Scrapbooking & Crafts
Sasha's Roots Our Family Tree Photo Album Elliot Alexander Nathan Voluntary Simplicity Health & Fitness Pregnancy/Parenting Gossamer Threads/Sewing Scrapbooking & Paper Crafts Other Crafts Getting to Know Me! Our House Guestbook	In the last year I made great progress with scrapbooking. For years I have stored my pictures in a very organized, but not user friendly set of photo boxes. I never felt comfortable letting people take them out because they easily got mixed up. Then I moved a great deal of them into photo safe sleeves, the downside of this being that they were sometimes turned on their sides to fit in the envelope, and not very fun to look at. Finally this year, I commited to 12 x 12 three ring Scrapbook Albums, got several at a great price from Costco, and speed scrapped my way through a few years. In addition, I started at the beginning of my photo collection and worked straight through the years scanning those images I thought were worth sharing or keeping digitally, leaving me even more free to do what I like with the originals now. I'm not caught up, but I have a good method for progressing through them. I'm more than halfway done with my own heritage album, gathering pretty materials for an album of my own baby and childhood, and have most of my kids pictures caught up. Soon, I'm going to time myself through a few projects so that I can work up a price and service list for other people who want me to organize and digitize their pictures. Below are some of my favorite Scrapbook pages along with some cards and other paper crafts I've made. I carefully measured the ovals for this paper, then made images to fit, adjusting the color as desired I gave this picture extra special treatment, as it is the only picture of my mother's family all together. I used some leftover lace trim to frame this copy of my Great Great Grandmother's wedding invitation. The paper is from Anna Griffith, something I put on my wishlist (from QVC). I really enjoy using it in my heritage scrapbooks. This is Anna Griffith Paper serving as a base for my French Memo Board scrapbook page. My grandmother Ruth in one of my favorite pictures of her. Here are my Ryan Great Grandparents as young people and then as an older couple. I like how they are framed almost as if hanging on a wall I find that punching frames is a great way to make an inexpensive coordinating frame. I measure an appropriate thickness (test it out on scrap paper if you aren't sure how much the punch will remove) and add it all around the plain paper then starting in the center of each side of paper, punch along to each edge. Another lower budget way to use paper to make fancy frames. This is a facimile report card, crumpled and stained with tea dye then printed. I found a report card from a similar time period online, and simply recreated it in Microsoft Word. I used the report card to help date the photo and the notes section to describe Grammie's school years in more detail. Clearly, when I can't think of what to do, I use the old French Memo Board look. Also a quick, easy way to assemble more random items on a page. I made this scrapbook for my mother in law and a matching album for my father in law. His was my first gift album and heritage album. It was all plain black paper with gold photo corners and Gold Writing. For Jean's I branched into colors and got a lot more artsy with the decorative scissors and paper punch. A paper pieced birthday card for the contruction crew fan. This is a shadow box I made for Elliot's 1st Grade teacher Miss Hamernick. It's a little fancier than the one I made last year. Elliot wrote a note which is attached to the back with his picture. She told me she really loves it. This is the card I made to present the baby dress for Hannah Rose. I think it's also a nice Valentine's Day design.   I created this card to include all the "at" words for Elliot, while he was in kindergarten. Too late, I realized I forgot the word brat, oh well. I went in to read this to his class dressed up in my witch costume and they all really liked it. A Valentine's Day card I made for Stephanie and Michael. I just wanted to send them this cute picture I took of them when they came to visit me. I glued quilled flowers on stitched red seed beads, pearls, and paper with green embroidery thread. This was a shadowbox I made for Elliot's kindergarten teacher as a thank you gift at the end of the year. I made this card to accompany the Wedding Video DVD I made for my friend Sharon & her husband Vernon, which I sent as a surprise for Valentine's Day. The roses are made of a piece of quilling paper, cut with scalloped scissors, sliced along the scallops, then rolled in a tiny scroll. I used tweezers to bend the petals into shape.

Date Last Modified: 09/6/2006