Scrapbook Journaling Using My New CTMH Planner

It's so pretty, I had to have one but I don't use planners! 

You may have seen me tweet that I don't use planners but I really liked how pretty the CTMH Planner is so I thought I could use it for a journal.  I finally had time to open mine and it's perfect for a journal.  The month view will show all our special events.  I'll also jot down some regular events like Girl Scout meetings and swim lessons that I want to remember and document in my scrapbooks.

On the weekly pages there is just enough space for me to write a short journal entry.  I may not journal every day but I'll be ahead of what I do now.  Later I can match photo dates to the journal entries.

I've started by putting in family birthdays for the year, adding in scouts and swim for the next few months to the monthly calendar pages.  I wanted to use the really fine point Sharpies so I could write small but wondered if they would bleed through the page.  Warning: they do.  The lighter colors are okay but the black shows on the other side just enough to annoy me.  I tried a purple Sakura Micron and it doesn't show through but I don't have a black to compare. I might use colored pencils and keep them sharp.  Then I can use colors, no bleed through and I can erase if I need to. 

I also bought the picture my life pocket pages so I'll be able to put photos right into the monthly pages.  I'm kind of questioning if I'm going to like that part because I don't really like using mini-albums.  Clearly this is going to be a work in progress so I'll see after a couple of months whether I want to use them or not.

Happy Journaling, Karen

Card Making Video Using CTMH Kaleidoscope Paper

Hi everyone, Happy Holidays! 

I hope you're enjoying the holidays no matter what/how you celebrate.  I wish everyone a great New Year with 2016 bringing you good health and happiness. 

I really shouldn't be blogging today. I've got family from out of state arriving soon But.... I was just checking Twitter and found this great video from CTMH.  I couldn't resist sharing it.  I wish I had time right now to make a card.  I hope you enjoy the video.

This video uses several fun techniques I haven't used in awhile to make a card.  You could use any stamp set and any paper collection.  If you do want to use this one go to my CTMH web site and look for the Kaleidoscope paper kit (X7202B), the silver foil is (Z3130), and the stamp set is Diamonds Are Forever (C1629).   You can even get the paints here if you don't have any. Leave a comment and share what you make after watching this video.  I want to squeeze in some time and make one too.  I have the paper but the diamonds aren't my style so I'll look for another stamp set. The paper makes me think of spring or Easter so I'll probably make an Easter card.

Again Happy Holidays, Karen

Paper Crafters Save $$ With This Tip

Make Your Own Daubers

I admit I spend a lot of money on paper crafting. I will especially pay for good quality tools. However, I am a very thrifty person and will not spend my money on things that won't last.  Thus I only have about 6 daubers and half of those were given to me at an expo years ago. The other pack of 3, I got at a sale.  I like them but they wear out and I can't pay over $1 for something that wears out so quickly.  So I saw a blog about making your own daubers and I'm going to try this.  I searched and found several how to videos.  I picked this one and wanted to share with you. She says she can make these for under 5 cents.  In bulk, I can't find them under 65 cents!  That's worth my time.

Lightbulb moment!!!  I realized after watching several different videos that they are all using slightly different measurements.  You can make the daubers to fit your finger no matter what size finger you have.  PVC pipe comes in so many sizes.



Reasons To Make Your Own Daubers

• Less than 5 cents each vs 66 cents bought in bulk
• When they wear out you just change the sponge, don't need new pipe
• Buy the PVC in a size that fits your finger comfortably - a custom fit dauber
• Find a plumber that will give you scraps so you save even more
• Borrow the plumbers cutting tool for a bigger savings
• If you do have to buy the supplies get together with friends to share the cost

Leave me a comment and let me know if you make some of these, Karen

CTMH Planners Are On Sale

When December ends so does the sale for the new CTMH planners.  The sale is a package deal and is a great value.  Planners are very popular right now.  I don't use them but I'm very excited to try this as a journal and add my own creativity to it.  Click here for the details and then click here to order from my shopping website.

