Scrapbook paper is as addictive as fabric! It’s available in as many colors and patterns as you can imagine and you can buy it by the sheet or in a big tablet. It comes in solids, stripes, glossy, flat, glitter and embossed types. Extra large pieces to small scrap size pieces are all available at the local neighborhood craft store. Of course, I don’t have a local, neighborhood craft store so I have to drive long distances to the big name stores. Many chain stores, such as Target and Walmart have scrapbook/craft sections in them also. I even found scrapbooking supplies at Cabela’s! If your family is into the outdoors, they have some really fun, unique ways to document your exploits, although, they can be pricey. They even have craft supplies at Costco. That’s where I found these great storage boxes, which I use for scrapbook projects because they can hold 12×12 paper and lots of pictures, embellishments, and other miscellaneous items. This way, each child or different book can have its own individual storage box.
Last Wednesday the Cake Queen and I were going to drop some things off at the resale store and go out for lunch. When I got to her house, she said that she hadn’t had time to get everything together, and asked if I had any other suggestions. I don’t know why it popped into my head, but I said, “I have a $25 gift card to Hobby Lobby.” Well, so did she as it happened, and off we went to spend our gift cards. We really weren’t counting on it taking very long. After all, $25 just doesn’t go very far anymore.
We got to Hobby Lobby, which is a good 1/2 hour to 45 minute drive for us, around 10:30 in the morning. We started browsing, skipped over the silk flowers and headed toward fabrics, barely looked at the one row of upholstery fabric and moved on. We browsed nearly every picture, poster and wall cling available. They have some really fun, arty pictures to frame yourself, and some very nice posters of famous, or not so famous, artwork. We moved on to the baskets and a little bit of home décor from there, and then over to the craft and scrapbook section. It’s not really a section, it’s more like 1/4 of the store.
The paper was calling me. Even before we left, my goal was to get some paper. Everything, I mean paper, stickers, embellishments, EVERYTHING, by The Paper Studio, was on sale for 40% off. ChaChing! Jackpot! We looked and looked at all the different patterns and colors and themes. How could I choose?! They even had mustache paper! My daughter would love it! Can anyone tell me why mustaches are in? We picked stuff up and put it back. We filled our little shopping cart almost half full…and then we added it up. Well, I could have bought all that I had picked, but I would only have $10 left for lunch, so I put some back. I decided that I was going to keep my sewing themed packet of paper and all of my sewing stickers and embellishments. They were really hard to find and it was the only tablet of sewing themed paper in the entire store. Yes, I am going to sew, then blog about it, then scrapbook about it. I can’t think of a better way to combine everything that I love to do! Cake Queen put some things back also and off to checkout we went. I looked at my watch and it said that it was 10 minutes after….wait for it….1:00. That’s right! We spent nearly 3 hours in Hobby Lobby and we didn’t even look at everything! I’d say we missed half of the store!
Over lunch at Applebee’s we discussed how long we were in there and still couldn’t believe it. In the end, we decided that it was a lot of fun and we wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. And, on top of that, she asked me if I wanted to do a bible study with her and the money I saved from putting so much back was just enough to buy the book for the bible study!
It was a great day spent with a great friend!
I got to indulge my love of paper and practice moderation. ( I would have bought 3X as much paper, if I hadn’t thought about the other things that I wanted to do.) My stash of paper is nearly as large as my stash of fabric, but the colors and patterns are so pretty that it’s hard to choose and I usually end up getting several, you know, for future projects. I did really well that day and it paid off in the end. Here is what I ended up with.
I can’t wait to get started! Happy Crafting!
Julie (Gardengirl)
- Scrapbook Inspiration (triciatreasure.blogspot.com)