Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Tagalicious - Part 1

 

Hi, it's Sarah Pendergrast here again today to share fun ideas for creating tags, using different bits and pieces from your stash. With November on our doorstep, I've decided to focus mainly on Christmas, but these ideas can be used for all occasions.  Here are some ideas to get you started, using a package of shipping tags from an office supply store.

1. Use your stamps

2. Use fabric

3. Use chipboard

4. Use your die cutting machine

5. Wrap a ribbon around the middle

6. Embellish with bling

7. Use strips of washi tape

8. Use stickers

9. Use buttons

10. Use a mask and spray ink

11. Go glittery

12. Add some flair

13. Use a doily

14. Use your punches

15. Use some twine

 

I hope this inspires you to grab what you have and just start creating. These tags are super quick, and could also be used in December Dailies, Project Life, or on your pages...come back Friday!

To finish up, here's a few birthday tags that I whipped up using strips of washi tape, stamps and spray ink.

just when you think you have forgotten...

... someone's birthday, or boss' day, or your very own anniversary, you remember, "I am a scrapbooker! I have the supplies and the know-how to make one!" 

And so you do. In just a matter of minutes, you can create a card as lovely as this.

This birthday card was created by Paula. She is really very talented. She found the perfect letter stickers for this one, with its narrow "y" and skinny "i" so that she could fit four letters on one line. And that tiny little birthday hat sticker? It's the perfect addition!

 

What if your bestie's baby comes early? and you don't have time to stop at the drugstore? No matter. A quick stop by your scrapping table will get you this:

Which is far better anyways. ps wouldn't your bestie feel very un-bestie if you showed up with a store bought card anyway? just sayin'...

Paula made this one, too. That tag behind is worth a good giggle on a baby card with its year, make model, serial, color, extras, and price. Heehee. Clever usage, Paula!

 

And that wedding for a co-worker of your husband that he forgot to add to the family calendar? No trouble.

Now, if only finding a sitter were that easy! Thank you, Paula, for this one, too.

 

There is never a need to be without one. 

You can even make a belated seasonal card. Are you dreadful about getting to the post office on time. Or even worse, you fail to get to the store on time? And even though you are at the store just as it is opening the morning after the holiday, the cards have magically disappeared. Poof! Gone! And sadness fills you.

But then you remember, "Hey, wait! I am a scrapbooker! I don't need Hallmark to make me whole! I can make it myself!" Ooh, now that is some good magic! Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, Halloween... totally taken care of! No matter the date on the calendar.

Paula made this one. Isn't it darling? The woodgrain is perfect and the stacked photos are delightful.

 

And because we are all better when we are prepared, than when we are hurrying, we leave you with this card. If you sit and make it today, you will be 24 days ahead of schedule. And that will feel nice!

It was made by Jennie McGarvey. One of our wcs friends. The layered patterns are very on trend while the design is very traditional. What a perfect blend. And a good non-gender card. Which are sometimes hard to find at the store.

 

We hope you will bookmark this post and use it as reference when you need some quick cards. Or for when you have some scraps to use up. Cards are perfect for that, and building you own card shop is a magnificent idea!

Happy Monday!

Try This at Home

A terrific side benefit of scrapbooking is all the craft supplies that you have on hand for making holidays more festive. It's so fun to just open a drawer and pull out what you need to make fun things. 

Lisa used some oogly eyes, masking tape, and toilet paper rolls to create the cutest mummies in the house. Because of the layered masking tape, they are really quite sturdy.

And if your children help you make them, they will love them for years to come. Don't you long for the homemade decorations from your own childhood homes?

With some help from her kindergartner, Marnie soaked some cheesecloth in watered down white glue to create these fun ghosts.

Once you have the wey cheesecloth, drape it over a small balloon (like your summer leftover water balloons) and let it dry. Maybe some oogly eyes would work on these, too!

 

Celeste used her digi skills and her amazing paper crafting abilities to put together some treat toppers.