Organizing Your Scrapbooking Supplies

I do not have a scrapbooking /crafting room.  I have a closet in a guest room to use to store my supplies.  I often scrapbook in the kitchen which is on a different floor.  In addition, I scrapbook at a monthly crop once a month and try to get away for a crop weekend once a year.  While we all drool over scrapbook rooms on Pinterest for many of us this is not a reality.

Scrapbook supply organization is a definite issue for most of us.  I can't count the number of times I have reorganized.  I keep trying to find the best organization to fit my scrapbooking needs.  I need easy access (we all do) but I also need to be able to take my supplies on the go. After retiring this summer, I was able to eliminate all my  teaching supplies which were taking up large amounts of space in my home so I started yet again reorganizing my scrapbooking and crafting supplies.

I love the CTMH organizers because they have a handle and the cart that goes with them is great for crops.  However, I still spent a lot of time looking around to see what else was out on the web to get more ideas.  Here's a great article on organization mistakes that I wanted to share. (I had to remove the link to the article about 5 organizing mistakes - that website is no longer valid.)  I've made all of these myself already but if you're reorganizing maybe they'll help you.

You can also go to my collection of dreamy scrapbook rooms on Pinterest here: https://www.pinterest.com/pageswithheart/.

Leave a comment if you have any great organizing tips to share.  I'm always looking for more, Karen

Card Making With Kids

Have Fun Paper Crafting With Your Children

I found a great video on using kids art to make cards.  It reminded me of something similar that I did years ago when my son was a toddler.  I let him finger paint, then I had him make his hand prints so I would have them to keep and frame.  I used his finger paintings as mattes for his photo that I put into clear plastic ornaments which opened up like plastic Easter eggs. His grandmas all got one and we kept one.  Still one of my favorite ornaments.

This video is from Jennifer McGuire Ink check her site out.

CTMH Simply Fundamentals Bundle Last Day of Sale

Simply Fundamentals

Purchase the album bundle and you get:

• Album of your choice (D-ring or Post-bound)
• Paper Fundamentals Enchantment (1 pack)
• Fundamental Stickers Enchantment Pack (1 pack)
• Fundamental Assortment Peacock (1 pack)
• White Daisy Cardstock (3 sheets)
• Memory Protectors™ Value Pack (1 pack Side Load or 1 pack Top Load)

Experience the beautiful Simply Fundamental Scrapbooking workshop—available only during November! This workshop has been created using all the items featured in our campaign exclusive My Legacy™ album bundles, available during November for $71.80 each! When you purchase the album bundle, you will also qualify to receive a value pack of side load or top load Memory Protectors™ FREE—a savings of $19.95! Along with the album style and design of your choice, each bundle includes one Paper Fundamentals Enchantment pack, one Fundamental stickers Enchantment pack, one Peacock Fundamental assortment, and three sheets of White Daisy cardstock. You will then be set to turn these beautiful products into fabulous layouts using the new Simply Fundamental Scrapbooking workshop featuring five layouts you can make using all the supplies in your bundle.

The above is directly from the Close To My Heart Website.  Tomorrow (Nov. 30, 2015) is the last day for the bundle sale.  You can of course continue to buy the items individually after tomorrow.  I've already purchase mine.  It's a really nice bundle and would make a great gift if you have any scrapbooking friends.  The workshop directions are downloadable. 

Happy scrapbooking! Karen

Close To My Heart's Cyber Monday All Week Long Sale

I haven't found any rules that say I have to keep this a secret so here is what the consultants have been told will be on sale starting tomorrow (Monday 11/30/2015).  If you order Monday you can also still purchase the Simply Fundamentals Special package deal and the November Stamp of the Month.  I'll put up a short post on that right after this one.  If you order Tuesday through Friday you can also purchase the new Planner. (I've already posted about it.)  The new December Stamp of the Month will be available then, too.  Of course you can purchase multiple days but you must make the purchase before the Friday cut off time.  You also must choose the sale items in the special Sale section.  If you choose these items from within the regular categories they will not show the sale price is what we are being told.

