With the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day quickly approaching (April 22^nd), I thought I would share some ideas on how to make eco-friendly scrapbook layouts. You can use eco-friendly craft products, such as post-consumer recycled paper, to make your scrapbook layouts. You can also reuse household waste in your green scrapbook layouts and save money on materials.

Of course, one of the greenest ways to engage in scrapbooking these days is with digital scrapbooking. We were very impressed with Serif’s Digital Scrapbook Artist.  With digital scrapbooking, you eliminate product packaging and transportation, even if you do eventually print your scrapbook pages. (I would highly recommend sharing scrapbook pages with family and friends online!)

General Tips for Eco-Friendly Scrapbook Layouts

• Purchase durable scrapbooking tools and products. Repair broken tools instead of buying new.
• Buy local whenever possible. You’ll support your community and reduce fuel consumption in transportation. Attend local craft fairs to find scrapbook products.
• When purchasing any new products for scrapbook layouts, separate the recycles and non-recyclables. See if you can use the non-recyclables, such as plastic sheets, for creative projects. Whenever possible, try to purchase products with eco-friendly packaging.
• Save every scrap of paper for future scrapbook layouts. You can turn paper scraps into homemade sheets of paper or use for a variety of other uses in scrapbooking.
• Use freecycle to find scrapbooking products and tools that others don’t want anymore. You can also use craigslist barter to swap scrapbooking materials.
• Instead of tossing, donate unwanted scrapbooking materials to local schools, senior centers or scout troops.

Eco-Friendly Paper for Scrapbook Layouts

• Paper Bags- You can use plain, brown grocery bags as the base for a number of scrapbook layouts. Cut out shapes, paint, stamp or even burn the brown bags for a variety of effects.  
• Cereal Boxes- Cereal boxes are a perfect weight for heavy cardstock or to make chipboard shapes. Paint the background or let the fun shapes and bright colors show in your scrapbook layouts.
• Corrugated Cardboard- You can use corrugated cardboard for the covers of scrapbook albums or sturdy scrapbook paper. Paint or color the indentations for a fun, striped look.
• Junk Mail- You can make your own paper at home with junk mail. You will need fine screening and a few other materials, but the process is pretty easy.
• Paper Trunk- This scrapbook company offers recycled cardstock and packaging.
• Jillibean Soup- This scrapbook company prints on kraft paper, made from 100% recycled stock.
• K &Company Lotus Collection/ReMake Collection- These two scrapbook collections are printed with soy-based inks on recycled paper. The packaging is made with recycled and reusable materials.

Eco-Friendly Embellishments for Scrapbook Layouts

• Plastic packaging- Use the plastic packaging from scrapbook materials or kitchen goods to make clear windows in your scrapbook layouts.
• Puzzle Pieces- When you lose a few pieces from a puzzle, use the remaining pieces for your scrapbook layouts.
• Soda Cans- Colorful aluminum soda cans are a great material for scrapbook layouts. You will need sharp scissors and a piece of sandpaper to remove any burrs. You can also emboss the metal with a pointed tool.
• Stamps- Try making your own rubber stamps at home or make simple stamps with recycled materials such as old sponges or foam plates.
• Creatively Green- This craft company offers a variety of green materials for scrapbook layouts, including 100% recycled cardstock, eco-friendly felt flowers, wood embellishments and ribbon made from junk mail.
• Die Cuts with a View (DCWV)- This company offers chipboard shapes and letters made from 70% post-consumer recycled paper.

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Eco-Friendly Scrapbook Layouts

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Happy New Year, Crafters!

One of the best ways to celebrate the New Year is to look back on the past, and then also look forward to the future. By reflecting on the past, you can see how far you’ve come. But it’s also important to look toward the potential that the future holds! New Year crafts often commemorate both of these ideas, whether in a card or other craft. New Year crafts are a fun family activity, as well as a meaningful individual project that will help keep you in line with your goals and accomplishments.

One of my favorite New Year crafts is a family photo project. Every year on New Year’s Day, my cousin takes headshots of everyone in the family and puts them in a thick photo album she bought back in 2000. She used to take polaroids, but the film has since become rather obselete – so we’ve gone digital. She places the photos in the album, and asks a question to go along with it. In years past, she’s asked: What are your top three movies, musicians and foods; If you could rule the world, what would you change?; What is your favorite things about New Year? We’ve even had the task of writing a New Year haiku!

As the years have gone by, we have nearly a decade of photos of the entire family – along with personal, often goofy, thoughts from each person. The great thing about this album is that we’re literally able to see how we’ve grown physically and mentally. And as the family grows, people get married, and so the photo collection grows. It’s really been a blessing to have this photo album in our family.

