What? Did Valentines come and go already. Sheesh. I never got around to making the little Valentines cards I was dreaming of. Hum, I guess they’ll have to wait until next year. I hope you all had a lovely Valentines day. My house was filled with lots of homemade paper hearts with sweet words written on them. So nice.

But on to the real subject…

With all the adventures that I’ve had with running my little template shop I haven’t quite figured out how to keep on top of adding new products there as well as keep up with free templates on my blog. You see, I want to do both but have to make sure to keep my life balanced with computer time and mommy/wife time. I have to keep everyone happy, yes? So it is truly a mystery how other designers mange to put out new products weekly and do it with kiddos at home. Puzzling, don’t cha think?

So… here is my attempt. I’ve created some little add on packs. They are additional pages that will coordinate with the original template. But don’t get to excited. I’ve only made two so far. I’ll see how they do before I make some more.

Here is Add On Pack 64 (it’s 50% until Sunday 2/20)

and pages I made with it.

And here is Pack 69 (it’s 75% until Sunday 2/20)

and a page I made with it.

Now, the Template 69 pack is 75% off because I’m going to give you the first page for free. Yes, you can grab it here on my free template page for a limited time. If you’re wanting more pages, those 3 extra 12×12 are only .50. Woooh, what a steal.

That’s if for now. Happy scrapbooking.

Hey, have you been looking for one of these?

I whipped up one for a friend and thought I’d share the template. It’s of course simple and sweet but you could embellish it as much as you dared… or maybe you are a super duper hybrider and can make all kinds of crazy banners out of it.

I left the text layers editable so you can change the letters to spell out whatever your little heart desires… such as “Welcome to the Chaos” or perhaps “No, the Neighbor Boys do not Live Here.” Either of those would work at my house.

So if you’d like to whip one up yourself you can download my template by clicking here.

Remember to leave me some comment love below if you downloaded. Thanks!

I have another fun project to share with you. Tithing boxes. These were my examples to show the girls at Activity Days. I’ve had several requests for instruction or template so here you go.

These are medium sized (about 4 inches wide) paper mache boxes from Roberts. I think they were around $1.29 each and happened to be 30% off when I bought them. I bought two different shapes because they didn’t have enough of one shape for all my girls but  I think the hexagon shape was the favorite with the girls.

If you are using scrapbooking paper, all you have to do is trace the box shape and cut it out a bit smaller so that it won’t hang off the edge. If you are looking for a hybrid project click here for a template and leave me a comment.

The strip of paper that goes around the bottom of the circle box needs to be 12.25 x 1.75 inches. So a 12 inch paper is, unfortunately, just shy of making it all the way around. I patched mine up but some of the girls opted to leave the little gap. If you are doing hybrid you’ll have to print 2 strips for around the circle as well as around the lid rim if you don’t use ribbon.

Once you have your paper printed and cut, simply paste the paper on the boxes with a glue stick. Make sure you glue the edges down well so that the lid doesn’t catch the corners when you’re slipping it on. Some of the girls tried modge podge over the top but I didn’t think it was necessary.

Decorate the top with a cute paper flower and button and ribbon. If you don’t have (matching) ribbon to go around the lid just use a slim strip of paper. Perhaps you have a small scalloped edge punch that will just look darling.

If you need a few paper flower tutorials, I found some here, here and here.

I made my circle box flower by punching out 4  scalloped circles. Then I folded each circle in half and in half again making 4 trianglish shapes. Then I glued the 4 pointed tips together in a circle which makes a flower. Then glue a button on top. Easy pease!

My hexagon box flower is one of those accordion ones. Take a long strip of paper, fold it like an accordion, staple or glue the ends together making sure the ends point to the underside of the flower. This will make the strip into a ring. Flatten it by pushing the top edge in to make a circle. Glue it to your box and put a button on top to hold in place. I used a hot glue gun which makes it much easier and faster.

Most of my activity day girls made the scalloped punch flower because it’s easier… but of course you’ll have to have access to a circle punch of some sort if you don’t want to cut them all out.

Next add a tag that you either stamped or printed out that says tithing on it.

And lastly, use an exact-o knife or razor to cut a slit in the top. Have an adult do this part and make sure a quarter can fit through.

ps. my slits are not perfect so don’t expect yours to be either.

And that’s it! Happy hybriding!

Hi, ya’ll. So sorry for the sporatic posting.

I have declared January PROJECT MONTH so my computer time has dwindled a bit. I’ve been busy sewing (show you soon!), digi scrapbooking, hybriding (tithing boxes for activity days) and even a little bit of paper scrapbooking with Emma (she has started her very own scrapbook!)

