Make Watercolors from Bad Pens

I have a ziplock bag in my craft room labeled BAD PENS. 

When I come across a pen that's drying up, it goes into the bag. Then I use them to make watercolors. All you need to do is pull out the felt nib... 

... and drop it into a shallow container of water. If you can't pull out the nib, like with the yellow Crayola pen at the bottom left, just put the pen into the water. With most pens, you'll see the color start to leach out right away. That violet one, second from the left, was a highlighter. I didn't know if it would behave the same way as standard markers. (Answer: No.)

You can paint with your watercolors right away, but for full intensity wait a day or so. 

If the colors are too pale, just leave your watercolors sitting out uncovered for a day or two to allow some of the water to evaporate. This will concentrate the color. Happy painting!

Clear Acrylic Stamps

I don't do a ton of stamping, but when I do, I almost always reach for my clear acrylic stamps. Most hard-core stampers prefer deeply-etched rubber over acrylic. Rubber stamps produce a crisper, cleaner image. But my priority is seeing exactly where the image will end up, and for that you can't beat clear acrylic. 

One of my favorite things to do with clear acrylic stamps is to use Versamark ink to create a tone-on-tone background image on a plain sheet of patterned paper. It adds a little bit of visual interest without being too bold. 

 

Notice what I'm using to stamp? It's a saucer for a potted plant. There's no need to spend money on acrylic blocks. You can use pretty much anything that's clear and has a flat base. In addition to the saucer, I've used a Pyrex baking dish, a CD case, and rigid plastic packaging. This saucer is my favorite though, because it's easy to hold while still keeping my fingers out of the way. It's lightweight and I can store it in the craft room (vs. the Pyrex that lives in the kitchen). 

I'll share my completed layout next week, after I've given it to the Birthday Girl. 

DIY Sprinkles

Here's a quick tip for those of you who do a lot of holiday cookie baking or candy making. Perhaps you occasionally buy these?

They usually cost $3-4, which means that if you want a full set of the basic colors, you're spending at least $25.  And when you run out of orange/black during a Halloween baking session or green/red while the Christmas cookies are iced and ready, you're stuck running to the store.  Not if you make your own!  All you need is regular sugar, ziplock bags, a toothpick and food color.   

I've had these Wilton Icing Colors for years.  The package of 8 costs about $10 (or about $6 with a 40% off coupon).  There is enough color to last for many years.  Not only do they color frosting, but they are great for making your own colored sugars.

 

It's so easy.  Put some sugar in a ziplock bag.  Poke a toothpick into the color and rub a teeny bit of color onto the inside of the ziplock bag.  Close the bag and massage the sugar until the color is evenly distributed.  You can always add more color if it's too light or more sugar if it's too dark.

 

Here's what my orange sugar looked like halfway through the mixing step.  

Here's my finished orange sugar.

I will never buy colored sugar again when making my own is cheaper and so easy!

Playing with Paint

Here's the second layout I made for Nancy's family. The pictures are from their May 2011 trip to Moab, Utah.  

I wanted the design to be stark, much like the landscape in the photos. I love the way the red rocks look against the blue sky, so I chose that for my color palette. I poured some Americana 'Georgia Clay' acrylic paint into my Frisbee. Then I got out the old toothbrush I keep in the craftroom.

I dipped the toothbrush into the paint, then ran my thumb across the bristles to splatter paint onto plain tan paper. I let a few accent drips fall, then used the toothbrush to paint the chipboard title and date stickers. What fun to play with paint! 

My Punch Organizers

Over the years, I have amassed quite a few punches.  Not so many that I forget what I have, but it's getting close.  I decided it was time to create an organizer.

I started by dividing all my punches into two piles: border punches in one pile and everything else in the other.  I got out a scrap of black cardstock and punched a sample from every border punch.  I used white cardstock to create a card for each punch, then attached each sample to one and wrote the name above it.  I used my Crop-a-dile to punch a hole in the corner of each card.  

I wanted to be able to quickly find each punch, so color-coding was the next step.  I got out my cardstock scraps and punched circles to match each border punch.  Here's what the back the cards look like:

I added a ring, then tied an orange ribbon to the ring, indicating that every punch on the ring is Fiskars brand.  If I happened to own any other brand of border punches (which I don't), I would have made a separate ring for each brand and added an appropriate ribbon.

 

I did the same thing for my miscellaneous punches.  I have two rings of those, one for my Fiskars punches (in the picture below), another for the rest (mostly Marvy Uchida).  

 

I love my new organizers!  It's great to have a visual reminder of what I own, plus I love having the names of the punches all in one place.  

