Two Kickin' Web Tricks for Bloggers and Readers

I've got a couple of cards and some more scrapbook pages (8x8 ones!) to post really soon, but in the meantime, I'm excited to share a couple of great little techy tidbits I learned this week. If you already knew about these, feel free to feel superior in your media mastery, but since they were so new and exciting to me, I thought it might be helpful to pass them along.


1. Find out who's pinning your stuff on Pinterest.

(First, if you're not already using Pinterest, you're really missing out on a great way to collect inspiring images and bookmark ideas from all over the web. You should join. And follow me, if you like. And tell me if you're on it, so I can follow you back.)

Tools for bloggers to find out what other sites are linking to their pages have been around for a long time, but thanks to this post at The Speckled Dog, I learned that there's also a super easy way to find out if your images are being pinned.

Just type http://pinterest.com/source/ and then add your blog's web address.

For example:
http://pinterest.com/source/traceyfox.com

This is also a great tool to quickly find an image if you remember what site it was from but don't want to go searching through all of its past posts. If it's a memorable image from a popular blog, chances are pretty good it will come up when you input the blog name into Pinterest like above. Or, you can just obsessively check your own blog for pins and never get anything productive done ever again.


2. Turn shortened RSS feeds into full ones.

I understand why blogs do it. They truncate their feeds in the hopes that you will click through to see their painstakingly-designed sites and hopefully click on their advertiser links and earn them pennies. But nothing makes me unsubscribe from something faster than the inconvenience of a partial feed. So, when I heard Peppermint Granberg offer a solution to this on an episode of The Digi Show, I rushed to my computer to resubscribe to some much-missed blogs.

The secret is http://fulltextrssfeed.com/, a site that will generate a link to a full feed when you input the link to a partial one. Then, you add the new feed's link to your favorite feed-reading app (I use Google Reader), and your days of being forced to click through are over! Life-changing!

Just to warn you, this may not work for every site whose feed you want to lengthen. Katie's first attempt resulted in a full feed that still wouldn't load images, and I've run into one that won't seem to work at all. It's definitely worth a try, though. I've had success with 5-6 other blogs I had pretty much given up on reading, and I plan to attempt it from now on every time I subscribe to a blog and find I'm not getting full content in my reader.


Here's wishing you a great long Labor Day weekend full of pin-checking and blog-reading! Got a favorite web-trick to share? I'm suddenly worried about all the things I don't realize I can't live without.

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 10

I promise these double-page layouts line up properly in real life.  They really do!

Just about every year at the Pumpkin Show, some little shop or booth is selling these laser die cut titles for the event, and I can't keep myself from buying them, even if they aren't my style. They're different every time, but something about them always just feels kitschy and somehow reminiscent of the whole experience, so they're sprinkled throughout my Pumpkin Show albums. The green backing on this particular one was an obscenely bright shade of grass green, so to tone it down and help it match better to the page, I used a  blending tool to ink it up liberally with Brushed Corduroy Distress Ink.

I also couldn't resist this flocked pumpkin paper from GCD Studios. Obviously, I have no qualms with being literal on my Pumpkin Show pages.





A single vertical photo really throws me off when I'm arranging my pictures, so I turned to this layout sketch from Shimelle Laine's 4x6 Photo Love Series to help out. I still don't like how weighty the vertical print feels on top of the horizontal ones, but the sketch and project examples helped me come to terms with that and move on.

Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: GCD Studios, My Mind's Eye
Border Punch: Fiskars
Border Sticker: Reminisce
Gems: Colorbok

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 9

Once again, I say if you want to use ALL the photos, just use 'em.





Here, I fit 12 4x6 photos on a double-page layout, and the only cropping I did was to overlap and shorten up the two pictures on the bottom left to make them fit and hide their wasted space. I ended up adding the polka dot Smash Tape to the sides because the Snapfish lab cut all my photos just shy of six inches and there was excess room on the page, but I like how it turned out, so I don't have to be mad at them after all.


