Sunday, December 31, 2017

Sunday Sketch with Kathleen

Hey there, it's Kathleen here and first of all, I hope you all had a wonderful, relaxed Christmas with all your loved ones! Today it's my turn to share a Sunday Sketch with you, so let's have a look at it first:

Citrus Twist Kits Sunday Sketch - Dec 31

And here is my take on it:

Story Scrapbooking Layout by ScatteredConfetti. // #citrustwistkits #fancypants #sundaysketch

As you can see, I stuck almost 100% to the sketch. The only thing I really changed is the placement of the journaling (I added mine as hidden journaling and I will show you in a second how and where) and the alignment of the two photos.

For my photos I printed the same one twice (of my husband and our dog - who loves to sleep on my side of the bed as soon as I leave); once in colour and once in black and white. Because I didn't want to cover up too much of our dog in the right photo, I decided to add my photos kind of offset.

Story Scrapbooking Layout by ScatteredConfetti. // #citrustwistkits #fancypants #sundaysketch
Story Scrapbooking Layout by ScatteredConfetti. // #citrustwistkits #fancypants #sundaysketch

For my title I used this gorgeous "story" die cut from the ephemera pack in the Scrapbook kit and also added one of the little tags from the exclusive cutouts page. "Down & Out" seemed quite appropriate for this page :D

As I said before, I added my journaling as hidden journaling. On the one hand because I didn't feel it would fit below my photos and on the other because I wanted it to be handwritten. Since I'm not too fond of my handwriting, though, I went for this solution.

I cut out one of the tags from the Crate Paper "Good Vibes" cut aparts paper, slid it into the glassine bag that the little cork pieces came in, and layered this behind my photo on the right.

Story Scrapbooking Layout by ScatteredConfetti. // #citrustwistkits #fancypants #sundaysketch

For the paint splatters in the sketch I used some Color Shine sprays from my stash, some star puffy stickers from the Maggie Holmes "Carousel" collection, some of the exclusive epoxy sticker dots and these really cute little starburst stamps from the exclusive stamp set.

I am absolutely in love with those little starbursts, so I had to add quite a few of them! I think they add such an interesting touch to this cluster and I'm quite sure they will make an appearance on many more of my projects :D

I also added some more details like the red and blue stitching on the left and right side, the stickers in the lower left corner and the little tag in the upper right corner peeking out from behind the paper strips.


Now it's your turn!  To play along with this week's sketch and to be eligible to win a $5 gift certificate to the CTK Store,  create a layout based off of this week's sketch and upload it to the CTK Gallery with today's date (12/31) in the title. Can't wait to see what you all come up with!!

Thanks for stopping by and I wish you all a safe and Happy New Year!!

Saturday, December 30, 2017

3 to Inspire | Gina

Hi everyone, welcome to another edition of the 3 to Inspire challenge. I hope that you can play along and all you need to do is follow along with the prompts below. My layout was created with the Sonoma main kit and the embellishment kit
My 3 prompts this week are:
1. write your journaling on a tag
2. add least 2 hearts (they can be embellishments, stamping or hand drawn)
3. use a single photo


I've framed the photo here with layers of paper, a sticker, die-cut and journal tab


The tag is a great way to add colour and small amount of journaling


Now it's your turn! Share your creation with us in the CTK gallery and/or the Facebook fan page by Saturday January 3rd for your chance to win. You can also upload to Instagram and tag us @citrustwistkits. Have fun!

As this is my final design team project and blog post for Citrus Twist, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Trina, it's been an absolute blast being on this team, I think for what must be getting close to 3.5 years over 2 stints and I couldn't think of a better team than this, creating with these gorgeous kits each month has been so much fun, thanks for everything Trina! xox

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Friday, December 29, 2017

Friday's PL Challenge | Kristel & Jennie

Hi all! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with lots of new special memories to keep.
Today I have a fun Project Life challenge for you which will hopefully give you lots of new ideas for your (Holiday) pages :-)

Since my photos are mainly white, my yellow coat is the first thing that pops up, so I thought it would be nice to use yellow as my main pop of color, combined with neutrals like white, beige, gray and black.


