Be inspired with Nina

www.paintingsunny.com

It´s no secret that I´m addicted to frames and also butterflies. I´m always on the run to find great new inspirations and mood boards like this one.  Normally I don´t use often the color black for backgrounds of my pages because I love the bright airy look. But if I got the kit with those chalk black and black dotted paper I knew I would like to give them a try. And I like the result. Sometimes it´s great to leave your own comfort zone, right?!

Behind the Insta frame I add again a piece of the black chalk paper. The butterfly is made with a die and my Big Shot machine.  I used acrylic painted white cardstock and transparency paper (both included in the kit) to make this 3D butterfly shape. The phrase is stamped with the Citrus Twist Kits Stamp Set....

Products used:
April Main Scrapbook Kit
April Embellishment Kit
From my stash: Acrylic Paint, A piece of a paper doilie, sewing machine

A Two Page Layout Using a 6x6 Paper Pad

Each Wednesday on the blog we bring you a dose of inspiration for using the 6x6 paper pads in our Pocket Life kits, and today I've got a double dose for you! I used my 6x6 pad on a two-page, multi-photo layout, which is a great way to both get lots of photos scrapped at once and to use up quite a bit of paper in the pad!

My idea for this layout started with this sketch from PageMaps- I've always loved Becky's sketches!

At first glance, it looks like the patterned paper in the sketch is in two main blocks- a big 12x12 piece offset on the right, and a pair of 5x12 strips running across the middle of the page. You could absolutely use those paper sizes on this design, but if you look more closely, you can also see that there's an opportunity to use smaller pieces, too. None of the blocks is over 6 inches in either length or width, meaning that you can cut those pieces from a 6x6 sheet of paper! I flipped through the pad and pulled out two sheets each of the yellow and purple prints, and, with a little careful measuring and alignment, pieced them together with my photos to make this page!

I also used two sheets of another print- an orange floral- to use as the photo mats where they were specified in the sketch.

Since the photos were already quite busy and the patterned papers very bright, I kept the embellishments to a minimum and used lots of neutrals- the cork butterflies, the black letter stickers, and the wood chip hearts.

The only item on the layout that wasn't in this month's kits is the journaling card- I needed something sort of plain and neutral, so I reached for a cream ledger print card and layered a tag from one of the Maggie Holmes cut apart sheets over it.

Next time you start to use a sketch that looks like it uses big blocks of patterned paper, look again and see if it's possible to break those sections down into smaller chunks and use a 6x6 pad instead!

Tuesday Tutorial with our Guest Designer

Hey everyone! Today I'm sharing a fun little tutorial using the chipboard frames that came in the April main kit. If you've seen the layouts I created with the kit, you might have noticed that I altered the frames on 2 of the 3 layouts.

 

 

 

1. Begin by gathering your supplies. You will need acrylic paint, white misting spray, a paintbrush, an embossing folder (and a machine to run it thru), and the chipboard frames that you wish to alter. 

 

 

 

 

2. Working on a scrap piece of paper, or something you don't mind getting messy, paint your chipboard frame with the desired color of acrylic paint. I would suggest using at least 2 coats, although you might find that you need 3 coats. The color I chose happened to be a pearl paint, so it was pretty thick and needed just 2 coats. Some paints will be thinner, and need an extra coat. Let the painted frame dry fully before proceeding to the next step.

 

 

 

 

3. Once the paint is fully dry, place your frame inside an embossing folder and run it thru your die cut machine to emboss.

 

 

 

 

4. Doesn't the embossing add SOOOOO much more interest to the painted frame! I'm a huge sucker for anything dotted.

 

 

 

 

5. You can certainly stop at this point and enjoy your painted frame. However, I wanted to add a little something else to it, so that it didn't appear as "flat" to the eye.

 

 

 

 

6. I placed my painted frame inside my "misting box" (just an old box that I've been using for at least two years now for misting), and spritzed the frame with some white misting spray.

 

 

 

 

7. And here's the final result! Altering the chipboard frames allowed me to coordinate them to my individual projects and added more color and texture as well.  