If you create a foldover treat topper, you don't have to find fancy bags, but can instead go with regular ziploc baggies for the treats. Much cheaper.

 

Celeste she also made these adorable pencil toppers! What a great gift for classmates!

Can't you also imagine them atop a cupcake? With some lovely buttercream frosting? Or perhaps an orange velvet cupcake with cream cream frosting?

 

If you have some diamond glaze and basic jewelry pieces on hand, you can make some custom Halloween earrings. For the first pair, Marnie printed a text box with the words boo and eek

and for the second pair, she printed a clipart ghost. Once printed, she just trimmed the art to size with her paper trimmer (like the ones above) or punched it out with a circle punch (like the ones below). First adhere the art with regular adhesive and then add diamond glaze on top! Really that's all that's needed. (Be sure to wait for the glaze to cure. Patience is a virtue. And uncured glaze is fingerprintable.)

 

We hope that these give you some ideas for making your Halloween more fun! We hope you will share your holiday crafts with us, too!

Tomorrow we get back to our roots... We can't wait to see you back again!

Something Spooky This Way Comes

This week we are getting you ready for Halloween! All week we will be bringing you ideas for your home, your kids, and your scrapbooks! Let's get our spooky on...

 

Home Decor

Halloween lends itself to the most wonderful decorations. It's got to be the luscious colors of autumn combined with the dark shadows of Halloween. And nowadays, Halloween papers are filled with graphic scrolls, flourishes, and elements that make possible items that are grown up and kitsch free.

Diane put together a Halloween cone with a piece of patterned paper and some holiday frill. Add a timepiece, a pair of sparkly bats, some candy, and it just doesn't get better.

 

Using the same fringe, Diane coordinated her candle decor. This is a quick way to dress up your candles for the season, and it's easy to switch out once November comes.

Here is a closeup so you can see the glitter and the pennant.

Having fallen in love with the new October Afternoon Witch Hazel line, Katie used the stickers and some papers to put together this amazing wall art.

We knew you would want a close up. Isn't it adorable? (in a spooky way, of course!)

And speaking of wall art, Paula and Marnie made some too! Paula rocked the web by making every section a different pattern. First she used her Silhouette to cut out the spider web and then she added each of the patterns by hand. Truly a work of art.

 

For her, not nearly as elaborate, but still festive print, Marnie searched online for dictionary pages with Halloween on them. She found one, downloaded it, and used it as her background. Adding a digital flourish from Echo Park and the word "boo" she printed it on regular white cardstock. 

Here is a closeup.

Then for a bit of whimsy, using two parentheses, a digital black cat, and a new favorite font, Marnie made a 4x6 print that she put in the backside of a $1 frame from Ikea.

 

Perhaps Halloween decor is fun as we just don't take the holiday too seriously. How could you take a candy holiday seriously? All those candy corns and bitesized snacks... Mmm. Did I make you hungry?

Tomorrow we will be back with some projects you can do with your kids! See you then! And if you have any Halloween home decor you have made, we would love to see it in our Flickr gallery. We will be checking all week and featuring your week here Friday if you want to add some in!

Jewelry featuring The Twinery

All this week, our write. click. scrapbook. members will be showcasing projects, layouts, cards and altered items featuring baker's twine from The Twinery. I've had a sneak at what will be featured and you're going to love it all! 

Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday from me, Monika, Alexandra and Marnie. We're triple-teaming you today with some out-of-the-box projects all created using baker's twine from The Twinery.

 

JEWELRY

At one time, I knew how to crochet, but have since forgotten. Too bad because these are so cute. Oh, Alexandra, are you available for one-on-one tutoring? 

Blossom

Cantaloupe

Denim

 

Using some Pink Sorbet twine and a button, I created this bracelet using a macrame tutorial I had Pinned and just knew I was going to give it a try. The bracelet has an adjustable closure so I can easily take it on and off by myself. I wear the gold ring bracelet every day, which has a length of Caribbean {one of my Top 3 favorite shades}.