All these things have made me a wee bit tired but I’m happy to say that I have a free template up for you guys as well as a little pack for my template store.

One of the projects I’ve been working on is scrapbooking all 371 photos that my hubby emailed me from his iphone right before it died. These photos span the time of 3ish years and many of the photos are such sweet memories. I felt like I wanted to scrapbook these photos so we could look over them for years to come… but I knew I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on them.

Thus, I’ve created this template pack. It’s on sale through Sunday the 23rd so grab it at half off while you can.

As a free template I’m giving away this one for a limited time (it is also included in the iphone picture pack so you wont need to download it if you are getting the full pack)…

Download here.

Here are some of the pages I created with the templates. I made 26 pages total.

Woo! That was a lot of work.
Time for a nap.

Here at Mandagirl I am hoping to offer a service that can’t be found anywhere else. At least, not at anywhere I know of. How would your like to submit a template idea to be created by me and then given to you to scrap with? Get it? You send me an idea for a template, I’ll then create it and post on my blog as a freebie. I’ll give you the credit for the idea and link to your inspiration if there is one.

So say that you’re browsing the internet and happened upon a gorgeous layout, one that you wish you could create yourself or even have the perfect picture for. Or maybe you’re looking at your pictures and wondering how your going to get all those pictures done. Perhaps you even have the vision of how you want your page to look but are not sure how to create it yourself.

Here are 3 ways to submit a template idea:

1. The easiest way- send me a link. Just not any link… one that you LOVE!! Completely obsessed with! Tell me why you love it, what specific things you like about it and what you hope to see on my template.

2. The wordy way- describe it to me. I’m going to need a lot of detail. If you have an exact number of photos you need to scrap this might be the perfect way for you. (How can you possibly not scrapbook all 25 pictures from Juniors birthday party?) Tell me all you possibly can, such as what kind of style would you like to see, what kind of background, simple and modern or lots of paper scraps, tons of spots for elements or journaling, strips of paper, a clustery style, a grid type page… you get the idea, yes? -give me something to work with. But remember, without a visual, I may not exactly envision the same thing you do.

3. The creative way- draw it out. Scan a sketch and email it to me or open up a blank document (4×4 or 4×8 inches and 72 px will be sufficient size) in photoshop, grab your brush tool and draw away. When you are happy with your sketch, save it as a jpeg and shoot me an email.  Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be pretty. I drew this one is 30 seconds just as an example.

Here are the rules:

1. Please do not send me to anyone’s shop or to any templates that are for sell. Links must be of completed layouts at galleries or blogs. I will not copy the layout exactly. It has to be legally scraplifted so expect a little mandagirl-twist to it.

2. Please do not ask for more than a 2 page layout per request.

3.  Family comes first so remember that my computer time is limited. Depending on the number of requests, I’ll have to see how many templates I can actually complete. I might not get to yours but I’ll try.

That should be it. Send the requests to manda at mandagirl dot com. I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

I’ve created a page in my side bar if you ever need to refer to the instructions. —>

Hey, hey! Can you believe I actually have a template to give away! It’s been ages. Okay it’s been 2 months but that sure feels like ages to me. I’ve made a Year in Review template for you. So if you are looking for a great way to highlight 2010 or any other year for that matter, download here.

I always enjoy these because it’s such a great way to look back and see what we’ve done with our year in a single glance.

Here are my pages. They look a bit busy to me so I’m not sure how I feel about them… but I spent all day on this layout so I’m keeping ‘em. If you think it’s a bit busy too you could delete a couple photos or make everything a tad smaller except the background. This would give you a bit more white space along your edges. Just made sure to center everything so you can still cut it down the middle.

Happy scrapbooking.

Hey, ya’ll! I’m excited to release my 2011 Calendar today. It has taken me longer than I thought to get it put together so hopefully you are a slacker also and haven’t already gotten a calendar for next year.

You can grab it for 40% off from now until Saturday the 11th (12/11/10) with the code mandascalendar11

Here are my pages that I have done so far… 10 more months to go. Credits at flickr.

If you are new to my calendars let me tell you a little bit about them. I make my calendars 8x10s because I think they are a flexible size and are easy to print anywhere.

After I get mine printed (matte finish), I cut them in half at 5 inches. On my templates I haven’t let any of the top decorations come down onto the bottom half so that I can do this (if you’re not going to do then I think it’s cute to let things come down onto the grid part of the calendar.) I then cut 8.5×11 card stock in half and paste the calendars on in flipping order both back and front. I will tell you that the photos fit perfectly this way and make a nice little border without trimming the card stock at all. Less work the better, right! With the photos mounted I feel like this gives the calendar a much more substantial feeling.

