Tutorial Thanksgiving Day!

Happy Thanksgiving scrapbookers!

Here is a new tutorial to make cute cards for the occasion, in 12 easy and fast steps.

I want to give thanks today for my health, my family, my boyfriend, my friends, the lucky I have been to travel this much the past 5 years, the fact that my grandparents are still with me and I can keep learning from them, for having an education, for my mac, for the internet, and for having creativity to express myself on scrapbooking!  GIVE THANKS! never take anything for granted...

ENJOY!

This is the final result....isn´t it easy!   Let me know if you have any questions and don´t forget to leave comments, I love to get feedback.

Tutorial Notebook Inner-Cover

I´m back! I was gone for the weekend to NY and let me tell you that it is now my favorite city (with Madrid and Paris) in the world!

I´ll post some of my scrapbooks about the trip as soon as I finish them, but now I want to show you my new tutorial.

Since I have a lot of free time, instead of watching TV or surfing the net, I decided to read...and write all the thoughts that comes to me while reading. So I looked for an old journal and used it for that purpose. I also write quotes and notes on it, from the books that I read and find worthwhile to preserve for future occasions instead of reading it again.

There are so many good books out there, I just joined the amazon zone and I´m mesmerized by the amount of books there are and how many of them I want to read. I´m really into memoirs after finishing Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and can´t wait for her new one, Committed, released on January 2010.

Hope you enjoy the tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it!

Tutorial Accordion Album!

Hello, anybody there?

I´ve been very busy improving my posting techniques so I can offer you a more friendly way to present the projects and I think I´m getting there.

I hope you have as much fun making this project as I did. My boyfriend was sooo happy when I gave him his present...I couldn´t believe that a guy could appreciate an 8 hour scrapbook! I thought he was going to be like -Thanks! Kiss-Bye... but no, he couldn´t stop looking at it and thanking me for it.  It wasn´t a big deal, I loved making it too. Every moment I spent looking at the pictures, matching colors and papers, and remembering those precious moments together...was priceless!

We hung it on the wall of our room and looks beautiful. Not only the scrapbook, but the fact that every time we look at it, it reminds us of the things we did through this 6 months together.

This can be a nice project to follow the development of a baby through a whole year, or to see how kids grow over a year, don´t you think? Enjoy!

**Click on the pictures to see them bigger!

What I learned this week...

1.- I learned that there is a blog by Jo-Lynne called Musings of a Housewife and loved it!

2.- I learned how to design a blog button on her tutorial and still don´t know how to get the code for it.

3.- I learned there are thousands of women out there blogging about scrapbooking, which made me feel either less special or part of a big community...I choose the second one.
I try to see the glass half full not half empty.

4.- I learned that starting a blog is easy, being committed to it is the tough part. Specially when your tongue mother is spanish and you chose to blog in english!  But there´s nothing a dictionary can´t solve  ;)

5.- I learned that I can research on the internet for 10 hours straight and keep learning and learning and learning... IT´S OVERWHELMING all the information out there...and it´s only about one subject! Wow!

6.- I learned about patience. I can´t expect to have the best blog about scrapbooking if I´m new at this. And I can´t expect to have 1000´s of followers just weeks after starting it.

7.- I learned that there are a lot of teachers everywhere, willing to share their wisdom. And I´m a humble student desperate for new knowledge!

The Miracle of Life!

My friend Anita is having a baby girls this week, so I decided to make her a Scrapbook-two-page-set for Sophia´s room.

I like to work on projects like this because they motivate me to make them as beautiful and sweet as possible. This will be hang on the walls of that nursery room and every time mommy goes in there, she´s going to look at it, si it has to project happiness and sweetness and family union.

So this time I did a little something to the pictures in Photoshop first to make them smaller. I opened a new page and made it 6 x 4. Then I pasted 2 pictures in the 6 x 4 page and saved it as a .jpg

And also edit them on picnik.com to make them look all PINK with the effects of that web that is amazing. It has a lot of options to edit your pictures before you print them, so they can fit perfect in your scrapping creative ideas. And it´s FREE!

I chose two pages with the same pattern to be my background and cut the spaces to place the main pictures.

For that I used my Cricut and the Lyrical Letters Cartridge and cut a frame of 5" for each pictures.

Then I pasted the pics on the back of the page facing front...like this:  

The heart frame was made separate and then pasted, as well as the thin frame on the top. To see if it fits perfect, first I tried it with a template. It turned out to be 5" too.

The next step is to place the rest of the elements that will make your page look more decorated. For this I chose a picture of a flower that I previously edited and print. I cutted it myself (my Cricut couldn´t help tere, LOL) and place it on the blank space with other elements.

Now I want to have the newborn´s name on it so I choose a nice font on the Lyrical Letters Cartridge and cut it out.

Most of the times when I already have all my elements on the page, I play around with them, like pieces of a puzzle and most of the times end up changing my first template idea....you just have to flow and be open to new options.

At last, I finish it with some ribbon to give it the final touch.

...but wait. 

It´s not over. Remeber I said it was a double project?

Well, the other page has the same background and the same frame for the main picture but this time I cut it right in the middle of the page.

Now I arrange the pics for this page and spread them until I find a good way to place them. I make some paper frames for each picture and paste them.

Last but not least I cut another flower exactly the same as the previous one and place it on the blank space. If you put them together you will see that they do look like a set and they will make a beautiful decoration for Sophia´s New Room.   Enjoy!