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Four Photos: Summer Time!!!

May 31, 2011 By Piradee 8 Comments

Hi Everyone, Piradee here to share some summer fun colors using the Hometown Summer Collection!!!  Although its pretty much all year summer over here in Singapore – but you can somewhat feel that summer is starting as all of a sudden the days are getting hotter and hotter and HOTTER (and thank goodness for those rain showers from time to time *wink*).  But it’s this time of the year, that I’m off daydream of fun filled days (where no work is involved) and therefore, couldn’t resist scrapping these pictures from last summer spent down under…

And aren’t those Punchouts from the Hometown Summer Collection super fun to use?  I really love that activity punch card and the little banner there is just perfect for my title – yeap, its one beautiful day!  And oh, how could I not reach for the Chipboard Pops and the glossy finish on these chipboards really add that perfect touch to the layout. 

And to help add the much needed details to the layout, I turned to my new trusted friend – the Cricut  Expression – and using the Accent Essentials Cartridge, I cut the additional suns with the Summer Fun pattern paper and added the baubles from the butterfly garden collection to glitter things up.

Pink Paislee supplies used include:

Thanks again everyone for stopping by and can’t wait to see your inspirations using the Hometown Summer Collection and off to daydream some more…. :)

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Simple Stories – A Smile

May 30, 2011 By designteam 4 Comments

Hi everyone!

When I saw that one of my themes this month was “simple stories,” I smiled. For me, that was the same as saying “make a layout.” All my layouts contain stories because, to me, that’s a core part of my scrapbooking.

The first thing I do as I sit down to scrap is to pick my photos and story. To decide what my story is, I look at my photos and think about why I am scrapping them. I take a ton of photos each month and there’s no way I can scrap them all. I prefer to scrap the ones that have stories. The ones that speak to me on a deeper level than just a technically-nice photo. So I spend some time looking at my pictures and think about why I want to preserve these particular ones. What’s the story behind the photo? Years later, what would I want to remember about these particular moments I captured? What would I want my son to know about them?

This is my regular process. Once I’ve decided what my page is going to be about and picked my title, then I can scrap. Here’s the page I did for today’s entry:

I had these two photos of my older son David and here’s what I thought of when I was deciding my story: I take a lot of pictures of both my children. David is six and there are times when he’s had enough and has no desire to smile at the camera. But even at those times, I tell him jokes and, despite himself, he ends up breaking into a smile. This is so David. It’s a part of his sunny disposition and it’s one of the millions of reasons I am grateful to have him in my life. So I wanted to make sure to tell this story as I scrapped these two photos.

As soon as I have my story, I think of a one-line summary. That one line ends up as my title. I figure even if you only read my title, you’re still getting more of a story than just looking at the photos. I then add some lines to tell a bit more of the story.

The journaling on this page reads: David, I know I take too many photos of you and that sometimes I drive you crazy and you just don’t want to smile at the camera any more. But what I love so much is that you can’t help yourself. A few seconds and you break into a smile and then laugh like crazy. I love you my son.

It’s not pages and pages of journaling but it is meaningful and shows you what’s special about these particular photos and helps me preserve a particular memory of my son’s current personality. You don’t need a lot of words to tell the story. You just need to decide what the story is and make an effort to put it down. However simple.

A quick review of the products on this page: Passionfruit Cushies. Daily Junque Tickets, Map and Tabs papers and Ephemera. Soiree Words and Music papers, Dimensional Stickers, and Mini Notes and Labels. Sweetness Alphabet stickers, Doodads and Clear Cards.

I also wanted to mention one more thing. Up until last year, I never ever handjournaled on my layouts. I hate my handwriting and couldn’t stand seeing it on my pages. I felt like I ruined the page as soon as I scrawled on it. But, then, I decided to do a layout a day for all of May and there was no way I could type journaling every single day. So I found an old journaling stamp, cut it up so all I had was the lines and decided to use that on my pages.

The nice thing about that is that the lines are small and close together so I can stamp it several times on my page and blend it into my design. I can also stamp in a color that fits my page. And since the lines are close together, my handwriting is pretty small and doesn’t bother me anymore. It makes the scrapping process much faster and it has the added benefit of leaving another piece of me on my pages.

If you’ve never handwritten on your pages, I highly recommend tracking down a simple journaling stamp (there’s an excellent one in the hometown summer set) and challenging yourself to use it. It takes a few layouts but eventually I promise you’ll get used to it.

Even if you never use your handwriting, I hope you take the time to journal on your next layout. To me, it’s what makes your pages unique and special. And, most importantly, meaningful. Make sure to show your simple story pages to us in the Live Pink gallery!

Thank you for letting me share and have a wonderful day!!

 

 

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Tool School – A Cricut Centerpiece

May 28, 2011 By designteam 6 Comments

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone. I hope you are enjoying some beautiful summer weather wherever you are!

I have recently started planning my son’s birthday party and came up with this candy inspired idea for the table centerpieces. It’s decorative, goes with our pool party/sailing theme and is fun to eat.

I started by customizing the Daily Junque Chalkboard Sticker with my son’s name. I was able to feed this through my Cricut and cut it out on maximum pressure/high speed at a 1″ height. The Cricut Expression had no trouble cutting through the material and gave me a nice clean cut on the first try. I then stuck it on my glass bowl and backed it with a strip of white cardstock so that the name would really stand out.