Another First

Earlier this year, I scrapped Trevor doing his first homework assignment.  I just finished scrapping another fun 'first' - Trevor's first bike ride.  We surprised him with a bike on his 5th birthday.  He was absolutely thrilled.  I got my first bike on my 5th birthday and I remember it vividly.  Here's Trevor on his first bike ride:

Check out the letters in the title.  All but one of them are from the same sticker sheet (BasicGrey 'Cupcake').  Can you tell which letter is from a different line?

It's the T.  It's from BasicGrey 'Oh Baby Boy.'  It was a similar color, but definitely not close enough.  You can see it here:

Awhile back, I posted six suggestions of what to do if you're missing one letter from the perfect title.  Now I can add one more solution to the list.  I used chalks to match the color of the T to the letters around it.  It worked perfectly!

Photo Titles

When our family went to Legoland recently, Trevor and I posed in front of the entrance sign, like just about everyone else does. 

I printed 12 of our photos from the day, including this one, to use for my 2-page layout.  When I started arranging the pictures on the page, I realized that the Legoland sign in my photo was large and bold enough to serve as my title.  I grouped some colorful accents both above and to the left of the photo to draw the eye.  I added a third color grouping by my journaling.  It forms a visual triangle that leads right back to the title.  I think it works.

To contrast, let me show you a layout with a photo used as a title that doesn't work.  This is from our cruise to Hawaii three years ago.  Look closely in the middle left where I'm using a photo of a Hawaii sign as my title. 

This layout does not work for a number of reasons.  The title recedes into the background because it is not large or bold enough.  My fussy cut flower accents form a visual triangle, but that triangle doesn't center on the title.  There is nothing to lead the eye to the appropriate location.  This is a case where I knew I was creating a layout that didn't work, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it and finally just gave up.  Now in hindsight, it's so obvious to me why it didn't work!

Using a photo as a title can work well in a multi-picture layout.  Just be sure that the title is large and bold enough, then use your embellishments to lead the eye to the title.  Have you used a photo as a title?  I'd love to see what you made!

Make it Work!

Back in January, I made a layout with pictures I took at 1:11:11 on 1-11-11.  Of course, I couldn't resist taking pictures at 11:11:11 on 11-11-11!  Because it was Veteran's Day, Trevor was home from school.  We were leaving for Disneyland the next morning, so I was busy packing while Trevor was getting started on the work from his Independent Study.  I made sure the camera was nearby and set a timer so that I wouldn't miss 11:11.  I love this quick little glance at our life when the date and time was nothing but ones.

This layout is based on this sketch by Lead Fiskateer Rebecca.

The sketch was quite simple, which worked well because I wanted a casual, effortless look for this layout.  I decided to stamp the title, starting with a 1 and leaving spaces for the dashes and colons.  Only problem- I went through every single stamp I own and not a single dash or colon.  Definitely a 'make it work' moment.  The dash was easy- I found a smaller alphabet and turned an "i" on its side.  I didn't have a single stamp that would function as a colon.  I finally thought of something- I used my Crop-a-Dile to punch two tiny holes next to each other, then stenciled the colons. 

 

 I had another 'make it work' moment when it came to the banner.  Here's how it looked originally:

The "Old School Notebook" message seems really weird to me and not at all what I wanted on my page.  But there wasn't a good way to cut off just the alphabet that I wanted.  So I ended up using a pen to color the entire top brown, then laid a thin strip of the brown patterned paper over the center to cover the words.  The scan doesn't show it well, but I stamped some detail stitching on the brown. 

11:11:11 at 11-11-11 captured!

Wax-resist vs. Enamel Accents - Snowman Gift Tags

This post contains affiliate links. 

Last week I shared my Snowman Gift Tags. As you'll recall, I used black Enamel Accents for the face (a success) and initially used white Enamel Accents on the hats (definite failure). For the final product, I switched to Decorative Snow for the hats.

This led me thinking- how can I use white Enamel Accents? How about as snow? Worth a try!  

I took a plain white tag and put little dots of white Enamel Accents all over it, then set it aside to dry. Once the tag was dry, I rubbed blue ink over the top, then used sandpaper to reveal the white dots. Cute! I hand-cut an itty-bitty snow drift and snowman and glued them on. The finished tag:

I love everything about it except for the long drying time. I thought I might be able to achieve the same look using wax resist, which would have no drying time. I took a white crayon and put little dots all over a plain white tag. I covered it with blue ink and then scratched off the wax to reveal the white snow. I cut out another snowman and added it to the tag. Here's the wax-resist version:

Still cute, but not nearly as nice as the Enamel Accents. The 'snow' is quite irregular and I missed a bunch of spots.  While it was easy to see the little dots of Enamel Accents while I was working, it was very difficult to see where I'd dotted the crayon. And it was impossible to make consistently round dots.
 
