Showing posts with label scrapbooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scrapbooking. Show all posts
Monday, February 23, 2009
Scrapbooking
This weekend I caught up on my scrapbooking -- finishing up my first book with two pages of photos from August, and starting a new book with Christmas 2008. This week I'll catch up with our trip to New York last month, and Valentines photos.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Labor Day Arts & Crafts
Happy Labor Day Everyone!
Although this is traditionally a holiday I plan some sort of travel over, this year finances dictated I hang around a little closer to home. Instead, I've been working on my new novel, catching up on Netflix, and doing some scrapbooking.
I made a few changes to my scrapbook, going back to include some holidays and events I'd skipped over before and inserting season markers to give the book a better sense of chronology. The season marker pages are pretty plain, but set the tone for the pages that follow. For example, I used a spooky silouette of a graveyard over an orange background for the Fall page, and glittery flower designs in bright colors for summer.
And, of course, I added our recent trip to the midwest including my Mom's birthday extravaganza and our trip to Shipshewanna. Here are some pics, what do you think?
Although this is traditionally a holiday I plan some sort of travel over, this year finances dictated I hang around a little closer to home. Instead, I've been working on my new novel, catching up on Netflix, and doing some scrapbooking.
I made a few changes to my scrapbook, going back to include some holidays and events I'd skipped over before and inserting season markers to give the book a better sense of chronology. The season marker pages are pretty plain, but set the tone for the pages that follow. For example, I used a spooky silouette of a graveyard over an orange background for the Fall page, and glittery flower designs in bright colors for summer.
And, of course, I added our recent trip to the midwest including my Mom's birthday extravaganza and our trip to Shipshewanna. Here are some pics, what do you think?
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Scrapbooking Steals
Today's fall-ish weather had me wanting to shop in the worst way, so I decided to take a trip to A. C. Moore for some art supplies.
Having never been to an A. C. Moore before, I didn't know what to expect. I found it to be much smaller than Michaels, with a disappointingly small selection of what-the-hell crafts. One thing I love about Michaels is I am guaranteed to find at least one bizzare craft-in-a-box kit that I can't wait to take home and sew/engrave/bake/all three. A. C. Moore was pretty bare bones, which I suppose probably saved me some money.
I wanted to check them out because every week the Globe runs their ad and it always has some really enticing items in it. This week the ad featured 40% off any full price item with a coupon and advertised that all K & Company items were 40% off. I've blogged before about my love for the K & Company scrapbooks, but my passion for all the other assorted pages, stencils, cutouts, and doodads they make borders on obsession. (oh yeah, and their borders!) I must have read that ad 20 times because I was afraid I'd gotten it wrong, but no - every K & Company item -- including the hard-to-find expander pages was 40% off. And, to top it off, a lot of those items were already on sale or reduced.
So I went, I spent, and I made a killing! Check out this haul (above), all for 40% off!
I was particularly excited by this sort of mix-pack the store put together of all different random doodads. Maybe you can see in the picture, it's labeled $49.99. That's the value of the decorations contained in the pack. The normal, every day price for the pack is $19.99. It was all K & Company, so I got 40% off of that -- just $11 bucks! The best part is that it's all mix/match stuff that I would never buy separately so I have a lot of cheap weird materials to work with and get creative on. I opened up the package and look how much was in there. Some cutouts, some glitter stickers, ribbons, alphabet stick-ons and my favorite, rub-ons. I could go on, but the night is young and I have a whole stack of photos just waiting to go into the book.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Scrapbook Talk
Last night I got to spend a little time updating my scrapbook with photos and mementos of our July escapades. It's taken me a good week and a half of searching to find the right expander-pages to fit in my book. I'm really surprised by how hard they were to find.
It seems like every company that makes book has a different style of page. I have a couple of different scrapbooks, but my favorite is my 12x12 K & Company book. The book opens almost flat, so I can flip the pages easily, and it uses plastic page protectors (like this: http://www.kandcompany.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=423&idproduct=5311) so I don't have to worry about items on facing pages rubbing against eachother and getting pulled off. The book is held together with screws and rods, which can be expanded or swapped out for larger pieces as you add more pages to the book. I think this style is a lot sturdier than the clamped style some other companies use, and it's more versatile than the books where the pages are permanently fastened in. The only downside is that you need to find the add-ons specifically made for or by K & Company or the holes in the page protectors won't be in the right place. Michaels carries them, and the little art store in my town center does sometimes, but they're nowhere near as easy to find as the Kolo stuff.
