Pocket Scrapbooking

There are so many companies that have jumped on the pocket scrapbooking party train. Most make pocket page protectors and journaling cards (filler cards fall into the same overall category). Here are the companies that I have stumbled across that make all these goodies:

Project Life/Becky Higgins

Studio Calico

American Crafts

We R Memory Keepers

Teresa Collins

Close To My Heart

Kaisercraft

Papertrey Ink (brand new this month!)

Echo Park

My Mind's Eye

Simple Stories (their entire philosophy is simple scrapbooking)

Crate Paper

Now there are also companies who make 12x12 papers that have journaling cards on them. You simply cut them up yourself. 

About that mountain of 12x12 patterned papers and cardstock sitting in my studio? Yeah, about them. I'm slowly working my way through them and cutting most of them into 4x6 journaling cards/filler cards. Yup, even the cardstock. Why? Perfect for using some of my stamps and stickers/chipboard pieces on to make my own cards! 

I have started my first album. It's a week long vacation in the Smoky Mountains. Over 600 photos and they ALL fit into one - yup one - album! I used a mix of Project Life, My Mind's Eye, We R Memory Keepers, and Kaisercraft journaling cards along with the ones I cut up myself. 

Here's the fun part. Journaling. I hate it. I stink at it. But guess what. Doing pocket scrapbooking is making me journal! I've even Googled places we went for historic details. Crazy I know! 

Oh and the best part. I spent less than 12 hours on this album. Normally, I could spend two entire weekends doing traditional scrapbooking to get that many photos done. I also still would have to do all of my embellishing. And there's no way this would all fit into one album....probably not even two. So I saved a ton of time and shelf space.

I'll have photos of these projects soon! I want to finish my album before I post pics. But stay tuned!  

One last thing about pocket scrapbooking. I also collect postcards from all of my trips and travels. I’ve been looking for a few years for something to organize my collection in. I haven’t had any luck except for plastic envelopes and those were ugly. There are pocket pages that hold 12 postcards! There are page protectors that will hold 12 horizontal or vertical. Thank you We R Memory Keepers! I have been able to give hundreds of postcards a lovely home finally!

I'm Back!!!!

 I've been working on doing some reorganizing in my studio. Some things just aren't working for me. I also received a Silhouette Cameo for Christmas and that baby needs a home! A few pieces of my furniture went back to their real purpose in life. My armoire went back to my bedroom. It needs a paint job to blend into the nautical bedroom we have. The hutch went to the dining room now that we have the space for it. So that left me with many things needing a new home. Thanks to Home Depot for having some really nice white cheapo bookcases that worked perfectly for this project!

I've been going through many supplies and really considering if I need or want it. Amazing how much I have accumulated over the last 12 years of paper crafting! I have been selling a few things here and there, but I really need to move a lot of stuff. I'm seriously considering having a scrapbook yard sale in the spring. Yup, a tent popped up in my driveway with a bunch of tables kind of scrapbook yard sale. Stay tuned if you happen to be hanging out in the Finger Lakes when the time comes!

All of this cleaning and organizing has made me really want to get photos of my computers and printed so they can go into albums. Here's the problem with traditional and digital scrapbooking. Traditional takes soooooo long and I never feel like I get anywhere. I guess having around 100,000 digital photos will do that. It's been suggested that I stop taking photos by several people. I think they're crazy! I'm too busy traveling to stop taking photos! 

I really do enjoy digital scrapbooking, but I'm still learning and trying to get Photoshop all figured out is time consuming. I just want to get things DONE! And I'm starting to have a hard time remembering where many of my photos were taken. Time to get a move on so I decided to start exploring other options. One included actually printing photos and just putting them in photo albums. I didn't really like that option. And then....

I stumbled onto Project Life. I am not interested in the daily, weekly, or monthly thing. I honestly don't care what I had for dinner on October 3, 2010 nor do I care what the weather was or what clothes I was wearing. It seems like lots of people do care about those things so good for them I say! That aspect just isn't for me. I've already got a zillion photos that need a home.

This brings me to my current project of the week. I started really organizing all of my digital photos. I have them in like 20 million folders on two computers and an external hard drive. Some dated. Most not. It's an incredibly time consuming, but I am making major headway. I've been taking digital photos for 11 years now. Who knew? I sure didn't. While sorting and labeling the photos, I have been uploading all the same folders to Shutterfly for printing! Yay for printing! 

