I have been having mojo issues off and on for some time now.

But it’s been a particular struggle in the last few months.

I don’t have any particular reason to offer… unless you count my addiction/obsession with Castleville on Facebook as a reason. But there is it is; creativity brick wall.

So this post is for all of you who are having similar creativity brain blocks.

Here are some articles I’ve written on ideas that might help you to get firing on all cylinders again.

When Your Mojo is No-Go

10 Top Ways to Rekindle your Scrapbooking Inspiration

How to beat Scrappers Block

10 Speedy Scrapbook Ideas

And for me?

Well I’m going to start making some Christmas cards!

Yes I realise Christmas is over half a year away but I think it’s a gentle way to try and ease back into the creative stream again. Christmas cards aren’t too demanding and I have plenty of stamps and embellishments etc. to get me started.

But most of all – I don’t feel pressured to make the perfect card.

I’ll be making over 50 cards so I can try different things and different techniques or do a bunch of simple cards all the same. No pressure.

So wish me and my missing mojo luck.

And please let me know in the comments section below if you have any mojo generating ideas of your own that we can share.

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Today is my daughter’s birthday (Happy Birthday Seona) and following our five year tradition I have hopped on the big silver bird to Sydney (Australia) to spend her birthday week with her.

And also following our five year tradition I have made a special birthday card for her and I’m sharing it with you here. I reckon you are practically one of the family by now.

I love all the different cards I’ve made for Seona’s birthday over the years and I particularly love the challenge of coming up with something fresh and new each year.

This year I took my inspiration from a card design I found in my DoCrafts Creativity magazine, which is my favourite papercraft magazine as it shows you projects that are beautiful, interesting and – most importantly – easily doable.

I’m a bit in love with these easel cards at the moment because they look complicated but they’re actually very easy to make.

How to make this Easel Card

• Open your blank card and fold one of the sides inwards to the centre fold.

• Cut three strips of patterned paper and stick them to three strips of cardstock that are just slightly larger than the paper. Tip: make sure your cardstock strips are no longer than the width of your card.

• Create a background piece by layering another piece of patterned paper onto some the same card stock you used for your three strips. Tip make sure that the size of the finished background piece is wider than the size of the three strips when laid on the card front. You want to be able to see see it peeking out behind them.

• I then made a custom background to sit immediately behind my focal image. Cut a piece of white cardstock to size. On a smooth non-porous surface (a sheet of acrylic transparency is perfect) make a couple or three swipes across with different colors of water based distress ink pads such as Tim Holtz Distressed Inks.

• Now the fun part. Start swiping your white cardstock around the inked surface until it’s covered by the inks. You should have a lovely marbled effect. If you’re a bit timid the first time you do it, don’t worry. Just do it over again until you’re happy with the result.

• Dry off the cardstock: either leave it to one side until it dries or speed the process along by using your heat gun. Don’t get too close with the tool and if the card curls up with the heat just turn it over and give it a burst on the back to straighten it out.

• Apply one of the colored inks around the edge of the cardstock to give it some extra definition and voila, you’ve made your own patterned background.

• I didn’t stop there though. I put the card through my embossing machine to add some extra texture. If you don’t have an embossing machine or hand embossing tool don’t worry. You’ve still got a great looking card without it.

I used some die cuts for the focal image of this card but you can create your own focal image by stamping onto cardsctock, coloring in the image and cutting around it.

• Place your blank card in front of you with the fold at the top. Mount the horizontal background strip onto the front.

• Now mount the three vertical strips on top of the background strip making sure that you only glue the bottom half so that nothing is stuck above the fold you created in the top of the card.

• And now mount the background you made yourself on top using foam mounts or foam tape to add dimension.

• Finally mount your focal images including a sentiment which you can stamp on a separate piece of cardstock and cut out.

For the inside.

• Cover the inside of the back of the card with a patterned paper.

• Stick a strip of grosgrain ribbon across the card just below the centre (remember the fold is at the top)at the point where you want your front panel to be supported.

• Add some little flowers and some bling and you’re done. I used white paper flowers which I colored by dabbing with the inks I used for the front of the card to coordinate the elements.

You may not have all the equipment I used to make this card. But even without it you will still get a magnificent looking card and it’s really quite simple to do.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Oh and don’t forget to wish Seona a Happy Birthday.

Other related articles:

5 Tips for making a Great Mini-Album

Hybrid Scrapbooking, Perfect for Card Making

Hybrid Scrapbooking a 50th Card

And if you think this is all a bit fiddly for you, why not try digital scrapbooking? you can find out all about it by clicking the image below.

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

If you’re a follower of Scraps of Mind you’ll know that this is generally a pretty upbeat sort of a place.

But sometimes you just gotta vent.

