Halloween at College Scrapbook

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Halloween at college was always something interesting. Freshman year, we spent a lot of time at Target (because it was closer by bus) and also did a little thing called Haunted Hall.

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Haunted Hall was part performance, part building, part trying to keep a bunch of people organized, but mostly scaring the pants off of people. We used an empty residence hall and decorated it and figured out routes and all that fun stuff and people would come and donate cans of food or money to enter.2

Unfortunately, my senior year they stopped doing Haunted Hall and I was sad, but I still have tons of great memories.

College Scrapbook

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Like I said yesterday, I have a whole bunch more photos to scrapbook, so here is my first page of my college scrapbook. I LOVE how it turned out. LOVE.2I did have to splice together two pieces of yellow for the background of the photos, and I may or may not have cropped someone out of the photo on the left (Ok, I did), but I think this is a great, fun, happy beginning to my awesome college scrapbook.

I really do have more projects than just scrapbooking, but for now I’m having TONS of fun. I’m sure I’ll get bored of it soon and post some other projects, but for now, I have some awesome scrapbooky goodness to share.

The Wedding Scrapbook

bridesmaidsGetting all of my scrapbook paper and embellishments organized has really inspired me to scrapbook everything I have. And I have a TON of photos that need to be scrapped. That might be all of what you see for the next few days, but worry not, I have more projects that need to be done!

thegirls

I may have gone a little crazy with the rhinestones on these pages, but I like them and had space to fill. You can never have too much sparkle!

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Now that I’m done with my favorite photos from my best friend’s wedding, I’m going to move onto some college stuff that I already have printed. I have to print photos from my other friend’s wedding and my brother’s wedding, but I have tons from Vegas and college that I’m going to move onto next.

Freebie Label Printable!

I mentioned earlier that I would offer the label that I made for my scrapbook pages, so here they are! Just click the image or the link below to be taken to the full size download.

scrapbook label

Download

The font I used for the label in my scrapbook was Sucker Font by Juan Casco, found on DaFont.

I love making stuff like this, so if you’re looking for anything special just let me know and I might offer some more freebies in the future!

And don’t forget to follow SwankyLuv on Facebook and Twitter for updates!

Scrapbooking!

pg1My best friend got married on October 1st. Of 2011. And I got the photos from her wedding about a month later. And then I immediately scrapbooked those photos. Except that’s not what happened at all. They sat in their envelopes until yesterday (some of them ended up in frames on my unfinished frame wall) when I finished the first two pages of the book.

I plan to make the invitation the first page of the book, but the first photo is of myself and Chris dancing for the FIRST TIME EVER! Though we look like we’re at a high school dance, he improved at our second dance at another friend’s wedding about a year later.

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The facing photo is my favorite one of my friend and her husband from their wedding. When I saw it I thought it was so sweet and so cute I may have teared up a little.

pagesI made the wedding date label in Photoshop, and I might offer it in a few colors as a printable later today (it counts as a craft, right?) The rose paper I bought as a pack of 50 from Tuesday Morning for like $1 a while ago. The purple is from one of many stacks. The punch to create the border is Martha Stewart, and the sparkly letters were a TJMaxx buy (can you tell I don’t like to pay full price for my supplies?)

Not too bad for some of my first pages!

Finance Folder

SwankyLuv: Finance Folder

I’ve always loved Mint.com for keeping track of my money, but with my current job, I get paid on a pay card that can’t be connected to Mint. And that sucks. I really like that I can see what’s coming in and what’s going out and what categories I’m spending in and where, so when I found this 13 section file at Staples, I figured it would be a great place to keep track of receipts (and keep them out of my wallet).

I labeled each of the sections with a month and keep spare notecards in the back section.

SwankyLuv: Finance FolderI’m not going to show off my financials, but every time I get a receipt, it goes into its month’s section and I write down the date, where I spent it, what the category was (Shopping, food, gym, loan payments, etc.) and how much I spent. Negatives are in red, paychecks are in black.

SwankyLuv: Finance FolderThis has worked out pretty well so far. It’s a great place to keep my receipts and I’m able to keep track of everything really easily. When I get a job with direct deposit, or if I ever sign up for direct deposit through my current job, I plan to continue saving receipts in this method, just not writing anything but cash transactions down (since it will all be on Mint).

How do you keep track of where your money is going? Are all of your receipts in a shoebox?

Scrapbook Paper Hanging Folders

IHeart Organizing is a huge inspiration for me, considering I’m currently one of the least organized people in the world. So when they posted some scrapbook paper organization help, I was ON IT. But I was also not about to spend $2 per folder on these scrapbook file folders. Maybe in the future, but not now.SwankyLuv: Scrapbook Paper Storage

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive compensation.

I originally had my paper in 12×12 drawers, but not only was it hard to access, it was bending the paper that was on top and that made me sad.

SwankyLuv: Scrapbook Paper Storage

The best folders I found were the job were Office Max brand hanging folders. They’re cheap and easy to use, while also strong come with tabs.

SwankyLuv: Scrapbook Paper StorageOf course, the folders are only about 9×12, so they need some help to fit 12×12 paper.

First cut one folder in half at the crease.

cut2Then, cut one metal piece off of a second folder. I held onto these in hopes to figure out a way to use them, but you could also just discard them.

SwankyLuv: Scrapbook Paper StorageThis folder gets folded to create a 12×12 folder. If you’re using the Office Max folders, the crease you see immediately to the left of my scissors will be matched up with the bottom one of four. If you’re using another folder, match up the two folders and use a piece of your paper to create the proper size.

foldNow, just tape both sides (they should overlap, so make sure you tape both front and back) and you’re done!

