Meet our November Guest Designer - Paige Evans

We are so excited to have the amazingly talented, Paige Evans with us this month to work with our Sunshine on My Mind kits.  Our November kits have some of her gorgeous new Whimsical collection included so pairing up with Paige this month was a perfect match!  I'm sure you'll be justs as amazed by her gorgeous pages as we are! 

Be sure to connect with Paige and see more of her beautiful pages via her website, Facebook or Instagram.

----------------------------------------

Short bio: My name is Paige Evans and I love scrapbooking! I've been married to my husband Chris for 11 years and we have two kids that are most often the focus of my pages - Fox (8) and Jane (6). We also have a dog named Joey, a cat named Rachel, and a bunny named Phoebe (yes, we're huge Friends fans!). We recently moved to the Denver area and are enjoying settling into this next chapter!

When did you start scrapbooking? I started scrapbooking when I was 16 years old and got my very first job at a local scrapbooking store. The first time I put pictures with paper & stickers I was hooked! As they say, the rest is history!

What is something most people would not know about you? I know Morse Code - I learned it in high school for my senior project.

What are the 3 scrapbooking products you can’t live without? Silhouette Cameo, patterned paper, sewing machine

What do you love about the November, Sunshine on My Mind, kit/s? I love that these kits include lots of my new collection with Pink Paislee called Whimsical :)

Finish this sentence “If you could see my scrapbooking space now . . .  It's half a mess, half organized. I'm working on lots of projects at the moment so it's a bit chaotic, but I know where everything is so that's a plus!

----------------------------------------

WHIMSICAL by Paige Evans

Hey everyone! So excited to share my first layout created with the Sunshine on My Mind kits!

I started with the rainbow striped paper and used a border punch on every color to make scalloped strips. I lightly adhered the strips across the B-side of the aqua sailboats paper and then machine stitched across the top of each strip. To add lots of texture I bent up the edges of all the scalloped paper strips.

Next I grabbed two photos of my daughter and overlapped them in the middle. I layered frames from the Whimsical ephemera die cuts underneath and added a chipboard "whimsical" sticker at the bottom of one for the title. 

Then I had fun picking and choosing embellishments to go across the entire background, placing them color-on-color. So pink clouds over the pink paper strip, blue clouds over the blue paper strips, etc. I love the texture this technique creates!

I just now realized as I was typing this that I forgot to add journaling, but it will go across the very top and bottom edges of the layout :)

I hope that you are inspired to check out the November Sunshine on My Mind Citrus Twist kits! They are full of color and things to get your creative mojo going! See you again soon!

First Day with Emma

Hi CTK friends!  Emma on the blog today to share a layout using the, oh so gorgeous, February Main kit!  I'm quite sure I've confessed my love of circles before - there is just something about them that I adore and I find myself sneaking them onto pages without even realising sometimes.  In this case it was actually a conscious decision but rather just use circles on my page, I mixed it up by adding them onto 2x2 squares and creating my own patterned background!

This is one of those layouts that kind of just came together on its own.  I started it with an idea of using circles and the design changed a few times in the process of actually putting it together ;)

Here's a look at the page I created:

 

As you know (or may not know), my pages are all 6x8 which means I'm always left with lots of 6x4 "scraps" of paper, particularly white cardstock which I almost always use for my backgrounds and I'm forever looking for ways to use them up.  For this page I've used them by cutting little 2x2 squares and then adhered my circles on top (I used my glue pen).  I used a 3/4" punch and cut dozens of them using almost all of the papers included in the Main kit.

 I think I had around 10 of the 2x2 squares done by the time I'd used up all my punched circles (I went a little crazy with my trusty little punch).  I had originally planned to just adhere them to the page in a plain square pattern but by some odd chance, I'd turned one on the diagonal and liked how it looked so ran with that instead.

 

Rather than keep it all square and uniformed I cut a few of them in half (so they're 1x2") and mixed the positioning, keeping a small border around them.  Although I've mixed all the patterns with the circles I found that having the squares/rectangles all butt up together was crazy busy so that small white border around each shape helped to break things up a bit.

I adhered the pieces using double-sided tape but I've also gone over a few pieces with the sewing machine (using either standard straight stitch or the zig-zag).  My pages are not complete without some machine stitching on them!

My journaling is typed up in Photoshop and I just make sure it fit within the 2x2 white squares then printed it on the same white cardstock I've used on the background (using up more of that scrap cardstock I have!).

The gold alphas included in the main kit are gorgeous and I LOVE how they have mixed sizes of the font.  I often have trouble using some of the alphas on my page becuase they are so big but these smaller fonts are perfect.  I used a combination of the small and large fonts here and by some small miracle, they are a perfect fit for my 2x2 square format!

Although I knew what my layout was going to be about I actually left the photo printing until I'd figured out the background design.  Although my title/journaling are on the angle I didn't want my photo to be so I used Photoshop to create the diamond shaped template for my photo and then just printed it on 6x4 photo paper.

I left the embellishing to the bare minimum because the page has alot going on in the background already, I just tucked one of the word stickers at the bottom of my journaling then cut the yellow heart from the leatherette stickers and popped it underneath.  And that's it!  Embellishing is my favourite process of any layout so only having 2 pieces is unheard of for me ;)

I'm not going to lie - this page took a bit of time to put together.  I'm a slow scrapper at the bet of times but this probably took a few hours (I want to say 2 hours but in all honesty I think it was probably longer than that, ha!). It was fiddly, and somewhat messy with gluing all those circles down, but I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it!  And it's such a great way to use all those patterned papers too (without it looking like a crazy mash of patterns!).

I am so happy how this page finished up.  I got to use my favourite shape (circle) but added a new spin on it by having them stuck to 2x2 squares and having them on an angle. 

Thanks so much for joining me on the blog today!  I hope this might inspire you to try a new spin on a trusted favourite shape/technique of yours!  Take care, Em xo

Quilted Squares with Leigh

Hello, Leigh here to share a layout using a punch and trimmed squares.

The full layout using the Add-on Kit for April, and Patterned Paper Play Kit. So many colorful and pretty patterns to choose from!

I chose a rhombus punch and the same card stock from my background to punch the diamonds first, then filled in the spaces with patterned paper in the color scheme, coral, yellow, aqua and navy. 

If you point all the centers of the white diamonds together, then fill in the patterns underneath, you can trim the squares to 2 3/16inches and place them as shown above.

Then lay your photo on top and add some embellishments and journaling. I created the journaling on my new We R Memory Keepers Typecast Typewriter. 

You can bend up some of the edges from the floral die cut for dimension and interest, and top it off with a couple splashes of mist.

Thank you for joining me today, and happy scrapping!

Leigh

3 to Inspire with Michelle

Hello! Michelle here with this week's "3 to Inspire" challenge!

Your take on this challenge can be a layout or a PL spread and you must include all 3 prompts on your project. This is what I have for you today:

1. Make a one word title.
2. Use a punch.
3. Include something floral.

Here is my take using the February Main "Stories" Kit:

This was an easy challenge for me! I love, love floral patterns and the February Kit had plenty of options. The one word title was pretty appropriate for the subject of my story--spending quality time with my littlest. What really got me excited though, was the chance to dig through my punches. I picked my favorite butterfly punch and thought it went well with the floral, girly theme I had going on.

Now it's your turn! Use the three prompts to create your own project, share it with us here in the gallery , and you will be eligible to win a small prize from the CTK Store. Make sure to include the date of the challenge in the title of your gallery submission. Can't wait to see what you create!

Michelle