The Pocket Life kit has lots of different colors you can add to any page, so you mostly likely will always find a matching one :-)
But, you can also add your own little touch of color by stitching, for example.


As you can see here, I have stitched some plus signs onto a photo with black embroidery thread.
Don't worry about ruining your photo; just keep enough space in between your stitches and you can create any shape you want.


I also stitched around the diamond shaped label of this journaling card with some yellow embroidery thread; just to add a little more yellow onto this page :-)

My challenge for you is to recreate a page or spread like this by using:
- Only one accent-color; white, beige, gray and black are considered neutrals.
- Any form of stitching onto your photos and/or cards.

Something I always do, but it might not be something you are used to;
To add anything extra, you can print your photos with (small) white borders around them.


Read on to see some close ups and find out what Jennie did with her awesome spread! :-)

Have a crafty weekend and until next time!

Love, Kristel




Hi Everyone! This is Jennie and Kristel just served a challenge! 
This one was a hard one for me, only ONE accent color! What? Me? The one that puts everything and the kitchen sink on her pages? Yep! The second challenge was way too fun, stitching! The last one was easy, white borders around the photos. Most of the time I print my 4x6 photos with borders because otherwise part of them get cut out. 

This week I had lots of photos of random moments and things which reflects how chaotic and random is my life.

I love to use black and white photos specially when the quality is not very good. But sometimes they just look better.

This title card is very different from anything I've ever done but I was inspired by the layout of the card. I am crazy about these Puffy Alphas! I used stitching for the numbers. It's pretty addicting.


I used some foiled alphas from the October Pocket Life Kit. I always use some of the papers to cut tiny hearts so I can use around my layout.

I added a few stitches to give the illusion that they were holding some elements. Lately I've been cutting lots of photos in circles using dies.
Thanks for challenge Kristel! I hope you join! Share it with us at the Citrus Twist Facebook Fan Group

Thursday, December 28, 2017

Pocket Life with Candace

Hello friends!  I hope your holiday was fantastic and the new year brings lots of lovely memories to document.  For todays spread I worked on week 27 in my 2017 album. The colors in this month's kit were a perfect match for my photos and theme for my week.  Here is a look at the final spread!



When creating this spread I stuck to just a few colors, red, orange, grey and blue.



I made sure that I balanced the colors on the right and left sides of the spread.



To add a little more interest I created two see-through pockets.  I love the clean look of these pockets on the spread.









I am so in love with the little moments and memories captured this week.  I think it is important to capture not only the good, but also the difficult and "bad" days.  This is our life, and it is filled with good and bad.





Such a fun spread to put together!  I hope this gave you a few ideas and inspired you to tell your stories.  Let me know if you have any questions and make sure you stop by the shop to pick up goodies to create your fun spreads!

Have a beautiful day!

Candace



Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Christmas Stories album with Emma

Hi friends!  Emma on the blog today and I am so excited to share my completed December album!  Yep, you read that right; I have actually finished it - wohooo!  I am so happy I could dance, ha!

I've already shared the first few pages of my album in the CTK Facebook Fanpage but I thought I'd share the whole album here so apologies if you're already seen a few of these before ;)  I used the Christmas Stories kits for the majority of my album but there are also pieces from previous years kits and other random things from my stash throughout.

This year I went with a 4x4 album and painted the cover (it was white with purple spots, I covered the whole thing in white paint and added gold spots!).  I'm definitely not going to win any awards with this paint work, but I actually don't mind how it turned out!  Edges are wearing already but that's OK.


The album has finished up ALOT chunkier than I'd anticipated.  I love a chunky mini but this one is really stretching the limits!  I've had to use a band to keep it closed because it can't close properly (and I need to be a little careful turning the pages so the rings don't pop open...oops!).  I used a red elastic band I had in my stash from who-knows-what and added a few "charms" - a die cut, sticker and actual charm (from a dear friend!).



Before I go on too much, here's a quick flip through of the whole album (sped it up 2x so it's just over a minute, didn't want it to take too long and bore you all!):




Rather then show photo's of every page, I thought I'd just  share a few of my favourites and talk about those but if you have any questions about others, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you!