I've been a little obsessed with decorative label stickers lately, because they're pretty, inexpensive, and such an easy way to add some journaling to a page.  These came from a package I found in the stationery section at Target in a package for about $2.50

(Note: If archival scrapbooking is important to you, you'll probably want to stick with labels made by scrapbook supply manufacturers. I don't take acid-free scrapbooking as seriously as I used to, though. I won't be heartbroken if my albums don't last 500-1000 years, as long as they're around for me to enjoy until I'm old and gray.)


  

Supplies Used:
Ribbon: American Crafts
Decorative Tape: K & Co.
Letter Stickers: Basic Grey
Adhesive Labels: Target

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 8

Even though the industry pros are amazing at it, scrapping just one photo on a page is totally out of my comfort zone. But meeting our friends Noel and Ryan for the first time in person after months of bloggy friendship was an evening highlight that merited its own page.



Conventional wisdom says you're supposed to add stitches to your buttons so that they give the illusion of being sewn on, but, alas, I am lazy.



Decorative paper clips are a common scrapbook embellishment, but you can glue your own buttons or other trinkets to regular old paperclips and save your pennies.



Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper, Chipboard Border: Me and My Big Ideas\
Border Punch: Fiskars
Adhesive Tag: Reminisce
Label Sticker: Hampton Arts
Striped Twine: My Mind's Eye

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 7

Only have three 4x6 photos for a layout? Just cut some patterned paper to 4x6 to use as a title-block, and recycle the tried and true four-photo layout. The best-kept secret in scrapbooking is that there's no shame in using the same design over and over and over, as long as it still makes you happy. As long as the photos keep changing, the pages will look different. And if you're working on a themed project, sometimes it makes more sense to keep certain aspects  (design, color, pattern, etc.) consistent to keep it feeling unified.

   
Figuring out where to put Katie's beautiful photos in this one was easy. It always feels more natural to place photos so that the subject is looking into the page rather than off of it, because it helps to lead the viewer's eye across the page. Balance-wise, the off-center pumpkin just seemed to beg to be put on the opposite side, and the white space in that photo became a great spot for extending the title.



Since you can't really see it from the full page view, here's a shot of the pleated ribbon at the bottom of the page. I have a HUGE stash of ribbon that I'm always using to stretch across pages to create quick and easy borders, and this is a super simple way to take it up an extra notch. Just adhere the end of the ribbon to the page and pleat the ribbon across the page, securing each pleat with a glue dot as you go.



And since I'm so grateful to her for getting the only picture of the special "10-Year" pin I made for my friends Dayna and Justin for their 10th Pumpkin Show AND for letting me use her label maker again without asking, I wanted to give Katie a rightful photo credit in my album:




Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye, DCWV
Ribbon:: American Crafts
Twine: My Mind's Eye
Border Sticker: Reminisce
Label Stickers: Hampton Arts, October Afternoon
Chipboard Letters: Colorbok
Letter Stickers: Authentique
Label Maker: Dymo

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 6

I could have made a few more single-page layouts with the rest of these photos from Day 1 of Pumpkin Show 2010, but since they didn't easily separate into discernible categories or themes, I just threw them all together on a double-page spread summing up the rest of the day.

Apparently, I have no clue how to photograph and crop these layouts, because they're supposed to line up.

Even though I have a stash of bright orange and pumpkin-themed papers for this project, I also kept the Die Cuts with a View Natural Stack handy, since its shades of brown, tan, white, and black went so well with the fall theme. I love how the vertical stripes in this pattern slice through the thick band of photos. I've done stuff like this before by cutting up a bunch of different papers, but I love how DCWV thought to include a paper with stripes of all its patterns so I wouldn't have to go to any work.

Once again, I let a sticker do all the title-work for me. To make it stand out, I elevated it a bit with some foam dots and stuck on a few gems.




I LOVE this giant scallop-edge border punch, and the cover of a recent Scrapbook Trends magazine inspired me to stick different papers behind each hole in the pattern.




