The Finished Baby Shower Invitations

Finally, the invitations are completed and mailed. This was the final product:

I did half with yellow ribbon, and half with green.

The inside:

In the end, I wasn't 100% in love with them, but good enough for my first try at making invitations. I mean, I ended up making about 30 of them.

Scrapbooking Sunday - Pregnancy month 4

My month #4 scrapbooking pages for April 2011. I want to add a little blurb of text on the second page, but just don't know what to write. 

I need to hurry and finish month #5, because it's time for month #6 photos in a few days.

Upcoming projects: 

- Month #5 and #6 scrapbooking pages

- Painting three baby blocks

- Handmade photobooth props

- Wooden picture frame painting

- Possible cardboard princess castle mural for baby's room

- Princess Peach baby name letters

Scrapbooking Sunday - Pregnancy months 1-3

This is what I've been up to lately. 

Stamping 'It's a boy' or 'It's a girl' 20-some times. It's not both, so half of my work will have been pointless. 

Cutting out the pink or blue backgrounds to attach to the 'it's a boy' or 'it's a girl' tags. 

All for the baby shower invitations. I have decided that I'm going to let distant family and friends find out through their baby shower invitations instead of Facebook announcing it right away. This plan will probably fail since my sister wants to come to the ultrasound and find out what it is with us. She's not big on keeping secrets. 

But it's soon invitation assembly time, then hopefully I can mail them out. Canada Post and their strike might also get in the way of my surprise. They better not make me hand deliver all my invites. After all this work I better be able to send them out.

In my first Scrapbooking Sunday post I posted the beginning of my pregnancy months scrapbooking with month #1. I'm now working on month #5. 

So here are the completed pages for month one, January.

Month two - February

Month three - March

And I'll save my two newest pages for another week. I decided to keep the same page setup for my entire 9 months, plus a simple delivery page, because they're all the same kind of stickers. It feels great to keep on top of my pregnancy scrapbooking, because I definitely didn't stay on top of my nephew's scrapbooking, since he's almost 3 and a half and I'm still working on his first month of life. Oops. But anyway...

What's been keeping you busy lately?

Ps. Only a few days left to enter my giveaway. Just guess if my baby will be a boy or a girl. I haven't decided on a prize, but I did decide that I will let the winner help me choose. 

Handmade Baby Shower Invitation { Scrapbooking Sunday }

Scrapbooking Sunday

Not exactly scrapbooking, but it's made by all the same stuff. This is the beginning of the baby shower invitations I'm making. Looks simple, but that pregnant woman is a #?*!~ to stamp on correctly, but fun to make. Now just to make a bunch more. 

Scrapbooking Sunday - Wedding Invitation & Misc Baby Boy

I wanted to post this last week, but couldn't. This is a horrible picture, now that I look at it closely. The main page and the little stickers are all yellow. 

Used: One 12x12 yellow

One 8.5x11 brown page

Clear photo corners to hold invitation in place without actually gluing it in

Some of a pack of $1 dollar store stickers

I didn't know what to do with the invitation. Since it has the pattern on the side I didn't want to use a patterned page to put it on. Too much to look at. 

Here are the two pages I finished Friday of my nephew when he was less than a month old. Everyone took so many pictures of him during his first two months that I just wanted to throw some of the random 'around the house' photos in, so it's just a simple page to use up photos.

Used: Two 12x12 pages with baby boy sayings on it

Two 12x12 yellow pages

One 8.5x11 dark blue page

Stamps and blue ink for month/year

Some of a pack of $1 stickers

Hole punch to make little dots

Patterned scissors

I'm still getting used to my new camera lens, and was very impatient when taking these pictures (waiting for food to cook :p) so excuse the horrible quality. 

Next week: The completed Month 1-3 pages of my pregnancy. (Month 1 tutorial here)

Scrapbooking Sunday - 5 Must Haves

I've been scrapbooking like crazy all week. I did a simple wedding invitation page, completed my 'First Month of Pregnancy' page from last week, and even completed two single pages for month 2 and 3. I've also done more much overdue work on my nephew scrapbook. 

