Christmas Scrapbook Themes and Ideas

With Christmas quickly appearing on the horizon, it is time to start planning Christmas crafts, make Christmas cards, and plan for spectacular Christmas scrapbook pages. This is all possible and easy with a quick visit to the Christmas Scrapbook Themes page which not only provides ideas for cards and scrapbooks, but also give ideas for photos to take at and around Christmas time, Christmas scrapbook page titles and even a cute Christmas ornament that looks great but is easy to make with clear hobby rubber stamps. Don’t let Christmas catch you unprepared, plan your crafty ideas today.

Designing Background Scrapbook Paper with Clear Rubber Stamps

Some of the most fun I have is decorating my own coordinating background papers for my scrapbooking and card making projects. It is really very simple and easy to do.

• Choose your coordinating rubber stamp or stamps
• Choose an ink color
• Follow the instructions in Making Decorative Background Paper for Scrapbooking and Card Making Projects
• Paper can easily be embellish with glitter or embossing techniques.
• Use your paper as you would any purchased pattern paper.

Making your own background paper will always produce the perfect colors and depth for your own personal projects because you put it all together. Everything matches and contrasts just like you want it to.

Advantages to making your own pattern paper

• All your elements complement each other
• You don’t have to decorate more paper than you need for the project which saves paper for other ideas
• Colors in your background paper will definitely match the stamping you are doing for sentiments or other key elements
• No one else will ever have the same look in their background paper because only you designed it.
• Your background paper can develop and enhance the theme you want

NEW Scrapbook Layouts

The focus this week has been to put together and make available new scrapbook layouts for your scrapbooking hobby. Each layout is unique and has been originally designed just for you. Enhance each design using your clear stamps on backgrounds, foregrounds and embellishments. The possibilities for creativity are endless. With each completed page you get that feeling of accomplishment that makes all the time it takes worth it in the end.  As of today there are now 15 total scrapbook layouts never before seen with more coming!

Check it out at http://www.clearlyrubberstamping.com/scrapbooking-layouts

Stamping Easter Fun after Easter Egg Painting

So another Easter has hopped on by. It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies, but because it does it is important to capture the moments while they are fresh in our memories.  Scrapbooking ideas for Easter themes are always welcome. This idea is to help you highlight your Easter Egg Activities. The following is a simple card making craft using this technique.

The fun Easter Egg background is created using the Egg Pattern Clear Stamp. Once you have completed your background add photos if you are doing a scrapbook page and plan the layout in such a way that you can add painted Easter Eggs as embellishments.

Cut out ovals in the size that you want your Easter Eggs to be using white cardstock. Next choose your favorite border rubber stamps to decorate your eggs. I suggest using colors that appear in your photos or scrapbook page backgrounds to make your stripes.

Begin stamping lines on your Easter Egg shapes. Once you have finished your horizontal and vertical stamped elements it is time to fill in the background with a complementary color. You really do get to ‘paint’ your Easter eggs. To do this:

Choose the color you want your egg to be. Close the pigment ink pad then squeeze the top and bottom together tightly. This will create some residual ink on the inside of the lid of your stamp pad. Next, generously wet a small paint brush and mix a little water around on the lid – creating inked water. With that done, begin painting in all the white background areas on your Easter Egg! I like to ink the edges when I am done for a little extra emphasis.

You have just created a fabulous Easter Egg embellishment with your rubber stamps for decorating your Easter scrapbook pages!

Happy Stamping!

Easter Scrapbooking Themes

Easter is a great time for scrapbookers to use pastel colors in combination with spring photos and embellishments to recreate a special holiday. When designing your page, first consider it’s purpose.  You may wish to capture your faith with religious aspects of the holiday, you may prefer pretty pastels and Easter Eggs to dominate your pages.  I chose a fun pastel color theme.

Begin by choose an appropriate Easter Scrapbook Page Topper. If you are having a hard time coming up with something look through the Easter and Spring categories in 1500+ FREE Scrapbook Page Toppers to help you. You may also find a few new ideas from Easter Theme Scrapbooking Ideas.

Easter scrapbook themes are really easy to create when you have Easter Eggs to adorn your pages. You may wish to make them large enough to host a photo or small enough to create an interesting decorative border. Regardless of their purpose, you can make them easily by cutting striped paper into an oval. Next  use two or three different colors of pigment ink and some clear border rubber stamps to add interest to each stripe. Change the rubber stamping ink color often to make your eggs very colorful. I enjoyed stamping a spring garden to place my stamped Easter Eggs in.

Clear Rubber Stamps used in this layout: Big Blooms and Ribbons and Rikrak (for the lines on the Easter Eggs)

However you use them, stamping Easter Eggs to enhance an Easter scrapbooking theme will please the eye every time.

For more Easter scrapbook page ideas scroll to the bottom of the Easter Scrapbooking page in this link.

Scrapbooking with Rubber Stamps

For Christmas this past year I decided to do a Mini scrapbook that contained all the personal information of my family members including neices and nephew and all the rest. My goal was to have a small, handy complete and up to date address book that would be fun to look at and use.  This is what I came up with.