So I’ve decided to make this post a place for you to vent about your pet scrapbooking or cardmaking peeves. Here’s mine:

Disappearing scrapbook items

You know. You’re using a scrapbooking tool or element and you put it down to do something else. Then when you go to pick it up . . . IT”S GONE!

Now maybe I’m haunted by the dreaded Invisible Scrapbook Magpie, but this happens to me all the time. And it just drives me nuts.

My latest hair tearing event was last weekend when I was making this 1^st birthday card for my girlfriend’s son and one for my girlfriend who’s just found out she’s pregnant. I peeled the acrylic teddy bear stamp I needed from its acetate sheet and made my card. Then I went to use another stamp from the set for the inside of the card, and the acetate sheet with the rest of the stamp set had disappeared!

Now I realise that when I’m working on a project my desk is not the tidiest place in the World. But even when I cleaned it all up I still couldn’t find the stamp set!

I felt sure that it would magically reappear over the next day or so, in the strange way that these things happen. But no. It’s gone. Damn! The Invisible Scrapbook Magpie strikes again.

Does this bird visit you too, or is it just me?

And what’s more, I think this bird has a cyber cousin that lives in my computer too.

How else can you explain how I can save files and then when I go to look for them they’re not there? And after spending twenty frustrating minutes poking into every different folder I can think of I remember the search tool and find my file in some obscure place where it clearly doesn’t belong.

So I end up spending more time phaffing around looking for things than I spend getting the job done. (Excuse me whilst I just bang my head against the wall for a few minutes. Ahhh, that’s better.)

Well, I feel much better after letting go of all that. There’s nothing like a good vent to clear the emotional sinuses.

So how about you? What are your pet papercrafting peeves?  Air them in the comments section below. You’ll feel a lot better when you do.

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

I was talking with my sister at the weekend and she shared this great budget scrapbooking tip with me.

Both of us make greeting cards and love messing around with stamps, embossing powder and paints and chalks.

Anyway my sister had made this card for a friend’s 50^th birthday. She’d used some chalk to color in a background and it came up with a nice soft mottled effect. But if you’ve ever used chalk on your cards or scrapbook layouts you’ll know how messy things can get. Every time you touch your card you end up with chalk all over your hands.

When it’s only in a small area I find that pressing down with a clean sheet of paper helps to set. But for a large area, such as a background that’s just not going to be enough.

Now you can buy spray cans of fixative that will do the job. But they usually come in larger cans than you need and are fairly pricey unless you’re going to use them a lot.

But here’s a budget scrapbook idea that you can find on your bathroom shelf.

Hairspray is the answer!

Just give your chalked area a light spray with your can of hairspray and set it aside to dry for half an hour.

One thing you do need to watch out for though. The hairspray will have a strong smell. It’s a good idea not to use it on the same day that you’re intending to give the card to your recipient. Leaving the project out in the air overnight will dissipate the smell and then you’re good to go.

Other sort-of similar articles you might enjoy

Hybrid Scrapbooking a 50^th Birthday Card

Digital Scrapbooking on a budget

Tips for making your own embellishments

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Christmas scrapbooking freebies galore!!

Well December 1 is here again and with it the annual Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies.

Your one stop for all the Christmas Scrapbooking Freebie goodness you can possibly handle. Antoinette’s got all the goods loaded up and raring to go.

Just click on the logo below to go and snaffle the goodies.

But before you go . . .

Make sure you pick up the Scraps of Mind Christmas Scrapbooking Freebie below.

I’ve made some festive Word Art for you to use on your scrapbook layouts or Christmas Cards. And some Christmas flavored background papers that you can resize to card size to put your free word art on.

To download right mouse click on the image and choose Save Target as… or Save Link as…

Enjoy and have lots of fun with getting ready for the Christmas season.

And please help us to spread the word by letting your scrapbooking friends know about the Worldwide Digital Scrapbooking Christmas Freebies on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and anywhere you can think of.

Help us make this year the biggest Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies ever.

Other related articles:

Christmas card making in July

When’s Christmas this year?

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

It was my daughter’s 30^th birthday yesterday.

Naturally I required some intensive therapy to come to terms with this. But once I had gotten over my “where did the last 30 years go” shock I decided that I had to make something a bit special for her in the way of a card. Last year I made a pretty spiffy concertina card which she loved and said “Oooh, my first ‘book’ card!” That made me realise that I had never made an album just for her to keep before.

So I decided to make a mini album covering her last 30 years.

Now when I make a mini-album I like to do it from the ground up; making the pages and cover rather than buying a pre-made chipboard album. I gave myself plenty of time, as I usually do. And I managed to blow most of it away leaving me with a last minute rush, as I usually do. But I was quite pleased with the finished result.

