Using Your Kit....

Since Noel jam packs each kit with tons of goodies, sometimes a few might get neglected or overlooked. Especially the fabulous stamps that are in most of the kits. (Or maybe that's just me? LOL!) Like this one from Imaginence. I decided to stamp it four times to create a dimensional flower.

I chose 4 coordinating colors and stamped directly on white tissue paper. I cut each flower out with scissors and proceeded to fold it twice. In half....then in half again. Stamp another flower on cardstock so that you have something to adhere the four flowers to. I glued them down in the center of the cardstock flower and added a piece of felt cut into a circle and a brad.

I "floofed" up the flower a bit, added a couple of leaves, and cut a few large white flowers with a die cut and white tissue paper to "ground" my colorful flower. All of the papers and stickers are from the Sun-Kissed kit. The embossing and clouds are from Papertrey.

Don't forget to take a peek at Noel's newest kit called Office Party! Such a fun kit!!! And don't forget...there are a couple of more days to participate in the "White Space" challenge!

Thrifty Tip- Usin' that Adhesive

I was brainstorming the other day, trying to think of things in everyone's stash or even just home stuff, that could be made to do other things in scrapbooking.

If you are a scrapbooker, you HAVE to have adhesive on hand. Most likely, a wide variety of ones that you've tried out for different things. I have some that I have found I love, but then I have this excess of other adhesives that I don't use on a regular basis... but they are sitting there, taking up space.

So I came up with a few ways to use them up, besides just sticking things down.

On this first tag, I used some pop dots to raise up some of the sun beams cut from the Sun-Kissed kit... but that's not the innovative idea here.
I used these ginormous glue dots that I have a BUNCH of, and stuck them down in the middle of each circle of the patterned paper. I then poured Pink Paislee Pixie sticks glitter on them, and squished the glitter down into the glue dot with my finger. Once I shook off the extra glitter, the rest stuck on the glue dot. AND there isn't any "shedding" of glitter. That stuff is staying put! I finished off each little embellishment with a blue rhinestone.
For my next experiment, I used some Quick Dry 450 Helmar Adhesive to draw a heart and write the word "love." The trick here is to use an adhesive that dries quickly (unless you have major amounts of patience). Once it was dry- within a few minutes- I sprayed on some of the Chick-a-Dee Shimmerz Spritz that came in the Sun-Kissed kit. I followed that with a couple of shades of blue (which turned to green in some areas... perfection!). I then used my finger to rub off any mist on the glue areas. It left these beautiful resists and it was so simple and fast!
And finally, for this flower tag, I used Britt's tape/flower technique (which is super easy, I might add!), but instead of using the Pink Paislee tape, I used regular old masking tape. I love the kind of vintage/worn look it has.

(P.S. Masking tape can be stamped on... and inked... and misted.) :)
(A Jenni Bowlin button finishes off the center of the flower.)

I hope this helps you to look at some of your adhesives- and other common stash items- in a new way!

Playing Princess

I have LOVED using up every last bit of my Noel Mignon Lemonade Stand kit (sorry, sold out)! The colors of that kit were so perfect for this picture of my daughter pretending to be a princess.



This is an important memory for me because my daughter practically LIVES in Princess dress-ups every single day. Her favorite thing to do is put on her latest DVD and act out the story with dress-ups and props as she watches. Pretty cute . . . and totally girly! I know this phase won't last forever, so I wanted to capture my girl being her cute self. :)



The actual picture was taken in a dark hallway of our home with a flash. The colors in the photo turned out muddled, and the harsh shadows didn't contribute to the princess feel I was going for. I decided to convert my photo to black and white and let the soft colors in the page design create the feeling I wanted. :)



I added a pearl flourish by Zva Creative, lace trim and a few buttons from my stash as finishing touches.



Have you capture your family in the middle of playtime? Pull out your camera and make it a goal this week to capture the things they like to do.

Have a great week!
Jana

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!!

