College Tour

After Kevin's last exam in May, we hit the road again, in search of that perfect university. It was a whirlwind tour, four colleges in three days. Sooner or later, he'll have to choose between all the schools he's visited. Hoping for robust scholarship offers to sweeten the pot, and make the choice an easier one. Meanwhile he's started to amass a nice collection of T-shirts from his favorite SEC schools!

This page was created with the June main kit from My Creative Scrapbooks.

Epic Success Step-by-Step

The following tutorial was recently shared on My Creative's Scrapbook blog. It's an easy step-by-step for my page, Epic Success, created with My Creative Scrapbooks' Main kit for June.

As you can see, I drew inspiration for my page from the patterned paper below, one of the kit papers from the Fancy Pants' Family And Co. collection:

I loved those color-blocked stars and decided to make a similar star the focal point of my design. Using a piece of 12x12 paper, I sketched a five-pointed star to use as my template. Then, to make assembling the star easier, I numbered each segment and the corresponding side of the center section. 

After cutting apart the star, I traced each section on various patterned papers from the kit.

Here are my colorful star pieces, placed upon a grid-design background paper from my stash.

Next, I have a photo and a frame but, uh-oh, my picture was cropped too small!

That wasn't a problem for long...as I backed the frame with patterned paper, 

and placed my photo askew on top! It actually sets off the photo better than if it fit perfectly. ;)

Did you notice what has changed?! Before adhering the papers, I switched around two of the star's rays, so that a more solid pattern was on top. This strategic move was intended help my title stand out better when it is added to the upper portion of the layout.

Meanwhile, I added a few die-cuts around the photo frame and at the bottom of the star,

and placed several puffy banner stickers along a hand-drawn "clothesline" of sorts:

Finally, a long title was added using a Fancy Pants chipboard sticker, Jillibean Soup tiny letter stickers, and Fancy Pants chipboard alphabet, all three a part of the June Main kit. Pretty epic!

A bit of journaling, and a couple more stickers, finishes it off. Sweet!

I love when patterned papers and/or kit accessories spark an idea for me! What inspires your page designs? 

1st Apartment with My Creative Scrapbooks June kit

Another has flown the nest! It's an exciting time for him, but we were apprehensive when he said his apartment was in the city. Gulp. And then we helped him move some furniture and saw that it was a carriage house of sorts, nestled in the back yard of a nice family home in a fine neighborhood. Thank goodness!

I LOVE old houses, and this apartment is so cute. I had to take a picture of him standing on the front porch. 

The papers and embellishments in My Creative Scrapbooks' June Main kit couldn't be more perfect.

Houses, hearts, tabs and things compliment my theme, while a modified grid design makes assembling the page super easy. Two photos and two patterned papers were cut into squares. A third paper, cut rectangular, takes the place of what would be two of the bottom squares. There is where I begin my title... 

I finish my title with a colorful assortment of chipboard letters stretched across the page. Almost everything you see is from Fancy Pants' Family and Co. collection, all a part of My Creative Scrapbooks' main kit for June. 

We Are Family with My Creative Scrapbooks June kit

Can you believe it? I'm still finding photos that I want to scrapbook from our Disney trip...WAY back in 2011! So when the June Main kit from My Creative Scrapbooks landed on my doorstep, I knew it would do just fine. In fact, better than fine. Here we are:

Two of the patterned papers were cut into long horizontal banners and layered with a punched scallop border. The die-cut title shows off well when overlapping the printed paper. Puffy hearts, tabs and chipboard pieces accent the page.

Two papers were fashioned into tags, with puffy banner pieces performing as hole reinforcements. Small alphabet stickers add a subtitle to the one of them.

I'm not sure we were all together EVER on this trip. Chris was off with his fellow high school grads, and Brendan was sleeping in...as usual! So this is about the closest thing to a "family" photo that I could ever hope to have on this Walt Disney World adventure.

Disney Dream Step by Step

(As seen on the My Creative Scrapbook blog)

This photo has been sitting on my desk for quite a while (cough, cough...six years), so it's about time that I scrapped it! The discordant colors of our shirts had me pushing it aside, thinking I'd never find the "right" papers to pull it all together. I was wrong, because the gorgeous array of bright papers in My Creative Scrapbooks Main kit for May were perfect. 

