Inspiration all around

If you're like me you find scrapbook inspiration all around you. A great quote, design, product, technique or sketch may come to mind no matter where I am, or what I'm doing. Sometimes I have a pen and paper handy, other times unfortunately I have nothing handy and I might lose the idea. I have ideas scrawled on every imaginable piece of paper, especially shopping receipts in my purse, or a paper towel from the barn. My desk pad calendar is full of little notes to remember, ideas, doodles/scribbles, and calculations! I really should organize some of them into a proper notebook organized into categories. I have sketches from a number of years ago that I fully intend to scrap; they may not end up exactly the same as I may have imagined them at their inception, my scrapping style has grown and changed, as well as my scrapping stash.

Recently however I've added another quick method of capturing the source of my inspiration... my cell phone camera! I always thought it was a pretty useless feature since the image really isn't big enough to capture anything considering it is only 480x640 pixels, not much bigger than an index print. However I've been finding that it makes a great note pad! If an image doesn't do the trick you could always draft a text message to yourself. This spring I found a beach bag that had great design, texture, and stitching that would relate well to some patterned paper I had, and create the basis of a layout. I grabbed a pen and receipt and doodled away, but now I would just grab my camera and snap a quick picture to jog my memory when I get home. Sometimes I run into a great quote, I could snap a quick picture much faster than I could copy it down. No longer do you need to rip that magazine page out of the magazine at the doctors office (doesn't it bug you when people have done that to part of an article you really wanted to read!)

However you record your inspiration, I just want to encourage you to keep looking around you, you will find inspiration for your next layout!

Are you stuck on one subject?

I want encourage all of you to go through your albums and look back and see what you have scrapped in the past. Are there subjects that are neglected in your albums? Do you find it hard to scrap your older pictures, heritage photos, perhaps people you may not have a close relationship with but mean the world to those close to you (maybe your outlaws). It's so easy to scrap the pictures of our adorable kids, the wonderful pictures we take now. But by taking a close look at our work over a long period it sometimes becomes obvious we are missing 'things'. My challenge to you is not to go sit down and do a series of layouts on that subject... if we could do that and stay motivated we would have scrapped these pictures already... rather take it one step at a time. Every once in a while step back and force yourself to create a page that is less motivating. It doesn't need to be a masterpiece, it just needs to be done.
Then go back to your layouts every once in a while and reflect on these pages and what they mean to you and your family. Sometimes my motivation doesn't come from the fact that I love the page... rather how much a page means to my husband. It sometimes helps to make it all worthwhile to know that those difficult pages we struggled over are in the end significant.

Show off your other crafts

How many of us scrapbookers have multiple crafty hobbies? I think many of us enjoy multiple crafts. A lot of people do incorporate other paper crafts into their scrapbooks. I did a layout this winter using ribbon embroidery. I wanted the layout to have a subtle but eye-catching touch, and I decided that this would be the perfect effect. I backed my patterned paper with fabric to give it extra support so it wouldn't tear the paper excessively, although it will still create relatively large holes where the ribbon goes through. The layout reflects celebrating Christmas just before the passing of my mother-in-law.

Do you crochet? You could crochet a flower for your pages, or punch holes along the edge of a piece of card stock and crochet a piece of trim for your page. Or add some Spirelli to your pages; notched paper shapes that are wrapped with thread all around. With experience the designs can become quite complicated, but even a simple design can add a nice touch to the right page. Here’s a blog with an example of the technique. If you have the gift of drawing, what better way to show it off than to incorporate it into your scrapbook pages for future generations to see! Tole painting is another way to incorporate some beautiful art work into your scrapbook pages. If you want to try cross stitching on your page I would suggest planning your pattern first, by creating a template and placing it onto your layout so you can pierce holes for your design ahead of time. Then use a needle with a much smaller head than the traditional cross stitch needle.

Maybe you’re not so crafty; keep your eye out when you are shopping and you might be able to pick up something crafty to incorporate into your pages. Thrift stores and yard sales are usually great place to keep your eye out for these little touches.

Whatever your crafts may be, try to find a way to incorporate them into your scrapbooks. Not only is it a great way to decorate a page, it will also say a lot about yourself, and what you like to do.

Scrap Metal and Patience

Hi ladies, thank you for your continued patience as Rebecca and the programmers continue to figure out the bugs that are plaguing the site. Becca actually has one of the programs creators working on it as well, trying to find that needle in a mountain of gibberish (I’m sure that’s what the source code would look like to most of us). Don’t give up; the site will be back up and running. Coincidentally the message in our church service today was all about patience… I don’t think it is something that many of us have enough of. Ugh, I’m not sure if adage ‘practice makes perfect’ will work for patience.