If I were in a hurry, I'd definitely use the crayon version, but I think the Enamel Accents is the winner!

Photographing Cards

I have a lot to learn about photography.  While I feel like I know how to compose a good photo, I know very little about how to translate my vision to a well-taken photograph.  I've read quite a bit about the basics and have done a lot of experimenting with the manual mode of my little point-and-shoot, but I'm just barely learning how much there is I don't know.

I usually scan my layouts, but I prefer to photograph cards.  Since I often use dimensional elements on cards (and almost never do on layouts), a photograph is a better way of showing off a card.  Except my pictures always looked flat and distorted.  I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. 

So I finally asked my husband for help.  Steve is a very knowledgeable photographer and immediately identified my main problem.  After putting the card in the light tent, I was standing very close and using the macro setting, which led to distortion.  He told me to back way up and use the zoom.  The difference was immediately apparent.  This photo won't win any awards for Excellence in Card Photography, but it's one of the better pictures I've taken of a card, especially considering that it was taken on a dark, rainy day:

I showed Steve a few blogs I follow that have excellent card photography.  He noticed something they had in common and gave me another suggestion.  Look closely at the back of this card:

See the way the back is ever-so-slightly elevated?  A lot of the best pictures had that in common.  Steve had an idea to test.  Here's a side view.  Propping the card up on a very thin Lego both keeps it stable and creates dimension in the photograph. 

Two little changes and already my card photography is improved.

Another Use for Foam Dots

When I make cards, I frequently use foam dots (affiliate link) to pop up an element on the card. Here's one of many sheets of dots that live in my adhesives basket.  

Years ago, I used to throw out the sheet when I used up all the dots. Then I realized I should save the unused parts to cut apart to make pop-up strips for larger items. Now I've discovered another purpose for used-up sheets of foam dots.

They make a perfect template for rows of Stickles!  Here's a card I made using that technique. Check out the perfectly even dots of Stickles on the background cardstock.

"A friend is a treasure more precious than gold." Happy 30th birthday Courteney!

Expect to see many more dotted Stickles backgrounds from me in the future!

Chipboard Photo Templates

Here is the layout of our family celebrating my 39th birthday.  We went roller skating at a rink near my hometown that I frequented as a teenager.  (What a fun blast from the past!  The place hadn't changed a bit.)  I took a ton of pictures, but there might be no worse place on earth to try to get decent photos than at a roller rink.  I ended up printing the eight best photos, but as you can see, I only used four of them.

Sometimes, I print just the right number of photos because I know exactly where I'm going to put each one and what the finished layout will look like.  In this case, I didn't.  So I pulled out these:

Years ago, I cut down some sheets of chipboard to make a set of templates.  Each is cut to a common photo size, then labeled with its dimensions.  There are multiples of each size.  I can't tell you the number of times I've used them.  They are so handy!

When I'm stuck on a layout, I pull out one template for each of my photos (in this case, eight 4x6's- five vertical and three horizontal) and start playing with them.  As I move them around on a piece of white cardstock, I look for a pleasing arrangement.  If I decide I might be cropping one or more photos, I swap out the template for a different size to see how that will look.  This lets me make design decisions before I ever cut a photo. 

Once I like a layout, I grab some random chipboard letters to plan where my title will go.  In this case, I knew my title would be really short ("39"), so I just put a few letters down as a place holder. 

At this point, I knew exactly what my layout would look like.  I was able to grab patterned paper, a punch, a few stickers, and a journaling pen and the whole thing came together very quickly.  Which is always very satisfying.

Scrapping Out of Order

I do not scrap in chronological order.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read my blog before.  In the past few weeks, I've posted the following layouts in this order: our anniversary (May), a trip to San Jose (June), Trevor at preschool (Sept-April), preschool graduation (May), adopting Trouble (June), a pumpkin patch visit (October), and Trevor's birthday (June).  That's not just the order in which I posted them- it's the order in which I completed them.

Even though I don't scrap in order, I always put the pages in chronological order in the scrapbook.  Here's the system that works for me: I order a stack of prints every 2 or 3 months, sort through them to figure out how many layouts I'll be making, then put post-it flags on my page protectors to show where each page will go.  The top of the album looks like this:

Once all the pages are tagged, I start scrapping, beginning with whatever photos I feel like working on.  When I finish a page, I slide it into the marked spot in the album and remove the post-it note.  Here's the spot where yesterday's layout about Trevor's birthday party will go:

Occasionally I misjudge how many pages I'll be making, but it's very rare.  When that happens, I just move the layouts and post-it notes to make room for the unexpected layout.

