If you have been with me for any matter of time since I started this business 10 years ago, then you know how much I dread moving. I have rolled with the moves to this point, after all, Gary can’t help his PTSD, but I have told him I plan to live out our days in this house. No more after this.. We have found the perfect house. First and foremost in my mind is the basement where I will hold scrapbooking, and other papercrafting events. I am even thinking about setting up the rooms downstairs to be suitable for overnight guests in case we want an all night crop!

Along with all this new space, I will have a dedicated craft room upstairs and while this is a happy thought, the re-organization of a new craft room is a daunting task. So once again, we will take on this challenge or organization, and a place for everything, and {gasp} everything in it’s place!

We have decided that instead of my painting everything I would spend the money to have the house professionally painted.  Tomorrow  I will share with you that experience.  For now, I will journal this journey here. You on the other hand want to be signed up to follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CreativelyCarol. Make it easy, just click on the link. Look for my journaling tweets for questions for your own journal.

Have a wonderful day!

 This is one of those holidays that you either love or hate, can take it or leave it, you get the idea. Did you know that in 2014 people spent 37  BILLION on Valentine’s Day!  That my friend is a lot of  chocolate!.  As much as I love to see all the jewelry ads, and  ooh and awww, I have also seen a trend of “I Hate Valentine’s Day” items.  Depending on where you are in your life, and how comfortable you feel there, would you embrace this turn on Valentine’s Day?  I know the arguments “no one is going to tell me when to express love” or “It is a made-up holiday created by the card companies” no matter the negative reason, I couldn’t so so far as to wear “I Hate Valentine’s Day”  across my chest.  I would look like a bitter old woman who didn’t have love when in fact I am very happily married and am spoiled rotten!  Ask him, he will tell you.

On the other hand, I love how creative people can be on Valentine’s Day. Take a look at the card on the left. I love how the creator (not me) used paper flowers tipped with Ruby Ink, or the spray effect caused by using the Spray Pen. And who doesn’t like some bling on Valentine’s Day?   I will be posting a series of Valentine Day Cards today on Facebook. While I would love to take credit for them, I didn’t make them, only compiled them for your enjoyment. If you have not yet “Liked” my Facebook page – PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DO IT NOW.

Wishing you a warm and cuddly Valentine Day, 

Hosting a Close to my Heart Scrapbook, Card or Papercrafting party is easy and lots of fun!  As we are heading into spring.. there will be baby showers to plan, weddings to prepare for and birthday parties for sure. Why not do something different this time and throw a scrapbook party!  Just imagine how much fun it would be to all be making a special scrapbook page for her baby book. She would be thrilled with a scrapbook that has a bunch of pages where all she has to do is add pictures of her new arrival!

Instead of bringing gifts or in addition to smaller gifts, every participant purchases something so the new mother can continue to scrapbook her child’s life.  Or they could purchase for themselves and give the hostess gifts to the new mother. there are lots of ways to do this, but it is lots of fun!

Here is a view of what you can earn as a hostess of a Close to my Heart Party:

When sales of your party reach:$1,050 or more $200 or more** in free products AND select up to 4 items in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$950–$1,049 $180 in free product AND select up to 4 items in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$850–$949 $160 in free product AND select up to 4 items in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$750–$849 $140 in free product AND select up to 3 items in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$650–$749 $120 in free product AND select up to 3 items in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$550–$649 $100 in free product AND select up to 2 items in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$450–$549 $80 in free product AND select any 2 item in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$350–$449 $60 in free product AND select any 1 item in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$250–$349 $40 in free product AND select any 1 item in the current Idea Book at 50% off
$150–$249 $25 in free product

So you can see how this can quickly add up to a wonderful party.

What do you think of this idea? Leave a comment below and share our thoughts with us.

If you have read my blog much, you will notice over the years I change things up a bit. What do you think of this new format?  I discovered something when I was figuring out all the settings, have you heard of Google Typography?  I had never even heard the word “typeography”  only the word “fonts” to explain a lettering style. Here is what Wikipedia has to say explaining typography”

Typography (from the Greek words τύπος typos “form” and γράφειν graphein “to write”) is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language readable and beautiful. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing (leading), letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space within letters pairs (kerning). Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. In modern times, typography has been put in film, television and online broadcasts to add emotion to communication.

Here are a couple examples I found this morning,

Just think of changing the fonts on the journaling of your scrapbook pages and the interest different fonts can offer. In the coming months, I hope to show you more examples in my own work as I work on some long overdue personal scrapbooking.

Do you use different fonts in your scrapbooking? What do you think of these? Please share your thoughts below.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Punxsutawney Phil say his shadow this morning so as the story goes… 6 more weeks of winter.

With overcast skies he sees his shadow… I guess we will have to see how this plays out. Here in Utah, if the snow has any bearing on the subject, we might doubt that winter has even shown up this year. Ok, the bitter cold in the middle of the night might indicate in some way that winter is here, or maybe the calendar but with so little snow fall on the valley floor, I, for one, feel cheated! Are you sure Phil?

Last year he also saw his shadow.. and it was the most brutally long winter in the United States! Winter dragged into March..wait… isn’t winter SUPPOSE to drag into March? Spring starts Monday, March 20th.

Here you can read how Phil almost got the death penalty for “misrepresentation of early spring” until a Pennsylvania law firm claimed that the attorney in Ohio was out of his jurisdiction… I am just wondering how they train the groundhog to look for his shadow in the first place.. who explained to him what a shadow was?  That might have been one interesting conversation!

I will however watch the movie from 1993 called “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray and directed by Harold Ramis.  It will make you laugh enough to keep warm today!

