Super Fast Christmas Gift Idea

We have another super fast Christmas gift idea for you. Not only can you download the product and start making it within minutes, but it will be finished in no time, too. That’s what we said, super fast!

As Christmas gets closer we all feel the pressure so think there’s no time now to make gifts - we’ll have to buy.

That’s where digital scrapbooking products come in to their own, with a gift you can make quickly, yet looks like you’ve spent days over it

This easy calendar, the 2009 8.5×11 Calendar Easy Page Pro from Scrap Girls, is all ready for you just to drop your photographs into place and it’s done.

So the idea of such a great gift as this fun, cheery and bright calendar is very welcome. Yes?

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How do you hold the pages together?

If you’re like me you probably already have dozens of book rings and ribbons to hand. These are so simple to use.

Or maybe you’ve got a Bind-It-All tool on your Christmas list and plan to make calendars as New Years gifts for family and friends. Or take it to your local copy or printer store to bind. Many have professional wire binding systems (similar to the Bind-it-all) and will quickly bind your calendars.

It’s an 8.5×11 scrapbook page design, and there are twelve easy pages, one for each month of the year. It’s designed by Angie Briggs one of Scrap Girls professional designers. You simply slide your own photograph behind the page and position to your liking in the window.

And once made, you can print off as many copies as you require of each page to make multiple calendars in one fell swoop!

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Nothng could be simpler and yet so professional as these easy calendar pages to make super fast Christmas gifts. Sit back and wait for the compliments.

 

Simple Layout with Scrapbooking sketch #22

Sometimes it helps to have a simple layout made with a scrapbooking sketch to get you off the starting blocks. We hope this idea helps inspire you.

This sketch is similar to sketch 20 but the proportions and order of the layers are different. It’s these little differences that allow the sketches in this mini series to work together.

Try using them in an album with coordinating papers. (We’ll cover that next month after the last sketch is posted.)

Meanwhile here is a sample sketch for those who like to see what we make of the sketches we give you.

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Products Used:

• Assemble Your Own Zoom Pages: His and Hers
• His and Hers Embellishment Biggie
• Day To Day Life Collection Biggie from Scrap Girls
• ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Pressed Petals 1
• BHA RetroFamLove Special: Willow
• DMI Serene corner Special

A Scrap Girls ’special’ usually means it was a free gift in one of the newsletters.

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Let’s Take a Closer Look

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How did we make the layout?

Isabella used two strips of the same paper at either side of the layout, and a dotty paper to echo Victoria’s head band. However, as the template called for a darker color at the right side, she adjusted the color of the paper using the hue/saturation. She then added the pressed petals and blended them with the overlay option in the layers menu.

The buttons also reflect the head band, and the ribbon pulls what could be seen as three separate columns in the layout together.

We hope this simple layout using our scrapbooking sketch 22 challenges you to have a go. Do let us know how you get on.

Scrapbooking Sketch #22

December’s new scrapbooking sketch, in our current mini series, is the third to be based on a series of abstract paintings seen recently.

Use it for Christmas scrapbooking layouts, Thanksgiving layouts, end of year scrapbook pages, school party layouts, birthday pages … you name!

The same sketch can be used with paper layouts and with digital layouts. There’s no difference in the concept just the final product.

New to sketches? You’ll find help at How do I use a Scrapbooking Template

And you’ll find we’ve many more sketches for you to try.

We’ll post some ideas in a day or two. Meanwhile those of you who like to get on without interference in your own creative thought process can do, and those who like a little more of a springboard will get that shortly.

If you’d like to enter our layout competition for a chance to win a $10 gift certificate, contact us for details.

We look forward to seeing what you do with our scrapbooking sketch 22 or any of the others.

Personalize your Calendars

I’ve been making calendars for my family for a long time now. It started when we lived overseas and the Grandmas missed the growing years of our young children, so a personalized calendar was just what they needed to keep up to date. This was long before I knew about scrapbooking, and long before digital photography, the internet and photo-sharing were around.

