50 Ways to Use Your Ribbon for Scrapbooking, Home Decor, Crafting and Fashion
May 31, 2007
Scrapbooking:
Tie onto a tag, photo mat, border, or photo as an accent. Use with a hole punch to make a booklet. Tie onto clips attached to paper. Use to secure a fold open photo frame. Staple along the edge of a photo for a border. Place behind a photo to use as a mat. Tie in a knot and adhere with a glue dot. Attach a ribbon charm and use as a long border. Thread through eyelets and tie as an accent. Tie onto a slide holder for a small picture frame. Tie onto each end of a metal label holder. Tie small bits of ribbon onto a larger piece of ribbon for a unique border. Attach diagonally along the corner(s) of a photo. Stamp words and sayings onto ribbons for titles.
Crafting:
Tie numerous ribbons around the lid of a gift box. Tie small bits of ribbon along the handle of a gift bag. Tie small bits of ribbon on each piece of a spiral notebook. Fold and staple along the top of a gift bag. Tie around a sketchbook, journal or diary. Tie ribbons through buttonholes and attach with glue dots. Weave ribbons to use as placements, wallhangings, etc. Use fabric stiffener to make ribbon bookmarks. Make a french ribbon board to hold notes and photos. Tie around the handle of a mug and fill with candy for a gift. Use a hoop and long ribbons to make a mobile for breezy summer days.
Scrapbooking on a Budget
May 30, 2007
Memories are priceless, but the cost of preserving them can be high. Here are nine tips for making the most of your scrapbooking budget.
1.Be on the lookout for scrapbooking supplies everywhere you go. I once made the cutest shabby chic card with the corrugated cardboard liner in a light bulb box. Another example: you can buy 100 brass brads for less than a dollar at the local discount store and then customize them to match your layout with acrylic paint and/or sandpaper. Or look in the clearance bin for ribbon, fiber, and fabric remnants - or bouquets of silk flowers, which you can take apart and attach to your cards and layouts with brads, eyelets, bottlecaps, or button. You’ll find all kinds of treasures at office supply, hardware, and dollar stores, as well as flea markets and garage sales.
2. Keep your supplies organized. When your papers and embellishments are logically arranged and easy to find, you’ll always know what you have, which means you’ll buy fewer duplicates. And you don’t need expensive racks for storing your paper. The large 14″ Ziploc bags are perfect for storing 12×12 paper. You can even hang the labeled Ziploc bags from skirt hangers to maximize your space. A few inexpensive baskets or plastic containers can hold your adhesives, pens and trimmers. And a common tacklebox is great for small embellishments. Or use resealable Ziploc bags to organize brads, eyelets and other small embellishments by type or color and store in a shoebox.
Taking Back Christmas
May 30, 2007
John Grisham wrote a book called SKIPPING CHRISTMAS. Amazon.com reports: "John Grisham turns a satirical eye on the overblown ritual of the festive holiday season, and the result is Skipping Christmas, a modest but funny novel about the tyranny of December 25….”
My friend Dessa Byrd Reed, author of the poetry books THE BUTTERFLY TOUCH and SEVEN BRIDGES, prefers nontraditional holidays. She wrote in THE DESERT WOMAN that as a widow she often spends time with friends over the holidays, take trips, or simply goes out to eat on Christmas (not necessarily turkey). It’s easy to see why, especially if you grew up with traditional Christmas expectations of warmth, family, and usually, expressions of faith. Christmas is under attack in this country. I think it was my high school AP Government class that asked us about cases involving removing Nativity scenes from public places. At the risk of revealing my ripe old age of 32, that was in 1990.
First we had the trend of saying Xmas for Christmas. Then Christmas sales started way back before Halloween. Now, the holiday season is more about parties, overeating and drinking, and commercialism than expressing spirituality, in particular and especially the Christian faith.
Bracketing and How To Use Tt Correctly…
May 29, 2007
What Is… Exposure Bracketing
Exposure bracketing is a simple technique professional photographers use to ensure they properly expose their pictures, especially in challenging lighting situations.
When you expose for a scene, your camera’s light meter will select an aperture / shutter speed combination that it believes will give a properly exposed picture.
Exposure bracketing means that you take two more pictures: one slightly under-exposed (usually by dialing in a negative exposure compensation, say -1/3EV), and the second one slightly over-exposed (usually by dialing in a positive exposure compensation, say +1/3EV), again according to your camera’s light meter.
The reason you do this is because the camera might have been ‘deceived’ by the light (too much or too little) available and your main subject may be over- or under-exposed. By taking these three shots, you are making sure that if this were ever the case, then you would have properly compensated for it.
50 Ideas to Get Organized and Enjoy Your Scrapbooking Hobby
May 28, 2007
Scrapbooking is a wonderful hobby! Besides being relaxing and fun, it also allows you to be creative and to spend quality time with your family and friends. Plus, it results in a storybook of lifelong memories.
One very important element of scrapbooking is getting it all organized. This includes, but is not limited to:
- storing all of your supplies in an organized fashion so they can be found instantly when you need them.
- remembering what supplies to pick up at the store, and eliminating duplicate purchases.
