Colourful Chipboards to Find Your Wings and Fly

Hello lovelies.  It is Ifa with you today.

How has the summer been for you ?  Are you all ready for school ?  I have some news for you but I will share on my own blog.  No, I am not pregnant, silly!

I am often drawn to sheets of printed chipboards but I find I struggle to use the larger pieces.  This month, I decided to remedy that ( or attempt to! ).  I bought a sheet from My Mind's Eye, Find your Wings and Fly.

The six linked doillies at the top are nearly 12" wide so I knew I was going to struggle to place it on my layout. I decided to cut them into two which helped me tremendously. I still used both parts on a layout and being in two pieces provided me with more options. The name of the range inspired me to create a layout entitled "Finding your wings" about my 17 year old son.

Here is a close up.  I added a frame from an old Making Memories tag to create a continuous line of circles.  It also helped to frame my son J in the photo.

I also bought a set of these stamps from the same range, I am not overly keen on the moustache but then, I am not into facial hair either! I digress.

I used these stamps plus an older set by My Mind's Eye to decorate my layout before adding the chipboard pieces and some decorative brads. 

  

My next layout is about a day at the seaside. I adore the flowers but it is also a large piece. I contemplated using it against one small photo but I ended up using five busy photos, all pushed up close, pretty much like the bunch of flowers.

I think this is my new favourite stamp set at the moment.  Till next month, that is.  See you soon.

Blogged with love by Ifa.

I ♥ Summer

Hi Tracy G here. Not long left of the school summer holidays now,  and I bet for those of you with young ones it will be a welcome rest when they are back at school. This month I dug out some photos that reminded me of when my son was young and the six week summer break was filled with fun days out and holidays.
This month I choose to use Crate Paper The Pier 6x6 pad and Sn@p Cuts - I Heart Summer die cuts cards. I was looking for different ways to use the die cuts cards, so I inked through a couple of them with Versa mark ink and used powder blue and white embossing powder and also on my second page I inked through the reverse side of one with a coloured ink.

Here's the shop links to my supplies,
Simple Stories- I Heart Summer -Sn@p Cuts Die Cuts Cards
Crate Paper - The Pier - 6x6 Pad
American Crafts Zing! embossing powder - Opaque- Powder
Studio Calico- Wood Veneer - Hearts & Arrows

Don't forget to enter our sketch challenge this month, details can be found here.

Blogged by Tracy G. x

To Project Life or not Project Life, that is the question.

Hi folks, Jen G here. How are you all enjoying the summer holidays? How many sleeps left until Back to School? 

When the new Becky Higgins Project Life core kits and mini kits came out I swooned. They are so pretty and stroke-able. My only problem was I don't do Project Life. It's just not for me. But I wanted them. Needed them !!!. So Helen and I shared several of the kits and I set about trying to use the cards on my usual A4 size pages. Being obsessed with patterned paper, of course I bought a couple of collection packs too - the Midnight and the Honey packs. Here are some of the pages I have created so far.

I dipped into my wood veneer and washi tape collections to add some detail along with the odd Simple Stories and Jillibean Soup sticker.

Have any of you done the same thing? Been wooed into buying Project Life supplies but used them for non- PL projects? Leave us links to your work so we can pop over and have a peek.

Enjoy the rest of your summer all!

August Sketch Challenge

Hi all it's time for another sketch challenge here at the Sarah's Cards blog.  There's a £20 voucher for the shop up for grabs again this month. All you have to do is create a layout inspired by this month's sketch and post a link to your work at the bottom of this post by the deadline of the end of the month.

Lou created this sketch for the August challenge:

This is Lou's layout featuring gorgeous new PJ's. Who doesn't love new PJ's!?!

Tracy G used the sketch to incorporate multiple photos of a family day out.

Ifa managed to get four photos onto her beautiful interpretation. 

We can't wait to see your entries so leave us a link below this post and the winner will be announced in September. Yes folks - SEPTEMBER already!! 

** Using Project Life Core Kits **

In yesterday's post, I showed the contents of some of the Project Life core kits.  Today, I'm going to show you what I did with some of those cards and the different page protectors that I bought.