I would laboriously draw up calendars by hand in a book of quality watercolor paper and get the children to draw on it or for it - depending how old they were at the time. Actually I really enjoyed doing it. The hard part was engendering enthusiasm in the children because I’d left it so late to do it all and everything had to be done in about a week or it missed the last mailing date to arrive in time for Christmas.

We included photos of the birthday girl/boy in the various birthday months which helped stretch things and reduce the number of drawings needed that first year … which was just as well for enthusiasm waned very quickly. Up to that point I’d have said my children loved drawing and were always doing it, but when even a loved task is condensed into a very short period it can become a drag.

As I’ve told you often, I’m a ‘last-minute’ person and the children quickly got bored as I tried to get them to do too much in too short a time, so after that first year it quickly became seasonal photographs showing things we’d done throughout the year to fill the calendar instead of drawings. There might be the occasional drawing or a little story to fill in almost scrapbooking, but not quite!

Now if I’d been an organized person, I’d have arranged this over the year and it wouldn’t have been so hard for the children, or I could have gathered and saved the drawings they’d made throughout the year.

Of course, it is a lot easier nowadays with digital cameras. You can photograph the children’s drawings while they are still fresh and not worry about storing them until they become brittle and start to disintegrate. And if you make a scrapbook layout while everything is still fresh in your mind you have a long-term record of your genius’ creativity. Then all you have to do is re-size the image to just what you need for this year’s calendar!

But in those days it took too long to go through the processing cycle and I didn’t have time for that.

I still make calendars even although that early reason has gone. I enjoy doing it and it continued to be a way to show the Grandmas what the children have been up to - even as young adults! The styles varied but they were usually photograph based.

And now there are digital scrapbooking kits especially for making calendars!

Read more

Sample Layout with Sketch #21

“I found sketch 21 a bit harder than sometimes,” said Isabella. “There isn’t really much to it, must have lost my thinking cap; maybe because I’ve been too busy lately. Sometimes the creativity can wane when I have too many things to do. lol!”

Genie: Well I think you’ve come up trumps again, Isabella! I like the torn edge at the top right. Is that easy to do?

Isa: Mm, very easy … it’s a tag that comes with the kit I used, complete with the curled edge. I just made it big enough to cross the top of the layout.

Genie: That sounds like cheating! lol! How long did it take to make all those curvy dots at the side?

Isa: No time at all … it came like that, and I used the overlay setting to blend it to the background which meant it took on the shades behind it. The products are as you see them; all I did was an assembly job and a little simple tweaking like this

Genie: Is digital scrapbooking always that easy?

Isa: At the first level, yes. Then as you grow in experience and practice with your scrapbooking software or photo-editing package you learn to do a lot more. I’ve only got one foot on the lowest rung of the ladder; there’s masses to learn. But you can take it at your own pace - as much or as little as little as you want. I found ScrapGirls’ boss Ro’s Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed a great help. I don’t like reading instructions and these are short video clips explaining what to do. They got me off the ground really quickly.

Genie: Yes, I tried them recently and found them very clear. I find the best way is to work alongside Ro rather than just watching the video. I have Photoshop Elements, so I had it open and as Ro showed how to do something, I’d pause the video and go and do it. If it didn’t work as expected I could just switch back to the video to see what I’d done wrong - but usually things worked first time. It was quite exciting to have a layout made as we went through things.

Here is a larger view of this layout

Journaling reads:

I promised I’d bake a chocolate cake with cherry filling for your birthday.

It’s a recipe I’ve been making for ages and has never failed. As usual I made it the evening before, and for this special occasion I decided to make it a four layer cake and not just the usual two.

Therein lay the problem.

Everything was perfect when I sandwiched the layers with the cherry filling and put them on top of each other. It was when I applied the chocolate fudge icing that disaster set in … the layers began to slide …

OK. We’ve time to run into M&S in the morning before heading off.