All of the papers, die-cuts, puffy stickers and frames are by Jillibean Soup (Bowl of Dreams collection) and part of the Main May kit. Also from the kit are the white Thickers from American Crafts. Cardstock is Bazzill. 

Although my layout is titled, Disney Dream, the design can be easily tweaked to fit your own photo(s) and "theme". 

Here we go:

1.) First, cut (6) 9 X 1 1/2 inch strips from the following patterned papers: Dream Big, Make Magic, Think With Purpose (cut twice, used both sides), Pie in the Sky, and Aim High, ink edges, arrange the strips rainbow-like, and adhere all to a sheet of white cardstock cut down to 11 x 11 inches. 

2.) Then adhere to the center of a 12 X 12 sheet of Pie in the Sky (floral) patterned paper:

3.) Next, prepared your photo and frames. (I used one frame for my photo, and a second as an accent.) Adhere photo to the backside of the "bloom" frame. Adhere Pie in the Sky (floral) paper to the backside of the green patterned frame.

4. ) Then, arrange prepared frames, staggering placement, as shown below:

(Another option is to use the second frame for another picture, but overlap only slightly so as not to obscure the focal point of the photo.)

5. ) Now, add puffy sticker and die-cuts (dream-catcher, feathers, flowers, and greenery): 

6. ) Punch small shapes (hearts, stars, flowers, etc.) to embellish above and/or below the row of patterned paper strips. (I used a Mickey head punch to coordinate with the theme of my page.)

7. ) Adhere punched shapes and title. For an eye-catching mixed title, use a combination of Thickers and die-cut words, and accent with a punched shape.

And there you have it! If you choose to use this page as a jumping off point, I'd love to see what you create and how you make it your own. ;)

Thanks for stopping by today.

Going Monochromatic

After creating two pages with the colorful papers of My Creative Scrapbook's Main kit, I decided to go a different direction with the one below. After misting and splattering teal/aqua on a sheet of white cardstock, I stuck with the same color while assembling the rest of the page. 

I also used photo frames in an unexpected way, adhering them haphazardly behind my photo, instead of framing the photo in a more exact manner. I think it gives the page a more playful feel!

Die-cuts and stickers are layered with the frames, drawing the eye towards those boys in the picture.

An abundance of letter stickers on Jillibean Soup's Bowl of Dreams sticker sheet helped me to create a little crossword of sorts, using words to describe their relay and the strokes that were swum.

Although I LOVE colorful pages, it's good to mix it up a little. And going monochromatic is an easy option!

Studio

Here's another page created with the May Main kit from My Creative Scrapbooks. It looks like a pretty simple design, with rectangles of patterned paper arranged on a white cardstock background. But did you notice the doodling? That's where I really had fun!

This is the paper, a colorful polka dot from Jillibean Soup's Bowl of Dreams collection.

Before:

After:

A black American Crafts' Precision pen was used to draw imprecise circles around each of the dots. Then the fun begins! Stars, hearts, smiley faces, flowers, arrows, numbers, words, and more fill each of those colorful circles. I even drew hair on a couple of those smiley faces...not my best attempt perhaps, but fun nonetheless.

To see more examples from the design team using this or any of their other kits, visit My Creative Scrapbooks.

B Is For Beach

Today I'm sharing a very different type of scrapbook page...one without patterned paper! Yes, I know, this is VERY unusual for me. I'm a patterned paper fanatic, and it's typically "the more, the merrier" when it comes to mixing and layering papers on my layouts. But not this time...

I began with a big "B" painted on white cardstock. Then, I further defined the letter with all sorts of goodies from Jillibean Soup's Bowl of Dreams collection, a mainstay of the May Main kit from My Creative Scrapbooks.  

As you can see, I made up for the lack of patterned paper with an overabundance of little embellishments...chipboard, buttons, die cuts, and stickers. Fun stuff!

Check back all this week for more pages created with the Main kit from My Creative Scrapbooks. 

