Omg I didn’t even know there was such an app to connect on Wordpress in this manner! I totes need an iPhone now! LOL

I thought it would be exciting to do a Project 52 this year, and since I’ve recently purchased the Weeds and Wildflowers Sweet & Simple January Bundle, I’m all set to do this! The templates are fabulous! I’m awful doing multi-photo pages, and I really love that the templates have full-size 3×4 photo windows for me to work with! Here’s my January cover page and my page for Week 1:

Tomorrow, I’m working on another Project 52 this time doing the LogYourMemory.Com Challenges!

To Christmas kits, that is!

Come Dec. 24, I try to sit on my hands to just STOP buying the Christmas kits. There are so many beautiful kits this season, and add to that the fact that I hardly own any Christmas kits from last year (I thought it was tacky last year, boy am I fickle or what!) and it’s a match made in… um I dunno where but it’s definitely bad news for my Paypal. I shopped so many Christmas kits this year I’m probably gonna continue making Christmas hybrid well into July next year just to use up all the kits I picked up.

But wait. That’s not the worst of it.

In buying all these Christmas goodies, I thought it might be good to have some cutesy sets (to work with those X’mas babies pix) and some nice elegant sets. Nice+elegant = Microferk Designs. So, I was totally NOT prepared for the onslaught of Christmas goodies that Miki has, and I picked up almost every single one of them. D:

I’m about a hundred bucks poorer now. But I foresee a number of beautiful Christmas pages to make it into the galleries soon.

If only I could find myself some time to scrap.

So everyone, don’t forget to drop by Polka Dot Plum! The Christmas sale ends tomorrow and there are so many awesome deals and great kits here!

One other awesome sale: Olga Unger’s special 12th day of Christmas sale on Scrap Orchard! Don’t forget to drop by today! The sale’s only for 1 day!

And so I thought to make this timely little feature for Christmas!

Most people’s idea of hybrid is that it’s such a time-consuming venture. Never mind the expensive part, coz ya really gotta own stuff to make something good. Just the time it takes to create a project is something you’re never getting back. And with all the rush during Christmas, time is, I’m sure you’ll agree, something that isn’t in abundance for a busy lady. Who really has the time to be cutting and gluing stuff amidst the holiday furor?

But this year, I’m determined to give pretty, customized gifts to my loved ones, and so the solution of the hybrid calendar really fell into place.

I joined the Log your Memory Gift of the Year workshop last month and ended up with beautiful calendar pages to give to that special someone, while I also enjoyed my scrappy time! Here’s my January page that I have from the workshop:

It’s personalized and just that perfect gift for the perfect someone!

Now, say you didn’t even have that one or two hours a day you dedicate for your scrappy time (oh no! However do you manage a whole day not doing any scrapping? I think I may die!) Our hybrid community has the perfect answer: ready-made calendars!

I have this gorgeous CD calendar project from my hybrid CT with Dani Mogstad and it made for the perfect present for my dad and my stepmom (who are seriously too rich for their own good and it makes giving them presents really difficult)

As a special touch, and so that I didn’t feel too guilty for not scrapping the calendar pages on my own, I made pretty gift box to go along with the calendar, but that’s really an optional thing! And that’s the beauty of these quick presents: just pop in your photos into those open windows, print, and a few trimming here and there (you don’t even have to do that if you’re planning on a 8.5×11″ calendar) and go! And it took me maybe all of 20 minutes doing that. I probably spent more time selecting and cleaning up photos than I did putting my calendar together. Teehee!

Now, let’s tally up how much was spent into this project:

1. 2010 CD Calendar by Dani Mogstad from The Sweet Shoppe – $6.99
2. A 50-sheet pack of Canon Matte Photo Paper – $11.63 from Amazon. I used 6 sheets only (print 2 calendar pages per sheet) so that works out at $1.40
3. CD Jewel Case – recycled from unwanted CD (hint: Pussy Cat Dolls hehehe)
4. Optional: Gift box materials:
   • 1 sheet of photo paper for the printed sheets – $0.23
   • 1 sheet of black cardstock (purchased a pack of 20 sheets at the local bookstore for $4) – $0.20
   • 1 yard of the special red ribbon ( I forget which brand!) – $1.50 from the local scrapbook store
   • lace-punched cardstock and brown and gold ribbons are all scrap.

Grand Total: $10.32

OMG, that’s so much less than the expensive branded perfume that I was planning to buy LOL! And I can reuse the digital CD calendar over and over for lots of different gift ideas! Plus, I saved so much time doing this project, probably even less time than it would have taken me to go downtown to the mall and pick out the perfume.

And so, I hope you manage to save yourself some time and money while making beautiful, treasured presents for your loved ones this gift-giving season!

OK, I’m popping in quickly for this awesome sale from Tracie! Hurry to Scrap Orchard before you miss it!!

Don’t forget to drop by!

So, I’m starting this new series I’ve thought up as a direct result of my hybrid addiction and brain storming at the PDP CT forum (gotta thank Susan for getting my creative juices going!) And I hope as I go along writing these articles, I’d get more people interested in doing hybrid scrapping, because it’s a fun and fresh way to jazz up your home or give a present!

Starting out with hybrid is simple and you really only need 5 things: a printer, paper, a pair of scissors, glue, and your imagination.

