August Smashbooking SHOCK!!!

I completed a total of 4 smashbook pages this crop and was shocked to realize I have caught up to real time!!! I have finished Halloween of 2013 and have a 2-month rest before the 2014 Halloween photos can be printed on Nov 1!

I found some really lovely Anna Griffin papers that have that perfect smashbook feel to them! And got to use some more of my ephemera stash!

Here's what got done...

Smashing out Halloween in July

I had to stop and pick up my pictures at WalMart, so I was a bit late to the crop. I usually photoshop my pix and upload them to walmart.com and have them shipped to the house, but I ran out of time this month and had to do the 1-hour photo, lol. I thought my kids were busy during the school year, but summer time seems to be even busier!

Being late to the crop, I didn't get as much done as I was hoping. After I got home and got everyone to bed, I stayed up and spread my scrapbooking stuff all over the floor and cropped until I thought I was going to fall asleep on my embellishments, lol!

Happily, I completed 8 pages, a personal best record for 1 day of scrapping!!! I'm really enjoying using all the fun ephemera in this smashbook-type project (and I have quite the stash that needs to be used up, lol). The hands on, tactile experience is most enjoyable for me, although I struggle with the aspect ratio due to the fact I am so used to Photoshop where I can easily make anything smaller or larger. Digital flowers are easily made smaller, real life silk flowers are not, lol! Eventually I got everything to fit on the pages...

More smashbook entries HERE.

Smash in a flash!

This crop was fruitful! I got 5 pages done, talk about smash in a flash, wheeeee!!! I also bought myself a new goodie: the Sakura Gelly Roll 08. It's that white pen in the very bottom of the first photo, it writes white opaque ink so you can see it on dark paper (you can see that I wrote with it on the bottom of that first page).

I love opaque gel pens. I had the entire Pentel Milky collection of opaque gel pens, but they dried up so fast, and I was really disappointed to have wasted my money on them. But Sakura is one of the best names (right up there with Copics and Marvy Uchida) so I'm convinced it was worth the investment this time, however I was cautious and only purchased one instead of the entire collection, lol!

You will notice some papers from my Quote The Raven kit HERE. Also, I did some hand-written journaling on the pages after the photos were taken. More smashbook entries HERE.

Smashy and Melty? Yes Please!

Last month, at my scrapbooking crop, we talked about a technique I saw on Pinterest. I decided to give it a try at home and see how it worked. I melted pony beads to make an epoxy-looking circle embellishment to use in my smashbook.

First, I put some pony beads on parchment paper and put them into a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes.


It made some stinky smoke, but I kept on eye on it until the beads had fully melted.


They turned out really great and just the right size!


And here is my smashbook, featuring my new embellishments in the purple color! So fun!

And here's me at the crop gluing the beads into my smashbook!

A Smashing Saturday

WOO HOO! It's that time of the month again -- Girls Night Out! Ok, ok, its more like, girl's afternoon cropping, lol, but you get the point. I love the monthly get-to-gether with my girls to crop and craft and have that 'me' time (I even take myself to a new lunch place each time!). Here's a photo of me cropping my heart out, and a photo of two of the three pages I made today in my 'halloweens thru the years' smashbook...

Another reason to smash

I'm an avid pinner on pinterest HERE, and when I saw this quote, I immediately thought of scrapbooking, especially smash books...

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."

This sums up why I am a scrapbooker. I really want to remember all the little everyday things that seem 'normal' now because I know that things change, children grow, life moves forward, etc. I want to be able to look back on my life and smile at all the fun little tidbits.

Here's a DPS (double page spread) page I made from the crop today...

and here are a few of us getting our crop on, lol...

"Smashy, Smashy!" ~ Bart Simpson

As I mentioned in my last paper crafting post HERE, I've started a smash-type book. It's a fairly new product line by K&Co, but an old idea: put some glue on your pix and coordinating random stuff (like tickets or receipts or newspaper clippings), smash them into a book, and call it done -- messy yet beautiful! It's like what a scrapbook used to be back in the days before acid free adhesive and stickers.

K&Co explains that a smashbook doesn't really have any rules, but that you can create it using themes (such as I am which is 'Our Halloweens Through The Years') or you can use it to write down thoughts, make notes, keep memorabilia, record those fashion trends you love, write your top 10 priorities/goals/quotes/to dos, journal a day in your family's life, or just about anything else. Of course K&Co has come up with embellishments that are uniquely smashbook style such as washi tape, This & That stickers, date stamp wording, chevron striped banners and arrows, and much more. They have a great video to explain smashbooking and they show several of the cute embellishments HERE. (i am not affiliated in any way with K&Co!)

The point is that our everyday lives are really extraordinary and we should document them for ourselves, our family, and future generations to look back on. Holidays and Birthdays are great celebrations, and we all have pix of those things, but do you remember how much milk used to cost, your daughter's favorite blanket or what she used to say she wanted to be when she grew up, your son's favorite color when he was 5 or the time you found his dinosaurs in your shoes, that time the dog got onto the swingset, the day the cat climbed up the shower curtain and took a nap at the top of the rod, the funniest thing your significant other said this week, that new recipe you tried that became a family favorite, when _____________. (fill in the blank)

I'm using a book called "This is Not a Book" so it's not the K&Co Brand Smashbook, but its working really well thus far. I host a scrapbooking crop every month at my LSS (local scrapbook store) and this is the only chance I get to work on it due to space limitations and 2 kiddos who love stickers and scissors, lol! Thank goodness for digital or I'd rarely get any scrapping done, lol! Here are my latest smashbook pages from yesterday's crop... I'm looking for some wording to put above the photo on the left, any suggestions?

sometimes i print out my digital scrapbooking kits to use in my smashbook, click the image for more info

Hybrid or Tra-digital with a SMASH!

Like many of you, I started out as a paper crafter. When I couldn't find the papers and embellishments that I had imagined would go perfectly with my photos, I went to my graphics program and tried to make what I wanted. I would print out what I had made and use it in my scrapbook. I didn't know it back then (it was August 2000) but this was Hybrid scrapbooking, part traditional paper crafting and part digital design, also called Tra-digital.

A few days ago I decided to try a new project and it brings me back to my traditional paper crafting roots. I have started an old-school type scrapbook, with 'smash' type pages (more info on this in my next blog post HERE). The theme is our Halloweens thru the years. I just started, so this is one of the first few pages. I will share more pages as I complete them. For those of you familiar with my digital Halloween kits, you will see that I have printed out several of my papers and embellishments to use throughout this book.