Kit Item

Good Morning Everyone!! Amy here. :D Today I am going to share with you a LO using my favorite kit item!!! I actually have three whole packs of these but hadn't used any of them yet. :P So when I got my Sunkissed kit (sorry, sold out!) and saw that it had a couple of the Maya Road Kraft envelopes that I had been hoarding and wanting to use for forever-I knew it was time to finally use one! :D Love love LOVE these! And I still have tons more to use so I have to start thinking of ideas to do so.

But the LO I made only used one, I wanted it to hold all my journaling. This LO is actually one of my favs that I have made in a while! :D I really like how it turned out, and the colors from the Sunkissed kit were just fantastic so it really made this a fun one to do!

The patchwork background on the top was super easy to do with my sewing machine! I just cut the squares and rectangles out and lined them up-putting just a tiny bit of glue on the back in the middle. Then when they were all dry, I stitched up the edges! :D (I can actually see though that I missed two spots though! :P Looks like I'll need to fix that! LOL!) But what was fun was I even stitched the kraft envelope on! :D (Have I mentioned how much I love those little things?! :D) Then the bottom border was pretty easy. It is just strips of paper cut with border punches and then the freehand cut paper at the very bottom. That bottom one was kind of different for me but it was fun! :D Trying something new. Then the title, and a few minimal embellishments make the rest of the LO. :D The only time consuming part is the patchwork background. But the work is well worth the effort.

And here is a little close up of some stitching and the gorgeous flowers!

Hope everyone is having a great day!!! Be sure to stop by the Noel Mignon message boards to check out the sneaks for the new kit coming out soon!! The sneaks are gorgeous so far!!! :D

~Amy

Inspiration!

Hi everyone!! Today I am gonna talk to you about the things that inspire me! I actually have about 4000 or something websites and blogs bookmarked on my computer but only about a 1000 of them are organized. :P I will be the first to admit that that number is crazy, and that I most certainly have not looked at every single one of them in a couple years. But clearly there is a lot that inspires me!! :D

I do have the few set blogs that I go and visit on a regular basis, and the company sites I go to as well. But there are a few that I absolutely love and adore because they inspire in many different levels! :D One of these favorites is a site called Creature Comforts. Not only does it provide amazing posts that include colors and textures and gorgeous photos (that totally inspire me to be a better photographer!), but it also has fantastic DIY ideas and downloads for free!

One of my favorite things to get from this blog are the color schemes she puts together! She calls them Color Crush. :D Love it! This one is my fav of all time!! I gasped when I saw it! Using color schemes is one of my fav things to do in scrapbooking. It is so fun to put a LO together using only the certain colors in my scheme that I have chosen, and then seeing the finished result when it is done! My favorite part about it is that it challenges me to have to go through all my stuff to find things that work with the colors I need, which in turn uses my stash and keeps everything I own fresh in my mind! :D Losing track of what you own is real easy to do when you accumulate as much stuff as I have! LOL!

Well I had really wanted to share a LO with you that I had started using a color scheme, but with all the CHA stuff I'm trying to finish too, I just couldn't get it done! :( So I am cringing right now because I have a post here without a picture! :P But I am going to make the LO work for my next post and will be able to share it with you then! :D Until then be sure to check out the Creature Comforts blog for tons of inspiration!

And another place to go is the Noel Mignon Challenge blog! A new challenge just went up on Sunday and it is amazing!!! I love what the other girls did with it! It is a no Patterned Paper challenge, which means you can use cardstock, and stickers but just no patterened paper! I tried hard to make use of a whole bunch of my Hambly overlays and the massive amounts of rub ons I have!! Hope you get a chance to play along! Can't wait to see what you do!

Take care!

~Amy

My Latest Favorite!

Hello Everyone!! Talking to you today about my latest fav in the scrapbooking world! For almost all of us this changes every 6 months with the new releases, if not sooner! For me, it changes a lot! I move from one collection or another with my mood, calling each one my newest fav. But today I have something that seriously is going to hold the title of 'Absolute Latest Fav That Will Last A Long While'! I am lucky enough to be one of the first to play with Crate Paper's newest collections, and have absolutely fallen head over heels in love with one in particular! It is called Restoration, and it is all about the vintagey colors and patterns that I go nuts for! Here below is what I did with the collection:

I am in love with the colors, and patterns, and the distressed look of everything! I just can't get enough of it, so I go back and just stare at it! LOL! When I started cutting into the paper, I seriously didn't think that I could do it justice. I still don't really think that I accomplished what I had in mind for the collection, but I am happy with my LO anyway! :D That is all that matters really. But I can see this collection staying permenantely in my stash, as I know I will always want to come back to these gorgeous colors and textures!

Do any of you have things in your stash that you vow to keep there for as long as you possibly can because you love it that much? I'd love to hear about what your latest fav is right now!

Have a great rest of your Monday!!

~Amy

Seasonal tips

Hi Everyone!! Today I am going to talk to you about Seasonal LOs! :D Now know that I do not normally do these because holidays are just so hard to do for me! And I have heard that it is the same for a lot of people. So I know I am not alone! :D

I decided for my seasonal LO here to just use the colors of the season instead of doing a LO about that particular season. I thought this was much easier. :D The picture is from the fall, and all the colors remind me of fall, but I didn't have to say anything in my journaling about the fact that it was fall. Instead the journaling relates to something very different. I chose to talk about the way my daughter has made me feel as a person, because she has changed me so much and made me a much better person. :D

I used the Lemonade Stand kit here (sorry Sold Out!), and it actually had so many wonderful fall colors in it! The picture I chose is not actually from the moment I felt independent, but I really like this picture of my daughter and me.

Well I hope you all thought this was a little easier way to scrap those seasonal photos! For me at least it made it not quite so daunting, having to use seasonal supplies and themed things, instead just go with colors and what makes you happy! :D

Have a great Sunday everyone!

~Amy

Title Tip!

Hi Everyone!! Today I am going to share with you a quick Title Tip! Titles are always hard for me. I don't think I have had a single LO where the title was the easiest thing on it. :P And it almost always comes after the LO is done. (I am a little title challenged! LOL!)

The LO I am going to share today I actually made a little bit ago, and includes the gorgeous Delovely collection that was in the last two kits, Sunkissed and the new Limited Edition Pocket Full of Sunshine!

Now I am going to confess something, the Delovely collection is just a wee bit brighter than I am comfortable with using. Everyone has their comfort zone, and mine just doesn't happen to include brighter colors. LOL! :D So instead of diving head first into the collection and using them all in massive amounts, I decided to balance with a lot of white cardstock! :D That toned it down a lot for me.

You are probably wondering now how this relates to my title. Well like I said before, with majority of my LOs the title comes last. And in order to keep the balance of the colors and the white, I decided to use all white letters for my title! :D And on this particular LO, that actually meant doing a tone-on-tone technique. Meaning I used the same color letters as the background they sit on. But at the same time I didn't want the letters to just blend away into the background so I did a few things to try and make the title stand out a bit more. First thing I did was I used two different letter types-one of them a glitter to add more texture, and the other a chipboard to add more depth! The chipboard especially adds a lot of pop with the tone-on-tone and really draws your eyes to it! And the last thing I did to help the title stand out a little more was to make a paper embellishment to go under part of my title that happened to play into the words of the title. :D I used punches and decorative scissors to create a scallop circle that had a whole bunch of punched hearts in the middle, and put the last half of my word 'sweetheart' on top of the paper embellishment! :D

Well I hope this inspired you some today!!

Have a great Sunday everyone!!