I’m going to host my first open house/ scrap and stamp play time next Saturday, September 13 between 12 and 5pm. I’ll send out an email with details on how to get here. If you’re going to be in the area and I haven’t sent you an email, let me know. We’ll play with stamps and paper, maybe do a card or two. The first ten people who come will be able to make a little purse shaped card from this set of diecuts. If anyone has any techniques they want to experiment with, let me know, and I’ll make sure I have the materials ready. Otherwise, we’ll play with watercolor stamping techniques. Check out Tim Holtz’s blog for inspiration. I don’t claim to be as good as he is, but we can play with his techniques.

And for anyone interested, I’ve signed up for Cathy Zielske’s Design Your Life class, to pump up my design savvy. It starts October 3, and runs thru Christmas. I’m really looking forward to it. Anyone else want to take it?

Oh, and a word of warning for visitors next Saturday. I have 4 cats, a dog, two rambunctious boys and no offstreet parking. So, yes, kids are welcome. I’ll have a table set up with kid stamps and stickers, and number one son will be on entertainment duty. (Now he just has to keep his room picked up between now and then.)

To do the second page, I simply rotated the plan 180 degrees, and replaced the title and journaling block with another photo.

The fun thing about approaching scrapbooking design this way is that you can find inspiration anywhere. A label on a piece of clothing that you like, an ad in a magazine that catches your eye, a piece of furniture with interesting lines are all places where you can find inspiration. Beautiful design is everywhere, you just have to be paying attention. Once you notice it, you can apply it to your own designs. Just remember the basic components: a focal photo, a title, and a place for you to write. Everything else is icing on the cake (or page, as the case may be.)

As one final note, I told you I was going to make a page about the Police concert I went to, and as threatened here it is:

I really like the way it came out, but you may not be able to see it very well. It does have a little structure, but this was a more organic process. This was more of a move everything around until it works page.

So, take a look around you, and look at the structure of things you like. Then go mimic it. It’ll be fun. Try it!

Materials:

Floral Favorites stamp set
Basic Birds stamp set
Juliette SWIC
Ultra Smooth White Cardstock
Juliette coordinating cardstock pack
Versamagic-perfect plumeria

Tools:

Paper trimmer
acrylic blocks for stamps
adhesive

Instructions:

1. Cut a sheet of white cardstock in half to measure 8 1/2 X 5 1/2. Fold in half to get a 4 1/4 X 5 1/2 card.
2. Cut a 4 1/4 strip of paper from the striped paper in the Juliette SWIC paper pack. Tear about a 2″ piece off. Adhere along top edge of white card.
3. Cut a 4 1/4 strip of paper from the light tan cardstock in the coordinating cardstock pack. Tear off a 3″ piece. Adhere along bottom edge of white card.
4. Ink oval flower from Floral Favorites set with versamagic perfect plumeria, and stamp on left over piece of white ultrasmooth cardstock. Trim to small rectangle. Rub ink pad along edge of rectangle to add hint of color. Adhere over joint between striped and tan papers.
5. Ink “enjoy” from Basic Birds with versamagic perfect plumeria, and stamp on small tag from Juliette SWIC. Adhere on bottom right-hand corner.
6. Rub ink pad along edges of card front to add color and definition.

Fill the inside with a favorite quote or a short note, then share. Repeat as needed.

The letter stickers are some I’d gotten for the kids one time, but on seeing them again, realized they’d go perfectly with this picture. The “attack” letters are some of Tim Holtz’ grungeboard. I love his stuff. The stamps are from Close to my Heart. The stamps from CTMH are clear polymer, and are very sticky. They can be a little difficult to peel off the storage sheet. But they do have some nice designs. The papers are from DieCuts With a View. While I’m at it, I’ll post one of Ethan, too. Here:

Either Mom or I took this photo when she was having her pond installed. These are all Angel Company papers and stamps, and the transparent shapes are from Heidi Grace/Fiskars. I love this paper. I want about ten pieces of this exact paper, but I’d have to buy 10 sets to get that. And while all the papers and tags in the set are beautiful, they don’t make me say “I need you” like this particular design does. Oh well. Reason not to spend money.

Hope you like the pages 😀

Last weekend I taught a 30 minute class to 30 seniors with some help from my mother. (aka SuperMom!) There were two basic ideas I tried to get across: You are your family’s historian, and scrapbooking is flexible. You can make it as simple or as ornate as you like.

The case in point: A very simple layout I used as a demo.

As you can see, it’s very simple. I’ll probably jazz it up later. It needs more pop. I brought in another layout I did not finish so I could show how a picture and papers could be rearranged to suit different ideas. For example:

As you can see these are little variations that give slightly different impressions to the page. Just a thought. Now go play with some paper. Or candlesticks. Or your garden tools. Rearrange until “happy.”

No one signed up to make a perpetual calendar tonight (see the sidebar), so I’ll show you a simple project you can do with stamps tonight. This will work with any stamp. I’m using a very architectural stamp, but you could use an animal stamp if you’ve gone zoo crazy, or a Christmas stamp if you’re putting together holiday cards, or a ball stamp if you’ve got a kid whose second word was ball. You’ve got the idea.

A word about stamp pads

There are a lot of different inks. But when it comes to putting ink on your stamp there’s only one thing you need to know: is it a felt/cloth pad or a foam pad? If it’s a felt pad like the one on the left, you bring the stamp to the pad and tap it gently on the pad, then give it a little twist before lifting it off the pad. If it’s a foam pad like the one on the right, you turn your stamp upside down, and gently tap your pad on the stamp. No twisting! You can rip or separate the pad from it’s case if you aren’t gentle. If you follow these instructions, you can have stamp pads for years! They will need re-inking eventually, but that’s another easy thing to do. How to tell if a stamp pad is felt or foam? Get your fingers dirty! A felt pad feels like a piece of canvas, and a foam pad feels like, well, foam.

The Technique

We are going to make a background. I used this technique to make a card and a scrapbook page, but there are lots of other things you can do with this idea–even use paint and you have a home decor treatment that looks like wallpaper, without the need to scrape and peel in ten years when you decide you must have been crazy to do that. First you need to choose a stamp. Base this on what your end project is going to be. I knew I was going to be doing something with my husband in it, so I chose a stamp that could be considered masculine. (Maybe.) From this stamp set from theangelcompany (aka TAC). Then I chose three colors–2 colors close in hue, and then an accent color. I used Niagara Mist, Hint of Pesto, and Night Sky . (I’m linking you to Michael Trent’s website because I haven’t set one up for myself yet. He’s the wonderful guy who sent me a catalog from TAC for free! It’s his fault I’m selling TAC now.)

Start with the lighter of the two colors close in hue, and stamp in a staggered pattern, leaving room between images for the image in the darker color. If you aren’t comfortable with eyeballing it, stamp the image on a post it note, with as much of the image on the side with the sticky strip as possible. Cut close to the image, and you’ve got a repositionable place holder that you can use to help space your images. In StamperSpeak, it’s called a mask, and it’s a very useful trick for layering images, and creating scenes. That will be a future technique.
After you’ve filled the page with the lighter color, choose where you want your accent spot to be, and stamp the image once with the accent color. Then fill in all the empty spots with the darker background color. Don’t forget to go off the edge of your page. This will ground your background, and it won’t look like it’s just floating there, waiting for you to finish it.

I used it for a page about my husband on his birthday two years ago. I hope you like it.