Scrapping by Design

This morning at 8:40 AM, the Olympic Torch arrived at the Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver.

This post isn’t related to crafting, but it is related to photography, so it fits on a scrapbooking blog, I think.

I am excited about the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.  I was asked by Associated Content to provide a slide show of Olympic related photographs and pictures that were taken before the Olympics begin.

I was happy to do so. The Olympic slide show is viewable at

Pictures Related to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

Several of the local craft stores are selling special Olympic albums and some are offering classes and workshops to assemble these albums.  I may not purchase the class or the kit, but I’ll definitely be making a scrapbook when the festivities are over.

Go Team Canada!

I made these three, hand made mini albums to give as Christmas or Holiday gifts. None have a Holiday theme. Instead. all are small scrapbooks intended to remind friends of a special time shared in the year that has passed.  In the picture, the last two  are from a birthday celebration; the first one shown is a picnic with three friends on the beach at White Rock, BC.

These little books are fun, fast and easy to do.  You could easily make three of them in a couple of hours.  Editing and printing out the photographs takes longer, of course.

Each book requires two 12 inch by 4 inch rectangles of doubled  sided scrapbook paper OR the equivalent in one sided paper glued back to back with another strip of scrapbook paper. Two 12 by 12 inch double sided paper will make three mini albums.

I used the Zutter Bind It All Version 2.0 to apply the wire binding at both sides.

Here is a video demonstrating the mini books.

I think these little mini albums make great stocking stuffers and small gifts. Better still, if time is running out, you can put these together really quickly.

Today the birthday fairy, aka Sue Rapin,a gal from the CST group, sent me the cutest birthday card.

The cupcake  appears to be a punched shape, I think, but it is very much layered and textured. I love texture because I am quite tactile. I like the “feel” of things and this card has a great “feel”.

The bottom part of the cupcake is a corrugated material. The icing is raised, and it has a texture also.

The words “Happy Birthday” are beautifully done. I can’t quite figure out whether the sentiment is stamped or a die cut.

Since the card base is black, the crafter has lined the inside with a pale blue paper, cut with a scalloped edge and trimmed with some stamped images.  The pale blue makes it possible for her to sign the card, something that can be challenging when working with a dark background like this.

It’s a lovely cheery card. Thanks so much.

This hand made birthday journal was inspired by a project I saw on a crafting community called Life on the Scrap Beach.

The journal is called My Year, and its a gift for a friend’s birthday.

I made the project 100% from my stash, since I’m trying to use up the supplies I already have before I buy yet more. The downside of stash-using  is that not all pages coordinate well. The upside is that in addition to saving me some money and reducing the piles of craft supplies in my home, it also forces me to use more hand made embellishments and to strive for more creativity in design.

Each page in this little book  has a title and contains tags for journaling.  The book has a wire binding, made with the ZUTTER BIND IT ALL SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL. The titles and a die cut on the front and back covers are made with the Cricut Expression 24-Inch Personal Electronic Cutting Machine.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Cricut because for quite some time I could not get it assembled correctly. Now that its working the way it should, I am warming up to it.

Here is my video demo of my hand made birthday journal:

I have used a number of techniques that I have demonstrated in other videos.   People new to crafting or people unfamiliar with the tools and techniques  might want to check them out:

1. Video Demo of the Zutter Bind-It-All
2. Video Demo of the Sizzix Big Shot Universal Die Cutting and Embossing Machine
3. Video Demo of the Burnished Velvet Glitter Technique
4. Video Demo of Basic Rubber Stamping, Masking and Coloring
5. Video Demo of Heat Embossing

This hand made birthday journal is in the mail now. I hope it arrives in time for the birthday.

Today, Queen of the Night Tulip has a blog post entitled 5 Unique Ways You Can Make Money With Scrapbooking.

She has some good ideas there. I’d like to comment on one of them and add a few of my own.

Selling Your Left Over Scrapbook Supplies

Queen of the Night Tulip suggests selling your left over scrapbook supplies on eBay or elsewhere. To this, I would like to add that periodically, our local craft stores run “yard sales” or “flea markets”. Crafters can rent a table (prices vary) and sell their unwanted tools and supplies. If your local craft stores aren’t doing this, it might be worth making the suggestion to them.

Along the same lines, I believe you could sell grab bags of scraps of scrapbook paper, card stock, vellum and other specialty papers. Promote it as suitable for punched shapes, die cuts, embellishments, etc.

If you wanted, you could punch out a number of shapes and sell them instead of the scraps of paper. Perhaps throw in your leftover pieces of ribbon, fiber, unwanted stickers, etc.

I know there is a market for such a thing because my friend bought me a bag of crafting materials like this at a Silent Auction. The item was donated by the local scrapbook store.

I have a few other ideas for making money with scrapbooking and other crafting.

Sell Scrapbook  Kits on eBay or through Craigslist

It appears that there is a market for kits containing supplies and pagemaps for a layout. If you’re good at designing and coordinating supplies, you could undoubtedly market kits ready for the purchaser to assemble.  You would include the scrapbook pagemap or layout design, all card stock and papers and all embellishments ready for the user to put together. The purchaser supplies her own cutting tools, adhesives, photos and journaling.

Provide Crafting Workshops for Children

I’ve actually done this, and it is profitable, providing you cost your supplies carefully and perhaps hit a good sale.

