New Year New You Webster's Pages October Calendar Pages

The following are the instructions for creating the October calendar pages for the Webster's Pages® "New Year New You" calendar class held at The Paper Forest Scrapbook Boutique in Washington, Illinois.

Page Left

Use the green print on the reverse side of the Webster's Pages® New Year New You "bucket print" paper as the page background.

Approximately 1/3 of the way from the top of the page, attach a piece of Karen Foster Design ® "Pastel Pink Scrapper's Floss" to the background paper for your banner. (I taped the two ends onto the back side of the background paper. Give the floss enough slack for a gentle, natural curve.)

Apply adhesive onto the back of the October calendar and mat it onto a piece of "Pinkini". Set aside.

Using your Sizzix® Big Shot® and the smallest banner from Stampin' Up!® banner framelet collection, cut two banners from "Pinkini". Using the next larger size banner, cut two banners that match the background paper. Using the next larger size banner, cut two banners from "Pinkini".  Layer the banners one on top of the other as shown.  Attach the banners to the bottom side of the matted October calendar as shown. Apply adhesive to the right, left, and bottom of the matted calendar, but leave the top of the calendar free from adhesive. This will create a pocket for you to add journaling notes and/or photos. Center this piece in the middle of the pink twine.

From "Pinkini", die cut a doily using a mini doily die from My Favorite Things®. Fold it in half and attach as shown.

Punch out eight pennants with Stampin' Up!® pennant punch by EK Success®. I used SU "Old Olive" for 4 pennants;  Bazzill® "Pinkini" for 2 pennants; and Webster's Pages® floral print for 2 pennants.  Apply a mini Glue Dot® to the back of each pennant and adhere on top of the pink twine as shown.

Page Right

















Use Bazzill® "Pinkini" as the background for this page.

Punch out 3 butterflies using Bazzill® "Pinkini"; 3 butterflies using Bazzill® "Pollen"; and 2 butterflies using blue SU that matches your label. Run all the butterflies through your Xyron®. Remove the clear cover but leave the butterflies on the waxed paper. Apply "Icicle" Stickles™ by Ranger to the butterflies and allow to dry.

As shown, cut apart the quote "Life is a journey that gives you the liberty to draw your own map and choose your own route." Run all these pieces through your Xyron®. Adhere the word "life" to the label punched from blue card stock.  (It is Stampin' Up!®, but I don't know the name.) Mat the words "is" and "a" on some of the green paper that remains after you cut apart your quote. Set the words aside.

Use the clouds die from My Favorite Things to cut out three white clouds. Use a sponge dauber to ink the clouds with ColorBox® "True Blue" pigment ink. (You may want to practice on a scrap piece of paper to determine the right amount of ink and pressure to use to achieve the look you want on your clouds). Apply a small amount of the Stickles™ on the clouds and swirl it around with your finger.  Set aside and allow to dry.

Cut a piece of blue card stock (that matches your label and butterflies) to 5.5"wide x 5.75" high. Using the tree and leaf stamps from Stampin' Up!® "Season of Friendship" stamp set, stamp a tree onto the blue card stock that matches your blue label and butterflies. Use SU "Baked Brown Sugar" ink for the tree trunk and SU "Pear Pizzazz" ink for the leaves. You may stamp as many or as few leaves as you like. The fullness of your tree is up to you. (Just know that more leaves will result in more work a little later!) Place your tree on top of the Sizzix® "Frame, Oval Scallop" die. Be sure to position your paper at an angle so that your tree will fit inside the oval shape. (You should not be able to see any of the design showing on the parts of the die that are not covered by paper.) Run through your Sizzix® Big Shot®. It is okay to have some leaves or part of the tree trunk on your scalloped frame; this is not a mistake. Apply adhesive to the back of the oval and attach it flat against the upper right portion of the "Pinkini" background, as shown. (Be sure to leave space for the scalloped frame!) Apply pop dots on the back side of the scalloped frame and then place it around the tree in the oval. Use the "Icicle" Stickles™ on the leaves of the tree. Be sure to apply Stickles™ to the leaves on the frame, too. Allow to dry.