The most surprising thing I've noticed about my album (now that it's all done) is the amount of red I've used!  Red isn't a colour I use a lot of (scrapbooking and in real life) but it's on almost every page of this album and I actually love it!

I love my intro page - it's super simple but something different.  I had some gold craft wire in my stash so I used that to form my circle and used the hot-glue gun to stick it down.  Then I picked a few chipboard stickers and white sequins and stuck them on top (using the glue-gun again).  So easy right?


No mini-album of mine is complete without some kind of sequin pocket. I love them.  I think they add a fun interactive element to any book.  I used my sewing machine to stitch the top of my page so they don't pop out (one day I'll invest in the Fuse...).


On this page I used one of the papers from the December Add-on (Sweater Weather "Cozy") and added various stickers inside each of the boxes and added some (red!) pompom trim at the bottom of the page.  Another simple but effective page to put together (it's how I roll!).


The majority of my album relates to the elf and his daily antics.  We don't typically do a whole lot of "Christmas-themed" activities during the month (other than the crazy shopping) but we do have our elf, Freddie, and he is always entertaining so I include everything he does in my album.  All of my journaling is typed up on the computer (using a typewriter font) because I'm not too fond of my own handwriting.  Actually that's not true, my handwriting is fine until I put it on a scrapbooking page, and then I think it makes it look messy, haha.  Weird but true.

I've also included a few random notes from the elf and tucked them behind the photo/journaling and just used ribbon that's stapled to the tops so you can pull them out.  And yes, more red....



My album is actually repetitive in the layouts I've used - such as this one - I used big photos and added a word/embellishment directly on top, then for my journaling I'll either have it on the page beside or on a tag of some sort.  I love having different textures in my album so I've used various ribbons/twine/elastics to loop the tags over the rings.  (Although I picked up the WRMK Crop-A-Dile so I'm currently addicted to adding eyelets to everything!!)







I completely forgot to take photo's when we went to my brothers for our Christmas Day lunch.  I packed the camera/tripod so I could get the family photo's but never got around to it!  Just means we were having too much fun hanging out :)  I also blame the fact that I was super tired, haha - I got to bed late and Zack was up super early....I am a girl who need her sleep!

But it's not the end of the world, sure the photo's would have been great but I added a quick little note saying I'd forgotten and talked about the awesome food.  We love our food ;)


Using the Christmas Stories kits made this album so easy to put together.  And it all coordinated so well with pieces from previous years Christmas kits so I was able to use up pieces from those too (I never, ever throw out or give away my Christmas-themed items haha, they stay in my stash forever!).

I loved putting this little book together; makes me so happy to have those random little bits down on paper (with photos) so that hopefully in the years to come, we can look back and have a little giggle about the fun we had at Christmas time (while Zack still believed in the magic ;) ).

And if you've made it to the end of this post - THANK YOU!  Sorry for the novel but I'm hoping this might help inspire you to finish your own album (if you've not done so already - and if you have - HOORAY!).  Remember, if you have any questions at all, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you!  I'll also be sharing all the photo's on my blog (all 43+, eek!) incase you wanted to see more.

This is my last post on the CTK blog for 2017 (I'm back in 2018 though!) so I just want to say thank you so much for your support this year; it's such an honor to be a part of this team and I hope a few of the projects I've shared this year might have inspired you, even if it's just a teeny bit!  Best wishes for the New Year - please stay safe and have fun!!!

Take care, Em xo

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Tutorial : un pastel page with Célina

Hello,
Here is Célina, I'm back to inspire you with a new tuto !
Do you want to make a cute pastel page ? With only items from the December Kit = dies cuts and stamps !
And of course a beautiful black & white photos and some sewing to bring texture !
But, before, some pictures of this amazin PL December Kit with exclusive Citrus Twist Kit :








Are you ready for the tutorial ?
1/ Take a white cardstock and select some die cuts assorted : labels, tags, etc... and stamps.



2/ Start to dispose tags and labels all around the photo, harmoniously : 





3/ Add some small crosses : 




4/ I used, then this beautiful stamp to decorate some labels :






5/ To bring a finished side, I used my sewing maghine : 









And there is my page !



Can't wait to see yours !
Xoxo,
Célina