Also, I am amazed I finally found a use for these bargain-bin Karen Foster cork word stickers. I've had them for years and almost considered them a lost cause. I guess they just needed the right brown-colored layout and some stickers and buttons to jazz them up. Using old, cheap products and not hating them is such a rush.



Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: DCWV
Border Punch: EK Success
Stickers: Karen Foster, Heidi Grace, Reminisce, Flair Designs
Ribbon: American Crafts

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 5

Katie was BORN to photograph those deep-fried buckeyes, no?

This "four photos at the bottom and title at the top" layout is another one of my favorite go-to scrapbook page formats for 4x6 prints. It's so easy when the photos do most of the work.


Rather than use another big title on this one, I tried making one of those fun "clustery" page toppers I've been seeing lately:

I envy scrapbookers who make a lot of their own original embellishments, because I really love the end result, but I'm usually way too impatient for this sort of thing and would rather just slap on a pre-made sticker. I had fun with this one, though. layering punched shapes, ribbon, and stickers over and inked-up tag and a chunk of an adhesive border. I might just try this again sometime.

Another "Get Out of Journaling Free" trick I use on my pages is to grab a Dymo embossing label maker to add simple captions to my photos. The fact that they're dimensional and shiny means that they can pull double-duty as both journaling and embellishments. I usually use my classic, all-caps labeler, but instead, for the first time EVER, I got into Katie's scrapbook stash (which collects dust in my closet until she comes to visit me), and I pulled out her nifty Dymo caption maker so I could use these cute lowercase letters, instead. Thanks, Katie!

Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: American Crafts
Punches: EK Success & Fiskars
Embossing Folder: Provocraft
Stickers: Heidi Grace, Reminisce, Target
Ribbon: American Crafts
Decorative Tape: K&Co.
Label Maker: Dymo

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 4

 

These photos make me so happy, because it's usually such a struggle to get my adorable mom to smile for the camera, and apparently all it took here was some deliciously greasy food. And doesn't that bloomin' onion look amazing? I'm so lucky Katie shares her pictures with me from our times together so I can scrap 'em. Nobody can capture the deliciousness of food from behind a lens like she can.

This is another super easy layout to make with 4x6 photos. Just lay out two landscape prints and one portrait print, and then cut some patterned paper to 2x4 (a perfect spot for a title) to complete an 8x10-ish block to stick right on your page.

I added some Glossy Accents to the chipboard heart at the center of the page to give it some sheen. I totally love that stuff. I also love it when a page can look complete to me with hardly any embellishment. The stripes on the heart seemed to go really well with the patterned paper under the title, even though they're from different companies, and I liked how the black and white label sticker at the top (from a package found in the stationery section at Target) ties in with the black and white chevron at the bottom of the page.


Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye, fancy pants, GCD Studios
Letter Stickers: American Crafts
Chipboard Heart: Crate Paper
Label Sticker: Target
Dimensional Adhesive: Glossy Accents

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 3

The beauty of 4x6 photos is how easily they just tile onto a 12x12 layout and make scrapbooking so easy. (Especially when you're like me and can't resist putting all of the pictures from an event onto a page.) If I have 5-6 pictures that go together, I am all about just sticking them end-to-end and calling it done.

(Please excuse the glare on this one. I am so not a pro at photographing layouts.)

That big pumpkin is actually the cover of a chipboard mini album from Maya Road, which I colored by heat embossing it with orange Zing! embossing powder before backing it with a little patterned paper.

Another unwritten scrapbooking "rule" this page breaks is its complete lack of journaling. There's a big movement in scrapbooking to journal the heck out of your albums so that you are making sure you're actually telling your story and not just putting pretty paper with your photos. And althoguh I totally get that argument, and while it might make sense for someone who is trying to be a family historian and pass on a legacy of memories to their children or something, I have to be honest and say that my scrapbooking is pretty much for and about me and my own memories. So, rather than put pressure on myself to make my pages communicate specifics to someone else,  I just do what makes me happy and include the information I think I'll want and care about when I look back through my albums.

