Cuttlebug ideas

This, my friends, is a nifty fun tool for scrapbooking and any other paper making craft. It's a manual die cutting machine, and I know that you're thinking..."I'd rather have the Cricut." Well, the Cricut can't emboss, and this baby can. It's made by the same people as Cricut, and I've heard that you can make your own embossing folders with the Cricut and then use them in the Cuttlebug, but I've never seen it done or used it. Don't know what embossing looks like? Check it out. See the raised part on the words below....that's what embossing does. Makes it just a little bit cooler than flat paper. They have tons of designs for the embossing folders, and they are pretty inexpensive (less$6 a piece...or cheaper with a coupon).

You can get the Cuttlebug kit for about $35-$40 online plus shipping, but it's uses are limitless. I bought mine here last year, and I know you can get them here also for a good price. So it's well worth the money. Or use a 40% coupon in stores in town although it's still more expensive this way.

Oh, and I just found out that you can use the folders on acrylic shapes in these. Check out this website here and here to get a few more ideas. Pretty cool, huh? Oh, and did I mention that they have sets of dies that will be embossed and cut out too.

Magazines and Idea books

I love magazines and idea books to look through when I'm not in the mood to scrapbook. It usually puts me in the mood. I was scouring over them a couple of weeks before the crop I went to recently. While looking through them, I sometimes will sketch out layouts from the magazines especially if there are a lot of pictures per page. (like the picture above) I love to use sketches because sometimes my little mind just won't come up with cute ways to place a bunch of pictures on a page. But with sketches, then you have a chance for some variety. I have quite a few websites on the side of my blog that gives sketch ideas, but my favorite books for it are Becky Higgins' sketch books. You can't go wrong with those. Scrapbook Etc. also made a layout book that I enjoyed. And so did Becky Fleck. There's one more set of books that I've heard only good things about, but I've yet to get them or even see them, but they are called Blueprint Layouts.

I also like to look for cute ways to use all those embellishments that I just "had" to have like flowers, stickers, and chipboard. Magazines give countless ideas to scrapbookers.

I must admit though I used to be obsessed with them. I received every scrapbook magazine that was made, well almost all of them, but now I don't receive any. I usually get them from the library or I look over them in Barnes and Nobles (if I ever make it there.)

You can even get inspiration from regular magazines too for colors to use together and even layout ideas.