 

 

CHRISTMAS CRAFTS

Marnie has created two fun holiday crafts that will add such an impact to her decor and even be great little projects to do with the kids during their break. Here, Marnie used a shower curtain ring, Maraschino baker's twine and a bit of ribbon. So cute.

 

 

The grouping of trees, using twigs from the yard in their mini "snow-filled" bowls, makes me smile. In the order they appear, Honeydew, Peapod and Seaweed rounds out this cute arrangement.

 

 

Is it ever too early to begin on Christmas cards? Monika used generally the same design, just changing the position of the metal-rimemd tags for each of her cards to help her craft quite a few cards in a short period of time.

 

YEAR ROUND DECOR

After designing her own art print, Marnie used The Twinery twine to embroider her rainbow and cloud, adding an extra bit of dimension and a big dose of adorable.

 

And her spool covered in Marigold baker's twine completes her vignette here perfectly.

 

 

AND ONE MORE

Alexandra's layouts always tell her story in such an artistic way. She's wrapped her paint swatches in a bit of Peapod.

 

 

And we have even more goodies for you tomorrow! 

 

write. click. scrapbook. is pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with The Twinery in creating our projects this week. Connect with The Twinery on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr.

The Twinery's twine is made from 100% cotton, it's eco-friendly and made in the USA. Whether you're gift wrapping, crafting or tying up baked goods to give to a friend, their baker's twine adds a fresh, yet nostalgic look to any project at hand! Baker's twine from The Twinery comes in 22 delicious colors and is uniquely twisted against a bright white hue, creating an eye-popping burst of color and a creative embellishment! And all that color lends to a fun, candy-striped look. 

Layouts featuring The Twinery

All this week, our write. click. scrapbook. members will be showcasing projects, layouts, cards and altered items featuring baker's twine from The Twinery. I've had a sneak at what will be featured and you're going to love it all! 

 

It seems that we're not the only ones in love with baker's twine from The Twinery. Happy Tuesday...Monika back again today with my teammates Amy Sorensen and Katie Ehmann. Goodness, do we have some goodies to share today.

 

LAYOUTS 

 

What's not to love about Katie's layout. Not only did she highlight the photo of her sweet daugheters, she used baker's twine as part of her title treatment and as extra splashes of color. Buttercream is used on the button, Mandarin is wrapping the journaling cards and Charcoal is used to spell the word Love.

Using what I think is all 22 shades of The Twinery baker's twine, and attaching the strands with tiny staples, Katie allowed her journling cards to do her journaling for her. Clever. Unless she's hidden her journaling on the shipping tag and isn't telling us!

 

 

Amy always weaves perfectly composed journaling into her layouts. Her commitment to telling her family's story is evident in every page she creates. Again, a rainbow of baker's twine on this layout. Says Amy, "I used the twine in one of my favorite current ways, which is filling in a big space with contoured rows of twine. I started by drawing a wave shape with glue, and then just started adding twine and glue, twine and glue, until the wave was filled. I also did this with the round spot on the yellow square." Perfection.

 

 

Here, Monika simply wrapped strands of Denim, Marschino, Marigold and Peapod around her cardstock border sticker.  

CARDS

Katie has featured one of The Twinery's newest shades, Strawberry, in a card that has so many uses. Hurry, pull out all your 1 inch wide scraps and whip up a few cards so you'll be prepared when it counts. 

 

And here are a few cards that Monika created. They both use Buttercream baker's twine. The first example has the twine wrapped around a punched scallop shape. 

 

AND ONE MORE

Amy has created a fantastic project that is just so perfect for the Season...how darling are these sugar-crystal pumpkins, wow! And what's even better is that her daughter created the friendship bracelet stem on the tall pumpkin. I do love a mother-daughter craft project! Amy's also an exceptional quilter and I bet she made the quilt featured in her photo.

 

 

Amy is featuring a tutorial for her sugar-crystal pumpkins on her blog today, just for you. 

