Happy New Year everyone!

After a very busy and hectic holiday season, I am so glad to be back with a new layout share.  Over on the Facebook group Mercy Tiara's 27 Day Scrappy Challenge, we were challenged to use three new-to-us techniques on a layout in the month of January to get this year started out on the right creative foot.  I am grateful to Tracy for challenging us to change things up, and feel brimming with renewed energy and creativity.  I can't wait to get into my craft room and create more!

I have been watching Paige Evans' scrapbooking process videos lately and drooling over her bold, brightly coloured designs and have been wanting to harness some of that inspiration.  I have also been lusting after the beautiful look of layouts made with white cardstock and silhouette cut files.  However, I don't own a top of the line die cutting machine (I know, poor me).  I decided to play around with how I could get a similar look and I truly love how it turned out.


I created this background using two simple supplies; a paper punch and a sheet of 8.5" x 11" cardstock.  I used my Martha Stewart heart punch, but you could try this with any shape.  I want to try it next with a butterfly punch!  To ensure that each heart was lined up perfectly and spaced apart evenly, I inserted the paper all the way into the punch until it hit the back, then lined up the edge of the punch with the last punched heart.  When the full row of hearts were punched, I trimmed it into a strip and started again.  I backed each heart with patterned paper, arranged the strips on my background, and then stitched them down with my sewing machine.

The rest of the layout came together very quickly because I just let go of everything I usually do, and gave myself complete the freedom to create.  Instead of adding large layers of patterned paper as I usually do, I used small scraps of a few of the patterns that appear backing the heart and created small layers around the photo.  Some Heidi Swapp embellishments, buttons, resin flowers, and gold colour shine mist, and this one is finished.



Thank you so much for stopping by for this layout share!

I am continuing to work towards my personal goal of expanding my colour confort zone.  Today I would like to share a page I put together using plenty of bright colour.  I was inspired by all of the colourful beach umbrellas in my photographs to bring a rainbow of colours into the page.

I liked the idea of placing my photos side by side to mimic that these scenery shots were of the view to my left and my right.  I created a pretty simple 'L' shaped design.  My background sheet and paper strips are from My Mind's Eye, labels from Doodlebug Designs, and stickers from Echo Park.  For embellishment I twisted some white embroidery thread into loops and glued down to the page, five tiny pink and green gems in each cluster, and some wood vaneer pieces.  I took some inspiration from techniques I have seen Shimelle use, and borrowed the title Busy Busy from one of her older 'Sketch to Scrapbook' process video because this was the busiest beach I had ever seen.

This month I am participating in the October 27 Day Challenge on Mercy Tiara's Facebook Group MercyTiara's 27 Day Scrappy Challenge.  This month's challenge was to follow a recipe put together by last month's winner.

The layout must include: 

1. 1 Black and White, 5X7 photo of yourself
2. 1 or more 6X6 papers
3. 1 Floral paper
4. 1 Striped paper
5. Follow a sketch of any kind

For my sketch, I decided to use a layout from Glitter Girl Adventure 112: Just Be Brave, and scrapbook a picture of my very first time swimming in the ocean.  Since I live in Ontario, Canada, I have only ever swam in the Great Lakes, so this was a big milestone for me.  I really wanted to give this photo a bit of a special treatment, so printing it up at 5x7 and turning it black and white worked out quite well for the page.  Here's what I came up with for this recipe challenge.

• The 6x6 paper I used is the yellow and cream damask print from Recollections Fashionably Chic 6x6 paper pad.  
• My floral paper, which appears in the background, is from the Oh So Lovely Collection by Kaisercraft.  
• My stripe is from a 3x4 card from a Becky Higgins Project Life Value Pack called Southern Weddings.  I punched a heart from the card using my Martha Stewart heart paper punch, cut off the rounded corners and used the rest for a strip at the top of the photo.  I stamped the word "love" onto the heart with a Felicity Jane stamp.

The grey polka dot in the frame around the layout, the grey woodgrain strip, and the pink doily strip all come from My Mind's Eye.  Glitter Girl cut up and layered some Project Life cards in her layout, so I did the same: a green 4x6 and 3x4 from Notes and Things, and a pink 4x6 from Southern Weddings.  The journalling block is cut from a pack of Becky Higgins plain lined Project Life cards, which are lined horizontally on one side and vertically on the other, which makes them very useful for creating journalling spots on all kinds of pages.  My title is made up of gold glitter scripted letter stickers by Sticko and a tile aplhabet from My Mind's Eye Necessities in teal.  The black chipboard circles are from Me and My Big Ideas.  All of the little stickers I used come from two packages of Recollections planner stickers.  The cameras are cut from a patterned paper in a Pink Paislee's Memorandum collection, and the teal enamel dots in the centres are from Recollections.  As a finishing touch, I sprinkled the page with Heidi Swapp Colour Shine in Gold and Hot Pink.

