup so you can see just how carefully and perfectly it is put together. Lisa, you are amazing!

 

 

Speaking of intricate details, Francine cut up little bits of paint chips and arranged them as a mosaic inside the outline of a heart.

You can see the names of the colors on this shot. I bet lots of us have a stack of these from a few years back when we all thought we should put them on our pages!

 

Kelly had a delightful date with mod podge this week, and we are so glad! What treasures these will be year after year.

 

The ribbons on this box are so well matched. The variations in color, and texture make such a subtle statement. And then the heart shaped button... mmm...

 

Kelly also created a fabulous wall canvas. Book papers, stamps, buttons--things we all have on hand. Isn't it lovely?

I also spy a sweet garland in the photo! Strung together with little rings. I love that, too!

 

LisaO made a most wonderful gift for her daughter. Using a Sharpie, she wrote all sorts of things she loves about her sweet angel on this mug. Just don't forget to bake it at 350 degrees for an half hour!

 

Lastly, I did what I do best, used some fonts and graphics to make a poster for a frame. Here is mine.

I hope that these give you some ideas for adding a bit of love-ing love-liness to your love-ly homes on this day of love!

Valentine's Week Day Two

The first year that Nigel went to school I sent him in with homemade Valentines. And he came home with a box filled with store bought Valentines and treats. Yes, treats. I had no idea that Valentine's exchanges included treats. I only made that mistake once!!

Now, every year, I make a printable valentine, and we make treats to give. One year we made brownies, cut them into hearts and put a cherry juju heart on top. Mmm.

 

The next year, was brownies again. Though I suppose cupcakes might have been expected from the design we picked for the valentines.

 

This year my Lavender's class is not going to be brownies. She has sixty four allergies in her class. No, I'm teasing. Not that many. But she does have dairy, egg, wheat, tree nut, and coconut oil allergies. The list of food options is small so we are taking the easy route, fruit. I test drove all sorts of "pun-ny" sayings but ended up with the expected oranges and apples. Not too creative, I know, but will still make for a cute enough treat topper.

If you would like to use either of these valentines, you may download them here (oranges) and here (apples).

 

Once I made one (two :) ) corny treat toppers, I couldn't resist doing one for the non-allergy class as well. 

They should attach wonderfully to this year's brownie selection, what e'er it turns out to be. And would you like it? It's here if you do.

 

For her sweet littles, Katie cut double heart cards with her Cameo. Then the girls glued them to doilies, embellished them, and wrote their names on the insides.

I love how girly they are! A perfect fit for her bitty darlings.

 

Francine has a two fun ideas for Valentines you could make with your youngster. 

These Valentines were made from paper handpainted by her little boy. Clever, no?

 

Or you can just paint the whole hand! Finger painting at its finest!

Have you planned your Valentine's class cards yet? I hope these ideas help you with your class cards!

 

Thank you for stopping today! I appreciate your coming by. Tomorrow we will feature a bit of home decor. Hope to see you then!

Valentine's Week Day One

Hello! It's Marnie and I am so very happy to be spending the week with you! This week we are getting ready for Valentine's Day. Today I have a little family craft for us to do together! 

I wanted this year to be special and have a bit of a different twist. So for the next ten days we are filling out lovenotes for one another. I created a set of notecards for everyone in our family (mom and dad are together!) with the same pattern, but different colors.

Here is how the red/grey set looked before printing

and here is how all four sets look together printed out.

I trimmed the cards and put them in piles for each person. Each night, everyone will fill out a note to someone in our family and set it in their mailbox. (You know, the little tin boxes that target sold a few years' back? The ones that have been hiding in a tote box? yes, those mailboxes. We are using those. Finally! Hooray!)

 

I want this project to be successful, so I put a card station together with all the cards and some pens. It sits on the little project table, within everyone's reach. Each set of cards is divided upon separate plates. 

The mailboxes are sitting on the cupboard just to the left so that they will be easily accessed.

(Mmm. I need to add some names to those boxes, no?)

 

Here is the whole setup.

We are going to read the lovenotes as a family on Valentine's Day. And then a few days later, I am going to put them together in a minialbum. I already put the title on one of the cards to make even easier! I am excited for the handwriting and the memories that this will record, and equally excited to see what everyone writes and to see the impact of two weeks of kind thoughts at the end of the day.

 

The printable is available in our new etsy shop! Stop by and visit. You can pick from any of the four colors. Or get all four!

 

How about you? Have you any thoughts about how you will celebrate Valentine's Day? I would love to hear them! Please stop by tomorrow. We are doing class treats tomorrow!

Flair

Hello! Welcome to the final day in embellishment week. Today I'm going to share ideas for using one of the hottest embellishment in the scrapbooking industry right now...flair! 

Flair is fabulous on layouts, but it can be used for so much more. Let's take a look!

 

Flair on Layouts

Besides the obvious of using flair as a decorative element, why not use it for part of the title in your layout. That is exactly what I did on my layout for the January gallery. Take a look at your word flair and see if you can incorporate a piece into your next title.  