Pi Day Apple Pie

There's not much going on this time of year. Mardi Gras's over; Easter's still a ways off. So, what do we do...celebrate Pi Day of course! These photos are from the the year our family began this tradition. I had never made an apple pie from scratch before, but the recipe I found in my ancient Betty Crocker cookbook seemed easy enough. Of course I had to make two. ;)

This scrapbook page is a mix of old papers and Simple Stories stickers, Thickers and alpha stickers, bingo cards, apple brad, and a couple of inked wood veneers. I was a little overzealous drawing seeds. Did you notice my mistake? ;)



(I should have confined those apple seeds to the area nearest the core, instead of spreading them about as in a watermelon! Ooops.)

For this year's Pi Day I also made two pies, one apple and one pumpkin. It was about time I used the pumpkin I had frozen from Halloween! With cinnamon crumb topping on the apple pie and orange crumb topping on the pumpkin, they were gone in no time. Yum!

Quilting with Paper

(This tutorial was originally published on the My Creative Scrapbook blog.)

It takes a lot of patience to piece together and sew a fabric quilt. For me, a paper quilt is much more doable, especially when you're working with simple shapes like squares and triangles. A pattern of triangles forms the basis for the layout I'm sharing today. 

This page is created with My Creative Scrapbook's Main kit for April. The gorgeous patterned papers are from Pink Paislee's Oh My Heart collection, designed by Paige Evans. The design can certainly be duplicated in alternate color schemes, but if you want to follow along and create an identical backdrop for your page, I've included paper numbers in the instructions. Let's begin!

First, cut away the center portion of Paper No. 18, leaving a 1 inch border on all sides. Tuck this outer section away, as it will be used to finish off the layout towards the end of this tutorial.

Next, cut out (12) 2-inch squares from various patterned papers. I used Paper Nos. 18, 01, 24, 10, and 12. 

Luckily Paper No. 24 is already arranged in a 6x6 grid with each individual square measuring exactly 2"x 2". However, Paper No. 10 is arranged in a 5x5 grid, so each of those squares are larger than 2"x 2" and must be cut down slightly to use in this design. 

Then, cut each square in half diagonally, resulting in 24 triangles, the number needed for the paper quilt design.

Here is what I cut for my page:

Next, ink the edges of the triangles, and arrange on a sheet of white cardstock which has been trimmed to 10 7/8 inches by 10 7/8 inches. Begin in one corner, and work your way around, placing all 24 pieces first, before attaching with adhesive. If you're the ambitious type, you could also add some machine stitching at this point. ;)

You may have noticed that there are only three pink corners. I meant to do that, opting for a little contrast with the one purposeful purple corner on the bottom right.

Now it's time to add that border cut from Paper No. 18:

Looking good! 

Next, sort through and add various die-cuts, chipboard and your photo to the center of the design. 

The cute little fox is my favorite!

Lastly, add your journaling (always optional). I began at the top and let it flow down the center of the page. 

This simple design makes a big impact on a page! I can't wait to try this with other colors and patterns. The variety in My Creative Scrapbook's Main kit for April makes it easy to do. If you try this yourself, I'd love to see what you create, so please link me up in the comments. Thanks!

Irish Pirate?

Since I only used HALF of my favorite water-color-look paper from Pink Paislee's Oh My Heart collection for the scrapbook page that I shared on the blog yesterday, I had a "whole half" left for today's project...yay! The vibrant pink/orange/fuschia really sets off my title, and the "tear strips", those little cut-away pieces with bar code on one side, give it a fun feel.

In homage to the event captured in my photo, I gathered up several of the green die-cuts and papers to surround my "Irish Pirate". (The kids were participating in the annual Irish-Italian parade, their first experience riding on a float!)

I sure am enjoying all the colorful papers in this kit and collection! Check out My Creative Scrapbook for ALL of their gorgeous kits.

The World Is Your Oyster

As soon as I saw this paper, I knew that it would make a gorgeous water-colored title for my page!

BUT, instead of cutting my title out of the patterned paper, I cut it out of white cardstock. Then, I placed the yellow/pink/fuscia paper behind the splattered white cardstock and voila:

A strip of patterned paper, a couple of die-cuts and several fussy-cut flowers from the floral paper below, were all that were needed to complete the page.

This just might be my second favorite page with this kit, the April Main Kit from My Creative Scrapbook. My first fave? I have a little tutorial for that one. It's coming to the blog soon, but here's a little peek. ;)

Cute little fox, huh?! Til next time...