Mr Kipling may think he makes ‘exceedingly good’ cakes, but M&S takes the biscuit … or
rather that should be the cake!

The products used in this layout are:

Assemble Your Own Zoom Page: Character

Character Embellishment Biggie

Character Collection Biggie

Fit To Be Tied

ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Curves

If you’d like to use this sketch you can submit your layout to our competition with an opportunity to win a $10 ScrapGirls gift certificate. Contact us for details.

Scrapbooking Sketch #21

The scrapbooking sketch this month is the second in our current mini series, which was inspired by some abstract paintings I saw recently.

If you’re not familiar with using sketches you can read How do I use a Scrapbooking Template

A scrapbooking layout includes a photograph(s), some pretty scrapbooking papers, journaling - telling the story behind the photo - and a few embellishments. What they become when your inspiration is added … is magic! It’s amazing just how different two pages can be using the same sketch idea.

The sketch can be used by a paper or digi-scrapper.

 

Layout Competition

To help inspire you further, there’s a $10 gift certificate to spend at the Scrap Girls Boutique for the best layout submitted this month. Digital products can be printed, but you could use it to start your digital scrapbooking experience, or to buy a Christmas gift for a digital scrapping friend. We’re into helping you cut costs this Christmas! (The fact it’s digital means instant download so less time pressure as the holiday season swings in on us!)

If you wish to enter our layout competition this month please contact us for a few rules and the deadline. Thanks.

See our other free sketches for more ideas to give you a jump start on your pages. And we’ll be back shortly with sample layouts using this month’s scrapbooking sketch #21.

Self Adhesive Chipboard Shapes

Christmas is a comin’ in … Make fun Christmas cards and scrapbooking layouts with these great self adhesive chipboard shapes from Fancy Pants Designs - Happy Holidays Collection They are brand new and come in a useful, re-usable chipboard box with pull-out drawer.

There are co-ordinating chipboard alphas and a fall collection, too. Visit Fancy Pants Designs Embellishments to see their full range and sample layouts using these products at Scrapbook.com

New Look at Scrapbooking Gems

Bear with us!

Please bear with us while we’re hard at work updating the site. Why are we doing this? So you can find things faster, quickly see a wider range of what’s here, and just generally improve the site. We hope you like it. If you want to comment or you find a problem and have time to drop us a note that would be wonderful. There are 2 ways: use the comments or contact us. Thanks for your patience.

Pre-Designed Scrapbook Album

Looking for a way to make a fast scrapbook album as a gift for family or friends? Then try these pre-designed albums from Making Memories. Each one is an 8 x 8, 3-ring album in corduroy; 10 pages are printed with embellishments and the other 10 are not.

There’s a good range of albums covering friends, family, travel, baby boy and baby girl, as well as the Christmas Pre-Designed Album shown here. View them all in the Making Memories category at Scrapbook.com. They will make great Christmas gifts.

iCube Storage

If you’re like me your workspace can get out of hand pretty quickly. Organize your own work area with these handy plastic cubes that combine and stack for the way you like to work.They are from Purple Cows Incorporated and come in white, black, steel, sky, rose, plum, pistachio and melon; you can add shelves, doors, drawers and wheels. View them on the storage and organization page at Scrapbook.com
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Scrapbook.com

Scrapbooking Kits

Short of time? Not sure of your color co-ordination skills? Then a scrapbooking kit could be a good solution. Why? Because the hard work of matching is done for you by the professional designers.

There is a huge range of kits available to choose from, some with just basic items included - just a few papers and scrapbooking stickers - and some with a very comprehensive selection of papers, embellishments, templates, and even alphas. But the common factor for all “kits” is that it includes everything you’ll need to create at least one scrapbook page and often more.

Download a kit from Scrap Girls and you get digital files and printable files, so whether you make digital layouts or traditional paper layouts you are just a few clicks away from a huge, reusable scrapbooking kit.