Making a mini album is a really fun thing to do. It’s great to create a whole album in one project and the smaller size helps to make the project less daunting.  If you have never made one why not give it a go? You don’t have to make the whole thing from scratch like me. You can buy premade chipboard albums that you can cover and embellish to make a fabulous album.  They make wonderful and really appreciated gifts for the special people in your life. Here are a few tips to get you started.

5 tips for making great mini-albums

1.  Find a theme to link your pages together. This can be a color scheme, a scrapbooking style, a specific topic or anything that gives a sense of continuity through the pages and helps the album to tell a story. Using a combination of theme ideas will also help to reinforce the continuity. In this album I used papers from the Papermania Chatsworth Collection to maintain a color scheme. I used the same font and style for the titles on all the pages and I themed all the titles by making them follow a similar pattern for my Seona Days album: Early Days, Dress-up Days, School Days, BirthDays, HoliDays.

2.  Choose smaller, simple patterns or plains for your background papers. Now I have to admit that I didn’t strictly follow this rule. Several of the patterns in the paper pack I had chosen were a bit on the largish side. So I chose mainly simple pastels with dots for my pages and interspersed them with a few patterned papers in muted tones so they don’t overpower the photos.

3.  Add texture and dimension. Following on from the last tip you can make up for the lack of pattern in your papers by adding texture. The papers I chose for Seona’s album had a sort of a linen texture that I really loved. But you can add your own texture by putting your papers through an embossing machine such as a CuttleBug. And a bit of lumpy bumpy doesn’t hurt either. Generally your mini-album will only have a small number of pages. So you can probably afford to add a bit of height to your embellishing. Foam tape is my best friend. If you’re doing a digital album then try out some interesting drop shadows and bevels.

4.  Go easy on the embellishments. Because your mini–album pages are so much smaller than your regular scrapbook pages you need to be careful that you don’t over clutter them with embellishments. Try to pick smaller embellishments that won’t overpower the page. And I also like to reinforce the continuity by repeating the same embellishments throughout the album if possible.

5.  And most of all, put your love into it. Mini-albums (especially ones you do for other people) are usually a sort of capsule for an idea or an event or, like Seona’s album, a life story. That makes them a bit extra special. Let that feeling shine through in the journaling you write and the themes you choose.

As usual for me, this album was a hybrid scrapbooking project where I combined digital scrapbooking techniques with paper scrapbooking elements. One of the great benefits of this approach is that I can manipulate my photos and digital embellishments to perfectly fit my smaller pages and coordinate with my color scheme. I couldn’t decide on just 3 or 4 photos for the BirthDays page so I created the photo collage digitally, scanned in a background  from my paper pack and mounted the collage on it so I could keep all the fuzzy edges and just cut around the paper matt.

And yes, Seona loved it.

Other Related Articles

What is Hybrid Scrapbooking

Hybrid Scrapbooking a 50th Birthday Card

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

I’ve just made this 50^th birthday card for my brother and I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s a Hybrid scrapbooking card made using both paper scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking techniques and I must confess, this is my absolute favourite form of scrapbooking. It combines the touchy-feely satisfaction of working with paper with the convenience, versatility and virtually unlimited paper and embellishment options of digital scrapbooking.

I’m pretty chuffed with how it turned out. What do you think?

I’ve used this template before when I made a 50^th Wedding Anniversary card for my Aunt and Uncle. And if you want to try it out you can download the template here. If you want to use it for digital cards just delete the white background and clip your digital papers to the outline shape.

When I make hybrid scrapbook cards I usually do the design on my computer first so I can play around with ideas. Even if I’m not intending to use digital papers I’ll usually pick a digital paper that’s similar to the ‘real’ one that I intend to use for the purpose of the design. And I’ll use digital elements to stand in for the ‘real life’ ones I’m planning to use. Things like brads and ribbons etc.

Once the design is done I work out which of the digital elements I’m going to use on the card and then print them out. It’s easy to change the color of them if they don’t quite coordinate with my other elements.

On this card I clipped the patterned digital paper I wanted to use (Cheryl Barber’s Etc Collection) to the template and then printed out the whole of the digital design on satin finish photo paper. Then I glued it onto cardstock which I’d printed with the template shape. I cut a slit in the card to thread the ribbon through on the inside before I glued the designed card to the card stock. If I was going to use ‘real’ brads I would also have fixed them to the papers before gluing onto the cardstock.

Then I printed several of the elements of the card separately onto satin photo paper, cut them out and adhered them to the card with foam tape to add further dimension. This worked particularly well with the focal photo because it meant I was able to run the real ribbon over the frame and under the photo.

Like I said earlier, I love the way hybrid scrapbooking combines the best of both of the scrapbooking worlds I love. If you haven’t tried it yourself I urge you to give it a go. It’s the perfect scrapbooking marriage.