A similar craft to my family’s photo album project is a scrapbook page. Scrapbook’s can be time consuming to make, but it’s nice to be able to look back on a period of your life with memories, photos and captions. Make a simple scrapbook page for yourself or a family member. A fresh take on a scrapbook page is to give a scrapbook card. The same idea as a scrapbook page, folded into quarters with photos on the inside!

Materials:

• Patterned Paper
• Cardstock
• Ribbon
• Doilies
• Stickers
• Glue
• Photos

Steps:

1. Make a standard card with patterned paper and cardstock.
2. Glue doily and desired embellishments to the card – in the corner or center.
3. Glue photo to the inside of the card – putting caption that describes the scene.
4. If desired, use sticker letters, or stencil letters to write caption.
5. Tie ribbon around the card and give as a New Year gift.

If you like this project, Check out this New Year Scrapbook Page craft and Christmas Cover Story card craft.

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

How To: Happy New Year Cards and Crafts

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The Christmas season is always a tough one for me. We know it’s coming and we count down the days, yet every year it surprises me and I am never prepared for it. With the economy slowly coming back, it’s still tough to spend a lot of money especially for those with large families like me. This year, my budget is very tight and therefore I have resulted in making some homemade gifts. You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on such extravagant gifts, but now you can have a low budget and still create something beautiful, after all, it’s the thought that counts, right?

The women in my immediate family are my three older sisters and my mom. I know them well and I know their personalities. Unique gifts for women can be far and few in between if you don’t quite know what they’re into. Luckily, I have a few ideas that may help you out.

If there is a woman in your life who likes to drink in social situations or even collect beautiful glasses then a great gift for her can be a wine goblet. All you have to do is buy a wine goblet of any size and any shape, whatever you wish. Get some paints and go at it. My favorite goblets are ones that my mom and I both have. They have ladies painted on them. Using fun paints, like a pink color you can paint a skirt and add some yellow for some blond hair. The most fun part about this kind of goblet is the stem. You can paint it whatever color you wish, draw a vertical line down the center and it becomes her legs. You can then paint a pair of shoes on the base part of the glass. I love it! The painted nutcracker goblet is somewhat of an example. He has blue pants. Use your imagination and creativity. Your woman friend will love it!

Some other great and unique gifts for women are the more sentimental ones like a scrapbook, a calendar or a photo frame. These are all pretty similar in the way you make them. For all of them you can collect as many or as little photographs as you want. My suggestion for the calendar is at least 12 photos, one for each month, but the more you have the more fun it is. To make a scrapbook, you can really go old style and use construction paper for your pages. Glue your photos on the pages; however you wish to arrange them. I personally have the fun scissors with the designed edges; it makes for a pretty borderline for the photo. After gluing is all done you can take markers, glitter, stickers and fun embellishments to make the pages look how you want. Once this is all done you can use a hole puncher, make three holes along the side of the scrapbook and then tie all the pages together. If you want something more sturdy you can always put the scrapbook in a folder of some sort.

As for the calendar, just glue whichever photos you wish on any month. I like to go in chronological order and use Christmas photos for the winter season and vacationing for the summer months. Again, you can use stickers and embellishments of your liking.

For a photo frame, you can buy a wooden frame, any size. Buy some wooden letters to glue on top of the frame. Plan accordingly so you can spell something out like sister or best friend. You can then paint the actual frame and the letters then glue the letters on. Add some glitter and some glam, put the photo inside and you’re done. Add a personal note on the back so they’ll always remember who it’s from.

Some other Christmas gifts for women:

Crochet Winter Gear
Wall Decor
Felt Needle Book

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

How to: Make Unique Christmas Gifts for Women

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The question may have been asked of you at some point, “If you had to pack up your life into one small suitcase, what would you bring with you?” A popular response may be, “photographs of my family, heirloom jewelry, my favorite sweater or the family recipe book.” It’s often the things that have the most nostalgic weight that we’d make sure to grab if the house was on fire, because material things can always be replaced, but tangible things that remind us of a special memory cannot.

So this got me thinking about how special my journal is to me. Sometimes I go back and read through it to see what I was up to 2 years ago, going through different life transitions, some good and some bad. It can make you think “Wow, if I would’ve known then what I know now…” or “That was truly an amazing adventure…” It’s a special thing to reread passages from the life you’ve lived, because even though we remember big moments in our lives, we may not remember how it felt or the thoughts that were going through our heads at the time it was happening. It’s the written memores that remain special to me.

