Welcome to Make it Monday! You may be starting here today, or you may have come from Alice’s Scrapbook Wonderland, where she shows how Christmas is all about family connections on a holiday layout she shares.
At some point you are going to have an odd shaped gift and need a way to wrap it. There are a variety of ideas, but I came across this one and thought it was just brilliant! Plus, it’s not hard to do.
If you are so inclined, you could even take plain wrapping paper and just write lines of words for the appropriate occasion, or just make lines of designs with markers or paint pens. Whatever you decide, you are going to be happy to have this technique in your bag of gift wrapping techniques! Enjoy!
If you need some quick gift tags to print, you can always do a quick search on Google or Pinterest for “printable gift tags” and come up with all kinds of tags to suit your needs.
The next stop on this week’s Make It Monday blog circle is Karen at Photos Kept Alive. She is showing how she finds images in the digital software program she uses, Historian.
Just a quick shout out to the others in our circle this week, in with some tips that may make your holidays more memorable. Gina is making memories with homemade bread this week. Do you have a family recipe that is a must have at the holiday meal? Do you have a recipe that must be passed down from generation to generation? Gina shares her favorite.
Whether you are new to art journaling or an experienced pro, you’ll want to be sure that The Documented Life Project is on your radar. 2014 is the first year this project took place. It was headed up by a group of the five women who make up the Art to the Fifth Academy; Lorraine Bell, Sandi Keene, Rae Missigman, Barbara Moore, and Roben-Marie Smith.
The project was free and was designed as part planner, part art journal. Most people used Moleskine journals. A prompt was issued each week and these five women shared their take on the prompt. A Facebook group was started and by the end of this year, it had grown to over 7,700 members! People shared photos of their pages and the inspiration and comradery was phenomenal!
The good news is that there will be a new project for 2015!
Did you know that inexpensive, disposable coffee filters can provide the perfect quick item to corral small items! I don’t know about you, but a seem to be a messy crafter. Once I get started on a project, it’s like an explosion has gone off around me. I am always looking for ways to contain small items I am using.
The first time I realized how hand coffee filters could be was when I was working at an office job and had an unruly snack. I decided I would grab a coffee filter to use as a little bowl. Then I decided coffee filters could come in handy in the craft room! They can also be used in different ways in things you may create, but today we are looking at them today for their versatility as a utility item, not a project component.
Not only can you use them to hold small parts of a project, they are great to use for embossing powder or glitter! Because they are static free, you may even like them better than the little trays which have the spout to pour your powder or glitter back into the container. When you are finished with your powder/glitter, just gather up the filter and make a little spout to pour it back into it’s container.
Beads, sequins, brads, eyelets… you get the idea! In fact, you can even use a filter as a little bowl to hold all the small items you may have ready for a project. They will stay right where you put them until you are ready to use them.
A stack of flat bottomed coffee filters can be handy for so many things, but in the craft area, I’m sure you’ll find them useful. You can even grab one to use instead of a paper towel to wipe your paint brush on, dabbing off a bit of water, or cleaning between changing colors. Just think, if you leave it to dry, it may even be the perfect item to add to a collage, art journal or mixed media piece!
Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it won’t work!
What small products do you find you are always chasing around after they get loose while you are working?
Welcome back to the Make It Monday blog circle. You may be starting here, or you may have come from Jen Wright Designs and seen her fabulous Christmas template and freebie she shared today. Continue through this post and find out who is next in the circle.
Gift wrapping. I would venture to say that you either love it or hate it. Personally, I love creating a beautifully wrapped gift! A friend once told me that when she first got married, they lived in the small hometown of her husband. There was a store in town that wrapped gifts in the most beautiful way, and when you received one of these gifts, you felt special before you ever even opened the gift. We use to laugh that it could have been rocks and you would have loved them, because they had been presented in such a fabulous fashion!
You may be among the many people who have moved to just putting your presents in a gift bag, and just calling it complete! No doubt, gift bags have really taken the stress out of wrapping presents these days. They are quick and easy, and you can add a variety of ribbons or fibers to create an even more festive look, if you want to. However, a gift bag and some tissue is all it takes to get the job done.
Wouldn’t it be great to have some gift bags on hand, that would fit any occasion? How about keeping some plain bags on-hand, and then decorating them as needed — hand decorating them. Don’t roll your eyes at me! Hear me out.
