I am obsessed with my new toy! If you've been following this blog for a long time, you'll know that I migrated to an Epson Stylus 1400 wide format printer (13 inches wide) for my digital scrapbooking and photography needs back in 2008 (yes, really). I have been diligently using this printer for years (it works great) but the cost of ink cartridges vs sending print jobs to Costco made me stop using it a couple of years ago. Basically if you aren't using it a lot then the ink cartridges dry up and you don't get your money's worth.

However, Costco printing isn't always convenient when kids come to you the morning of a school presentation and ask for a baby photo (for getting to know me day), photo of an ancestor (for an immigration project) or a wolf (for research project) - yes these are *real* scenarios.

In addition my Project Life has stumbled as I want to send a year's photos at a time, but really who wants to write a year's worth of "about this photo" and who can even remember why the photo was taken, where it was etc.

So enter the Canon Selphy. Ok, so I kind of hate the name of this printer. I mean, I'm Gen X, I don't do selfies. However, the name is the only bad thing about this printer.


First of all, it's cute, did I say adorable!! It almost fits into the palm of your hand. While it's not the smallest printer on the market - it might be the smallest that prints a full 4x6 photo.

But what else?
Well it has wifi. So I might be late to the game on this, but printing from your cell phone, iPad or direct from your camera is huge. But you'll also be able to print from USB connection to your computer or laptop, and use an SD card to review photos and select them to print using the built in screen.

What about cost?
This printer was $119 CDN from Amazon. I also picked up a package of paper and ink cartridges (to print 108 images) for $40. There's a real advantage to this printer because they guarantee you can print exactly 108 images - no more no less. The package contains 3 packages of 36 sheets paper, and 3 ink cartridges. That works out to CDN $0.37 per print. Sure it's more than Costco (which charges CDN $0.10), but much more convenient when you only want a couple of images at a time.

Watch my Canon Selphy unboxing:


If you want a Canon Selphy, please consider using my Amazon links below. It doesn't cost you anything extra, but helps fund the cost of hosting this website and producing these videos.

Take an interactive tour through my newly labelled scrapbook albums on Flickr (click here). 


I've sold all my CTMH albums and moved almost all my 12x12s to American Crafts D-Ring albums.  This enables me to more easily mix page size as the pages/posts don't have to be removed to insert the different sized extra pages.

See previous post about spine labels.

Local Kelowna gals, I've got two 12" lilac fabric Colorbok Perfect Scrapbook albums for sale. The refills are a different size than the huge stash of CTMH ones I've got and I don't want to buy a different kind of refill.

The albums were purchased for $7 plus taxes at Winners and I'll sell for same price. Both are clean and unused and come with 10 refill pages each. Each has 3 post screws.

Let me know if you are interested.

(Repost: I was going to keep/use them but now I'm not)

Signed up for this class at BigPictureScrapbooking
Going to a crop here tomorrow

Scanned some photos my mum sent at Christmas ready for it
Hopefully will make some pages to post this weekend :)

It seems like every year C has to come up with some scheme to rennovate the house - or sell it and build another one.

When we bought this house 5 years ago, I thought it was our Forever Home. Since then we haven't even unpacked because we've tried to buy/build three times unsuccessfully and have done two large rennovations (basement finishing, create 2nd bedroom on main floor (by stealing 1/2 the kitchen).

Now we have rennovation #3, the create an open space and finish a room for the live-in nanny rennovation designed to make the main living area more like a great room concept and have somewhere to put the nanny when she moves in. Subsequently there is stuff everywhere! My neatly organized family room with it's craft area looks like a storage unit and there is a thin layer of drywall dust on everything.

I am beginning to feel like I am drowing because I can't get out from under all this stuff. My creativity level is way down because I can't access anything to express myself (so why bother). This morning I stumbled across this article: http://www.scrapgirls.com/ro_scrapbooking_office_scrapbooking_storage.htm

What's interesting is that this is the way I've been going, i.e. digital. My office area is part of that storage unit so I can't really get into it to print anything but my laptop allows me to work remotely from upstairs or wherever I want. I guess I have just realized that I need to really downsize my stuff. I don't have a lot of stuff by most scrapbookers standards but I'm displaying some of those symptoms, the hoarding, the less output with more product. So I've decided I'm going to bite the bullet and give stuff away for free on Castanet.net or take it down to a women's shelter or any other place you might suggest. More to follow....

My scrapbooking stash really isn't that bad when compared to many of my friends :) as you can see from the photo here (stash is mostly housed in bookcase on the right).

