There is much more June to come, I just have not gotten around to scrapping it yet! For now, have a NKOTBSB page (I managed to squeeze it all in on one page since I skipped adding in the setlist since it was the same as a couple of nights before) and a page that is the layout of the hotel we stayed in when we went down to MD/DC to see Hanson. Coming sometime later… SK6ers, David Cook, Hanson and Honor Society… just have to find the free time and motivation to get scrapping again!
A special post for my trip in May to Tulsa. Mainly because my May regular post was big enough as it was without all this Hanson stuff 🙂 A couple of travel pages w/ plane tickets, a couple of sight seeing pages and one for the concert. There was no way this show trip was being limited to one page! (Although technically there is only one page devoted to the show!)
This month was pretty big! I broke my 1 page per show rule (or “guideline”) for NKOTBSB. But with 8 guys on stage and 2 bands… It was a rule that needed to be broken. Also included, The Ready Set, Javier Colon, Mat Kearney, Gavin DeGraw and ComiCon! ComiCon went over the limit as well, but that was a full day event even though I mainly was there for Tom Felton 😉 Plus – the ticket was an entire page big!
Two final pages for April. Ocean Grove concert page and Jon McLaughlin. It is becoming a bit more difficult to limit myself to 1 page per show, but I am trying to stuff as much as I can on there as evident by the Jon page. The Ocean Grove page I had some room to spare once I cropped everything down!
Since I scrapbook mainly concerts, there is a lot of memorabilia that goes in to my pages. Creating Keepsakes Magazine threw together some tips for scanning memorabilia for your scrapbooks that I think will be helpful:
http://www.creatingkeepsakes.com/articles/6_Tips_for_Perfect_Memorabilia_Scans
Today is National Scrapbooking Day, so I figured since I won’t be doing any actual scrapping, I might as well post some of my layouts. These layouts finish out March and contain half of my April layouts. Lee DeWyze, Stealing Angels, DJ Miller and Ricky Martin. Also included is the setlist from the Ocean Grove show. Nothing too spectacular, I just stuck it on to a page 😉
Today is National Scrapbooking Day, so I figured since I won’t be doing any actual scrapping, I might as well post some of my layouts. These layouts finish out March and contain half of my April layouts. Lee DeWyze, Stealing Angels, DJ Miller and Ricky Martin. Also included is the setlist from the Ocean Grove show. Nothing too spectacular, I just stuck it on to a page 😉
Recently I decided that a great addition to my room would be a French Memo Board. I wanted a place where I could put my concert tickets without having to poke them with a tack, or keep them in an envelope tacked to a bulletin board so I decided that a French Memo Board was what I needed.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with a French Memo Board, it is a board with ribbons crisscrossed on it so that you can tuck your memos underneath them to hold them in place rather than tacking them to the board. I am not sure why this makes it “French”, though there must be an explanation.
I took a trip to JoAnn Fabrics. I already had a TON of ribbon in my scrapbook stash and I figured I could come up with plenty of brads and or buttons to use where the ribbons criss cross as well. All I would need was a foam board or a canvas and some fabric.
First I found foam board. I got a piece that was 20×30 (there weren’t many other options). On my way to the fabric, I found a few that were pre-made for sale! They were $19.99, but I wasn’t a fan of any of the fabric choices they had. One was alright and I figured if I couldn’t find something I LOVED in the selection of fabric, I’d settle on it. But JoAnn’s has a TON of fabric and it was no problem to find something really awesome. I got a print that seemed very 70s and had bright oranges and blues among other colors and I knew that HAD to be the one, even though I looked around for about 10 more minutes just to be sure.
For $9 ($3 for the foam board, $6 for a yard of fabric) I was going to make my own customized version. I would be saving myself about $10 and I would be using up some of my ribbon (I seriously have so much it is INSANE, especially since I rarely use it in my scrapbook layouts)
When I got home, I found the middle of the foam board, scored it with an exacto knife and broke it in half over my head. Seriously! Then I hot glued the two pieces together so that my board would be a bit thicker.
Then I had a bit of a mishap cutting the fabric. I think I was channeling my inner Tim the Tool man Taylor and threw the idea of “measure twice cut once” out the window. Fortunately I did not screw up TOO badly and I still had enough fabric left to cover my board. (HOW I tried cutting a straight line up and down and ended up cutting the fabric diagonally, Ill never know!) I also had to iron the fabric so the crease in it would not end up being seen on my board.
