Heart Punch, Three Ways

Now that you have all of those lovely photos from Valentines Day, I have a trick for you! I'm going to show you how to use one punch, three ways. You know I'm all about stretching a kit, and this is a great way to do that and incorporate a nice design at the same time.

So the first way is to use the punch as it was intended. See below, hearts punched and painted.

The second way is to utilize the negative pieces your punch left behind.. I trimmed those patterned papers into neat little squares around the punched shape. Then layered them onto a card. 

You can see it in the bottom right card as well. All you need is a little backing and you're set! Using these pieces gives the cards some nice dimension. Bonus!

The third way (and maybe even my new favorite way) is to use the negative as a stencil.

I just laid out a row of negatives and traced inside of them. Boom, mostly uniform sized hearts.
I wasn't worried about precision, but you could be precise with the stencil, no problem.

Easy, peasy, amiright? Guess I had hearts on the brain when I created these February projects! What kinds of things are you punching lately?

Elizabeth

Double Recipe Challenge with Emma & Tara

Hi everyone, it's Tara and Emma here today! We have a couple layouts to share as well as a double challenge! I asked Emma if she would like to do a joint post with me and she had a great idea of giving each other a recipe challenge! One of my favorite challenges here at CTK is 3 To Inspire, so this was a fun one to do together. Join us and try out our recipe challenge!
Instead of using the same recipe, we surprised each other and both had some great ideas! Emma definitely pushed me beyond what I normally do in my Pocket Life pages. I was so excited to take the challenge. Emma's prompts were to:

1. use stitching,
2. hand-cut letters,
3. and circles.

Stitching has been something I want to incorporate on my layouts, I just don't make the time to do so and since I don't have a sewing machine, I have to do it by hand. I have added stitching to maybe one layout, so this was a fun one! Hand cut letters are a fave of Emma's - one of her most recent layouts is so beautiful and inspiring! I haven't done any hand cut letters since high school or helping my kiddos with their science fair projects. The circles sounded like a lot of fun - until I realized I only own a 1 inch circle punch (yikes!!). I knew one way or another I would make it work and thanks to Emma I think this is my new favorite layout:

I had a hard time committing to which style of pocket page I wanted to go with. In the end, I really am happy with the final layout!

I LOVE the exclusive CTK patterned paper in this month's Pocket Life Kit! I used it to create the "Dream" cut out. I had grand plans to add a lot more stitching but I felt just a few pops here and there were perfect! I also re-purposed one of the 4x6 jounaling cards in the kit and made it a 3x4 card for my title. The puffy sticker on the letter "a" ties into the challenge too.

Since I don't own many circle punches, I used a hole punch to create tiny circles to add here and there, adding a little more color and circles.

I punched out one large circle and added another tiny circle and a cork piece from the kit. I even used a white gel pen to create "xx faux-stitching" on the teal circle.

I wanted to tie in the circle theme and the heart patterned paper was the perfect touch to my photo! I had so much fun working with Emma and being challenged in new ways. It's so great to try other techniques or work outside of my comfort zone to create a fresh and new layout.

Here is Emma's layout and her take on my recipe challenge for her. She did a fantastic job!

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I was super excited when Tara asked if I'd like to do a joint post with her this month - it's always fun to work on a post with someone else from the Design Team! I was even more excited when we came up with the idea to give each other a 3-part recipe challenge - I would give Tara hers and she would give me mine! I'm a big fan of any type of recipe challenge (like our 3 To Inspire weekly challenge!). I don't mind admitting I was a litttttle nervous about what my recipe would be and Tara did not disappoint, she gave me some awesome challenges - my criteria were to:

1. use my own handwriting,
2. incorporate either 3x4 sized photos or paper on my layout,
3. and use a bold/bright patterned paper for my background

If you're familiar with any of the pages I've made in the past you'll know #1 and #3 are my weaknesses! I can only think of a few times I've used my own handwriting (because it's so messy!) and I'm constantly using white cardstock on all my pages. I panicked for a few minutes then jumped straight into it - and can I just say, it was FUN to step outside my "norm"!

Here's the page I finished up with:

And my first thought when I look back at this is - the background paper - so much yellow! Haha, Although you'll notice I couldn't help but add a white border around the outside...had to include a little bit of my "norm" into the mix. This paper was one of my favourites from the kit and I had intended to use it differently but I'm kinda loving this page - it's different to my usual style and that's what I find so fun! I used the February Main and Add-on kits for this page (plus I picked a label from my stash).

I even included one of the embellishment's I created for yesterday's tutorial post!

As I mentioned, I had so much fun with Tara's challenge! As nervous as I was, I had a ball working with things that I normally wouldn't - it was like a breath of fresh air! If you can, pair up with a buddy (or group of buddies) and give each other your own recipe challenge - I promise you'll love it!

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Don't you think this challenge was super fun and easy too? We definitely thought so - we had such a blast, Emma and I would do it again in a heartbeat! We would love to see your take on either recipe or even a mash up of the two! Please upload your layout to the Gallery and/or share it on the Facebook Fan Page.

Thank you for stopping by and have a fab day!

Xxo,

Em & Tara

Tuesday Tutorial with Emma

Hi everyone!  Emma here to share a super easy tutorial for making your own embellishments!

This month's kits come with some super cut die-cuts, stickers and papers that are perfect for grouping together to make your own dimensional embellishments.  Some times when I don't have alot of time to put a page together I'll sit down and make these - gives me my crafty fix without involving a heap of time :)

 The beauty about making these is there are no rules and you're really only limited by your imagination and the amount of goodies you have onhand to use ;)

1 - First up you'll need some tools - I grabbed my punches, scissors and mini attacher.  Plus you'll need some double-sided tape and foam dots (to add some dimension!).

2 - Then you need to get all those bits and pieces you want to use - I've used some goodies from both the Main and Add-on kits :)

3 - Then pick your favourite papers and start punching and cutting shapes.  I went with circles (used punches) and cut banner shapes with my scissors.

4 - Now this is the fun part - rifle through all your goodies to find things that you love.  I like to group things together at this point.

5 - Start layering!   I don't stick anything down at this point so if I end up not liking something I can  easily take it away.  The adhesive pieces are a little tricky but I tend to just stick those to a clear ruler then lay that on top to see how it looks.

6 - Stick it all together!  Use that tape, staplers, sewing machine or whatever else takes your fancy to keep it all grouped together :)

Super easy right?!

I like leave these sitting in a bowl on my desk so when I'm making a page and need something a little extra, they're ready to go!

And because I still have a few of these left - if you would like a little happy mail with a few embellishments ready to go, just leave a comment below and I'll pick a random winner on Friday and send some of these your way!


Thanks, Em xo

Just Driving with Brenda

Good Morning everyone!

Brenda here to bring you a layout with my lovely little munchkin.  Last weekend I had a photoshoot an hour away so Daddy drove and we all went.  This little bugga went to sleep on the way there and on the way back.  There is just something about riding in the car that knocks her out every time.
When she wasn't sleeping, she had her face up to the window watching the trees and snow go by in a blur.  She is my little bird, always looking for the next adventure.

My favorite part of this months "Heartfelt" Add-On Kit is that pretty paper with the birds from Maggie Holmes.  It is very much like my little bird.  I couldn't wait to use it.  Of course, the stamps in this kit are perfect.  I will be using it a lot.

Thank you for stopping by today.  Have a lovely one.

Brenda