Photo Pocket Book

It's back to school time and that means picture day will be coming soon. If you're like us, everyone loves to receive new school photos of the kids, especially grandparents. Today I have a fun photo pocket book to show you to hold all those treasured memories.

I started out by selecting a combo of pretty patterned papers that are suitable for Fall. I used pieces from the Autumn Abundance and Green Tea Leaves paper pad collections.
Next, I used a 1-3/8" square punch to punch out lots and lots of squares.

I then stamped images from Borders and Corners Squares onto my punched images. You could also stamp the squares first, then punch...either way works. I'm going to set these aside but we'll come back to the squares later.

Next, I used two A1 Kraft envelopes to create my pocket book. Lay the envelopes down with the flaps facing each other like shown below. Tuck one envelope flat into the opposite envelope. There will be a flap left on the back when you turn the envelopes over. Go ahead and seal the flap. You should end up with the two envelopes folding together like a book, with a pocket on each side.

With the pockets facing down, stitch around the entire outer edge of the envelopes with your sewing machine. This is totally optional...if you're not into sewing, then forget about this part.

To embellish the inside of the photo pocket book, cut two pieces of patterned paper and adhere them to each side. Using Scor-Tape, adhere two strips of Bitty Dot Orange Zest ribbon to the pockets, then trim the ribbon edges.

I created two square embellishments by first punching out two cardstock squares with my Giga scalloped punch. I then stamped a square border from Borders and Corners Squares onto the punched pieces using Dark Chocolate ink. I stamped *memories* from Pine's Journaling Lines, green leaves from Borders and Corners Squares, and an orange heart from Borders and Corners Hearts. Can you tell that I love these Borders and Corners sets?

I then used Fresh Alphabet to stamp the letter *J*....then punched it out with a heart punch. I adhered this to my square with a pop dot. I adhered my square embellishments to the inside of my photo pocket book.

I then printed photos of the girls' first day of school using my Canon Selphy printer. I'll also add the school pictures once we get those. These will all be tucked into the pockets of the photo book.

Now here's where all those punched squares come into play. I adhered them to the front and back of the photo pocket book to make a quilted looking mini album. I'll tie my photo pocket book up with a pretty Orange Zest ribbon and it will be ready for the grandparents.

I'm kinda liking this little mini photo album so I think I'll have to make me one too. It's fun to have photos on hand of my cute reds! Hope you give it a try!

Basketball Card

Happy New Year's Eve! Do you have big plans? I'd love to hear about your fun evening. Us? We're staying home, having a taco night, watching basketball.....and loving it!! We've had extra kids here all week long so a night to ourselves will be nice.

For Josey's next basketball practice, she's supposed to bring a note stating her strengths and weaknesses. I thought it would be a great time to send a thank you note along to give to Josey's coach. Coaches love to hear that praise and like to be recognized for what they do. They put a lot of time and effort into our kids, so be sure to let them know you appreciate them!

Here's my card below. I was able to assemble this in about 10 minutes! I used my handy dandy Canon Selphy printer to print off a black and white photo of Josey's ball team and made it into a simple card. Then I used Just Rite Stamper's self inking stamps to create words arranged in a *ransom* style. I love the black and white colors and the inspiring words. A ribbon finishes off the outside of the card and I used a *thank you* sentiment from JustRite on the inside. Here's a closeup of the words, simply stamped on white cardstock and then cut into strips. Easy peasy but a pretty cool look. I think I'll be incorporating a lot more photos into my cards now that I have my little printer too.

Until supplies are gone, Just Rite is offering these self inking stamps for just a buck! One buck, one smackaroo, 100 pennies!! I took my basket full of these little stampers and some notebook paper to Josey's basketball practice the other morning. It was the best entertainment for 6 little kids that I could think of and we never heard a peep out of them. They loved them!!! Check out the link to the Dollar Store section at Just Rite HERE.

Thirty Minute Thank Yous

Edit: For my pocket Christmas cards, I simply folded a half sheet of cardstock in half, trimmed a little off the top of one side and sewed around 3 sides to make a pocket. I trimmed an insert to fit inside and added a computer generated holiday sentiment and a small family photo. Embellishments are from Papertrey Ink.

Edit: Alicia asked if I would recommend using the Canon Selphy home printer to print out all my photos for scrapbooking. Let me first say that I love the quality of the photos and have gotten lots of questions about how did I get 4 to a page, and that the quality looks great. For me personally, the answer is no to printing out all the photos though. It really depends on how you scrapbook. If you only scrapbook 1 photo to a page, maybe this would be for you. But when I scrapbook, I usually do (2) 12" x 12" layouts and have 5-8 photos for each layout. And I take a LOT of photos. So I'm going to save my biggest print jobs for Shutterfly or my local photo shop. I definitely have been using my Selfy for my Daily December pages and will continue to use it for mini albums, etc. I love, love, love it and highly recommend it. And the folk at Canon are THE BEST for customer service.....they are in the USA, I can understand them and they are sooo helpful!

