Super Simple, Yet Thoughtful Gift Ideas....

Hello everybody, Happy New Years Eve!!!! Can you believe that this is the last day of 2013?!?!?!?! Honestly, I will not be sad to leave this year behind. While I have learned and accomplished quite a bit this year, this has been a year of hard trials, both for myself and ones very dear to me. But anyhow, to a brighter topic, today I thought that I would share a gift set that I made for one of my three new sister-in-laws for Christmas. She is an English teacher and her favorite color is blue, so I thought that I would whip her up a nice, coordinating desk set.

For the Post-It note holder, I simply used a clear, acrylic frame from Dollar Tree and decorated it with a 6x6 paper pad from My Mind's Eye, some small white Basic Grey letter stickers, a blue Prima flower and a Post-It note stack.

 

 For the magnetic notepad, I took some basic tan cardstock and layered some patterned papers to add some interest behind the blue paper pad, which I picked up from Dollar Tree as well. (Side note: Dollar Tree is a great resources for picking up base materials for projects, like mini notebooks, notepads, photo frames, etc.) I used some letter stickers I got in the dollar aisle at Target and some gold pearls from Q&Co. The pen is a gel pen from a Fiskars jumbo pack. 

To attach the pen, I took a 1/16 whole punch and punches a little hole in the top left corner of the cardstock and then looped some twine through the hole and then hooked the pen cap through the twine. I used a hard core magnetic strip that I cut off from a large roll I picked up at Ace Hardware a couple of years ago. I do usually have to put some hot glue behind the magnet to get it to stick permanently to the back of the cardstock, but once the hot glue hardens, it does not come off.

 

I also whipped up a mini notebook with patterned papers from the same My Mind's Eye 6x6 paper pad, used some small white glitter Thickers from American Crafts and some ribbon from my stash (I believe the ribbon was originally wrapped around a pack of washcloths I picked up at TJMaxx a couple of years ago. The scalloped circle was punched out with a Fiskars punch.

While I did make this as a gift set for a Christmas gift, it could easily be replicated for a gift for just about any occasion.

I hope that you all have a wonderful New Years!! See you in 2014! ;)

Bad, Bad Blogger....

I have just been the worst blogger ever this summer!  But, fear not, I shall be sharing some pictures today of some scrapping I've been working on for my own albums. I am a little weird in my scrapping routine. Every 4 years or so, I get the bug and then scrap through ever piece of memorabilia I'd saved in that 4 year period of time. Well, this year I think it was working on my mom's enormous scrapping effort that had me kicked in to scrapping mode for so many months that I just couldn't kick out of it, so I started delving in to my own photos and memorabilia.

Unlike my mother's albums, which I did in 12 x 12, I did these in 8 1/2 x 11. It's just easier for me to store, and it is so much cheaper than the 12x12s. I simply get fashion binders from places like walmart and a 50 pack of page protectors. I actually get quite a bit of life out of my papers this way as well, since I end up with such large scraps that I can often get multiple layouts out of a couple of 12x12 pieces of patterned paper.

Anyhoo, I have been sharing these pictures on Facebook and I've had some interest in seeing the pictures on the blog, so I thought I would start sharing. I will only be sharing my own photos though, not those of my friends and their kiddos as I don't have their permission to share those with the whole world. :)

I will not post ALL of them today, but for the next couple of weeks I will try to share my very favorites. While some of my pictures are scrapped with all papers and embellies from a single line, most of them are a combination of all kinds of supplies, both old and new. I don't really store anything by collection, just simply go through my supplies and pull out what coordinates. I have been really using my stash up this year. I had 270 12x12 layouts from my mom's albums and I have filled up 2 entire 1 1/2 inch binders full of 8 1/2 x 11 layouts of my own!

This first picture is one of my sister and I, using recollections card stock, echo park 3x4 journaling card, thickets, letter stickers from the dollar aisle, and papers from a 2012 Echo Park collection by Allison Kreft called "Everyday Eclectic." I absolutely love this line and may have to pick up another collection pack the next time I go out of town to a place that has a Hobby Lobby!

The rest of the layouts are from Hubby and my honeymoon 5 years ago! These layouts use a combination of collections and embellishments. I really love trying to coordinate as much as I can between different lines and designers.

Hope that you are all staying cool in this crazy heat wave!