Happy National Scrapbooking Day from Martha!

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No, not THAT Martha... she isn't the only Martha around with something new to say about scrapbooking... (wink)

Today we have a Special Scrappin' Guest! Please welcome my pal and fellow Chicagoland Craft Collective Organizer Martha Bonneau! Let me say I am such a fan of Martha's style... her pages have a very unique look. As far as I know, she never puts her pages into albums... they are each individual works of art, and she almost exclusively scraps her babies, and her babies are her two adorable Pugs; Opie and Mugsy... she also has a kitty... Ivo! She says she comes from a long line of crafty people but that she had suppressed her inner craftiness until receintly. Martha supports her craftiness with her job in retail management. She and her husband Bob have been married for 7 years.

Martha is actually pretty new to the world of scrapping, which in my opinion adds to her unique vision. She incorporates found objects into her pages and has no worries about what is or is NOT Acid free... she is a scrapbooking RISK taker, and a perfect example of what Craft Critique likes to promote. She scraps because she loves to create!

Martha also has a love for felt... after she started using it in her scrapping she began making really cool Felt Tote Bags and Pug Plushies too! She has an awesome Blog; Mugsy Boo, and also an Etsy Shop you can visit. You can see the bulk of her Scrapbooking Pages on her 2 Peas Gallery HERE. You may need a hankie to wipe the drool off your keyboard.

I asked Martha to write a bit about how she came to use such unusual objects on her pages... where she acquires it all and what she digs. Enjoy!

Creative Scrapbook Supply Shopping
Reported By Martha Bonneau

Anyone who is a serious scrapper knows that half the fun of the hobby is the stuff, the delicious papers and brightly colored bits & bobs call to us. We are always on the search for that perfect embellishment that will take our LO to the next level. Over time I have found that a combination of traditional scrapping items sprinkled with a dash of non-traditional really stretches me creatively when I am working on a page. What are these non-traditional scrapping items and where do I find them you ask…let me show you the way!

Ephemera & Vintage Goodies

What is ephemera you ask? It is defined as a printed or handwritten item normally discarded after its intended use; items such as postcards, ticket stubs, valentines etc. Well as it turns out, instead of being discarded, these items were put in boxes, attics & basements and eventually they made their way to estate & yard sales to be purchased as potential scrapping supplies. Items I have used on LOs include vintage place-cards, pages from children’s books, old playing cards, & Christmas seals from the 40’s and 50’s all of which have a cool retro look that I love. An example of ephemera used in a LO is the banana pie recipe from an old magazine that I used on this LO

Estate and yard sales are also a terrific source for buttons and vintage trims, my favorite of which is ric-rac which is no longer available in the fabulous palette that it once was, but there is plenty of the good stuff out there to be found. One of my favorite sources for Ephemera during the cold winter months when there are no yard sales is Etsy. There are several sellers that have put together packs of goodies that are perfect for scrapping.

Office Supply Store

One of my favorite places to find scrapping supplies is the office supply store or the office supply aisle at stores such as Target. I love index cards and shipping tags, they can be stamped and used for journaling or as an embellishment. I also adore graph paper & those fab “hello my name is…” tags.


Gift Wrap as Patterned Paper
One of my favorite places for cool paper is Paper Source. They have the most unique wrapping papers that are perfect for scrapping and for the amount you get, it is a fraction of the cost. One of the images you see a lot in scrapping right now is robots, but there is no robot scrapbook paper to be found, I ran across this great robot wrapping paper though!


Scrapping Kits
So you want to use some of these unique items on your LOs, but just don’t know where to start…might I suggest going to Zingboom. She puts together a monthly scrapping kit that is a combination of the funkiest traditional scrapping supplies mixed with packets of fun and unusual stuff, some of it vintage, some new, but all of it cool.