Using a stapler, I stapled the fabric to the foam board. Then it was time to go through my ribbons and figure out which ones looked good with the fabric I had and lay out how I wanted it to look. I am not going to lie, this was the hardest part. First I had every thing laid out, but then I realized I’d have to do things one by one or everything would be a mess. I started by going diagonally top left to bottom right and top right to bottom left. Then I tried to fill everything in from there, making sure the ribbons were in an over/under pattern and stapled them to the back. If you look closely, everything is not spaced perfectly, but that’s ok!
Then was the fun part. I got to stab through everything so I could put the brads in. After I had them all in place I used the hot glue gun to make sure they wouldn’t fall out and also filled the holes on the back with hot glue. (With the foam board doubled up, the brads were not long enough to fit through the whole board and then be secured)
The finishing touch was adding some fun stickers I bought at the Sanrio store to each of the corners!
I often get asked for my custom Silhouette files or how I make my custom shapes. I decided I would put together a tutorial so that those of you with a Silhouette can make your own custom shapes too! I recently updated my Silhouette software so this is with Silhouette Studio Release 1.5.0 and Inkscape 0.45. (Inkscape can be downloaded at http://inkscape.org/ for free)
Under the cut will be screen caps to go along with most of the instructions. Some steps I wasn’t quick enough to capture and some I was unable to capture because once I hit the Prt Scr button the way I had the screen set up changed! I think it should be enough for you to be able to follow along though 🙂
1. Choose your image. This can be something you scanned in to the computer, something you found on google, etc. For this example I chose the Chicago Cubs logo as it is a fairly straight forward image which I got from a Google Image search.
2. Open Inkscape.
3. Open the image (File > Open) Under Places select where on your computer the image is saved (I tend to work off the desktop) then under Name find the name of the file. Hit the Open button on the bottom right once you’ve selected the image you want to work with.
4. Click on the image (make sure it has arrows and a dotted line around it (not shown in the photo), that’s how you know it has been selected) Go to Path > Trace Bitmap
5. If the image does not show up in the box on the right, click “Update” Depending on the image, I usually toggle through Brightness Cutoff, Edge Detection & Color quantization hitting “update” each time to see which looks best. For the example I went with Brightness Cutoff
6. Hit ok. (The trace bitmap screen might not go away after this, you may have to manually close it by clicking the X) When you are back on the main Inkscape screen, you should see a dark version of the image. I like to select it and move it to the side a bit to make sure I have the right image selected.
7. Save the file. File > Save As. In the “Append filename extension automatically” drop down box, select Desktop Cutting Potter (*.DXF) and hit the Save button. (A python script might pop up. If it does, let it do it’s thing – it shouldn’t take long). Further files you can convert from word 2 pdf and back.
8. Close out of Inkscape. You may get a popup about closing without saving changes. You can hit “close without saving”
9. Open Silhouette Studio. Go to File > Import to My Library. Change the “Files of Type” dropdown to “All Files” or at the very least DXF Files so that you can see the file you just made. Select the file and click ok.
10. If you want to add keywords or a description to you file, you can do it on this screen and then click OK
11. If you are not directly brought to your library, you can go to File > My Library. The file your just imported should be in the “My Own Designs” folder. Double click it to open it in a studio page.
12. Once the design is on the page you can resize it, move it around, un group it, group
it, etc just as you would with any purchased silhouette image! (Sometimes there are extra lines/layers – this design seems to have 3 layers of lines, so you do sometimes have to do some editing and tweaking with the lines once the file has been imported into silhouette)
For the cub logo, I ungrouped the image and took the outer 2 circles on to a separate page so I could cut them out in blue and left the CUBS lettering so I could cut that out in red. Since the TM was so tiny, I opted to remove it entirely rather than attempt to cut it. I also removed the additional layers of lines that were there so that there was only 1 line left for the design.
And a scan of the finished product. (Which will obviously be more centered and straightened out when stuck on a scrapbook page, but my scanner has a tendency of moving things around when I close the lid)
Hi, I'm Katie! This is my blog.