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!

Duct Tape Binding Tutorial

I have been wanting to create a tutorial for this duct tape binding mini scrapbook album for quite a while.  I finally finished it this morning.  What is nice about this binding is that it allows you to have a lot of bulky pages.

Calendar Journaling

For the month of May I wanted to try the calendar journaling that I had seen online.  It was easy enough to just jot something down each day of the month.  It's kind of cool, but at the end of the month I missed three days and today I couldn't remember a single thing from last Thursday.  Ha ha

Scrapbooking is Where My Heart Is

I have been running a transcription service out of my home for close to 25 years.  I started when my oldest daughter was a baby and it has been an amazing blessing to our family that allowed me to stay home with my children.  Now both of my daughters work for us and my husband is my business partner.  We also have about 25 subcontractors that work for us around the United States.  It still keeps me pretty busy, but I really have had my heart on my scrapbooking website for the last 7 years.  It is just that I never have any time to really work on it.  I have finally committed to getting up an hour early every single weekday to get at least a little bit of time in on it every day.  It is helping me make some progress.  This morning I posted a new tutorial for creating a little ATC mini album.  The tutorial can be found on my website Making Mini Scrapbooks.

Hopefully this is the start of me getting more and more done. 

Wedding Bells

I have been working on a variety of things lately.  My oldest daughter is getting married in early August.  It is a short engagement and a simple backyard wedding with a potluck afterwards.  I know it sounds funny, but she is marrying a Baptist pastor.  Isn't that what they do?  LOL  Anyway, we started doing a lot of Pinterest in getting ideas for the wedding.  One that she found is an altered guest book, which she tasked me with creating.  Of course I had to make a trip to my local scrapbook store!  And then I found these really cool cards on Etsy.  They're a digital download and I am printing them on cardstock and including them throughout the book.  There are also little bags with tags inside that the guests can sign.  So it's sort of an either/or/both, whatever the guests want to do.  Hopefully the guests "get it."  We'll give instructions, but you never know.  Tell me what you think, please.

Simple Collage and Journaling

I have been needing to clear my mind a little bit and sometimes just creating a simple collage with some journaling background is just what I need. 

I chose a couple of my favorite papers.  I love the lavender and yellow patterned paper.  It's a handmade paper from my local craft shop and I have used that one sheet in so many projects.  I just love the colors and the feel of it.