When all of your pieces are dry, assemble the page as shown.

Day 320: Little Yellow Bicycle Acorn Hollow Cards

I created these two cards for The Paper Forest Scrapbook Boutique with products from Little Yellow Bicycle's Acorn Hollow line of products, a leaf punch from EK Success, and my Big Shot and dies from Sizzix.

Day 296: Circles for Bingo from Scrap Papers

Tonight I punched out approximately 1000 circles from scrap papers with my one inch circle punch from EK Success.  The circles are to be used  as markers when we play bingo at our church's Happy Birthday Jesus Party.  Since very small children will be playing, I thought paper circles would be safer than bingo chips.

Day 281: Glamour Shots: Sugar and Spice Part 1

Tonight I decided what the title for this page should be: Sugar and Spice.  Again, I was trying to highlight the dichotomy between the studded leather jacket I am wearing with the feminine Graphic 45 papers I used for the background of this page. I used some lace (offray) at the top of the page for a soft effect, then used black rick rack (American Crafts) on top of that, again, those opposites.  I dug through my stash of "scrabble" letters to make the words "sugar, spice" and stamped a large ampersand (Stampabilities) on cream card stock and matted it with black to make my title. I put some of the torn pearl paper I used on my  "Pearls and Leather" page (see yesterday's post) underneath my photo and punched out two photo corners to frame the photo. However, this page needs something more.  I will work on it more tomorrow.  Corner punch by EK Success.

Day 272: Glamour Shots: Glitter Time: Title

Tonight I used the EK Success postage stamp punch from to make a tiny background  to go behind each letter brad in my title. Letter brads from Colorbok. Black card stock from Stampin' Up!

Day 267: Penguin Card

Today I made this cute birthday card for a little girl whose birthday party theme is penguins. The party hat and "top note" dies are from Sizzix.  Punches from EK Success were used to make all the punched shapes.  All card stock by Stampin' Up!

Day 243: Baptism Page

For this baptism page, I chose a brown background paper as there were a lot of brown tones in the photos. Paper by Susan Winget for K and Co. I used "chocolate chip" card stock from Stampin' Up! as mats for my photos, journaling, and the embellishments by Me and My Big Ideas.  I used my HP scanner to scan my actual baptism certificate into my computer, shrank it, then printed it out on "very vanilla" card stock from Stampin' Up! I wrote out the Matthew 28:19 around the mat of the cross.

Day 216: Happy Birthday: Polka Dots

We had this collage made of my son when his photos were taken at Sears Portrait Studios.  I love how the photographer created the saying with the different colored circles.  I decided to use two different color polka dot backgrounds from Stampin' Up! to play off the circles. (The brown polka dot frame is part of the collage!) I also used some cute dot ribbon from DCWV across the bottom of the page.  I punched circles to back three birthday plaques from Making Memories and put those on top of the ribbon. I also punched out some photo corners from the SU dot paper.  Punches are Paper Shapers by EK Success.

Day 212: #1 Soccer Player

Tonight I worked on 2 soccer pages for my son.

For the left page, I used a soccer background from Bella Blvd, the big round soccer ball paper from Reminisce, chipboard embellishments "soccer" and "#1" from Little Yellow Bicycle, and soccer ball stickers from Karen Foster Designs. I think it is pretty self-explanatory how this page went together, so I won't give details about what I did.

For the right page, I used a soccer collage paper from Little Yellow Bicycle as the background.  I selected 3 photos of my son and cropped them to fit inside the postage stamp frames (die and Big Shot machine by Sizzix; black card stock by Stampin' Up!). In the center of the two larger photos, I added a "soccer champ" sticker by Karen Foster. I used my date stamp from Office Max to stamp the month and year around the cluster of photos.  I used three epoxy soccer stickers from EK Success to add a triangle shape to the paper that helps to keep the eye moving across the page.  I added some info about the team, coach, etc., to the words at the bottom of the page with a journaling pen from Creative Memories.  Finally, I added my son's "soccer card" photo to the bottom right of the page and tucked another soccer ball sticker under the left side of the picture, further adding to the collage effect.

