MERRY & BRIGHT with Our Guest Designer CLAUDIA WHITE

 

Hi there!

We are so excited to welcome Claudia White as one of our Merry & Bright Guest Designers.   We know you are going to love her designs, but before we show her project, she answered two questions about the holidays.

What is your favorite  thing about the Holiday Season?

My favorite thing about the holiday season  and the thing I look forward  to the most; is all the fun I’ll have with my family when we all get together and play games. We play the White Elephant game.

Everyone laughs so hard, have such a great time and we all try to make it last a long time.

I usually set up a video camera and try to record everyone. We all enjoy looking at photos and videos when we are together thought our year. 

 

 One tip/idea to help you document the Holidays:

One tip to help document the busy holiday season is to get the whole family involved, ask everyone to take pics of the things they are doing and seeing. You can all share at dinner time and talk about how they are experiencing the joy of the season.

  

 

 There is nothing more fun than playing games with the whole family. This holiday season, start a new tradition the whole family can participate in. 

Let’s have some holiday fun with a good old fashion Scavenger Hunt. You can use the one we are providing or come up with your own.

I created my Scavenger Hunt in my December Life Documented Album. This month’s kit includes lots of wonderful pieces to create this double spread. 

  

I used the Busy Sidewalks 6x8 paper pad by Crate Paper and two extra-large tags as the focal point of this double spread.

To print your scavenger hunt list on the tags. Print the list on white paper, overlay the tag above the printed list and attach the tag with a small piece of washi tape. 

Feed the sheet of paper with the attached tag onto your printer and print as usual. 

 

I thought it would be great to get the whole family involved in the game so I sent each one of them a picture of one of the tags. I have instructed them to snap a photo of any item they come across as they go about their day.

It is going to be fun seeing the photos they take.

 

My husband and I go for walks around our neighborhood and I am sure I will find some of the items on my list around here. Everyone in our neighborhood does a  great job decorating and getting into the Spirit of the Holiday Season.

Make sure you take a photo of your list and keep it on your phone to refer to when you are out running errands. You never know when you will come across an unexpected  decoration.

 

The little houses that are decorating my tags came from the back cover of the Busy Sidewalks paper pad. Companies create such beautiful packaging that can be used in your projects, so always take a look before you discard them.  

I was trying to create a little city or neighborhood feel on the tags, which goes so well since it is a Scavenger hunt in the city.

 

I can’t wait to see the photos we gather as a family and add them to my December album. This will be a great starting point this holiday season.

Don’t forget to grab the free scavenger hunt list I created for you. Feel free to make some changes and customize your list. Have fun with this project!

 

Thank you so much.

Claudia

 

Sunday Sketch with Ashley Laura

 

Hey y'all, Ashley here. I am so excited to be sharing a Sunday Sketch with you all. 

Take a look at the sketch I have for this week:

I'm not great at following things exactly how they are and I normally love to add a little bit of my own touch to projects like these, but I loved this sketch so much that I wanted to get it as close to the original as possible. 

I started with choosing my photos. These pictures were taken at a Tea Party that my daughter was invited to for one of her friend's Birthdays. I thought they went perfectly with the scrapbook paper from the October add-on. 

I then built my layers, adding strips of paper behind one another and mounting embellishments on the left side of the photos.

I even used packaging as one of my layers, which I just love! Lastly, I added stitching across the top of ht page and even vertically down my embellishment clusters. 

I hope you all will find inspiration from this project and I can't wait to see if you try the Sunday Sketch this week!

Have a wonderful rest of your weekend!

XOXO

Ashley

3 to Inspire with Kira

 Hey there!  It's Kira and I am so excited to be back on the Citrus Twist blog to share a look at what I've been working on.  And today I've have a challenge for you, use these three items on a layout:  

1.  Cut file 

2.  Multiple photos

3.  Patterned paper

Here's a look at what I came up with:

 

I am working with the Hocus Pocus Halloween mini kit to document our 2020 Halloween, so I started by choosing my photos.  I picked two of my son in his Captain Hook costume, one sized to a full LC page (4.25x8.25) and the other to 2x3.  

 

Then I decided on the color scheme I was going to use.  I love the floral print paper included in the kit, so I wanted to play off the colors on that:  pink, orange and yellow.  I pulled out other papers that I felt coordinated well.  

I love the leaves in the Fall Days cut file, and thought they could work well as layering pieces on my layout.  I cut out the outline leaf in pink and yellow and the solid leaf in orange.  They were sized to about 5" wide, but I cut most of the clusters apart before using them on my layout.  

 

Now it was time to start piecing this layout together!  I cut three pieces of paper into strips and layered them on top of each other on white cardstock.  I added some machine stitching on top of a few of the strips.  Then I brought in my leaves and layered them under and over the strips.  I adhered my smaller photo down and added some die cuts and chipboard pieces in the corners.  

On the reverse page I chose the chipboard "October 31" piece as my title.  I thought it felt a little plain so I decided to layer some of the cut file leaves under it as well.  A small chipboard heart finished off the layout.  