SwankyLuv: Scrapbook Paper Storage

Just do it about 30 more times depending on your categories. For the record, my categories are pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown/tan, black, white (solid and print), stripes, geometric, polka dots, letters and words, baby, travel, holiday, family, and two-sided. I tend to give myself an “other” category, but I know I would have ended up with a TON of stuff in that category.

So far, it’s worked, but of course, I haven’t used any of the paper since finishing the box. It holds the paper, and I have drawers to hold other things now so I’m pretty excited about that.

How do you hold your scrapbook paper? Is it organized or thrown into some drawers all willy-nilly?

Scrapbooking Embellishment Organization

SwankyLuv: Embellishment Organization

This might not look like much, but when you see the before, you might be surprised.

SwankyLuv: Embellishment Organization

The worst part is, this isn’t even all of it. I had a plastic bin full of paper and other embellishments as well, which is all in the drawer now. I started with three little boxes (you can see one with pink handles in this picture) that had embellishments and stamps in them, and then everything else was just thrown into the box. It was pretty bad. I really had made an effort to keep it organized, but when you end up with SO MUCH STUFF, it starts to get hard very quickly. When I came across these Martha Stewart secure top binder pockets at Staples, inspiration hit.

SwankyLuv: Embellishment Organization

I grabbed a couple binders from the binder box (yes, we have a binder box) and got to work. The smaller embellishments and clear stamps went into the four section pockets (and two section pockets not shown) and the larger ones went into the full size ones.

SwankyLuv: Embellishment Organization

In the larger pockets that held the clear stamps, I inserted a piece of paper to separate the front and back to allow me to double the number of stamps. The smaller pockets are one sided.

SwankyLuv: Embellishment Organization

This made a huge difference in my drawer. I’m now able to see what I have, and actually use it. I have easy access to embellishments and clear stamps, and I was able to fit a box from my cereal box drawer organizer project into the drawer, which holds stamp makers and scissors and punches.

One of my biggest issues was that a lot of stuff was still in packaging, so getting rid of tons of packaging trash was a huge help. And now I have an empty plastic bin to use!

Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

A while ago, IHeart Organizing posted about how she made drawer organizers out of cereal boxes, and I really needed to organize my bedside table because it looked an awful lot like this:

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

SO BAD. So I collected some boxes and laid them out in a pattern that made sense and still left some room for big/square things.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

And then I had to wait for the boxes to be emptied. But once they were, I followed IHeart Organizing’s instructions to cut them to size and cover them. But I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted a box that had a top and closed, and after a little bit of figuring, I found the best way to do it.

First, cut one of your boxes in half.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer OrganizersYou’re going to use the top half for this part. Make sure the box you’re using looks like this:

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

Then flip the top half of the box over and measure the height of the drawer against it, but don’t cut it yet! You’re going to need that extra bit of the box to make the bottom.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

If you don’t want Cheezit’s by now, I don’t know WHO YOU ARE. Anyway, cut the extra bits of the box down to your cut.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer OrganizersNow, you should have a box top that has four flaps on one side and four flaps on the other. Take a look at the bottom half of the box. You’ll notice that everything is cut at an angle. This is to make everything fit together better, and it works, so cut all four of your bottom flaps at an angle.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

I decided not to line the inside of this box because it just seemed like a lot more work, so I wrapped the outside of this box with some of my $4 for two rolls contact paper that I bought on clearance at TJMaxx, then cut down to the corner of the box.SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer OrganizersWrap the edges down and trim anywhere that there’s a corner, wrapping the cut edges around instead of cutting them off. At any corners, cut at an angle into the corner and push one side down and the other over.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

Make sure you cut out the slit so you have a place to put your tab.SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer OrganizersAnd you’re done!

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer OrganizersKeep sensitive items in your closable box or just anything that you don’t want readily available to anyone opening your drawer, then fill your organizers up! I sorted my things by category, then by what would fit into which drawer.

SwankyLuv: Cereal Box Drawer Organizers

I love it! I smile whenever I open my drawer and see my beautiful little boxes and all the pink. This is almost everything that was in the drawer before, save for some hair ties and a small pile of stuff I threw away. I’m considering putting the hair ties in the drawer, though, since I have enough room for them.

What are you making for National Craft Month? Do you have a drawer that needs desperately to be organized?

30 Days of Crafting

30 day of crafting

I have a problem. I am a habitual craftstarter, in that I start a project and then a few hours later, I get distracted and start a new one. It’s a rough life. Mostly surrounded by sad, half finished projects that either didn’t work out or I got my craft-high out of and didn’t need a fix for a while.

But all that ends today. My friend Julie posted a drawing that she had completed on Facebook and inspired me to do something useful, so, starting tomorrow, I will be completing one project every day until the end of March and posting them Monday through Friday with two posts coming on Mondays and Wednesdays. Some of the projects are things that I started previously and never finished, and some are brand new projects.

What constitutes a project, you ask? It obviously can’t be something like an entire scrapbook, but one page (two pages that face each other) will do. Cooking or baking something. Deconstructing a t-shirt. Making a useful storage object. Etcetera.

Want to join in with the 30 days? Start with a list of ideas that you’re going to complete over the course of the month. If you’re having trouble thinking of things, browse Pinterest for a while (but not too long!) and work out a list of ideas. Then, DO THEM! Make sure they’re small projects that can be completed in your spare time during the day. If your project is knitting a sweater, you’re probably a craftstarter whose eyes are faster than your fingers!

Leave a comment linking to your project in my daily posts and I’ll share my favorites every week!

(By the way, I was unaware of this, but March is National Craft Month!)