Quick Tip of the Day

Today I am going to share with you a little trick that I use to determine where to place my titles and stickers on my layouts. I used to place them directly on my layouts but sometimes I did not like where I originally put them and wanted to move them. Well whenever I would do that, I would always have the unfortunate luck of tearing the paper just a tad. It was very frustrating. Then I discovered wax paper and my problem was solved! What I did to remedy this dilemma is place a piece of wax paper on my layout and then place my stickers and title where I think I want them to go. Since these items don't really stick to the wax paper, it is very easy to move things around without loosing the stickiness of the backing or tearing your paper. Awesome right? Here you can see where I used my wax paper to determine my title and flower sticker placement.

All I need to do now is removed the wax paper and place everything where I want it to go. And just like that, I have a completed layout that I like without having to do any cover ups from accidentally torn paper.



Have a great Saturday everyone!

Limited Edition "Pocket Full of Sunshine" kit!

CLICK HERE to purchase!

Multi Photo Layout

So it is no surprise that I love taking photos.  I take a lot and not all of them make it onto my scrapbook pages.  An easy way to make them all "fit" on your page is to use the contact sheet menu in photoshop.  You can add and delete rows to make your photos bigger or smaller.

For my whitespace layout I wanted to use the parade photos that I took on one of visits to Disneyland.  There is nothing better than Disney photos because they are always so bright and pretty. 

Alyson was in front of me for the parade and with the lense I had and the lack of room to move - I was very limited in the photos I could take of her watching the parade.

Since 2 of the shots I have of her were from behind I layered them with the other parade photos.

To balance the layout I added a photo I took of her that day to the top of the layout.  And to 'ground' it even more I added my journaling there. 

Hope this helps you in scrapping those multi-photo layouts.  Thanks for stopping in!

Tip & Technique: Sewing on Your Pages!

a Sketch For You!

Hello!!! I have a sketch to share with you today. Please don't judge too harshly on my Photoshop skills.....they are not the best! But hopefully, you will get the general idea! : )

Here is my sketch:

And here is my silly,niece, Katie! She loves posing for the camera.....even if it is a goofy face! This girl just cracks me up! I used Noel's Sun-Kissed kit. I did some Glimmer Misting and a bit of the paint and toothbrush technique. (Messy but fun!)

I am in love with these tissue paper butterflies! I cut the butterflies with my Spellbinder's Butterfly die and several layers of tissue paper. Then I Glimmer Mist them and add buttons to their bodies.

Here is a mini butterfly.....same method, smaller die.

......and my journaling lines! I went a bit crazy with the ole' sewing machine!

That's all I've got for you today! Thanks so much for stopping on by! : )

Seasonal Layout- Beach Trip!!

I got to scrap with my crazy talented friend Katie Burnett the other day, and we were both playing with the new (sorry- sold out!) Sunkissed kit. She whipped out this layout, and inspired me to do my own beach trip layout.I too used kraft cardstock as my background, and the big sunshine die cut. I had a lot of photos to use, but they were all tiny, so I went with a long strip of pics along the bottom edge.

I added in a piece of sheet music paper (from October Afternoon Very Merry, I believe!) to mat my 4x6 photo, and some Pink Paislee Alpha stickers.

White Space Challenge and Trying Out a New Tool

I came across these scissors by complete accident. I was waiting in line to check out at my craft store when I spotted them randomly discarded on the shelf by a previous shopper. I picked them up, thought they were interesting and threw them in my basket to give them a try.



And I am soooo glad that I did! The Precision Snips by EK Success have become one of my latest favorite tools! They make fussy cutting a BREEZE! Before now I have relied solely on my Fiskars Micro-Tip scissors, which did a fantastic job . . . but the Precision Snips make getting into tight corners a lot easier. LOVE them!



You can see how I used them to cut out a few elements on this next page. I handcut the blue floral border from the Cosmo Cricket Strips sheet and the row of Japanese Lanterns from the Jillibean Soup paper.




Page created with the Noel Mignon Sunkissed kit for the new White Space Challenge going up today on the Noel Mignon Challenge blog. Be sure to pop over and see what the rest of the Noel Mignon Design Team created!

Have a great week!
Jana