- finding time to research new and creative ways to spruce up your scrapbooks.
- finding enough time to enjoy the art of scrapbooking in your busy life.
Plan your photos, before you shoot. Instead of taking random shots of someone standing here, or someone else sitting there, tell a story. For example, let’s say it’s Halloween. You may plan on taking four photos of your child:
Photos for your scrapbooks can be extra nice if you take a little bit of time to learn some basic photography. Visit www.kodak.com for a quick photography tutorial. Getting organized has a lot to do with preparation and this site is filled with helpful tips and ideas.
Kens Poem
May 27, 2007
How wonderfully sweet to be a dweller
dwelling on the road of goodbye.
Bittersweet tears fall as I think
of all the places I’ll never see,
all the faces I’ll never know,
all the joys I’ll never share,
as I head for the unknown.
I have lived life as best I could,
met challenges head on,
drawing strength from an unseen source.
You cannot come with me on this journey
you can only stand and watch,
sometimes the more difficult task.
I know what I must do
and I will give myself a voice
drawn from the inward depths of my being.
For Ken
June 1, 2003
copyright Fran Watson
Fran is a Consultant, Workshop Developer/Presenter, and Toastmaster. More information can be found at my website www.franwatson.ca where you can also sign up for my free ezine.
Need A Scrapbook Journaling Idea?
May 26, 2007
Try using song lyrics in your next layout.
Song lyrics can be a great source of title and page inspiration for a scraper.
Music and songs play an important part in our lives. Hearing a song again can evoke a lot of emotion, bringing back fond memories of special times, special people and special places.
Of course, different songs mean different things to different people - but you can use songs to ‘tap’ into those memories to create unique, and highly personal scrapbook pages.
How do you use lyrics on your pages?
Well, here’s a scrapbook journaling idea for you to try using a wedding layout as an example.
If the bride and groom have their own ’special song’ then you use that to add a personal touch. If not don’t worry find another suitable song instead, there are lots of song lyric web sites on the internet that you can browse.
Pick a section from your chosen song for example, the first verse of "A Groovy Kind of Love" by Phil Collins and journal the lyrics around the edges of your page.
Hassle-Free Holiday Baking: 6 Easy Days to Perfect Christmas Cookies
May 25, 2007
Like many people, I love the idea of making a large assortment of Christmas cookies during the holidays, but I find it difficult to find the time to get it done. As a working mother, cookbook author and webmaster of Christmas-Cookies.com ( http://www.christmas-cookies.com ), I am a very busy woman, but baking Christmas cookies every year is a must. Over the past few years, out of frustration and necessity, I have developed a system for organizing my Christmas baking. This system allows me to make a large variety of holiday treats without taking too much time out of my busy schedule. By dividing the tasks up into 6 days, I can spend a couple hours each day getting this done, and on the 7th day, relax and enjoy giving and eating some delicious Christmas cookies. After all, God rested on the 7th day! You don’t even have to do this on 6 consecutive days. Most of the steps can be done days and even weeks in advance, giving you a great head start on your holidays.
Day 1
Stress-Free Scrapbook Journaling Ideas
May 25, 2007
Do you find it intimidating when you come to journal your scrapbook pages?
You are not alone! Many scrapbookers find it hard to get started when it comes to adding journaling to their scrapbooking layouts.
If you are one of those people who go blank at the thought of having to journal, don’t worry. Here are some stress-free scrapbooking journaling ideas to help you write the right words whatever your page theme.
Make a list.
This is a fairly simple journaling technique that is suitable for use with any type of page theme, for example:
Doing a friendship page - list how you met, where you met, how long you have known each other, include what you like about your friend and why you are both pals.
Doing a recipe scrapbook page - then make a personal top 10 list of reasons why you like Grandma’s chocolate cake so much.
Doing a baby layout - do a list of baby’s favorite foods, you can even do one for the foods they don’t like!
A variation of this technique is to use bullet points to mark each line on your list, giving you an opportunity to empathise each item of your journaling:
Tame Those Memories
May 24, 2007
Family vacations, summer weddings and family reunions are in full swing, and the warm memories and envelopes of photographs are ever growing! You certainly intend to organize them — but the boxes in the attic are full of intentions, and now the photograph CDs are being to pile up! What can you do to stop the madness?
Step 1: Decide why you are saving the photographs. My mother- in-law, for example, wants to ensure them for future generations, which means acid-free paper and detailed labeling. One of my clients, on the other hand, just wants to enjoy them now. She has an antique trunk full of loose photographs (with names and dates!) she uses to tell stories to her fascinated grandchildren.
Step 2: Don’t set unreal expectations. Mary had a house full of photographs of her 18-month-old — duplicates, in fact — because she was always going to send them to her mother. But first she wanted to write a letter explaining the picture — the birthday party, the trip to the zoo, or the first haircut. There wasn’t time for that, so her mother hadn’t seen a picture of her grandson in months, and Mary felt overwhelmed by her failure. Undoubtedly her mother would have been delighted to see the photos — without the perfect narrative descriptions. If you are a working parent with active children, the best way to organize your photographs for now may be a shoebox in the front hall closet — with the lid off, so you can get to it easily!