I am most excited about the Artfully Sent Cricut Cartridge being on sale because it comes with a pack of cardstock ($14.50) and 3 size D stamps ($17.95 each/$53.85 total).  The extras alone are worth $68.35 and the sale price should be about $75 so you get the cartridge for less than $7!!!  I've already done a post on this sale and pinned some ideas on pinterest for you so check it out if you don't have this cartridge.

A lot of the other items would make great Christmas gifts.  Just click on my Shop tab above and it will take you to my shopping page.  Join either of the gatherings and choose your items.  Make sure you complete your purchase, it does not hold items in the shopping cart if you leave and you can't get the sale price if you wait too long.

Have fun shopping! Karen

Z3111 Base & Bling Snowflake Charm—Faux Gold

Z3112 Base & Bling Jingle Bell—Faux Gold

Z3135 Base & Bling Snowflake Charm—Faux Silver

Z3136 Base & Bling Jingle Bell—Faux Silver

Z3138 Base & Bling Red Bead Charm—Faux Gold

Z3139 Base & Bling Red Bead Charm—Faux Silver

Z3180 Picture My Life™ Going Places Scrapbooking Program

Z3147 Cut Above™ Dapper Giraffe Card Kit

Z2028 Designer Creations Short Stack Album

Z2036 Designer Creations Slate Paper Bags

Z2037 Designer Creations Lagoon Paper Bag

Z2038 Designer Creations Ruby Paper Bags

Z2039 Designer Creations Honey Paper Bags

Z2049 Designer Creations Cupcake Box

Z2050 Designer Creations Takeout Box

Z2053 Designer Creations Buttoned Bag

Z1838 5" x 7" Hinged Display Tray

Z1750 Designed Décor Display Tray

Z2006 Designed Décor Red Magnetic Chalkboard

Z2015 Designed Décor Black Shadow Box

Z2016 Designed Décor Colonial White Shadow Box

Z1833 My Creations™ Kraft Container

Z1871 My Creations™ Kraft 3-Ring Album

Z1953 My Creations™ Journaling Cards Box

Z1956 My Creations™ Hip Pics Album

Z3043 My Creations™ Black Mini Book

Z3044 My Creations™ Kraft Mini Book

Z3069 My Creations™ Mini Mix Album

Z3137 My Creations™ Pint-Sized Container

Z3168 Cricut® Artfully Sent Collection

Z1476 4 ¼" x 5 ½" White Daisy Envelopes

 Z1477 5" x 7" White Daisy Envelopes

Z1478 6" x 6" White Daisy Envelopes

Z1756 3" x 3" Colonial White Envelopes

Z1757 4 ¼" x 5 ½" Colonial White Envelopes

Z1758 5" x 7" Colonial White Envelopes

Z1759 6" x 6" Colonial White Envelopes

Z1851 Scallop Border Punch

Z1997 Triangle Border Punch

Artfully Sent Cricut Cartridge by CTMH is going on Sale!

One of the items that will be in CTMH's cyber sale is the Artfully Sent Cricut Cartridge.  Here is a copy of CTMH's flyer about this cartridge.  This cartridge comes with 3 full stamp sets that coordinate with the cartridge and some cardstock.  Go to my shopping page, join as a customer, sign up for the newsletter so you'll get news about the sale, and check out the details for this and any other product you're interested in.  You'll probably find some great ideas for gifts to make.

There will be about 40 items at 25% off.  That's a great deal.

I also started boards on pinterest for both Cricut and the Artfully Sent cartridge.

Happy Shopping! Karen

CTMH Is Having A Cyber Sale!

