July Sneak Peek

Kristen just posted a peek on Facebook.

And since I have the kit in my hands, and I'm currently working with it, I can confirm that it is indeed awesome and cute! Mark your calendars for the full reveal next Wednesday!

-Linda

It's Sum..Sum..Sum..Sum..SUMMERTIME!

And boy can I tell! My schedule is all out of whack and that means a bit of computer time is thrown out the door as well! We just got done celebrating my daughter's 6th birthday and went out of town to enjoy some time away as a family...enjoying the outdoors and the beautiful weather as much as possible. Now I'm home again with a ton of fun photos that make me smile just thinking about them and now to the fun part...getting to scrap them!

Here are some fun summertime themed layouts that I've seen as of late around the web and in one of my favorite publications, Creating Keepsakes. Hopefully they will inspire you to create some fun summer themed layouts (that is of course when you are not out enjoying those summer memories in the making!).



Above layout by Cindy Tobey.



Above layout by Mou Saha.



Layout above by Jennifer Barksdale.

Birthdays!!

So June is all about birthdays at our house.  My sweet girl's birthday is the day after mine, so we do a lot of celebrating this month.  I went to my fave souce of inspiration, Etsy, to see what cool birthday things I could find.  A lot of this stuff you can make yourself, or if you're like me and just too lazy, check out what you can buy:

You can find whole party sets like this:

Talk about EASY and FABULOUS!  This frog prince set can be found here.

Pompoms are all the rage right now, and these pompoms, which I love the colors of, came from here.

How wonderful is this?  I wish I had done this for Georgia this year.  I love this personalized cupcake you can get from here.

I want to do this next year for Georgia's birthday.  Over at Lindsey Cheney's blog, The Pleated Poppy she tells you how to have a tiny party, and more info here.  I just LOVE this idea.  Hop on over to see all the details.

Hope your Thursday is fabulous!!

Summer is almost here...

and with summer comes bored kiddos at my house.  My kids love the last day of school and can't wait to have extra time doing NOTHIN', but after one day of that, they are bored, and I hear about it.  There are some great summer ideas to be found out there, and I am going to do my best to keep the whining at bay during our lazy summer days.

I did some blog surfing, and found some great summer ideas.  First up, love this list from the talented Meg Duerksen.  Check out her blog for lots of fun summer craft ideas.

I found this cool art website through Meg's blog called Deep Space Sparkle, and it has daily art lessons.  I am going to do one a week with my kiddos this summer.

The oh so talented Emily Anderson is doing a theme a week with her fabu family.  Check out her blog for ideas as well.

I am also planning to do summer jounals with the kiddos.  Be on the lookout for my journals using the July kit from Mosh Posh.  There are tons of journaling tips and ideas out there on the web.

Do you have any summer tips for keeping kids happy?  Please share...pretty please. :)

Essential Scrapping Tool

I have lots of tools I must have to create a page: x-acto knife, straight edge, various adhesives, punches (I love punches). But the one I consider my most essential is my computer.



Yes, that is it. (The desk is only that clean about once a year.)

I use it in almost every stage of creating layouts. In the very beginning, I use it to edit photos. Then I use those photos in a quick mock layout in Photoshop. I pop photos, colored shapes standing in for patterned paper, journaling, title into a PS document to figure out the overall design.

After that's done, I print the journaling out on cardstock, and the photos in the appropriate sizes. While referencing the screen layout, I build the rest of the page, using real patterned paper and embellishments. Half of the time, the finished product looks just like the mock layout. And there are those times when I change everything. But either way, it's nice to have worked out some design issues before I stick things down permanently.

Sometimes, I print journaling and photos together (I use photo paper when I do that). I finish the layout by adding little details using paper/embellishments. Super time saver!

In this layout, I added the title, the teeny strip of paper at the bottom, and the heart epoxy detail on top.



In this one, I added strips of blue and orange paper, the fork, the heart, and then rubbed on the title (on photo, to the left).



And for this layout, I printed the photos together on one sheet, leaving space for patterned paper. Saved me from having to print individual photos, cut them out, and glue them back together on a grid (which would require this annal retentive scrapbooker to break out a T-square to make sure the photos are straight).



What is your favorite scrapbooking tool? How do you use it? Please share with us. Also, join us on Flickr and share your layouts.