How about using word flair as journaling prompts. I had a full set of flair that I used on one layout to record my current thoughts and activities...all 8 of them on one page. I'm going to enjoy taking a look back at this some day to see how I answered all those prompts.

There are many arrow flair designs and they are fun and easy to use. Try using it to direct your eye to a title, a little detail, or a photo. This flair has the words "one little word" and an arrow which directs the eye to my title and my one little word for the year.

You can use flair for the centers of shapes, just like buttons and brads. Celeste used a piece of flair for the center of her snowflake in this layout.

Use them at the bottom of your photos along with a geometric border, like Celeste did here. I like how it anchors the photo and draws your eye across the page.

Flair on Cards

Flair is perfect for cards too. Create a coordinated set using flair. Here is one card of an entire set I made and posted last year. Did you miss it? Visit this post to see the entire collection of cards I made with flair.

 

Flair in Home Decor

I've used flair in my home decor to. It was the perfect finish touch to this piece of framed subway art that I created using my cutting machine.

 

Flair in Jewelry

Did you ever think to use flair in your jewelry? I have always wanted a charm bracelet with all my "one little words" so I decided to make my own and incorporated a few pieces of "one little word" flair in with the charms. Fun, right?!

 

Flair Giveaway

I hope this has given you some ideas for using flair. Would you like to win some flair? Yes! I thought so. The flair I used for all of my projects is from {a flair for buttons} etsy shop.The owner has generously donated three sets of flair from {a flair for buttons}. One lucky winner will receive the following sets:

My Life Words 2 flair set.

My Life Words 5 flair set.

Tell Your Story 3A flair set.

To be entered in the {a flair for buttons} giveaway leave a comment on this post letting us know your favorite way to document your memories. The comments will remain open until 10pm Eastern Standard Time tonight. One lucky number will be selected at random and posted tomorrow. Please remember it is your responsibility to check and see if you were the lucky number. The lucky number will have until midnight on Saturday to claim your prize by sending us an e-mail at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com.

I hope you have found some inspiration for using your embellishments this week. Remember to come back tomorrow to see if you are the giveaway lucky number and for our February gallery reveal.

Pretty Paper, Double Duty

 

I love pretty paper. I love embellishments and stamps and washi tape and well, I love it all. And, lucky me, I have loads and loads of all sorts of goodies.

Hi, I'm Monika and I'll share just a few ideas to help you reduce your stash and actually use some of those goodies you've been hoarding for way too long.

My oldest son lives away from home, several states away, so this Mama decided to package up some items and put together a few little advent calendar goodies for him and his girlfriend this year. Because, after all, girls are so much easier to craft for!

I used some canvas bags from my Etsy shop and began embellishing them with washi tape, stamps, layered stickers and rhinestone gems all from My Mind's Eye. Just the perfect size for gift cards and chocoates. I like the stamped bags the most of all and can't wait to embellish more. Nest, I added some washi tape embellished shipping tags and a supply of twine to a tin, making it a gift that's cute and useful too. Yep, this one's for his girlfriend.

After adding lots of goodies from SEI to this repurposed mini art canvas, it has become one of our newest holiday home decor items. Adding the gold washi tape to the edges of the canvas was the perfect solution to hide the pattern that was already there and then all I had to do was just add layer after layer of pretty paper and die cuts. Going one step further, I even used a border die cut strip to embellish the front portion of my wood stand.

I hope you have as much fun playing with your pretty papers and embellishments as I have. May your December be delightful and full of joyful memories!

 

 

 

Easy Paper Ornaments

Hi everyone, it's Christine today with my very first post here at Write.Click.Scrapbook.! Today I want to share some easy paper ornaments that you can make at home with scraps of patterned paper or cardstock. They look lovely hung up on a tree together! So grab some paper scraps and big circle or scallop punches, some glue, some ribbon or twine, and follow along!

I've chosen some POW gold glitter paper from American Crafts, and a striped patterned paper from an old Christmas paper stack. I'm using a big scalloped circle punch as well.

In total, we want to have eight scalloped circles punched out. I punched out four of the striped paper.

And also four of the gold glitter paper.

I've got my scalloped circles all punched out to begin making my paper ornament.

Next I folded each scalloped circle in half, making sure to match the scallops from side to side when I fold.

Lastly, I glued them together, alternating between the striped and gold pieces. I knotted a piece of twine and used a couple of glue dots to adhere the twine into the middle of the paper ornament so I could use it to hang up the ornament.

I also cut out some other paper ornaments using some downloaded shapes from the Silhouette store, and using my Silhouette SD digital cutter to cut them out.

Here they are after I've assembled them. They look so cute together!

They look great on my little table top tree in our foyer.

I hope you found some inspiration to make some quick and easy paper ornaments with your paper scraps at home! You can hang them up in the tree, or make a garland with them as well. 

If you make some paper ornaments, be sure to share it with us in the Flickr gallery. Happy Holidays!

