So my big day is just 2 months away and I hadn't sent out my invites yet. (cries at a corner). Anyway, it's all because I hadn't finished doing them.

Why on earth was I doing it myself, you ask? Because I'm a bridezilla who wants to get married cheap. And going cheap meant cutting costs. So I needed to make my own invites to save. Also, I think I couldn't get a cheaper price for having a customized wedding invites. So I needed to innovate.

**Enter my inner DIYer**

Here's the materials I used:

- Cardboard paper in silver (I wanted light gray but can't find any)
- Sinamay in pink
- Jute
- hot glue (forgot to include in the pic)
- pictures
- free online watercolor flowers (used for the accents on the invitation pages)
- photo editor (I used photoscape)



1. Search for nice wedding invitation wordings. Add flower accents to prettify my invites. Print and cut to 4.2" in width.

2.  On a cardboard paper, I placed one page of my invitation to get the correct measurement of where I will be doing the folds. Measurement (approximately): 2.2" x 4.2" x 2.2". Crease using whatever tool you have. In my case I had to improvise since I don't know where to buy a bone folder.

3. I added the jute and sinamay accents along with my chosen save the date photo.

4. Assemble the pages and glue them on the invitation cover.



*Here are more invitation ideas I thought of before I was able to finally make up my mind. :)

Another Friday Rest Day for me and I just came home from my bebe's school. I got lots of time to waste on doing nothing so I decided to make a Scrapbook Album from scratch.

Materials:

- Used/old cardboard or chip board or cake box board

- Printed papers or cardstocks (I used Wrapping Papers)

- Glue

- Ruler

- DIY scoring tool (old pen + paperclip)

- pair of scissors

I outlined the scrapbook paper that I would be using for my pages and used it's size to complete the measurements for my box

Crease on the lines and fold. Glue the corners together to make the box. I used paperclips to hold the glued sides in place.

Let it sit for a few minutes until the glue dries up. Remove paperclips after glue dried.

I used Wrapping Paper to cover my scrapbook.

Place the Scrapbook Pages in and it's ready to be filled with photos and other memorabilia.

I had a sudden desire to craft the moment I woke up at 2 PM (I had very little sleep by the way). So I rummaged my scrap box and looked for anything I could work with.

I actually had an "almost anxiety attack" because I was thinking so hard about my wedding invitations (that's probably the reason why I woke up so early). I couldn't get myself to rest well because I still haven't started doing my invites. So to get rid of the stress, I thought of doing some paper crafting.

I was supposed to do a sample of my wedding invites but I couldn't put myself in actually doing it. I was already about to give up when I saw some old pics of the bebe which I didn't use in her baby book. An idea hit me so I immediately started working.

2 x 2 " Exploding Box

Materials used:

Card stock (I used size 6x6)
Pair of scissors
Glue
Ruler
Pencil
Pictures


Using the ruler, measure 2" squares on each side. Do these on 2 sheets of card stock. One for the cover and one for the bottom. For the inner page, measure 1-2 cm smaller than the bottom. If you wish to have more pages, reduce the size of the squares by 1-2 cm per page.

Cut through the lines. Make sure your box cover looks like the below. For the cover, cut about 0.25" - 0.5" on all sides so that your cover will be shorter then your bottom box.

As for the bottom box cut the corner boxes to form a small letter t. Do the same for the rest of the inner pages. Set aside.

Glue together the flaps to form the box cover.

Get the bottom and inner pages. Glue together in the center square. Make sure not to glue the outer squares.

Then add the pictures and you are done.

Enjoy paper crafting! Do share your finished projects in the comments below. Thanks for reading!!! :)

I made two Holiday Trees this year. One for our Bay Decoration Contest at the office and another one for my aunt for their Christmas decoration contest at the barangay.

Materials needed:
Magazines
Glue or hot glue sticks
Glue gun
Carton or chip board
Spray paint
Glitters and beads
Embellishments or accessories
Wood - optional for the stand

1. Make a cone out of the carton or chip board according to your preferred height of the holiday tree. This will serve as your base. If using chip board, you may add stand using wood.

2. Using the magazine pages, roll and make a cone. Make sure that the open part of the cone is pointed. These magazine cones will serve as the leaves of the holiday tree.

3. Using hot glue, put together the rolled magazine cones on the base made out of carton or chip board.

4. Coat the tree using spraypaint. I used gold for my aunt and silver for our office tree.

5. Accessorize your tree any way you want. I made my own embellishments by following this diy tutorial I found in pinterest. I made snowflakes and Christmas star our of hot glue.

Print a pattern of a star on a whole short bond paper. In another paper print patterns of snowflakes that you want. Make sure the snowflake you choose is a continuous or connecting pattern. Place parchment paper on top of your pattern. Using hot glue trace the pattern on the parchment paper. After the hot glue dries up run water on the parchment paper so the snowflakes will be easily removed. Spread glue using paint brush on the snowflakes and sprinkle glitters and beads. You may also use glitter glue if you don't want it too messy.

After accessorizing, this is how my tree looks like.

This can ba a good holiday project with the kids. Just make sure you keep them away from the hot glue.

Holiday Season is just around the corner. What other way to spend your time other than early Christmas shopping? Christmas decoration making--what else?!

Here's a round-up of my Christmas project this year!

DIY Recycled Magazine Holiday Tree

Recycled Christmas Parol (star lantern)

Craftmaking just makes me really merry and making christmas decorations gives a big smile to my face.

Have a happy Holidays and enjoy Christmas!!!

I love Davao for so many reasons. One reason is the Kadayawan festivity. Our office decided to hold our version of the Kadayawan festival. One of the competition is the terrace decoration. There were only two groups consisted of different accounts/projects. Our group was tasked to decorate the Sobrecarey side of the office.

The competition was announced late so there was very little time left to prepare. To do my part in this competition, I contributed to make a huge durian fruit. Here's the progress of my durian project.

Materials used: Wire for the Durian's skeleton and Cardboard/old cartons/cereal boxes to cover

To get the natural brown color of a ripe Durian, I used withered Banana leaf

For the Durian's spikes, I made cones out of old magazine pages and covered them with the same withered Banana leaves

Finished Project

I'm happy to announce that my hard work had paid off. We won 1st place!!!! Hooray!!! Thanks for reading!

I am recently addicted to trying out sorts of scrapbooking styles and designs for wedding invitation inspirations. I keep surfing the net to find out tutorials on how to make mini albums out of scrap papers/chip boards. Luckily, there are lots of step by step tutorials in youtube and some other blogs. It's like information overload for me. I just couldn't rest my hands and I so want to try every one of them.

The one that really made a very great impression to me is the mini album out of used cash envelopes. It's super easy and will really turn out very pretty.

Here's my take on the recycled cash envelope mini album made pretty using DIY papertapes.

Envelopes make a really good scrapbook album. All you have to do is fold one envelope in your preferred position and glue/attach it to another folded envelope. You will have multiple pages plus you'll have pockets for extra card stocks or photos.

So there you go, easy to make mini album for my next scrapbooking project.

Enjoy doing your own mini album project and don't forget to share what you come up with in the comments. :)