 

Until tomorrow,

 

 

 

write. click. scrapbook. is pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with The Twinery in creating our projects this week. Connect with The Twinery on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr.

The Twinery's twine is made from 100% cotton, it's eco-friendly and made in the USA. Whether you're gift wrapping, crafting or tying up baked goods to give to a friend, their baker's twine adds a fresh, yet nostalgic look to any project at hand! Baker's twine from The Twinery comes in 22 delicious colors and is uniquely twisted against a bright white hue, creating an eye-popping burst of color and a creative embellishment! And all that color lends to a fun, candy-striped look. 

Home Decor featuring The Twinery

All this week, our write.click.scrapbook. members will be showcasing projects, layouts, cards and altered items featuring baker's twine from The Twinery. I've had a sneak at what will be featured and you're going to love it all! 

 Hi, I'm Monika and today Kelly and I will be your hosts. You'll be seeing some amazing projects all this week from other write. click. scrapbook. team members all using baker's twine...a trend that has quickly become a go-to item for crafters, scrapbookers and card makers.

 

HOME DECOR

With the 22 colors of baker's twine available from The Twinery, it's not difficult to find a shade that coordinates perfectly with your home decor. Here, Kelly Jeppson has embellished a soup can with pencils, burlap, a book page flower and Mandarin baker's twine to add an extra splash of color. She also used a bit of Stone on the button.

 

As The Twinery adds new colors to their inventory, I add a new styrofoam covered twine ball to my vase. Looks like I need to add a few more balls and get a larger vase! Sometimes I display it in my studio and other times I move it into the family room for a pop of color. Either way, it makes me smile.

Here's the super-sized version, where I used Carribean and Marigold. It helped that I began with a styrofoam ball form, but be prepared to put a dent into your baker's twine collection with this project.

 

This is one of my newest projects and I kinda sorta have a crush on it. I wrapped bendable wire with Strawberry twine and added it to a painted canvas to inspire me in my studio. You can see my tutorial here.

LAYOUTS

Kelly also embellished this layout highlighting the fun birthday Luau for her daughter with a rainbow of baker's twine from The Twinery. I spy Pink Sorbet, Lilac, Honeydew, Mandarin and Denim. The pom pom's are just adorable and add such a festive flair.

For this layout about our youngest daughter's first days of Kindergarten last year, I used Cappuccino baker's twine to serve as lines for my journaling and to embellish the die cut.

AND ONE MORE

I adore how Kelly used the burlap scraps from her vase project and designed a rosette flower hair clip for her darling daughter.

Looking forward to a fun week and a super awesome give.away.day. on Thursday!

 

write. click. scrapbook. is pleased to have had the opportunity to team up with The Twinery in creating our projects this week. Connect with The Twinery on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Flickr. 

The Twinery's twine is made from 100% cotton, it's eco-friendly and made in the USA. Whether you're gift wrapping, crafting or tying up baked goods to give to a friend, their baker's twine adds a fresh, yet nostalgic look to any project at hand! Baker's twine from The Twinery comes in 22 delicious colors and is uniquely twisted against a bright white hue, creating an eye-popping burst of color and a creative embellishment! And all that color lends to a fun, candy-striped look.

pretty school supplies

Monika here today with the last post for me in this Summertime Dailies series. We are already into our second full week of school in East Tennessee, our school supply shopping is complete and we've already had our First Grader home yesterday with a bout of Strep Throat. Yep, school's in session.

My two girls are in the age that they love to create with Mommy's baker's twine, washi tape and glue dots. Kind of a perfect combination for prettying up some school supplies, don't you think?

PRETTY PAPER

Our spunky little Victoria is a lover of all shades of blue and we had the most lovely time sitting in the floor of our craft space going through my collection of pretty paper to find THE most perfect sheet for the front of her new notebook. It's blue, of course, and I purposely purchased one of then notebooks with the pockets in front so that we could personalize it just for her.