No doubt there are different ways to approach this, but the workshop I did took place in a private home. The mom of the house was responsible for promoting the event and taking registrations. We charged $16 a head, which included supplies. We set our price based on the price  that a local art store was charging for a two hour kids’ workshop.  We did a theme around Valetine’s Day, but obviously any theme would work. You could also “rent yourself out” for birthday parties.

To do this, I suggest having business cards to hand out. You can get very nice FREE Business Cards at VistaPrint. You pay for S&H, which cost me $8 because I live in Canada.

Selling Cards and Similar Items Through Consignment

I know people who are selling their cards this way. You approach a local gift shop, florist shop or boutique and discuss arrangements. Again, the key is to keep your costs down and be careful of time management.  You cannot charge more than the customer is willing to pay — and the business owner will want a share as well.

Sell Cards to Your Local Veterinary Clinics

My veterinary clinic asked me about making “sympathy” cards for them to send to pet owners whose animals had died or been euthanized.  In this particular case, we didn’t reach an agreement over price, but the idea is nevertheless a good one. Perhaps someday I will pursue it with other veterinarians.

Sell Completed Scrapbook Layouts on eBay

Would you believe you can make two to three hundred dollars US for a double page spread minus the photographs?   I follow an exceptionally talented scrapbooker on eBay who does just this. Her work regularly sells for these amounts.  This gal’s work is exceptionally lovely and original, and she has regular customers who follow her auctions and bid.  Her eBay ID is craftingalong.  If your talent is in that range, why not go for it?

Open an Etsy Store

If you haven’t heard of Etsy , its worth a look.  Etsy is an online marketplace for crafters of all sorts to sell their items. It’s free to open a store. Etsy takes a small percentage of the sales you makes.

But Above All, Learn Business Skills

If you want to make money scrapbooking, you have to approach it like a business. This means you consider the cost of supplies, the cost of travel (if any), the cost of promoting or advertising and your time spent. You also have to price yourself product or service at a price that people will pay.  If it’s too low, the customer will undervalue it. If its too high, they won’t spend the money. You have to know your customer and know the market.

For anyone serious about making money with scrapbooking, I recommend you visit this link.

This hand made Valentine card is left over from last year, 2008.

I used two styles of patterned card stock for the card front. The heart is cut from a sheet of die cuts and inked slightly around the edges with brown stamping ink.  I have affixed a similar, but smaller heart inside the card.

The button in the middle is a sticker to which I have added glitter.

For the ribbon, I laced narrow red ribbon through lace and tied it in a bow under the heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day is a stamped image.

Hand made Valentine cards are so much fun

I want to wish all of my visitors and the valued subscriber to my newsletter a very Happy New Year. Here’s to happy scrapping in 2009.

I’ll be doing some thinking about Resolutions for Crafting in the New Year.

Since I started making videos showing projects made with the Zutter Bind-it-All, people have been asking me to do a video showing it in operation.

Your wish is my command. Here’s the Zutter Bind-it-All Video  Demo. I want to point out that I have using Version One. Version Two is exactly the same except that it will punch  more pages at once and it is easier to do a long line of binding. Version One punches six holes and sets  six coils without you stopping to measure and realign. As I understand it, Version Two does more than six. Oh, and one last thing, Version Two is PINK!

Here it is at Amazon: ZUTTER BIND IT ALL PINK VER 2 SCRAPBOOK & PAPER CRAFT TOOL

Zutter makes various accessories for the Bind-it-All, none of which I own.  The only one I’m planning on buying is a Spacer that allows you to put a row of wire binding on tiny mini-albums.  Without it, the punched holes are placed too far inside the album.

You can also get a carrying case, wire cutters, the Round-It-All for making rounded corners, a special cutting tool that cuts several pages at once. Additionally, the company sells precut pages and special acrylic pages.

A gal going by the name of fauxwurden or The Handy Goddess on YouTube sent me a link to her new YouTube video. She has a great how-to video showing exactly how to make gift boxes out of recycled materials such as calendars or Christmas cards.

I struggled to design some little boxes for my advent calendars this year. I eventually created a design that works, and I’ll probably post directions later. However, I think these ones that the Handy Goddess came up with are excellent.

Check out the video at How to Make Gift Boxes from Recycled Materials.

I’ve made these three 2009 scrapbook calendars from a Maya Road Chipboard Mini Album. They’re Christmas gifts for various friends, and each has a different theme.

I made a variation of the yellow one at a class run by Clipper Street, a Vancouver scrapbook store. I changed a few things to make it different and uniquely my own.  Most importantly, I changed the calendar pages from transparency paper to card stock. The transparency paper that Clipper Street used was lovely, but it is also quite costly to purchase, and may not be readily available everywhere. Additionally, not every printer can handle it. I decided card stock was a safer bet.

This class was over a year ago. I thought perhaps the Maya Road Ring Binder album was no longer available, but this morning, I received an email saying that Two Peas in a Bucket has them. Not only do they have them, but there is a sale on right now. Spend $35 on Maya Road products and you get some free embellishments. Here is the link to the Chipboard Binder Mini Album, 6 “.

These binders also come in other sizes, most of which would work just as well for this project.

Here is the video tutorial for this scrapbook calendar:

As for the calendar pages, I used a free template found on the Web. Google “calendar template 2009″ and you will get plenty of hits. The one I used was from WinCalendar. I also added the birthstones and the flower to each month.

These scrapbook calendars are attractive and functional. I have made mine as a scrapbook, in that they all contain photographs. Naturally, you could create them as an art calendar instead, using images or embellishments that you have created.

Happy 2009!