They had a lovely sale a week or so ago where photos were 40% off and the shipping was free because I spent a few dollars. Ok so I printed 1,379 photos. That's barely a dent in what I have. The photos I printed were purposely chosen to bring with me to Crop on the Cape. Why so many? Well, I'm not bringing all of them. I have a weekend crop the following weekend as well. 

So what will I be doing with my mountain of photos? Pocket scrapbooking! Yup, you read that right. What's pocket scrapbooking? It's like Project Life and traditional scrapbooking got together and had a party. You simply take the pocket page protectors and place your photos, filler cards, journaling cards, memorabilia, etc. in the individual pockets. Each page protector has several individual pockets in them. They come in a variety of configurations with different sized pockets for your items to be places vertical or horizontal. 

More about pocket scrapbooking tomorrow!

Long Time No See!

Yeah, I've been really bad at blogging for the last few months. I went away for the week of Thanksgiving. I spent a lovely week in the Adirondack Mountains in New York. My dream Black Friday? It's this little place called Old Forge. There's a tiny place called Inlet down the road a bit. Then there's Raquette Lake. I grew up spending a good chunk of my summer there camping with my grandparents and parents. I have amazing memories of Golden Beach Campground and it's like nothing has really changed. It's a state park that was built by the Civilian Conservation Corp. In all, it took 13 years for the campground to be 100% completed. If you ask me, it was worth all the effort!

While we were in Inlet, our dogs got to be in the dog parade! Maxx had fun meeting the ladies. He’s such a ladies man. Ashley liked visiting with the other small dogs. She's not a big fan of big dogs since one grabbed her. Yup, I clobbered that dog and grabbed her back! Nope, you're not eating my seven-pound Yorkie baby! She's curled up on her blanket sleeping snuggled up to me as I type this. 

I made my Christmas cards at the cabin we rented. The hubs had to work part of the week so I had some free time. It was cold and snowy and I didn't want to go exploring on my own. I didn't want him to miss out. 

We made a big turkey feast on Thanksgiving. We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Without cable at home, we haven't seen it in several years. It's a nice, old tradition! It was actually weird having satellite tv. I discovered I didn't miss much on HGTV....much of the same old same old. 

Then Christmas snuck up on us. There were a number of projects to get done before our families came Christmas weekend. We moved our dining room into the library, painted, put up a chair rail, and a new light fixture. The old dining room became our study which also received a paint job and a new light fixture. We also had to move a whole bunch of furniture. Some disassembly and assembly required. There's still some more work we want to do - judges' panels and crown molding. Oh how fun! :)

It's amazing how small our house became with a house full of people. It's always nice having our families visit us. Then there's the feast I make. It was great having my fancy double oven stove back from my house in South Carolina. I love that thing! 

In January, we celebrated my birthday and watched the temperatures and snow fall. It's been a cold winter. It hasn't been overly snowy where we are, but we have had more snow than last year. The snow blower has been used a few more times than last year. So glad we bought it so the hubs doesn't hurt himself shoveling the 100+ foot long driveway.

More tomorrow! 

Cyber Monday Sale

The Cyber Monday Sale begins at midnight EST and ends Tuesday at midnight EST. Have questions? Send me a message! 
Don't forget you must join our Facebook group to see what items are available. Join us on Inky Hot Mess.

Close To My Heart Stamps sizes A, B, C, and D are $3 off! 
Close To My Heart Stamps E size and kits are $5 off!
House Mouse stamps over $5 are $2 off!
SEI ink pads are $1!
Close To My Heart cardstock alphabet stickers are $0.50 each!
All 6x6 paper pads are $3 each!
Close To My Heart Background & Texture papers are $2 off!
Close To My Heart Level 1 Kist are $2 off!
Close To My Heart Base Pages are $2 off!
All albums are $2 off!
We R Memory Keeper stickers are $1
Washi Tape is $0.50 off!
Studio G stamps are $0.75!
Ranger Adirondack Ink Pads are $1!
Karen Foster Design stickers are $0.50!
Cuttlebug die sets (set of 4 dies) are $3!

Black Friday Sale!

Happy Gobble Gobble Weekend! 

HUUUUUUUUGE Black Friday Sale is happening NOW here at Inky Hot Mess. 

This sale runs from NOW until Saturday at 12 midnight EST. 

ALL items are 25% OFF!!!

EXCLUDING the paper boxes! They are 10% off and shipping is included!

You MUST join the Inky Hot Mess Facebook group. Just ask to join and once approved, check out the photo albums. Everything available has a photo, description, and price listed. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/211504655531278/

Why do you have to be approved to join the group? It's nothing personal. Really it isn't. I'm trying to keep spammers out. People live to spam others and it's just plain annoying! 