Millions of people today will be watching the Superbowl, even those that regularly don’t watch football. Are you one of them? I love Superbowl pools, picking squares and such, so I thought I would bring a bit of that fun here to Creatively Carol Scrapbooking. Every order placed today, February 1st, 2015 will receive a discount on the items they purchase based on the spread at the end of the game (up to 20%off).

Now if you know anything about me, you know our home is a Raider Nation… and if you know anything about the Oakland Raiders, you know we Do NOT like the New England Patriots!  We here at Creatively Carol Headquarters are cheering on the Seattle Seahawks!

So to make it even more interesting, anyone who places their order BEFORE GAME TIME will receive an extra gift with their order.

So Spread the word to all your scrapbooking and papercrafting friends, and click here to go shopping. Then e-mail your order to me here.  I will call you on Tuesday after the game to get your payment information so I can apply the proper discount!

Leave a comment below and tell me who YOU think is going to win and the final score. If you are correct, you could win a free stamp set!

GO SEAHAWKS!!!!

You want to get some depth perception in your stamped image, but don’t find too many 2 stamp sets anymore. Have no fear, I will show you how to create that shading using just one stamp, a sponge dauber and just a bit of time. Here we go: 

Step One:

Stamp a floral image in your desired base color and then clean the stamp.  Now re-Ink your stamp using the rocking technique in a slightly darker shade than the first colorso just the outside edges of the stamp get the ink. Carefully stamp over the previous image.

Step 2:

After cleaning the stamp again, ink only the center of the flower using a sponge dauber using a darker, contrasting color and carefully stamp over previous images. with a sponge dauber. Use a tissue to wipe any ink you don’t want to show.

Step 3:

Carefully stamp over previous image, Be sure to align the stamp correctly over the image so your end result is crisp and clear.

If you have any questions, please leave them below.

If you are like me, you are always hesitant to throw out your tax returns and support stuff.  But since we are buying a house I am trying to get rid of the unwanted or unneeded clutter and paper stuff. The loan company asked me to find my 30 year old divorce decree..can you believe that?? I looked in the file and found it, and a lot of old tax returns.  I have decided to shred all the returns older than the 7 year statute of limitations.

As I grabbed the folders a bunch of checks fell out and I saw one made out to a football camp my youngest son went to in 2003; then a light bulb went off!  I could use information in my taxes to reconstruct a timeline of events.  This can be helpful for both scrapbooking and genealogy. Those returns show where you worked, what you may have won gambling or when an event may have occured if you wrote memos on your checks.  Now I wish I had realized this before the last time I purged tax returns from our 29 year marriage!

So while you think about your taxes this year, or start your spring cleaning, think twice before just throwing them into the shredding. They can be a wealth of information.

Leave me a comment and tell me what you do with YOUR old tax returns.

Would you like the latest news from the world of clear stamping (the clear version of rubber stamping, scrapbooking and papercrafting delivered  to your inbox each month? That’s what you receive when you join my Mailing List!  Each  month, as a  Mailing List Subscriber you can enjoy my newsletter several tutorials worth $4.95 and $7.95 each as well as all the latest news, tips, and ideas… and it’s FREE!!

As a bonus, you will also receive 6 projects with cutting directions, measurements and all the instructions (a $59 value). To join my Mailing List and receive my monthly newsletter, just fill out the box to the right. Don’t forget to confirm your subscription and your free tutorial will be delivered to your mailbox.  If you need any assistance with your projects, or anything, please don’t hesitate to give me a call!

-*When I began scrapbooking some 12 years or so ago, I felt I had to use every photo I took (unless it was an exact duplicate. I even had trouble getting rid of the blurry ones. II never really considered that was you DIDN’T have to scrapbook every picture. I learned later about cropping photos and how it is important it was, but I will save that for another day,  The biggest challenge for me both 12 years ago and even today is organization. Since today is Organizational Tuesday I thought it was a good time to talk about organizing your photos. Here are some tips to help you get ready.

First, decide if you want to put your Christmas photos in a traditional scrapbook, in a digital photo album or in a Picture my Life® by Close to my Heart.  There are benefits to each method which we will discuss later. The next thing you must do is to organize your photographs.  This has become more complicated than just making piles on the floor to separate them.

If you’re making a traditional scrapbook, you will eventually want to print the pictures but perhaps before you do this, create a folder labeled Christmas 2014 and inside it put folders for every scrapbook page you want to do. Divide your pictures up by desired page. Then when you are finished, you can evaluate the pictures in each folder and determine what is worth scrapbooking.

This will work for any occasion going forward.

Next week we will talk about all the pictures already sitting in your computer already and if you are as old as me, all the pictures you have printed and stilling in a box and your albums.   I will tell you that if you have your photos in any of the old “magnetic” albums, please remove them. They will damage your photos because the chemicals doesn’t not play well with the inks in your photos. If the picture is stuck use some dental floss to slide under the picture.

I was reading an article tonight and decided I had to share it.  We all like to find things that are junk and turn them into something wonderful, When the article talked about other uses for butcher Block knife holders, I just had to share!

You can read the rest of the article here.

Sometimes there is photo that you just can’t reduce to a 4″ x 6″ photo without losing the details or that special look. Here is a great layout that puts the focus right where it goes, on your photo. Using the contrasting colors to bring out the color in your photo will help it pop.

The blues and browns have been a popular color combination for quite a few years. Looking at the color pallets for spring, I don’t see this changing anytime soon.

What is your favorite color pallet these days? Leave a comment below and let see how everyone else thinks.