On another note: We all have a pile of metal embellishments sitting around; they were all the rage a few years ago, and we had to have them, stock piled them, ooh-ed and awe-ed at them, and we maybe even used some of them. Time has passed though and we may have grown tired of them, and they are ready for the scrap pile (hah-hah). I’ve come up with a list of ways to breathe new life into your old metal embellishments and keep them out of the recycling bin:

1) Paint; especially on textured metal paint will add a wonderful touch. You can even try two different colours and rub the second coat off a little bit more so it only shows in the deeper crevices of the embellishment. Don’t forget some of your metallic paint either for a (ie) gold on silver look.

2) Stamp with StazOn. If your metal is smooth you can stamp a design or texture (if the image is bigger than your embellishment) onto it using StazOn ink. Or just rub some of the ink onto the embellishment like you would with the paint.

3) Add rub-ons. Remember a while back some of the companies came out with rub ons specifically designed to go on the biggie brads. Why not try it with other metal items as well!

4) How about just adding a little accent such as a flower, button, a piece of ribbon, trims or fiber, rhinestones, pearls, tiny die cuts, just like we would on our chipboard. The possibilities are endless. Gasp, we could even add another small metal embellishment.

5) Alcohol inks: Janet challenged us to use these. They can be used on any non-porous surface; so don’t forget to try them on your metal embellishments.

6) Embossing, you can either stamp with Versamark and emboss or you can heat the entire embellishment and dip it in the embossing powder to change the look of your metal embellishments. Make sure you handle the hot item with tweezers or you might seriously burn yourself.

7) Micro beads: Micro beads come in many colours as well as clear which will allow the background colour to show through. You can adhere them with Glossy Accents, Crystal Lacquer or the like, or just use thin coating of good quality liquid glue.

8) Glitter: There are a lot of glitter-covered brads out there these days but you could certainly transform some of your own by covering it in a thin layer of glue and dipping it in the glitter. Don’t just leave it at brads though; the same technique can be extended to so many of your metal embellishments.

9) Fun flock is a new thing that is all the rage at the moment. Take advantage of it and cover up some of your old metal stuff. You can either stamp a design or cover the whole surface depending on the look you want.

10) Patterned paper, magic mesh, fabric, stickers or photos: We could certainly entirely or partly cover up the metal embellishment with any of these. How about tracing a template of the item and cutting it out slightly smaller so that when the items are adhered you are left with a thin edge of the original metal embellishment.

11) Dimensional paint and stickles: I think we all still love stickles and they would make a great addition to our metal embellishments. For myself the dimensional paints have always been right beside them. They are a great alternative especially when we’re dealing with masculine subjects where you can get a little too glitzy.

Here are a few more non-acid free alternatives you can use if that is not an issue for you. Go to your make up cabinet and dig out all those fun and funky nail polishes you use, the selection these days is amazing! Deco art also has paint that looks like stone finish and there is a large selection of various spray paints as well. Maybe your significant other or child likes to put together model cars or planes etc. and has a nice stash of paints (s)he’ll let you use. Check to see what you have laying around the house and get creative.

If you have any other suggestions on how to update our old metal embellishments add them to the comments section and I will add them to my list to share with everyone else!

Adding a Title onto Your Photo

Here’s a fun way to add a title to your layout. It is also very versatile, because you can do it so many ways, both digital, hybrid, and in a paper layout. Add your title right onto your picture, using the image itself. As I mentioned there are so many ways you can do this, digitally, using an outline stamp, or hand cut the title from a second copy of the original photo. In my ‘Spring’ layout I outlined the image after I cut it, embossed and added a drop shadow to give it definition. With the fall image I embossed, and added a drop shadow after I played a little bit with the colour of the layer. If you hand cut a title from the photo you may have to outline or ink the edges to add a bit of definition and I would suggest using pop dots before mounting it back onto the photo.

I would love to see how all of you implement this fun technique. If you do a layout using this technique leave a link to your layout in the comments section. I will randomly draw a name from everyone who leaves a link to his or her layout for a small RAK on May 1^st.

For the Spring layout I used patterned paper from the Lisa Habisreutinger's Challenge Freebie*, Obsidian Dawn brush, and embellishments from the Rustic Elegance Kit*, Black Chancery, Brock Script, ChiselD fonts, and Bucephalus font on the fall photo. (*colours altered by me)

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