Do you scrap chronologically?  If not, do you put the layouts into albums chronologically or in the order in which you finish them?  What system works for you?

Dealing with a Missing Letter

Is there anything more frustrating than planning a title, pulling out the perfect chipboard letters or alphabet stickers and being short one little letter?  I hate that!  Of course, there are many ways around the problem.  Here are some of the solutions I use the most often.

Trim letters:  In just about any font, u and n can substitute for each other.  M and W are natural substitutions, as are b, d, p, and q.  With a little snip, it's easy to make the letter c from an a, b, d, e, g, o, p, or q.  The letter t can become an f.  In this layout, the u is an upside-down n and the lowercase y is actually an uppercase X.

Stamp the missing letters:  If I can't spell all the words of a multi-word title, I stamp the words with the missing letters. 

Mix fonts or colors:  On a whimsical page, I'll mix fonts and/or colors in the title words.  Here I used a variety of colors in similar fonts to echo the colors of the party.  (Also, notice that the two p's aren't quite the same.  The 2nd is an inverted d.)

Trace the letters:  If I'm short a letter because my title uses that letter more than once, I trace the chipboard.  In this example, I had an e, g, and s, but not a second g.  I traced the letters for a uniform title and can now use the chipboard letters on a future project.

Use the negative:  I never throw out the negatives from an alphabet set.  They can be used as stencils or to fill in for a missing letter.  They work especially well as the first letter in a title.

Use a button, flower or themed shape for the missing letter: Here I had all the letters except an o.  Because it hit 100° during the trip, a sun was a natural stand-in for the missing letter.

What other tricks do you use to deal with a missing letter?  Please share your tips!

Ever wonder if rub-ons work on Shrinky Dinks?

Me too.  So I decided to try it.

I put rub-ons from two manufacturers (Making Memories and Cosmo Cricket) on shrink plastic from two manufacturers (Grafix and OTC).  I made sure the rub-ons were thoroughly adhered to the shrink plastic and had no flaws, then followed the manufacturers' instructions for proper shrinking.

Here are a few of the pieces I made:
  

I was expecting quite a bit of ripping and distortion.  Indeed, some of the rub-ons did rip and/or distort, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was minimal.  In both cases the words look pretty good.  There didn't seem to be any difference between manufacturers; instead, the heat of the oven (and thus the rate and direction of shrinking) seemed to be what caused the variation.  It was also crucial that the rub-on was applied thoroughly.  If there was even a tiny bit that wasn't burnished properly, that area ripped. 

This was an interesting experiment.  I don't know that I'd try it again.  It would make a lot more sense to apply a full-size rub-on to an already-shrunk tag or charm.  But if I needed to make an existing rub-on smaller, this is the way to do it. 

My Big News

There's a lot of waiting in the scrapbook industry.  See cool product at CHA, wait before it's actually in stores.  Make an awesome layout for a Design Team, wait to post it until it runs elsewhere.  Accept an exciting new opportunity, wait to tell the world....

I can finally announce that I am the newest Contributing Artist at Ideas for Scrapbookers!  I am really excited about this opportunity and already love working with Pam and the rest of the artists there.  You can read my introductory post here.

Below I've shared my first official post:

Time and Date Dot Com

Have you ever been to timeanddate.com?  It's an extremely handy website if you need to do a time zone conversion, look up sunrise/sunset times, or find out when Daylight Savings Time starts or ends.  It's also incredibly useful in scrapbooking.

Here's how.  Imagine you have an awesome picture of yourself with your child.  You'd like to do a heartfelt layout about how much motherhood has changed you, how your life is so much richer since the day he was born, how you can't imagine life without him.  Simply enter the date of your child's birth and the date the photo was taken into the Date-to-Date Calculator.  It will tell you how many years, months, days, hours, minutes, or seconds have elapsed.  

This layout is about the best 1,795 days of my life.

I encourage all of you to play around with the Date-to-Date Calculator.  There are so many possibilities just waiting to be scrapped!

I Love My Centering Ruler

I'm not a big fan of measuring.  I avoid it whenever possible, relying on the eyeballing method instead.  When I need or want something to be more precise, I use my Centering Ruler. 

I love it.  It is so quick and easy to use.  Simply put the zero near the center of your project, then make small adjustments until the edges are both the same distance from the zero.  No real measuring, no making marks, no stress if the item is a nonstandard size.

Here's the finished card.  The sentiment is perfectly centered.