"Backyard Adventures" with Kira

Hello friends!  Kira here with a 12x12 layout using the main "Sonoma" scrapbook kit.  I am swooning over here over the colors in this month's kits!

The first paper that immediately jumped out at me was the Dear Lizzy "Green Thumb" paper.  I loved all the little vases of flowers/plants.  I knew it would work perfectly for this picture of my son playing in the backyard.

We just moved into a new home right before Thanksgiving!  It has been such an exciting time for my family and me.  But the greatest thing about our new home is definitely having a backyard space for my boys.  And since the weather remains in the high 70s with sun shining daily, we are able to play out there, eat out there, or just relax out there 90% of our day!

I snapped this photo of Elliott during a final walk through before the house was "officially" ours.  I love his sweet little expression, almost as if he's in shock this backyard belongs to us now!  And since the colors in this months kits are so vibrant, I kept the photo in color to coordinate with the papers and embellishments I planned on using.

I started fussy cutting the little vases almost immediately after getting my kit (which happened to be my first piece of mail at our new house!), even though I had no idea what I was going to do with all of them!  So I chose a few more papers to go with my photo before deciding.  I loved the wood grain of the Crate Paper "Warm Wishes" paper, and thought it mimicked the wood fence in my photo.  And the Fancy Pants "Fancy Free" paper worked well with the colors in my photo so I pulled that paper out too.

I cut my title "backyard" out on my Cricut using the goudy stout font.  And I stitched around it with some dark blue embroidery thread from my stash.  Then I started playing with embellishing my page.  Once I started moving the fussy cut vases around my page, it all came together fairly quickly.

I hand cut the reverse side of the Dear Lizzy paper to look like grass, and layered a few pieces to give a little dimension.  I added some pieces of ephemera from the Fancy Pants "Take Note" die cut pack around the page, and I loved how the "adventures" piece finished off my title.

I am so happy with my finished layout!  I can't wait to see what everyone else does with this kit!  Thank you so much for stopping by!

Kira

Tuesday Tutorial with Brenda

Good Morning!  Welcome to this weeks super simple but fun tutorial.

I LOVE simple pages.  I am pretty sure everyone knows that already.  haha  One of my favorite things to do when creating pages is to make the title really stand out.  Sometimes I use several alphas or hand drawn word, even stickers to make my title pop.  This time I wanted to make my own paper letter title.  It looks so much harder than it is.  I promise.

Start by choosing your photo, elements and the papers you want to use for the title.

Now for the fun part.
Draw the letters on the paper you chose.  One color for each letter.

Thankfully some of the letters could be turned over because I ended up using the other sides once I put the letters all together.

Once you decide on where you want your title to go, lay out the rest of your page.

And that is it.  Just a quick, simple and fun way to take your simple page to another level.

I hope this little tutorial inspires you to make your own custom titles for your pages.  I think this will be one of my new go to ways to jazz up my pages.

Have a wonderful day!

Snapshots Mini Album

Hello everyone, it's Tara here sharing my DIY Snapshots mini album. I have been feeling the itch to create a few mini albums to give away and I finally decided to try one out. Since I will be mailing it out, I had a few criteria to meet: light weight, small enough to display or take/move around, and interactive. I found a great accordion mini album tutorial that Stephanie Bryan made here. It required no stitching and seemed easy enough, so I decided to give it a go!

I made this one to give to my mother in law:

I used the cute heart patterned paper from the July Driftwood Main Kit. The heart cork piece was from a past Citrus Twist Kit and worked so well with this month's Pocket Life Driftwood Kit Cocoa Vanilla snip its.


I ended used two strips of 4x12 pieces instead of three, mostly because I mis-cut the last piece, but I loved how it turned out!

Here are a few close ups:

I wanted to add some interactive parts and also hide the journaling. I did this with a tag cut down from my stash. I also re-used a glassine bag from the kit to create a pocket for my tag. I can't get enough of that black and gold dot paper!! It's such a nice compliment to all the bold and bright colors.

I used both stamp sets from July's Main and PL kits. I have a slight addiction to stamps and always find a place to add them. I added more hidden journaling with the "notes" snip it tucked behind the photo.

On the tag, the "Hello, I Love You" phrase is from the Maggie Holmes Shine roller stamp. It's one of my favorite roller stamps!

Here is an idea of how small it is! I love how my mini album fits in my hand so easily. It's a great size and I plan to make a few more to give to friends and family.


Thank you for joining us today! I hope you try making some of your own mini albums too.

Have a lovely day!

Xxo, Tara

Sunday Sketch

Happy Sunday CTK friends! 

Brooke here today to share my take on this week's sketch!  Let's start with a look at the sketch...

And here's my take on it...

The doilies from the May Sprinkles kit were my obvious starting point, as they would act as the circles from the sketch.  From there, I took inspiration from the layering of the graph, title and banner from behind the photos in the sketch and started laying down a background for this project.  First, I used watercolor paint to squiggle messy lines on the white cardstock.  Then, I laid the strips of patterned paper and figured out the placement for the doilies.  The acrylic flowers were added for a pop of color.

It was at this point that I chose my photos and decided where my journaling would go.  My go-to color whenever I feel a project needs a little oomph is yellow.  I like how it instantly brightens a page and makes it seem cheerful!  So, I cut out a few of the geometric-shaped yellow strips to add throughout the page.  I sewed them down the center for added interest.

A colorful tag was tucked behind the photos to cover up the center of one of the doilies.  Funny note...I don't really like the blank circle centers of doilies...I always feel like they're missing something. So whenever I use them on a project, I try to strategically cover those centers up a little.

The last details added were the title, the silver glitter stars and my journaling.

Because I glued down the acrylic flowers before I placed those yellow strips, there is one part of this layout that bothers me...The bottom right corner.  I think that longer yellow strip of paper should actually be where the shortest yellow strip is.  Then it would be pointing up at the photos and leading your eyes there, instead of pointing to the doily in the upper right-hand corner.  Ah, such is life!

So, there you have it! 

I hope you're super inspired to create something using this week's sketch as your starting point.  I can't wait to see what you make! 

**To play along with this week's Sunday Sketch Challenge, create a layout based off of today's sketch, upload it to the gallery with today's date (5/22) in the title, and you will be eligible to win a $5 gift certificate to be used in the CTK Store!