Ways of reusing those ubiquitous picture envelopes

You know those envelopes that you get from wherever you get your pictures developed that tend to scatter all around your scrappy space?  Well, i hate throwing them away, but usually just do to maintain space in my scrappy area.  I've always used them to sort photos till they make it to my actual photo sorting system, which is this- 

I get a couple a year at costco and am gradually getting caught up sorting my decades of photos.  

However, being prone to procrastination as i am, i don't get the pictures in there immediately.  And i've always sorted them in envelopes by month.  Today i figured out i could ALSO make little folders out of them and sort within the month by event, for busier times of the year like this.  See?? i'm pretty excited about this.  

Someday I may possibly clean off my desk.  :) maybe. 

"December Days"

So, i've noticed that as women and particularly as scrappy women, we like to punish ourselves with concepts of taking a picture every single day of the year and scrapping it in an album, and then in November, doing a gratitude album, and then in December, doing a December Daily.... and on and on... and currently, i'm in a place, family-wise, in which i'd not be able to do that, even remotely, even if i WANTED to, which of course, i ABSOLUTELY would :)  But the process of adapting to life changes means adapting to things that are simply not possible in an unadapted state which brings me to my December Days album.

I subscribe to the Citrus Twist kit club which i'm sure i've mentioned before, and love it.  Trina has GREAT customer service, is attentive, and designs awesome, amazing, eclectic kits.  I'm on my 3rd and so far they've all come with an inker, at least one stamp, fibers, papers from several lines, exclusive stamps and embellishments, and more.  This month's kit arrived yesterday, and i'm getting started this morning working on it.  Now, my dilemma is that i really really prefer to use kit leftovers for minibooks, as it 1. uses up leftover and i'm not left cutting a 1" by 5" strip from a 12x12 paper! and also because the little leftover pieces are themselves inspiring and take much of the brainwork out of the process!  so i made the shell of the album and will be making the cover and the majority of the pages as the month goes on-  but i'm posting here in case anyone else is inspired by this idea, NOW before its too late.

What I used:

-i used the thin cardboard inserts that come with the kits each month- i used two, chopped them in half and then folded them in half to make 8 6x6 pages (front and back)

-in November, Trina sent kit subscribers a set of baggies and dealymabobs to make an album with, as a contest- i'm using those baggies and cardboard thingie for the other pages.

-2 binder rings

-3 hole punch

-Brown inker from the December kit.

-misc supplies and fibers and stamps and other stuff.

 So here's exactly what i did.

 Please excuse my desk mess- while i love my house neat and orderly, for some reason, i love my desk all scrappy and messy.  I write on my table, i doodle, i leave pictures laying around...  you might notice a red teardrop shaped BLOB where a certain husband who shall remain nameless felt compelled to take the lid off my Prima fall leaf colored inker and BLOB it on my desk, for no particular reason!   Moving on....

So, first, i took my 3 hole punch (in order that the holes would line up- versus a 1 hole punch guestimated) and punched the 4 cardboard sheets in approximately the same location.  it doesn't have to be exact, because the other pages will be all askew anyway, but i wanted to have the basic form be pretty basic and similarly aligned. 

here's what they all look like punched. 

then I proceeded to punch the envelopes and long cardboard shape, making them intentionally differently punched.  

Then I proceeded to liberally ink the entire inner and outer edges of each peice.  I was a bit afraid i was going to ream out my inker, but thankfully it was strong enough to hold up.  Be gentle though.  I was tempted to rush through it after doing a bunch of pages.  

To line up all the pages that were all differently punched, i opted to take the two rings, open them, and add each page, sticking it through the ring.  that worked a lot better than just trying to line them all up and THEN ring them.  

Ta-da! this is what the end result of the empty book looks like. 

And here's the first page, not counting the cover, which for that and future pages i'm waiting for December kit scraps to avail themselves. 

here's a close up of a tab and stamp i'm liking.  Not to mention my sweet little belly-bean.  

ENJOY!!!  I hope others who are intimidated by a December Daily might make a December Days album! if you do, please leave a link so i can go check it out!!! 