And if you’re nervous about the idea of the digital scrapbooking part, just click on the banner below and check out the selection of Beginner Tutorials from Step by Step Digital Scrapbook to help you get started.

Other Related Articles:

50^th Anniversary Card and Template

What is Hybrid Scrapbooking?

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Life is Wonderful!

And as some comedian once said: It beats the hell out of the alternative!

I love life.

Everyday brings something good . . . even if sometimes you have to search a little to find it.

Anyway, for no reason in particular I’ve decided to celebrate Life today with some free Word Art.

Click here to download the full size PNG file.

Click here to download the full size PNG file.

Click here to download the full size PNG file.

And here’s an extra one that epitomises my philosophy of Life.

Click here to download the full size PNG file.

Hope you’re enjoying your Life today.

Other Related Articles:

Free Summer and Winter Word Art

Word Art Freebie

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Well Summer is in full swing here in Oz. And I’ll be honest with you; I haven’t done much in the scrapbooking line for a few months.

But I haven’t shut up shop entirely. My Tuesday night craft group ensures that I still keep projects on the go.

Last year I introduced Marla to the concept of  Artist Trading Cards and I’ve never seen someone embrace anything with as much enthusiasm as she has with ATCs. She’s joined several swap groups and in a few short months she’s built up a huge collection, filling two binders already. She makes beautiful ATCs as you can see here.

At the moment she’s got a couple of swaps which she’s organising herself, so in a fit of buddy support I’ve volunteered to contribute to them. Here’s one of my efforts on the theme of ‘birds and feathers’. It’s called Soar.

Like many of my ATCs it’s a hybrid of digital and paper/scissors techniques. I find this approach especially useful when I have to make 7 cards all the same. I can design the backgound, duplicate it and print out 7 identical versions. Then add the cut outs and three dimensional stuff. In many cases I’ll print out digital elements, cut them out and mount them with foam tape, mixed in with ‘real life’ embellishments, as I’ve done here.

Cuttlebug Crafting

The group has recently clubbed together and purchased a communal Cuttlebug. I wasn’t that excited until I gave it a try myself.

What a bunch of fun it was! Quite ordinary looking card or paper embossed a gorgeous patterned texture which looks fabulous in card or scrapbooking projects. Or you can create embossed embellishments using card or papers that coordinate with your scrapbook layouts. Here are a couple of cards I made for my niece’s  birthdays and one for another niece’s engagement. I just love the effect.

If you are a user of one of these babies and have some cool ideas for ways to use it, I’d love it if you could share them in the comments below. Often something that seems quite straightforward to one person can sound like a revelation to another. We’re all still pretty new to the world of Cuttlebugs so we’d welcome any suggestions that help to get the most value from it.

What is your favourite scrapbooking tool?

And whilst on the subject of scrapbooking equipment…do you have a favourite piece of equipment that you just love?

Even though I’m in love with the Cuttlebug at the moment, I think I would have to say that my fine cutting scissors are really my favourite piece of scrapbooking equipment.

I love my little embroidery scissors but I recently bought a funny looking pair that have now taken first place on my scrapbooking ‘must have’ tools list. They have no normal handles and you work them by squeezing the single handle which works a spring which works the blades. They really take the effort out of cutting and there’s no more red indentations on my thumb and fingers when I have to do a lot of cutting. And best of all, they make doing really fine and detailed cutting so easy.

Well as you can see, I seem to be drifting back to the more tactile side of papercrafting, after spending the last 18 months immersed in the world of digital scrapbooking. I still like to combine the two wherever possible. Most of my cards and ATCs are hybrid creations. And I think that I’ll always prefer the freedom that digital gives me when creating scrapbook layouts. But I’m really enjoying getting back into the ‘glue and paper’ stuff again.

Other Related Articles:

Artist Trading Card Swaps

Christmas Card Making in July

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking

Yes folks it’s on again!

Antoinette from  Sparky’s Scratches has organised another huge roundup of scrapbooking freebies for your crafting pleasure.

Just click on the logo below to get to the special blog she has set up with all the links to a Wonderful World of Christmas Scrapbooking and Cardmaking items

I didn’t have anything to do with the organising of this year’s event being otherwise occupied cruising up the Danube and down the Rhine, but I’ve come home in time to do my part in providing some Christmas Word Art Freebies for you.

Just click on the sample graphic and you will open a .PNG file. Save this file to your computer and you should be able to use it with any of the mainstream graphics editing programs (eg. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paintshop Pro).  You can resize the image to fit your scrapbook layout or card.

Enjoy.

(This looks better in the PNG format. the O doesn’t look so good in this sample)

Make sure you visit the other contributors to the Worldwide Christmas Scrapbooking Freebies.

Scraps Of Mind - All about scrapbokking, digital scrapbooking and hybrid scrapbooking