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!

xo, Kira 

MERRY & BRIGHT With Our Guest Designer Jennie Garcia

 

Hi friends! I’m Jennie and this month I’ll be sharing with you my December 2020 Memories album! My favorite part of the holidays are the “small silly traditions”. I love “Cookiethon” which is a day where I make a lot of cookies and making ornaments. But one of my favorite stories must be the Christmas tree, specially when we have a new theme! My elf Charlotte appears often in my album. I’m not a fan of her shenanigans, but my girls love her! If Santa hasn’t sent  a helper to your house, do NOT request one!

In the past few years I haven’t been able to finish the album close to December. In 2019 I had a full house and in 2020 I was packing to move to a new home. But things that help me stay on top of my documenting are printing photos constantly and putting them in the page protectors. It’s my least favorite part of the process. I also have an album on my phone for the photos I have to print.

  

 

 I love the black journaling card because I can use it with a title, a photo or for journaling. I love digital cards because I get to print my favorites many times!

  

 

The gold embellishments from the Merry & Bright Kit is perfect for this photo!

I already had a few golden touches that I added with the A Design Kit App. I was trying to be a little more creative with photo editing.

 

 

 This pale mustard card is from the Flea Market Findings Kit. It has a double meaning, a small snowball, and my little girl.

 

 

  

I had a lot of photos for this day! I couldn’t choose less photos so I made a collage with the PicStitch App. I love the Citrus Twist Life Crafted Adhesive Page Strips. It makes my life super easy because I don’t need to Fuse my page protectors to make a new size and I don’t ruin my photos punching holes. 

 

Can you spot the Printable Cut Apart Elements in my organizer?

 

 

This cute snowy digital paper was perfect for my photos! The Gold Puffy Alphabet Stickers are exclusive from Citrus Twist Kits of the Merry & Bright Kit. I love round alphabets!

 I went a little crazy with the Gold Puffy Phrase and Icon Stickers. I also love the hearts and stars I can use like sprinkles around the page! 

Did I mentioned I had a LOT of photos? I had to cut a page protector down to 12x8 and fold it in half to add even more photos! The enamel dots from the kit are also great sprinkles.

Dies are expensive items so make sure you use them often! I like to use circle dies to cut photos.

Let me know which part of this layout (with many parts) is your favorite! Stay tuned to see what else I’m making with this kit! Take care!

Sunday Sketch with Nathalie

 

Hello there!

Nathalie with you today to share this week's sketch.  I am sure that as the holiday season starts to become busier, we will all be looking at ways to document our memories in a short amount of time.  Here is where sketches are our best source of inspiration and speed when documenting your memories. Sketches are the blueprint of a page!  This new sketch is fun, versatile, and so easy to use in different formats.   First, let me show you the sketch:

and here is my take on this week's sketch featuring the October Add-on kit:

I love all the layers and white space of the sketch; these are opportunities to make the sketch your own.   My first choice was to flip the sketch 90 degrees counter clockwise.   

I decided to add a strip of paper as per the sketch.   Then using then new Penelope Stamp set, I added my title to the negative space on the page.   A small cluster of ephemera  was added to the bottom of the paper strip as per the sketch!

I followed the sketch to add the paper layers and most embellishments  on the other half of the page.  The new Jen Hadfield collection is gorgeous, and you can find it included in this October add-on kit.

 I hope this inspires you, and you also use the sketch to create a page of your own. Remember to tag the shop so we can see all your beautiful projects, too

3-to-Inspire with Desiree

Hello CTK friends!  I am so happy to be joining you today for this week's 3-to-Inspire challenge.  

This week's items:

1. stamps

2. frames

3. ephemera

I was really excited to use the new Flea Market Findings kit.  I had an idea for a layout with stacked frames and a stamped background.  So I got to work on my idea.  I started by stamping the new Citrus Twist 6x8 Penelope Alpha Stamp in a large cluster at the top left of my page.  I made a smaller stamped letter cluster at the bottom right.  There was no specific stamp pattern, I just overlapped the letters and also sprinkled in a different ink color to add interest to my page.

Next, I pulled out the Flea Market Findings Chipboard Frames to start layering them.  I chose this black frame for a picture of me from my Mom's 60th birthday celebration.  I selected smaller frames to layer around my photo.  The beautiful yellow flower from the Flea Market Findings Ephemera was perfect to anchor my cluster with its large size and darker elements that matched my black frame.  I added more elements from the chipboard pack and a phrase from the Flea market Findings Ledger Tiny Word Stickers.

 

Next up, I used the cut apart sheet from the Flea Market Findings 6x8 Patterned Papers.  I cut out the little tags/cards, punched a hole in them, and added thread.  I used the cute little tags to add to each cluster.  For the smaller cluster, I let the ledger "xoxo" die-cut be the star. 

 

For the title, I selected the "good" ephemera which echoes the colors of the flower.  The Flea Market Findings Tiny Alpha Stickers completed my title. 

Black, pink, and yellow splatters were the perfect combination of colors to add to my page.  To continue the color combo throughout, I added the Flea Market Findings Enamel Dots.

I was so happy wih this completed layout. It came out better than I imagined thanks to the soft and perfect combinations of the Flea Market Findings Kit.