Besides, these photos totally tell a story on their own. One that goes something like this:

"Simon's trying his FIRST PUMPKIN BURGER!"

"Hmm. That looks pretty good."

"I WANT SOME OF THAT PUMPKIN BURGER!"

"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"

"Yessssss!"

Supplies Used:
Chipboard Pumpkin: Maya Road
Word Sticker: Me and My Big Ideas:
Letter Stickers: American Crafts
Border Sticker: Reminisce
Embossing Powder: American Crafts
Patterned Paper: BoBunny

Scrappy like a FOX

Even though I'm pretty sure this little blog only has two readers (despite the 20 or so Google Analytics is telling me there are), I should still probably point out the recent blog-name change. Since she totally peaked in 1996, I liked "Feast on Scraps" as a scrapbook-blog title much more than I ever did the Alanis Morissette album, but I still figured it was time to change things up a bit. Once I decided to route traceyfox.com here, it seemed to make sense to incorporate my much-better-for-puns-than-my-maiden-name name into the blog title. So, "Scrappy like a Fox" it is. I cordially invite you to update your bookmarks and feeds.

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 2

Years ago, when I went to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh with my friend Dayna, I picked up these super cool paper ribbons with Warhol quotes on them in the gift shop, knowing that they would be great for scrapbooking. And the quote "Everyone is rich, everyone is interesting," seemed to rather perfectly sum up these photos of Katie, our friend Eric, Circleville's famous "Pumpkin Man", and a complete stranger in an awesome deer-head jacket.

To gather ribbon like I did with the orange one, just stitch a line right down the middle of it (by machine or by hand), and pull the thread to scrunch it up.

And how 'bout that cute felt pumpkin? I'm pretty sure I found those in the Target Dollar Spot last fall. Theme-scrapper that I am, I collect pumpkin-themed stuff whenever I find it and toss it into my Pumpkin Show supply stash. It's always fun to pull out a plastic container full of forgotten orange and green treasures when I sit down each year to scrap the event.

Monday's post gets into the really good part of Pumpkin Show -- the food!

Supplies Used:
Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey, DCWV
Letter Stickers, Basic Grey, EK Success
Ribbon: American Crafts, KI Memories
Stickers: Me and My Big Ideas
Punch: Martha Stewart Crafts

Pumpkin Show 2010: Part 1

I'm not gonna lie. Summer doesn't do much for me. And scrappin' these photos from last year's Circleville Pumpkin Show made me totally yearn for fall to hurry up and get here. There's nothing like crisp-but-not-quite-cold weather, the most delicious fair food ever, and visits from Katie.

It's become a tradition for me to scrapbook a bunch of Pumpkin Show layouts every year and put them in albums devoted entirely to the event. After filling the last book (a bright orange number from Kolo) with pages from 2005-2009, this layout is now the very first page in my new Pumpkin Show book, this pretty binder from Basic Grey. Pumpkin Show 2010 ended up with 11 layouts, and since I finally took the time to photograph them before stuffing them into their plastic inserts, I can actually share them here and use this blog what it was originally meant for!

Patterned Paper: Reminisce, My Mind's Eye, Basic Grey, Pink Paislee, Doodlebug
Pumpkin Die Cut: QuicKutz
Punches: Fiskars
Date Stamp: Becky Higgins (Project Life)
Striped Twine: My Mind's Eye
Photo Corners: Scrapbook Adhesives

"Hoppy Easter"

Easter has never really meant cards to me, and pastels aren't usually my thing, but when I found this Candy Bunny die from Lifestyle Crafts, I needed to snatch it up and make something. Luckily, I had exactly one Easter stamp and a few pieces of pastel orange, yellow, pink, and blue in my stash, so I could get my Easter-craft fix without buying any supplies.

My mouth was watering for Peeps the whole time I was tiling those bunnies onto the paper.

Here's a peek at the inside. My stamp was so tiny, I decided to make a little paper "ribbon" to help it stand out.

As soon as I stop being too lazy to take, upload, and crop photos of them, I've got tons of scrapbook pages to share. Stay tuned!