 

 WONDERFUL WASHI 

This mini spiral bound notebook is to be used for weekly spelling word review. It also had a clear acrylic-like front that was just begging to be embellished...this time with washi tape, which my girl carefully chose from my collection, a chipboard banner shape adorned with an enamel dot and some twine.

The thirty minutes we spent sitting in the floor together, while her older sister was upstairs reading in her room, was a nice peek into what I hope will be many more moments spent choosing pretty paper together. She felt so grown up getting to make her own choices for her big girl, First Grade school supplies.

 

 

Bored No More!

Hi Kathy Martin here with a few ideas to help get you through these long hot dog days of summer when you hear the kids utter, "Mom, I'm bored! There's nothing to do!" Fortunately we have Pinterest at our fingertips and a craft room full of all the supplies needed to whip up some pretty cool summertime crafts.

With a few toilet paper rolls, paint, card stock and glue you can create these adorable projects.

(source)

(source)

 

Since it's mid-summer, there should be a few popsicle sticks laying around to make airplanes out of!

 

While the kids are busy cutting, pasting and crafting up a storm, you can get a little scrapbooking in! 

 

Christopher and I recently made this adorable kitty from paper plates. Another great idea from Pinterest.

 

Do you have an old puzzle in the closet, one that's missing several pieces? Christopher created this puzzle piece tree at camp recently.

 This creepy rock bug is next on our crafty to-do list. Who knew you could make something this cool with a few rocks and sticks from the back yard?!?!

Happy crafting!

Family ABC's

Hi there!  Happy Friday! Today I have a fun and relatively easy project to create for your kids.  My family and I live in Illinois, while all of our extended family lives in Wisconsin, most up to 7 hours away. We also have family in Georgia.  This means my kids don't get to see their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins very often.  I decided to create a little game for my daughter that could meet two objectives.  First, it would help her remember the names of all the faraway family members. Second, it would reinforce her knowledge of letters and letter sounds.  There are basically two steps to creating this project.

 

Family Cards

I have to admit, the family cards I made were super simple, and thanks to my resources, took me very little time to create.  I used my Canon Selphy printer to print out images of all our family.  I love this printer because I can select the "4-up" option, and it will automatically print four images on a single 4x6 photo. If you do not own a Selphy, you may need to do a little work in Photoshop or just crop down larger photos.  After I used my trimmer to cut them all apart, I adhered each photo to a blank Project Life journaling card.  The photos fit perfectly.  That's it. I told you...super simple! 

 

Alphabet Pockets

I purchased a set of generic library pockets from a local educational store. I used a bunch of papers from my stash to decorate them up a bit and included a single letter on each. I kept it simple and didn't spend a ton of time on each one, because let's face it, a three-year old would be playing with them...they are bound to get a little destroyed! ;) If you wanted to keep it even easier, you could simply write a letter on each pocket!

 

The Game

My daughter and I reviewed the names of everyone on the cards.  Then I had her figure out what letter of the alphabet each name started with. She already uses a lot of name association with her letters ("J is for Justin") so this was a perfect next step.  Once she decided upon the first letter, she put the card in the appropriate pocket. The Project Life cards just happen to fit perfectly into the library pockets!

 

I have to say, I was a little surprised at what a hit this game was with my daughter. She was so excited to see all her family members. She loved it immediately! We had a little trouble deciding if the grandparents should reside in the "g" pocket for "grandma/grandpa" or the pocket for the first letter of their first name. She decided we should go with the first name, which was probably a good thing or the "g" pocket would have been stuffed!

All on her own, she also started playing  a matching game with the family cards, matching same family siblings and spouses to one another. I was amazed at all the different combinations she eventually came up with. It really helped her understand the relationships between all our family members - things like who mommy's brother, who is daddy's grandma, who is cousin C's mom, etc.  I did have to laugh when she mixed up the great grandparent couples based on her oh-so-scientific method of who had the whitest hair. ;) I made the game a couple of weeks ago, and she continues to play it at least once a day.  As predicted, it already looks, though not destroyed, very loved! 

 

Let me know if you have any questions!  Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!