Oh, I So Want This!

Hi, everyone! Welcome back to Life on the {Scrap}beach!

I am not buying many things for myself right now because Christmas is coming and I need to save my pennies for gifts for family and friends. Well, except I did buy printer ink and kraft cardstock and two new glass mats ~ one to replace my glass mat, which broke, and one to have on hand as a spare. But those were not very fun items to be spending my money on, since they're such staples of scrapping ~ not anything new, fun and exciting. Especially the printer ink ~ boring! But, no photos = no scrapping, so it had to be done!

Anyways, besides those three {four?} things, I have been avoiding personal shopping and making a wish list for all the Santas in my life, per their request. I just found something last night that tops the list: Quickutz Santa's Workshop Kit!



As far as I can tell from my online research, this kit includes dies to make the Peppermint Mini Album {3 3/4" x 5 1/2"}, the Wintergreen Mini Album {6" x 3 1/2"}, the Sugarplum Mini Album {4" x 3 3/4"}, the Santa's Workshop Mini Alphabet {pre-foamed cookie cutter dies} and an assortment of additional shapes! Just from looking at the pictures, it looks like the assorted shapes would be great for mini albums ~ I think I see some tabs in there, some book plates, etc.



I recently bought some lightweight chipboard as a mistake. {Hmm ... for someone who claims to have not been doing much personal scrapbook shopping, there seems to be quite a lot in this post about buying things!} I wasn't paying attention when I was ordering more chipboard {I ran out of kraft colored chipboard}. Normally I get the extra heavy weight chipboard & this time I ordered lightweight instead. Which explains why it was so cheap. I decided to try running it through my BigShot with the large piece in my Nestabilities "Labels Eight" set to see if I could use it for shaped mini albums. It was thin enough that the Nestabilities cut it perfectly!

It was too thin to use by itself as an album page, but I just took some Mod Podge and used it to stick two of the sheets together. I pressed them overnight while the Mod Podge dried and I was left with perfect chipboard pages for a new album! Once the Mod Podge was dry, I ran the chipboard pieces through my 7Gypsies Binderie really fast and voilà:


For a six page mini album, I needed 12 of the die cut shapes, and I was able to cut 6 out of a single 12"x12" piece of chipboard, so it was not bad at all. Since there were 25 sheets in the pack of chipboard, I'll probably be able to get a bunch of albums and chipboard letters out of this $7.00 mistake!

The album pages were relatively easy to decorate as well because I was able to just run the patterned papers through my BigShot & adhere them down:



I used a liquid glue to adhere them down instead of my ATG to make sure I got a nice, tight, connection. Normally the way I cover chipboard is to cut a square or rectangle with the same dimensions as the chipboard shape. Then I cover the paper with my ATG and trim around the chipboard shape with my craft knife. I'm pretty fast with this normally, but since my craft knife is taking a much needed vacation while I am waiting for my glass mat{s} to arrive {they come today!}, it was fun to experiment with new techniques for mini albums.

Now I know to keep lightweight chipboard on hand to use with my wafer thin dies! And I know that I can make chipboard quickly and easily for any size or shape of album. Or even for totally customizable chipboard letters!

Which means that even though the Quickutz kit above is filled with wafer thin dies, they can still be used to make chipboard albums!

What scrappy goodies are on your Christmas wish list?

~Kathryn
Life's a beach. Scrapbook it.