Day 198: Touchdown Scrapbook Page

I started working on a scrapbook page of my son tonight.  He had some photos taken for his birthday with a football as a prop, so I used a football field paper from Reminisce as my background paper.  Over that I layered a football die cut, also from Reminisce. I spelled out the words "Touchdown" and "Daniel" using letter stickers by EK Success. There were no numbers in that particular set of stickers, so I had to use some from Echo Park Paper Company to spell out "is 7" and the year "2010".  I want to add his initial "D" and the letters "MVP" to the page, so I inked them with black ink and will need to let them dry overnight.  I will finish this page tomorrow.

Day 187: A Boy Is A Joy

For this page of my son, I used this brown football paper from Echo Park Paper as a background to coordinate with the sepia tones of the photo.  The red wood paper I used as a mat for the photo and for the tag is from My Mind's Eye. I made some photo corners from a fabric tag by Making Memories and put the photo corners under the upper left corner of the tag and the lower right corner of the photo mat.  Usually I would put them on top; however, I think because the texture and color of the fabric made them look heavier than the red paper, they looked better underneath. The sign " A Boy is a Joy" was by EK Success.  I punched out the spots for the brads, added red brads from Oriental Trading Company and some twine from my stash.  I also cut a football  out of the background paper and used it to fill in the "o" in "boy". I used a football-shaped sticker from 7Gypsies to cover up the "o" in joy; the sticker says "amazing".

Day 162: My Prince

To scrap this photo of my son, I used the crown paper from the Bohemia collection by My Mind's Eye as the background page.  I used the reverse side of the same print to make the brown mat and the brown strip. With my photo corner punch from Paper Shapers by EK Success, I punched some photo corners out of the leftovers from the mat page. I embellished the photo corners with blue brads from Bo Bunny. The "handsome" die cut and the "my son, my handsome prince" title tag are both part of the Bohemia collection.  The crown brad is by Bo Bunny. 

Day 87: Playing with Paint

I needed to scrap my son's school kindergarten photo, but to coordinate with the next page, I couldn't use the typical primary colors.  I went through my stash of papers and found "Khaki Plaid" by Kelly Panacci for Sandylion.  It is a blue and green plaid, set on the diagonal. One of the shades of blue looked good with the shirt my son was wearing, and the paper coordinated with the grandmother and grandson page I completed a couple of days ago.  But how to make the page look "school-ish"?  I jumped on the internet and typed in scrapbook school page to get some ideas.  One idea I liked was to use a piece of notebook paper behind the feature photo.  I found some ledger style paper in a pack of designer paper from Stampin' Up, and used a punch from EK Success to make it look like torn out spiral notebook paper.  Then I roughed up the edge of the notebook page so it would look ragged, like it does after you tear paper out of a notebook. I wrote the word "Kindergarten" and "2009-2010" with the teacher's name and the name of the school at the top of the ledger page (journaling pen by Creative Memories).  I found the class list and wrote all of the kids' names on the ledger paper. I set the ledger paper at an angle and then placed my son's photo on top. I used some ribbon that looks like a tape measure across the bottom of my son's photo, and attached a "k" stencil over the ribbon.  I also added a soft yellow "k" charm from Around the Block to the stencil.  Beneath the ribbon, I used some white sticker letters that look like a child's handwriting to spell out "Kindergarten 09".  I added a large letter K from Deja Views with star clips from Oriental Trading Company to the upper right hand corner of the page. I liked how the page looked, but thought it needed something else.  So, I got a sponge brush and a bottle of white paint (Plaid) and smeared it on the page randomly, even on my son's photo.  Too much white...so I got out a bottle of lettuce paint (Ranger) and added that.  Then a little more white. I never had so much fun making a scrapbook page and playing with paint!