Scrap therapy

This is a layout from my Citrus Twist November kit that i made for Apron Strings sketch challenge, and its actually kind of funny, i had to do surgery on the black and white paper to get it the right shape and it was my last peice and i NEEDED it for the red/black/white with a burst of color scheme i wanted to create.  There's a backstory to this one.  So first, much of the design of this layout is actually in the picture itself.  i edited the picture 'meme style' to reflect an event that happened last week.

Here's a close up of the picture

 Ash is 3 and has autism. He goes to special ed preschool and rides the bus daily.  his bus driver snatched away his toys which are his comfort objects, and it was super traumatic for him.   It might not seem like a big deal, but to a lot of spectrum kids, Asher included, the world is an intimidating place.  His sensory system si all messed up- sounds are way louder than we hear them, touches are harder, lights are brighter.  That would be hard for me to take, let alone a practically brand new person.  Its a constant struggle to make sure his environment is as hospitable for him as possible.  And i'm commmitted to doing so- he deserves a chance.  we ended up buying him bath toys shaped like things he normally enjoys, airplanes and firetrucks, since they insisted on allowing only soft items in the bus.  This was a sort of scrap therapy for me, the event being probably close to as traumatic for me as for him.  It really clarified for me that we are in a battle, and i have to protect this helpless child and be on guard ALL the time. anyway, thanks for looking!

A few more quick shares...

Yes, i'm a crappy blogger these days, but just real quick like sharing a few layouts from my new Citrus Twist kit! Woot!  Loving the Nov.  kit!

just a few quick layout uploads :)

just sharing really quickly...

Truth-

Stupid linky! i'm just posting this layout here for a challenge, and it won't let me upload from a file and i don't have time for a real blog post! wahhh! :)

When you have a house full of sick kids and a pounding headache, what do you do?? Scrap, of course!

I'm on a roll.  Today i've got the creeping crud and don't feel like doing anything but sit around, but when i saw the sketch at Citrus Twist  i knew i was going to scrap- NOW.  So i did!  i want to do the beautiful sketch again, and make several more that all look different, (the beauty of sketches!) and i'm wishing i added more layering at the bottom of this one, but I still like it.  I tucked hidden journaling into the pocket that i show in greater detail below.

I also made this layout earlier this weekend, but i don't really like it so much...  I think having all the same paper line makes it look kind of plastic.  Ah well, live and learn.  I did this as a sketch challenge over at the Scraptastic kit club so i'm still posting it, but yeah, better luck next time :)  I should add that it is a BEAUTIFUL sketch, and one i hope to retry again soon.  I love that it uses 2 4x6 pictures, a common increment in scrapping for me. 

a funky technique photo doubling

So i was working on this sketch, with my new Citrus Twist kit, from the boys rule blog, and i broke the rule of the spray ink- DO NOT spray over pictures without covering them.  OOPS.  So, i thought, i'll replace the picture later.... but then I got a better idea.  I tried to find an identical pic, which i didn't have, but i had a similar one- EVEN cooler,  i cut out the body of the new pic of Nik, and pop dotted it to the original green covered Nik.  LOVE IT!!! whatcha think?

another layout and finally doing a project life layout.

so first, i did another layout with my citrus twist kit-

It was taking a chance when it came to the circle, i used the sketch at Creative Scrappers and i think it turned out pretty good!! my favorite part, besides the wild hand drawn circle was the raised embellishment from the flat tags that came with my kit.  i love doing that! 

Next, i'm sharing my early october layout for my family album.  I make albums for each of my children and one for our whole family, and this year since i've been having such a hard time making it happen, i decided to do a project life-ish album for our family album.  Well, i was well intentioned anyway- my album goes from January to October :) i do plan to fill in the gap, but its a lot harder when you don't have the memories right on hand.  in the future i think i'll write journaling cards riight when i get the pics, that way if i do fall behind, it will still be easy.   i made these bigger for in case if you want to read the journaling.  I'm not very god at this style yet, so these are purely functional ;)

i made a layout yesterday!

And I had to share!  i got my new kit from Citrus Twist  and its such a beauty! Yes, i signed up for a kit club again! i totally can't afford it, and I totally don't care! i've reached that point!!!! :)

Anyway, i was scouring my stash of challenge blogs for a good challenge or sketch to use and I came across The Scraproom's blog, and their AWESOME challenges.  I used the October sketch for this layout.