Close To My Heart is having a one week cyber sale with prices 25% off retail.  It even includes one of the cartridges!  If you have any papercrafters on your Christmas list you can buy their gift on sale and use the savings to treat yourself to something.  On Monday look for the sale items on my page karenhostetter.ctmh.com. Click on Shop in the menu and then look for a special section for the sale items.  When you shop make sure to join the Dec15 gathering.  

More information about the sale will be sent by CTMH via their December newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter by logging in to karenhostetter.ctmh.com.  Join as a customer then click the “My Account” link in the top right corner of the page, check the box indicating you would like to receive email, and then confirm your subscription via the confirmation email you receive.

Card Making For Kids

My 8 year old daughter has never given a purchased card in her life.  Not even for Valentine's day when she needs 32 cards.  From the time she was old enough to stick a sticker on a piece of paper she has made her own cards.  I would buy foam stickers, stick a blank card in front of her, peel the paper back and she would stick them on.  There were a few years she made our family Christmas cards.  One year with the foam stickers, a couple years with kits that I purchased from CTMH.  She has progressed over the years and now draws them, uses regular stickers, or with my help she uses the Cricut.  She can work that machine better than I can.  Her eyes are better for seeing the screen but also she just remembers which menu is where.  She really only needs my help with the mat and the machine is expensive so I'm overly careful.

Most kids love arts-n-crafts.  What a perfect way to spend time with your children.  Do you paper craft with your kids?  Share some ideas here.  I'd love some more ideas that I can do with my daughter and now I just started a Brownie troop so I'll need some for them too.  Thank you for sharing.

My 8 Year Old Made A Scrapbook In A Day

I had my Halloween layout workshop yesterday and my daughter joined  us. While we scrapped our 3 double page layouts, my 8 year old joined us to make her mini-album.  This is one of the CTMHInstalife mini-albums.  I received this one at our convention and gave it to her.  It has pages for 4x4 pictures and pages that are divided into 4 pockets.  It also has little cards that go in the various pockets along with the pockets.  Think Picture My Life in miniature.  I had already gone to Studio J where there is a layout for this album.  You just drop your photos in and you get the sizes you need.  (Choose Express layouts, photo mixes.) 

My cutie just had to put photos and her inserts in the pockets and she has an instant album.  I had printed photos of herself from her very first baby photo to current so she had a great time looking at them and is very excited to add the journaling.  She needed a few more inserts so we cut some cardstock and she used my stamps.  

All of us "ladies" had a fun day!

To get this album and it's accessories go to my
Close To My Heart page.

Scrapbooking in 1974

My first scrapbook that I shared with you was based on the scrapbooks my mother had.  Yes, she was scrapbooking in the early 1950's.  She had scrapbooks that were of ticket stubs, cards she'd received, etc.  She also had photo albums that had black pages, she used photo corners to hold the photos onto the page and she labeled her pictures using white ink.  I loved looking at her scrapbooks and photo albums.

 

My second scrapbook was actually homemade in a mother and daughter's club that all the neighbor ladies started with us girls.  I'm not sure where that book went to but it was mostly birthday and Valentine cards I received.  My first photo album was after I got a camera of my own and I was probably around 10.  Film and developing were expensive so I didn't get to take too many pictures.  Later I received one of the first inexpensive Polaroid cameras.  That film was expensive but you didn't have to develop it.

I continued to enjoy my mom's albums and when I got to high school I bought myself a scrapbook and created an album that contained photos, memorabilia, and journaling.  It was about my senior year of high school.  So in 1974, I created my first scrapbook that had photos in it.  To me that was very unique because I had never seen photos mixed in with memorabilia in one album.  When you bought a photo album, it said that on the front cover , was wider than it was tall and had black pages.  A scrapbook said scrapbook on the cover, was taller than it was wide and had gray or manila colored pages.

Who knew that 20 years later scrapbooking would become a booming industry and a passion for so many of us.

Halloween Layout Workshop

Do you have Halloween photos you need to crop?

