Saturday, January 31, 2009

Use for yogurt cups!

Because we don’t think about future generations, they will never forget us.” -Henrik Tikkanen


I know in most areas of the country, you can throw your yogurt containers (or sour cream containers) in the recycle bin. However, what do you do with them if you can't? Or, if you don't have a recycling program in your town?

I have an old cutting board that I have designated as my painting board for chipboard letters or for painting the edges of papers, etc.




You can see where I have squeezed out all colors of paint on the left side of the board. So, in an effort to try & keep it a bit neater and not have lumps of dried paint on it, I decided to put my yogurt cups to use. Our county does have a recycling program, and trust me, I fill up our bins as much as possible. The beauty of using the yogurt cups is I can use them and wash them out & still throw them in the recycle bin.

If you are in a part of the country that doesn't have a recycle program, then you can keep a bunch of them & use one for each color that you paint with. Stay tuned for more uses of yogurt cups!


Friday, January 30, 2009

What are you doing this weekend?

How about joining an on-line crop? Head on over to http://yourmemoriesbydesign.ca/phpBB2/index.php

and register in her site & join a group of ladies for fun, challenges and lots of scrapping! YMBD is giving away bucks to their store for completing challenges. Bucks are the same as gift certificates, so you can buy gifts for you or another scrapper!

Come on over - the fun starts at 7pm tonight!

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Recycling Ribbon


Don't we all just love ribbon? Maybe it makes us think of when we were little girls and our dresses would have ribbons on them or maybe our Mom adorned our pigtails with them.

Ribbon is a major embellishment in scrapbooking, and it can add up. So where can you find some ribbons to repurpose? How about this:


  • Christmas or other gifts received throughout the year

  • Clothes you no longer want

  • Gift Baskets

  • Thrift Stores!

I'm sure you can come up with some other ideas - share them with us by posting a comment!

Friday, January 23, 2009

Another Vendor Goes 'Green'!

The Queen Goes Green!

Queen & Co. has decided to reduce their carbon footprint by reducing their packaging. Check out these very cool little buckets that their product will come in - can you image the uses for that??

Click on this link to read more about it: http://www.scrapbook.com/blog/view/135575.html

They also have some very cute products coming out, which are featured at CHA this coming week. Of course, all of us 'green' scrappers are trying to reduce, reuse and repurpose, so we might not buy 1 of everything, but it doesn't hurt to support a company that is greening itself, now does it?

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Repurpose your scraps!

Don't throw out your scraps!


There is always another use for your leftover pieces of paper, a.k.a. scraps. As I am finishing this Word Book for my niece, I noticed I had already used my Cricut to cut out some purple flowers for another project - FROM MY SCRAPS! They worked nicely with the letter 'L' I was working with.




All I had to do was outline them in a white pen, add a brad and adhere with a foam dot. One less little piece of paper floating in the landfill........

What have you done with your scraps?

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

New uses for bottlecaps

New Uses for Bottlecaps!



My husband loves his IBC Root Beer, and I love the bottlecaps! I am designing a Word Book for my niece, Allison, and I had a few bottlecaps lying around, so I decided to incorporate it into her book.
What can you do with a bottlecap? you ask. Turn it into an embellishment! A 1-inch circle punch is the perfect size for a piece of paper to fit inside the bottle cap (oh - wash the cap first as it can be a little sticky!). I also grabbed a rub-on word and stick for rubbing.


I used the word 'courage' because I feel Allison is taking a giant step next year in leaving home for college. I know when I was 18, I was not ready to leave the roost. I admire this quality in her.

















After adding the rub-on, I simply adhered the circle punch to the bottle cap. You can use a glue dot or any other strong adhesive.


















Finally, I used the remainder of my 3-in-1 adhesive in adhering the bottlecap to the Word Book:

















Here's the full Word Book. It's not done yet, and if I find some other goodies to recycle and use on the book, I will post them as well!

















And remember, if you are interested in a custom made Word Book, please visit my website at http://www.rwctc.com/! Thanks for stopping by today!

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Use an old map!

Don't forget - I'm still on vacation!

Tip #2 - Do you have any old maps laying around? Or maybe you picked up a map from your last vacation. Don't throw it out - use it in the following ways:

  • a background paper
  • matting your vacation photos
  • cut out the states or countries you visited & use it as an embellishment on your page!

Monday, January 12, 2009

While on vacation this week....

....I'm going to post very short articles. Actually, they are more like tips. I'll return to "work" on the 19th with some pics of using recycled goodies on my pages.

Tip #1 - Donate your leftovers! It's very easy to start filling your scrap space with lots of papers, ribbons, flowers, embellishments, stickers, etc. etc. Try cleaning out your stash at least quarterly, find everything you absolutely don't love, put it in a bag, and take it to your local child care center, or even your child's school. These places LOVE free stuff, and it will definitely be put to good use!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Save Money on Your Scrapbooking - Go Recycled!

The human race will be the cancer of the planet. ~Julian Huxley, attributed



In our financial crisis, many of us are looking for ways to cut costs and curtail our spending. This is definitely a possibility in scrapbooking, if you think outside the box a bit. Let's talk about storage first. Here are some ideas for uses of household items to aid you in organizing your scrapbooking:



Jars - we all have empty jars of sauce, baby food, jelly, peanut butter, gravy -whatever you have eaten! Now, I know most of us wash them & throw them in the recycle bin, but what if you can use them for storage? See my post: http://scrapwithjan.blogspot.com/2008/12/scrapbookcraft-room-challenge-pt-ii.html
Wash them out with warm, soapy water and let them dry. Voila - pretty storage solution for flowers or ribbon!

