Citrus Twist Kits & The Cutshoppe Blog Hop Starts Here!

Welcome to the Citrus Twist Kits/The Cut Shoppe blog hop. We think you are going to love what the participating designers have created. They all got to work with the free cut file and April or May Citrus Twist kits. Let's get started!

You'll be hopping in order beginning here and ending with The Cut Shoppe. To be eligible for our prize drawings, please leave a comment on each of the 7 participating blogs. We will randomly select one winner for the Citrus Twist prize and one winner for The Cut Shoppe prize.

CITRUS TWIST

CANDACE PERKINS

EMMA WOOD

JESSY CHRISTOPHER

JENNIFER HAGGERTY

BRENDA SMITH

THE CUT SHOPPE

Both The Cut Shoppe and we have special discount offers happening during the 4-day blog hop, so don't miss out. Here is a graphic with the discount codes. The Cut Shoppe has also designed an exclusive cut file, free, for blog hop participants. Here is the link to download the free cut file.

And we do have a prize giveaway (1 from Citrus Twist, 1 from The Cut Shoppe). To earn a chance to win be sure to comment on each participating blog so your name can be entered for a chance to win.

Have fun hopping!

Trina

Challenge Winners!

Today we are happy to announce the winners of the March and April challenges!

Each week our Design Team provides you with three challenges to help you get your creative juices flowing. Pocket Life Sketch Friday gives you multiple sketches to use in your pocket style scrapbooking. Saturday's 3 to Inspire challenge brings you three creative prompts to incorporate on a project of your choice. On Sunday, our Sunday Sketch challenge goes live. To participate in either or all challenges, all you need to do is upload your project to the gallery within a week of the challenge date, noting the date of the challenge in the title of your project. Once a month we pick a winner from each challenge and announce them here on the blog.

Thanks to all that participated in the months of March and April! Here are the winners:

Sunday Sketch-$5 Gift Certificate to the CTK Store:
  3/6: deshetrick3

3/13: annau

3/20: pizookie

3/27: 3littleks

  4/3: mamakven

4/10: barbp

4/17: justt

4/24: juliee

3 to Inspire-A Small Prize from the CTK Store:
  3/5: sunie

3/12: juliee

3/19: pizookie

3/26: ibestsey1

  4/2: celisemcl

  4/9: shellgel

4/16: ibestsey1

Pocket Life Friday-Fun Mail!
  3/4: annau

3/11: sunie

3/18: stefcia

3/25: stefcia

  4/1: stefcia

4/15: stefcia

4/22: pizookie

4/29: ellewood

Winners, please email Trina at CitrusTwistKits@yahoo.com and include the name and date of the challenge that you have won in the subject of the email to claim your prize!

In My Studio with Diane

I was SO excited to see my brush script words as part of the stamps in this month’s kits here at Citrus Twist Kits. I’ve always admired hand lettering and really wanted to give it a go but had always felt too intimidated to try. But one day I picked up a brush and just gave it a go. It was not pretty. But I persevered and slowly I felt like I was getting better.

Now I try to make sure I practise a few times a week (in fact, I’ve just started the 100 Day Project where I brush script something new everyday, you can see the results over on my Instagram). Swapping my keyboard for a brush has become a habit for me, a quiet time to think, a time to slow down and feel inspired by the words I’m writing.

My favourite tools for scripting are: watercolour paints, acrylic ink, a variety of brushes in a range of sizes but my favourite is a No 2 Round by DAS, water brushes, a LOT of paper and a LOT of time.

For each finished piece, I usually have 2-5 practice goes before picking the best composition. Then I photograph it and edit the photo to adjust the contrast or colours. To create a digital version for stamps and design work, I scan the paper and make any final adjustments in Photoshop.

Have you ever tried brush script? My advice would be: give it a go! Practise, practise, practise and enjoy the process!

Sunday Sketch

Another week is coming to an end and that means it is time for a new Sunday Sketch! For this week's challenge, we are excited to have guest designer Jennifer Haggerty from The Cut Shoppe sharing her take on today's sketch using the May "Beach Glass" Scrapbook Kit!

Starting with the white cardstock as my background, I cut out the geometric shapes of the butterfly on my Silhouette. I then cut the butterfly in its entirety with the light blue lined Fancy Free #08 patterned paper and adhered it over the top of my background. I also used the multi-colored Fancy Free #06 to back the geometric shapes of the butterfly. I then cut strips from Ombre Wall and Happy Place to adhere across the middle of my page. To accent my photo, I adhered one of the cute Becky Higgins Project Life Chipboard frames as well as layered two of the Fancy Free Emphemera tags underneath.  My title is from the Fancy Free Thicker sheet. I loved adding the three bright sequins and cork embellishments along with the small acrylic flowers from the kit on and around the butterfly.  To finish, I used two of the sentiments from the clear stamp set as well as added journaling under my title.

Now it's your turn! To play along with these week's Sunday Sketch Challenge, create a layout based off of today's sketch, upload it to our gallery with the date of the challenge (5/8) in the title, and you will be eligible to win a $5 gift certificate to be used in the CTK Store!

3-to-Inspire with Melissa Mann

Happy Saturday morning, friends!

This is Melissa here with you today and I'm bringing the Saturday "3 to Inspire" challenge for the weekend!

My challenge for you today is to use the following three products in your project:
1. Patterned Paper
2. Twine or Floss
3. Watercolors

 I created two cards for my Pocket Life Album that I will incorporate into my spreads this month. The first card was created by cutting a 6x6 piece of pattern paper to 3x4. I cut out a star shape and then used that as a diagram to punch the holes into my cardstock. I then used the twine that Trina used to wrap my product up with this month and filled in the holes with some back-stitching. I stitched around the outside edge of the paper and then used some light water-coloring on the card.

For my second card, I cut down one of the 6x6 pattern papers to 4x6 and stitched around the edge with some purple thread. I deliberately chose a pattern paper that already had a watercolor look to it! I placed my picture on the paper and adhered it down and placed one rubber embellishment strip across the bottom!

Make sure you show us what you created! You can share with us on our Facebook page or in our Gallery!

Pocket Life Sketch Friday with Marie-Pierre

Hello everyone!

I've been working with the gorgeous and very colorful May 2016 Pocket Life and Embellishments kits and it's just so much fun!!

Today I have a Pocket Life spread to show you as well as a sketch to inspire you! I hope you like it.

The colorful journaling cards can make a big impact on your layout and bring lots of joy and happiness. Even when you think your photos are colorful enough, a card with lots of colors can shake things up and make everything else calm down.

I always love the small embellishments in every kit! This month we get to play with rubber charms, cork and acrylic shapes. i like to mix and match them and to use them several times on my layout. 

As you can see, I placed my rubber charms forming a visual triangle to guide the eye through the photos. I tried to pair the color of the charm with the color on the photo or journaling card. I did the same with the red label that I placed on the reddish part of the journaling card.

I loved to used these little numbers and alphas. :) I stitched on my journaling card before adhering them on top.

Here is a small cluster of embellishments/die cut. You can't really see it on this picture but the die cut is foiled in silver. Just gorgeous!

I added little words that I typed with my typewriter onto white cardstock.

On this page I played with the wide white spaces on my photos to add titles.

Here I made the title with the epoxy alphas.

More epoxy stickers mixed with cord embellishment to tie both pages of my spread together. Here my photo couldn't be cropped to a 4x6 so I simple printed it a little smaller and backed it on patterned paper. It's a nice way to make a picture pop off the page.

More embellishment clusters.

And I found a tiny little post to add some more words. :) I used a white gel pen to write on the black cardstock. Worked pretty well.

Stitching around a picture is also a nice way to frame it without adding too much weight to it. Oh and did you see this beautiful hello card? Love the horizontal lines to write strait. I like my handwriting, but I can't write strait, so that's a little trick to help me.

And here too, I used the white space to add a nice title.  Love the simplicity of this.

And now here are the sketches:

I hope you use them and I hope they inspire you to create. 

Thanks for visiting Pocket Life Friday, where every week we share PL sketches and a chance to win. For your chance to win, create a layout based on the sketches in this blog post, post your layout to our Gallery or our Facebook Fan Page by Friday, May 13th. Be sure to include PL 05/06 in your title when posting!

Marie

Kit Love with Wendy

Hello May! The start to a new month and the big reveal of new kits from Citrus Twist Kits!  

The colors in the kits this month will have you ready to plan a vacay! 

Check out my video reveal below sharing up the May 2016 "Sparkle" Add-On kit and May 2016 "Beach Glass" Pocket Life kit.  

Don't be late to grab them up over at the shop!  

There are LOTS of new goodies in the shop too!  Yeah, I couldn't resist adding a few 'must haves' into my cart this month.  

Wendy