Unsure about digital scrapping? Try Scrap Girls free Refresh Collection Biggie scrapbooking kit. You’ll get papers, embellishments and word art, plus a ScrapSimple sample pack with two paper templates, two 4×6 layout templates, a brush set, a texture set, styles and instructions on how to use them. And if you require more assistance their Messageboard is a great source of help.

Embellishments

Embellishments are anything you use to enhance your scrapbook page. Typical examples of items referred to as embellishments would be:

• brads
• die cuts
• stamps
• alphas
• tags
• stickers
• journalling blocks
• ribbons
• silk flowers
• paper flowers
• etc.

You can find lots of examples of these here. Just see our product pages.

Fun Photo Tips from your Handbag

Some call it a purse, others a handbag. Whatever it is, you want to be ready to take great photos with it, huh? Here are fun photo tips for people on the go or for those who don’t have enough hands to carry all the camera gear and the baby!

 

Photographing a Special Event

When we’re planning a special occasion there’s a lot to take into account. Much advance preparation is required to make a success. It’s the same when we’re photographing a special event.

From Harvest or Thanksgiving to Christmas or New Year celebrations, birthdays, weddings, graduations and baptisms, there are many special times in a year. We want a camera on hand to record them, yet so often the shots we catch are haphazard.

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Fall Layout with Sketch #20

This Fall layout idea is made with our scrapbooking sketch #20.

Autumn is a gloriously golden and fruitful time of year, with magnificent colors and abundant harvests. Lots of photo opportunities for you from the apple orchards to pumpkin patches.

When Isabella saw this photo by professional photographer Ben Earwicker at stock-xchng, it reminded her so very much of one of her sons as a toddler and the fun they had at this time of year. She decided to use it in this autumn layout along with a few memories from that time.

Read on to find out how she made the layout and for a product list.

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Scrapbooking Sketch #20

This month’s scrapbooking sketch idea is a blocky geometric design inspired by some abstract art I saw recently.

With food and fuel prices rising we don’t have so much to spend on our scrapbooking.

So show us what you make of this design in either a digital or paper layout and we’ll give a $10 ScrapGirls’ gift certificate for the best one we print. That should help the winner cut her scrapbooking costs!

It could be you!

Use the contact form to tell us you want to enter a layout and we’ll send you the details you need. As the winner of our scrapbooking sketch #20 layout competition you choose your own prize from the huge selection of products at the ScrapGirls Store. Digital scrapbooking supplies are printable and permanently reusable!

Other posts you might find helpful:

How do I Use a Scrapbooking Template?

More Free Sketches

Make your Money go Farther

With the cost of basic foods and energy and gas prices rising so quickly we have all had to tighten our belts. Like me you may be wondering how to make your money go farther. That goes for our scrapbooking money too - if there’s anything left at the end of the month to use for hobbies at the moment, that is!

Often, as the purse-strings tighten, the stress levels rise, so having time and a small allowance for your hobby, if you can find it, will relieve the stresses. You very often have to be the anchor for your family, helping everyone else cope. And if you find scrapbooking and card making de-stressing, then maybe the children will find it helps them too.

So, one of the first tips to make your money go farther has to be to use our existing scrapbooking stash creatively, and finding ways to stretch the budget quickly follows.

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It is Fun to Decorate the Envelope

How often do we think to decorate the envelope, too? I mean, we may have spent hours making the card and it looks great. Then we tip it into a plain, dowdy old envelope. Where’s the fun in that?

Make the most of your scrapbooking supplies and try these ideas to liven up the envelopes you send your greetings cards in:

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Birthday Cards: Idea 4

The final one of our birthday cards ideas is the least feminine so suitable for male family members and friends, too.

Sometimes we can get a bit concerned as we see the years pass and the numbers increase, so this card reminds us to ‘Laugh’ for ‘age is only a number’.

For me, leaving my teens was the hardest age. My husband hated turning 50, and our son-in-law has just turned 30, much to his chagrin! We’re all different.

Read on to find out how to make this card.

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Birthday Cards: Idea 3

The third card in our mini series of birthday cards ideas uses tags which are always popular and come in all shapes and sizes.

