Guest Blogger: Contributing Writer, Mou Saha

Happy Friday my dear CK blog readers. Mou Saha here. I’m a contributing writer for Creating Keepsakes, and I’m happy to be here with you today as a guest blogger on the CK blog.

Another glorious summer is drawing to an end. Students are going back to school. Every year, around this time, I stock up on pencils, markers, rulers, clipboards, etc. at back-to-school discount prices. In my article, “Back to School in Style” in the September 2010 issue of Creating Keepsakes, you will see how we have utilized these extra supplies to create interesting layouts and inexpensive gifts. For example, I decorated a clipboard on page 65, and Stacy Cohen used a real pencil and a ruler on her “The Big Yellow Bus” page.

Even though Jaime Ward’s candy pencils are not real, they sure are clever just like Laina Lamb’s “chalkboard” lunchboxes.

Megan Hoeppner’s altered crayon box card holder and the apple accent in my “The Second Grade Apple Project” created from an old thesaurus page are both lessons in creative recycling.

Learn how to paper-piece stunning backpack and pencil accents in Lynn Ghahary’s “Back 2 School” page.

Cindy Tobey shows you how to create a mini notebook to hide some personal journaling in “Math Geek?” Don’t forget to check out the online extension of the article to see the instructions for making a file folder to house extra photos on your page as I did in “The Second Grade Apple Project”.

Be inspired by Paula Gilarde as she documents her son’s bus ride to school in “1^st Day”. And last but not the least, put together a first day care package for a loved one as I did on p. 66. You can even check out this Studio 5 segment where Brittany Beattie walks you through some of these projects.

And now, let me show you a fun and quick paper-weight project that I made with pebbles collected on a nature walk. If you can’t find pebbles on your walks, you can buy them at any garden center. Choose the shapes you like and clean them with soap, water and an old toothbrush. Wipe them dry and they are ready to be decorated.

For my pebbles, I chose the School Spirit rub-ons by Crate Paper and cut out the sections I wanted to use.

Remove the backing sheet and lay the design down on the pebble. Using a rub-on tool or a craft stick, rub the design on.

And that’s how simple it is to make these cute paper-weights that cost you almost nothing.

I hope these ideas inspire you to document the school experiences this year and to make some easy, quick and inexpensive handmade gift items for a loved one. To make this even more fun for you, Crate Paper has generously offered to give away their School Spirit rub-on pack to one lucky CK Blog reader. Simply leave a comment on this post below, and we’ll select one lucky winner to win this prize. We’ll announce the winner next week.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mou

P.S. Don’t miss Free Font Friday. This week, you can download the CK  Lala font for free here.