More recently, I’ve started a new type of journal, one that I write small notes in, but not the typical long entries about life lessons and the like. I call it an Inspiration Journal because it contains snippets of things that inspire me, things that I enjoy, would like to become, or simply things that I think are pretty. One evening I took a pair of scissors to a bridal magazine and began cutting out all the pretty pictures that would encapsulate my Big Day in a perfect way; I’ll use it as a reference tool when I begin planning my wedding. I’ve included small fortunes from fortune cookies that have sayings that are either funny or sweet, because I know I’ll never remember it on my own. As well, I’ve added great advice I’ve received from friends or relatives. The point of the Inspiration Journal is to be able to look through it and recognize yourself by your sense of style, sense of spirituality and aspirations of a particular moment of your life.

Some people create Vision Boards that illustrate a vision for the future and give them goals to strive for. An Inspiration Journal can use some of those same ideas by creating goals for yourself, but it can also be a broader and more inclusive vision of inspiration and positive thoughts.

Materials Needed:

• Blank Journal – I recommend a thick one with a spiral binding so it is easy to open and paste things into.
• Scissors
• Magazines
• Tape
• Newspapers – Even go to the library and print off copies of old newspapers that they have on file. For example, check out the front page of your city’s newspaper on the day you were born!
• Holiday and Birthday cards from friends and relatives that you’ve saved.
• Love letters, you know you still have a few!
• Anything else you see fit

Set aside time to go through your favorite magazines and clippings to find things that inspire you. Much of the time, I’ll see something on a whim and just add it to my Inspiration Journal – hear a quote, a song lyric or see a beautiful flower. The possibilities are all part of your own adventure, and the finished product will be a true treasure!

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

How to Create an Inspiration Journal

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By: Jennifer Barlow for DivineCaroline.com

It may surprise you that a fun, personal hobby, like Digital Scrapbooking, could actually help strengthen your career, but I know from first-hand experience that it can!

Consider it for a second. Do you have a career where you EVER make any type of flyers, handouts, or work with digital photos? If so, you most certainly could benefit at the workplace by becoming a Digital Scrapbooker!

I can actually vouch for this theory, as I have experienced it to be true first-hand at my 9-5 job. I started within a customer service role: answering phones, filing, faxing, and placing orders; but I wasn’t very happy. I was good at what I did, but I wasn’t passionate about it at all. I wanted to stand out and be a little more creative at my workplace. I decided to take the turn towards that creative path when, one day, I was instructed to outsource the project of completing our product’s visual pricelists. These pricelists were a basic list of thumbnail pictures of all the items we sold and their prices listed beneath. It seemed like a simple project within PowerPoint, but we were honestly paying “an arm and leg” for this outsourced company to complete it for us! I decided at that moment that I would just give the project a shot and just do it myself. Thankfully, it was a success, and my boss was ecstatic!

My boss began asking me to take on new challenges and create even more, but things became way too complicated for PowerPoint. Because I was familiar with Digital Scrapbooking and Photoshop Elements, I knew we needed to get Elements to complete the projects he wanted me to do. Elements was only $100 and would save a lot of money in the long run by doing these projects in-house, rather than outsourcing … so the office invested in Photoshop Elements!

I was then in charge of not only making our product’s order forms, but flyers, handouts, and eventually, even our company catalogs! I began using my knowledge from Digital Scrapbooking to resize and fix product photos to email at Web-quality to retailers and customers, and increased the resolution to print-quality for our Press Contacts. Because I was familiar with Photoshop Elements and because I understood Digital Scrapbooking, I was able to lighten/darken photos, correct image blemishes, color-correct, add detail like text (with our contact number and address), and insert our logos onto images to create “branding.” I helped create tradeshow collage posters and was able to design and create professional hand outs because I was familiar with layers and layouts as an avid Digital Scrapbooker! It was truly incredible!

Finish reading the entire article at DivineCaroline.com!

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Guest Blog: A Crafting Hobby That Might Score You a Raise at Work

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We celebrated my aunt’s 65th birthday in true Hawaiian style this weekend. She’s a member of a local ukelele club, so the theme was fitting. The party-planners had purchased leis for everyone to wear at the party, and many decorations that laced the indoor and outdoor areas. Luaus are popular summer party themes, whether or not you have any Hawaiian heritage – they’re fun and inexpensive! I wish there was more DIY Hawaiian decor out there – any recommendations?

We had used these invitations for the party, to get the word out that this was a Hawaiian luau! The stamps we used were a bit different, but the local craftstore always has something reminiscent of this theme, so don’t worry about that!

The party was a big hit – it was a surprise – and she was definitely surprised! The scorching weekend heat made us feel more like we were on the islands, except there wasn’t a body of water nearby to give us some cool relief. To document all the fun we had, I found these scrapbook pages from Etsy that will make great backgrounds for all the pictures we took!

