Papertrey Ink's December Blog Hop

Winter break! A chance to play in Papertrey's Blog Hop!

Challenge: Holiday Leftovers It's that time again for our annual holiday leftovers challenge! Use scraps of wrapping paper, parts of holiday cards, recycle gift tags or bits of ribbon on a paper crafting project. We all have plenty of it laying around after all the holiday excitement and this is your chance to incorporate some of those pretty little things into an amazing piece of art!

I've always been pretty bad when it comes to wrapping gifts. I tend to have a lot of scrap paper left over which I've managed to save. I love Costco wrapping paper! I took two cues from Papertrey's leading ladies - I was inspired by Nichole using the scor-tape and glitter. Love. Inspiration came from Heather Nichols about kraft cardstock with white distressed edges. Thanks for stopping by and happy blog hopping! My Supplies: wrapping paper (Costco), whisper white craft ink (Stampin' Up!), basic black ink (Stampin' Up!), winter sentiment is from Peace Be Still (Papertrey Ink), white gold glitter (Martha Stewart), scor-tape (Papertrey Ink), kraft cardstock (Papertrey Ink)

Papertrey's August Blog Hop

Hello everyone! I'm so glad you could stop by here! Here I am participating in my very first Papertrey Blog Hop! I can't wait to see what all these talented bloggers have come up with! This is also my first take on a brown paper bag book (I've only seen one, and my friend showed it to me after she made it at a workshop), and this is my first scrapbook. I've been strictly a card maker up until this point...

Last week I had the pleasure to go on a field trip with my three-year-old twins at a Nature Center. We had little brown bags with scavenger lists stapled to them and we were supposed to have the children find everything on the list. As we were approaching the half-way mark, I realized I'd be making a paper-bag book for the Blog Hop! This is a work-in-progress paper-bag book. I'm waiting to take my children on a fall walk during late September, early October, so the pages might change by then, but the great thing about this book is that it's so easy to add pages. To start, I took three paper bags, and snipped the end off of the bottom of the bag, laying them down alternate top and bottom. This leaves six open-ended pockets for each page - for slipping in cardstock for journaling about our fall walk, for things the kids find, or for pictures we take. Can't wait for this part! I used small post-it notes to lay-out my design, and went through the whole book stamping the words (especially LEAF), then going back with the leaf stamps, then the die-cuts, followed by journaling inserts. I was going to bind this book with a twig and rubberband, but the rubberband was harder to come by in my stamp room, so I used twine. The three twigs shown here are ones that my kids collected during our field trip. I'm really looking forward to my fall walk(s) with my kids. I hope you'll make a book of your own for yourself, children, or grandchildren. I'm also thinking I'll be making leaf walk books with my first graders this year. Thanks for stopping by and I'm looking forward to visiting your blogs and being inspired!

Supplies: Paper: three brown paper bags, Vintage Cream cardstock (Papertrey) Stamps: Leaf Prints, Fresh Alphabet, Mini Scrapbook Series: Tabs, Mini Scrapbook Series: Library Ledger (all Papertrey) Ink: Rusty Brown StazOn (Tsukineko), Timber Brown StazOn (Tsukineko), Tangelo Memento (Tsukineko), Creamy Caramel (SU!), and Chocolate Chip (SU!) Embellishments: Twine, Twigs Tools: Leaf Print Dies (Papertrey), Mini Scrapbook Series: Tab die (Papertrey), Cuttlebug