The Avid Scrapper: March 2008

Saturday, March 29, 2008

FREE SHIPPING THIS WEEK ON EBAY AUCTIONS!

The following 5 spreads are listed on Ebay until Tuesday, April 1 @ 6pm PST. All will be shipped USPS Priority Mail FREE within the United States! Don't miss out!

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"

Perfect for Halloween, Birthday and Build-A-Bear Photos

"Summer Time Fun" Tear Bear Pages

"School shoes off,

Flip flops on!"

"Goofy"
Eveyone has taken the Goofy photos!

"A Baby Girl Is..." Tear Bear Pages
Beautifully display photos of your baby girl

"Easter Fun" Tear Bear Characters
Perfect layout for girls AND boys!

Friday, March 28, 2008

Easter Papers

So, this is them! April's paper for our pages! They are glitter pages and these pictures do not do them justice! All papers are double-sided so you can choose which side you want. I am almost done with the layout, when I have it perfect, I will post the pictures.

See how the 2 background pages fit perfectly together? So cute!

March's Scrapbook Class Pages

This month's class went so smoothly! Thanks, ladies! I know it was lots of cutting, inking and gluing, but every one's pages looked fantastic and all your bears turned out so adorable! I know the foil paper was stinker to ink, but when it dried, it looked great, just like I said it would.

Next month's is going to be lots of fun, too! More glitter papers and bright colors for those Easter pages. See you all on the 24th!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Custom Baby Announcements: "Our Family Has Grown by Two Feet"

I love to do baby announcements but don't get the chance to do them very much. I was recently contacted by someone, who had stumbled across my blog and liked my work, and was asked if I would be interested in making some handmade custom baby announcements for her new arrival. "Yes!" I was so excited to have this opportunity. She emailed me sample colors and and I was off to the scrapbook store for paper. I found this adorable paper by KI Memories and just loved it! I love that it looks masculine with out being just "blue". I also only use Bazzill card stock, as many of you know, and I wanted some texture for these and so I found brown, green and blue and made sure they were all different textures to add a little something extra to the design.

Once I emailed samples and got the ok on the paper, I got started. I knew that I wanted the checks and stripes on the front of the card but I also wanted something that was different and would focus the attention of his little feet. I somehow wanted the title to enclose the photo she would place on the front and came up with the circle and the title wrapping around that circle. I will admit, I panicked when I realized that I was going to take the digital image and make it real on paper! But, where there is a will, there is a way, right? Thanks to my Cricut and some crafty calculating, I got it to work perfectly! I really loved how it came together; the circle, the title, the entire cover.

I inked all of the edges with Colorbok Fluid Chalk Ink. Inking always adds the dimension I am looking for. The inking was more subtle that I would normally do but I didn't want it to over power the paper. Something she specifically requested was that there being some sewing on the cards. Just the little bit of Zig Zag stitch on the front was the perfect touch. 3 small brads added the perfect accent without taking the focus from the photo.

Here is what it looks like with a photo of the baby feet, not his baby feet, but some baby's feet!

Now the inside. She requested a photo mat so that she could also include photos of his face. ( I mean as cute as his little feet are, family and friends are going to want to see his cute little face, too! °Ü°) I put that photo mat on the top of the card, double matted it and zig-zag stitched the frame. Four small, brown brads helped to accent that.

For his information, I wanted his first and middle name to stand out, after all family and friends already know his last name, so I put the last name in a cursive font and grey ink so that his first and middle names would stand out. (Names on the examples have been changed from the real ones) Now that I had that done, I needed something to balance the page out and since I wasn't able to buy much of the circular paper I decided to run a row of it along the bottom. I felt that the mat and this runner framed in his birth information nicely.

(The example below is the digital design but matches the paper pieced design with the exception that the zig zag stitch is brown on the cards and not white as shown)

Thank you, Christy, again for allowing the chance to create these for you! I had a lot of fun with them learned some new techniques with my Cricut and grew a bit design wise. I can't wait for my next chance for more announcements.

Designed and Created by CJL
ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHTED 2008 The Avid Scrapper

Feel free to be inspired by my work but do not copy it. THANK YOU! °Ü°

Friday, March 14, 2008

"Easter Fun" Pages

Easter is almost here and as I was thinking about what kind of page to put together, I thought of a "Bunny Express". Don't know why, it just came to me.

As I was going through my papers, I originally picked out pastel pinks, lavenders and yellows but then I came across this great glitter paper and decided that I would put together a more gender neutral page and LOVED the way this turned out!

The entire spread

I love the way the tear bear bunny, chick and lamb came out. Honestly, I hadn't made tear bears in some months now, but it was like riding a bike!