The idea behind the cards is that it speeds up the recording process.  In its simplest form, you print photos, choose some cards and pop them in the slots in the page protectors and maybe add some journaling.  That is how I started my pages.  I didn't leave it there though; I used that as my base and then got creative and embellished the cards and photos using all sorts of things from my stash.  All of my journaling was handwritten which did help with keeping it quick and simple to do as well as making it more personal.

The first page I created was my title page.  The following photo shows the layout in its simplest form - just photos and cards from the kits:

Whilst this photgraph shows my finished page with added extras to make it more 'me':

I then started to record the things that we've been doing, starting in June as that was when I received the kits.  I may also go back and play catch up with the beginning of the year but I'm happy for now starting mid -year.

I printed the photos that I needed and started to think about how I could lay them out using full page and smaller insert pages. 

I looked through all of the cards choosing ones that matched the photos/themes and colours.  I mixed and matched cards from all of the kits that I bought (Jade, Midnight, Honey, Seasons & Wellington).  Some were purely used as 'decorative fillers' whilst some allowed specific journaling.

The following 'Before' and 'After' pictures hopefully give you an idea of how you can keep it simple and use the ready made cards as they are intended or be more creative and add your own embellishments: 

Before:

Before (a full page next to a smaller insert):

 After:

After (smaller insert):

Before:

After:

Before:

With a little added detail:

 After:

 

Before:

 After:

Before:

 After:

 

Before:

  After:

My top tip from working with these page protectors is to glue bulky embellishments to the top of the plastic.  All of the Thickers, wood veneer shapes and badges have been attached directly to the plastic page protectors using Tombow glue: this prevents creasing in the slots from thick embellishments.   

These finished pages show where I've added different elements directly to the plastic:

 

Some of my go to embellishments include: washi tape, labels, alphabet stickers, stickers, tags, wood shapes, badges, enamel dots, date stamp and paper clips.  I've also saved and used ephemera such as tickets and clothing tags.

In a couple of places, you may have noticed that I cut and split both photos and cards across the pockets in the divided protectors.  This allowed me to make things fit with my overall design of each page.  I've also  layered some of the smaller 3x4 cards on top of the bigger 6x4 cards too to add to the overall effect/look of a layout.

 

If you've been using your Project Life core kits, please share some links with us: we love to see what you've been creating.

All of the Project Life kits and page protectors can be found here in the shop. 

By Helen

** What's inside a Project Life Core Kit? **

When the highly anticipated Project Life kits finally arrived in the shop, I managed to get some.  I'd seen pictures of the boxes and some of the cards and had an idea of the colour schemes but it wasn't until they arrived (in the biggest box of scrapbooking supplies that I've ever received!) that I could finally appreciate what was inside the box of each core kit.

Firstly, you get a lot of cards.  In the full core kits, there are over 500 3x4 cards and over 60 4x6 cards, whilst in a mini kit you get 80 3x4 cards and 20 4x6 cards.  The designs are repeated and in the full kits, there can be 10 cards of one design.  This makes them ideal for splitting and sharing with a friend (which I did with Jen G!).

The next few photos show the inside of the boxes of the Jade, Honey and Midnight (mixed in together), Seasons and Wellington kits that I bought:

The following pictures show some of the designs on the cards (click on photos to enlarge to see more detail).  NB. they only represent about half of the cards that you actually get in each core kit.

Wellington kit:

Midnight 6x4 cards:

Honey 6x4 cards:

Midnight 3x4 cards:

Honey 3x4 cards:

Jade kit:

What I really like about the kits is that not only do they co-ordinate within a kit but it is really easy to mix and match the designs from different kits.  The designs are beautiful, easy to use and I have really enjoyed using them.  Even if you don't do or have any intention of doing Project Life, the kits are still very usable on traditional scrapbook layouts in place of papers.  And because you get so many copies of each design, there's no need to feel like you have to hoard your favourite designs.

Come back tomorrow to see how I've used them to record some recent memories.

All of the Project Life ranges can be found here in the shop.

By Helen