Is It a Boy or Is It a Girl?

Our oldest daughter, Andrea, is due to have her first baby (our first grandchild) at the end of October.  We are beyond excited about this new chapter of our lives.  Her and her husband are planning 4 children when all is said and done, so we are just in awe that there are four human beings that we haven't even met yet who will be so important to us!  Next Wednesday they will find out if it is a boy or a girl.  On Thursday the rest of the family gets to find out at the "reveal party."  I guess it's a thing these days, and a pretty cool thing it is.  I do not care if it is a boy or if it is a girl - all I care is that I will have a precious grandchild to love and cherish.  Obviously, I've had babies on the brain lately, so I put together two collage sheets for my Etsy shop.  One for baby boys and one for baby girls.  I'll let you know next week which one my daughter is having.

Free Printable Doll Tag Collage Sheet

Work is still slamming busy (after a very slight slow-down), but I am managing to find little moments here and there to create.  It makes my workday so much more fun!  This past week I created these doll tags.  You can pick up a free PDF printable at the website here.  These are fun to use in your scrapbooks, journals, etc.  I tried to leave lots of room for journaling.  I used templates and papers from Pixel Scrapper.  I hope you enjoy them!

Paper Bag Scrapbook Tutorial

I created a new tutorial for the main website the other day.  It's a variation of a paper bag scrapbook.  This one has a hard cover, both front and back and the bags are sewn together using the sewn tapes binding that I am still so hooked on.  I seem to be using it on a lot of my stuff these days.

I used 12 bags for this one and I think that's about right.  Many more and it would not lay properly when the book was closed.  But I do like the thickness of it like this.  Nice and fat! 

You can find the free tutorial on my Making-Mini-Scrapbooks website here:  Paper Bag Book.

Crafty Superstar Spotlight

This week I have the honor of being a Crafty Superstar at the Cut Out + Keep website.  Each day one of my projects will be featured.  There are already five projects posted, which include a triple pocket mini album, an origami mini album, an altered journal, a collage book, and a heart shaped corner book mark.  These are complete little tutorials.  There are still two projects to be unveiled this weekend, which include a magazine wrapper coaster (upcycled projects are a passion of mine) and a shirt mini album or card.  I was thinking Father's Day when I added that project, but it is getting published a week late for that.  That is okay though - it is always a good project for a male birthday, etc.

Making Mini Scrapbooks Newsletter

In the past it has been very laborious to put out a newsletter because of the software/web hosting I was using.  It is a great web hosting company because it is great for people like me who do not know how to build a website by themselves.  But it used to be very clunky.  They made some upgrades a year or so ago with a simple drag and drop way of doing things, which has helped me create pages faster and better!  But they hadn't upgraded the newsletter publishing feature until recently.  Well, in fact, it is still in Beta, but I went ahead and gave it a try yesterday and found it works pretty well.  So I published a quick little newsletter that you can read by subscribing here.  The GREAT news is that with this easier, more efficient, much less clunky way of doing things, I will be able to improve the newsletter and start sending out more frequent editions.  I am thrilled!