Hi Everyone,
I guess it’s no secret that I love paper, I mean I LOVE paper! Everything about scrapbooking paper. Its so much fun going and looking through it, finding new designs, finding matching designs, putting papers together, thinking of the pictures they would go with.
I’m so into paper that I will often take pictures of some event because I have paper that I’ve found that I can’t wait to use.
So I found this new line of paper! Its called Carolee Designs.
Here are a few designs I just recently picked up over at
Cute Creations . First, I love this website. I’ve order from them twice now. There shipping is a little high. Its a standard $13.95 no matter what you order, but there paper is between 15 cents and 25cents so both times I’ve order my total in product has been about $13.00 so when you break that down you are getting paper for about 30 cents a piece. Which is still very good because all of this paper is by good designers. Bobunny, Karen Foster and the recently added Carolee.
The great thing that I discovered about the Carolee Design paper is that if you flip the paper over, in the corner there is a list of other matching papers that will go with each design. That makes it very easy to mix and match designs. Not all Scrapbooking paper has this, so often times it can be hard to pick what goes with certain designs, or to pick colors that will go nicely together. This takes the guess work out of picking paper.
Wendy use to say she had a harder time choosing different designs of paper that go together in one layout. My advice was always to get started use polka dots and stripes together. This is a great way to start and it will help you get comfortable with mixing and matching papers.
She was given advice at Heart2Heart Memories to put small prints together with larger prints. That has seemed to work for her as she has been able to mix more patterned paper in recent days.
Also placing a soild color print between patterns is a great way to break it up and add layers.
My next adventure in paper:
Last week I posted that I went over and helped a friend organize some paper so here are a few pictures from that adventure:
This was how things looked when we got started. The 1st picture is of her soilds. Which we didn’t even get to. I got to her house about 10am and I didn’t leave until after 6. We took a short 45 min break for lunch. It was an all day project.
I love organizing paper, so this was so much fun for me.
We started by taking all her paterned paper (and she had a lot of it) and spreading it out on the floor.
Side Note: Here is the thing about organizing paper. It has to work for the person whos paper it is.
I have a way that works for me. I have what I call my “Foundation Paper” and then I keep most of my paper packs together, and then paper that I hand pick is together.
My Foundation paper includes Stripes, poka dots, holidays, words, birthdays, events, etc
That way when I’m working on a Layout or a project I can go and look through my stripes or poka dots to find something that goes together.
(For more information regarding my system please shoot me an email)
OK back to business. When orgainzing paper it has to work for you, you are the one that will be looking through it and trying to find what you need, so this is what I stressed to Christie (the friend that I helped).
For her we did a section of Foundation paper and then she has bins that she keeps projects in. She is working on her wedding/honeymoon right so she kept all that paper together.
Her patterned paper looked much like her soild paper did. Here is the after shot ofr her paper.
This was about half of her paper.
I also suggest that when sorting through paper you are open to getting rid of what you are not going to use. I love paper, so I’m always going to be buying paper.
An easy way to get rid of extra paper is only keeping 2 pieces of each patterned paper.
Most paper packs/stacks come with 3 to 4 sheets of each pattern paper, so one thing Christie did was go through and only keep 2 of each piece unless she knew she would need more than 2 pieces for something specific.
Here is a picture about half way through the day of the paper she was getting rid of.
All in all we got alot done, most of patterned paper got organized and put together. We have plans to work on her soilds and finish another time.
It was a long day and for me it was so much fun, I think she was glad when it was over. She had way more paper than she realized.
Yes I agree Carolee's papers are great… Did you know she has her own site you can order from and has digital papers too. here is her website:
http://www.adornitscrapbook.com/Shop/Shop.cfm?pg=product&tid=1&cid=56
Dont order too much now……LOL!!!
Thank you so much, I had no idea she had her own website. I'm going to check this out now. This might be bad!!!!!!
Tina –