American Crafts National Scrapbook Day 2014 Blog Hop

WELCOME to the American Crafts National Scrapbook Day 2014 Blog Hop! I hope you enjoyed all of the projects and challenges posted by each design team member today. Are you totally inspired and ready to create?! 

Well before you get started, here's one more project, a scrapbook page I created with the new #Summer collection from American Crafts. 

CHALLENGE: For my title, I chose to die-cut super-sized letters and back each with patterned paper in assorted tropical colors. Your challenge, should you accept it, is to use BIG (more than 2-inch tall!) lettering somewhere on YOUR page. It's an eye-catching way to present a smaller less complicated title, especially when paired with a single large photo such as this 5x7 team picture.

PRIZE DRAWING: For a chance to win some colorful American Craft goodies of your own, perfect for summer scrappping, leave a comment below by midnight on Friday, May 9th. Tell me what moments you are looking forward to scrapping this summer. A randomly chosen winner will receive the following:

ANOTHER PRIZE: If you started at the beginning of the hop, and are ready to wrap it up, you should now head on over to the American Crafts blog for your chance to win one more, absolutely fabulous, prize! 

If you landed here by some other method (or got lost along the hop) and would like to visit all of the blogs, here is the full list of participants:

Paige Evans

Allison Waken

Patricia Roebuck

Lilith Eeckels

Ashley Horton

Katie Ehmann

Elizabeth Gardner

Gina Lideros

Diana Waite

Janna Werner

Heather Leopard

Meghann Andrew

Erin Stewart

Becki Adams

Angie Gutshall

***Madeline Fox***

American Crafts

From all of us, to all of you...Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

Scraptastic Kit Club May Reveal

It's the first of May and Scraptastic Kit Club has revealed it's kits for the month. Check them out below and come back tomorrow for the American Crafts National Scrapbook Day Blog Hop!

I chose The Story I Heard kit with its pinks and blue-greens, kraft and navy, red and black. Quite a lovely and unexpected color palette. As usual most of the patterned papers have TWO sides that I love, which will require a bit of strategic cutting to pull off the pages I plan to create. And just look at all those embellishments!

The Story I Heard Scrapbooking Kit

More fun paper and the most awesome chipboard stickers and alphabet are included with the add-on:

The Story I Heard Add-on

Here is the coordinating stamp set. Isn't that old fashioned telephone the cutest?!

The Story I Heard Stamp Set

Daylight is the other kit choice for the month of May. It has such a beautiful spring feel, with shades of blue, green and yellow throughout. 

Daylight Scrapbooking Kit

Again, there is a plethora of embellies in both the main and add-on kits!

Daylight Add-on

More cursive writing is found in the stamp set for this kit, which includes the coolest light bulb, notebook paper, cool banners and more!

Daylight Stamp Set

The This Life Noted kit features more springlike colors:

This Life Noted Kit for May

It's time to get busy creating with my kit. I already have a couple of ideas!

Here We Go!

I'm playing a little catch-up on my blog today, with two stamping projects that were featured on the American Crafts blog a couple of weeks ago. The first is a layout sporting the colorful Plus One collection from Amy Tangerine. The bicycle stamp, from the Dear Lizzy Daydreamer collection, is a perfect fit for this page, especially with the assorted brightly colored embossing powders! 

Embossing on vellum, and then fussy cutting the stamped images is a stress-free way to add a lot of stamping when I would otherwise be terribly nervous about the many opportunities to mess up! This way I could play with my design, moving the images around and ultimately deciding on their placement before committing with adhesive.

My second project is a card. The fancy chalkboard frame holds a sentiment from the Dear Lizzy Daydreamer stamp set (the same one with the bicycle). Embossed in white, it resembles chalk!

What tricks do you have for stamping on scrapbook pages and cards? I'd love to hear your favorite tips!