The pages then go together kind of like a book. The cover page, being cut in half also, is now the front and back of the calendar. I then get it wire bound and a little nail sized hole punch in the bottom so that it will flip and hang nicely on a nail.

If you don’t want to be bothered with cutting and pasting then you should try Scrapping Simply. They offer free Wiro binding on calendars. Just tell them to add the binding in the special instructions when you are checking out. I love their prices and the photo quality is beautiful too.

Another helpful hint for making your calendar darling is to use your paint tool to change the color of the numbers, days of the week, and grids to match your layout. I think it really pulls the whole calendar together and adds something special. When you are designing it’s also fun to add elements, holidays and birthdays to the bottom part of the calendar too.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Happy scrapping!

I’m having a Black Friday sale! Yup. Can’t believe it but I just thought of doing it and so here I am up at 1:10 am Friday morning making it happen.

I’ve been shopping around computer land myself and I had the pleasure of getting a great deal on something I wanted super duper bad… so for all of my dear digi scrappin friends, I give you 40% off my entire store. Just for two days though. So hop on over and grab that template you’ve been eying.

Let me know if you have any troubles. Happy scrapping.

Ps. I’m working on my 2011 calendars.

I’m starting to see Christmas stuff pop up all over. The radio is already playing Jiggle Bell Rock and stores are advertising black Friday specials and sending out their toy catalogs (in which every toy has been circled with a bright red marker by my two kiddos.)

I’m not sure if I’m ever ready for Christmas before Thanksgiving actually gets here but I am getting a jump on my Christmas cards this year. How about you?

If you are in need of a little boost, I’ve made a bunch of Christmas card templates in 3 sizes for you at my shop.

I’ll admit that I do not like to spend oodles of money on my photocards so I tend to go with the 4×6 size. It’s hard to beat a price of .12 to .15 cents a print. I make sure to always choose a matte finish to avoid fingerprints. In the past, I have mounted my card on card stock. I like the look of the border and it makes it feel less cheep and flimsy. The only other thing you have to consider is an envelope. I have found that it is very difficult to find the right size so make sure you have your envelopes planned out before you commit to a 4×6 size.

Here is my card that I made with the above template pack. Credits are at flickr.

Next I have a 5×7 pack of photocards. I think this size is much nicer and fancier feeling but you’ll pay a bit more. I’ve used Winkflash in the past and if you use their blank photocard option, they’ll send them with envelops. Looks like they are running a sale right now. 25% off their cards and 5×7 are 53¢ so that’s something like .40 cents. Not bad, eh? Shutterfly’s cards are also on sale for .44 cents a card.

I also have 4×8 photocards as well. I think these are fun sizes and are a little cheaper than the 5x7s. At Winkflash they are on sale for around .30 a print and at Shutterfly they are .32 cents. I have used this size to make my mother-in-law Christmas cards. She has 6 kids plus all of their families so we love the 6 photo option.

Lastly, I have made a free 4×6 Christmas card to try out or for those of you who are really stretched in the money department this year. Please delete my little tree and add your own element. He he.  I also haven’t retired last years free Christmas card. Gosh, so many options. What are you going to do?

Download this free 4×6 card here. If you download either free card please leave me a comment.

Now all you have to do is find a darling Christmas scrapbooking kit to help you decorate it. Happy card making. XO

Now that my shop is up and running I’ll show you some new templates that are there, just so you don’t miss them.

I made a great new package to help those of you who are overwhelmed with all the pages you should be getting done. Simple but helpful, yes?

Images are linked.

I had acquired some random photos from my mom’s camera that I wanted to scrapbook because I loved the photos so much (especially the one of my dad!) but didn’t want to bother with figuring out how to go back and insert them in my already done scrapbook pages… so I used the above templates to quickly get the pages done and add them in the back of my book. I think they turned out perfectly.

Do you ever get stuck with random photos at the end of the year? What do you end up doing with them?

Next, I have a couple of friends who scrapbook the 8.5×11 size (can’t figure out why!) and they have been begging me to make them some templates. I must be going crazy but I whipped up a couple of packages to help them get their scrapbooking done and have put them in my shop as well. Perhaps some of you are scrapbooking that size as well. These will help you avoid having to resize all the 12×12′s.

When I was making this packages I was obviously thinking about a 365 project since all the pages have 7 photos.

That’s it for now. I’m always working on new templates so I’ll keep you posted when I put new ones up. Thanks so much for stopping by.