#gettingcrafty: washi tape cards !

If you haven't already noticed, I am kind of in love with washi tape (or paper tape, they're the same thing). I am in love with washi tape for multiple reasons:

1. The tape is so versatile. You can use it to label things, tape things together in a colorful way, create tabs for your notebooks, decorate your room, etc.
2. It is easy to remove. If you do not want it on one place, you can easily take it off no matter what surface it is on and move it to the next place.
3. There are sooooo many patterns--from stripes, to polka dots, to owls (hehehe) and flowers and more! There is a pattern out there for everyone!

Besides using washi tape to decorate and stick things in my SMASH book, I also use washi tape to make simple cards for multiple occasions. I typically get my inspiration for these cards from a simple Pinterest or Google search of "washi tape cards."Despite the mess I make (imagine paper scraps everywhere, rolls of washi tape sprawled out on the floor, markers in an uneven pile, and all other craft supplies in between), I love the process of making and truly personalize the cards that I make for the person I am giving it to. Below are some cards that I have made with washi tape.

Christmas Cards I made for my Secret Santa within my "family" in an organization & my "little" in the organization!

Closer look at one of the cards. The present is made of three different patterns of washi tape & the tag is one pattern. The rest is drawn in with marker!

Random card I made for my "little" to wish him luck for his first round of finals!

May the odds be in all of our favors when it comes to finals.

Valentine's Day card for my boyfriend. It's a simple heart cut-out with different patterns of pink/red washi tape! On the back was a cute, maybe-romantic message for him.

Baby shower card for one of the ladies that work in the lab I work at (I hope you can tell that's a diaper--a lot of struggle went into trying not to make it look like underwear!). I tried to make it as gender-neutral as possible because she does not know the gender of the baby.

The front of the message card has pink polka dots and the back of the message card has blue polka dots. It kind of enforces gender stereotypes, but it was the only cardstock paper I had that exhibited the most "gender neutrality."

I challenge you to get creative & make your own cards (even if it's just a card made of lined notebook paper and a pen). No matter how cliche, it is the thought that counts. Your parent, sibling, relative, friend, or coworker will truly truly value your effort and the sweet message you say within the card.

Comment with your own washi tape creations; I'd love to see them! More inspiration for me for my next crafty project.

#gettingcrafty: smashed potatoes !

(I may or may not be starting to run out of ways to use the word "smash" cleverly...)

It's been almost two weeks since I last touched my SMASH Book, but since I go back to SD for school in less than two weeks, I want to finish smashing in the rest of my stuff so I don't have to bring any of it back with me.

I finally did the front and back covers. I'm less than satisfied with how the front looks, but it'll do for now. I'll hopefully add more stuff and make it look more colorful (even though I love the color pink) and less bland.

Front. "There comes a day when you realise turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because your realise there's so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on." - Zayn Malik

Back.

 On to the pages ! This time... DCON Edition ! When I was in Key Club, District Convention (DCON) was always one of the events I looked forward to because you got to interact with Key Clubbers from all over the District. It was rare in high school to even meet Key Clubbers from other divisions (it makes it even tougher that I lived in Nevada and not California where most of the Key Clubbers are). In Circle K, there are many more opportunities to meet other Circle K'ers because there are more District events, so I looked forward to Circle K DCON because of meeting other Circle K'ers AND it's just a familiar event due to KC DCON. DCON is a lot of fun and I had a blast ^__^ Looking at this page brought back some good memories~

I added this pocket to hold the DCON Program.

I used the black and white paper ad for DCON that we got back at FTC as a background for the page.

All my cool swag I got from DCON. Thanks UNR, UCB, CSUF, OCC, Sac State, UNLV, and Capitol Division for stuff! :)

Under the HIMYM Tie (courtesy of UNR) is my room key ! I roomed with Charlotte, Lynn, and Jen Keli :D

I really like this spread because it's a perfect collage. It feels like it didn't take me too long to put this together since everything seemed to fall into place, but it probably did take me as long because of distractions... and I'm a perfectionist :P

Anyways, look forward to more of my SMASH Book pages in the near future ! Need to get this done before I go back to SD !

#gettingcrafty: smash it up !

Greetings ! It's been almost a week since I last updated with the progress of how my SMASH Book is going... and not much progress has been made within that amount of time. Every time I do something creative, I feel like I have to let my creative juices rest and do other mindless things until they are recharged, kekeke. With the short break I took, I managed to do two pages (sadly, only two pages).

One of the reasons why I took so long in doing another page or two was because I didn't know what to smash next or how to order things from that page onward. I'm trying to do it chronologically, but I have so much stuff that don't fit together chronologically, but the categories can be arranged chronologically, so I decided to just go with that.

Before I get to the pages, I bought some more stuff to help me with my SMASH Book ! I was in Target and I passed the scrapbooking aisle. I curiously looked and saw a few SMASH products on sale ! :D I bought four pockets, these magnetic clip thingies, and this booklet for around $4 :D

And without further ado, here are the two pages I did !

The theme of these two pages is FTC (Fall Training Conference). It is an annual CNH Circle K event held in Sonora, CA. Bunches of workshops, new members are called on stage and get a certificate welcoming them into the organization and clubs hand out/trade cool goodies to put on your name tags and show off during the event.

Here is the first page~

A close up of the first page.

My certificate ^__^ I went on stage to receive this ! 

From SD to Sonora in NorCal ! The washi tape parts say what school I got the cool goodies from.

And the right page~

I got that bag from UCR. I'm using it to hold the FTC program. The space-related stickers are also from UCR, since their theme was Men In Black. It took forever to get the bag to stick on the page.

The beautiful program~

Behind the straps of the bag, since I didn't want there to just be an awkward space.

That's it for now ! I'm debating whether or not to do a giant Circle K chunk (aka a few pages, since I have random Circle K stuff) or KP/Phamily pages next, since I don't know what would be better chronologically. Maybe I'll do all Circle K stuff (including DCON, which is after those two chunks) and then KP/Phamily pages afterwards. Or my birthday after the pages I just did THEN those pages ? Maybe I should've done my birthday before these FTC pages.... AHHHH, I don't know.

I still also do not have a cover. I know what I want on the cover, but I don't know how to design it yet. Hopefully, I'll get a random burst of inspiration and design the cover before the book gets TOO fat.

I'm excited to work on the rest of my book & keep you all updated ! (:

#gettingcrafty: how smashing !

Earlier this summer, I decided I wanted to make a SMASH Book after seeing it all over Pinterest. I thought it was a cool way to store all of the small memorabilia I keep throughout the years. I'm going to document my journey with my SMASH book here~

After buying some washi tape and some more scrapbook supplies and salvaging other scrapbook supplies from our hallway closet, I decided to get to work!

They sent me two rolls of the bird tape on accident/purpose ? Most of these I got from downtowntape.com. Two are from cottonon.com, and two are of the SMASH brand.

All the scrapbooking supplies I found in the closet. The red composition notebook is what I'm making into my SMASH book, which is an old notebook I used in the 7th grade.

Two SMASH pens (I'll buy the blue one next time !) and a paper pad by Teresa Collins.

Close up of the SMASH pens (with New Girl in the background) !

First, I covered the edge of the composition notebook pages with washi tape. This would help group the pages to make them thicker (versus gluing the pages together) and make the side of the book look pretty at the same time ! Tutorial is here.

I didn't know what to do for the cover, so I skipped to the inside cover. I glued a paper patterned with a field of lavender flowers and a flower-related quote... something girly and cute to open the book with.

"Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower." - Shigenori Kameoka

It took me a couple of more days from the point when I made the cover to actually do the rest of my SMASH Book. I had to dump out all the stuff I had from the past year of college (I'm starting the book here; I have a bunch of stuff from high school that I think I'm going to save for another book) and think of how to organize the stuff together and arrange it nicely on a page.

I didn't even realize how much stuff I had ! It doesn't look like so much, but, trust me, it is.

Here's what I came up with for the first page. I imagined this to be a two page kind of design, but I lacked name tags. I had a bunch more name tags but I think I threw them away when I was moving out of my dorm. I'm still mostly satisfied with how the page turned out though. I think it's a pretty good introduction page, right ? I used washi tape to decorate the page more.

Hello ! My name is...

It took me a while to decide what to do next, but I decided to make it UCSD/Triton themed since it was my first year attending university. I didn't have a lot to work with, but I think I made it look good !

Program from Convocation ! Inside the program, this guy & I were writing messages to each other. Kinda cute.

Underneath the Convocation program.

Sun God wristband and a bunch of pins I've gotten from school so far. I don't know if I'm going to keep the pins in there or not since it makes the book so fat already.

Signed concert tickets & the wristbands, Sun God babies, random stickers...

Underneath the tickets. Back of the Sun God babies & a random star sticker (which I wish I placed differently, but I couldn't remove it after I put it there >___<).

Under the wristbands.

Anyways, that's all I have done for now. I'm excited to keep working on my SMASH book and improve my scrapbooking/creativity skills ! (((: