Lime Rickey 2

Last Thursday, I showed you a few of the cards I made with my leftover paper from the Basic Grey “Lime Rickey” pack.  I’ve made countless cards out of this pack because the colors are so vibrant and they just scream birthday!  I found a few more, and thought I would share them with you.

This first card was for a male friend of ours.  I didn’t want it to be too girly, so I went with some darker colors.  I used my label punch from Stampin’ Up! to make a border around my sentiment.  If you look at it very closely, you will see that it is just two of the large labels turned in opposite directions.

The second card was for my mother, and definitely has more of a girly feel to it, even though it is not over-the-top .  This time I used my cupcake punch with a scrap of the tie-dyed looking paper.  The multi-colored cupcakes are a great way to tie odd colors together on a card.

Okay, this last card technically isn’t “Lime Rickey”, but it did come from the same leftover cardstock, and I just love this bold color combo. 

Okay, that’s it for the Lime Rickey, I promise!  I just couldn’t resist showing you how many different cards you can make just from scraps.  Do you have a scrap stash that you go to when you need to make a card?  Or do you start fresh with all new products?

Lime Rickey

I was feeling really guilty all day about the missing blog posts and getting my 365 prompts out there so I thought I’d give you a little treat today.  Instead of one card, I decided I would post 3!

All three of these cards are made from the Basic Grey “Lime Rickey” collection that came out a few years ago.  I bought this paper line to do a World Scout Jamboree album for my son, Steven, and wound up with so much of it left over that I’ve been making cards with it for years!  Now I know a lot of people would just toss it all in the garbage bin or give it away to someone else, but I just cannot stand to see good paper go to waste, and I really did have a lot of it left.  Plus, with all the vibrant colors, it was just perfect for making cards.  You can see how versatile this line really is…these cards are all very different from each other.

And in case you are curious, the cupcake punch is from Stampin’ Up!.

Shop 'til You Drop!

Scrapbook Expo is coming to the Gaylord Convention Center this weekend.  I am so excited, I just can’t contain myself!  I plan to do lots and lots of shopping.  I’ll also be passing out some goodies and information about our upcoming Scrapbooking Cruise and cropping at the “Team Spirit” themed crop party.  If you see me out there, stop by to say hello.  Our table at the crop will feature a College Rivalries theme.  Look for me in the Texas A&M t-shirt!  Or if you catch me out on the convention floor, I'll be wearing a Crafty Neighbor scrapbooking cruise shirt. Mention this blog and ask me for a “goodie” – I’ll have some special little gifts just for convention goers who read this blog!  

Think about shopping at convention makes me recall a fun layout I did a while back.  Our whole family spent Christmas in Mazatlán, Mexico one year, and we traveled without gifts for anyone.  So on Christmas Eve, we spent the afternoon shopping as only girls on vacation can.  What fun!  When we got back, I just had to do a cute layout that expressed all the fun and excitement we experienced.  The bold patterns and colors combine in busy layers to remind us in vivid detail all the wonderful sights, sounds, and smells of the Mexican markets.  Just looking at the page makes me want to go back!

Papers by Basic Grey

Happy Scrapping Weekend!

I love it when I get to have a scrappy weekend!  I just feel so much more rested to start out my Monday if I've had some quality time with all my pretty projects!  This weekend, I got scrappy and used up some real scraps!  

I've mentioned before that I like to use the leftovers from projects to make cards and tags because all the supplies already match.  Sometimes, if I have a lot of supplies leftover from a big project (like an entire 12x12 album made from one product line), I might make a card or two and then set it aside to use later. That's exactly what I did with a huge stack of Basic Grey's Lime Rickey.  I originally used this paper in a scrapbook album of my son's Boy Scout World Jamboree, but I still had tons of it left after making cards and tags.  So I've been whittling away at it for a couple of years now, and I still have supplies left!    I've made cards, tags, multiple scrapbook pages (to go in other albums)...you name it!  Recently, I even used some of it to make hundreds of kits to give away at conventions and other big scrapbooking events.

This weekend, I decided to use up all the scraps so that I wouldn't have anything left but full sheets of paper and matching cardstock.  I wound up making five cards and three tags, and in the process of making those, I found supplies to make a sixth card.  I think they turned out rather well, if I do say so myself!

 

Christen had this cute little stamp that features a bird on one side, and a cat on the other.  I've used the quote many times for cards with this paper, but hadn't used the actual stamp.  She was going to get rid of it in our recent garage sale, so I nabbed it.  I used the flip-side of the stamp on the inside.

For both of these first two cards, I inked only the words of the stamp using my markers and then punched it out with a  Stampin' Up! decorative label punch.  This card features the full stamp.

I loved this green paper and wanted to do some monochromatic cards with it.  The butterflies are Stampin' Up! Beautiful Wings Embosslits die

The "birthday wishes" on this one was cut with the Spellbinders Nested Pennants die that I bought at the scrapbook garage sale last week.

While digging around in my green scraps for some pale green paper to make my butterflies out of, I found this piece of cardstock that was scored and ready to make a card.  I found a matching piece of paper from My Minds Eye and I used a set of the embossed butterflies that I had earlier discarded because I had tried an inking technique that didn't work.  Thank goodness for Copic markers...I colored them brown and they look great!

