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Get Some Scrapbooking Material To Make Your Own Greeting Cards

Posted on January 13, 2012

Want to make your family and friends happy this holiday season? You could always get some scrapbooking material to make your own greeting cards to send to them. This will really capture their attention as receiving hand made greeting cards these days will make one feel really special.

Use Your Creative Side

Ever get bored receiving online greetings from family and friends? It just does not carry that same warmth and meaning any more these days. Granted that everyone is busy with life and trying to squeeze as much productive work into a day as possible but when it comes to sending some greetings to others, surely we could choose to make some time. It's all a matter of choice on whether we want to or not. I am sure many people will agree that they are constantly trying to find time for themselves. But if you are willing to do something about it, it will work out. So get in touch with your creative side and choose to create your own greeting cards to send out this holiday season.

Set A Budget

Not only do you have to plan your time but you will also need to set a budget. This will help you estimate how much to spend on the different types of paper, stationery and tools you will need to make this home made project a success. Bear in mind that it does not take a few hours to get everything done. So what you can do is to budget a bit of your time each day to putting together your creative cards. You could call it a time to unwind from all the stress at work. Many people actually enjoy doing craft work as a form of hobby as it helps them to de-stress. And some enjoy creating complicated works of art while others would like to display their wonderful personality in their creation. Others enjoy creating their own customized birthday invitations to send out. So set a budget and get to it. Don't forget to budget for postage rates as well.

Send Them Out Early

It's important to plan a time line on when you need to complete these greeting cards. The reason is that you need to send them out a bit earlier so that the postal service could have them delivered to your family and friends in time. Also, it's always good to send them out earlier as the postal service could be flooded with tonnes of greeting cards from all over.

Summary

And there you have it. Not a bad idea after all to have your own greeting cards made and sent out to family and friends. Better still if you do it together with a few friends. Enjoy the coming holiday season.

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Top 10 Techniques for Creating Vintage Cards and Scrapbook Pages

Posted on January 11, 2012

Do you love vintage style cards and scrapbook pages, but don't know how to get that look in your creations? Are you afraid that if you try, your attempts will just look like something a truck ran over? Don't get left out, wishing you could make beautiful vintage projects! Here are my Top 10 Tips to get you started.

  1. Use your imagination. When I design a vintage card, I imagine I found some precious memento that is old, torn and dusty in my grandmother's attic. I experiment with adding new materials to re-enliven the memento, and end up with a lovely piece of vintage art.
  2. Use lots of layers. They give depth and dimension to your piece. Put the layers together with little foam adhesive pads, like Stampin' Dimensionals, for a powerful 3-D effect.
  3. Use soft, muted colors. Neutral colors, especially browns, contribute to that dusty look. Use them as background, accents or even the main color. When using other colors with browns, even the muted ones will look bright, so use the sponging technique below to soften the contrast.
  4. Sponge everything! To make your papers look old, take a small piece of sponge, wipe it on an ink pad, and apply the ink lightly to your card stock or paper in a gentle circular motion. If you just dab it on, the ink will look splotchy. Use soft browns to make layers look dirty and dusty. Accent edges and folds with darker browns.
  5. Make interesting backgrounds. You can use a page from an old encyclopedia or music book, or use background stamps with small flowery designs that look like old wallpaper. Then apply all the "aging" techniques in this list.
  6. Make the layers look dirty. Sponging will accomplish this, but you can also use a Color Spritzer with markers to add speckles of color. The effect is like artistically placed paint splatter--think Jackson Pollack, only smaller and subtler!
  7. Distress all the layers. Use a paper distressing tool, emery board, sanding block, small file--anything that will make the edges of the card stock and paper look frayed and worn.
  8. Crumple and tear the pieces. Take the focal point and wad it up, then smooth it back out and sponge the folds. Make a little tear on one or two sides of the piece, and let the backside of the card stock show. Tear off a little piece of one corner, or crumple a corner and leave it folded to expose the layer underneath. Use adhesive to hold the crumples in place.
  9. Add texture to the layers. Use embossing techniques, or stamp subtle images on card stock with ink of the same color.
  10. Add antique-looking embellishments. Use brads, buttons, beads, lace, ribbons, crochet trim, etc.--whatever you think you might find in Grandma's attic.

Creating lovely pieces of vintage art is easy once you learn the techniques. These Top 10 Tips will get you started on a whole new paper crafting adventure of making new things look old!

Filed under: Scrapbooking

How to Make a Wedding Scrapbook

Posted on January 11, 2012

When all the vows have been said, the gown worn and the dust settled on the big day, you really need to start considering saving all those cherished wedding day memories. Perhaps you should preserve that stunning event perfectly in a wedding scrapbook all of your own?! Since people scrapbook everything now from getaways to the birth of babies, your wedding is the ideal occasion to produce it into a keepsake album.

There are a selection of ways you could go about making your wedding scrapbook. A lot of brides-to-be start their albums when they get engaged. As a result, you could chronicle every detail of the planning, various showers and all of the exciting build-up to the special day.

If your wedding is approaching fast, don't fret, starting a wedding scrapbook now, or possibly following your wedding, is just as simple to do as well.

And for individuals that had weddings that might have happened years ago, your wedding scrapbook can not only detail the events of the wedding day, but you can also get great insight into what marriage was like those first few years. On reflection, the certain memories from your wedding day might jump out clearer than others, giving your scrapbook a unique feel.

Irrespective of when you decide to start your wedding scrapbook, there are some essential items that you'll need. If you are already a veteran scrap booker, you will probably have most of the supplies already accessible. For those newer scrap bookers, go to your local stationary or hobby store to gather the fundamental memory album items. Wedding keepsake albums, that comes with themed scrapbooking materials, can be found and make the job a snap. But if you aspire to personalize the book with your wedding theme and colours, then you may need to conduct some assembling yourself.

First, gather all the pictures and wedding keepsakes including invitations, programs, napkins, table settings, etc., that you'd like to use in the scrapbook. This should help you obtain a rough concept of how big of an album to choose and how much material you should have for the project. Determine if you would want to make the wedding scrapbook just about the bride and groom, or if you wish to heavily feature the wedding party, friends and family, the ceremony locale and the reception hall. Perhaps the honeymoon can be incorporated the scrapbook to paint an entire picture of your wedding journey.

From there, you can start selecting scrapbooking material such as the album itself, the cardstock and decorated patterned paper for the pages, adhesives to attached the pictures and memorabilia to the paper, and decorate stickers or pens to add that extra something special to the scrapbook. Always choose acid-free materials, which keeps your photographs and wedding memorabilia from fading.

Map out a good plan of what all you want the album to include and get to scrapbooking! If you're feeling stuck or nervous to start, begin planning pages and the scrapbook will quickly take shape. The album is about you, your spouse along with your big day, so there isn't a right or wrong way to capture your wedding. Make the wedding scrapbook unique and make it yours.

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