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New to Scrapbooking



I'm finally back to blogging and today I would like to share with you my newest hobby, scrapbooking! I've been working on a scrapbook for my new baby and it has been fun. I've been ordering supplies from online and buying them from craft stores. Today I would like to share with you what I just bought from hsn.com. It just came in yesterday and I'm super excited to start using the stuff in my scrapbook.



 

 

These two kits are from Inspired Inc. They are currently on clearance at HSN.com for $10. Shipping is around $5 but if you buy more than one then the second shipping is half off. So about $15 per set, which is not bad considering a pack of scrapbooking paper goes for at least $10 at the craft store.

 

The bottom kit contains premade templates. You still have to put the pages together but all the pieces are there. You can either follow the template they provided or make up your own using the pieces that are included, which is what I did to one of the template. I think this kit is great if you're new to scrapbooking like me. Both of these kits have great reviews and I do recommend them.

I'd like to share with you some of the things that I got. These are all the embellishments that came with the two kits. The more bright and colorful ones came from the neon kit. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the clips or ribbons or buttons yet but I'm sure something will come to mind later  :)

Here are two of the templates that came from the second kit. As you can see (hopefully), that they provide you with an example and include all the pieces that you need to create the two pages in the package. There are several to choose from (I forgot to count how many lol).

This is another template that was in the kit. I used this one yesterday to make two pages for my son's baptism. As you can see below, I used the embellishments from the kit but did not follow their exact layout. Their theme did not go with mine so I mixed it up a bit to make it work with mine.

(Sorry the picture is sideway. I forgot to rotate it before uploading and now I can't do it on here.)

I'm not quite done with it yet. There are still room on the page for me to add some journaling, date, name, and etc. I just haven't found the right embellishment for that yet. The photo sizes that they recommend on the layout are hard to come by so I just made my own. If I could redo these layouts I'll probably put a small border around each pictures to make them stand out more.

I'm new to scrapbooking so my pages are not professional but I'm getting the hang of it. I've created several pages already, which I will share soon. I don't have any idea for the Neon kit yet since everything I have now are baby related. I'll be fun to see what I can come up with later. I would recommend checking out HSN.com and see if they're still there and order one if you're a big fan of scrapbooking.

Halloween Baby Shower Invitation

Today I would like to share with you guys a DIY baby shower invitation that I made for my baby shower. I wanted to have a different and unique baby shower instead of the typical blue or pink, so I decided to have a Halloween Costume party shower instead. Here are my results.

To make the invitation, I went on google and found this simple blank template to use. Then I loaded the image into GIMP, a free open source editing tool. It is like a free version of Photoshop if anyone has never heard of it. It is not Photoshop so don't hold me on this one. Anyway, once loaded I can start adding texts and whatever else I want. Once finished, I export it to my desktop so that I can get it printed later.

This is what I finally came up with. Its simple and doesn't take long to make. You can probably guess that the top blemish is my address and the rest has my name and phone number. I don't want the world spamming me so I had to take it off. :)

Now that the actually invitation is done, lets move onto the envelope.

I got these orange envelopes at Party City in the Halloween section. It came 20 to a pack so I bought two packs. BTW, the envelope doesn't come with the bottle. I made that separately. 

I bought this pack of scrap booking paper from target. I went on google again and found a silhouette of a baby bottle, since it is a baby shower invite, print it out on cardstock paper so that it can be sturdy, cut it out, and trace it onto the scrapbook paper that I like. You can use whatever silhouette you want, depending on what you're doing. I got about four bottles to one sheet of paper. Then I cut them out and glue them to the front of my envelopes, as pictured above.

I bought these little foam stickers at Dollar Tree to seal the back of my envelopes. And the result is this:

I mix and match them up for every envelopes so that it would be more interesting.

Well, there goes my party invitation. I'll be hand delivering most of these to ensure the post office doesn't open them, as I have found out that they do such a thing (from previous experience). If you are going to send them, I recommend leaving the bottle off the front and sealing the back with tape, as the foam sticker is easy to take off.