 

 

 

Simple Strategies with Gina Rodgers

Hi everyone, today I'm sharing a couple of layouts with you, using a few simple strategies. Both pages have been created using the Enchantment Kit Add-On and Being Me stamp add-on

On this first page, I've used a vertical design for the background, starting with a cardstock base then adding 3 strips of patterned paper..

I've kept the vertical elements flowing with a few journaling tags, including a couple of older printable Pocket Life tags

to add some interest to the cardstock here, I added a smear of white gesso and a little watered down mist with a paint brush. The white splatter was drawn in with a gel pen..

On the second page I kept the background very soft with white cardstock and added some subtle water colour touches (once again using watered down mist) and stamping

I've used a small paintbrush to apply the mist then immediately held the page upright and blew on it in a downwards direction to achieve the drip effect

I've also added some soft stamping, by stamping first on a scrap paper then onto the cardstock, a nice alternative to black ink is Prima "Old Road" chalk edger available in the CTK store

here's some more of the mist effect, this time the drips are in a different direction and I've used the same soft stamping technique with the flower stamp

I hope this gives you a few ideas for your pages..happy scrapping!

Gina x

Sunday Sketch with our Guest Designer

Ready for another sketch challenge??  We have our guest this week to share her take.  First here is the sketch.  And remember, to play along with our sketch challenge, upload your layouts to the gallery by April. 19th to get your name in a drawing to win a $5 GC to the store. When uploading to the gallery you can name it as you would normally but please include "Sketch 4/13".

 

 

 

Laura here to share with you my take on this weeks sketch. I love a good sketch, as it gives me a great starting point for my layout and I don't have to spend too much time trying to plan out my page design. I love that this sketch had 4 photos, arranged together on the page. This tied in so well with my love of photo collages. I created a simple collage with 4 photos of my girls from years and years ago and got started.

 

 

 

I knew I wanted to add lots of interest to the background of my page, so I started by die cutting a 12x12 circle background piece from the aqua cardstock using my Silhouette Cameo. I layered my die cut background on top of a sheet of white cardstock that I lightly spritzed with black misting spray, and layered that onto a sheet of tan cardstock.

 

 

 

I used a 1" circle punch to punch out circles from several of the patterned paper in the kit, and then adhered them randomly in the openings of the die cut background. I stamped the larger flower from the stamp set, using white chalk ink, onto all of the black chalkboard patterned paper circles.  

 

 

 

Once I had my photo collage adhered to the page, I tucked in some trimmed down pieces of cardstock and patterned paper on the left hand side and a few tags cut from one of the sheets of patterned paper along the top of the photo collage. I finished off the layout with a few of the cork butterflies sprinkled around the page.

 

 

Mini album with Eve

Hello :)

Today, i will show you a mini album done with the main Kit & embellishment kit. The size is 13x18cm. I really love the colors of this kit, so fresh !

Hope you love it :)

Pocket Life with Jen Boumis

Hello Friday! Today, I'm sharing Week 11 in in my family album. I used both the Pocket Life and PL Embellishment kits for this layout. This was the first week of the year that it was finally warm enough to get outside to enjoy the sun - despite the blanket of snow still on the ground - and the yellows in the Lemon Lush 6x6 pad were just perfect.

Outside play, newborn sweetness, toddler mischief and power outages were the themes this week. I love the pre-printed "need a do-over" label, along with the frown face flair to illustrate the photo of our powerless appliances. My date card uses a combination of papers from the 6x6 pad, along with a vellum "highlights" Silhouette cut and one of the frames in the PL kit, finished off with a label and a few of the fun glitter stars from the PL Embellishment kit.

The left hand 3x4 photo of my green blouse is on the outside of the page and flips up to reveal journaling underneath. I used a small piece of the yellow stripe cardstock as a hinge. And, of course, one of  the amazing etched wood chips.

TIP: An easy way to make sure your letter stickers go on your page straight is to place them on the edge of a clear ruler or piece of plastic. Line up the ruler with the side of your page or card, stick them down and gently pull out the ruler. Perfect every time!

I had a hard time narrowing down my photos this week so, added a small page protector for extra 3x4's. This side explains the power outages we endured and how we made the best of the situation. The exclusive "flying monkeys" card just seemed right. I trimmed it down a bit, added it to a clear, stitched sleeve from a past kit and slipped it in the pocket.

Here are your sketches for this week: