Friday, Friday, I love Friday!! Don't get me wrong- I love Monday, too- but Fridays are something special. I get every other Friday off from work, it's the start of the weekend, I have Taekwondo class, and most Fridays I have a little more time than usual to scrapbook. In fact, I have a half-finished layout on my desk right now, and it includes some super cool Star Wars paper from Creative Imaginations.

Fridays are also time for Friday favorites, and I found some great stuff to share with you this week!

From left to right:

• Kinsey Wilson gives us the scoop on making a pleated box trim on Crate Paper's blog.
• I'm totally digging this monogram made up of buttons, brads, and other tiny embellishments. Head on over to American Crafts to learn more!
• Becky Oehlers has a gorgeous studio and has been kind enough to give a tour of it on her blog. I love the white furniture and clean feel of the room.
• Oh Happy Day shares a tutorial on making these super cute fringed streamers. The directions use sheets of crepe paper, but I'm guessing you could also do with with rolls.
• Elise Blaha Cripe shares another amazing mini album, this time documenting her 26 by 2 list.
• Learn how to make photo strips in Photoshop Elements at Scrapbooks Etc.
• Minitoko has lots and lots of free digital scrapping papers and elements for download. Love the fun patterns and bright colors!
• File this in the "why didn't I think of that?" category...there's a genius idea for embossing Thickers over at Moments of Tranquility.
• Hank and Hunt has posted a tutorial for making some cool flag graphics using PowerPoint- a great idea for making headers for blog posts or elements for blog banners.

Have a scrappy weekend, everyone!

St. Patrick's Day Decor + Shamrock Wall Art Tutorial

One of the best things (besides having my scrapbook room together) about finally having finished moving and sold our other house is that I have the time to do a bit of decorating for all the fun little holidays that happen throughout the year. I mean, sure, I used to always decorate for Christmas, but I just never seemed to find the time to do something special for days like Thanksgiving or Easter.

Or St. Patrick's Day- probably my favorite besides Christmas since it's also my birthday. :)

The photo above shows my little collage of frames that I'm constantly swapping pieces in and out of for different seasons and holidays. For St. Patrick's Day I've printed up a piece of subway art (found here) for the 11x14 clip frame, placed a layout about last year's birthday dinner in the 12x12 frame, and for the 16x20 shadow box I cooked up a special piece of shamrock wall art using a bunch of stickers from the JoAnn dollar bin.

Want to see how I made it? Glad you asked!!

I needed a template, so I started by doing a Google image search for a shamrock. Luckily the first image that popped up was perfect, so I ran with it.

Since I only needed the image to use as an outline, I didn't care about the coloring or size- only that it had a well defined shape to it.

I then opened the image in Photoshop Elements, where I also created an empty 16x20 canvas. After placing a copy of the shamrock image on the canvas, I resized it until it filled the desired portion of the canvas. This helped me see, proportionally anyway, how the shamrock would fill a 16x20 area. Again, since I only cared about the outline of the shamrock I didn't care how much the image pixellated as I enlarged it by a few hundred percent.

Once the shamrock was the desired size I needed a way to print it on 8.5x11 paper (the largest I have for our printer). Since the image was nearly 12"x12" at this point I had to use the selection tool to highlight portions of it, copy them, and paste them into new, smaller images that would fit on my printer paper. I ended up with four different sections, making sure that pieces of each section overlapped with the sections next to it.

Then I printed them and cut them out...

...and using the overlapping parts as guides I taped it all back together again. (Apologies for the wonky angle of the picture- I was on massive amounts of Sudafed at the time and wasn't exactly thinking clearly.)

After taping my shamrock template (yes, I went to all of that trouble just for a template) together, I placed it on a 16x20 board (mine is a white Canson artist's drawing board from Hobby Lobby) and traced around it lightly with a pencil.

I could have tried to freehand a shamrock and not gone to all the trouble of making a template, but I really, really can't draw!

After tracing the outline, I began filling it in with these fun shamrock stickers. As I mentioned earlier, I purchased them for a dollar a pack at JoAnn, and I think I used 3-4 packs to make this piece. The packages say that they're paper stickers, but when I peeled the backing off of one I found that it's actually made from a thin canvas. They were super easy to work with and would peel up nicely if I needed to reposition one, but otherwise they stayed firmly stuck.

I found it a lot easier to fill in if I started by going around the outline of the shamrock and then filled in the open areas afterward. I did a lot of playing with orientations and sizes to get the stickers to fit so closely together. It was kind of like working on a jigsaw puzzle (which is cool because I really like puzzles).

After a little over an hour of fitting stickers together (and cutting stickers to fit into the stem), my board was finally finished! I also erased the pencil outline (my kneaded eraser was great for getting into areas that were perilously close to a sticker) to hide any evidence that I needed such a crutch. :)

I'm totally in love with this little grouping now that it's all together! And, yes, the Star Wars poster is a permanent resident. Star Wars works with any season. :)

I also sprinkled a few green things on the mantle. One of my favorite (quick, easy, cheap) holiday decorations involves taking an inexpensive garland and shoving it into an apothecary jar. I did the same thing with a bat garland at Halloween and some pretty beads at Christmas, and this time around I had a shamrock garland that worked nicely next to a couple of Beanie Babies.

I've never quite known where to stick these shamrock lights, so for now they're coiled up in a glass pitcher. I think it's kinda cute. :)

So, even if I don't get to spend the next week at home (I'm going back to Boston next week), I'll still get to come home to a decorated house. Love that!

Hotel Room Scrapbooking: Recap

If you were following me on Twitter a couple of weekends ago, you mostly likely saw my layout-by-layout report on the progress of my scrapbooking time in my hotel room while I was in Boston on a business trip. I completed a total of 13 pages (10 layouts since there were a few 2-page spreads in the mix) over the course of the weekend. I also worked 10 more pages (8 layouts) to the point that I only need to add a few finishing touches from the stash that I didn't take with me. Not bad for working with a limited number of supplies!!

Speaking of supplies, the photo above shows everything that I brought with me for this trip (scrapbooking-wise). I normally wouldn't pack quite so much, but since it was a two week trip and I knew I'd have a weekend free I decided to go a bit overboard on purpose.

Two of the plastic boxes were stuffed to the brim with page kits. Some of the kits were actually packed several years ago (circa 2008) during a time when I scrapped more at crops than at home, and some of them (based on the course material in May Flaum's Creative Retreat class) were packed the week before I left. If you want a closer look at how I pack page kits, I recommend checking out this post.

One box was full of nothing but tools- my tape gun, some refills, a ruler, a couple of basic shape and border punches, and some decorative tapes. I ended up not using everything that was in the box, but I didn't find that I was missing anything. Also, my paper trimmer and craft knife set didn't fit into the box, so they were loose in my suitcase.

Another box contained items to work on my Bahamas cruise album and another mini-album I have in progress. Unfortunately I never got the chance to work on either of them.

My hotel room contained a decently large table that turned out to be a great size for spreading out a few tools, opening my MacBook, and working on a one- or two-page layout without feeling crowded.

I've scrapbooked in hotel rooms (or on travel in general) many, many times before, but it's been so long that it seemed new to me again this time around. I definitely noted a few things to be aware of for my next trip:

• Make a packing list (I did this) and then check and double-check it before you leave the house (I didn't do this). I ended up taking all the supplies necessary to work on the cruise album that I prepped last fall...except for the photos! Duh, Melissa!!
• Glimmer Mist? Totally usable in a hotel room!! I spritzed mine while holding the paper over the bathroom sink.
  
  
  
  
  
• I didn't realize how spoiled I've been about paper cutters since purchasing my very precise Rotatrim. My Cutterpede started to drive me nuts by the end of the trip!
• Some of the older photos that I wanted to scrap had been shot on film. I've become so accustomed to digital that it didn't even occur to me to check that I had duplicate prints or that the negatives had been successfully scanned before I left (you can read about my negative scare here), so I was left with the choice of either risking it by scrapping them and hoping that things worked out when I got back home or having duplicates made on the go. In the end I went with the latter choice, driving 15 minutes to Target (it was near where I wanted to have lunch, anyway) to use their scan and print kiosk. Less than $4 later I had reprints that I could use without worry- totally worth it!
  
  
  
  
  
• I discovered a big difference between the page kits I packed several years ago and the ones I packed the week before my trip. The newer kits were much more complete, and I had included several extras (sets of letters, journaling spots, etc.) in case I needed to make a design change on the fly. This turned out to be a huge help, and I've determined that it's better to pack too much in an individual page kit (at least those items have a purpose) than to just pack a bunch of random stuff and hope it all works out in the end. The older kits, on the other hand, had too little in them in the way of embellishments, producing the majority of the unfinished pages that I brought back with me.

Is scrapping on travel something I would do again? In a heartbeat!! In fact, I have to go back to the Boston area again next week, and I plan on taking something scrappy to work on. The catch? I'm going to try to do it all in a carry-on this time, meaning it'll have to be something that can be accomplished without all the tools that normally have to go in a checked bag. I've already got a candidate project in mind, and I'll share it with you soon!