I saw the greatest idea in the new Top Ten 2006 issue of Creating Keepsakes this weekend. Faye Morrow Bell, who always has such great ideas, suggested creating an Idea Index to keep track of all the creative, fun and gotta-do-it ideas you come across.

She suggested creating a spreadsheet and listing the ideas in it with details as to where to find these great ideas again. Sheer brilliance!

I created a Scrapbooking Idea Index spreadsheet and thought maybe you’d like to grab mine so you don’t have to start from scratch with yours. I also created a second tab to list each source as you use it (so you don’t have to wonder if you have already cataloged something).

A final bit of advice from Faye:

Do not attempt to index five years worth of magazines and idea books in one sitting! Start with this Top 10 issue and build from there.

Thanks, Faye, for the great idea and the solid advice (as usual!).

Here’s my Scrapbooking Idea Index file. It is an Excel spreadsheet file. Feel free to share it with anyone - just don’t start selling it and please leave the credit lines to Faye and me intact. Enjoy!

Angie tagged me, so here goes:

4 jobs i’ve had in my life…

1. Waitress
2. Office assistant in insurance office
3. Marketing director in a travel agency
4. Book marketer

4 movies i could watch over and over…

1. The Princess Bride (my all time favorite movie - ever!)
2. Out of Africa
3. The Breakfast Club
4. Mary Poppins

4 places i’ve lived

1. Gunnison, Colorado (born here)
2. Tabernash, Colorado (grew up here)
3. Denver, Colorado (went to college here)
4. Lakewood, Colorado (been here ever since)

4 tv shows i love to watch

1. Commander in Chief
2. Two and Half Men
3. The Book of Daniel
4. Medium

4 places i’ve been on vacation

1. New Zealand (for our honeymoon)
2. Hawaii
3. Disneyland
4. Puerto Vallarta, Mexicon

4 websites i visit daily

1. Problogger
2. MyYahoo (where I see/read a TON of blogs daily)
3. Google
4. My wp-admin pages for my blogs

4 of my favorite foods

1. Vietnamese Egg Rolls
2. Chocolate Cake
3. My Grammie’s ham salad
4. My husband’s grilled garlic bread

4 places i’d rather be right now

Since I’m working on being in the present moment AT the present moment I will have to modify this to “4 places I love to be when I’m not here”:

1. In the mountains
2. At the DU Penrose Library
3. In my scrapbooking room
4. Anywhere with my daughter

4 bloggers i am tagging

1. Tami DePalma(she’s about to be a blogger here.)
2. Shai Coggins
3. Steve Pavlina (he probably won’t do it, but I would love his take on how /if this kind of thing can improve one’s life.)
4. Ariane Benefit

I have figured out the fine art of getting free digital scrapbook kits. And, a fun art it is, I tell you. I compiled a list of 11 Places to Get Free Digital Scrapbooking Kits and thought you might appreciate it. (It took me more than a few hours to find all these sites and get this list organized - enjoy!)

When you go to these sites remember that one of the main reasons they are giving you free stuff is so that you will come back to their site when you decide to buy something. The best way to remember to do that is to sign up for their newsletters when you’re at these sites.

11 Places to Get Free Digital Scrapbooking Kits
Digital Scrapbooking Freebies List

1.
Digital Scrapbook Place
Weekly freebies, posted on Mondays. Register to get access to all freebies. Easy to find in the Freebie Gallery. Some freebies are associated with challenges. You do the challenge, submit your work and you receive the kit free. Lots of cool stuff free. THE best place to get free digital scrapbook stuff and also a great place to buy stuff too.

2.
ShabbyPrincess
Holy mother-load of freebie kits! Each month the Shabby Princess offers up a free digital scrapbooking kit. These are GIANT kits with tons of stuff in them and they are beautiful. Sign up for her newsletter too. The newsletter alone is so pretty you’ll get a scrappin “lift” just reading it.

3.
Designer Digitals
creative. innovative. fresh. digital.
Very cute digital scrapbook stuff! Don’t have to register to get it, but I highly recommend getting on Katie’s newsletter anyway.

4.
Scrapbook-Bytes
Tons of freebies. but they’re a bit hard to get to at first. You have to Register and then go to the Downloads area. Once there I recommend going to the Elements section. When you find a digital kit you like you’ll have to download a bunch of files to get the whole kit.

5.
DigiChick
You have to register to see the free kits in the Downloads section. Once there they are in the Designer Samples section of the forum. The coolest thing about DigiChick is their de-zine (a designers e-zine chock full of cool stuff). Wait, I just got it. Design. De-sign. De-zine. Oh, cute. The de-zine includes a free kit too!

6.
ScrapGirls
A smaller selection of freebies and not full kits. But very cute, fun stuff. Also have free digital tutorials. Their freebies change out often and the best way to stay up to date on them is subscribe to their newsletter. They will email you with the latest freebies.

7.
ScrapKitchen
Delicious designs for your digital appetite. Only one freebie kit at a time, but very easy to find, download and maneuver around the site. Her kits are very nice too.

8.
RAK Scraps
Each month they release a new free mega kit which is free to registered members. The pieces to the kit are released a few at a time and you must look through a thread in the forum to find the links. If you plan to participate in the forum anyway, this is probably worth it.

9.
GottaPixel
You do have to register and click on the email confirmation just to see the freebies, but they are cute and plentiful. Worth registering. They have daily downloads with kits broken up into daily pieces.