Hi everyone, what's on your list today? I was chatting with some friends about how the countdown is on. One week til Christmas and I want to enjoy the Christmas break with my family. I want to have everything wrapped up and ready to go so that I can enjoy the true meaning of Christmas and just *be*. Nothing else but reading a good book, playing games and drinking hot cocoa, watching movies, etc. The stuff that childhoods are made of.

But to accomplish that goal, I've had to keep busy to get everything checked off my list. I issued myself and my friends, and now you, the Thirty Minute Challenge. Make your list, keep it handy, and allow yourself 20-30 minutes tops to work on one selected task. This helps you to not spend all day piddling around on the computer, etc.

Yesterday I took the time to make one last batch of cookies for holiday trays. While I had the timer set for 35 minutes, I printed off my family Christmas photo for this year and addressed all the envelopes. I got them all done by the time the buzzer went off on the stove. If you recall, I had all of my Christmas cards finished back in the fall when Nichole issued the design team a challenge. Thank goodness I took the time to make those 25 cards back when I had time!


I tweaked my card design but here's the simplified version of my Christmas cards this year. I cannot stress enough how much I looooove my Canon Selphy printer. It was an early Christmas gift and it's probably one of the best gifts/tools I've gotten. I didn't have time to get online and finish up my photos and I didn't want to stand in line at Wal Mart. So I just put 4 photos to a page and printed them off at home. Easy peasy!
Here's another 30 minute task I did...little Christmas thank yous for the girls to write out. Yes, we DO still write thank yous. I insist. No, a phone call won't do. I grabbed some precut SU! scallop notecards because I wanted quick and easy. I cut some K and Company patterned paper to put on the front of the cards and used scraps to put strips on the small envelopes.

I used Just Rite's thank you center and border from the Designer Borders and Centers set. I stamped the images with Java Versamagic ink, let them dry a little bit and then punched them out with a SU! scallop punch. Again, easy peasy and quick! I edged all the scallops on the sentiment part and cards with white ink. I grabbed some velvet ribbon from my May Arts collection (available from Cindy at Star Lit Studio) and glued it on, then added a few staples to secure the edges.

I got seven little thank you notes done in that 30 minute time frame and even had time to put away my supplies. Thank you notes, CHECK!! Now I'm going to move on to some laundry and picking up the house. You can do it girls, these 30 minutes tasks make a world of difference!

All For My-Selphy

P.S......I posted a card last night so be sure to scroll down one post if you missed it.

We delivered 3 loads of firewood this weekend, so we had cash in hand....which means we paid bills with it. Snort! If you believe that, I've got some ocean front property just outside my back door to sell ya! We went shopping, you sillies!

I got an early Christmas present because I needed it NOW. Well, actually December 1st I'll need it because that's when my Daily December Album starts. I got a new little printer!! It's the Canon Selphy CP 760. I found it at Wal Mart for $79.99 regular price...did some research online and it was $99.99 at Best Buy and a few other online stores.

PRODUCT REVIEW:
It only comes with a printer cartridge and 5 pieces of photo paper so a refill pack is a much needed purchase along with the printer. I found the refill pack KP-108IP right there beside it for $29.99. It has 3 printer cartridges and 108 photo refills. The Selphy model I got was the newest model and it didn't say that the refills fit this model #. But when I got it home, the instruction manual listed the one I got as a correct refill. Prints figure to be .27 cents each, not too bad.
The unit itself is about 5" x 7" or so, not including the printer tray that detaches. You simply put the paper in glossy side up and slip the tray in til it clicks. Plug in two cords to each other and then into the wall. Turn on the machine, plug in your memory card from your camera and you're good to go.

You scroll through your photos with the arrow buttons and can do multiple copies and change about 5 or 6 settings like minor photo quality, sepia color (cool!), multiple photos on one page (up to 8 but I can't figure that one out), add a white border, etc.

You insert the printer cartridge on the side by opening up a little door. Easy peasy. When it's making prints, it runs the paper back and forth, first making the yellow tones, then the red tones, then the blue tones, then once more I don't know why. I forget the process this is called but it's pretty cool whatever it is. (I'll get more technical for you once I ask my printer guru friends).
The prints come out on glossy paper with two white tabs at each end. They are perforated and you just bend them once and they almost *click* off. Or you can keep them in tact to write on or put a tack in. By the end of the learning session, the girls were pros at printing.

The quality of the photos really AMAZED me. I was skeptical....VERY skeptical of the photo quality because I don't like the look of hazy,home printed photos. I have to say I was very pleased with the photo quality. They really look like photos you'd get back from the printers.

I would HIGHLY suggest this little photo printer and give it a two thumbs up! It's small, portable, doesn't require a computer (but does have a cord so it will work with your computer), prints great photos, is easy to use and convenient. I won't be printing all my photos from home but when I need some for mini albums, school projects, family events, birthday party projects, etc., it will come in SOOO handy. I know my girls will be wanting to use it all the time.

So now I'm all set for my Daily December album. Can't wait for December 1st to roll around now!!