Author Archives: amysolovay

Card Making Ideas for Spring 2024

This year, the first day of spring will be March 19, 2024. We’ll be enjoying spring until June 20, 2024, when summer will officially arrive. Between March and June, we’ll be celebrating several holidays — and it’s always fun to make holiday greeting cards to send to your friends and loved ones on those occasions.

Want to make some spring-themed greeting cards? Check out the following card making ideas for spring:

Mother’s Day Cards to Make for Spring 2024

Card Making Idea: Bohemian Floral Mother's Day Card

Here’s a card making idea for those of you who like to make your own cards. This is a Mother’s Day card constructed from floral patterned papers and embellishments.

This year, we’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day on Sunday, May 12, 2024. That gives you plenty of time to make some fabulous DIY Mother’s Day crafts. If you want to make a handmade card for your mom this year, check out our page of Mother’s Day cards to make.

Although the idea pictured on this page isn’t brand new, it’s one you might want to consider trying if you’re brand new to card making — first of all, because it’s easy, and furthermore, because you can make it without making a huge investment in paper craft tools like a die cutter and dies. I made this card design before die cutters were popularized, and the supplies you’ll need for making it are pretty basic.

More Spring Card Making Ideas

Click here to check out our main directory of card making ideas.

More Spring Arts and Crafts Pages and Ideas

See Also: Holiday Crafts

Posted By: Amy Solovay


This page was last updated on 2-11-2024.

Digital Scrapbooking Layout Featuring Elwood Beach, California Palm Tree

Digital Scrapbooking Layout Featuring Elwood Beach Palm Tree

Digital Scrapbooking Layout Featuring Elwood Beach Palm Tree

From 2006 to 2009, my husband, Mike, and I lived in Goleta, California. Elwood Beach was basically our backyard; we could walk out our door, down a dirt path through the Eucalyptus trees and be at the beach within moments.


Here you can see one of my favorite views of the beach. I have variations of this same tree photographed, like, dozens of different times.


At the time, Mike and I both had amazing jobs working in Santa Barbara. Mike was working as the sales and marketing manager for a local AV company, and I had a freelance gig helping Big Dogs Sportswear put their summer print line together. I only worked with them during the summer months.


In my downtime during the fall and winter months, I messed around with scrapbooking, making and selling art, building websites, freelance writing and hanging around the beach. Life was just about as perfect as it could be.


Then along came the great financial crisis. Mike and I both lost our jobs at about the same time. We didn’t want to leave Santa Barbara, but we knew we couldn’t stay in the place where we had been living.


We met this guy who told us it was possible to live rent-free in Santa Barbara. He was selling a 1960s Chris Craft in need of restoration. He told us he was anchoring it in Fool’s Anchorage, and he suggested buying it and living aboard.


Well, of course, living rent-free in Santa Barbara was an appealing idea, so we took a look at his boat. However, we knew immediately that buying it would be a bad idea. Even if someone had been willing to invest the time and elbow grease getting that thing looking awesome again, it would take a billionaire to keep its fuel tanks full.


And we realized that staying in Fool’s Anchorage was also a terribly, horribly bad idea. Glad we had enough sense to dodge that bullet.


Later, after we’d bought a different boat, we met a guy, David. David is an experienced seaman who has been sailing since his childhood 60-some odd years ago. We got to talking with him about anchorages in the area. His comment about Fool’s Anchorage: “No self-respecting captain would anchor a boat there.”


Our other friend, Jim, used to live in Fool’s Anchorage. In the wintertime, when the winds would kick up hard, we’d get worried about him. We’d call him and ask how he was doing. He’d respond, “I’m rocking and rolling with the best of ‘em”. He used to drop, like, 200+ feet of chain and a massive anchor for his 34-foot sailboat, and the dude didn’t even have a windlass. Even with all that ground tackle, washing up on the beach was a constant threat.


And that doesn’t even begin, really, to describe the insanity that is Fool’s Anchorage. Jim told us horror stories that I won’t get into here and now.


So I said to Mike, “Forget the Chris Craft. Let’s get a sailboat. And definitely forget Fool’s Anchorage. Let’s actually go cruising.”


Mike occasionally goes along with my wild ideas. The rest is history.


Credits:

The lovely people over at Katie Pertiet’s website are having a blending challenge that inspired this digital scrapbooking layout. I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to blending, so this really was a challenge for me – but I’m planning to keep messing around with it until I get proficient.


I used Gimp and digital scrapbooking supplies from Katie’s website to create this image. The title font is Cream Cake.


I’m new at Gimp, and so far, it would be incredibly generous to describe my skills in the program as being mediocre. But they’re getting a little better with each project I attempt, and they took a pretty big leap forward with this project (although it occurs to me that is probably not evident just from looking at this piece, which is more of a mess than I’d like it to be…)


Messy or not, I liked it enough to declare this digital scrapbooking layout finished. Thanks for checking it out! I appreciate your interest.