I used the Cricut Boys Will be Boys cartridge to cut out the sailboats from some of my favorite Hometown Summer papers. They are approximately 4″ tall.  The suns were cut from the Everyday Paper Doll cartridge at  2″. I used some yellow brads, white string and the Hometown Summer Baubles to add dimension to each sailboat.

I then used my hot glue gun to adhere the boats to white candy sticks. I had some leftover fabric strips from another project that added just the right amount of color and texture.

This was such a fun and easy project to make. I hope it inspires you to create a little something special for your next party!

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All in the Detail – “A Little Birdie Told Me”

May 27, 2011 By designteam 7 Comments

Hi everyone, I was thrilled with todays post “All in the Detail” as I love to do any sort of detail on my projects, but this time I created something a little different, creating my own background and flowers using the Cricut and Cuttlebug products.

Here is my project “A Little Birdie Told Me”.

I used the gorgeous “Butterfly Garden” Collection and the Circut “Accent Essentials” and “Paper Lace” and Cuttlebug “Quilled Rose/Carnation Kit.

I started with the Circut “Accent Essentials and created my background, I covered 8 x 8 chipboard with “Butterfly Garden Dragonflies” and stuck the Cricut “Paper Lace” over the pattern paper, and using white paint and a tissue or sponge I dabbed over with white.

Then using the Cricut “Accent Essentials” I created a pink frame which I embossed with the cuttlebug “Classeur de Gaugrage” and dusted with white ink.  Using foam tape I stuck the frame over Butterfly Garden “Drew Drops” and cut the excess paper away, so you only see the frame and stuck to the centre of the project.

To create the Flowers I used the Cuttlebug “Quilled Rose/Carnation Kit I used the Butterfly Garden “Nature Santuary” Pattern paper cut out the template 3 times and stuck all the cutouts together.  Then I used the quilling tool to roll the petals and also to curl the petals, when finished glued them to the bottom of the frame, I also used the leaves, which where also created from the same kit.

I also added extra detail by cutting out flowers from the pattern paper which I added to the top of the project along with the birds, butterflies and a cord ribbon.

Here are some more close ups of the Quilled flowers and leaves when finished.

Here is a close up of the embossed frame and the birds with beads and dimensional glaze to highlight.

Here is a dimensional photo of the whole project.

Materials Used:

Butterfly Garden Dragonflies Pattern Paper
Butterfly Garden Nature Santuary Patten Paper
Butterfly Garden Drew Drops Pattern Paper
Butterfly Garden Butterfly Wings Pattern Paper
Butterfly Garden Ephemera
Butterfly Garden Clear Pops Butterflies
Cuttlebug Quilled Rose/Carnation Kit
Cuttlebug Classeur De Gaugrage Embossed Folder
Cricut Accent Essentials
Cricut Paper Lace

I really hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and have a heap of fun creating your next project with Pink Paislee.

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Product Pick: Daily Junque Clear Stamps

May 25, 2011 By Danielle 7 Comments

Today we are featuring the Daily Junque stamp set, and I have a few cards to show you that I made with this fun set! There are so many things you can do with it, such as travel cards and scrapbook pages, days of the week pages, miss you cards, birthday cards…well, the possibilities are endless, really! Check out this gorgeous package. You get a TON of stamps:

My first card was inspired by the “top priority” saying and the numbers list. I stamped these two onto the Daily Junque – MAP patterned paper with red and blue ink. Don’t be afraid to stamp directly onto patterned paper! A patterned paper can add a lot more pizazz to your card than plain cardstock.

I added a balloon from the Daily Junque – Ephemera and some red cardstock stars that were punched with a Fiskars star punch. The red border is also a stamp from the Daily Junque stamps! I’ll be using that one a lot today.

The “you” is cut from a Papertrey Ink die (Wonderful Words) out of Soiree – Trellis paper.

Next, I made a “Miss You” card. I loved the little envelope in the stamp set, so I stamped it in red and cut it out, then tied it with Soiree Twine like a little package. I stamped the map twice onto the kraft paper and made a blue border – both with the Daily Junque stamps. The red check is a ribbon from my stash. The polkadot circle is a 2″ circle punched from a Sweetness – Love Blooms paper. The resin stars are by Melissa Frances.

The third card I made is a little more colorful – perfect for a birthday. I stamped the border in different colors and used some alphabet stamps from my stash for the sentiment:  “it’s your day”. I was going to use the lines as candles, but decided to turn them sideways and use them for journaling lines instead. You could certainly make candles out of them too! I stamped them onto white cardstock and cut them out, so I could rearrange them on my card as I was creating the design.

The little yellow hearts are from the Sweetness Glitter Letters, and the teal paper is Daily Junque – Tickets paper.

And one more card today…

I couldn’t resist using those frames in all different colors here…I used Papertrey Ink’s Berry Sorbet (peach) and Hawaiian Shores ink (blue), and Jenni Bowlin’s Lemon Drops ink (yellow). Flower is Prima. I cut a piece of the Soiree – Wood Shapes and inked it up with Hawaiian Shores ink.

When I stamped the sentiment, I masked off the words as I went, so I could stamp one or two words in each box, not the whole sentiment at one time.

I hope this gave you a little bit of card inspiration today. Which one is your favorite and why? :)

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