Scrapbook & Cards Today Blog

Simple Stories giveaway and a little Sn@p!

Hello and happy Friday!  As we approach the last long weekend of the summer and head into fall, we have the PERFECT giveaway today!  One of the companies that we fell in love with at CHA is Simple Stories.  I think I just heard everyone squeal with delight as you know what's coming right?  Simple Stories have very generously offered this fabulous collection to one lucky reader...

And have you heard about Sn@p! by Simple Stories?  If you haven't, you need to check out this GREAT video...

 

We are SO excited by this whole collection and just heard that Sn@p! will be shipping in October!  You can learn even more about Sn@p! and all the new Simple Stories collections by visiting their blog for great inspiration each day.   This is a great company owned by some of the sweetest people around.

And if that is not enough, Simple Stores is also our 15K Facebook Fan sponsor today!  Join us on Facebook HERE for a chance to win this...

As Simple Stories is a brand new partner to SCT, we would love you to give them a great "welcome" and a "thank you" on their facebook page.  Make it nice and loud as I know they will love hearing from you! 

We hope everyone has a great long weekend and don't forget our 15K Facebook Fan celebration continues all weekend long!  A little scrappy fun over a long weekend is perfect right?  We thought so too!

~  Catherine

Miss Fancy Pants is here, a birthday to celebrate and one more!

I am so excited to share a quick little project with you here at the SCT blog!  With school starting back up again, I wanted to share a quick and easy little project I made for my daughter to help her track her schedule and hold little notes using the Summer Soul Collection!  It's a magnetic board!

Supplies Used:

1 metal tray from the dollar store
1 pack of simple magnets
1 dry erase marker
Scrapbook Supplies {Fancy Pants Designs}:  Transparency, paper, stamp, buttons, stickers and chipboard pieces and banners!  All of these items were using our Summer Soul Collection!

1.  Spray paint your tray to custom match any room!
2. Create magnets by using items like stacked buttons, stamp on a circle and embellish on top, add ribbons and chipboard pieces to spice it up!  Attach designs to one side of the magnet and you have custom coordinating magnets!
3. To create your 'dry erase' board, trim a piece of paper (size it according to your tray-mine is about 4x6) for the background.  Next, from your transparency, cut the same size piece. Adhere the transparency to the paper at the top.  Add another little strip of paper to hide any extra adhesive!  {I decided to stitch mine at the top for extra security!}  Add stickers to label it as you wish!  Now, you have a customized dry erase board--simple and easy to use!
4. To create the decorative banner at the top, I used a popsicle stick to stick my banners and buttons to.  Design on the stick and adhere...then, using a strong adhesive like E6000 or a glue gun, adhere the popsicle stick to the top of the tray!
5. Last, add little details like a wallet sized photo, cut some notebook paper to mini size and stitch for a little paper notebook! 

I hope you like this fun little project, I know my daughter was thrilled to have it!  Thanks for having us here for a quick visit today and I hope you'll visit us on our blog {missfancypants.typepad.com} to see all of the great ideas we to share on a regular basis!

 

Thank you Jodi for joining us on the SCT blog with this super cute tutorial.  We bet any little girl would be thrilled to have this!

We also have a birthday to celebrate today!  Melissa Frances turns 50 today and after some serious health issues over the past five years we could not be more delighted to be a part of her celebration HERE!  Melissa, we wish you the very best on this special day ~ may continued good health and happiness follow for the next 50!  Please join us in wishing Melissa a happy birthday and be sure to take part in a fabulous giveaway that also includes a little SCT gift!  xoxoxox

And last, be sure to visit us on facebook as we continue our 15K Facebook Fan celebration right HERE!  Core'dinations has generously provided a fabulous prize so please give them a huge thank you on their Facebook page!  We have heard from many of our sponsors these past 10 days and they have LOVED hearing from YOU!  Thank you for taking the time to thank you those that support SCT with open arms.  I truly appreciate it.