All-in-all this is my favorite Easter page to date. Available now on Ebay.com. Bidding ends Tuesday, April 1st. 6pm PST

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHTED 2008 The Avid Scrapper
I work very hard to make sure my customers get a beautiful one-of-a-kind spread for their albums. Feel free to be inspired by my work but do not copy it. THANK YOU! °Ü°

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

"A Mother's Love" Premade Scrapbook Pages

With Mother's Day coming, I thought I would start a bit early to get some pages done celebrating our mothers and being a mother. "Like a circle, a Mother's Love has no end." LOTS of flowers and flourish and a little "bling" to brighten the page. There are 5 photo mattes and a jounaling frame. Sephia photos would look GREAT on these pages!

Listed on Ebay through Tuesday, March 11th at 6pm PST.

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHTED 2008 The Avid Scrapper

I work very hard to make sure my customers get a beautiful one-of-a-kind spread for their albums. Feel free to be inspired by my work but do not copy it. THANK YOU! °Ü°

A Little About Me

Hello! My name is Carla. I am a wife to a wonderful man and mother to two beautiful daughters and two adorable fur babies. I have always loved taking photos and creating a special place for them to be cherished and shared. In my childhood and teen years, it was my journals that played host to my early scrapbooks. I really started to work on my craft in 1999 and there has been no slowing down since then. Scrapbooking is very therapeutic for me and gives me a chance to express "Carla" in ways I couldn't do otherwise. This blog is where you can see a little of what I create. I hope that you are inspired by all that you see here. I welcome questions and comments, so please feel free to drop me a note on my posts, or you can contact me via email. I ♥ hearing from you! °Ü°

Understanding the Cost of Custom Work:

I get emails for custom work all the time. I would say, that on a weekly basis, I get at least 8-10 emails requesting specific themes. I love hearing from everyone and truthfully, I am honored that there are so many of you who love my designs, style of scrap booking and work so much that you would love to make it apart of their memory albums. The part I find frustrating and sometimes hurtful, is that when I reply to these emails and give pricing, one of three things happens: 1) I never hear back from the person 2) I get an email back arguing price and saying they won't pay it unless I drop the price 3) A sweet apology that they can't do it right now (this would be the rarest of the emails, however, it is the most appreciated!)

I understand that in today's economy, that scrap booking pages and albums are truly a luxury purchase. I also understand that everyone is trying to get the most for their money. Aren't we all?

Here is the side I would like you to try to understand.

I am a crafter by trade. I scrapbook for fun and I scrapbook for a living. I need to be home with my family taking care of them and our home, and this is the working relationship that works best for us and our family's needs. Although I get to be home with them, I still spend 30-40 hours a week designing, planning, cutting, hand-cutting at times, and piecing together pages, albums and projects. Pretty much a full time job. Sometimes, ALL of that time is spent on just one album. Sometimes all of that time is spent on just 4-6 pages.

When it comes to my work, I do not cut corners! I only buy the best papers, metal embellishments, adhesives and so on. I take my work seriously, I go over every detail and I know I am not the only crafter who does this. I am simply just one of many who are in this "crafter's boat", if you will. What is minimum wage these days? I honestly do not know. From what I see and know, is it about $7 per hour. Maybe I should look it up... okay, according to US Dept of Labor, the minimum wage is $6.55 hour. The average person making M.W. makes $262 for a 40 hour work week BEFORE taxes, etc. Wow. that doesn't leave a lot for the bring home amount, does it? The average spread, (2) 12X12 pages together, takes me 8-12 hours to design and put together. {There have been a handful that have taken me closer to 16. I keep track for how long it takes to make each.} So let's say I am in "The Zone" and get one done in just 8 hours and I charge $6.55 per hour. That is $52.40. That doesn't even include the materials cost for that spread, that is just my time. Keep that in mind. I actually charge a set fee of $45 for a custom spread. There is extra time and steps that go into each project, like custom names, dates and details. Now, divide $45 by 8. I am making about $5.63 an hour, and then, not even that much because that doesn't include the cost I have already paid for the materials! That is JUST my time. At the end of each custom spread, I am only making about $2-$3 per hour. (REMEMBER, that is only if it took me just the 8 hours, any longer than that and it brings my hourly wage down even more.) That is not a lot for my time, for my design and hard work when it is spelled out that way. What do you think?

Please keep these things in mind when shopping sites like Etsy.com, Ebay.com and personal websites. We crafters put our all into our craft. Each design, every piece is a part our personality and we take a lot of time to put it all together.

I think that everyone, no matter who you are and what you do, wants to have their work appreciated and they don't want others to make them feel that what they are paid for their time and talent isn't worth it. I think my time and talent is worth what little I ask for it. Remember that when you see hand crafted items, time, talent and effort was put into each project. Think about how much time it would take you to do something like that if you were to personally make it, think of professional crafting as some one's career and think about how truly little, the time making it is actually charged for.

Thank you. °Ü°