Linda

Lace

In one of the add-ons this month, there is a lovely sheet of Basic Grey Doily Paper. I must confess I was a little nervous about that. I'm not a lacy person in general. I don't do lace on clothing or on paper! But that sheet was beautiful and speaking to me. So I plunged in, and played around with it, and ended up with this layout:

I punched little circles of patterned paper and layered them behind the doily paper. Then I added the journaling strips on pop-up dots, and tucked the wishes inside some of the lacey openings. The whole page is backed by kraft paper. It's not a page one would usually expect from me. But I love it anyway. It pushed me outside my comfort zone, which is why I love working with a kit.

More ideas? Here is how Jen used her doily paper:


Note that it looks like a letter size sheet! She only needed that much to highlight the lovely block of photo/ribbon/paper/flowers. So Jen cut the paper up, and joined them carefully. You can't really tell where it's split. So clever!

And she used the cut off chunk as a nice textural layer in this layout:



Laina also had lace details in her layouts:


First with a punched lacey edge, and then with layers of cream colored paper punched, stacked, and stitched on to create a very delicate detail to be discovered. So pretty!



Amy also used that same edge punch (which now I must have!):

Just a teeny bit of laceyness. Which is the perfect amount for this adorable layout about those ever-present Silly Bandz! (Also note she also used garlands! She posted about that yesterday. And I'm going to use them soon.)

So there you have it. A few different ways to use lacey details in layouts. And note, they are not just for girl-themed pages! You can use a lot of it, or very little. But either way, it adds a nice punch.

Share your layouts with us at our Flickr group! Hope you have a great weekend!

Linda

Garlands, garlands EVERYWHERE!!

Yep, they are all the rage right now.  I check in our DT's scrapping galleries and found some great garland pages like this one from Jen:

Here is a page I love from our past DT coordinator Brook:

Here's a garland page of Laina's that I just love:

Here is one of my fave banner pages:

This garland is from Belladrummer's Etsy Shop.  I am a huge fan of Debee's paper art, and you can visit her blog for more inspiration.

This garland was found in Milissa's Etsy Shop.

 And last but not least, you MUST check out Mara May's Etsy Shop for some pretty darn amazing banners!  It was hard to pick my fave because I really loved them all, but you can snag gorgeous banners like this:

Sigh, what's not to love?  Have a great Thursday!!

June Monthly Sketch!

We found one this month from Pagemaps that we liked...check out our interpretations of the sketch.

Amy's layout:



Linda's layout:


Laina's layout:



and mine:



If you decide to play along this month be sure to share it with us in the Flickr gallery or on our Facebook Fan page!

Jen

June Gallery Is Up!

Happy Weekend! Our June Gallery is up. To view it, you can click here, or on the design team gallery button by the blog header! Have you noticed the new blog design? We are sprucing things up to make it easier to navigate the blog. Enjoy!

Linda

Some More Sneaks!

Here are a few more project sneaks from me...the full gallery reveal will be tomorrow evening!

Jen

Fun photo schtuff

I got an iPhone a little over a year ago, and I'm still totally happy with it. I try my best not to be annoying and check my email/twitter/facebook/text non-stop. I definitely don't do those things while driving. Really.

My favorite apps for it are photo-related: ShakeItPhoto and Hipstamatic. ShakeItPhoto creates a Polaroid-like photo. And Hipstamatic has many many options for cool borders and older-film-like shots.

Here are some shots I took with ShakeItPhoto (you'll see some in my layouts this month):






And these were taken with Hipstamatic:







Another super fun thing to have is an instant photo camera. As we all know, Polaroid stopped making, well, polaroids. (Some investors bought an old Polaroid factory and started making polaroid-esque film again!) But Fuji continues to make instant photo stuff. Last year, my parents kindly gifted me a Fuji Instax Mini 7.



What I love about an instant photo is that it captures a single moment never to be reproduced in that format. I do scan them. And share them with friends and family. But it is very unlike a digital photo. To me, there is less control of what will appear once the photo develops. And that mix of nervousness, awe and expectation is a very cool feeling.





Oh, yes, I've got my eye on a number of other alternative cameras and printers. But uh, I need to get a higher paying job first.

Do you have any cool camera/printer toys you love?

Vintage Couture

Here is the full kit for June! Remember too that all these papers are double-sided so you have numerous options for designs and color combination's...this has been one of my all time favorite's from Mosh Posh, I love how it's classic, simple and pretty. :) The gallery reveal will be this Friday so be sure to check back to see what the design team did with this beauty of a kit!

Jen