Meaningful Child Play meets Cost-Effective and Efficient Scrapbooking/Card Making!

As a mom I am always looking for ways to keep my kids busy and happy.  One of the best ways to do this is to allow them to scrapbook with me.  Yes, it makes THEM happy and keeps THEM busy, but it does pretty much take all the stress-reliever of scrapbooking away.  So, to find a happy medium, I have developed a plan… (yes, I always have a plan [and sometimes even a spreadsheet])!

Here is what I do with some of my scraps… I give them to my children to scrapbook with or to make cards.  Don’t you just love Lexi’s cards!  She even included a sculpture on the bottom right-hand card!
She was so proud of her cards, it kept her busy and it didn’t cost me a dime!

Moving on…one of my goals this summer is to get closer to being “caught up” on my scrapbooking.  I find that I can really get bogged down on a layout and could easily spend an hour on one double page spread.  To combat this, I really like working from premade patterns.  Close To My Heart has developed some really great books for this purpose.  I have tweaked the patterns some and then combined them so that I can get the most bang from my buck!  Instead of getting a layout or two from a set of papers, I make 10 or 12 layouts from one pack.

While some people don’t like to make pages without pictures, I find it freeing.  I use what I have and make it work.  I know that when I get pictures, I can move things around or add something else.  I DON’T embellish the pages at this point!  It’s also really easy to make pages with lots of stops and starts and interruptions when you work from a pattern!

So this summer, I am trying to use up all of my old paper.  I am in the simplifying mode and not the hoarding mode.  I am only purchasing paper for a specific event or project or in order to complete a page pattern that I already have started!

Here is what I have done so far!

Yep, it’s a lot of pages!  More than 100!  I have probably 50 more that already have embellishments.  My goal is that by the time I go on a scrapbook retreat in August to have around 200 premade pages to work from!  How freeing is that!  All I will have to do is print out the pictures, attach and then get to do the fun part of adding ribbon and stickers and stamp!!

Lastly, one of the things I have enjoyed the most about working from patterns is that I don’t have a ton of leftover pieces that take up space.  So with the leftovers I do have, I am going to make cards!  Here are some cards I made today.  My requirement is to use the pieces that are leftover from the patterns (to NOT cut into a new piece of paper.)   

So for those of you who say you aren’t creative enough to do this, I say YES YOU ARE!  If you can follow simple instructions you can make a scrapbook page or a card!  So no more excuses!  Get CrAfTiNg!!