These are the tags I made with some of the scraps.  I have four sets of sticker embellishments that go with this paper pack, so it will be a fun challenge to see how many different ways I can use them up!

What's Old Is New Again....

The saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and when it comes to scrapbooking, that saying is often true.  Try though we might, there are times when we just run out of fresh ideas.  But who says we have to always have fresh new ideas anyway? 

One of my not-so-secret joys is my penchant for finding new uses for old items and reusing things over and over and over.  What can I say?  I’m a firm believer in “Recycle, Renew, Reuse”.  I’ve made mini albums out of toilet paper rolls, calendars out of cookie sheets, and wreaths out of old newspapers.  I also am very good at reusing old scrapbooking ideas again and again.

I just wrapped up day 20 of the LOAD 212 challenge, and I discovered a recurrent theme in my scrapbooking:  I don’t like to waste ANYTHING.  I will use and reuse scraps of paper until there is absolutely nothing useful in them any more.  I will store away stray stickers and odd embellishments leftover from other projects just in case I might need them some day.  I keep everything!  While many of my friends are having scrapbook garage sales to get rid of all their extra, unused supplies, I’m busy trying to find places to store mine.  Fortunately, I also spend a lot of time trying to find creative ways to use those odd bits, so they do actually get some use.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I like to make cards and tags with the scraps from my page layouts, but I may not have mentioned that I also make other layouts with scraps from layouts.  This is especially true whenever I have a lot of paper left over from a kit or from a large project.  I just can’t toss it, so it will eventually wind up in another album somewhere, done up in a completely different style.  Most of the time, no one will ever realize it.  I don’t limit myself to just reusing the paper and cardstock, either.  I’ve reused pictures in multiple layouts, spread a pack of embellishments across many different pages, and even copied the exact same layout design but with different paper, pictures, and embellishments.  My rule of thumb is, “If it’s in a different album, then no one will ever know!”

To illustrate my point, here are my last 4 days of LOAD layouts and a listing of all the features that are copied or repeated in each one.  Then take a look at the layouts I copied them from below:

Doctor:  All of the embellishments on this page came from a cut-out page I bought years ago.  I’ve been using pieces of it on layouts ever since.  It's hard to tell in the picture, but I glazed select portions of the embellishments to give them dimension.  The letters are plastic and came from a baggie I bought at a scrapbook garage sale several years ago.  They've gotten lots of use.

Birthday:  The background paper is Basic Grey from the “Lime Rickey” pack that I used extensively in my son’s Boy Scout album for his 2-week long World Jamboree trip.  This paper was used on no less than 3 layouts in that album, plus countless birthday cards.

Kennsington:  Okay, there’s really nothing in this digital layout that I directly stole, but I’m sure I have a layout pretty much like this simple one somewhere.  And now that I think of it, I sure use a lot of green.  Of the 20 layouts I have done for this challenge, I used green on 12 of them.  Many times the green that was used was a small piece left over from another project.

Fashion:  This one has several repeating themes.  The paper comes from DCWV.  If you’ve followed my LOAD progress at all, you will notice that I have used the same “Retro” paper pack repeatedly.  What can I say?  It was cute paper, and it definitely works well with the prompts I’ve been given.  I also used yet another art phrase from this pack, and the photos themselves were used in Christen’s high school scrapbook because she made the dress and wore it to her Homecoming Dance.

And here is a look at the original use of these stolen bits:

They don't look a bit alike, do they?  So just remember, the next time you get stuck in a scrapbooking rut, or can’t think of what to do, go flip through your old scrapbooks and projects.  The answer may be right there, waiting for you to copy it.

November Card Ideas

You've probably noticed that most of my cards are square (6"x6", to be exact) and that they often use the same line of paper.  We'll, that's because of something I mentioned in an earlier blog.  It was a time-saving tip from a fellow scrapbooker that I adopted for my own.  Whenever this crafty neighbor finished a scrapbook page, album, or craft project, she would immediately use the scraps to make as many cards as she could with the leftovers.  This method ensured that she wasn't building up piles and piles of scraps or simply throwing away and wasting whatever pieces were left over from her projects.  It also meant that she always had a ready supply of cards made up for just about any occasion.    I loved this idea so much that I've been doing it ever since!


So why make 6"x6" cards?  That, too, is a time saver.  Since all my supplies are the result of some other scrappy project, I am usually left with 12x12 paper and scraps.  The fastest way to use them?  cut it in half, fold that in half, and Voila! an instant card.  Of course, this means that I need an odd sized envelop for my odd-sized card.  I generally like to use clear cellophane envelopes.  Not only do they come in a variety of sizes that fit my cards perfectly,  but you can see the card through it!  Why hide a beautiful card behind some plain old envelope?  Not me...gotta go flashy all the way, right?


Oh and one more note...if you decide to make some of these square cards, be sure to double up on the postage.  Two stamps should generally do it if you don't want to weigh it.  You wouldn't want your recipient to have to pay the extra postage!


Here's a few new birthday card ideas featuring Basic Grey's Ambrosia and Lime Rickey product lines:

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Cindy