One Photo, One Word Digital Scrapbooking Challenge at the Katie Pertiet Designs Blog

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The lovely people over at KatiePertietDesigns.com are having a bunch of inspiring digital scrapbooking challenges this month. I’m working on entering a couple of them. Here you can see my entry for their “one photo, one word” Saturday Scraplift challenge. I’m “scraplifting” a layout by a creative team member, Kate, who goes by the username “OKate” (although my layout actually ended up looking more like Wendy’s).


Hiking Around Cat Harbor Digital Scrapbooking Layout

Hiking Around Cat Harbor Digital Scrapbooking Layout. Photo and layout by Amy Solovay. Digital Scrapbooking Supplies by Katie Pertiet Designs.


I found this challenge to be an especially challenging one, because the inspiration project is so clean, simple and uncluttered. In theory, I LOVE the clean and simple aesthetic; I was instantly drawn to the inspiration project. But in reality, I don’t typically make scrapbooking projects that are totally clean and simple. When it comes to scrapbooking layouts, I like having more than one photo on the page, and I like to pile on textures and layers. Beyond that, I probably overdo it with journaling — so asking me to keep it to one word was like asking me to keep it to one chocolate chip cookie.


So yeah, I totally failed at living up to the “one word” part of the challenge. I thought about titling this “Cat Harbor”, but even that shorter title exceeds the one-word limit. And I have a few thousand photos of Cat Harbor to scrap (I probably won’t get to scrapping all of them…but I’m glad to have scrapped this one, which is one of my favorites). If I were to title one of them “Cat Harbor”, it wouldn’t be this one — because I have photos where the harbor is really the star of the show, and this isn’t one of them.


But this is still a huge win, because it dragged me out of my comfort zone long enough to come up with a new layout that I wouldn’t have arrived at otherwise — and it’s one that I LOVE.


My heartfelt thanks to Katie, Kate, Wendy, Liz, Candy, Rae and the rest of the creative team over at Katie’s website. I appreciate the inspiration y’all provide, and I enjoyed this challenge.

Supplies You Need for Creating a Similar Digital Scrapbooking Layout

All the supplies I used for this layout are available at Katie Pertiet’s website. I plan to post a list of them shortly, so please check back if this would be of interest to you.


Over to You:

Did you enter any of the challenges at Katie’s website this month? If so, how did your project(s) turn out? You’re invited to make use of the comments area below.

October 13, 2022: Life Right Now Digital Scrapbooking Layout

Featuring Digital Scrapbooking Supplies by Katie Pertiet Designs

Life Right Now Digital Scrapbooking Layout: Photographs by Michael and Amy Solovay. Scrapbooking Layout by Amy Solovay. Digital Scrapbooking Supplies by Katie Pertiet Designs.

Life Right Now Digital Scrapbooking Layout: Photographs by Michael and Amy Solovay. Scrapbooking Layout by Amy Solovay. Digital Scrapbooking Supplies by Katie Pertiet Designs.

This is sort of an idealized version of what my life looks like right now. If I were going to post completely honest photos showing life at my place, you’d mostly see a jumble of cardboard moving boxes in stacks everywhere. Ugh. You didn’t come here to see that, did you? No, I think not.

So instead of messy cardboard box pics, how about checking out a few pics of what I’m putting into the moving boxes? Basically, these are some of the things I want to be working on, but I’m too busy with packing and ghostwriting to get to it right now.

*SIGH*

I am a diehard paper scrapbooker — and in the long term, I don’t see that permanently changing. However, at the moment, I am messing around with digital scrapbooking for a couple of important reasons. 1) I want to see if I can speed up my crafting process — in particular, I’m hoping to get faster on the journaling; and 2) Most of my paper craft supplies are packed up in boxes for moving.

As I wrote in another recent blog post, I’m just getting started with digital scrapbooking. I’m a diehard paper scrapbooker, and in the long term, I plan to keep going with mostly paper layouts but doing a few things digitally here and there. This is another one of my attempts at digital scrapbooking.

This page is actually a prime example of why I need to start doing at least some of my pages digitally. I wrote a lot of journaling to go along with this layout, and the truth is, I’m still not exactly sure what to do with it. There isn’t enough room to put it all on the page, so I will have to figure out how to lay it out on the facing page, I guess. Or maybe make another layout with additional pics (I have a bunch of them) plus the journaling. I haven’t got that far with figuring it out. But I do know this: I DO NOT want to rubber stamp all the accompanying text! Heh.

Here’s the journaling:

Top and Bottom Left: It looks as if King Midas has paid Brian Head, Utah a visit; everywhere you look, you see gold. The aspen trees around here are having a glorious moment.

Most years, we only get to enjoy the display of gorgeous golden leaves for a few days before it snows on them or a hard freeze causes them to drop. This fall has been unseasonably warm, so I am hoping the leaves will linger on the trees awhile longer.

Upper and Lower Middle: This is Knitpicks Palette yarn that I want to work on crocheting NOW – but I had to settle for snapping these pics of it before tossing it in a box and packing it up to move. I will get to you soon, my pretties. When I see you again, you are going to become hats and scarves. (Hopefully…)

Top Right and Middle Left: Last fall, I bought these packages of 49 and Market Butter Washi Tapes and Autumn-themed rub-ons with the intention of using them to scrap my fall pics in the 49 and Market 6”x 8” albums (not pictured). However, I am still working on printing out photos and finalizing photo placement, so I haven’t opened the package yet.