When I say overdue, I mean I'm still playing around with his 'one week old' photos and he's 3 years old now. 

I have even been keeping up with taking photos of my pages. But my camera is home, and I am not. So instead, I'm going to list some of the most helpful things I've come across for scrapbooking. Prices are all Canadian. 

1. Circle Cutter

I have never used one of these, so I can't personally vouch for it, but I really want one. I've cut circles out a few times lately on my own and it's been a disaster. I'm not great with scissors. I plan on getting one of these when I get some extra moola down the road. They seem to range from $30-$90.

2. Paper Trimmer

Same idea as the circle cutter, except it just cuts straight lines. I have this exact 12" one and I'm loving it so far. There are smaller ones, but they wouldn't work so well if you use a lot of the 12x12 paper. The blade doesn't always seem the sharpest though, and leaves little fuzzies on the edges. I haven't tried my other blade re-fill to know if it IS just because of sharpness, or if they all do this occasionally. I don't remember the price, but I'm cheap so it couldn't have been too much. 

3. Paper Storage

I found a cheap accordion-style filing thingy for the 12x12 paper. It has 16 slots. Perfect for sorting your papers by theme (baby, friends, holidays, etc) or color. Saves them from getting bent out of shape like some of mine are. Sorting is a big help when you're looking for something specific. 

4. Project Holder

I got one of these recently for $2.99. It's basically a transparent plastic envelope big enough to hold 12x12 pages, and whatever else. It's for those times when you're in the middle of a project and you have to put it away. It's great for me because I have unfinished projects everywhere. 

5. A good SHARP pair of scissors. 

Mine are dull and just plain bad

Those are five for now. I'm sure I'll have tons more to share later on when I start trying things like border cutters and other random things. 

What's your favorite tool?

Scrapbooking Sunday

Pregnancy: 1 Month, two pages

Supplies:

4 - 8.5 x 11 pages

(2 Yellow + 2 Green - Recollections paper from Michaels)

3 - 12 x 12 pages

(2 White + 1 Black)

Adhesive foam dots 

(From the dollar store)

Miscellaneous stickers 

(Mine from Michaels)

Tip: One of the most helpful things I can tell you is to never glue your entire page in place until you've seen it layed out and what it will look like finished. You can glue papers together, but never stick stickers or glue in pictures. Paper is easier replaced if you don't like what you were working on. 

1. To start, take your green 8.5 x 11 pages, and cut two 1-inch strips from the longer side of the page. Glue one to the left side of the page, and one to the bottom. The bottom strip will have to be trimmed. Cut two strips from the black paper and do the same. Glue the entire yellow-green-black page to the top right hand corner of your white 12 x 12 page

2. I'm going to mount my photos on the green paper, mounted again on the black paper. If you have the photos ready to go, cut out a green rectangle measured to fit your photo, then a black rectangle to fit the green one. There will be one photo of the 4 pregnancy tests I ended up taking, and one photo of me holding a couple of the tests. 

3. I stuck all my stickers on black paper to make them pop out a little more since they were all random colors. 

4. On page one, I listed the reactions of some friends and family when they found out I was pregnant. I measured a long strip of yellow and a long strip of green that were as wide as I needed to fit in the white space on the left side, cutting them apart after I wrote the info on them. Not visible in the photo, but all the yellow strips are mounted with adhesive foam dots, so they're lifted off the page a bit more than the green strips. 

5. Page two is made basically the same way, except made opposite so the pictures will mesh well together when side-by-side in the book. On the right side of page two I listed the dates I took my pregnancy tests, when I told people, and first doctor's appointment. And pre-pregnancy weight at the very bottom. 

In the center of the empty yellow space will be a few belly pictures once they get developed, so I wasn't sure of their size and how I was going to place them. 

I have stickers to cover each month of the pregnancy, and I'm beginning month #4 now, so I hope to get month 2 and 3 templates done shortly. Better pictures next time around. This may or may not be a new feature. 

If you've posted on scrapbooking in the past week or so, send me your link. I might feature some other posts on the subject if there are any. 

For more scrapbooking fun, visit Memories By Christine, who has all kinds of scrapbooking info all the time.