~  Catherine

(pssst....make sure you join us tomorrow!!!)

 

 

Incorporate more photos on your layout!

Hello SCT blog readers!  I’m back today to share some ideas on incorporating those small photos into your layouts.  On Monday I shared a layout that featured small photos as an accent to a larger photo to assist in telling the story.  Today I’m going to share a layout that uses small photos to tell the entire story.


I like to use several small photos to tell the entire story when I know I have several photos I want to use and still have space for journaling and embellishment.  As you can see on this page, by using wallet sized photos, I had space for my title, journaling, the circle embellishment block and still have plenty of space left over!

Although I normally order my larger photos online, I often print my wallet sized photos at home since most online services require customers to order 4+ wallet photos of the same image.  Nothing fancy or high speed for me, but simply my computer’s photo printing program that has wallet sized printing capability.

Depending on how linear my page design is (fairly linear in my case!), then I will keep the box checked “fit picture to frame”, although on some photos you risk losing some outside edges of the photo.  More often I uncheck this box and work with the size printed, which is slightly less than a wallet 2.5” X 3.5”.  Once the photo placement is situated then the rest of the design just fits around the photos and story.  For me, the photos and story are always first and everything else simply works around that.

 The smaller photos allowed me to have a little fun with some circle paper and my craft knife!  I cut out the areas in between the circles then layered on some colorful papers cut with a circle punch.  Since the photos are from the small country town I grew up in, I chose papers that had a country feel to them, primarily from Crate Paper’s Farmhouse line.

Thank you for joining me this week and allowing me to share some of my design process with you.  Hopefully you have some ideas on how to incorporate more photos on your layouts without getting out that second piece of cardstock!

~ Christa Paustenbaugh

It's day 10 of our 15K Facebook Fan Celebration and we're getting a little fancy...Fancy Pants that is!  Fancy Pants is celebrating our facebook fans with the fabulous Good Life Collection and the buttons to match! 

Please be sure to enter your name HERE and then head on over to Fancy Pants' Facebook page and let them know just how much you love their support for all things SCT!  We love our friends over at Fancy Pants!

A special thank you to Christa for joining us this week.  I know she is busy working on a special assignment for us too!  More on that soon!  Have a great Wednesday friends!

~ Catherine 

Paper piecing, Core'dinations and a video with Sarah Hodgkinson!

Good morning!  I wanted to share a quick paper piecing layout and video with you using Core'dinations Color Core Cardstock.  By using Core'dinations for diecuts, it allowed me to add great dimension to this owl by sanding the edges and embossing and sanding his chest. This is where it pays to have WAY too many embossing folders in your stash!

Supplies: Core'dinations Kraft-Core cardstock and Sand-It Gadget tool, Sizzix owl die, Stampin' Up!/Sizzix letter dies, Quickutz letter embossing folder and branch die, Cuttlebug embossing folder (for owl's chest), We R' Memory Keepers Sew Easy tool (to add small holes to the blue strip), Uniball white pen, Xyron adhesive, American Crafts layering tape, Font: Mason.

Helpful Hints: To create the tiny holes in the blue border strip I used my We R' Memory Keepers' Sew Easy tool. I ran the basic straight-stitch hole maker over the strip and then lightly sanded to reveal the kraft paper core.

Here is a link to the "look who's reading" video (and some other great ones!) on the Core'dinations website. http://www.coredinations.com/index.php/about/howto_videos/core-class/  Be sure to visit the Core'dinations site often to keep up to date on all the new videos that are uploaded.

Happy sanding!  ~  Sarah Hodgkinson

Are you an SCT fan on facebook?  Come join us as we are on Day 9 of our 15K Facebook Fan celebration and we are celebrating today with Pebbles!  And Pebbles is celebrating the SCT fans with this...

The beautiful Sunnyside collection!  Just click HERE to enter our contest!  Pebbles would also love to hear from you so please take a minute to give them a big "SCT thank you!" on their facebook page HERE!  Good luck!

