American Crafts Junior

The newest memeber of our design team, Vanessa, has been working with the gorgeous American Crafts Junior range. She has produced this fantastic page which just goes to show that you don't need to use heaps of stash to create a stunning page, how about scraplifting this layout using up some of your scraps.

Eat your Veg!
My little boy is always asking for raw carrots, he likes them washed, but not peeled – “just like a rabbit eats them mammy!”, I thought this was so funny, as well as really sweet and a lovely little memory to document in a layout.Firstly, I converted the photograph to black and white to contrast with the bold, funky and bright papers from the American Crafts Junior range and I then I coloured the carrot back in to add to that contrasting effect.I used normal green embroidery thread to stitch up the side and I sponged the centre of the main cardstock with a white chalk inkpad. The little black stars above the journaling sticker are hand drawn.

For him.....and for her!

Jen has been using one of the new My Minds Eye ranges, Ooh La La for him, the range is obviously being marketed for those male pages that you want to create but Jen has shown that it is perfect for any of layout!

Novembers Kit, Great Crate Paper!

Have you seen the picture of the November kit? It is full of the gorgeous Crate Paper Season collection along with a 12x12 sheet of fantastic chipboard shapes plus lots of other embellishments including an alphabet! Kit subscriptions can be found here.

Here is a little sneak of what one of the design team has done with the kit, just to wet your appetite!
Crate Paper brought out three other gorgeous ranges at CHA in August,

Cottage.

Bliss

and
North Pole

Watch out to see what the design team do with some of these gorgeous papers over the next few weeks.

Bold and Beautiful!

Nat has created these two gorgeous layouts using the Basic Grey Lime Rickey range, she has really shown how well these bold, bright papers can be used to create some fantastic results.

Monthly Sketch Challange

Sometimes we all need a bit more inspiration than usual to get the scrapping ideas flowing so we thought it would be fun to do a monthly sketch challange.
Jen has designed this great sketch to kick us off and a few of us have put together some examples.

Jen has used American Crafts "Craft Fair" papers on her page.

Gems layout has been put together using the Cosmo Cricket papers from the September kit.

I have used Fancy Pants "Dancing Girl" patterned papers.

And finally Rachel has put this page together using MME Abbey Road "Best Buddies"

I hope you enjoy using the sketch as much as we all have, we would love to see how you use the sketch, if you want to share then pop a link to your layout into the comments box so we can all have a peek.

xx

First Garden

Rachel has created this fab dotty layout using the Three Bugs In a Rug Spread Your Wings collection. I love how she has combined all the patterned papers together and made a block of photos to really showcase her first garden.

Fancy Pants

I thought I would have a play with one of the new Fancy Pants ranges, Dancing Girl. The papers are obviously meant to be used for the little dancers in your life but can be easily used for any girlie layout.
Sometimes I am put off using stickers on a layout because I don't want to risk sticking it onto the page and then finding that I don't like it and I can't take it off again. Also the sticker has to be stuck straight onto the page so can look quite flat. To get over this I have stuck the three stickers that I have used from the Fancy Pants sheet onto a piece cardstock and then cut them out so that I could place them onto my page and move them around, it also meant that I could stick them onto my page using foam pads to create added depth.
I have also cut out the yellow scalloped edge from the transparency sheet.

More French Couture!

I thought you might like to see the last layout that Emma created using the gorgeous Lily Bee French Couture range, she has made a wonderful rosette to add to the page too!



"We visited a silver/lead mine in Wales and my son headed straight to the panning shed. He was fully engrossed in his panning and we should have known that if there was something to be found, he would find it (even if it was a tiny flake of silver/lead).
I made the rosette by cutting a ¾” strip of paper and scoring ½” lines along it. Fold into a concertina and then into a circle. Glue onto a chipboard circle and then add a 1” circle in the centre and ‘ribbon tails’."

Lily Bee

The newest member of the design team, Emma Trout, has been working really hard to put together a few layouts to share with you using the new Lily Bee French Couture range. I am sure you will agree that they are stunning!

"One of the highlights from our recent holiday was working out which person was ‘Jelly’ and which one ‘Jolly’. Of course, with a couple of beers this joke was funnier!

I used a Chatterbox doodling template to make the swirls and add a new look to the patterned papers. The gems were coloured using a drop of alcohol ink."

"On the second day of our holiday we walked into the nearest village. This was the first time we experienced the severity of some of the hills in Wales. So it was a welcome distraction for G’ma to stop and take in some of the views and catch her breath! My son, as always, was on hand to offer words of comfort and a cuddle.
I made the paper flowers by rolling a spiral of patterned paper in on itself, working from the tip inwards."

Same Paper Different Look

Rachel was given the lovely 3 Bugs in a Rug Spread Your Wings collection to play with, when I first looked at this paper range I thought lovely bright summery papers. Rachel has produced two layouts using the same paper range but that look so totally different.

My first page is perhaps more traditional, using the brighter summery sides of the papers. I tore the main sheet of paper on two sides and tried to bury the photo in the page by creating a frame and covering the edges with lots of embellisments, a lot of which I have created by handcutting them out of the paper. Its not always practical you use the same thicker pack on one layout so I try to vary them with other alphabets.

I had been thinking about creating this next page for some time and when I saw the reverse of the 3 Bugs papers I knew they would be perfect. Over the past few months I have started to read the Twilight Books and I am hooked, I thought I would do this page to remind me in the future just how 'into them' I was. As with the previous page I started with a bazzill base, and used the fabulous dotty black paper as a background. Again I used a mixed of thickers and different alphas for the title which is even more effective as the title is much longer. To create the journalling block I used the back of a piece of card that some stickers came on and added little bits of my own stash. This is a completely different look but with the same papers and basically the same design.