Thank you for stopping by my blog.  Comments and questions are always welcome and appreciated.  Take care xo! - Kristen

Shimelle Laine recently taught two scrapbooking classes back to back,  The Scrapbook Process and The 20 Project.  I absolutely love Shimelle, and her new classes have me brimming with inspiration and so excited to scrapbook!  I learned a lot of great ideas about album theory while taking these classes, and want to apply some of Shimelle's principles on album continuity and creating an album as a unified, long term project that tells a story.

When beginning to put together my Italy album, I thought that I would want to create each layout using distressed products to go with the 'old world' feel of Italy, and be very careful to not stray from that choice.  But, that ended up being easier said than done.  This album is a challenging one because it has two different types of stories with different feels.  The first are those that feature photos of Italian scenery and buildings when I was sightseeing, which definitely lend themselves to old, antique, and distressed looking papers.  However, the whole reason I was in Italy was to teach English to children at summer camps, and that is the more important story in the end.  The logo of the organization I worked for was based on the pattern and colours of the Union Jack flag, our uniforms were bright red, and our teaching methods were based on enthusiasm, theatre and play.  This contradiction has admittedly given me a little bit of trouble making decisions on maintaining continuity throughout the album over the past while and has caused some frustration.  I decided that it was more important to me to highlight the energy and feel of those days teaching in my product choices, than to scrapbook youthful, playful school pictures with distressed papers just to maintain continuity.  I think that I will start to adapt my album to her "happy medium" philosophy what she uses in her Olympic album, and create pages that still have similarities but with a little more freedom.  I've learned that I can still incorporate some distressed items with some brighter, more clean products, and still make it all work together.

I have to admit, I'm a little bit girly, so this was a challenge for me.  For far too long I have been ignoring tons of awesome items in my stash...things that are bright, punchy, saturated, and primary colours.  I clearly have a comfort zone, and I decided it's time to try something new.  Over my next few projects I want to work on breaking out of my habit of making every page pink, pastel and girly, and try my best to use some new colour schemes and products on my pages.  In the past I have attempted to use bright colours and gotten a little bit too carried away, and not been happy with the end result.  My goal is to find a happy meduim that works for my style.  In this page I am happy that I was able to achieve balance mixing a few brightly coloured pieces with some muted colours and neutrals to tone it down. 
This layout features two pictures from our job orientation week, a part of the trip that was a very fun and crazy, and definitely needed some bright colour choices.  It tells the story of how we went for dinner one day, and, to my surprise, were each given an entire pizza.  The look on my face in the photo tells it all.  I decided to incorporate a colour that I have never dared to use yet on a page: Orange!  I began by using a process video in Shimelle's class The 20 Project: Day 9, as a guideline for my page layout and embellishment.  I pulled out a cute 3x4 journalling card with a speech bubble that I have had in my stash since I first started scrapbooking years ago, and used it as a starting place for my title, journalling, and embellishment.  I mixed together scraps of orangey-red and blue patterned papers to build up background layers.  All of my papers came from two old Recollections paper pads I have in my stash: The Sweetest Thing and Mosaic Memories.  In my embellishment, I focussed on the colours orange and blue with two cameras cut from a camera print paper from the Maggie Holmes Style Board collection, 3 labels cut from a patterend paper from Pink Paislee Memorandum, and Dollar Store brand rhinestone strip stickers.  I managed to bring in some more dark and saturated colour with some royal blue bits and pieces from my stash.  The Bucket List journalling box was originally together on one 3x4 card, and I cut it down to just include a small 2 item list, and the Bucket List sentiment in my layering, which I think is kind of funny.  I also wanted to add in some variety by branching out the colour scheme, and adding in red doilies and a heart die cut from Kaisercraft, and yellow heart stickers from a Jillibean Soup Happy Camper label sticker sheet.  The flat white stickers in the title are from American Crafts Remarks.  I used a tiny scalloped square punch by Recollections for something extra to tuck in among my layers.  Finally I used two roller stamps to add some wording onto the label, a date stamp by Recollections and a phrase stamp by Becky Higgins.

My most helpful tips when creating a colourful page are:

1. Include a variety of colour instead of going overboard with just one or two bold colours
2. Add in plenty of neutral elements in among your colourful pieces to avoid overwhelming your photo

I am so glad that I tried to stretch my colour boundaries, and I surprised myself by creating a page that I love and that really captures the memories of the day.  Thanks for reading! :)

I've been playing around with letter stamps and distress inks, and am so excited about the beautiful, simple, customized titles I have been able to create for my scrapbook pages.  I love using thickers for titles, but they can be expensive to purchase and limiting because they only have a finite number of each letter per sheet.  By purchasing a few stamp sets in different fonts and sizes, I have been able to create titles for two pages in a size, font, and colour that suited each layout.  I feel that this two toned, ombré lettering looks so beautiful, and I certainly believe this is a technique that will appear again and again in my scrapbook.

To create your own hand stamped titles, you only need a few simple supplies: An alphabet stamp set, ink, and some cardstock.  I used two shades of Tim Holt's Distress Ink to create my letters.  A medium pink colour called Tattered Rose and a more red shade called Festive Berries.  I mounted each stamp on my clear block, inked up the bottom edge with the darker colour, then inked the top with the lighter colour, overlapping the darker colour, then stamped the letter onto a sheet of white cardstock.  I repeated the process and stamped a second time, using the clear stamp to line up the image.  Then, I fussy cut each letter out with scissors.  I found this process really simple and quick to do, and the results definitely worth the effort.

If you've watched Glitter Girl's Adventure 065: Layouts Within Limitations, you'll be familiar with her method for breaking through creative block and creating a few layouts with a limited range of supplies.  In the video, Glitter Girls sets out to solve the issue of being hindered by the volume of supplies we own, and the worry that we have not chosen the absolute best supplies for each page we want to create.  I have been experiencing a little bit of this overwhelmed feeling myself lately.  I decided to pack up a few supplies that could fit into one iris container and moved up to my living room to do some scrapbooking by the TV.  The fresh new setting and the limited amount of supplies actually came together to create 3 really pretty layouts.  Here's a summary of the process.

Step 1: Gather 3 papers that you want to use as full page backgrounds
Step 2: Pull out other papers for layering.  I pulled out a pile of scrap papers from my scrap bin that coordinated and a bunch of cut-apart sheets.
Step 3: Choose 2 lettering options that will be versatile enough to work on all 3 pages.  I chose a small grey tile sticker and glittery turquoise Heidi Swapp letter stickers.
Step 4: Pick out a set of non-themed embellishments that will work with a wide variety of colours.
Step 5: Pick out 3 sets of photos, a group of three, a set of two, and a single photo.

Over on MercyTiara's 27 day Scrappy Challenge Facebook page, each month we are encouraged to take on a different challenge, and in March it was Hoard-Not your Pretties!  Too long I've been holding onto my favorite supplies waiting for the perfect time to use them (specifically Maggie Holmes die-cuts and stickers), so I decided it's time to get them out of my stash and onto some pages.  So, I pulled out some of my most pretty, most prized scrapbook supplies.  The results are oh-so lovely.

Page 1

Page 2

 Page 3

Leave me a comment letting me know which page you like best!

Supplies List:

• Heidi Swapp Teal Glitter Alphabet Stickers
• Shimelle Letter Tile and Phrase Stickers
• Heidi Swapp Gold Lame Colour Shine
• Maggie Holmes Confetti Ephemera Pack
• Maggie Holmes Confetti Collection Sticker Sheet
• Heidi Swapp Marquee Love Floral Washi Tape
• Ledger Paper called "Shindig" from Maggie Holmes Confetti
• Crate Paper Craft Market multi square print 
• Crate Paper Style Board Collection Cut-apart Sheet 
• Shimelle cream chevron called "Winlock" from the Shimelle Signature Collection 

Hello :)
This week I created a layout in response to more challenges going on at Shimelle.com.  This one combines two of the challenges, the current week's challenge to scrapbook using lot's of letters, and a pervious challenge to bring back colour blocking.

I used a layout that Shimelle created in her blog post We're Bringing Back Colourblocking as a guide to creating the structure of the page.  I spicked out a Shimelle True Stories patterned paper for my background, and used to floral cluster in the corner to define the colour scheme for the page; pinky-red, turqouise, and yellow.  For embellishment I used a few bits and pieces from Jilly Bean Soup and Dear Lizzy, the True Stories branding strip including the "Big Victory" wording, some heart stickers from the Simple Stories I AM sticker sheet, and some soft pink pearls I got at Michaels.  I created the scalloped journalling box from a stamp and black dye ink. 


The reason I created this page was to remember playing a game at English Camp with my students.  We would sit in a circle, rest our right palm on the person's next to us, and clap our hands in sequence as we sang this little tune.  "I like candy, I like chocolate, I like bubblegum. Yum, yum, yum!"  I had so much fun at camp, and I don't want to forget the lyrics to the songs and details about the games we played.  I wanted to document the lyrics in my scrapbook.  Therefore this challenge worked out perfectly for this page.  Nothing would make a better title than this.  When I look at it, the song instantly plays in my head and all of those fond memories flood back.


 
I used a multitude of different lettering to create the song-lyric title:

• American Crafts grey tile letters
• Echo Park yellow and turquoise letter tiles 
• white foam thickers (I can't remember the brand), 
• Forever in Time tiny craft and black stickers (from Dollar Tree)
• Alphabet Button Stickers from Forever in Time (from Dollar Tree)
• Martha Stewart Letter Punches 

Thank you for your views, comments, likes, and support.  Thank you for letting me share and have a crafty weekend!