In my case, my stepmom runs a magazine business out of our house, so printers, scissors and glue weren’t difficult to find, and they didn’t even need to be any special kind of stuff. For example, the printer I had was purchased for all of $85, and it came with 20 sheets of matte photo paper and the full cartridge of ink for FREE. For scissors, I had just used those regular office supplies scissors that we buy at the dollar store, same with the glue.

For the very first project I’d done, I was so psyched up with those board book albums from Basic Grey. By the time I wanted to start my project, I was already about 2 months into my digital scrapping craze and have made a number of pages, which were now candidates for printing out.

Basic Grey Bracket Album

Christmas was around the corner (this was just last year!) and I’ve made the decision not to buy an expensive present for my mom, and instead give her something meaningful, something she could treasure. I ended up buying a Basic Grey bracket album for $12 (I’m sure you guys in the US have it better. Some places sell these albums for less than half that price!)

The album had 12 sheets of bracket-shaped chipboard (including the covers) to embellish. I only had 20 sheets of paper. Simple solution: take out 2 sheets, and I was left with 10. Just enough to do back to back pages.

I scrapped my pages in 6×6in (about the same size as the album), and printed out 1 page per sheet of photo paper (boy, was I wastrel back then! :p) Since I was too cheap to buy a template, the pages were printed square, and the way for me to size up the album correctly was to trace the album shape with a pencil over my printed page, cut then glue them to the chipboard.

As I was punching out the holes for the ring binder, I messed up BOTH of my cover pages. Oops! Emergency! Off to the scrapbook store to buy something to cover up my booboo, and I ended up getting a small bottle of Prima flowers, which cost me $7.99. I used these to cover the messed up holes.

Prima Flowers

I took some ribbon scraps from some old flowers I received from my boyfriend (they’re all wilted by now, but I keep the bouquet nonetheless, and now they have a purpose!) and tied them to the ring binder of my album, and…

TADA!!! I now had a hybrid project!

Bracket Album

Let’s ring up what I used and spent:

1. Printer paper – FWP from my printer so FREE. (Otherwise, it’s $12.47 for 50 sheets of Canon matte photo paper from Amazon. If you took 20 sheets and wasted the white space like I did, that works out to be $4.99)
2. Scissors and glue supplies – borrowed from my stepmom, so FREE.
3. Basic Grey Bracket Album – $12
4. Prima Flowers – 1 little bottle was $7.99, and there were like 80 different flowers. I used 3 so that comes out at $0.10 per flower, so $0.30.
5. Ribbons for embellishments – scrapped from old present, so FREE.
6. Digital kits used – All were stuff already in my stash, or they were freebie kits from Shabby Princess. LOL

Imagine that! For a 10-page album that I was going to give as my grand Christmas gift to my mom, I only spent $12.30!! I now had a couple hundred dollars left for other expenses, since I didn’t buy the overly expensive branded bag I wanted to give her initially. PLUS, I had given her something that I made, and it’s something I know she’s going to treasure much more than she ever will a bag, or any other material stuff.

When I gave it to her, she thought I’d spent hundreds just to get it printed out. LOL. Little did she know…

See, that’s the beauty of hybrid!

And I haven’t started my weekend work, LOL.

I’m too lazy and it’s infinitely more fun to continue hanging out on forums and chasing after the blog trains! Speaking of which, if you haven’t gone after the PDP Blog Train, get going now! The fall kit you get out of it is super cute!

OK, let me get back to my Cafe World. LOL

OK y’all! I’ts DSD and there are soooo many goodies for you guys to shop! You’ll have to excuse the clutter, I made so many goodies in prep for DSD, and I’m pretty sure I’ve missed a couple of my CT kits coz today had also been a hectic day personally LOL

So, first up the whole Scrap Orchard Market is at 35% off! You need to hurry down and pick up some goodies, especially for Thanksgiving and Christmas! A few choice favorites:

I bought this kit with Amanda’s last grab bag and haven’t really had the chance to play with it yet, but it’s chockful of awesome fall goodies! This is perfect for your pumpkin picking and playing among the red leaves pix!

Is this kit beautiful or what? Megan makes the most beautiful Christmas sets, and you know, I’m not a huge fan of Christmas kits, but this one, and Megan’s other kit, Sugar Cookie, are simply rich and gorgeous!

Here’s another Christmas kit for you:

It’s another gorgeous and rich kit by Dani Mogstad! I had a pretty full schedule in the past week so I hadn’t been able to play with this as well, but I’m just itching to make a couple of cards with this!

And lastly, I’m guesting at Eva’s team this month, so I’m very happy to show you guys this gorgeous collab she has with the fabulous Traci Reed:

Kits about ourselves are few and far between. But by now, y’all probably know that I can make just about any kit to be for me LOL. I even scrapped something to that effect:

I’ve got a speed scrap at Polka Dot Plum at 7pm EST, so I hope you guys will join me later.

Meanwhile, I’ve already shopped to my hearts content this DSD. I don’t know if I should even be showing off my purchases. I’ve been really good this time though, and spent considerably less than I did during NSD. LOL But that’s probably because I bought a bike today! I got a foldable one from Monotine Bikes. I’ll snap a photo tomorrow or on Monday as time permits.

So, why don’t you guys share your DSD shopping lists with me?

http://www.sweetshoppedesigns.com/sweetshoppe/images/cache/e22378015ad4eb3fe455b6de43b06109.jpg