Go See Do

Oh, for the love of maps! The page I'm sharing today uses one of my favorite papers from this month's kit from Scraptastic. The map paper from Fancy Pants is so colorful! I couldn't very well cover up all those beautiful countries, so I added scrap strips of patterned paper and cardstock on the left and place my photos just slightly overlapping the map paper on the right. Title up top,  a trio of  embellishment clusters, and then on to that nice empty space in the Atlantic Ocean...the perfect spot for a little stamping, chipboard and a geotag indicating our destination...Bermuda.

The cork pieces in the Let Me Go kit are some of my favorites! There's a bike, globe, geotag and more. Here are some page closeups:

Everything came together so easily! I'm glad that I finally pulled out some travel photos for this, my fourth page with the Let Me Go kit. 

Mardi Gras Times Two

Scraptastic's Let Me Go kit came shortly after I had photos printed from this season's Mardi Gras parades. How perfect! Included in the kit were papers from Fancy Pants' As You Wish collection, and there couldn't be more beautiful colors to highlight my pictures.

First up is a selfie (yes, I did!), taken just after the Thoth parade. The weather was gorgeous, the crowds were heavy, and we had a great time with a large group of family members. But, the smartest move we made that day was to leave the parade just a teensy bit early and beat the traffic out of there. Tommy and I made a break for it several floats before the end. To further speed things up, Tommy left me alongside the road near the zoo, resplendent with chairs, ice chest, and large bag of beads. Meanwhile he high-tailed it empty-handed to retrieve the car, parked blocks away across the railroad tracks on the Fly. Getting bored waiting, I attempted a selfie. Yep, I got half a head, no head, out of focus, and finally a halfway decent shot. Hee-hee. Here it is:

A few brightly embossed vellum pieces (one using the iphone stamp from a previous Scraptastic stamp set) were tucked in among the postcard, die-cuts, and stickers, embellishing where the patterned paper meets cardstock. An umbrella embellishment, leftover from the page to follow, was glued and stitched in place. In this case it represents the sunny day need for shade and/or the second line celebratory atmosphere of the parade season.

On this next page, umbrellas represent the continuous rain we experienced on Mardi Gras day a week later. That's me and my sister, decked out in orange ponchos, trying desperately to stay dry at the Rex parade.

It was SO cold...and the rain never let up. There were a lot of other "crazy ones" out there, dressed in rain gear and holding umbrellas...thus the five on this page. Here's a closeup:

A stitching template from Amy Tangerine and American Crafts was used to add handles, and glittery gold enamel dots top each umbrella. These were easy to piece and not at all as hard as it looks. Fun stuff!

I hope I don't need umbrella embellishments for next year's Mardi Gras pages. ;)

Embellishment Love

Today I'm sharing my first page with this month's Scraptastic travel-themed kit. A favorite part of every Scraptastic kit has to be the plethora of embellishments, so carefully chosen to compliment the colors, patterns, and theme. April's kits are no exception, and I can't say enough about those selected for the Let Me Go kit. I used die-cuts, a cork shape, stickers, chalkboard flags, gold glitter enamel dots and exclusive flair and stamps in a few carefully placed clusters on the page below.

Creating interesting clusters are easy when you combine elements with different sizes, textures and shapes.

Here are two more cluster close-ups:

With the assortment of decorative elements in each Scraptastic kit, you can embellish any number of pages. Here's a peek at the page I'll be sharing tomorrow:

  

I see stamping, mist, stitching...and lots of color!

Sunday Fun Day with American Crafts

I've been eyeing up this die-cut paper from the Amy Tangerine Cut and Paste collection for a long time. The many little notches can be used in a variety of ways-to tuck papers, photos, and/or embellishments! I ultimately decided to thread an assortment of colorful tear strips through the slits and fold back the notches.

Even more tear strips make up the frame around my photo. Three little yellow-inked chicks were added to the journaling block. 

Additional details include die-cuts, flair, a puffy sticker, button, washi tape feathers and a hand stitched arrow design courtesy of an Amy Tangerine stitching template. All in all it was a lovely mix of American Crafts' colorful collections.

And it was indeed a fun day...an Easter Sunday crawfish boil. I guess it's about time for us to begin planning this year's Easter celebration!