From Studio M

This year I joined a Stampin' Up! hostess club to limit my spending but there are still a lot of things you can't buy from Stampin' Up! so once in a while I step into a scrapbook store (usually this one www.memorycrafts.ca). While I am not their best customer you do tend to spend more than you intended when you go there.

Yesterday I had one of those days. My friend B lives awful close to this store and I had left my laptop power cable at her house the previous evening so after collecting it, I hit the store. This time the damage wasn't too bad, a mere $95 plus taxes.

Oh well, let's see what I got:

- Ali Edwards "Life Artist" - an older book but one I've been meaning to get for a while. I noticed it had been discontinued on Amazon so I thought I'd better pick it up while stocks last.

- K&Co Photo Scrap Album - I just saw these in the Quick and Easy Photo Albums magazine. My friend Cheryl (who is on the editorial board for Simple Scrapbooks and who works at the aforementioned store) had an album in that special issue and I had wondered where to get one just like it. Duh, I should have figured that the store would have them!

- Fancy Pants 12x12 Photo Pocket pages - these hold 6 4x6 photos on a regular sized scrapbook page. Again inspired from the Quick and Easy Photo Albums magazine. I already have some of these page protectors (I often use them to house photos to scrap but now plan to actually use them as scrapbook pages.

- SEI 11x8.5 page protectors - in the words of my friend B, "I think this is my size". She is often lamenting that she doesn't have an affinity for 12x12 (even though she has 3 completed scrapbooks in that size) and wants to scrap in 8.5x11. It's interesting because I have several albums in 12x12, 8x8 and 6x6 but since noticing the landscape version of the 8.5x11, think that might actually be my true size and I've been wanting to try it out. The advantages to this size are many, you can print on a regular printer, you can use regular size paper (which I tend to buy for cardmaking), in portrait orientation it fits in office binders (you can always put your landscape pages in this way too though). So my plan for these page protectors is to intermingle them in with my 12x12 pages by simply re-punching the holes (because they don't line up).

- Karen Foster Ancestry stickers - for that unfinishing heritage album (don't remind me) - this project is taking a *long* time. I purchased the papers and cardstock for it about 2-3 years ago, and I have the black American Craft Linen D-ring albums for it, but I don't have a lot of coordinating embellishments, just some black buttons and metal photo clips etc).

- Heidi Swapp Clocks Clear Acrylic Stamps - this has to be the best deal ever. For $6.99 CDN (that's only $5.50 US) I got an acrylic stamp set with 4 clock faces and 4 hands. I've been looking for clock faces like this (rub ons or acetate embellishments) for a while but now I can make my own. They are so versatile and can be used on all sorts of layouts (Ali Edwards and Heidi Swapp use them a lot so they must be good!).

- Basic Grey Archaic Chip Stickers and Paper - Boy scrapbooking supplies aren't as plentiful as girl ones, so when I saw these stickers months ago I wanted them. They are chipboard so add some 3-dimensional bulk to layouts/projects. I also got a sheet of dinosaur paper too.

So are you thinking what I'm thinking? Did I write this blog post to justify my spending spree? I think so.... maybe I need therapy.... or an intervention.

I've been looking for something to store items to be scrapped/preserved (such as the kids artwork and oversized photos) for a while and stumbled across these drawers at Winners for $16.99 each (that's CDN). I picked up two sets in the "quiet meadow" so that I would have one drawer for each child plus one for family stuff. They are already labelled and K's is already pretty full with all the artwork she has done over the last year.

I don't plan to keep her artwork in there indefinitely as I'd actually like to photograph it and print each piece on a 4x6 and put them into a photo album that everyone can look at I just haven't worked out how I will combine that with the titles like "Elephant", "Horse", "Ariel the Mermaid", "Our Garden". Until then, these drawers are the perfect solution.

Today's thought isn't specifically craft related although applies to many of us "crafters". I was struck by an article over at MSN called "The High Price of Too Much Stuff" which talks about how the rise in credit card debt also coincides with the rise in the number of square feet of storage facilities available, even though the square footage of our homes has also increased during the same period. So it seems that not only are we buying more stuff, increasing our personal debt, and building bigger homes to store it in; we are also having to rent storage facilities because we still have too much.

This really hit home with me. I've only been scrapbooking for 4 years and have been through the cycle of consumption to out of control proportions and have now had to develop my own 3 step program (don't buy anything new, use what you love, purge what you don't love).