Come to my Halloweenpage workshop and stay all day to crop.
We'll be making three 2-page layouts (6 pages total) using the CTMH
Nevermore paper kit. The layouts are all inspired by Pinterest. After we finish the
layouts, stay and crop on your own projects.

When: November 21,
2015

Time: 11 am to 11 pm

Where: At Karen's
house in Brea, CA.  I'll send you the
address and directions after you place your order on my online site.  There is only room for 6 people so everyone
can have their own table.  Make sure you
order quickly and then send me an email so I reserve your spot.  Don't wait you need your supplies to arrive
on time for the class!

You need to order
the following items:

Nevermore paper
kit     X7198B

Nevermore
embellishments    X7198C

Silver sequins    Z2013

Black shimmer
trim   Z1809

You will also need
the following items which you may order if you don't have them in your current
supplies:

Black distressing
ink

2 sheets of black
cardstock

2 sheets of white
cardstock

Adhesive

Foam Tape (I can
share if you don't have any)

Trimmer

Scissors - small
would be best

If you would like to
crop but don't want to do the workshop, you must order at least $30 worth of
supplies from my online site.



Place your order
here: http://karenhostetter.ctmh.com/  and join the Halloween workshop when you
login.

Planners Are Coming

There is an update with  Monica from CTMH showing all the fun features of the new planner. Planners are very popular this year.  Order one for yourself and get them as gifts for friends and family.  They're available in December and on SALE too.

Planners Are Coming To CTMH

CTMH is coming out with a daily planner

Update: Check out this video about the daily planner and a special deal in the month of December.

I think this would be a great #journal.  I'll use it as a #planner but also journal the days that I want to scrapbook right in the planner.  I keep trying to journal right away so I won't forget the story.  Unfortunately, I rarely stay current on the journaling or the #scrapbooking. Hopefully, having a planner that I use everyday will make it easy to remember to journal. 

 I've also been wanting  to start using #Picture My Life (even bought 2 sets).  I'm sure the planner would work nicely for keeping notes for Picture My Life pages. 

Maybe my 8 year old needs a planner  too.  What a great way to introduce her to journaling, she loves writing stories so she'd be great at keeping a daily journal.

Anybody have any other great ideas for the new planner? It'll be out on December 1st!!

Share your ideas in a comment, thanks, Karen

I Have A New Tab For Workshops

I've added a tab for my workshops.  This is the first time I've posted a workshop publicly.  I'm looking forward to meeting some new scrapping pals.

Thanks, Karen

My First Scrapbook

When I was 7 (1964), we  went on a trip from California to Nebraska for a family reunion.    We made a lot of sight seeing stops both going and coming taking 2 different routes.  All the other trips to my mom's hometown we drove all day for 2 days and got there as quickly as possible.  So this was a really special trip for all of us.  Because the trip was going to be so long my mom got us lots of games and activities we could do in the car.  One of her ideas was to give us all scrapbooks so we could scrapbook our trip along the way.  I collected brochures and post cards from the various stops we made and put them in my book.  I started off labeling them using strips of paper that we had for making paper chains.  I'm not sure if they fell out or I stopped labeling.  This trip was the only time we ever went sight seeing when going to see family and more than 50 years later I still remember it.  I treasure this little scrapbook to this day.

My First Blog!

Hi, welcome to my blog.  My name is Karen and this is my very first blog post.  I am very excited to share my love of #scrapbooking and  #papercrafting with you.

I have been scrapbooking for over 50 years.  I'm sure a lot of you are thinking scrapbooking didn't exist 50 years ago?  I promise you that my mom gave me my very first scrapbook when I was about 7 years old.  There have been some long gaps in between my scrapbooks up until  19 years ago when I joined the latest crafting craze at the time and haven't stopped since.

On my next post, I'll show you some pictures of that first scrapbook so come back and check them out. 

I'd love to hear from all of you that stop by, please say hello and leave your blog address if you have one.

Talk to you soon!