Day 64: Candy Land Title and Cards

I wanted to place the title "Candy Land" on the first page of my two-page layout, and at first I thought about using some colorful primary alphabet stickers I had in my stash; but then I decided I would really like the title to use the same letters that are on the Candy Land game itself.  I wanted to work on this layout now, and not have to search the internet and then wait to receive something in the mail days from now, or run to area scrapbook stores to see if they had a Candy Land title.  So, I copied the letters on the cover of the game box, reduced the size, printed them out  on white card stock from Georgia Pacific using my HP Printer, and then fussy-cut them for the title.*  I ran the letters through my Xyron adhesive machine. I punched out nine 1.25 inch squares with a punch from EK Success using Real Red paper from Stampin' Up! and attached the letters to the squares. Then I punched out nine 1.375 inch white squares with a punch from EK Success on card stock from Georgia Pacific and attached those to the back of the smaller red squares.  I edged the squares in Real Red ink from Stampin' Up! to make it look like there was another layer of red beneath the white.  I thought there was not enough contrast between the white squares and the white background paper, but I did not have the next larger size square punch, so this was my quick fix.  However, that still didn't give me enough contrast.  I really wanted a red title strip to go underneath the letters, but the only red paper I had was 8.5x 11 inches and my scrapbook pages are 12 x 12 inches.  I have seen where people paint or ink acetate plastic, so I decided to do that. I have a stash of acetate plastic I have collected from product boxes, so I found a piece that was longer than 12 inches, and cut it to the dimensions I needed to make a title strip for my page (1.75 inches wide by 12 inches long).  I inked the acetate plastic with Blazing Red StazOn Ink by Tuskineko and left it to dry overnight. (StazOn ink is permanent on plastic or other slick surfaces, but drying time varies depending on what you are inking, so leaving it to dry overnight was a precaution so I would not smudge the ink.)

I began critiquing the second page and decided that the two matted photos, one embellishment from Jolee's and my journaling block were not enough, and that the page needed more. I decided to copy some of the playing cards and print them out and mat them and then lined them up down either side of my photos.

Satisfied with my progress, I decided to leave this and come back to complete the assembly of the pages tomorrow.

*Advice on cutting out the letters A and D:  to cut out the middle of the letter D: there is a slight separation where the D starts and stops at the top left of the D.  Using scissors with a very small, fine blade, cut along that separation and then cut out the center part of the D, following the inside of the D until you get back to the beginning.   Advice on cutting out the letter A:  make two copies for each A; then cut out the crossbar of the A on one copy and set aside; then cut through the crossbar on the second copy, following the lowercase "n" or upside down "u" shape; glue the crossbar on top of the "n"/ upside down "u" shape.

Day 62: Fairies

I found this great paper by Graphic 45 that has these beautiful fairies all over it. Titled "Once Upon a Springtime", it made the perfect background page for this photo of my daughter.  In order to save the fairies that would otherwise be hidden, I cut out the center part of the paper behind the 8 x 10 photo and rose mat (American Crafts).  I fussy-cut the fairies out and will use them to make greeting cards.  From the text portion of the paper I saved, I punched out four photo corners using a corner punch by EK Success.  In each of the photo's four corners, I placed the photo corner, added two leaves from Jolee's, and a rose from Stampin' Up! I chose to use two blue roses and two dark pink roses because I wanted to pull in the colors from the fairies on the paper.  I wanted the photo to be the focal point of the page, therefore I did not title the page. I simply wrote my daughter's name and the date beneath the photo using a journaling pen from Creative Memories.

Day 54: Using a Scrapbook Page Kit

My local scrapbook store, The Scrapbook Corner*, has page kits that include all the coordinating papers, embellishments, and a photo of thepage layout.  You just put it all together, add your photo, and you are done. I picked this kit up because my daughter loves pink and wears it in a lot of her photos, and the pinks and browns in this kit would work with anything.  The only things I used to embellish the page that were not part of the kit were the leaves (Sizzix die and machine), the buttons (jillibean soup), the American Girl title (Laserline)** and an American Girl sticker (EK Success). A quick page, but you wouldn't know it!

*The Scrapbook Corner is located inside of Holiday Presence, on the Square, Washington, Illinois, and also has a store on ebay

**Laserline is located in Washington, Illinois, and has a website www.laserlinecuts.com