Scrapbooking Made Easy, it's all in the Method!

As you all know by now, I'm a busy woman.

So I have had to figure out how to streamline some things along the way.

One of those is basic scrapbook pages.

By streamlining the method of creation, I have more time for my favorite part...

EMBELLISHMENTS!

So while you may be tired of my preaching easy scrapbook pages, I just can't stop myself :)

To start, choose 10 patterns and 12 pieces of cardstock that go together. 

Plus you will need base pages of white or cream depending on your color scheme.

 Here are my chosen pages.
Notice that my pieces of cardstock are really papers with a dominant color and a small pattern!!

The next step is to choose a set of page layouts that you like.  

Most of mine templates are taken from Close To My Heart's template books.

In fact, all of the layouts for this set come from Imagine.

To be honest, one of my very strange quirks is that I LOVE to take the layouts and place them on paper
and see how many layouts I can make with a little paper as possible. 

So while some of you might groan, I live for graphing paper!!

Once I have my cutting guides ready, I cut the paper.  The biggest part of the learning curve is to

 NOT STRESS over which page is which!

It's all part of the game.

As you cut your paper, label each piece in pencil and then when finished sort into piles.

Below you can see my pieces sorted with white between each grouping.

The first time you do this, it will take some work. 

You won't like some of the pages. 

In the midst of trying to figure out what to do you, you will be taking my name in vain!

But when you figure it out, well...

Then it is FUN!!

All of the above layouts were pieced and placed in the span of about three hours.

That's 18 12x12 pages.

That's enough to fill a gift book.

Plus, I had a good bit of scrap paper to use for journal blocks, embellishments and so forth.

So, if you haven't tried this type of scrapbooking, try it!

In fact, I'll teach you how.

Stay tuned for more details....

In case you were wondering..

No, I haven’t given up crafting for Lent, for 2010 or anything like that.  Life has been flying at us from all directions, but I have been able to create a few things.  I thought I’d show off a few of my latest creations.

I’ve made some thank you cards…

Some of my fast and furious template pages.  3 sets to be exact.  Now I just have to get the pictures to put on the 40+ pages I have ready.

And today I finished a little 6”x6” gift album.  It’s really cute I must say :) Here are a few pictures of it.

So there you have it.  Not much crafting, but a little to keep me somewhat sane!

The long awaited cutting guide

Cutting Guide for 20 page Imagine Workshop

I don’t know how well these pictures are going to come through when printing on your end, but at least you can see how I put the pieces together on the paper to cut them out.  The pictures are originally much larger, but in order to post them, they have to be smaller.  So, if you need them bigger, please email me and I will email you the four pictures individually.

Last note, piece 2a has 2 options.  You can use the paper labeled BT4b if you want it to match the piece 2f or you can use the paper BT5b so that you can save and not cut into BT4b.

You will have leftover pieces for mix and matching as well.  This is the plan for 20 pages, that is why you don’t have #7,#8 or #13 layout instructions.

Good luck and I want to see your completed projects :)

8x8 Gift Album using Imagine Layouts

Here is an album that I have been working on.  I used my Imagine workshop once again and converted all of the dimensions to 8x8 instead of 12x12.  I really like this size album for a gift.

Here are the pages prior to pictures…

And here they are with pictures.  I really like how nice a 4x6 picture looks on an 8x8 page!

View Full Album

I have 2 more double layouts left that I can add to the book plus paper.  Going from 12x12 to 8x8 allows you to get almost double from a piece of paper.

So Libby, if you have any more pictures you want added to the book.. email them to me so that I can get them in tomorrow!! Hope it’s what you wanted :)

New Workshop Pages

Last night while watching the Texas Rangers win big, I cut out and pieced all of these pages and this morning I inked and glued.  I can’t wait to run to the store and print out pictures from Lexi’s 4th birthday party and finish these off!!

I used CTMH’s Bella level 2 paper pack.  I LOVE these papers.  I also added the color Sweet Leaf to the set as I needed more cardstock.

The patterns are all from Imagine and I used my 20 page workshop plan in order to do all of these pages.  Total time spent on 10 layouts was probably 3 hours.  That is of course including stops and starts for kids and so forth :)

My 26 page workshop is posted on this blog back in April and I just cut it down to 20 pages, it’s more manageable and you have more scraps to add to the pages with the pictures later.

I’ll post the revised workshop guide soon.

Have a great day and I hope you do something creative today!

Falling In Love....

I have absolutely fallen in love with page patterns for scrapbooking! Here is a little background for you. Originally, I found a pattern on the Close To My Heart bulletin board for Consultants that compiled 9 different Cherish layouts into one cutting pattern to save paper. The basic pattern used 44 sheets of paper to create 18 pages. This may seem like a lot, but really it isn't if you factor in that 18 of the pages are base pages. However, after creating a set of pages like this, I didn't like how many scraps were left, so I set out to create my own.



So I created a set of patterns from the book Imagine using 11 different layouts. To create this set of pages I used 45 sheets of paper. I am thrilled with the results. From the picture you can see that I have not put pictures or embellishments on the pages yet, but I have a plan for them!! These pages will be Lexi's baby book!! I am under the gun with only 20 weeks to go for baby #3, I need to get baby #2's book at least started. EEK!



Papers: Bo Bunny

So, for those of you that need to make a scrapbook in a weekend, have years and years of pictures to scrap, or just tired of wasting so much paper, you might like this method of scrapping. I've started another set... this time it's 26 pieces of pretty paper plus another 26 bases.. yep, I've done it again :)

If you don't know where to start, you need to get the Imagine, Cherish and Reflections books from Close To My Heart. These books have to be the best scrapbooking investment I have ever made!