As a new scrapbooker/stamper, I quickly found that my need to own (but not necessarily use) craft products was out of control. I had never experienced anything like it before. The products were so beautiful and had so much creative potential and I needed a selection of everything just to get started (I'm not one of those "drive to the scrapbook store and pick out 2 sheets of paper for a specific project" type gals). Credit cards got used, making that great product or deal not so great once interest was factored in.

At first the products were pretty to look at, storing them was a form of home decor, and acted as an inspiration for what to create next. But once there was too much to fit on the shelf and I had to use utilitarian storage options, the products became a trigger for guilt (the guilt of how much was spent, and how much sat unused). Not only that, I was now having to spend money on storage and organization just for these supplies (and justify it). While I used some of the products to make scrapbook pages, cards, and other projects; after just a couple of years I had more product than I would use in a lifetime.

What opened my eyes to my "problem" were two things. The first was meeting a friend with probably 5 times more stuff than me, and more debt than me. I've often heard that it is easier to see your faults in someone else rather than yourself, and in this case it was. While she had all this stuff, she still wanted more. She thought that if she could purchase a house with a dedicated craft room and buy storage solutions, the problem would be solved. I could see that the problem wasn't storage/organization related, but a need to have it all and still want more. I've seen this in many crafters and often wondered why. Well I think it is because every product comes with so many new creative possibilities that to not purchase something, in some way, seems to be to put a creative ceiling on yourself which doesn't sit right with anyone who likes to be creative. The reality though, was that I was much more creative when I could see my stuff and knew what I had, and didn't feel guilty about it.

The second thing was wanting to try digital scrapbooking. I'd always been a computer geek and had used Photoshop to edit my digital photos. I liked the idea of digital scrapbooking because of the techniques you could achieve digitally and the fact that I didn't have to worry about my kids getting into my stuff when I left a layout only half done. The problem was that I couldn't continue to purchase more paper product if I was going to be creating layouts digitally. So I knew that I would have to clamp down on my buying habits.

Going "cold turkey" is not only difficult but is likely to result in a relapse :) so to contain my spending, I joined a stampers 10 club and restricted new purchases to that only. While $250 over 10 months sounds a lot, it really isn't for a stamper/scrapbooker (I have spent more than that in one month!). While it is a stamping club, I still have patterned paper, cardstock, consumables (like glue, glitter, ink, brads, ribbons) available. This is a great way to budget purchases if you have a "problem".

I've been working on a couple of craft projects this week trying to get ready for when the baby arrives.

The first project is a baby birth announcement. I started out making 10 of these but 2 got messed up so I'm down to 8 (if you get one you'll be very privileged!). I'm using some older stamping up supplies and a cute stamp set I found at the LSS. I'm just waiting to borrow an SU corner rounder so I can create a scalloped edge down one side then I'll post a photo.


The second project is a mini album for the grandparents. This is the third time I've made mini albums (see the first and second part 1 /second part 2 albums). This time I'm doing something I have never done before, making an ABC album. I don't know why I haven't used this approach before but it's working out pretty good. You have to be a little creative with your alphabet but I kind of like the structure.

I borrowed an idea from the Simple Scrapbooks Album Shortcuts special issue pages 90-91 where each double spread has one vertical and one horizontal photo and uses a round journal stamp to record the details of each. The pages are minimally decorated and the photos will be 4x6 for speedy assembly. 9/26 pages are done but I'm going to need to take some more photos to get these finished (of course I'm saving a few pages like B is for Baby) for after the baby arrives.


Here's a sample, "F is for Friends" (G is before I add the photo and journaling).

Scrapbooker Ali Edwards made an interesting post today at her blog, which included the following statement:

• What if you collected stories the same way you collect supplies?
• What if you did your journaling first, rather than last, in your creative process?
• What if you began paying attention to your life in a way that enabled the stories to free-flow from your fingers onto the page?
• What if you encouraged your kids (by example and through encouragement) to be the kind of people who grow up telling their own stories?
• What if you truly valued your individual story and life experiences and were brave enough to share them with others?

When I think about what scrapbooking means to me, it is about telling stories as much as capturing images, yet we rarely devote as much time thinking about what we are going to say as we do to preparing our images, choosing our supplies and designing our layouts.

I know that I often I rush the journaling or leave it off completely (intending to come back to it later). Ali's statement really hit home, scrapbooking isn't about the supplies, or even the design, but about telling stories through the use of words and pictures. I am going to challenge myself to do the things in the bullet points above.