Have a wonderful Tuesday! 

~  Catherine

 

Multi photo challenge with Christa Paustenbaugh!

Happy Monday friends!  We hope everyone had a great weekend and are ready for a great week on the SCT blog!  We are excited to welcome Christa Paustenbaugh as a guest designer this week, we have some more sneak peeks of the new fall issue and we just might have a cover to share with you soon too!  We also have our Facebook celebration continuing so let's get right to it...

"Hello SCT blog readers!  I am beyond thrilled to be here as a guest designer this week!  This week I want to share some tips on using smaller photos on your layouts, and specifically wallet sized photos.  I predominantly use multi photos on my layouts and to get more photos in I will often go for those small photos.


Sometimes that larger 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 photo doesn’t tell the whole story that you want to convey and a two page layout might just give you the hives!  The solution I use is 1 or more wallet size photos to enhance the story.  The added bonus is that they work as part of the embellishment as well.

Journaling is still the most important part of my layouts so even with all these photos, I find a way to include that as well.

So I’m challenging you to use smaller photos on your layouts to enhance the story or tell the entire story!  I’ll be back on Wednesday for some tips and tricks on including these photos in your layouts.  I would love to hear your ideas on creating small, multi photo layouts too!  Be back on Wednesday!" -  Christa

Our 15K Facebook Fan celebration continues for another week!  Today, we are thrilled to have a fabulous prize package from our friends at Bo Bunny!!!  Please visit Bo Bunny, show them some SCT love and thank them for sponsoring our fun contest! Enter the contest here! Good luck!

Have a great day and we'll see you tomorrow!

~  Catherine

BasicGrey giveaway...and some winners!!

Good morning SCT fans!  It's Friday and we have had an amazing week.  We are putting the finishing touches on the fall issue (in stores September 21st!), we are working on the 2013 PageMaps Sketch calendar and look for a winter call for submissions to go out next week.  Exciting times! 

Also exciting today is our giveaway from the fabulous BasicGrey!  We absolutely love the colours of Soleil - perfect for all those summer projects!  Just look at that yellow chevron paper and the sweet die cuts too!

 

If you would like to have this collection on it's way to your house, just leave a comment below by Thursday, August 30th and we'll randomly choose on winner!  Good luck!

Would you like a second chance to win this collection from BasicGrey...

then please enter our 15K Facebook Fan celebration right HERE!  We are celebrating for 16 days with 16 amazing partners that are celebrating YOU!  We hope you'll join us.

Last, by certainly not least, we have some winners to announce!

Winner of the Park Drive collection from Webster's Pages is:

If it's Webster's, it's beautiful. It's as simple as that.  Thank you for sharing! :)    Posted by: auntie em  (emily) | August 17, 2012 at 12:46 PM

Winner of the Sweethaven Summer series by Courtney Walsh is:

I scrapbook because my mother died when I was 13 and I am a 40 year old mommy of toddler boys. I want there to be no doubt that they were loved and cherished as children, teens and adults. The odds are that by the time they become nostalgic that their father and I wont be around. Our family books are my legacy of their lives to them to share with their children. :)   Posted by: Cynthia Keogh | August 10, 2012 at 08:45 AM

Thank you for all the wonderful posts about why YOU scrapbook!  Each were amazing to read.

Winner of the BasicGrey Serenade collection:

This is a STUNNING collection by Basic Grey - and I'm not the least surprised!! The colours are so beautiful - I would love to have this collection in my scraproom! Thanks for the chance to win!  Posted by: Melanie P | August 04, 2012 at 12:04 AM

Congratulations ladies!  Please send us your mailing information with "blog winner" in your reference line to ideas@scrapbookandcards.com! 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone and if you have a minute and are on facebook, BasicGrey is just about to celebrate 17,000 fans (I think there is a great giveaway going to start!) so let them know how much you love today's giveaway by sending a "thank you" on their facebook page here.  

~ Catherine