A few weeks ago, I discovered that Scrapbook.com had the matching Butter papers in stock (they were out of stock when I bought the washis). So I grabbed them! I am SO HOPING to hurry up and finish this project, but alas, realistically speaking, these goodies are probably also going to end up getting tossed in a moving box, too. A fond farewell for now, my lovelies…I hope to see you again soon.

Middle: This past summer I splurged on a few new things to wear. This O’Neill top is one of those purchases. It’s actually a summer top, but I was excited to discover that if I throw a sweatshirt over it, it’s still wearable in fall.

Middle Right: I was so blessed to be a winner in a Hero Arts blog hop! The prize was a gift certificate to their online store. I didn’t have a die cutter, and I had really, really, really been wanting one…and they have the cutest little compact cutter available. So that’s what I chose to get with my gift certificate. I have been playing with cutting out different shapes and using them to make cards. I love it sooooo much!

I do a lot of “fussy cutting” with decorative scissors and ordinary scissors. I find it enjoyable and even sort of therapeutic, so I can’t see completely giving that up. But, realistically speaking, I am going to have to take some steps to speed up my crafting process – and this will be a good step in the right direction.

The other step in the right direction is learning how to do digital scrapbooking, which I am also working on. I want to start doing most of my journaling and some of my pages digitally. I am off to a good start with that! This page is one of the first few that I have completed digitally. I also have about a dozen “hybrid” pages in progress; I plan to use some digital elements in the 6”x8” albums I am working on completing.

Lower Right: This is one of the projects I recently made with the new die cutter. It’s a greeting card that says “Happy Fall!” The dies, stamps, papers and other supplies are by Lawn Fawn. LOVE the adorable multi-part die set, which has tree trunks and leaves that can be cut separately. For this card, I cut the leaves out using golden and orange papers that resemble the aspen trees in my neighborhood. Looking at this makes me ridiculously, unreasonably happy – so I had to snap a pic of it before mailing it off to my in-laws.

Yesterday, I said a sad (temporary) goodbye to the die cutter and it, too got packed away to be moved. I am so looking forward to being reunited with it soon…

Supplies You Need to Create a Similar Digital Scrapbooking Layout:

I’ve posted the supply list for this layout in the gallery at Katie Pertiet’s website. If you’re interested in picking up the digital patterned papers and the other extras I used for making this, please check out my gallery page over there.

Thanks so much for your interest in my project!

See Also:

Posted By: Amy Solovay

This page was last updated on 10-20-2022.

Venice Beach Pier: A 12″x12″ Digital Scrapbooking Layout

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This 12″x12″ Digital Scrapbooking Layout Includes 1 Framed Photo, Journaling and Multiple Patterned Papers. The Layout Features Digital Scrapbooking Supplies by Katie Pertiet Designs.

Venice Beach Pier, a Digital Scrapbooking Layout.Photos and Scrapbooking Layout by Amy Solovay. Digital Scrapbooking Supplies by Katie Pertiet Designs.

I am a diehard paper scrapbooker — and in the long term, I don’t see that permanently changing. However, at the moment, I am messing around with digital scrapbooking for a couple of important reasons. 1) I want to see if I can speed up my crafting process — in particular, I’m hoping to get faster on the journaling; and 2) Most of my paper craft supplies are packed up in boxes for moving.

Here you can see one of my first efforts at digital scrapbooking.

I have a massive backlog of photos that I want to display in albums. Realistically speaking, I will probably have to just put most of them in pocket pages and call it a day; there are so many pics that it would probably take the rest of my life for me to make scrapbooking layouts about all of them (even if I were to do it all digitally).

But there are a few pictures that stand out as being ones I really want to feature in layouts — and this is one of them.

When I used to live in California, one of my favorite things to do was walking on the sand between Santa Monica and Venice Beach. In hindsight, it sort of horrifies me to remember how I used to grab a slice of pizza in Venice or a container of (pseudo) Chinese food at the mall in Santa Monica. But that was my life then. Since then, everything has changed dramatically.

A few years ago, my husband Mike and I went back to California to visit family and friends. We spent a day hanging out in Marina Del Rey with some friends we met when we were living aboard a sailboat and cruising around Catalina Island.

It was a quick walk from their place to Venice Beach Pier. On the day we visited, the weather was gray and overcast — which was kind of a bummer. But I still enjoyed the walk down “Memory Lane”.

Here you can see the view from Venice Beach Pier facing the shoreline.

I’m mostly content to be a homebody, but looking at my old pics sort of stirs up the dormant wanderlust in my soul…

Supplies You Need to Create a Similar Digital Scrapbooking Layout:

I posted the supply list for this layout in the gallery at Katie Pertiet’s website. If you’re interested in picking up this kit and the other extras I used for making this, you can click here to check it out.

Thanks so much for your interest in my project!

Posted By: Amy Solovay

This page was last updated on 10-14-2022.