Here's a break down of my total cost for this whole project:

2 packs of envelopes: $16

foam stickers: $1

scrapbook paper: $6

getting the invitations printed at Walgreens: 50 for $7

Total = $30 or $0.75 for each completed envelopes ( I made 40 )

I hope that was helpful and thanks for stopping by!

Origami bird

So I have neglected my blog for several months, but now I am back! And for my first returning post I thought it would only be fair if I share something that I made myself. Here is the origami bird that I finished yesterday. The whole project is not 100% complete but the bird is the main component so I'll go ahead and share it first.

This is the same bird, but just from different angles. It took me 700 - 800 pieces of folded papers to put it together.

Hopefully I will finish the whole piece by the end of this week so I can share it with you guys.

Balloon Egg Candy Treats

Found this on one of my friend's Facebook post and thought I should share. Its pretty neat for a homemade Easter candy treat. You can make this for your kid's Easter basket, or getting them to help you make some for the Easter hunt. Either way, this is a cute and neat idea.

Due Dates Spreadsheet

I was reading a post about Excel and someone asked if there was a template for you to keep track of expired things, like passport date and etc. so I thought it was neat to come up with a template that you can use to do that. The one I created here is used to keep track of your due dates, like bills and things, but you can easily change the heading titles to make it work for your expired items if you wish. Unfortunately, this blog does not allow me to upload my template so I'm going to show you how to make it. Hopefully I don't confuse anyone, and if I do please feel free to ask questions.

So this is how my spreadsheet looks, with a little bit of formatting.

To make the month part, in cell A1 type the month that you want. Then highlight cells A1 through F1. On your Home, towards the middle there's a tab called Merge and Center. Click on that and it should merge all your selected cells together. You can then highlight the cells again and change your font, size, and colors if you like.

After that skip a row and type in the heading names like picture one above. Again,  you can change the style if you want. I bold and centered my texts. Skip another row if you like before starting to enter your information. Underneath the Description heading you can put whatever you like. See mine for example.

Now we move on to the Today's Date. I used a function in Excel that will always display the current date every time you make a new entry. To do this you click on cell C5 and type in the function =TODAY() and press enter. The current date should show up. It might look a little different from mine depending on how you format your dates.

Under the due date heading you will manually type in whenever your item is due.

The # of Days left heading is the more confusing one. Here we are trying to find out how many days are left before the item is due. If it's past due then the number will be red. You can have it show a negative sign too if you like. Click on cell E5 and type in the formula =DAYS360($C5,$D5,FALSE) . Once you have done this you can use the auto-fill on the bottom right hand corner of the cell to make multiple copies of the formula so that you won't have to type it in every time you add a new item. You can do the same for the Today's Date column too. Just click on the square and drag it down however number of cells you want.

If you are keeping track of your bills then the paid column is helpful. I created a drop down list that display yes and no for me to choose from but you can easily just type it in for yourself.

If you want to format the date then click on the letter above the column, example, click on column C would highlight the whole column. Then you go to Format (Home tab, Format). click on format cells. Under the Number tab and inside the category box select Date and choose the format that you want on the right size and click okay.

You can reuse this spreadsheet again every month. You can just easily change the name of the Month. If you don't want to use it for this purpose then you can delete the month and use it to keep track of your expired things.

I wish I could just upload the file but I can't. However, if you would like a copy of this template then just let me know and I can email it to you. If you were confused about my instructions since I didn't go much into details, please post comments and I will get back to you. Thanks!

30 CREATIVE WAYS TO ANNOUNCE PREGNANCY

I'm planning on starting a family soon and was looking for fun ways to surprise my family whenever that special day comes and found this cute site! They're all such cute ideas! The one that had me laughing was the "We Are Prego". That is creative. Hope you guys find it inspiring. Please share your idea with the rest of us. I'm still looking for one to use for myself.  I shall share it whenever time comes :) .

Click here for your pregnancy announcement!