Lots of creations will be back next week. Along with some announcements. Something huuuuge will be announced in January. I'm super excited about many things that are in the works! 

Happy Shopping! 

Paper Pad Mess

Since I've gotten into card making, I've stocked up on 6" x 6" paper pads. Their smaller scale works so much better for many cards. You get the full pattern on a much small piece of paper. 

What do I do with this mountain?? Seriously. It's ugly and looks terrible on my shelves. And then there's that whole problem with things falling over. Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. 

So here's my solution. I purchased the black plastic basket from Target. They are found in the kitchen plastics section by the dish drainers. My Target has them in black or white. The 6" x 6" paper pads fit in them perfectly!

To help with saving a smidge of space and not having to worry about the seals that hold the paper pads closed getting everything all sticky, I tore both covers off. My original plan was to just cut off the company name and collection name off the cover and put that with the paper pad. That's what I do with my 12" x 12" collections. I didn't like how that looked with the small pads since they stand up and the large collections lay down. Shuffling through them to find what I wanted was also not as easy since the cardboard piece would fall to the bottom of the bag.

So onto Plan B! I threw away the cardboard pieces. They irked me. They also weren't very neat and once there's cut up papers in the bags, it would be even harder to find the tag. I have about 834 million labels around here. I went with the Avery 8478 labels. They're made for 1/3 tab file folders. There is a template you could use if that's your thing. I just used an Ultra Fine Point Sharpie and wrote on the labels. All I put on the label was the company name and the collection name. This solved my issues.

How do I organize my paper pads? Same way I do my collections. They are all sorted by theme. Christmas, winter, autumn, Halloween, Americana which covers the 4th of July and anything patriotic, spring, summer, beach/nautical, boy, girl, baby, love (includes Valentine's Day), wedding, Easter, outdoors, pets, school, etc. 

The bags. They are an odd size. I originally purchased them for my Close To My Heart stamp reorganization project. More on that in another post in the future when that project is complete. 

The bags are 7" x 7" zipper bags and I purchased them from eBay. They fit both the Close To My Heart stamp sets and the 6" x 6" paper pads perfectly! I'll have to find 9" x 9" zipper bags when I get some 8" x 8" pads. 

Oh one great thing about ordering the bags from eBay. You can find people selling them in 100 count or 1,000 count. I went with the box of 1,000 since I knew I have a huge project in the works. 

Hope this works for somebody out there! 

Grandmother Birthday Card

Two of my grandmothers have birthdays this month. No need to visit a Hallmark store when you have a studio full of supplies! I ended up making six of these cards. I figured I had everything out and making multiples is easy. It's the first one that is challenging. My extra four cards went into my Operation Write Home stash. Maybe someday I'll become famous and sell my cards.

Until then, I'll let you know what went into these cards. They're all the same card. A few things are different on a couple. I had some issues with my Vagabond. I finally used it! Talk about a learning curve. It doesn't work anything like the Cuttlebug! Lots of reading and video watching is necessary with the Vagabond unlike the Cuttlebug which is all trial and error. 

The card bases are Colonial White Die Cut Cards from Close To My Heart. Upon them I built several layers of papers and cardstocks. All of which came in the Chantilly Paper Pack from Close To My Heart. I used the Champagne, Buttercup, and Lagoon cardstocks. 

All of the inking was done in Regal Rose from Stampin' Up. The cardstock base was sent through my Vagabond and I used the Sizzix Texturz Fancy Fan plate from Stampin' Up.

The twine is Pink from Queen & Co. The stamps inside and out are from the Birthday Tags set from Papertrey Ink.

I used two die sets for this. The first one I used cut out the larger base that the stamped cardstock sits on. That first layer was cut on the Vagabond using Labels Fourteen from Spellbinders. The stamp cardstock layer was cut on the Vagabond with the Tabs and Tags set from Clear Dollar Stamps.

Apparently, I've come up with some sort of style that's my own. I haven't seen anyone else do this, but I'm sure there's at least one other person on earth who's done this. There are, after all, something like seven billion people here. Surely, I didn't create this, but it does seem to have become a signature for myself. 

I've been stamping a small sentiment in the bottom corner of the card. Then a stick on a row of washi tape. I have no idea who makes this washi tape. I probably should try to keep track of that somehow. Not sure how since all washi doesn't come wrapped up with a label when purchasing it especially online.