Items to consider:
You don’t have to be an “artist” to accomplish this!
Hand designed items are often more expensive than other items, and you can create your own!
You could decorate bags as needed, making them unique to the occasion.
You can use simple shapes and line art.
Few supplies are needed.
Grab a plain gift bag and a paint marker! The Gold Pen-touch markers are fabulous!
I never really thought about doing this until I had taken Joanne Sharpe’s free 5 Golden Letterings online class, which I told you about recently. Even then, I didn’t have a plan. Then the day came…. Christmas. It was one of those days where plans changed faster than you could figure out what was going on. Suddenly, we had someone who still hadn’t wrapped her gifts needing to make about a two hour round trip to bring a family member to our celebration. Her husband went home and got the gifts, and brought them to our house to get help with wrapping. Larger items were wrapped with paper from rolls, and then….. I suddenly remembered the idea of hand decorating gift bags! Okay, I may have thought about it before, because I had a pack of kraft colored medium gift bags. I pulled them out, grabbed a gold and a white paint pen, and got busy. The extent of this endeavor was writing “Happy Holidays,” or a quick bunch of holly leaves with some berries, a Christmas tree shape, a couple of bells with a bow at the top, etc. My images looked like they came from a coloring book, just simple line art. I believe some of the bags were decorated with random shapes and patterns, fast and easy.
How did they turn out? Let’s just say, some people are easily impressed. I noticed that those bags made a return visit last Christmas.
Simple and effective!
Think how some red glitter glue could jazz up these berries!
Look how this crazy simple tree even looks “elegant” in gold on this black bag!
Obviously, you may not always have the correct sized gift bag on hand, but to have some that would fit many small things could be a life saver. “Happy Birthday,” or some balloons would be sufficient for a birthday bag; or even zig-zags or spiral patterns. I hope you’ll give this a try! You’ll also love the money you’ll save! I just bought a pack of 13 medium gift bags from my craft store, and used a 50% off coupon, which made the bags cost about 27 cent each.
Have you used food photos in capturing your memories when creating a journal or scrapbook page? I’ll admit that I have not done it very often. Yet, I have found that it really does bring up memories — good or bad! I have an opportunity for you to learn more about using food photos, so be sure and read to the end!
Many of you have heard me talk about Layout A Day, the online event where everyone’s goal is to create a memory page each day for a month. There is a theme to the month, and prompts for each day, which makes it interesting. It really helps you think of stories that had escaped your memory, and it’s fun to capture those memories once more! At least a couple of times, I used food as part of those stories. Here is a story about angel food cake, and how it reminds me of my grandmother. In later years, I found out that she made it all the time not because they loved it, but because my grandpa had a sensitive stomach and it was one of the things he could eat. I still think of them when I smell it! (Sorry about the photo quality!)
A memory of angel food cake at Grandma’s!
The many faces of Jello!
My friend Dani Leonetti, AKA Scrapper On The Street, is an avid photographer who really urges people to capture their everyday life in photos. She prompts us to take photos of things we may normally overlook. I wish she had been around a long time ago, because there have been several things lately that I just can’t remember the way they were, and a simple photo in the room at that time, could tell the tale! Dani has had several online classes and she has a new one starting next week.
Dani is passionate about food! Not just the food, but the meaning we attach to it — the events, the relationships, the traditions, etc. What better time to think of that than holidays and the foods we share; and feel like we can’t have the holidays without them! Listen to her in this video:
Dani’s new Insta-Food, Christmas Edition is starting December 18, and runs until January 1st! I am giving one of the prizes during the event! It will be a free spot in my Art Journaling Basics class, with a twist on how to give photos an artful twist!
Go over to Dani’s Scrapper On the Street site and read more about the Insta-Food, Christmas Edition class, and get signed up! Hurry and register before you forget! Use Coupon Code: SCRAPFANS to save $10 Dani is giving away 1 Free Seat to my readers, so use the rafflecopter entry below. If you win the free seat, and have already registered, the money will be refunded. Plus, you can enter once each day before the giveaway closes!
Welcome to Make it Monday! You may be starting here today, or you may have come from Alice’s Scrapbook Wonderland, where she shows how Christmas is all about family connections on a holiday layout she shares.
Welcome back to the Make It Monday blog circle. You may be starting here, or you may have come from 