It's taken me a while to find a book that works well for me. When I first decided to take up scrapbooking, I went to the Papersource store in Brookline, which is a great place to get arts & crafts ideas, but a very expensive place to shop. Kolo is the only brand of scrapbook they sell there (this is also the case at Pearl in Central Square, as I learned after a walk in the rain yesterday) so I didn't realize other places would have cheaper alternatives. I forked over more money than I'm proud of for a book I never use. Kolo's books are beautiful, but 2-3 times as expensive as their competitors and don't ever seem to go on sale. They do use the post system I like so much, but page protectors, new posts, and everything else you could want costs extra. A lot extra. I think the Kolo album I have is similar to this one. So far I haven't put anything in my Kolo album even though it was the first one I bought. It's so nice it freaks me out. I feel like I should wait until I get married to landed gentry, have a baby, or win a Nobel prize. Those archival pages would look silly behind my pizza-eating phots. The book just doesn't go with my life. Plus, I've never gotten around to buying the page protectors because Kolo uses this ridiculous system where before you can buy any accessories you have to know your book's corresponding letter of the alphabet and girl's/city's name. Oh yeah, I guess I should've known what I was getting into when they all had names like Ann Taylor jeans or Coach bags.
The second album I bought was this pretty valentines-y K and Company one: http://www.kandcompany.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=67&idproduct=536. I have a few Valentines Day pictures in it, but haven't filled more than one or two pages because the pages are relatively small, and most of the stuff goes into my Travel Scrapbook. Plus, I love love love over-the-top bright colored florals and girly curlicues, but again most of my photos are me at a pizza place with cheese dribbling out of my mouth, or Greg and me with our heads coming out the headholes of a particle-board standup image of silly sheep, pumpkins, or pirates or something. The book is too pretty for my reality.
So I was lucky to discover my Travel album on the sale rack at Walmart in one of my random shopping trips in Michigan. It is K & Company (the posts have the telltale K engraved) but it was really cheap and has a real matter-of-fact look to it (I tried to find an image to post, but it's not listed on K&Co's site, Walmart, Michaels or Amazon and... I'm lazy). The big pages give me plenty of room to experiment with layout, and the generalized travel theme fits with most of the subject matter I have scraps for. So even though it's a pain in the butt to find the add-on pages to go in it, for now I'm going to keep on using this one. At least until I can find a 12x12 pizza/pirate themed book.
It seems like every company that makes book has a different style of page. I have a couple of different scrapbooks, but my favorite is my 12x12 K & Company book. The book opens almost flat, so I can flip the pages easily, and it uses plastic page protectors (like this: http://www.kandcompany.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=423&idproduct=5311) so I don't have to worry about items on facing pages rubbing against eachother and getting pulled off. The book is held together with screws and rods, which can be expanded or swapped out for larger pieces as you add more pages to the book. I think this style is a lot sturdier than the clamped style some other companies use, and it's more versatile than the books where the pages are permanently fastened in. The only downside is that you need to find the add-ons specifically made for or by K & Company or the holes in the page protectors won't be in the right place. Michaels carries them, and the little art store in my town center does sometimes, but they're nowhere near as easy to find as the Kolo stuff.
It's taken me a while to find a book that works well for me. When I first decided to take up scrapbooking, I went to the Papersource store in Brookline, which is a great place to get arts & crafts ideas, but a very expensive place to shop. Kolo is the only brand of scrapbook they sell there (this is also the case at Pearl in Central Square, as I learned after a walk in the rain yesterday) so I didn't realize other places would have cheaper alternatives. I forked over more money than I'm proud of for a book I never use. Kolo's books are beautiful, but 2-3 times as expensive as their competitors and don't ever seem to go on sale. They do use the post system I like so much, but page protectors, new posts, and everything else you could want costs extra. A lot extra. I think the Kolo album I have is similar to this one. So far I haven't put anything in my Kolo album even though it was the first one I bought. It's so nice it freaks me out. I feel like I should wait until I get married to landed gentry, have a baby, or win a Nobel prize. Those archival pages would look silly behind my pizza-eating phots. The book just doesn't go with my life. Plus, I've never gotten around to buying the page protectors because Kolo uses this ridiculous system where before you can buy any accessories you have to know your book's corresponding letter of the alphabet and girl's/city's name. Oh yeah, I guess I should've known what I was getting into when they all had names like Ann Taylor jeans or Coach bags.
The second album I bought was this pretty valentines-y K and Company one: http://www.kandcompany.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=67&idproduct=536. I have a few Valentines Day pictures in it, but haven't filled more than one or two pages because the pages are relatively small, and most of the stuff goes into my Travel Scrapbook. Plus, I love love love over-the-top bright colored florals and girly curlicues, but again most of my photos are me at a pizza place with cheese dribbling out of my mouth, or Greg and me with our heads coming out the headholes of a particle-board standup image of silly sheep, pumpkins, or pirates or something. The book is too pretty for my reality.
So I was lucky to discover my Travel album on the sale rack at Walmart in one of my random shopping trips in Michigan. It is K & Company (the posts have the telltale K engraved) but it was really cheap and has a real matter-of-fact look to it (I tried to find an image to post, but it's not listed on K&Co's site, Walmart, Michaels or Amazon and... I'm lazy). The big pages give me plenty of room to experiment with layout, and the generalized travel theme fits with most of the subject matter I have scraps for. So even though it's a pain in the butt to find the add-on pages to go in it, for now I'm going to keep on using this one. At least until I can find a 12x12 pizza/pirate themed book.
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