How do you do color challenges??

This has always baffled me, and i've tended to shy away from color challenges, because i'm primarily a kit user- I like to buy coordinated kits and save the brainwork of coordinating everything, and besides, how can you resist all the GORGEOUS kits out there?! and furthermore, why would you want to?

I'm off on a tangent.  Anyway, so when i saw the challenge at the Color Me Scrappy blog I knew i had to do this challenge! what a beautiful color combo!!!!

Right?? its awesome! 

BUT, the thing about color challenges, is that they don't always neatly fit into a ready made kit's scheme.  Usually, there's another prominent color that isn't in the color challenge, or the kit has most but not all the colors in the challenge...   A dilemma indeed.  

But i found a solution to this problem and thought i'd share in case anyone else had the same conundrum.  

Step 1:  flip through your kit stash and try to find kits with at least a few of the same colors

Step 2:  If that fails, or produces less selection than you'd like, take your remaining kits and try to pick out the specific colors in the scheme.  Pull the cardstock and/or patterned paper out, and set it aside.  

Step 3: narrow down the papers you pulled for the most attractive combination of colors and prints.  I like to choose a dominant color, a secondary color and then a couple of detail colors.  I also try to have some solid colors, big prints, small prints, etc.  so there's variety.  

Step 4: flip through first the kits with compatible colors that you set aside, and if needed all your other kits, to fish for embellishments.  I only pull out the ones i'm pretty sure i'll use, as pulling out all that patterned paper has created mess enough!  

Step 5: put it all together, and clean up the mess! Voila! you have a color challenge!!!  

Here's what I created with these beautiful colors- (sorry about the cruddy picture, I was too impatient to wait for sunlight!)  And because i am JUST that much of a nerd- i even used the color grid itself as inspiration for the design of this page! 

And a scrappy saturday it is!

Wow, its so exhilarating to get to scrap again! Life is insane and creative time is few and far between these days. but today I managed to find some time!  here's what i made.  The first two I styled after the color challenge at Apron Strings blog.   I love how they turned out, and I was able to use some oooolllddd stash so that was awesome! 

The next layout, i used the sketch at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge blog  I scrapped Alex's 17th birthday, which was quite fun, and as you can see, i'm all about the verbose statements today!  

Off to scrap some more! thanks for looking!!

I got to scrap today!!!!

Asher has been on my mind lately- pretty much all the time, so Asher is who got scrapped today! I want to work on a series of layouts about life NOW with each child, if possible, and document who they are at a variety of ages. so i started with ash a few months ago. its hard to remember even 2 mos back so i need to do this more often!!!  I used this sketch from http://letscapturethesesketches.blogspot.com/2012/06/sketch-138-reveal.html  super cute!

and almost 2 years later....

Yes, its been a LONG time since i've posted!  My life is insane.  The stresses of caring for 7 children, including 2 with learning disabilities and 3 on the autistic spectrum, me time has been pretty much eliminated.  I'm working hard to change that.  I've found that its critical for my functioning as a person AND as a mom that i get creative time.  I used to scrap daily, and i'm working toward once or twice a week- Its a compromise that i hope I can make work, because it really is a NEED for me, but as i've discovered, just because something is a need doesn't mean it gets to be met necessarily.  Some needs must be fought for.  Anyway, thought i'd share some layouts i've been working on lately!  I hope to be adding more to this post soon!!!!

Above is Asher :) this page is for his book and has gotten kind of bendy, hence the funny looking shape of the base- i thought he was so cute in his towel, diaper, and RAIN BOOTS on our first "warm enough to take out the sprinkler" day.  (a virtual holiday in our family!)  I used the sketch at http://sketchabilities.blogspot.com/ in this layout. 

Next is a layout about our trip to the art museum in Seattle, for Chloe's album, which I made today, thinking about how she in particular enjoyed the museum. I used a whole bunch of 7gypsies tags to create the circular form and distressed the paper base.  I used the sketch here http://www.creativescrappers.blogspot.com/

Love me my sketch challenges!! it makes the process so much more about creating and so much less about THINKING- not my forte these days!!!!  well, Adios all! hoping to add more soon!