The first page you see when you open up the book is the title page containing a full family picture and the heading “____ Family Address Book”. It is simply printed on white cardstock cut to fit in the sleeve of the photo album and I used my clear rubber stamps with first and second generation stamping techiniques to give the impression of patterned paper.

Inside the address book each family has two pages. One page is designed to hold birthday and anniversary information. It is embellished with full color pictures of family members and decorated with rubber stamped images. The other page is for information that changes such as mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and cell phone numbers. The following photo’s illustrate this well. You will noticed that all faces and personal information has been blurred to maintain privacy.The last page of the book includes a descendancy tree for a completed project which now contains personal family information needed to keep in touch and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. I stamped a tree on this page in keeping with the family tree theme.

I was surprised how quickly this project went. I had to make eight of them and they were done within a week as time permitted. Some of the pages already need a few alterations but it is a fun and personal gift that was easy to make and ideal to give.

Grandma’s Brag Book

It’s funny how things happen. This morning I was reminiscing and thinking about the Grandma’s Brag Books that we started several years ago. As I thought about it I was thinking that next time I visited my mother I would have to take my camera — You know, she called only a few hours later needing some help at the farm! Well I grabbed my camera and off I went.

Grandma’s Brag Book is a fun gift that I think all grandparents – particularly Grandma’s – love to have BECAUSE they love to brag about their grand kids! In fact, my nieces and nephews even read it when they visit Grandma so they can see the most current pages of their cousins. Here is a photo of the very first Grandma’s Brag Book that I made.

I painted the picture in fabric paints and wrote in the Title. On the inside of the cover I wrote a poem (I am no poet – It was the best I could do) that introduced the Brag Book. Here it is…

Well that is it! It is a fun project and each year both Grandma’s eagerly anticipate the new Brag Book Pages they will get for Christmas!

Scrapbooking – A Picture History

I think I was first introduced to scrapbooking about 20 years ago. At that time I had a lot of photos in those albums  where the photo’s stick to the page and there is a clear sheet that sticks over that to protect them. The biggest problem I had with that was the difficulty in removing the photos without damaging them. I had never heard of acid free prior to that either.

When I saw that first scrapbook I was in awe! Of course it was in the 8 1/2″ x 11″ format in acid free sheet protectors in a binder BUT it was darling, AND it was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to present my growing children with at some future time in their lives.

Since that time, scrapbooking has evolved into one of the most creative forms of family history that I know. I LOVE family history and I LOVE photos. So when you take the two and put them together in a Picture History… well you get the idea. I was instantly hooked.

I have done super simple scrapbooks and I have done more detailed pages. I actually enjoy doing both kinds, but I really love embellishing if I have the time. About 10 years ago we made a padded binder for each of the grandma’s that was entitled ‘GRANDMA’s BRAG BOOK’. Since then we have filled it once and have had to make her another one. We keep it pretty simple because the kids do a lot of their own pages, but it always includes a photo, and it is soooo fun to look back through and see the kids grow up page by page. When I get time I’ll post it to the blog with photo’s and more ideas….

I totally love the originallity of scrapbooking – even when you use the same layout ideas as everyone else. The pages are never the same. Scrapbooking has even grown to include rubber stamping – another of my favorite hobby crafts.  I enjoy embossing, stamping and designing my own patterned background paper. I almost always have great results even if it doesn’t turn out the way I originally thought it would.

Since that first glimpse at a well done scrapbook I have made MANY pages and filled MANY scrapbooks for my children. I tell them that when they start their own families then they can have them to read and show to their own children. Scrapbooking is such a fun way to relax AND preserve a little family history. It is definitely something I will NEVER give up!!!

Stamping Clever Valentines

Stamping clever Valentines for kids and sweethearts is easy with clear hobby rubber stamps. Design handmade Valentines cards that will always carry the appropriate saying for the recipient. From the idea list make clever Valentines that will bring a chuckle with ordinary rubber stamps.

To make a funny Valentine stamp a Hippo with the words “Hip, Hippo-ray for my Valentine!” or stamp a cheerleader and include the caption “Three Cheers for the Best Valentine!” Use any of the funny  ideas to design and create ideal Valentine card making crafts, or to begin decorating unique scrapbook art pages.

You can spend as much or as little time on Valentine crafts as you like. The more layers, backgrounds and embellishments you use the sharper the project will look. For kids Valentines you may prefer to limit the card craft to simple stamping techniques. For a sweetheart you may wish to embellish the card with a little extra time and effort to convey your feelings. No matter who the recipient is, these clever cards will be enjoyed by all.

FREE Scrapbook Page Toppers

With 1500 Plus Scrapbook Page Toppers, you will find fun Titles and Quotes to theme your Scrapbook Pages.  Topics include:

• Outdoors (Camping, Fishing, Snow etc),
• Family (New Baby, Grandparents, Parents, Heritage etc.)
• Birthday and Holidays (Christmas, Valentines, Halloween etc.)
• Seasons
• Events (Moving, Graduation etc.)
• Love and Friendship (Marriage, Dating, Best Friend etc.)
• Hobbies and Talents (Sports, Games, Dancing etc.)
• Food and Cooking
• Country and Nation
• Feelings (Happy, Remembering, Fears etc.)
• AND MORE…

Visit http://www.clearlyrubberstamping.com/free-stuff to get your FREE page toppers today!