10.
Matter of Scrap
Cool stuff here, but only a couple Free Samples at a time. Worth registering and checking out the Boutique.

11.
Three Scrapateers
Have to register and come back every day for another free piece of the kit. Cute stuff though.

UPDATED TO ADD:

12.
Scrapbook-Elements
Another great place to get some free kits is Scrapbook Elements. The catch is that they give away their free stuff inside their newsletter. The good news is that the newsletter is full of great ideas and the freebies are plentiful. I highly recommend signing up for this newsletter! Well worth it.

Did I miss any great freebie digital scrapbooking kits? I would be happy to add any others if you know of them.

Martha Stewart is launching a new line of scrapbooking supplies to be available later this year or in early 2007. She will release them through EK Success. According to the Business Week article, “the new line will be called Martha Stewart Crafts. The aim is for it to be a one-stop shop for consumers’ crafting needs.”

Hhhhmmmmm, pretty interesting. Kind of cool that Martha is jumping into the scrapbooking market. It makes me wonder if there are other celebrities who scrapbook?

Also, that statement of becoming a one-stop shop is a tad odd. I can’t imagine buying scrapbooking supplies from just one place, can you?

In my email inbox this morning I came across a couple of money saving tidbits on scrapbooking supplies.

First, from an article by Linda Fantin of The Salt Lake Tribune:

The rapid growth of scrapbooking also has created tons of discontinued and overstocked merchandise. Big Lots! recently bought $6 million in such materials, which it has been selling for 60 to 80 percent off retail, according to TDMonthly, an online trade magazine for the toy, hobby and game industry.

I never would have thought to go to Big Lots! for scrapbooking supplies. But 60-80% off sounds like it is worth the trip.

Linda’s complete article is:
The Resolution? Get to scrapbooking now!
Popularity has made the hobby affordable and easy to learn

Next, Joann.com is having a 30% off sale on scrapbooking supplies. It is an online only offer. To get the 30% off savings code, just subscribe to their newsletter and the sale code will be emailed to you.

I’ve been on their mailing list for a few months and they send a lot of online offers out. They also send out printable coupons for store shopping.

Sign up for the Joann.com newsletter here.

OK, it is official - I am now also a digital scrapbooker!

Thanks to Roberta D’Achille (my first favorite digital designer) for posting a comment here with a link to Scrapbook-Elements. After a visit there and a peek at her blog, I now have a wish list started at Scrapbook-Elements and have created an honest to goodness digital scrapbook layout!

TA-DAH!

I used the free digital scrapbooking kit - Snow Flakes Mini Kit - that Roberta so graciously shared on her blog. I figured that starting with a freebie would be the best way to go. After all, there was a slight chance I wouldn’t care for digi scrapping. (Yeah right!)

Oh boy, life is good…! [SMILE]

Thanks to my project that gave me a small taste of digital scrapbooking and a comment from Roberta who suggested a couple more sites to visit, I am feeling myself pulled more toward digital scrapbooking…Help…I may be hooked already.

I don’t foresee ever giving up paper crafting and doing physical albums - I just love it so much - but I can totally envision doing digi scrapping too.

Do you do both? Just paper? Digital all the way?

Now that I am almost done with my Christmas frenzy of cards, shopping, wrapping and parties I am starting to think about the photos I want to be sure to take this year. Here are some of my ideas:

*
Empty and Full Stockings

*
The Christmas tree with all the gifts under it before it becomes buried in a mound of discarded wrapping paper.

*
The food. And I want to write down the stories of the food that my husband’s 92 year old grandma will tell us.

*
All the kids in their fine clothes.

*
All the kids in their PJ’s.

Here’s hoping you capture all the photos you want. Have a great Christmas!

Yesterday I got my first taste of digital scrapbooking.

Two words: OH MY!

Within about 30 minutes of grabbing a freebie digital kit at Digital Scrapbook Place and opening up Microsoft Picture It! I had created this:

I have to say that digital scrapbooking was SO much fun and so easy. The only expense I had was printing it out at Kinko’s. This is not an actual scrapbooking project, so I am OK with the printing being non-archival. Clearly if I get into this much more (seems likely!) then I will need a place to print my digital scrapbook projects that are truly photo-safe.

Anybody have any ideas? Feel free to post links in your comments.

This weekend a friend of mine asked for some help getting started with scrapbooking. She wanted to do a complete album for her brother as a Christmas gift. I figured this was worth the half-hour drive up to Archivers. Although I had never been there before I have been wanting to go. She picked me up at 10 AM.

When we walked in the door I gave a little gasp out loud. My heart lept. Oh my. It was just like walking into Disneyland. Clean. Friendly. And oh the fun to be had.

The photo of the store on their website is very accurate. All the stores must be built the same because it looks just like this:

They had a great selection of albums in all sizes, colors, patterns and album type. Their stock of paper was beyond amazing. They had three huge side rooms of paper. Embellishments. Kits. Eyelets. Brads. Stamps. Tools. It was simply breathtaking.

Not just a place for scrapbooking supplies, they also have a terrific class line up. After the holidays it will be on my list to do. (I have a feeling Santa is bringing me an eyelet setter that I won’t know what to do with.)

Bottom line, if you live where there is an Archivers store (see the location map here) - GO! It is worth the drive even if it is a bit of a road trip.

Have fun and send me a “wish you were here postcard” in your head!