Typewriter Stamp Roundup

Sharing Dan's anniversary card yesterday got me thinking about how many typewriter stamps I've been seeing lately.

There's the one I used, which is from We R Memory Keepers:

There's this new wood-mount lovely from Hero Arts:

Hero Arts also has this useful cling set where you can change out the words on the typing paper:

Or, you can get their background stamp with typewriters and typewriter keys flying around all over the place (I'm not so sure about this one.):

Also in the change-out-the-sentiment family are these sets from the new stamping company Lawn Fawn:

And there are tons of super vintagey typewriter stamps, like this one from Technique Tuesday:

And this one by October Afternoon:

So, what do you think of this trend? I mostly just like thinking about the crafters of the future who will be using all sorts of vintage Kindle and i-Pad-themed products on their projects.

2-Year Anniversary

One of my favorite stamping techniques is to stamp the same image on different papers and then cut them apart in order to piece them together, but I almost never remember to try it. It happened by accident on this card, because after I stamped this little typewriter directly on the book paper, it looked all wrong, and the sentiment wasn't clear enough. Then, I stamped it on the deep red paper and cut it out, but it still didn't seem to look right. THEN, I realized that of COURSE typewriter paper isn't the same color as the typewriter! So I stamped the whole thing again on cream paper and cut out just the paper part. To make it look even more dimensional, I stuck the typing paper image directly to the paper, and I adhered the typewriter image with Pop Dots.


The best part about this card is that it wasn't until I took this detail shot that I noticed something funny about the particular circle of dictionary paper I had randomly punched out:

It says "SEXUAL INTERCOURSE"! On my anniversary card to my husband! Do you think he'll notice?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Excuse the harsh shadows in the picture. I just snapped a quick shot before giving this card to my mom this afternoon.

I didn't have any St. Patrick's Day stamps or supplies, so I went with a generic sentiment and die cut four hearts out of green paper to make the shamrock. It looked a little bare, so I made a little flower out of paper scraps to go on top. To learn how to make flowers like this one, check out this tutorial at the Hambly blog.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Quick Birthday Calendar

You know you're too caught up in crafting when you start letting your products dictate your projects instead of the other way around. After I got this beautiful 7 Gypsies stamp set of month titles, I decided to put together a quick and easy birthday calendar to keep track of important dates throughout the year.

I found this Conrad Ring Book from Creative Imaginations at my local scrapbook store, thinking its 6 chipboard pages would be just right for a 12-month calendar. Then, I chose papers from My Mind's Eye new Stella and Rose collection for each month, took it all home, and went to work.

Instructions:
1. Use a paper trimmer to cut patterned papers to the size of the chipboard pages, and round the corners with a corner rounder.

2. Punch holes in the top of the pages to match the holes in the chipboard pages. (If you use a Crop-a-Dile, you can punch all the pages at once.)

3. Stamp month titles on the top of each page with black ink.

4. Format lists of date numbers in word processor and print on printable transparencies. You'll need 7 lists of 31, 4 lists of 30, and 1 list of 29 for February (to go ahead and factor in the leap year). Trim apart the lists and attach to the patterned paper pages with staples. (You could avoid the stapled look by printing right on the pages, fussing with a clear adhesive, or trying to hide the adhesive with embellishments, but I was going for quick and easy.)

5. Adhere the patterned paper pages to the chipboard pages. Sand the edges if paper hangs off the sides. Assemble the pages and secure them with jump rings. I assembled mine so that January through June all face forward, and you can turn the whole calendar around to flip July through December.

6. Write in all your important dates!

I had to scour Facebook to collect a bunch of birthdays I didn't already know, and I still need to do a little detective work to find the rest, but once I'm done, I'll no longer have to rely on my memory (or my husband's) to be prepared for family events.

I'll probably eventually embellish this a little. I'm sure I'll at least tie some ribbons on the jump rings in between the pages. But for now, I like the simplicity. The stamps and papers feel ornate enough as they are.