A Wreath

Hello! Emily Pitts with you today, I have a project I'm rather proud of. I have a lot of paper and glue and such, but rarely do I make anything but scrapbook pages and cards. I have bought supplies, like say, a grapevine wreath, to make wreaths in the past, but those projects never came to fruition.

Until this year.

I blame Better Homes and Garden magazine.

I've been subscribing to BHG since I was first married. I love how all the houses they feature are sooooo beautifully decorated. It gives me something to aspire to. I love their gardens, I love their health tips. Occasionally, I'll even make a recipe, or try out a decorating tip or two. But this year, I saw this star ornament and knew I had to give it a whirl.

 

I went to Pinterest and looked for Star Wreaths. So many gorgeous varieties, I was inspired by this one, and this one, and this one.

If you go to the BHG website, you can print off the pattern and directions to make this star. I've tried making a 3D star before, let me save you the trouble, go print this off :) It was so much easier than what I tried to do on my own. Each star took me about 5 minutes to make, start to finish. I used nice heavy duty patterned papers from Authentique's Christmas line, Festive, some Scotch Quick-dry liquid adhesive, my paper scorer, and scissors. So very easy.

Once I finished making a bunch of stars, I wrapped my grapevine wreath in some ribbon and started arranging the stars, overlapping and grouping them. I used my hot glue gun to attach them, then randomly inserted some Maya Road Kraft Shipping Tags between the stars. It needed a little more, so I added some Die Cut Kraft Doilies, also from Maya Road. Finally, I punched a few more smaller stars, dipped the edges in some glass glitter and tucked them in to fill any holes. 

 

I love how it turned out. It's going to be a gift for a friend, but I'm so tempted to make another one for me! It took my about 3.5 hours from start to finish, about the same amount of time it takes me to make a layout.  

I hung it on my door to take pictures and a mom of one of my piano students wanted me to teach a class on how to make one, NEXT year. Wow :) Thanks BHG! 

Pretty Paper: Holiday Trimmings

Hi Everyone! I'm back for our final day of Pretty Paper. In anticipation of the holiday season, I have lots of holiday trimmings for you today created with patterned paper. Paper is an awesome way to decorate your home for all sorts of holidays the whole year through. I'll be featuring buntings, frames, wreaths, and trees today--all made with paper! So, without further delay, I present you, dear Write.Click.Scrapbook loyal readers, with holiday trimmings, pretty paper style!

 

Buntings

So my friends, who shall remain nameless, have dubbed me the Queen of Buntings. They know that where there is a holiday, I shall create a bunting. The easiest way to make a bunting is from paper, but I've also made buntings from fabric and felt. Since my theme is about paper, I'll be sharing my paper buntings. Shocking, right? The first bunting is made with book pages, patterned paper, ribbon, staples and a few glittery dots. I cut the book pages into banners, hand cut the hearts, and backed them with red paper for Valentine's Day.

 

 

 

The next bunting was also made with paper, staples, and jute, but was a bit more complicated. I cut strips of graduated lengths, stapled them together to another center strip, then curved them around and stapled again to make hearts. I used a hole punch and ran the jute through the punched holes. For the shamrock, I stapled three hearts together and tied it with a bit of fabric.

 

 

Frames

Just like the frame I made for my daughter's birthday party, I also decorated some frames to use as Valentine's Day decor using paper, mod podge, and some embellishments.

 

 

 

Wreaths

Well, one wreath, anyway! I quickly embellished this heart shaped grapevine wreath with a mini-bunting made with paper. It was a festive edition to my front door during the winter tundra that is February in Michigan.

 

Trees

Last year during Christmas I went on a tree-making spree. I'm pretty sure I made fifty billion trees. A few of them were made with...you guessed it, patterned paper! The first trio was super easy. I used chipboard cones from the craft store and covered them with patterned paper. I used hot glue to make sure they stayed covered.

 

 

The next duo of trees was also made with patterned paper, and was inspired by this blog post over at the Crate Paper blog. They took a long time, but were my favorite trees out of the fifty billion I made last year.

 

 

So, there you have it, friends! A week's worth of Pretty Paper: Patterned Paper's Plethora of Purposes! Thanks so much for joining me this week! In honor of our last day togther, leave me a comment telling me your favorite use for pretty paper!

give.away.day featuring STUDIO CALICO

Hi Everyone! I am so excited to share that Studio Calico is sponsoring a give away featuring their gorgeous new release: Darling Dear! One lucky commenter will receive a bunch of goodies including Darling Dear patterned paper and embellishments! How cool is that?

I snagged some items from this beautiful line as soon as it was released, and in keeping with this week's theme, I used patterned paper to make two projects: a layout and a ticket frame.

 

 

 

Beautiful papers, right?? If you'd like to be the one lucky number for the Darling Dear gift pack, make sure you leave a comment by 10:00pm Eastern Standard Time tonight. The randomly chosen winner will be posted tomorrow. Please remember it is your responsibility to check back and claim your lucky number via email (writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com) before midnight on Saturday!

Tomorrow is our last Pretty Paper day and it is a good one: Holiday Trimmings!