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Homemade Hawaiian Luau

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For every year that I was in college, my mom created a themed scrapbook encompassing that year. She put in the time to create beautiful keepsakes full of photos, my writing and of course – my personal favorite – 3-dimensional stickers. I have kept them all and love flipping back through and thinking about the great memories. My mom wasn’t always a scrapbook master (though she would probably disagree). It can be overwhelming to stare down a table full of photos, papers, scissors, stickers, borders and scraps and have any idea how to organize it. For that reason, FaveCrafts has put together some great scrapbooking tutorials and tip sheets courtesy of our crafting expert Maria Nerius. So whether you’re scrapbooking for the first time, or you’re on your 48th scrapbook looking for a fresh idea, be sure to check out our tips and techniques page.

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Scrapbooking Tips

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We weren’t kidding, Jennifer Priest really is scrapbook royalty! She has her own adorable blog, which you can check out here, and she also works for Scrapbook Royalty, a crafty charitable organization that we LOVE here at FaveCrafts. Here are a few of Jennifers creative DIY Father’s Day gift ideas for you last minute folks.

Father’s Day Mini Book

A great way to celebrate Dad and what he means in our lives is to create a mini book about just that. I collected quotes I found online that pertain to my children’s experience with their dad, my husband. Then I gathered photos that represented those things in my children’s lives. I used scraps of fabric that my husband liked as well as an old pair of his jeans that I cut into accents to use in the book. I taught this book as a sold out Prima Certified class at two local scrapbook stores in southern California. You can download a PDF of the quotes here.

Materials:

• Chipboard – Kelly Paper
• O-Wires – Zutter
• Paint – Making Memories
• Fabric – Joann’s, Heidi Grace, Ralph Lauren Jeans (cut up)
• Flowers, Gems, Stamps, Stars, Paper – Prima
• Ink – Ranger, Colorbox, Stampin’ Up!
• Cardstock- Bazzill, The Paper Company
• Book Plates, Brads, Photo Turns – Stampin’ Up!

Homemade Treat Can

I recently purchased some nut medleys packaged in brown cardboard tubes from Starbuck’s. My family already ate all of the goodies inside but I loved the shape and color of the sturdy tubes. You can “recycle” almost any packaging into something new. Fill Starbuck’s Frappucino jars, Prima flower bottles, and other packaging with candies or treats from your local grocery’s bulk candy and nut selection. My husband loves mixed nuts so I plan to fill this tube with a variety of flavored mixed nuts from our local market.

This makes a great gift for any occasion, especially Father’s Day for a little extra treat. Save the leftover can as a decoration or desk organizer!

For the full project, click here.

Check out FaveCrafts.com for more fun Father’s Day craft ideas.

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Father’s Day Ideas from “Scrapbook Royalty”

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Water balloons, juicy fruit, camping trips and a hot shiny sun remind me of Summertime. All these sweet things come with that hot weather that I love so much. That time is quickly approaching. Summer will be here before we know it and I am so ready for it! I always have my camera on me because I know good times are happening. Pictures are my memory, without them I don’t know what I’d do. I love to make scrapbooks out of all my pictures too. For those summer days you should make a Summer Watermelon Scrapbook page.

You can add whatever pictures you’d like and the page itself will remind you of all the good times you had. I love eating watermelon on those hot humid days, so with the backdrop of your page it’ll be sure to remind you. Another cute idea for your summer scrapbook could be the Sunflowers layout. Again, with the brightly colored flowers it’ll just put a smile on your face. Create your scrapbook page to perfection. Remember those sweet summer days and re-live them!

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Remember Those Sweet Summer Days

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So my fiance and I are looking at getting our first home together. We haven’t gone to any open houses yet, but we’ve been looking online. Our friend has his own house and is re-doing his bathrooms. So we went into Home Depot the other day and came across the paint area. Of course I look at the swatches and ask my fiance what color he wants certain rooms in the house we don’t have. haha. Looking online I found this amazingly cute craft. I never would have thought in a million years to use paint swatches for projects. Once you take them from the store you eventually throw them out, but my gosh are these great ideas! You can use them for Valentine’s Day cards, business card holders or even notebooks. I just can’t get over that someone thought of something like this. It makes me want to just go to the store, pick some up and make a craft.

Another cute craft I never would have thought of myself are little bell decorations. You can create a wedding decoration, something for an anniversary or find another creative way you can use it. If anyone has any other cute crafts like these let me know! I love stuff like this! These cute decorations for Valentine’s Day would also go with great cookies for you Valentine.

This is a post from: FaveCraftsBlog

Paint Swatch No Longer for Painting

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