Read on to see the instructions for this simple card.

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Birthday Cards: Idea 2

I love to give birthday cards. However it can be an expensive business buying cards for everyone I want to give one to. That’s one reason why I started making my own.

Read on for the instructions on how to make another one of our simple birthday cards ideas.

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Birthday Cards: Idea 1

With large and growing families we are always looking for birthday cards, and nothing could be simpler than using our scrapbooking supplies to make them.

In this case it’s our digital scrapbooking products, but we’ve included instructions for paper, too.

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13 Tips for Multi Photo Layouts

Using a multi photo layout sketch can have you scratching your head wondering how to fill all the photo spaces. We have 13 tips here for you.

1. The layout is for 20 photos, but I only have 10 (or whatever number you have) I want to use, what can I do?

• Look carefully at your photos and see if you can ‘zoom in’ on a specific part of the photograph - after all, the layout calls for 2″ images and most photos are at least 6×4″, and some digital photos are huge. You may even be able to get 2 or 3 good 2″ images from one photograph.

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A Twist on a Sketch

Add a little twist on a sketch - our scrapbooking sketch #19 - and you come up with this.

It doesn’t take much to change the look significantly, does it?

This is one answer to the question, “What can I do if I don’t have so many photographs to use ?” We’ll post some more tips shortly.

Help is at hand if you’re wondering How do I Use a Scrapbooking Template? Or if you are looking for More Free Sketches

Meanwhile, have fun with this variation on our scrapbooking sketch.

[tags]scrapbooking layouts, sketches, multiple photos[/tags]

Sample Multi Photo Layout

Here is a sample multi photo layout to go with this month’s sketch.

Some scrapbookers like a sample LO with the sketch and some like the freedom of not being influenced by another’s ideas. So to try keep both sides happy we no longer post a sample with our sketches, but post it a day or two later, instead.

This month’s free sketch idea is a multi photo layout using 20 images. Read on for some tips on how to use it.

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Scrapbooking Sketch #19

This scrapbooking sketch will help you use up all those photographs you’ve taken over the summer months.

At this time of year we often have lots of photos because the good weather gets us out for weekend activities and we don’t have time to scrap them. Even if we are not affected by the long summer school break, or can’t get away on vacation, photos can still mount up.

Read on for some twists and turns to use this multi-photo sketch. Plus we’ll have more tips for you shortly.

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Spanish Golf Apartment to Rent

Why are we talking about a Spanish golf resort apartment to rent on a scrapbooking website?

As scrapbooking enthusiasts we scrap everything, right? Including golf resorts? Well … ye-es, but …?

One of the jobs I’ve often thought I’d enjoy is that of the person who gets to furnish the model homes or show apartments for builders. You know, the houses the builders use to convince you their new development is just where you need to be.

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New Christmas Scrapbooking Products

Tis the season … for a quick peak at the new Christmas scrapbooking products in stores now.

As keen scrapbookers we may make layouts all year round, but the products are not available all year round. Make an early start on your Christmas shopping here.

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How Can I Use an Imperfect Photo?

We have a great tip for you to use an imperfect photo in your next scrapbook page, plus it’s the season for scrapping those back to school layouts.

Unless you are a professional photographer or really, really knowledgeable or experienced, you will have an imperfect photo or two or six hundred in your files!

No matter how much we want it, our photos don’t always turn out as we’d hope.

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Using Sketch #18 for a ScrapGirls Challenge

Can you make a layout with just three products? We did when using sketch #18 for a ScrapGirls challenge.

ScrapGirls had a fun week recently when they invited everyone on a Staycation. “What’s that?” I hear you say. It was a vacation at home - save money, save fuel but still have a great time. They had lots of fun competitions and challenges with prizes.

This challenge was to send Moss the dog, the ScrapGirls Moss-cot (mascot!) on vacation. You’d be amazed the places he ‘visited’ and the things he ‘did’.

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