Priority Mail Boxes: Instead of recycling them, they are very sturdy & make great paper holders! You can use them 'as is' or cut out a 'magazine-style' holder to see your paper. Use your scraps to make them pretty!

Nut & Bolt Organizer: Sometimes the man in your life may have something to repurpose. You know those cool metal or plastic boxes that have all the little drawers in them for different screws, nuts & bolts? Why not clean it out, maybe repaint it in a pretty color, and use it to organize your alphabet stickers or brads or buttons or other embellies? I'm on the lookout for a used one (hopefully for free) that I can use in my scraproom.

Silverware Tray: Do you have an extra one of these lurking in the attic? You can use it to organize your colored pencils and pens!

Cigar Boxes: How about these? Are they hanging around too? Use them to store scraps of paper or ribbons or other embellishments. You can also either decoupage them or paint them to match your room.

Yogurt containers: Eating yogurt is huge in my house. We each consume at least 1 a day. Of course, I wash them out & recycle them, but I had an abundance of glue sticks and didn't know what to do with them. So, I took a bunch of paper scraps, some modge podge & now I have a nifty holder for my glue sticks. I have also used another one for a set of alphabet stickers.

** I am on vacation & unable to download photos right now. Please stay tuned for pictures starting the week of Jan. 19th! Thanks for understanding! **

What ideas do you have? Share them with me! Together, all our small steps can make an impact on Mother Earth.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

K & Co introduces 2 new eco lines!

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American Proverb

K & Company has introduced two eco-friendly paper lines and a tree donation program! I was very happy to stumble upon this on their website:

http://www.kandcompany.com/shop/pc/viewContent.asp?idpage=90

This link will explain their 2 paper lines and their Plant A Tree program. Let's face it - scrapbooking, at its very core, starts with paper. And we use A LOT of it. By supporting these 2 paper lines from K and Company, we are reducing paper, packaging and fuel.

Even though I pledged not to purchase anything new this year, my fingers are itching to get my hands on some of this paper and try a layout. How about you? Have you used either paper line?

Saturday, January 3, 2009

My Great Find



"Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find." ~Quoted in Time






We are given one planet to live on - all of us. We need to take care of it, protect it and nurture it. So in my never ending quest to reduce my carbon footprint, I looked on Craig's list for the first time in about a month. You never know what you may find on there. So, there was a woman, in Palm City, that was moving & selling the remainder of her scrapbooking stash for $100. I gave her a call, it was all still available and at 12:15 pm on Friday, I pulled up to her house to see what I would find. Well, let me show you!










As I unpacked this wonderful treasure trove, I couldn't believe it. She had unopened packages of paper, ribbons and embellies. Now they are mine - to create projects, phoquets and word books, that I can sell to you.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because scrapbooking is a fun hobby, and we are often in a rush to go out & buy the best of everything and the latest & greatest. Craigslist or Ebay are great sources of unused products that people have laying around. Right now, for some people who are in financial trouble, they are relying on me and you to buy their "stuff". What a way to save our money, help someone else out with their finances and, most importantly, save our one and only Earth.

Friday, January 2, 2009

So what's this Goin' Green all about?

For those of you who have been following me faithfully, I was selling supplies and hosting crops. But, I wasn't happy doing it. So why waste my life's energy on doing things that don't make me happy?

The question begs - what does make you happy? Or what makes you happy in the crafting world? Easy - creating! I was watching everyone else make things & never had time for me and my projects.

What else am I passionate about? The earth - saving it. We Americans (yes, it's mostly the Americans) that have caused alot of the problems the earth is experiencing. I will start another blog on everyday living green, but let's get back to scrapbooking. I am all for preserving memories and journaling our life's events. So, how can I (and you) do that without always buying, buying and buying, and throwing away packaging, and Styrofoam bubbles, etc. There has to be a better way, and that is what this blog is all about.

A few times each week, I will post my "greening" techniques and I want to learn from you too! Add an RSS Feed on your favorite homepage so we can interact and share ideas, techniques and thoughts on our green adventure.

On another note, I am developing a very cool product, which will contain a minimum of 25% earth-friendly components. Stay tuned for more details, but don't rush out to buy your Valentine's Day gifts yet, you may just want to see what I have in store for you!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and safe New Year!


Now - it's time to get back to scrapping! Have you seen Becky Higgins Project 365? This project is about taking a photo each day in 2009 & documenting your everyday life as opposed to whipping out the camera for special moments. You can read more about it here:

http://www.beckyhiggins.com/blog/2008/12/understanding-concept-of-project-365.html

I may not purchase the kit (I have WAY too many supplies to use), but I am definitely going to take a photo each day of something relevant to my life and what is happening around me. My first photo (haven't downloaded it yet) is the Christmas tree all lit up before I took it down today. I think I am going to incorporate a journal into this project so I know what I was thinking and feeling at any particular moment.

Please click on the link above and read through the whole idea & concept of Project 365. We can share our lives together!

Helping You Create Meaningful Memories